Did I mention I hate Algebra?

I had my second test in Algebra yesterday. I got a little extra help this time, and thought I had a decent handle on it. I felt pretty decent about the test when I got home yesterday, then I went on the website today to see my grade. I made a 72 on this test, which means I actually made a 67, and got the 5 extra points for doing the practice test. Damn, man! I hate that I can't grasp this, I hate struggling and not knowing what I'm doing. I hate that this class is going to drag my GPA down, and I hate that I can't just let it go and try to be happy squeaking by with a C. I'm super frustrated about this. :/

In other news . . . :) Hunter's birthday was yesterday, he is 12 now! I can't believe it's been 12 years already. He got his present over the weekend, a new bike. It's a 10-speed mountain bike, and he's been riding it all over the place since he got it. I made a "Lego" cake last night, using cupcakes on a 13x9" cake to make it look like a lego brick. It looked a little sad, in my opinion, but everyone said it looked good. Whether they were just saying that to spare my feelings, I do not know. Heh. It tasted good anyway, which I guess is what matters. I got a picture of it, but I'm having a difficult time getting my pics transferred. I'll post one if I can get them transferred in the near future.

4 weeks of school + finals left! Woot! I can.not wait. Fall registration is coming up in the next couple of weeks, so I need to start thinking about that. I've decided that I'm going to try to take all of my classes for the fall semester online. Since Maggie will (hopefully) be in pre-school, no one will be home during the day, so I can carve out a block of time each day just to do school work. I'll just have to make sure I'm disciplined, and don't mess around on Delphi or anything. Heh.

They don't offer a ton of online classes that I have to take, but I know that Geometry, Speech, and Astronomy are all online classes. If I can just find one more, then I'll be set. I need to check and see if they have the catalog up on the website yet.

I've got several pictures I wanted to post on here, so I'm going to try to get my camera software working so I can transfer them and put them up here!

She'll probably have the first broken bone, too

We had an adventure with Shelby tonight. She was in her room around 10 PM, jumping on her bed. She was supposed to be laying down, waiting for me to come read her a bedtime story. But instead she was jumping on the bed, fell, and hit her head on a screw that was sticking out of the wall. The reason there was a screw sticking out of the wall is because Shelby & Maggie switched rooms with Hunter about a month ago. Hunter had taken down a shelf, and left the screws there for some reason. I've been in their room a hundred times since they switched, but I never realized he'd left stuff in the walls.

So, anyway, she comes out of the room and has this huge gash on her head, up in her hair. It looked awful. We got ready and took her to urgent care, and an hour later we walked out with one internal stitch and three external ones. We have to take her back in a week to have the external ones removed.

She did very well, though. She cried, and tried to get up off the bed a couple of times before we got started, but she didn't fight us or anything. The nurse there was awesome, too. She was very good with Shelby, and kept her talking about school and stuff like that while the doctor was stitching her up. She got popsicles and stickers when we left.

I've gone through nearly 12 years of parenthood without having a kid have stitches (well, technically, Shelby had stitches in her throat last July when she had her tonsils out, but it wasn't due to an accident). I fully expect Shelby to be my first to break a bone as well. She is so fearless, she scares me sometimes. Is it any wonder I've found some gray hairs on my head?

Out of the mouths of babes

Darrell has teased me for a long time that the Spanish word for down, or below, abajo, sounds like: a butthole. Well, today, Maggie was watching Diego on tv. He was saying 'mas abajo' over and over. Darrell said to Maggie, "Ma's a butthole? Did you hear him? He said Ma's a butthole." Maggie, without missing a beat, said "Daddy is, too!"

HA! I love that kid.

Change is not good

I generally take change very well, I can handle changes in my home life, at school, with the kids, etc. But, today, we had to get a DirecTV DVR box instead of the Tivo box we've had for the past 2 1/2 years. Our Tivo box bit the dust, and DirecTV doesn't have a contract with Tivo anymore. And, well, it sucks. I don't like the DVR format, I don't like the way you record stuff, I don't like the way you set up things on a season pass (although it isn't called season pass in DVR speak, I can't remember what they call it), I don't like learning new buttons on the remote, I just don't like it.

Yeah, I know, it's totally lame that I'm whining about DVR v. Tivo, but there you have it. I'm just going to say it, I don't take electronics change well. Whew. I'm glad that's out in the open. Hopefully I can move on with my life now that I've gotten it off my chest.

Spring Break is loverly

I haven't done much of anything this week, and it's been SO nice. I got the house completely cleaned on Saturday, and I've had the energy (and time!) to keep it clean this week, so it's not a mess like it usually is on a Thursday. I took Mackenzie to Girl Scouts on Tuesday, and also gave blood earlier that day, but that's all I've done this week. I have to grocery shop today, and Mackenzie and I are doing another booth sale tomorrow night, but it's at Movie Gallery, and my friend Dawn is working, so this one should be fun. Plus, the manager is letting us set up inside the store, which is awesome, because it's supposed to snow tomorrow.

Last weekend, Darrell and I watched the movie American Gangster, with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. It was a pretty long movie, but I thought it was very good. Denzel was excellent as Frank Lucas. It is based on a true story, but I had never heard of this guy until I watched the movie. Anyway, we give it two thumbs up!

Well, that's it from around here. I'm loving this week, and dreading starting back to school next week. I can't wait for the end of April, and then I'll be on summer vacation until August. Woot! Just 8 weeks to go!

I'm feeling unloved

At this very minute, I'm feeling very insignificant, unappreciated, and unneeded. And not by my children either, it's my husband. He's been off work for almost a month now, and this situation isn't working. I've tried to give him time to rest and get used to things, but he doesn't seem to be getting into any kind of routine. Well, he has if you count laying around all day, playing on the computer, and things like that to be a routine. I know I'm not working either, but I do go to school twice a week, and he seems to think that I only have to do things for school when I am at school. I don't have any breaks at school though, so all of my homework and studying has to be done at home. He doesn't clean the house at all when I'm gone. Sometimes he'll start doing laundry, or pick up the living room, but he just generally straightens up if he does anything, not really cleaning. My house is more of a wreck now than it was when he was still working, I guess because he's here all the time to mess it up.

To make things worse, it's like he's this huge social butterfly now. His phone is constantly ringing, and he's talking to this person or that one, or texting with his sister, or one of his friends or his sister is over here, or he has to run over to someone's house for something. On Wednesday, when I got home from school he was on the phone, and literally, until about 10 that night, he was either on the phone with someone, or someone was over here. We, or I guess I should say he, had three visitors that evening/night. He barely spoke to me that whole time, he was too busy. Then he decided he'd sit down with me at 10:30 and try to chat me up. Well, fuck you buddy. You haven't had the time of day for me all this time. What, I'm only good enough to hang out with when there's no one else around?

Last night was Shelby's birthday, and shortly before we were getting ready to cut the cake, his aunt called and he had to rush out to her house real quick. So, needless to say, we are fighting right now. :/ I just know he's going to have to get over this shit because I'm not going to be put on the back burner for too long. Why even be here if he doesn't have time or the inclination to interact with us and spend time with us?

It's the halfway point!

I realized yesterday that I only have 15 classes left before finals this semester. That's only 7 weeks plus one class the week of finals. Woot! I don't know where this semester went, but half of it has passed by very quickly. I'm sure you will all be glad, too, so you don't have to listen to me whine about Algebra anymore. Heh. Speaking of, I only made a 70 on that test last week. :/ I got 5 extra points for doing the practice test, so that brought me to a 75, but it's not as well as I wanted to do. It is passing, and I did study hard, so if that's the best I can do, then I have to be happy with it.

I need to make an appointment with my advisor soon, to see if I can substitute the Phys. Geo. that I took in '01 with the World Geo. that is now required for my degree (Phys. Geo. is no longer required, but it was when I took it). I'm also thinking about seeing if she can do something about the developmental reading course they're wanting me to take. I would like to just have that taken off without having to retake that portion of the compass test. I know that is probably unrealistic, but it's worth trying, anyway.

I'm out of school for Spring Break now, too. I had class today, and I don't have to go back until March 10. Double woot! Of course, I'll have to spend that time studying Algebra, working on my Spanish vocab, and studying for my Soc. test that is the Wed. after we get back. But I won't have to attend classes, so I won't complain. :D

Come on, summer!

Back in the winter of '04-'05, my family was sick everytime I turned around. We passed things around and around, and as soon as the last person was getting over something, someone got something else and started passing it around. Well, we're going through that again this year. We've had colds and viruses and bronchitis and who knows what else thrown in there. I've already had something like 4 colds this season, and I maybe get one cold per year, usually. The good thing is most of these things have passed quickly.

This weekend, Shelby got sick on Friday night. She was up off and on all night vomiting. No fever or anything else, and by Saturday afternoon she was fine. I woke up Saturday feeling puny, and extremely tired. I slept from midnight Friday night until 11 AM Saturday, took a nap from 3-5 with Maggie Sat. afternoon, then went back to sleep from 9:30-10:30 that night, got up and took a shower, and went back to bed at around 12 or 12:30, and slept until around 10:30 this morning. I had a headache and a stomachache yesterday, and I almost passed out right at dinnertime last night. So I was laying down and resting for most of the day. Maggie was complaining of her stomach hurting yesterday, which is why I laid down with her, but luckily nothing came of that.

I think part of my being so sleepy had to do with everything catching up with me. These past two weeks have been some of the busiest weeks I've ever had. I've had school, homework and studying, Girl Scouts, general household things to do, errands galore, and school activities for the kids, and I think it just wore me down to where I couldn't take it anymore. I needed the sleep, so I slept. I know that I will just be absolutely ecstatic for this semester to be over, and to be able to hang out with my kids over the summer and do a lot of nothing. :D

Of course, now it's 1 AM and I have to be up at 7 to get ready for school, so I should really go to bed now. I sat here and worked on Algebra homework for over 2 hours. :/ I've got my first test coming up Wednesday, so I've got some hardcore studying to do tomorrow night and Tuesday. I already informed L that I won't be at girl scouts this week, I need to be studying that night, she'll have to handle it alone.

Here's to a less busy week, although I can already think of about 50 things I have to do this week, so that's a pretty laughable notion.

What day is it today?

I keep thinking it's Tuesday today, dammit! I hate when I do that. I was just freaking out because we have to take some sandwiches to GS tomorrow, and I was thinking it was tonight and I didn't have them ready!

So, now that that's out of the way. I have been horrible about new posts in here lately. It has just been on warp speed around here. Trying to find time to study, attend school, do girl scouts, having a huge fight with my sister, and Darrell quitting his job, my head is spinning.

All I did this weekend was deal with cookies. Instead of helping to pick up the cookies, and helping deliver them to the woman's house where we keep them, and helping sort them, I've had to do it all by myself. 218 cases of cookies, 12 boxes of cookies to a case. It took us two hours to load them up, on the trailer, in the back of the truck, and in the cab; it took us another two hours to sort them by girl (thank goodness Darrell has helped me out with this, I can't imagine how long it would have taken me to do it alone). I also have to handle the Friday night booth sale next week. I was supposed to be at the Saturday one as well (which is all week), but I'm letting someone else handle that one. I've done a lot to get the cookies ready, and I'm going to let someone else take care of the Saturday booth sale.

I had my first test in Sociology last week, I made a 98. Woot! I only missed one question out of 55, so technically I made a 98.18. My first Spanish test is Wednesday, and my first Algebra test is next Wednesday.

Darrell finally had enough of his dad and his shit, so he up and quit his job last week. I know, it was a hugely rash decision, but aside from having no money coming in, I'm glad he did it. I have been trying to get him to find something else for a long time. His dad has just gotten worse and worse on him, and his back has too. Last Monday, he was taking a sick day. We've had a virus going around, and he didn't need to be too far from a bathroom, if you know what I mean. I left Maggie here with him since he was home. His dad called him bitching him out shortly before lunch, and he had to go in to work, taking Maggie with him. As if that wasn't enough, when he got there, his dad was just being a total asshole, throwing stuff against the wall, telling him he needed to get his ass to work when he went into the office to rest for a minute, etc. It just got to him and he decided he'd finally had all he could take. There is a ton of backstory on his dad and their relationship, but I just don't have the time or energy to go into it. :/

So, anyway, that's what I've been up to lately. Boring, but busy. ;)

I'm tired

Between three kids being sick over the past week, trying to keep up in Algebra, cooking, cleaning, and general day to day stuff, I'm tired. Thank goodness all the kids are well again, Hunter missed three days of school last week and Shelby missed two. Maggie was sick from the previous week, through the weekend, and she went to the doctor on Tuesday. It was mostly viral, with a touch of bronchitis. But now I feel like I am getting a cold again. :/

Algebra is actually a lot better these days, although I know there are still a lot of classes left, and they aren't going to get easier. I carry my book around with me everywhere, and I've already filled up almost half of my notebook just from working the example problems in the different sections and doing my homework. I go through every section and work every example, even though they are already worked out in the example (heh), then I go and do random odd problems at the end of the section. Our homework is based online, so we don't actually use the end sections for homework. The online place has problems exactly like what we do in class, though. I'm thinking our professor picks exactly which ones she wants us to do.

Anyway! I did three homework sections today, and took one quiz. I made not one, not two, but THREE 100s on the homework sections. And one of them was word problems!!!! I about fainted. I have always, always had issues with word problems, and I couldn't believe I was able to make equations that made sense and then work them out. On the quiz, I made a 90, but it was only 5 questions. It told me I got 4 right and was given partial credit for 1, but it didn't show me what I missed.

Tonight, I have to handle the Girl Scout meeting alone! L, the troop leader, called last night and has some sort of banquet to go to for her son's boy scout troop. I think she said she would probably get to the meeting before it was over, but for the most part, I'm handling everything alone. I'm kind of nervous. Me, against 20 rowdy, loud girls? Wowza! I've got things planned, though, so maybe I can keep them busy.

And? There are issues with my mom and younger sister cropping up. It's a long, convoluted, and probably boring story, plus I don't have time to go into it. Just suffice it to say that Mom is trying to bail S out again, to her own detriment. I have already said S cannot come stay here, so I imagine Mom is going to start looking for her a place so S can move in with her. Which is a huge mistake. She's staying with us so she can get some past bills paid off, and she's going to be doing very badly financially if she moves now. But she's an adult, and this is her baby we're talking about. *gag*

School daze

I started back to school on Monday. It was a very overwhelming day. I think I'm going to like Sociology, I got to Spanish and realized I had forgotten a lot of the vocabulary from last semester, and then I got to Algebra and I wanted to run screaming from the room. And in the midst of all of that I still had no idea what I was supposed to do for my Speech class (online).

So, when I finally found the speech class and what all it entailed, I dropped it. Immediately. It's just not the type of class that I think I can do online. Plus, I was going to have to tape myself giving all of my speeches and I don't have any type of video recorder, except on my camera, and they don't accept digital copies. I'm actually pretty relieved.

I'm having to study my ass off just to refresh myself in Intermediate Algebra concepts. I'm very askeered of the Algebra. It took me an hour today to do a homework set consisting of 14 questions. I suck at math in general, and it's been 7 years since I've taken any type of math course. The book we're using has several review chapters in the beginning, so I've been going over them. Some of it is coming back to me, but I don't ever remember learning how to complete the square or the quadratic equation formula. Maybe I did, but I sure don't remember it.

So anyway, that's what I've been doing this week. It's been a busy week, and I haven't had a lot of time to get online, and I probably won't have much time for the rest of this semester. I should have a good handle on algebra by the end of it, though! :D

Update at the zoo

Mackenzie woke me up this morning and told me that she was vomiting. Ugh. She threw up probably 5 or 6 times this morning and was white as a sheet. Around noon I sent her to bed and she took a nap for a couple of hours. I had her sipping on a bottle of water, too. When she got up she said she felt better and ate some crackers. I hope that's the end of it, and that none of the other kids get sick. I start school Monday, and I don't need to miss the first day!

In other news, Maggie is almost completely potty trained! We started at Christmas, and had a lot of accidents in that first week. We had ran out of diapers on Christmas day, so I decided it was as good a time as any to get started. I wanted to have her trained during the break, anyway. She's done really well during the past two weeks, although she will still go in her underwear if she doesn't feel like going to the bathroom. And? Last week, Darrell was doing some straightening up in our bedroom, and found a half bag of Pampers. Ha! I guess they fell behind the shelf and he thought we were out. But I'm not going to go back to them, of course! I'll just give them to one of my friends that still has a kid in diapers.

I'm finally getting over my hellacious cold from a couple of weeks ago. I was feeling awful and taking cold meds like clockwork, which I usually never do. It was just really getting me down with the congestion and general blah feeling. I still have a lingering cough, which has finally gotten productive, so I hope to be over that here soon.

3:10 to Yumama

This morning I was listening to the radio while I was driving the kids to school. The station I listen to has a trivia contest every morning, called Gender Wars. They have a woman and a man contestant, and they ask each one questions that are typically something that the other gender would know. So, this morning they asked the woman what western movie starred Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, 3:10 to ______.

She decided to use the screw, where the other person has to answer the question, so the man had to answer it. He said 'Yumama?' (pronounced you-mama) OMG, the DJs were cracking up, and I was laughing so hard I could barely drive. I know the poor guy was embarrassed, but damn it was hilarious. I still start laughing when I think about it.

I had something to blog about....

But I forgot what it was. Don't you hate when that happens? :D

The Guest from HELL!!

So, Christmas is over, and I'm slowly getting my house back into pre-holiday shape. Today, we all slept in and then I spent most of the afternoon sitting in the chair, watching a Project Runway marathon and thinking how I really needed to clean the house. Finally, around 6 PM, I got off my ass and started putting away all of my Christmas decorations and taking down the tree. Then I cleaned another room. Then I cleaned another. Then I sorted the mountain of laundry (7 people in the house + no laundry done for 3 days = mountains). I still have a bunch of stuff to do, but I at least got some of it accomplished tonight.

My youngest sister is in town this week. Originally, she was supposed to come down and stay the day of Christmas Eve. She waited until she was here, with all of her stuff packed in the car, to "ask" me if she could stay here until Friday. Let me just say that I don't mind her staying here, but she's a lousy houseguest. Not to mention she pretty much invited herself to stay at my home. We already have my mom staying here for a little while, so we are kind of full anyway.

The biggest thing that bugs me about her staying here is that she doesn't want to help out in the house at all, pick up after herself or help clean. Keep in mind, of course, that if she was an invited guest I wouldn't expect her to clean, but that's not the case, now is it? On the evening of Christmas Eve, my mom, Darrell, Shelby, Maggie, and I were all in the kitchen baking pies, making cookies, etc. I asked S if she'd help us out. She actually had the nerve to tell me that she has to cook supper and wash dishes everyday, so she wasn't doing anything. I asked her if she thought we only ate on Christmas. Miss "cooks for two adults and one baby", wah wah wah. Hello! We have 7 people in this house to cook for and clean up after. I have my mom here to help me now, but that's still 3.5 people apiece. Heh.

Luckily (for her), she went to stay with my older sister tonight and tomorrow night. She'll just be coming back down here Friday when her boyfriend comes to pick them up to get the rest of her things that she left here, and to say goodbye.

So anyway, enough of my bitching and moaning. Overall, our Christmas was a good one. The kids loved all of their presents. We got up super early (thanks, Mackenzie!) and opened gifts. Then Darrell started falling asleep on the loveseat, I dozed in the recliner, and my mom slept on the couch while the kids enjoyed their new toys. We ended up sleeping until noon, so our typical Christmas lunch turned out to be Christmas dinner. It was just a great lazy day. The kids were great, no arguing, and the adults sat around and watched tv. I cooked the dinner and my mom cleaned up.

I hope everyone else had a good day, and now it's on to the New Year! My sister and her clan are coming over for NYE, and I plan to get shitfaced. I'm going to buy some vodka this week sometime and get completely smashed that night. I haven't done that in forever, and I'll have at least 3 other adults in the house that won't be drinking, so I won't have to worry about the kids. :D

Merry Christmas to all!

This will probably be my last blog entry before Christmas, so I wanted to wish you all a wonderful holiday, if you celebrate. :) I know I don't have many readers, but that's okay. I enjoy keeping this blog (finally!), so I'm fine with having only a few readers. :)

Yesterday, we did the Christmas party I mentioned in another post. I had a really good time. I got to see all of my aunts and uncles and cousins that I don't see regularly. There was some good food, too! Tonight, we took the kids and drove around for a while looking at Christmas lights. I planned it for after supper and baths, and since Maggie hadn't napped all day, she was asleep by the time we got home. Yes, the plan worked!

Tomorrow, I'm going to finish cleaning the house, bake a bunch of pies and cookies, and get ready for Christmas. I'm planning cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning, then we're having ham and turkey breast for dinner. I have a couple of gifts to wrap yet, but I guess that will wait until tomorrow night. And of course, we have to drag out all of the gifts from Santa and the stocking stuffers. Mackenzie is getting a bunch of bath stuff, make-up, and perfume with a locking case; Hunter is getting a PSP and game, and Shelby and Maggie are getting a combined Santa gift this year. It's a bunch of doll furniture, a few dolls, diapers, toys, bottles/cups, & clothes. We did so well this year, we only spent around $300 for all of the kids' presents. We found a few awesome deals, so I'm glad about that!

I hope everyone reading this has a most wonderful, joyous, and peaceful holiday. I'm glad to have all of you to vent to, commiserate and share my joy with, and lucky to consider some of you my very good friends. Merry Christmas!

I passed!

Yay! I got a B in the dreaded Art class. It looks like she didn't take any points off for my absence. I got As in both Spanish and Lit, which I was pretty sure of. Here's the proof:

Undergraduate Course work

CRN	Subject	Course	Section	Course Title	Campus	Final Grade	Attempted	Earned	GPA Hours	Quality Points
80001	ART	1030	A	Intro to Visual Arts	Main Campus	B	3.000	3.000	3.000	9.000
80234	ENGL	2010	I	Intro to Literary Genres	Main Campus	A	3.000	3.000	3.000	12.000
80035	SPAN	1010	B	Beginning Spanish I	Main Campus	A	3.000	3.000	3.000	12.000

I knew y'all didn't believe me. :p I wish there was a way to know what I made on my finals, they should put that on the website, too.

Now, to rest up over the next 2 weeks before I start back, with one more class than I had this semester. Hopefully, without the Professor from Hell, it won't be as stressful. I'm not looking forward to 4 months of Algebra, though.

We are officially selling cookies now. Well, technically not for 9 more days, but I have the order forms. They do that in such a weird way. We don't have GS meetings while school is on break, so we have to hand out the order forms at the last meeting before the holidays. But the girls aren't allowed to start selling until the 29th. They should either let us start selling as soon as we get the forms, or have us wait until we all come back in January. The holidays are a prime time to sell, too, so you'd think they'd want us to start selling as soon as possible. Oh, well. Not much they do makes sense, so I shouldn't be surprised.

We have our family Christmas party Saturday afternoon. It should be fun. I like getting together with my extended family, it's always a good time. And that's not sarcasm, people! Heh.

Radio City Christmas Spectacular

Last night, Mackenzie's girl scout troop went to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular in Nashville. We went last year too, and it was so much fun. I took Shelby with us this year and she absolutely loved it. I was so glad I took her, it was fun just to watch her reactions to the different shows. All of the girls had a great time. Next year, we're going to try to go see the Nashville Ballet. I can't wait for that!

This year, the troop decided to sponsor a local family and buy them some gifts for Christmas instead of having a party. So last week, we wrapped all of the gifts we got them. The family has three kids, and we got each kid two outfits apiece, and one toy type of gift. I also had them make Christmas cards from construction paper last week. Monday, the troop leader and I are going to deliver the presents to the family, and then on Tuesday, the girls are going to deliver the cards they made to the nursing home and maybe sing some carols. After that, we're done with meetings until after the new year.

Cookie sales start December 31! If anyone reading this is interested in buying some cookies from Mackenzie, let me know! We have a cookie meeting Monday for the leaders, and I've been told there are two new cookie flavors this year. A chocolate chip (sugar free), and a lemon sandwich cookie. We'll get to taste them, so I can tell you how they are. :) The troop leader, L, asked me if I'd handle all the meetings during cookie season, so I've got to start getting some plans together while I'm off school, so I won't have to worry about planning when I get back to school.

We had our leader Christmas party tonight. It was at L's house, and we had a great time. The kids all played together, and we visited and ate for a while. We just got home about an hour ago, actually. Tomorrow I've got to clean the house and, well, that's about it! The kids have school Monday, and then Tuesday is an abbreviated day. They go back on January 4th, and I start back on the 8th. I get my grades from this semester on the 21st of December, so I'll let y'all know how I did! :)

Finals? Are Ovah!

Halle-freaking-lujah!

I think I did well on all three of my finals. If my calculations are correct, I'll have an 84 average in Art. I hope like hell that she doesn't take off the 5 points for my absence so I can be clear of that class. If she does, it'll drop me to a 79, which will have me retaking the class. Not with her, though, that's for damn sure!

I need to nap now. :D

Final Exam Hell

I have two more classes (next Tuesday and Thursday) before my final exams and the end of the semester. Yahoo! I am so glad to be finished with this semester. On the other hand, of course, that means I have to study for final exams. Of which, two are going to be hard. In the current Spanish lesson, we're learning about a billion verbs that have stem changes. For example, querer. It means 'to want'. It's an e:ie stem change, but two of the forms when conjugating them don't have the stem change. So conjugating that verb looks like this: quiero, quieres, quiere, queremos, queréis, and quieren. There are also verbs that have an o:ue stem change, e:i stem change, and there is one that has a u:ue stem change. So, I have to memorize the meanings of all the verbs, what their particular stem change is, and still remember the conjugation rules for the different endings: -ar, -ir, and -er. Spanish has come easy to me this entire semester, but this is by far the hardest lesson, and I'm feeling very anxious about this test.

I don't think Lit will be too awfully hard. The final in that class is over poetry (tone, word order, word choice, alliteration, assonance, etc.), A Midsummer Night's Dream, and A Farewell to Arms. We had the test over A Farewell to Arms yesterday. I didn't know we were having the test since I wasn't there Tuesday, and I hadn't read the entire book at that point. Hopefully I didn't bomb that test. Luckily for me, that teacher does her grading on an 800 point scale, instead of averaging all the grades, so it shouldn't kill me. Plus, all my other grades in that class are As.

Art is an entirely different story. We have to do things like trace the development of the human form in Art History, talk about Pagan prototypes in Christianity, and list a shitload of information on different monuments when we are shown the picture of each monument on a slide. For each monument, we have to memorize the name of it, the place from where it came, it's time period, the approximate dates it is thought to have been made, and it's current location. In a few cases, we have to know the names of the architects that designed the work. I am working my ass off in that class, and only pulling a C. This teacher is impossible to please, and I MUST make a C in this class, or I'll have to retake it. Hopefully I made a decent grade on my paper, but she hasn't graded them all yet, so I don't know when I'll find that out. I can say one thing, though. If I do end up having to retake the class, it will NOT be with this teacher. No freaking way.

So, anyway, my stress level is pretty high right now. I have a ton of studying to do over the next week - week and a half. If I disappear for a while, that is probably why. If I'm not back by December 14, come looking for me. ;)