The Penguin Papers

For a while now I've been following MckMama and her MSC , especially Stellan who survived prenatal Supraventricular Tachycardia. Stellan is now 8 months old, but still battles SVT which has necessitated another hospitalization. You can read more here on MckMama's blog. MckMama can also be found on Twitter and will most likely do most of her updating there. In the meantime, prayers and good thoughts for Stellan, please! Oh, and if you think about it, wear orange and send me a picture at thepenguinpapers at gmail dot com so that I can pass them onto MckMama.

It has been, without a doubt, a challenging summer here so far. Oh, we're all healthy and happy, etc., except for one thing. We kill appliances. First, the hot water heater thought it required intensive care i.e. a new element. That necessitated several service calls before it was fixed. Then the fan motor on our water source heat pump went out. A week later. In the middle of hot, humid, mid-summer Mid-Missouri. Within the first 2 hours of the first visit with the second company we consulted, we had a fan motor ordered and a deal made. They came out, installed and we've been good to go since Monday. Did I forget to mention the dead dryer? That gave it up the day before Jim left for a 9-day backpacking trip in CO. The replacement "is on the way in 5-7 days" so Jim put a clothesline up for me yesterday and I used it for the first time today. Now I feel all earthmothery and slightly crunchy, which isn't a bad way to feel at all. I just didn't know a clothesline ...

I am, here and now, admitting that I am yet another number to notch onto Facebook's belt. I can quit anytime, really. I can. But wait - it goes deeper than that. I have. a farm. on Farmtown. Ah, yes, FT* toyed with me for a while, but it waited until a night of solitude to pull me into its web, as I screamed "Yes, I want to gift a friend!", and then finished me off. I love my farm. It doesn't have much yet, but it actually is soothing to play. And in just a few mouseclicks and a couple of keystrokes, entire fields can be plowed and planted, in about 10 minutes. It's just that easy. So, I'm harvesting a "field" and wondering how much time it would take a farmer to accomplish an equivalent amount in real life? And I'm not even breaking a sweat. Farmers sweat. A lot. Even with modern equipment, there's just no getting around the fact that a farmer's work is physically demanding, sometimes heartbreaking, and frequently challenging. They till ...

Erin*, our 13yo, is usually good about remembering birthdays. She was at her dad's during both mine and Jim's birthdays so she was unable to give us our birthday gifts until this evening. Behold I love it. *The Teen Princess

Yeah. So, tonight I took several pictures, including some of the Teen Princess, as basis for several blog posts. But, as luck would have it, they got eaten somewhere between my usb cable and the save-as dialog box. No doubt about it, this is a classic example of a PEBKAC* error, courtesy of yours truly. And I used to be so technical. *Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair

My oldest kid, Meghann, and I have gotten into the habit of talking in the evening before bedtime, just hanging out, etc. Tonight as we were talking I was once again pulling my hair out over designing my new blog template, which I have yet to put up. (I've been wanting to do this for months and have finally decided to grab it by the, ahem, horns just recently.) During our discourse, this little lady made her way to me through email. Isn't she sweet?

Here is the rest of the story. Or pictures , rather.

So, sometime ago I bought a new toy, a Nikon Coolpix L100 and have been having great fun getting to know what it can do. Tonight I was bored, so I decided to take a twilight jaunt to our local lake which happens to be a mere 5 minutes from our house. Not all of the pics turned out as well as I had hoped, but the following are, if I may say so myself, not bad at all. There are more, of course, but this shutterbug needs to a)upload more to Picasa and b)convince myself to go to bed. I'm not sure which of those tasks will come first, though. :D

But I love silly.

Just a side note: I'll write on and off here for the next little while, hopefully with more regularity than in the past, but keep your eyes out for changes here at The Penguin Papers - a new look, a new home. I'm hoping to have this done within the next few weeks and certainly before classes resume, barring any major life interruptions. One can only hope. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

So, huh. It'll be October in just a few hours and just today I realized that it's been several months since I've posted. The summer flew by and I'm still wondering where it went, even though I know the answer to that question, anyway. My absence initially coincided with the flurry that was summer semester, the eight weeks of chaining myself to a widely varied number of nursing textbooks. Summer classes ended in early August so I began my "summer vacation" later than everyone else in the house. Now it's time to prepare myself for the grind that will be the remainder of my Associates Degree in Nursing program. I'm anxious to get started but also wary of what I'll become once classes begin. This summer was lost to the books. I spent easily 5-6 hours a day studying, sandwiched in between hour-long jaunts to my parents' pool to cool off with the kids. So, now it's time to gear up for October 20, when I start the remainder of my Associates Degree...

My very first. This one I got from my girlfriends list earlier today. These things usually make me giggle because it's so, um, junior high in a lot of ways, but I'm, um, junior high in a lot of ways, so I guess it's okay. Oh, yeah, must tag someone I suppose so I choose Jim , the lucky guy, with the proviso that whomever he tags must get back to me. :) And I nearly forgot - one word answers, please. Alrighty, here 'tis: 1. Where is your cell phone? Desk 2. Where is your significant other? Desk 3. Your Mother? Pool (thought I was going to say desk, didn't you?) 4. Your father? Driveway 5. Your favorite thing? :) 6. Your dream last night? School 7. Your favorite drink? Wine 8. Your dream/goal? FNP 9. The room you're in? Office 10. Your fear? Heights 11. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Clinic 12. Where were you last night? home 13. What you're not? tall 14. Sandwich? Quesadilla 15. One of your wish list items? laptop 16. Where ...

Yep, new title. I think it fits me better than the last one, which was a half-hearted attempt at coming up with something witty without a lot of forethought. We'll see how long I stick with this one. :)

Title change ahead. :)

Just a little mind dump today. I'm studying for a microbiology test that I'm sure I will do well on but still - I'm feeling a certain amount of pressure to do better than I have been doing. It's not like CIS class, where it's fun, I'm learning and I know I'll do well, but now the stakes are higher. When I was a kid I thought often about wanting to be a doctor. I can't say I'm sorry that my life followed the path it did - I'm happy with my life. I have a great husband and kids, supportive parents and siblings. But, as a teen had I had a little better idea of what I could accomplish I would've chosen a different path. More math, more science, and not be so wrapped up in the elusive teen girl things. I should've known (and did, down in my heart)that I was different - not your average teen girl. But sometimes the goals of a 16 year-old don't dovetail with truly adult goals/needs. So, I didn't go the med school path. Whatever. But, I c...

Powered By Miami Limo Now off to see the eye doc and be blind for the next few hours. Woohoo.

Yeah, what Jim said

And yes, the letter finally came a few weeks ago. I'm a nursing student, once again. Details later. Go me!

Jim and I are sitting in our respective cubes in our joint office listening to Christmas music. It's Christmas Eve Eve and tonight I had the privilege of singing with the worship band at church, and now my husband is treating me to the sounds of childhood. Since a first-grader I have spent the bulk of the Yuletide season preparing for a performance of some kind or another. As a child it was the all-school Christmas Program, for which much preparation took place. It seemed that for weeks and WEEEKKKSS classes were suspended for the joy of sitting in church in intense boredom until it was time for whatever group I was in to do its thing and then back to boredom in the pews. But, I remember, even as a young kid, being rocked by the emotion of the performance: being in front of a packed church, spotlights on, and hoping/praying that I would/could remember all of the lines or lyrics of whatever we were doing at the time. And loving every minute of it. Then, the high school years. Unles...

I am going to go out of my everlivin' mind if the letter doesn't get here soon!! What letter, you may ask? Why, the letter that will tell me whether or not I get to start the last part of my RN program in January or not! :) I was told when I applied to the program that I would find out toward the latter part of November and I'm probably hurrying it, thinking that letters should go out before Thanksgiving break. So, like an expectant dad in the waiting room, I pace in front of the mailbox most afternoons I'm home and dash for the 'box as soon as I get home from work. This will dictate what classes I will take in January. It will either be Some nursing class with clinical OR Microbiology and possibly Nutrition and Developmental Psychology. (The last 2 I may not have to retake since I took them in LPN school.) Registration is already open, so I want to get on with it and get registered for everything as early as I can get moving. Now it's just the classic hurry up...