Come see my new blog

Hey all, yes, you probably figured out that this blog has been neglected and abandoned.  But I'd like to invite anyone out there (do you hear the cavernous echo?) to come visit my new blog Running with the Baby-Mama Drama.  See you there!!!!

I PASSED!!!!!

Sorry to leave everyone in the blogosphere in suspense about my fate as a nurse but i was in suspense too!

Here's how NCLEX works. You sit at a computer and start answering questions. The test is designed to determine where you are competant to practice nursing with in a 95% accurace range. So you answer questions and as long as you are getting them right they get harder and harder until you are answering questions above that competancy level. Once you have answered enough to establish competancey (or they are pretty sure you are likely t kill someone) the whole exam shuts off. The minimum questions is 75, max is 260. So if the exam shuts off after 75 you probably passed or failed miserably. After 48 hours you can pay another $8 to the exam company (you've already paid them $200 for the priveledge of taking the test) to get your unofficial exam results. Official results come from the state board of nursing when you get your lisence in about a month.

So I took my test on a Thursday afternoon. Should be able to get my results Saturday afternoon. Look on line, look on line. No results. Finally find a place on the website that says 2 business days, not 48 hours. Everywhere else says 48 hours. So start looking Monday afternoon. No results. No results. Maybe Friday wasn't a business day afterall. Maybe the testing service took that as a holiday for 4th of July. Look Tuesday afternoon. FINALLY!!!!!! At this point I seriously considered not getting the unofficial results just because of how long I'd had to wait and I was pretty confident that I had passed. But I can only resist "Your exam results are now available" for about 30 seconds. Paid my $8 and say those four lovely letters PASS!

Now all I have to do is wait for my Texas lisence so I can apply for a transfer to a state of Georgia lisence!!! Whew!

So mine shut

This close to the finish line...

Tomorrow is NCLEX, the licensing exam for nurses. This is the last step in this two year journey called nursing school. (Oh yeah, there's also the job thing...) Tomorrow, 4 p.m., somewhere between 75 and 260 questions. One more hurdle. I don't think I'm nervous. Well, maybe a little nervous. More like ready to get it over with.

Tomorrow. 4 p.m.

What a crazy trip this has been...

Perfection is impossible

So my new house is pretty close to perfect. Land, Pool, view, teenager has her own bathroom. But nothing is perfect. So here are two slight issues that interfere with perfection.

First, Bugs. We have a new scourge of bugs to learn to live with. Houston has its bugs but they were pretty much two varieties. Giangantic cockroaches and mosquitoes. The former were pretty easily dispensed with by spraying highly toxic chemicals around the house inside and out about 5 times per year. I'd know it was time to spray when I'd find dead ones in the house. This meant that the perimeter shield was compromised and the interior shield was still effective. Yes, killing cockroaches in Houston is serious business because I HATE COCKROACHES. I'm pretty sure the chemicals we used have the potential to cause my grandchildren to have two heads. Ah well, more cheeks to kiss!

So anyway, here in Georgia, I think we have smaller cockroaches which is a good thing. We just have a larger variety of other bugs. More ants, more random flying bugs. HUGE green grasshoppers that look like leaves. And spiders. Lots of very large spiders. Like this one below. I would bet that legs and all it was about 3 inches in diameter. It was in my pool hanging on to the hose for the polaris. So I scooped it out and what did I discover???? Hundreds of baby spiders hanging on to its back. Lovely. I'd rather have spiders than cockroaches but it was still creepy.



And the other less than perfect thing about my neighborhood is the running situation. Our street is about a mile long which makes for a nice training distance. You can run laps like a track on it and know how far and how fast you ought to be going. However, it looks like this....



Yes, that is a hill and another hill beyond it. Truly the picture doesn't do it justice. You have to stand at the top of the hill and contemplate running up it to fully appreciate the sweat and heart rate increase involved. I have run these hills four times now and it is a completely different workout experience than running on the flats of Houston. Yowza! I better have an incredible looking backside by the end of the summer given how much said backside hurts after running up and down that!!!!!!!

The inside story...

So Ihave a few pictures of the inside of the house. When you walk in the front door there's a huge room with big windows which is what you see in these three pictures. It provides a perfect home for hubby's hunting trophies.



I love the fireplace!!! I t has a woodburning insert that will help heat the house in the winter. The previous owners also left us their wood pile which i think has enough wood to keep us warm for the 2009-10 season and beyond. One of hubby's first purchases was a riding lawn mower. The second was a chainsaw!!!!!! (Insert Home Improvement grunting here...)



This is apparently referred to as a "Baptist Bar" because it has doors that will close it off from sight when the church members come over!!!! That cracked me up!



This is probably the biggest negative of the whole house. The master bathroom leaves a little to be desired. You can see the sink is actually in the bedroom. Next to the sink area is a pocket door for the toilet and shower. It is definitely a project for the future. I have emailed on of the production companies at HGTV/ DIY to try and get on a renovation show. It would be an awesome renovation!

If my kitchen is clean later today I'll take a picture of that too!!!

My new digs...

So this is my new house!!!!! We love it!

This isn't my field but it is the field next door and it is what I see everytime I drive up to my new house. I think it is absolutely gorgeous. It reminds me of where we went on vacation last year in New York.


This is my field or as we like to call it "The Far Meadow" because we also have a "Near Meadow". I can't believe I have enough property that we have names for the different areas!!!!! COOL! The woods beyond it are also ours and have trails already cut through them. The girls are a little intimidated by the woods still but I am having major childhood wish fulfillment. I ALWAYS wanted woods. It's like "Bridge to Terabithia" back there - minus the drowning and the head trauma....



This is the garden with grape vines, blueberry bushes that are almost ripe, a banana tree that is just for show, too cold here to produce and a few blackberry vines. There's also room for veggies but I think that is a project for next summer! Beyond it is the "Near Meadow."


This, my friends, is the pool. I love the pool. It keeps my children happy, it is lovely to jump in after gardening and it is just a dream come true!!!!!

Tomorrow interior shots...

Lesson learned: Move your refrigerator frequently

So I'm not the world's greatest housekeeper. As the kids have gotten older, I've gotten better but truly what is the problem with sweeping stuff under the rug once in a while. I can't see it, you can't see it and I didn't have to find the dust pan to make it so! I like a tidy house but I don't need a spotless house. The little extras of housekeeping really escape me. Like I don't get the draw of buying no-iron sheets, are there people that really iron their sheets to begin with? Or Martha Steward's admonition that properly folded fitted sheets are essential to a neat and tidy linen closet, (read that in a doctor's office once.) Or my own mother's yearly trek around the house with a bowl of soapy water and a rag cleaning the baseboards. But upon moving i learned one thing that really ought to be cleaned every other year or so...
A view under my fridge...


Not only was there stuff under there but the freezer was defrosting too and leaking water all over the floor. Now we added slimy to the distgustingness. The driver of my moving truck had his 15 year old son with him. When I was dying of horror over what was under my fridge he said, "yeah, my mom cleans under our fridge now cause of what we see under other people's." Thanks buddy, that helped...


In my defense, the cat loves to play with most of the stuff you see under here and probably batted it under the fridge while playing in the kitchen. He especially loves to play with clothes from the girl's Polly pocket dolls. He also loves to play with hair elastics. However, i found hair elastics and barettes EVERYWHERE! Now I know where they go when we can't seem to find any. Under the beds, in corners, on doorknobs and certainly under the fridge...



I just had to include a close up of the Christmas card since a couple of my readers will recognize it. Think of it this way, although it eneded up under the fridge, at some point it held a place of honor ON the fridge.



Famous last words...
From now on I will clean under my fridge more frequently than every 6 and half years.