my mom is hilarious

This is a recent ad she placed on craigslist....

Big Black Sectional Sofa / Couch - $25 

SAVE BIG BLACK!!! Big Black needs a new home. It has served us well for years, but we're tossing her aside for a younger model with microfiber and color.
The far left section of Big Black includes a reclining seat, which provides perfect comfort for watching both football and dancing with the stars. It also has put in many years of sci-fi and homework support. We have paired it nicely with both floral and striped pillows and it's always happy to keep a throw handy on a cold winter's eve. As the pictures attest, it is in pretty good shape although it is starting to show its age a bit on the most loved cushions. A couple of the back panels have small tears, but these are actually quite subtle and well hidden if against the wall (and could easily be disguised by a small strategically placed bit of black tape).
The right section includes a hide-a-bed that worked well until the "pig-pile incident" of late 2011. We thought 20-something adult children could count a bit better, but alas, The Black did sustain some damage that night. The hide-a-bed now hides well, it just doesn't un-hide to become-a-bed so well. If someone was handy and had the right sort of crow bar and patience, that could probably be remedied. However, as my husband's strengths run more toward IT and emergency response issues, and I'd rather play in the garden, we're happy to let someone else take a crack at it and help the Black regain some of her multi-purpose glory.
Big Black is actually REAL LEATHER on the front/facing cushions (we think the back may be "leatherette" or some similar cowhide imposter), which disguises a million faux and real paw prints and cleans up beautifully with a few clorox wipes and a vacuum hose attachment. It comes in three sections. The bed section is fairly bulky and heavy. The others are just bulky. So you'll probably need two people who can lift and maneuver well.
Not bad for $25, eh? We might even consider "OBO" as well if it meant the Black would be truly appreciated and well cared for.
p.s. We're hoping Big Black will go on Saturday so as to avoid an awkward encounter with her replacement. Please text 206-555-5555 to Save Big Black. 

It should be noted that my mom bought Big Black's replacement for $10 :)

have any pennies for my thoughts?

So, I have a few partially-thought-out posts either in the "drafts" category of this blog or still in my head...  I'm a bit surprised at myself for actually blogging often enough to have a backlog of blog posts.  Who'da thunk it?  (Maybe you, but certainly not me.)
Anyways, now is not the time I am going to address those.  Now is the time I'm just going to talk about me as of late and some things on my mind.  The three things that have been on my mind the most (in no particular order), are boys, finances, work, and my health.


Guys
I won't say much on this blog about guys (unless it's a scripturally based post like the recent "every girl's dream man"), but I will say that I like guys who know how to treat girls.  I have a few new guy friends whom I really appreciate because they are kind to me- not just kinda kind, but thoughtful and go out of their way to be thoughtful.  I appreciate this.  I also appreciate receiving genuine compliments.  I could go on and on about so many different thoughts about guys but unless you're my mom, my counselor, or one of my best friends you probably won't hear it.  I hope you're not too disappointed ;)


Finances
In the past couple of months I haven't been able to work much for various reasons and that has been frustrating for me, my checkbook, and my psyche.  However, I have come to be grateful for my dearth of income for it has required me to budget and track my spending better and also rely on the Lord more.  He is totally providing for me- I truly do have sufficient to meet my needs!  I even have sufficient for a 'want' here or there, such as buying Christmas presents for family last month, going dancing tonight with a friend, and through the generous birthday and  Christmas presents of family, I am getting a new camera on Monday!  (A real Canon DSLR.... I am stoked!  I could go on and on about the camera but I'll save that for another time.)
I talked to my grandma on the phone today (okay, it's 2am, so technically yesterday) and commented to her that I'm really grateful for how tight my financial situation has become because it is really helping me to develop the habits I need to be financially responsible for the rest of my life.  I talked about how long-term, I feel that it's more important to develop these skills than it is for me to work every day and make good money (such that I don't need to budget as much and I forget to rely on the Lord for my very bread and water).  I have seen people have financial strain and I want to learn not only how to avoid it, but how to make the best of it.  I also want to become an expert budget-er so that someday when I have kids I can start teaching them about it young.
I find it almost odd that I feel so grateful to be flirting with the line of being broke.  I never thought I would feel that way about, well, having a lack of money haha.  Money can't buy happiness- it's a well-known cliche, true, but it's well-known for good reason: it is so true.  Happiness, or self-satisfaction and peace, comes from having agency: the ability to choose.  When we manage our money poorly, it controls us and we become bound and lose many options.  When manage our money wiself- whether we are rich or poor- we are exercising agency or power over it, and so we are in control and able to continously generate and chose options for action.
On ProvidentLiving.org's Financial Self-Reliance page, there is an awesome quote from President N. Eldon Tanner:

Those who structure their standard of living to allow a little surplus, control their circumstances. Those who spend a little more than they earn are controlled by their circumstances. They are in bondage”

Work
I like being a paraeducator and I really enjoy working in special ed.  It's also fun, as a substitute, to go around the district and see how different teachers run their different classrooms.  Very educational for me and helpful in generating ideas for how I want to teach my own kids someday.
But the scheduling of a substitute sucks and is something that has ended up being really hard for me.  It used to be good because I would work work work and then get sick and take time off no problem.  And then I went to school and was able to cut way back my working hours so I could study... no problem (except a decrease in income, obviously).  But now it's to the point for me that I don't really like my job.  I mean, I often enjoy it when I get to wherever I'm subbing, but at the same time, I don't come home from work with a sense of satisfaction that I made a difference and stretched myself today.  Usually I come home with a sense of satisfaction from simply knowing that I made money today.  I don't want that out of a job and to be honest, it is not enough to get me out of bed in the morning when I don't feel well.  This may be a character flaw in me, but it is the way I am (at least for the time being).  Last summer I made a "bucket list" of sorts and on that list is "work in an emergency room".  I think I might just pursue that.  It appeals to me, I think would really enjoy the job, learn and see a lot, make decent money, and be doing something that will be good for whatever career in medicine/health care I decide to go into.  I've still got more praying to do about it, but at this point I'm thinking I'll start pursuing it after I have recovered from my upcoming surgery.
Which brings me to...


Health
I have endoscopic sinus surgery scheduled for Thursday the 19th.  My surgeon is going to fix my deviated septum and open up my sinuses a bit more.  I am hoping that this will help cure my sleep apnea, improve my asthma, allow my sinuses to drain and therefore get rid of my chronic sinus infection, improve my migraines, and maybe even alleviate my daily headache.  I'm not expecting it to fix everything or even fix any one thing all the way, but I believe (and my awesome asthma & allergy Dr believes as well) that fixing my deviated septum will improve a lot of things for me.  Thus far I have just been excited for the surgery and interested in the anatomy of it all.
But now I'm getting a bit more nervous.  I'm nervous about the migraine that I will assuredly get from the surgery.  I'm nervous about taking painkillers and getting a horrible rebound migraine like I did last February (2010) when I had my wisdom teeth removed.  I was on painkillers for a week and then as soon as I got off of them I had a migraine essentially for a week straight.  It was miserable.  I stayed in bed pretty much every day all day and read, watched TV on my laptop, and photoshopped.  Anytime I got out of bed and stood up or moved around for more than a couple minutes, my migraine would return with an eager vengeance...  The week after this constant migraine I was better, but still recovering from the physical and mental toll a migriane like that takes on a person.  I essentially ended up needing a full month to recover before I could go back to working full-time.  It sucked.
I'm worried that will happen again.  Okay, say it does, what's the worst case scenario?  I essentially have no paycheck for the month of February.  Okay.  That wouldn't be fun, but I believe this surgery is needed at tis time in my life and the Lord will take care of me.  The lack of work may mean that some bills don't get paid or debts paid off and I don't have money to go to school in the spring, but I'll be back to work eventually and it'll be okay.
I'm also just a bit nervous about the pain itself.  Normally I'm not too worried about pain... I don't know.  Maybe that's not true.  One thing I'm worried about is the fact that I'll have to sinus rinses after the surgery.  The one time I tried doing a sinus rinse (last fall... september I think) I ended up with a migraine so horrible that I had a friend take me to urgent care.  This was the second time ever in my history of migraines that I have been taken to urgent care to be treated for one.  But it just hurt so badly and there was nothing I could do and I started panicking because of how surprising, strong and persistant the pain was.  My awesome asthma & allergy Dr. explaind to me that this probably happened because of my deviated septum- the migraine was localised to that side of my face and it was probably triggered by my trigeminal nerve flipping out over the water I was attempting to force through my sinuses (again- couldn't drain properly or even enter properly via the left nostril due to that deviation).  So hopefully with the deviated septum fixed i won't have a problem with sinus rinses.  I'm really hoping that's the case cuz I'm trying not to be nervous about all of this...
Okay, so my sleep schedule is way off.  Whether or not I use my CPAP I seem to be waking up after only a few hours of sleep.  It used to be I'd wake up after 5hrs with the CPAP and be good to go for the day... now I'm waking up after 3 or 4 with or without it and am not good to go for the day.  What the heck?  For example I started writing this post at 0130 or something like that.  I didn't fall asleep probably till about 3... it's now 0655 and I've been up for maybe an hour now- can't get back to sleep.  I wonder if those chocolate truffles sitting on the counter which I couldn't resist when I got home around midnight have something to do with it...

and that brings us to a subcategory under health...  Sugar.  Which I am going to give it's own post because it deserves that.
Stay tuned.

my camera. note to self.

why do i always feel embarrassed when professionals ask me what kind of camera i have? honestly, i love taking pictures, i like making money for it when i can, my camera was a very generous gift from my grandfather, photoshop was something my father was blessedly in the position to give, and someday (hopefully soon) i'll be able to start saving up for a nice canon or nikon body + lens, but in the meantime i'm totally privileged to associate with and learn from wonderful photographers!

so i need not have an inferiority complex when asked what kind of camera i have. so what if my camera isn't a DSLR, or i don't have a really cool f/1.8 lens (drool), or a telefoto lens (again, drool)? at very little cost to myself, i have the tools i need to develop photographic skill and that, in the long run, is extraordinarily valuable.

i feel like i'm fighting a cultural thing that teaches if you don't have the latest and greatest toy (piece of technology or whatever that "toy" be), you can't succeed. you must be competitive on every level as soon as possible and (here's the real kicker), if you have to go into debt for this, then do it.

i'm okay with taking the risk of calculated debt. that's what i'm doing for this guyana trip. but as things stand, i can't afford expensive camera equipment, and i have more important things to save up for in the meantime. so for now, i will drool over my friends' and peers' cameras and enjoy the wonderful camera and tools i have and use them to develop the best photography skill i can.

that is my reply to the "i should"s i have inside my brain that needed silencing.

the end.

me, as of late

Well, as you can probably tell by the time of this post, I have had some trouble sleeping lately. Actually, you could just as easily think that I woke up early, and that would be true.... sort of. I woke up really early. I was doing pretty well at that during summer quarter, but then there was that 3 week period or so between the end of school and the beginning of my job with the school district. I'm pretty sure that wrecked my nice new habit. [note, i began this at about 5:30am... then finally fell back asleep for awhile, then went out and took some pictures. thus why it wasn't submitted at the early time i was talking about. just in case you actually checked the time down at the bottom here and wondered...]

anyways...

First we'll cover the latest on Guyana. (If you don't know what I'm talking about when I say Guyana, please go here.) My fundraising page is up! I'm almost halfway to the $2500 I need to raise! (The fundraising page only says 2,000 but I think that might be because they took my deductible out of the total or something.) I'm amazed at how quickly people have offered their support and how generous so many people have been (whether they have a lot of money or a little). We've still got a little ways to go, but I'm not worried. I truly believe this is what Heavenly Father wants me to be doing right now and I know the the opportunity has come straight from Him. Since this is the case, I am not very worried about it working out. I think of 1 Nephi 3:7~

"I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing he hath commanded them."

I also like the words from the Children's Primary song about Nephi:

"The Lord commanded Nephi to go and build a boat.

Nephi's older brothers said it would not float.

Laughing and mocking they said he should not try.

Nephi was courageous and this was his reply:

I will go, I will do

the things the Lord commands

I know the Lord provides a way

He wants me to obey."

So I finally took the leap and decided to try hot yoga. I LOVE it. Every time I do it I like it even more. The heat/yoga combination is particularly helpful for my angry, trigger-point-filled muscles in my neck, shoulders, and upper back (they are large contributers to my headahces & migraines). Hot yoga helps the muscles to loosen up and calm down enough so that I can work out the knots and also strengthen my muscles without freaking them out and making it worse. It feels sooo good!

Also on the healthfront, I have a deviated septum with a dust mite allergy resulting in chronic allergic rhinits.... an ongoing sinus infection. The amazing doctor of magic, Dr McBride, has done an awesome job of diagnosing and treating me. But because of my pretty marked deviated septum (my left nostril is half as big as my right), we can't cure the sinus infection completely without my getting a septoplasty... a surgical procedure where they fix my deviated septum... aka a "nose job". Because of the trigeminal nerve which hangs out around your sinuses, your forehead, and your jaw, there's a possibility that my headaches are caused by sinus/nasal problems. I am, in the words of a wise YSA Relief Society President, "cautiously optimistic". I am hoping to have the nose surgery before the end of this year, but that'll depend on my doctor and my insurance.

And... the sun is beautiful this morning! With beautiful fog! I just went out took some pictures. I am uploading them now :)

zofran

In case you can't read it, it says:
U&C: $708.99
Pay: $10.00

Having insurance: priceless (well, sorta)