A first for me

So today was my first time being rear ended. The car is just fine and I am fine too. I was getting on to the freeway and had to stop for a pedestrian who had the right away. I was stopped and all of a sudden someone hit me. My head hit my seat, so I have a little headache, but there is no damage to my car. The girl said it was because the road was slippery, but I am pretty sure that it was because she was on her cell phone. Well I hope that does not happen again. Although everything is fine, it was still really scary.
Other than that everything is going fine. I am busy with school. I am also really excited to get out into the yard and get some stuff done. My tulips and hyacinths are starting to pop up. I am going to try and plant some peas this weekend if the weather cooperates. I am just really excited to have nicer weather. We have a lot of stuff we want to do around the yard and I want to start getting it done. I just hope we get to keep the spring weather for a little bit and don't go straight into the summer heat.

Waiting for the end of winter

This month has been hard for me. School has been harder this semester because I can not get over being sick. I had one cold right after Christmas and then a week after I got over that I caught another one that I still have. It is frustrating being sick for almost a whole month. I went to the doctor and was told that there is basically nothing that they can do. I don't have pnuemonia so I just have to suffer through it. So I have had no motivation to do school work and I feel incredibly behind. It will be okay, but right now I am just a little overwhelmed.

So with school and other things that have been going on Jason was nice and brought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers to make me feel better. I thought they were so pretty and perfect. Jason is really good about getting me flowers and he picks out really pretty ones.

The one thing that has been sort of fun, is that Michaels has all of their spring flowers out right now. I love the spring flowers and it makes me antsy for spring to actually come. Well I made a new wreath formy living room that I am pretty excited about. I worked on it before the Super Bowl (which was a pretty good game this year). I saw the big purple peonys and just thought they were so pretty and I have been thinking I needed a more springy wreath for the living room.

Well anyways that is about all right now. I am hoping that the next time that I write I will have something more exciting to write about before everyone starts sleeping when they read my blog. Maybe I need to write about something crazy like some blogs. If you have ever blog surfed you will know what I am talking about. You can kind blogs about pretty much everything, a lot of stuff I have never even heard of before. Maybe I will write about our state legislature, that is a short ride to crazy town.

I am way behind

So I am way behind on writing on the blog. One excuse is that I was busy with finals and then Christmas. The next excuse is after Christmas I got a bad cold, which is trying to turn into bronchitis, so I have not been doing much lately. Well I survived finals, barely, and got my grades right after Christmas. I got 4 A's and a B+. Not too shabby. The B+ was in Constitutional Law, so I was pretty happy with that. Next semester starts next week. I am not ready yet. I want another week. Right now I am taking a senior writing course, Chinese Foreign Policy, Interest Groups, and Globalization and Resistance. It should be an interesting semester. I am trying to decide if I should drop a class and take something different or stay with what I have.

Christmas was wonderful. We had a great time with our families. Jason loved the telescope that I got him. He has been able to find a couple of stars so far, but it is going to take some practice for him to see everything that he wants. He got me two hours at a spa. I am looking forward to that. I get to pick what I want to do. I am thinking right now about doing this hydrotherapy thing that they do. I have done it before and my skin was so soft after wards. I am also thinking about doing a seaweed detox wrap. I have always been interested in doing one. The ironic thing is after I going to the spa and being wrapped up in seaweed, we are going to go out to sushi so I can eat fish wrapped in seaweed. Mmmm, sushi.

Well I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year. I don't have any resolutions yet this year. I never stick with them anyways. I am just going to stick with the goals from last year of doing well in school and getting done as soon as I can with school. I have just 10 classes left. Yahoo.

November

I can't believe that next week is Thanksgiving. I am not sure where October went, but I would kind of like it back. I have one more month left in school. Which means my Thanksgiving break will consist of me working on two papers and trying to catch up on all of my reading. I will be putting up my Christmas trees, because I am not going Black Friday shopping. I know pigs are not flying, it is just that I am too busy this year. We decided to not to a sub for Santa because it takes too much time, and I need to focus on school. Instead of buying a lot of presents this year we are doing something else for our Christmas tradition. So I don't really have to go stand in the cold at 3 in the morning this year to get pushed in the back by someone trying to run to get the last $3 movie, even though it is a crappy one.
I have also decided to start early on my New Years Resolution. I have decided to make a better me. My first thing was to stop drinking Pepsi. I have been successful at that although whenever I see one I really want it. I still drink some pop but not every day. I took another step this week. I am not sure if other people will see it as being better, but I guess I do. I have stopped looking at adoption blogs. I noticed the more I read them the more negative I was becoming, because they are negative. When I first started to read them it was so I could learn more about what it was like for birthmothers. I wanted to become more educated so if we adopt I could be more prepared. In some ways the blogs have been helpful. I feel I have more empathy towards birthmothers, I am more open to an open adoption, and I feel like my perspective on adoption is different in a good way mostly. But lately it seems like everything I read is negative and it has made me question our decision to try and adopt and also question who I am. I read things like all adoptive couples are selfish and horrible. They are just trying to take babies from people. If God really wanted them to be parents they would be able to get pregnant. They all lie to get what they want. Reading those things made me feel bad about myself. Sure they are not talking about me personally, they don't know me. But it is hard not to take it personally because Jason and I are trying to adopt. I would go to bed thinking about what I had read, wondering if by adopting someday we will be ruining people's lives. Finally this week after reading a particularly scathing blog about adoption I decided that was enough. I could not do this to myself anymore. I deleted all the blogs that I followed off of my list and out of my history.
I guess some people could say that I am just trying to ignore the negative and look through the world with rose colored glasses. I look at it as taking something toxic out of my life. There are a few good blogs, but on the whole I found that even the good ones have links to negative ones. Birthmoms trashing other birthmoms, adoptive couples trashing birthmoms, and birthmoms trashing adoptive couples. People seem more content to tear down others than to help and understand. I know there are bad things in adoption. There are adoptive couple that lie, they say that they are more open than they are. That is wrong, wrong, wrong. Lying is never acceptable in adoption or in most circumstances. Some couples don't care about how ethical their adoption is. Jason and I are not those people. We are trying to do what we feel is the right thing to do. We have prayed about this and feel like adoption is the route we are suppose to go. I don't know why I wish that I did. I wish I knew many things, but there is one thing that I do know and that is the kind of person I am and the kind of person Jason is. I don't need some stranger who is mad at everything to make me feel inferior or like a criminal when I am not one. I don't need to feel guilty for something that I did not do and will never do.
Sorry this is kind of long. I just felt I needed to get that out. It has been on my mind for about a month now. Well back to studying. I hope everyone has a very wonderful Thanksgiving.

I am still here

I have not disappeared. I have just been so busy and luckily it is just getting worse. I had three tests in one week. The next week was fall break, I thought I would have a lot of time to do what I wants. Wrong. I had a hypothetical paper to write, a talk to do in church, and another midterm to study for. Then last week I was studying for a midterm that I did horrible on and my sister-in-law got married. Well I have not gotten it back yet, but I am pretty sure that I will be very unhappy with the results. My other midterms I did pretty good on. Three A's and a B+. I had an A- in one class, but then he changed the curve and I got an A. I was not going to complain. I now have to focus on another test in my enviromental policy class, and a couple of papers that I have about the same time. Next semester I am taking just four classes instead of five. I hope that will be better.
Well other then school not much else is going on. I am not crazy about the snow we had this morning. I am not ready for winter, or the holidays. Luckily this weekend I got all of my squash out of the garden before the snow came.
I have to get back to homework. Sorry if I have not talked to anyone lately. I am not trying to ignore anyone, just busier than I thought I was going to be.

I am going crazy

Well some might argue that I went crazy years ago, but it might be getting worse. I have three midterms next week in Political Analysis, Mexican Politics and Politics of China. Thank goodness my Constitutional Law one is in two weeks and I already had my Environmental Policy test last week. I don't know how I did though. I did get back my Constitution test back and I got 87%. So I was excited about that. If someone has a question about the Amendments I know all of them right now.
Well that is about all going on right now is school. Oh yeah I gave up Pepsi and it has been a week since I had one. I miss it, but I needed to stop drinking it. It is all part of being a healthier Elizabeth.

Random things

I have been busy the last couple weeks with school and my goal this year to do some canning. The canning has been more interesting then I thought. I bought three bushels of peaches to can and it took longer then I thought. We did not even get to all the peaches, they were too hard and I was sick of peaches. With my dad, mom, and brother helping we got a little over 2 bushels done and it took all day. We got thirty jars. So I think that I learned that for next year to try and spread it out over two weeks.

I also made raspberry jam. I learned that it takes me 2 1/2 hours to pick 10 pounds of raspberries. Also you have to follow the directions on the pectin or your jam will not set. I have a batch of raspberry syrup.

This is my other project making herb vinegar. I planted herbs this year and decided to make some bottles of herb vinegar. I just did on Friday so it is too early to know if they came out good. But they look pretty so I guess if they don't taste good I can use them as decorations.

School is going well. It is starting to get harder. I have a test this week and an assignment due. I still have a ton to read. I am learning a lot though. I like all of my classes, especially Constitutional Law. What I am surprised at are some of the kids in my classes. I might sound like an old foggy, but kids now are lazy. In my Chinese Politics class our professor was lecturing and this kid next to me was reading in a book. I thought it was weird he was not taking notes. I looked over and he had a notebook full of notes and I realized that he had borrowed his friend's notes who had taken the class before. All I could think was I really hope that I don't have to work with you later, you are lazy. In my Political Analysis class there is a girl who was making a bag or something on this plastic hoop. I thought that was weird. There is another girl who sits in the front row and she texts and reads the paper right in front of the professor. I thought that was rude. She could at least sit in the back of the room if she is going to goof off.

I just don't think that most of the people who are in college realize how nice it is that they can go when so many people would like to and can't. I know I appreciate the opportunity more now that I have gone back. But I think that most of their parents pay for it so they probably don't care if they are wasting money.