HATE

This summer, as I am sure I have said before, has been ridiculous.


The apex of the ridiculousness has been the class that I am taking... the one I am sitting in right now.


The class is "research methods in education" and the teacher is Dr. Hsu.

If you go to West Chester and need to take this class, do your hardest to not take it with him. Hsu teaches a few classes in the education department - largely dealing with statistics. Sure, he knows what he is doing. He can talk about two-tailed t tests and f ratios all day... the problem is that the course, as he teaches it, is utterly useless!

The other teachers of this REQUIRED education course at West Chester do what is called an action research project. The whole goal of the class is to design a research project and write it up. In the end, this project counts towards your masters comps and you do not have to take that particular question. Seems like a good idea, no?

Well, Dr. Hsu does not do that project. Instead, he spends all of his time teaching us about useless statistics! It is incredibly frustrating to spend 3 hours a day here, three times a week. I have a million other things to do then waste my time and money trying to decipher his thick accent.


Don't get me wrong - Hsu is probably a very nice and intelligent guy in his own right. But why would he choose to teach this course differently than everyone else? Most of us in this course are taking our comps in Oct and this is basically the last course for all of us. I have been waiting for someone other than Hsu to teach is... but he taught it in the fall of 07, winter of 08 I was signed up to take it and it got canceled. And so, here I am, wasting my summer days in this stupid classroom.


In a way, it is good. It helps me empathize with the students I have who hate science and think that my course is useless for them. On the contrary though, Biology is good general knowledge, whether it is about the environment or anatomy... kind of crucial.

This, however, as I have complained, is USELESS to me. I hate hate hate hate hate it. Mostly it is just my utter helplessness. I cannot do anything but sit here and try to pay attention. GRRRRRR.

Day 37

*Warning, this post contains commentary on female issues, read with caution, or not at all!*








Okay, so it has been 37 days. Normal females (you know, the ones whose bodies function properly) have a 28 day cycle. Me, in my abnormal endometriosis state, usually average around 33.

Now, my nutritionist put me on a new calcium supplement last month, and thus far, I thought I had it absolutely made. I had no pms, I was feeling great. But then I started to worry... the absence of pain really freaked me out. And how pathetic it was to realize that pain comforts me! Normal, for me, is pain. This whole feeling jolly good thing was absolutely not normal.

And so, I was thinking I was supposed to get my period last weekend... but I did not have any of the "tell-tale" signs... Actually, I was cranky... and my face started to break out... but the big (literally and figuratively) sign was missing - no water retention in my chest.

For those of you lovely ladies out there who have been pregnant, I am sure you can feel my pain here... having swollen breasts is NOT fun and totally not preferable. Trust me, I could easily go toe to toe with any mom as far as stretch marks go. That is how much I gain.


Anyway... that was not there.


And I got freaked out.



Jon and I were pretty stinking confident that we were not pregnant, but I realized something.... it is kind of scary, but its totally conceivable that if I did get pregnant, Jon and I would deal with having baby. Our wedding is 2 months away, I would not be showing then... and, heck, we want kids. We could cope. Not preferable, but manageable. The concept is strange in and of itself because its like whoa, we could do this.

Trust me when I say that we are not pregnant. We aren't. Thank the Lord!


However, I still am missing my period... and to be totally honest, I feel like POOP!
I am so run down, I am exhausted. My breasts have finally decided to gain that ridiculous weight, so every movement has to be carefully coordinated to minimize their movement. I am starving, my face is still really broken out... and I am just WAITING. It absolutely sucks, and yes yes, I am complaining about it to... who knows.



Bottom line is that I feel awful and have been in a rather rotten mood for over a week now.

Not only am I miserable, but I am anticipating not feeling so hot when it actually comes. The longer in between, the worse I feel. Its like my body is TRYING to be normal, but it cant go for some reason. It reminds me of a turnstyle. If you do not push hard enough, you cannot go through. If you push too hard, it swings around and whacks you in the butt! That is what will happen to me... pushing pushing pushing till I get hurt. Bleh. Grr. All those sorts of things.

Hopefully it will come very soon so that I am not a barrel full of scorpions this weekend. Here is my schedule for the week...




Monday ~ clean clean and clean more to get ready for my brother moving home
Tuesday ~ school, then work at the hospital
Wednesday ~ school, then dress rehearsal for Project
Thursday ~ school
Friday ~ Concert. 8 pm. Lower Merion High School. Be there.
Saturday ~ Prenuptual Paintball... then swimming in the afternoon... then respective bachelor / bachelorette parties
Sunday ~ 12:30 friend shower here... 5 Project Party




Great timing for it, given my present misery. I guess we shall see how the week goes and I will get as much sleep as I can to prepare. I apologize in advance if I am rude or mean to anyone this week, I will do my best not to be.



In other news, Jon and I are now the proud owners of a sofa and armchair. Woot. It is green and we like it. It currently resides in my basement, but will be moving to our apt on the 16th! :)

Life is so exciting, no?

shower

This weekend was a flurry of activity.


On Sat, Jon picked up my wedding band! It is gorgeous, I love it, and I can't believe I will be wearing it in 55 days!

We then went to Media for my cousin Matt's wedding to Kezia. It was a nice wedding all-around and I really only had two complaints - it was outside (um, it was 95 degrees at 5 p.m. on Sat) and the food was all crazy sort of vegan. Actually, I had tuna for the first time ever, and it was AWESOME. Kinda raw. Like it is supposed to be. But soooooo yummy!

After dinner, which was around 8ish... Jon and I popped over to Lindy & Matt's wedding, which was fortunately only a 6 minute drive away. We missed most of the festivities, but it was great to see them and congratulate them. Lindy looked beautiful! But of course she did, she always does!

I think we got home around 11 and Jon and I hung out with my cousin Pam until 12:30ish.

On Sunday, I had my first bridal shower! It was great. Leslie, Michelle, and Gwen did a wonderful wonderful wonderful job of putting everything together. All said and done I think there were like 35 people there? I do not even know. A lot. The food was awesome, they had baked tons of stuff and made lots of mac and cheese and had muffins and tons of tea sandwiches (mmm cucumber!). It was really strange being the "guest of honor"... and also strange opening presents while everyone watched, but I think it went well. We got lots of great stuff for our new apartment. We are looking forward to using it all!

I cannot thank Les, Michelle, and Gwen enough. As much as it was crazy insane this past week and this weekend, you all really pulled it together and made it wonderful! :) THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The wedding is actually feeling real now....

So, I am going to get back to eating my leftover mac n cheese and writing my wonderful thank you cards. YAY! You guys are the best!





Oh, and brief schedule of the week:
today - postcards
tues - class (test), wedding dress fitting
wed - class, rehearsal here
thur - class
fri - shopping for wedding presents with Lauren
sat - karaoke?!
sun - Lauren's shower, rehearsal

I passed!

Congrats to us - neither Jon nor I are sex offenders, dangerous criminals, or otherwise unfit to rent.

Officially I am moving on August 16th (get your trucks ready, folks) to Oxford Rise Apartments. Jon will be moving in after we get married.




While I am here, I might as well send some love to those who have helped along the way these past few weeks...


To Lauren, for being so encouraging and thoughtful, even when she herself is totally stressed out!

To Yassara, for being amazingly awesome and helping me with invites!

To Michelle, for working so hard on my family shower and for always being so considerate and kind!

To Paige, I cannot tell you how much I love you for going to pick up the bridesmaid dresses!

To Leslie, who reins supreme for making me laugh and giving me someone to grumble to and for planning stuff!


You have all made my life so much easier over the past few weeks... I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it. :)



Hurrah!

the latest

It has been awhile, I suppose.

It is the 4th of July today... yay Independence!

In another week, our wedding invites go out, which means Jon and I have a lot of addressing to do this week. I was hoping to be able to find Muppet stamps... but the last time they put them out was in 2005, so they are somewhat of a collector's item. Guess I will just be sending them out with normal stamps... or I might pick up the Marvel Superhero stamps. Why not? :)


This past week I started my final required class at WCU. It is three days a week from 1 to 4. Torturous. The class is on statistics and measurements in educational research... however, its mostly just about the scientific method and research methods in general. Cake, I daresay, but the prof has a thick Asian accent and goes pretty quickly. So maybe it will end up being more difficult than I though... but he at least is kind enough to get tired/bored after about 2 hours and is willing to let us go early. :)


I have also been working on my Masters comps questions. Bleh. They are taking quite awhile to do, but I am very pleased to be part of a study group. We split up the questions to divide the work... brilliant! :) They are coming along, though I have been so busy that I havent had much time to dedicate to working on them.


Jon and I have decided it would be worth our sanity to rent for a year instead of pushing the house issue. There is so much on the market right now, and neither of us really has the time to dedicate to it. And so, we checked out various apts and I think we decided on one in Oaks. It is in an old brick Victorian that is owned by friends of Jon's family. Maybe its not *the* place... but I think its a great situation overall for us. We like our potential landlords and it is in a better location for Jon to look for a new job. I am not too keen on being on 422 every day... its practically the corridor of doom... but I think my commute will be the same. We are both anticipating saving on gas due to the sheer fact that we will not be living a half hour apart from each other. Holy cow, we are getting married in 2 months!


Speaking of marriage, Jon and I were up in Mass this past weekend celebrating the wedding of Kris and Krista. The wedding was really nice. I daresay the nicest one I have been to this "season" (no offense, other newly weds, your weddings were nice too). However, the wedding ceremony was great, they were both so completely thrilled. I liked their vows. Their families were overjoyed. I spent a lot of time with Jon's friends from PSU Altoona because he was a groomsman... so I got to fill in some faces from the past. Really, the people who were there were all the people that I missed out on getting to know. It was great to finally see them and know even more about Jon. They had LOTS of flowers at the wedding... PSU white and blue and a mint green. Interesting combo, but it worked I guess! Jon and I are both glad that we are not into PSU. I pretty much lack any semblance of school pride. Anyway, it was a fun time. I also learned that my sleep number is NOT 40. It is about 70. My back paid the price for that one.


In other news, the bridesmaid dresses are scheduled to come in on the 18th. My wedding dress in another month. My first shower (for family and church people) is July 20th, the day after Matt & Kezia and Lindy & Matt's weddings. Two weeks later is our concert for Project on Friday night... then Sat is our bachelor / bachelorette parties... then Sunday is my "friend" bridal shower. Sigh. Busy busy busy.


My brother is moving home right around July 18th/19th, which will be really awesome. It will be fun to live together again for a month... then I will move out mid-august. Does it ever end?! Summer is going too quickly!



I *think* that is all that is going on right now?! Again, it just feels like time is moving very quickly. I guess it is good, in a way, because it leaves me with no time to be sad. When I do stop and think about it... it is sort of sad. The passing of "childhood", as it were. I mean, 27 years of age is past being a child... but there will be a lot of change in the next few months... moving out of my home, marrying my best friend, changing my name, finishing my Masters... it is just a lot. A lot of good, to be sure... but a bit scary too. At least I don't have to do it alone. :)