How Time Flies...

Has it really been that long since I wrote?? Wow!
O.k. All the latest that's fit to report. I will be finished school on Friday, May 7th and then have my big exam the following Monday, May 11th. From the 12th until July 3rd, I do my practicum and that's it, I'm done!! I am on the honour roll, can you believe it?? It was a shock to learn that. I never did well in school before, but I really enjoyed this course. I've learned a lot.
Now for the fun part...we have given up our apartment for July 1st and will be living up at the 'love nest' for the summer. I really wanted to get out of this town, as I hate it here as does Holly. We are so excited to be up north we've already started packing. I really shouldn't say 'we' as it is Holly who is getting us ready to go. She has been so helpful to us, while I've been at school. She's kept the house clean and made some great meals. I'm very proud of her. She is finally done with high school and is really looking forward to going to a bible school in Toronto in the fall. So, we will be moving to Toronto in September and I know I will be able to find a job there. I know of one place in particular that works with Native men who are alcoholics and since I'm native, I would do well there. They are a new agency and are always looking for people, so that would be great. But there are so many opportunities in Toronto, I'm sure I will find something I like.
Holly has also been working on getting her driving license and should have it by July.
Life is very exciting right now, and there's a lot of pressure for this final exam. Please say a prayer for me to remember everything as it's worth 70% of my mark. Whew!!
Right now my mood is very positive, excited even, and everything is going so well. I feel like we will be starting fresh and living a new life, which always excites me. We all have 'Jazz Wings' over this! I think I'm a gypsy at heart. I have never stayed in one place very long except when the kids were growing up and going to school. I didn't want them to have to adjust to a new school all the time, so we stayed put all through their school years. It was a good decision as now they have friends who will probably be lifelong, BFF's!
Everyone in my 'petting zoo' is doing fine except for one fatality. My sweet Heffalump died about a month ago. He first got something called 'Bumblefoot' and lost weight rapidly. Holly began to hand feed him smoothies and oatmeal and we even took him to the vet for some antibiotics. He seemed to rally a bit and gain a bit of weight. But the next week he again lost more weight. I looked in on him one day, and he looked just awful. I picked him up and held him for about an hour. He died in my arms, being petted and talked to which he loved. He tried to squeak for me but barely got it out. I know he was only a hefalump, but I was truly sad to see him go. I loved him very much and if I was feeling down, I would pet him and he'd talk to me and give me wet little kisses. I really miss him. Sleep well, my little sweetheart! I have him in the freezer so I can bury him up at the love nest.
Anyhoo, you may or may not be glad to hear I have quit smoking for nearly 2 months. My life is really not worth living anymore, and I still crave it terribly. Everyday I say to my family, 'I'm smoking tomorrow and you can't stop me!', and everyday they reply, 'O.K. Go ahead'. And every day I don't, but I haven't got a clue why not?! Can anyone give me just one good reason why I shouldn't smoke, cause I can't think of one. Everyone says, 'So you won't die.' That's it, that's the reason. Are you kidding me? Do I really want to live longer and be this miserable?? I really can't see any good reason why I can't smoke. But I tell you what...if my Doctor ever says, 'Tory, you have terminal cancer.', I will leave his office, go to the store and get the biggest pack of smokes ever. And I will enjoy every puff...so there! Sigh....
Actually, I think it would be so hypocritical of me to counsel addicts while smelling of cigarettes. That is honestly the only reason I quit. Plus Holly kept nagging about some crazy second hand smoke stuff...whatever...brat...sigh...why doesn't she move out?...sigh..
O.K. I'm over it...
Anyway, I will be able to write more often once I'm up at the love nest, as my summer will be my own. Boy, I really can't wait. Holly and I are going to be alone for a lot of the time as NIA Hubby will be staying with his mother on work days and just coming up on the weekends until his holidays kick in. So, Holly and I are going to go to garage sales, fishing, lots of swimming at the beach and in the pool after dinner. We will be going to the driving range, the farmers market, reading, I will work on my book, and she will continue with her Hebrew lessons. Not to mention I have some books pertaining to different therapeutic measures that I'd like to read before I start a job in the field. I also have several books I want to read for pleasure as I have read nothing but psych books, reports and other technical things for so many months now, I have to get caught up on the Twilight series, at least that's what my girls tell me. Actually, I read the first one and it was really good.
Anyway, Holly and I are also looking forward to experimenting with food this summer. She has become very interested in cooking lately, and has learned a lot. We watch the food network together a lot and I answer her questions. So, we've gotten together a bunch of recipes to try out. NIA hubby is mostly a meat and potato's man, so we're going to cook with recipes I don't think he'd like.
Well, this was a long post, but I have a lot of stuff happening right now.
I hope you are all well. Yes, Forsythia, I will be blogging once again starting in July. Hi Andrew, I hope you're doing good. I will catch up on all your blogs tonight.
Take care

My Blog is Getting Soooo Boring....

My blog has gotten so boring lately that I don't even want to read it. I think I'm going through a dry spell and I apologize for that. It's just that nothing is happening in my life right now and it makes for poor fodder for writing.
Anyhoo, I went on Thursday for my eye op and it went pretty good! Not as painful as it has been before and it seemed to go quite fast. Whew! Only 3 more to go. I'll be glad when they're done. The only thing I've noticed is that after each one, my eyesight is even dimmer than before. This procedure is not intended to improve my sight, but only to keep blindness at bey. However, the Dr. said it will diminish my sight a bit. Well, it's time for real (as apposed to reading) glasses. Maybe I'll get the big clown ones with the nose attached and feather eyebrows...could be fun!
The three babies are becoming enormous, all bums and bellies. So cute. Holly and I will be taking video of them and I'll post them. You'll all be shocked at their size. Their eyes are actually open now and they look like ugly little vultures at this point. But we love them anyway. However, we will be selling them. Just with the birds we have, there are times when you can't hear yourself think...our house is pretty loud. I wouldn't be able to handle anymore 'peeping'. I called Bambi the other day and she was busy so she put me on speaker phone so she could continue her work and talk at the same time..she said it sounded like I was calling from the rainforest. The blessing to all this is that, come night time, they are dead silent...except for Tequila who gets excited when his dad comes home from work. Tequila is so funny. When he sees his Dad walk down the hall to go to bed, he will screech to be put to bed too. He is free all day to sit on top of his cage or come out to the living room to visit us, but when dad goes to bed, he screams and gets into his cage waiting for us to close his door and cover him for the night. Spoiled bugger! Funny thing is about Tequila, he loves his dad and likes to sit on him, but dad is not allowed to touch him or he will bite. He's not the friendliest of birds and will only let me touch him or kiss him, although Holly can sometimes get a kiss if he's on his cage. So temperamental. Up at the love nest, the neighbours have a cockatiel that I sometimes visit. He's over 33 years old!! What!? Better get used to Holly, Tequila, cause I doubt I'll be around that long.
In other new....let's talk 'penis plugs'. Oh c'mon, you were all wondering about it for years and now I will explain it. (don't act like you weren't) Lumpy, (our guinea pig) was out playing on the floor the other day, when Holly noticed something hanging out of his back end. She freaked and brought him to me in a blanket, on his back, legs spread. I saw there was something there and I pulled on it thinking it was some debris from his cage. Out came this long, (about an inch) white rubbery thing. I dropped it on his blanket in horror. OMG, he's got worms. I had never heard of Lumpy's having worms before. I was horrified. Holly quickly dumped him back in his cage. She was even more freaked out than I was. I looked it up on the web and read it was highly unusual for a Lumpy to get worms but if they did it was serious. I kept searching. Something didn't seem quite right about it. I was almost positive that it wasn't coming from his bottom, but from his penis area. I finally found a vet blog that talked about 'penis plugs'. It turned out that he had been in heat, and sperm had collected and jelled. All you had to do was pull them out. So, I did...ugh...and he's fine. My poor little lumpy. He complained the whole time that it was very close to rape and he was feeling violated but we ignored him. He said he felt much better afterwards and thanked us. Boy, the things we do for our loved ones. I'm not sure I would even do that for my Hubby, as much as I love him. O.k. enough about that...I'm feeling kind of sick now....
We have joined a new church recently and it is wonderful. We all really enjoy it. The actual church building isn't all that big, but the congregation is big enough that they have 3 separate, but identical services on the weekends. Their first one being on Saturday nights. We love that fact, as Sunday is really the only day Hubby has off, so it's perfect. The music and the sermon are fantastic and the pastor is quite a young guy and very interesting. It is a very vibrant and active church and Holly is planning to go on a young adult retreat in July. It lasts 3 days and I think it will be good for her.
Well that's all there is to post about. Have a great weekend everyone.
Take care

I'm Finally Back...thanks for your patience!!

Hi everyone. So sorry I was gone for so long. At the last minute I decided to stay at the 'love nest' on my own for a few days. I kind of enjoyed being on my own for a change but that quickly got old and I missed my hubby being there. It's almost too quiet when you're by yourself. Sigh...the love nest just isn't the same without my love being there with me.
I put some garbage outside to put in the shed and a little while later I noticed something moving outside on the lawn. It was a gopher and he kept standing up and sniffing in the direction of the garbage. 'Oh no you don't'. He was so cute and must have stayed in the yard for a full 15 minutes, giving me time to have a good look at him. We also have some little red squirrels that are so adorable. I broke up some white bread and threw it around the deck for them. A little while later I heard a knock on the door and one of the squirrels was standing there with the bread in his hand. He demanded that from now on I need to put out multigrain bread, as he is trying to watch his figure. Fine. Ungrateful..so and so...
Hubby finally showed up on Sunday and I was so happy to see him. Let's face it, gophers are not generally known for their conversational skills. They tend to only want to talk about themselves. It gets tiresome.
We piled into the car and went for dinner in a nearby town. We had a great time, and dinner was excellent.
I was especially grateful that Hubby was there that night as a huge storm came up, the most severe storm I had ever witnessed since I was 4 years old and was in a hurricane. It was very close to tornado speed winds. There was a clap of thunder so loud that it shook the whole trailer. I knew something close had been hit. We were watching it out of the patio door and I noticed that the tree directly in front of the deck, which is at least 200 ft. tall, was swaying back and forth! No, not the branches, the actual trunk! If it fell, it could possibly crush our trailer. We decided to get into the car and head out to the front of the park where there weren't as many trees. We sat at the front for awhile and it seemed to be easing off, but on the drive back, the wind picked up again and it began to hail. I was afraid that it would come through the windshield! While driving, we found the source of the big crack of lightening. A huge tree had been hit a street behind our trailer and was laying on the ground. It took a long time for the wind to settle down enough for us to go back in the trailer. I was so grateful Hubby was there and I didn't have to go through that alone. I don't know what I would have done as the trailer park is almost empty on a Sunday night.
I see that Holly hi-jacked my blog while I was away. Actually, I told her to let you all know that I was staying for the week. Thank you for your patience...you know..the Darren Hayes pix! She's crazy about him and it was a thrill for her to see him in concert.
Thanks for all of your comments while I was gone. Abbagirl, thanks for the tag and I will work on it this afternoon.
Take care all and I'm glad to be back.