News of a general sort

Since it has been some time since I posted, I thought I update you, my faithful reader(s), on the general household news. Mainly this is a ploy to put off cleaning the bunny cage, which is reaching critical mass as we speak. But anyway. *cough cough*

I passed my CNA test and am now a board-certified Certified Nursing Assistant. Whoopty-do! It's a requirement for nursing school, so I had to do it. I looked into an on-call job at one of the area hospitals in the mental health unit just for grins, and it pays to start about what I make working on-call in residential mental health. But goes up from there, whereas I am about topped out in residential. Something to think about.

Speaking of nursing school, I am crossing my fingers that I will be receiving a letter in about a month, telling me I've been accepted into the program that starts in January. I had been all in a lather about getting my transcript to the college in time for selection (April 1st) and then gotten this confusing letter from the Credential Evaluation dept., so I called them to clarify (all was well, no reason to panic) and then asked them oh so casually about my points... I was told by advising that I had 46 (out of 53) and just wanted to confirm this. The friendly and helpful young lady on the phone asked which class they had used to figure up this or that point total etc, and it turned out that I actually have 49 points. Oh, she says, you stand a good chance this time!

So yeah. The mailbox. Haunting. Every day. Even though the theoretical letter wouldn't come for another month or so.

Okay, so you know all the hoopla about the terrible two's and how awful they are? Don't you believe it! The terrible two's got nothing on the almost-3's. Suddenly everything we do is a struggle -- "Baby, come get dressed, we have to leave soon." (Baby runs down the hall laughing. I pursue and capture. Baby cries angrily and kicks her feet. Repeat ad nauseum.) "Baby, come eat your lunch." (Baby refuses and has a tantrum, then demands chocolate milk.) "Baby, don't pull the cat's fur." (Baby then kicks at cat, usually missing, but still.)

Mainly it's the refusal to cooperate when I'm trying to get her out the door that really fries me. Then once we are out she's generally fine. It's just dirty and wrong.

Another fun tradition: lingering in doorways. Like, throwing open the door exposes a brand new world so exciting and beautiful that she can't take it all in and must move so-o-o-o slo-o-o-o-owly as she exits the house (or wherever we are) that I trip over her and no amount of encouragement will expedite this process. This is especially fun at places where there might be others behind us waiting to leave also. Fortunately she is fairly adorable and most people's hearts explode as soon as they look upon her, so we get relatively few dirty looks. But still! Is it so hard to pick up your feet, little girl?!

Nice weather today, maybe I'll get to paint the shed ...

Easter, Anger, Canoe

First off: Easter was fun. Delia got a big basket of mostly toys from the very wise Easter Bunny who knew that she would get roughly forty-seven thousand pounds of candy from other sources. Sure enough, at egg hunts on Saturday (Grandma's) and Sunday (church), she got her fill of magic beans (her far superior name for otherwise ordinary jelly beans), chocolate foil-wrapped goodies, and the like. Someone fed her a chocolate-iced cupcake at the fellowship hour afterward, which she very sportingly ate in the manner of Henry the Eighth, even wearing a delightful goatee afterward. I will post the photo as soon as it makes its way to me. Last year she ate a cupcake no-hands-style, a photo of which ended up in the church newsletter. The tradition lives on!

Today J went to look at a canoe from an ad on craigslist. The seller was not home but someone else showed her the canoe, which she agreed to buy and offered to leave money down on it while she ran home to get the other car, some tie-downs, etc. No need, said the fellow.

We showed up at the house as planned only to find the canoe being loaded into somebody else's truck.

She jumps out and says, "I told the guy I was coming for it."

"Yeah," said the seller, "but you didn't leave any money." (In snotty tone of voice, as if this was the stupidest thing ever.)

"I offered to leave some but he said I didn't need to!" she protested. "I told him I'd be back with the other car. He said that was fine."

"Well, why didn't you bring the other car in the first place?" says the snotty jerk seller. (WTF does that have to do with anything?! We showed up at the exact same time as the other guy!)

"I was calling from work," says J, and gets disgustedly back in the car. We drive off angrily.

You know, that would have been a totally different experience if he'd just said something like, "Oh gosh, I'm sorry for the miscommunication but the guy that was here was supposed to take a deposit for it if you were going to have to come back later." Like, would that have been so damn hard, Mr. Jerkface Seller? He was so snotty I'm glad he didn't get our money for his stupid canoe.

So we drove on to a large, well-known local retailer and purchased a nicer and larger (and new) model of the canoe from them. Last year's model, virtually identical to this year's, but on clearance. J has this kind of luck where we show up to buy something and find it's on clearance, often not learning this until it has been rung up. We call it Secret Sale. Also, because we bought a boat, all boating accessories were ten percent off, so we got paddles and life jackets. All told we spent about 200 dollars more than we would have spent for the other boat -- but a) we got a nice new one, b) it has backrests and other niceties, and c) we didn't hand our money over to a total dickwad.

We even got the baby her own little paddle. And an adorable life jacket. Far cry from those ugly orange ones we had to wear as kids!

Gaaaah!

I just read on the college website that it will be about EIGHT WEEKS before I am notified whether or not I got in to the nursing program!

EIGHT WEEKS! DON'T THESE PEOPLE KNOW THAT I COULD EASILY DIE OF ANTICIPATION IN EIGHT LONG WEEKS OF WAITING AROUND FOR THEIR STUPID LETTER!!!!

EIGHT WEEKS?!!! WHAT KIND OF SADISTS ARE THEY?!

Shed! Bunnies! Helping!

J's brother is here building us a shed and doing various other jobs. He is a very skilled carpenter and has made us the cutest, snuggest little shed ever. As I blog this, he is out putting up gutters on the patio roof and the shed. He even built a little fence to keep the dogs away from the back fence! They like to go back there and bellow at the neighbors behind us, a practice that I find odious and beating-worthy. Alas, due to societal pressures not to inflict violence on others, am restricted to yelling and shaking my fist. Stupid non-violence.

We took the bunnies out yesterday for their first ever lawn excursion! The wire enclosure is finally free for use since it is no longer serving as our hillbilly gate (as J's brother crafted two wonderful gates for us his first day here). They were unhappy about how much J's brother's dog Busty wanted to eat them -- he was literally drooling as he watched them -- but seemed to enjoy the grass and the sun and all that.



Note the ugly bald patch on Exidor's back. It has started to grow back since we began putting more toys in the cage, so I'm pretty sure it was just that Cleo was grooming it off of him. She's very energetic.



The baby wanted to help so J's brother let her do various things. He's really great with kids. She also wanted to play with her bunnies so we let her be in with them for a few minutes. Tempting as it is, we do not generally keep her in a pen.... Note the shed in background. It will be painted a lovely green with blue trim, since trying to match it with the house didn't really work out. The siding on the house is nice but as a paint color, it would have been a murky blueish-gray. Ick. So J said I could paint it as I like! She is both kind and brave. There is a ladder rack on the long side against the fence, and there will be a 2x2' window on the long side in the photo. J's brother has a place he likes to get them for cheap so he roughed in the hole and he'll just saw out the siding and put the window in next time he's here.

Three more days of CNA class and then the board exam is the 21st of this month. Yay!

Clarification

To clarify previous post, I have 46 points as of this evaluation. The other points from the CNA course and the third term of A&P will not count for this evaluation since they will not be completed by last Sunday.

Am now haunting mailbox despite how utterly unrealistic it is to expect any news this early.