Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Happy Birthday Alex!
Happy Birthday to Alex! May we enjoy many more years together as a family of friends!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Wordless Wednesday #1
March 2008 - just 5 months after we first started dating:
Oh how far we've come!
Oh how far we've come!
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
In an attempt to blog more...
In efforts to attempt to blog a little more often, I'm going to try to make this "Wordless Wednesday" thing happen each week....no promises though! Because I have a career in which it is important to lead a more private life, I've had to keep this blog unsearchable, which limits readers mostly to friends who know about it.
Since I can't expand it in any large sort of way, it has made it difficult to keep up with regular posting. Especially since I'm a very open person in general and like to share what is going on with me. Thank you Marni for the Wordless Wednesday idea and continual encouragement with my blog :)
Since I can't expand it in any large sort of way, it has made it difficult to keep up with regular posting. Especially since I'm a very open person in general and like to share what is going on with me. Thank you Marni for the Wordless Wednesday idea and continual encouragement with my blog :)
Monday, November 29, 2010
Rough Patch II
Quite a bit has changed since losing my job in October. Not long after it all happened, I sunk into a bit of a depression, and had a difficult time coming to terms with all of it. I stopped doing a lot of things I enjoyed doing (keeping up with friends, crafting,shopping etc.) and mostly just wallowed at home most of my days. My husband, seeing I was in a funk, bought me the new Sims 3 game, and for a couple weeks, I spent SEVERAL hours a day sitting at home living someone else's life.
I knew I was depressed, I knew laying around at home wasn't fixing anything, but part of me knew it was what I needed to do. I needed to sit and wallow in it a while and just be sad about the whole situation.
A couple weeks after I was let go, my former boss FINALLY answered my calls and agreed to meet up with me to sign off paperwork that is necessary to validate all the hours I accumulated while working with her. During our meeting, I pretty much gathered that she had thrown me under the bus to cover her own butt, which is why the county decided to let me go. Of course, she didn't say that, but it was pretty obvious.
Fortunately, while I was wallowing at home, I'd been taking some time here and there to look for jobs and shoot out some emails/resumes. Within 3 weeks of being let go, I had landed myself another internship. One week after that, I started my first day.
This place is just amazing. I really cannot stress this enough. My new supervisor is a REAL supervisor who actually takes time out of her day to provide real supervision and guidance instead of expecting me to do things for her and then lying about providing supervision to me. Group supervision is small (2-4 people on any given week) but it is REAL supervision with other really great interns.
As for my site, I'm contracted out to serve as school counselor for an alternative high school. This means I'm working with kids who have been kicked out of traditional high school for various reasons. Many of these kids are on probation, and have drug/alcohol/trauma/abuse histories. I'm the only counselor on site for a school of 115 kids, so I definitely have plenty of people to work with.
What I love the most is the trust and flexibility of my job. My requirement is to be there when the kids are in school M-F and do the work I think is needed. There are no requirements to see a certain number of kids, work with them in a specific kind of way, take a specific style of notes, run specific kinds of groups,or keep files in a specific kind of way. My company trusts me and my education, and trusts the work that I do, and my reasonings behind it. They back me 100%, which is something I've never ever had before. I'm able to keep files in a way that makes most sense to me, use treatment strategies that make the most sense for the situation, and see kids on whatever schedule feels most comfortable. They back me 100%.
The only downside is that I'm making roughly 1/3 the hourly wages I was making before. However, this is quickly trumped by the fact that I'm working for an amazing company and with great supervision and amazing kids. The stress of making less money is SO MUCH LESS than the stress from the joke of an internship I had before.
All in all, I'm in a much better place now. I'm really looking forward to our honeymoon coming up in a couple weeks, and am so glad I can go enjoy myself without the job stresses I had before.
I knew I was depressed, I knew laying around at home wasn't fixing anything, but part of me knew it was what I needed to do. I needed to sit and wallow in it a while and just be sad about the whole situation.
A couple weeks after I was let go, my former boss FINALLY answered my calls and agreed to meet up with me to sign off paperwork that is necessary to validate all the hours I accumulated while working with her. During our meeting, I pretty much gathered that she had thrown me under the bus to cover her own butt, which is why the county decided to let me go. Of course, she didn't say that, but it was pretty obvious.
Fortunately, while I was wallowing at home, I'd been taking some time here and there to look for jobs and shoot out some emails/resumes. Within 3 weeks of being let go, I had landed myself another internship. One week after that, I started my first day.
This place is just amazing. I really cannot stress this enough. My new supervisor is a REAL supervisor who actually takes time out of her day to provide real supervision and guidance instead of expecting me to do things for her and then lying about providing supervision to me. Group supervision is small (2-4 people on any given week) but it is REAL supervision with other really great interns.
As for my site, I'm contracted out to serve as school counselor for an alternative high school. This means I'm working with kids who have been kicked out of traditional high school for various reasons. Many of these kids are on probation, and have drug/alcohol/trauma/abuse histories. I'm the only counselor on site for a school of 115 kids, so I definitely have plenty of people to work with.
What I love the most is the trust and flexibility of my job. My requirement is to be there when the kids are in school M-F and do the work I think is needed. There are no requirements to see a certain number of kids, work with them in a specific kind of way, take a specific style of notes, run specific kinds of groups,or keep files in a specific kind of way. My company trusts me and my education, and trusts the work that I do, and my reasonings behind it. They back me 100%, which is something I've never ever had before. I'm able to keep files in a way that makes most sense to me, use treatment strategies that make the most sense for the situation, and see kids on whatever schedule feels most comfortable. They back me 100%.
The only downside is that I'm making roughly 1/3 the hourly wages I was making before. However, this is quickly trumped by the fact that I'm working for an amazing company and with great supervision and amazing kids. The stress of making less money is SO MUCH LESS than the stress from the joke of an internship I had before.
All in all, I'm in a much better place now. I'm really looking forward to our honeymoon coming up in a couple weeks, and am so glad I can go enjoy myself without the job stresses I had before.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Belated Halloween Blog
So, I've been meaning to share some super fun Halloween treat ideas I tried out this year. After losing my job, starting a new one, and trying to get settled into some sense of normal, I've finally got some free time on my hands to post this :)
So the first was an idea I saw used here. (To see a really nice how to on her blog, check out the link)This one didn't cook up to show all the layers all that well but in any case, the black and orange swirly made for some fun cupcakes.
I originally went with black frosting and quickly realized that this would dye the mouths of everyone who ate them....which isn't exactly what I was going for. I then decided orange was probably a safer option.
I did the icing by scooping it all into a sandwich bag and snipping one of the corners. After doing it I realized the icing looked a bit like a giant swirly turd. Lesson learned: make a smaller cut in the bag next time.
The next recipe I tried were string cheese witch fingers.
This one is super easy, and I think came out super cute. Start by taking your string cheese and cutting it in half to make two fingers. Use a pairing knife to hollow out a spot towards the top where you will later place the nail, so that it will lay fairly flat. Then take your pairing knife and make teeny notches to look like the knuckles. (This looks a lot harder than it actually is.)
You can then slice up a green bell pepper to make little fingernail pieces. You will want to cut the "meat" of the pepper fingernail so it is about 1/2 as thick so that it will lay a little flatter on the cheese.
Adhere with a little dab of cream cheese and voila!
On a side note, I'd recommend making sure your hands are very clean (which you should be doing anyway) and maybe even wearing gloves, as string cheese picks up little particles quite easily. I made the mistake of quickly wiping some of the cream cheese off of my fingers onto a black kitchen towels, and then noticed some of the little black fibers stuck to the next finger I worked on....oops!
The final treat I tried was an idea my mom gave to me based off something she had seen someone bring to an office Halloween party. To create these spider eggs, just prepare your favorite deviled egg recipe, and then use black olives to create spiders for each egg. I used about 1/2 an olive for each body, and then sliced up the olives to make little legs.
This one is super easy, but quite time consuming. In any case, I'm glad I did it. It was my first time ever making deviled eggs and I think they came out really cute!
I ended up dressing as Sally from the Nightmare Before Christmas and the husband was a mad scientist(literally and angry scientist). Unfortunately we managed to make it through the entire party without taking any pictures of ourselves. Bummer!
In any case, I'm looking forward to finding some new fun Halloween recipes to try out in the future!
So the first was an idea I saw used here. (To see a really nice how to on her blog, check out the link)This one didn't cook up to show all the layers all that well but in any case, the black and orange swirly made for some fun cupcakes.
I originally went with black frosting and quickly realized that this would dye the mouths of everyone who ate them....which isn't exactly what I was going for. I then decided orange was probably a safer option.
I did the icing by scooping it all into a sandwich bag and snipping one of the corners. After doing it I realized the icing looked a bit like a giant swirly turd. Lesson learned: make a smaller cut in the bag next time.
The next recipe I tried were string cheese witch fingers.
This one is super easy, and I think came out super cute. Start by taking your string cheese and cutting it in half to make two fingers. Use a pairing knife to hollow out a spot towards the top where you will later place the nail, so that it will lay fairly flat. Then take your pairing knife and make teeny notches to look like the knuckles. (This looks a lot harder than it actually is.)
You can then slice up a green bell pepper to make little fingernail pieces. You will want to cut the "meat" of the pepper fingernail so it is about 1/2 as thick so that it will lay a little flatter on the cheese.
Adhere with a little dab of cream cheese and voila!
On a side note, I'd recommend making sure your hands are very clean (which you should be doing anyway) and maybe even wearing gloves, as string cheese picks up little particles quite easily. I made the mistake of quickly wiping some of the cream cheese off of my fingers onto a black kitchen towels, and then noticed some of the little black fibers stuck to the next finger I worked on....oops!
The final treat I tried was an idea my mom gave to me based off something she had seen someone bring to an office Halloween party. To create these spider eggs, just prepare your favorite deviled egg recipe, and then use black olives to create spiders for each egg. I used about 1/2 an olive for each body, and then sliced up the olives to make little legs.
This one is super easy, but quite time consuming. In any case, I'm glad I did it. It was my first time ever making deviled eggs and I think they came out really cute!
I ended up dressing as Sally from the Nightmare Before Christmas and the husband was a mad scientist(literally and angry scientist). Unfortunately we managed to make it through the entire party without taking any pictures of ourselves. Bummer!
In any case, I'm looking forward to finding some new fun Halloween recipes to try out in the future!
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