Scrapping

Well I haven't scrapped in soooooo long, but finally got up the nerve to "just do it" here is what I have so far.

I am feeling better

I have been sick the last few days, and today is the first day that I feel half way decent. It's no fun being sick while on Christmas vacation. I think that getting a good nights rest has helped a lot. I had all these plans for what I was going to do, mostly I wanted to scrap a little while I was off. I think that tomorrow will be the day. Craig is taking the day off and we will all be home. I have to go into work for a couple of hours today; Faith is over at a friends house, so Sarah and I will go in for a little while.

My How Time Flies

I was taking some time for myself today, it's as if I am trying to gear up to be creative. But I am sick, and not feeling well. Anyway, I was looking at this website that I belong to called Two Peas in a Bucket. It is a scrapbooking website, and I haven't been there in a really long time. I want to scrap while I am off from school in the next 3 weeks, it has been forever since I have scrapped. They have a store you can order supplies from, a message board, and now a blog. So I was just looking through and decided to look at me profile. It has been 6 years since I updated my profile. I used to be a stay at home mom, my children used to be 5 and 6 years old. I had been married for almost 10 years. Things are different now.

Now I work part time at a doctor's office scheduling surgeries, part time college student; going for a nursing degree. My children are coming up on their 10th and 11th birthdays, and this past September my husband and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary.
It's amazing how time marches on. My life is very busy right now, I am working toward a goal. Sometimes, I think that my family suffers for it. Does it matter that they suffer now so that we can have a better life, or will they not see it that way and be angry with me later on in life? Will they understand? It is important for my family to know that I love them, both my children and my husband.

Moving News

Well Craig asked me the other night if I had talked to my Great Uncle Fritz and selling the fishing barge. I had gotten the number from my mom and dad but hadn't called. I don't want to push this, (see post) I have finally come to a place that if God wants me to move to Texas then He will have to make it happen. However, I did eventually call my Uncle Fritz. Boy is he sounding older these days.

He realizes that he can't take care of himself, OpalRuth and the barge. He loves that place! He loves keeping busy!! So I called Uncle Fritz and he told me that he was having two different appraisers come and look at the business and tell him what they think it is worth. I told him that if we had to live on the property in the trailer that they have we wouldn't be able to do it. They have a two bedroom trailer, it's very nice but not room enough for me, Craig, and two adolescent girls, if you know what I mean. But Fritz thinks that we could live off site as long as we have someone living in the trailer and keeping an eye on the place. That could be do able!
I asked Fritz as well how soon he was looking to have this deal done, I think he said February. WOW! I was hoping to get out there at the end of the school year. He did tell me there were several nursing schools around and a lot of medical offices and hospitals. He also told me that he knows someone who makes $25/hr for being a nurse. That is what I thought the pay would be, but in Texas, that would work!

If we do this, it means putting the house up for sale, packing and moving, finding a house down there and running a business, me finding a new job, transferring schools. It seems to be quite a lot all by February. As a matter of fact it seems quite daunting to me. But, if it is what God wants and Craig is for it, I will do it. We will see.

Essay 3 – Anna Nicole Smith

We had to choose a person that had recently been in the news and had to tell why their particular story had such longevity in the press. What was it about them that made us watch? I chose Anna Nicole Smith, because I was never quite sure if she was really as simple as she portrayed, not only that but there was something that has always drawn her to me. Bizarre I know, but I always felt sorry for her.

Despite our love or hate of Anna Nicole Smith, people tuned in when she died. Anna never seemed to be out of the news for long periods of time and when she was in the news it seemed to be negative press. Anna's story had it all, beauty, fame, and scandal. Why is it that we love to glory in other people's trials and tribulations? Why must we show peoples' most intimate and devastating times to the masses? Even though we as a nation, long to have the "lifestyle" that we see portrayed on television, we still reserve the right to look down on those that take up the front page of our newspapers. Could it be possible that we as a nation secretly long to know that celebrities are just a screwed up as we are. Perhaps we feel more at ease with our own lives by poo-pooing the poor decisions that others like Anna Nicole Smith made.

Anna was born Vicki Lynn Hogan and at the age of 17 she made what most would classify as her first mistake; she married 16 year old Billy Smith. Anna reports a home life that many would deem harmful in that her mother would "beat and kick" her. Some would not blame her for wanting to get out at any cost. Anna came on the scene as a voluptuous blond bombshell that sent in her photo to Playboy while making minimum wage. Practically becoming an overnight success and then became the model for Guess Jeans.

Anna Nicole was compared to Marilyn Monroe both in looks and in backgrounds. They were both from small towns and the desire for leaving would lead them both down a road wrought with pain and tragedy. As with Marilyn, Hollywood was the vehicle that drove her from small town middle America. The first time that society was made aware of one of the many bad decisions that Anna would make was when she married J. Howard Marshall. J. Howard Mashall was a very rich man who happened to be 89 years old, 63 years her senior. People immediately thought that she married him only for his money and began to make snap judgments of her character. Here is a woman who seems to be on top of the world and could have practically any man she wants and she marries an 89 year old man. Many people felt that her motives for marring him were for personal gain, not love or genuine feeling.

Once her husband dies Anna is in the news once again. Now she is fighting against her step-son for her claim to her late husband's estate. Even though both Anna and Marshalls' son are left out of the will, both maintain that J. Howard Marshall orally promised them a portion of the estate. This only re-enforces everyone's thoughts of her as a money hungry bimbo.

Anna goes from being in the news for "leeching" off of her husbands estate to being accused of using drugs and becoming an overweight wanna be actress who is jumping on the band wagon of Reality TV. At least now she has a hand in what is being put out there for everyone to see and in a sense being paid for being exploited. With all the bad publicity from outside media, Anna is now able to get her side out there in the form of "The Anna Nicole Smith Show". Even as her life appears to be going towards an out of work, has been she continues to put herself in the public eye by doing interviews for radio and late night television. Maybe it is true that bad publicity is better than no publicity. Some personalities begin to comment about her taking drugs, as well as her weight gain and slurred speech. At this time of her life, it appears by her countenance that she is lost and unsure of herself.

It seems that Anna had many different relationships with different men as evidenced by the number of men who came forward to say that they had fathered her daughter Dannielynn. This seems peculiar in that the majority of men are hesitant to proclaim to the world that they have fathered a child out of wedlock. The only relationship that seemed to stand the test of time was with her handler/escort, Howard K. Stern. Whether that relationship was good for her or toxic, is debatable. There are those that say they witnessed Howard giving her drugs and felt that he exploited Anna most of all.

From what the press printed, Anna's immediate family was estranged. Who knows what happened when she was a child. When she becomes pregnant with her second child it seemed to be more focused. Time with the family, the family she made; was important to her, but she always seemed a little sad. Maybe life had not become what she had hoped, maybe she felt disappointed with how things went, however, when she became pregnant with her second child she seemed to be excited. It was that joy for a new life that made the news of her first child's death so astonishing to the public. It had to have been hard to rejoice at the birth of her daughter and at the same time grieve for her son.

The public watched her downward spiral and no one was taken by surprise at Anna Nicole Smith's death. It was foretold wasn't it, when she was compared to Marilyn Monroe? Even in death Anna was in the news; people fought over who would get her body, where would she be buried, who was the father of baby Dannielynn, the cycle continued. In trying to be informed you inevitably hear the sensational stories about the entertainment industry. Maybe the reason we are so hot to eat up the headlines for Anna Nicole Smith was because she is what we all wanted at sometime, fame, fortune and what we would think would be an easy life. Anna could be an example of sometimes we should be careful what we wish for because sometimes it isn't the best thing for us.

Second Essay-I had to compare and contrast between 2 characters in 2 different stories

This is the second essay that was revised, (not completely I must add, I don't like the way I ended it) that I included in my portfolio in my English class.

Absolute power corrupts. When people live in a dictatorship, whether it is real or imagined it leaves no room for growth. In Sandra Cisneros' "Eleven", the teacher's subjugation of Rachel makes her unable to stand up for herself. In comparison, Kate Chopin's' "The Story of an Hour" tells how Mrs. Mallard feels the subjugation of marriage as a noose around her neck and lives her life in repression of her own desires. It seems to reason, that if one represses emotion or allows external power to control him/her, it can lead to a loss of one's voice.

When uncomfortable things happen, one's reactions to those events reveals a great deal about that person. When Mrs. Mallard is told by her sister and brother-in-law about her husband's death, it was a bitter sweet moment. Mrs. Mallard was filled with grief for the loss of her companion but relieved at the freedom that came from her husband's death. It was only at that time she hoped that "life be long" and looked forward to, "a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely." One can picture Mrs. Mallard standing taller and throwing the yoke of marriage from around her neck as she imagines a life lived only for herself. In contrast, when Rachel's teacher continues to insist that the ratty sweater is hers she wants only to be, "like a tiny o in the sky, so tiny-tiny you have to close your eyes to see it." Her teacher has made her feel so powerless that she feels minuscule, and wants to disappear. Inside she is screaming that the sweater is not hers. Rachel wants to cry and in that moment feels like she is three and not eleven. In essence both Rachel and Mrs. Mallard relinquished their power to a person in whom they trusted.

Many times people in society are pigeon holed into what is "socially acceptable"; everyone has a role to play. Mrs. Mallard's role was dutiful and obedient wife, however she was not happy in her role. When her sister Josephine tells her of her husband's death she, "wept in wild abandon" and then retreats to where she presumably would be alone with her grief. On the contrary, she feels such a freedom due to the death of her husband that she throws open a window and "drinks in the very elixir of life". Rachel on the other hand is the adolescent girl when asked a question is not assertive enough to say the sweater is not hers. The teacher places it on her desk to make her take ownership of the sweater. Rachel distances herself from the sweater and the situation. She begins to retreat inside of herself and eventually feels as if she is regressing in age; wanting only to be 102, "anything but eleven".

Who knows what these kinds of imbalances of power may do to one's self esteem. Mrs. Mallard loved her husband, but in her love for him she had ignored who she was and what she wanted. She had lost her voice, her sense of self and it is only in her husband's death that she finds a release from ties that bind. Rachel is young and the young heal quickly but a continued pattern of not standing up for one's self could become detrimental in the long run.

Last Day and I'm singing the happys song

Well tonight was my last test. Earlier this morning I took my test for the lecture part of Anatomy and Physiology (A&P 1). It was kinda hard. I didn't think that I completely bomb it, but I was nervous. I knew I would do well in the Lab portion. Went back to school tonight and took my Lab Practicle and I got a 93!!!! Go me! While I was waiting for my grade, I thought I might look at the board to see if my test grade was up. I wasn't sure it would be, but sure enough there it was. I looked for student ID#, found it and knew that I had passed the class. I wanted to dance a jig right there.

While we were waiting for the grades I mentioned that I wasn't go to check the grades on line until after Christmas to one of my classmates. That was when they told us they had to be in by. I didn't want to torture myself and keep looking on line and not knowing. He told me you'll pass the class! I thought the same of him, but apparently he is taking A&P 1 and a class for Respiratory Therapy. He took AP1 in the summer, but he was passing with just a C and he knew he could do better, so he dropped it. He is doing both classes and not doing this one very well I guess. But once he saw the practical grade he thought that he had passed. I hope so, it would suck to have to take that class again.

I am so happy that I have 3 weeks off from school. A week off from work with the girls, I think I might actually scrap a little. I really feel like I need to be creative after all this stress from class. Well, off to put the girls down.