It's Finally Over...

Well my freshman year at Xavier has finally come to an end. I finished the year with a 3.08 GPA. Pretty good for someone who works 12 hours a day, and has a family. Yesterday I came home to find that I had won the Scholars Award for my GPA. Pretty exciting stuff. That is the first thing that I have ever won in my entire life, and so I had to do a dance around the living room. I took some harder classes in my second term and still came out unscathed. I have figured out that Utopian literature and History are just not my thing. However, I did manage to get a B in Literature and Moral Imagination and a B- in History II. Now I am looking forward to my Sophomore year. I'll keep you all posted.

Final Exams Already???

Well I am gearing up for my final exams on Saturday and my pre-assignment for my new classes on Sunday. Eight weeks from now I will have finished my freshman year of college. Time has really flown by and I so love school. I could make a career out of being a student. There is just one problem with that. Lack of money. Everyone send me some great energy for my exams on Saturday. Not much going on here. Still working lots of hours and trying to keep up on my studies, is getting pretty hard. I did decide to take the summer off and take a break from some of the chaos that is my life. Well that is about it for me. I will try to blog more when I can. So sorry that there isn't more interesting stuff to report.

Saying goodbye once again to a good friend

On January 2, my wonderful husband decided it was time to tell me a painful truth. In my previous post I had explained why we had to give away my precious Trinity. A few days before Christmas she was hit and killed by a car. Jeff, not wanting to ruin my Christmas decided not to tell me. I asked him on Jan 1st to find out how Trinity was doing and he made the painful decision to tell me the truth. Just when I was starting to deal with her not being with me anymore, now comes the guilt and pain of her not being here forever. I am so torn in my feelings right now. I was so distressed over the thought that she thought that we just abandoned her, but at least now she is at peace and knows that what we did was in her best interest. I know that in death she has come home. There are signs of her everywhere, which does ease my breaking heart. I just can't keep but thinking that everything happens for a reason. I am a firm believer that when it is your time you know. Maybe her strange behavior was her way of getting away from us, she knew that her time here would not be long and wanted to spare us the painful sight of her death. Be at peace now Sissy, my beautiful Diva Dog and know that you always have a home here and you will always be loved and missed!!

Back to the books

Well I had my pre-assignment session on Sunday. This term I am taking US History I and Studies in Fiction. My course load this time is HORRIBLE!!! I just hope that I can keep up with it all. I have been working a lot of hours lately, so if you all wonder where I have been, well I am either at work or at school. This term will require a lot more trips to the campus library so I figure that I should find a nice bush and just move onto campus. Rest assured Aunt Pat if I am not blogging as much as you would like it is because by the time I have a minute to even look at this laptop it is because I have more work to do, which means even less time to blog. My goal this term is to bring my GPA from a 3.33 to a full 3.5. Wish me luck everyone, I have a feeling that I am going to need it.

Merry Yule/Merry Christmas Everyone

Well due to popular demand (actually it is just my one aunt), I have been told to update my blog. Not much has really been happening here. Working a lot, I had final exams, and getting ready for Christmas. First lets go to the disappointment that is my college career. I received my final grades, and my classes this term were very hard for me. I do not have the mind for philosophy at all. My professor Dr. Jensen asked me what I was thinking while I was reading Plato, Aristotle, and Kant. My response was that I wanted to jump into the books, hand them all a Bud Light and tell them to chill out. I did get a B as my final grade. The disappointing part. My GPA is 3.33. Not quite Dean's List. I was heartbreaking. Well next term, I hope. We did add a new family member to the household. Her name is Quinn (named after the QB of Notre Dame Brady Quinn), she is an adorable black lab puppy. It was beyond heartbreaking after Trinity left, and fate intervened. A lady at work just out of the clear blue asked me if I wanted a black lab puppy. The rest is history!! She is sleeping on me as I type.
Our Christmas morning festivities are already over. Jake got tons of stuff as usual. Dad got mostly Xavier stuff and Mom got a Trivial Pursuit 80's edition. Which by the way she skunked us in last night. My gift on the other hand was something totally unexpected. Everyone knows that I love old radios. Jeff found me a radio, CD player, and turn table (yes I said turn table). It looks like a vintage radio. I had seen one awhile back, but it was very expensive. Jeff was able to find one much cheaper. It has a great sound and we fired it up with one of my Frank Sinatra records. REAL RECORDS!!! Right now I am listening the The Beatles of course. It was by far the perfect gift for me. Well I hope that everyone has just as wonderful Christmas as I did. Now it is on to work. Everyone be safe and remember the true reason for the season!! Love you all!!

Saying Goodbye to a very good friend.....

For those of you who don't know what has been going on in my house for the past few weeks, my german shepherd Trinity (see very first post for pictures), once again attacked my Black Lab Merrick. This time my husband got in the middle and Trinity tore him up pretty bad. We made the painful decision to have her put down. Fate intervened and a the sister of a friend decided to take her. We made sure that she knew of Trinity's past behavior and asked her to sign a liability waiver. She agreed. She has a 15 acre horse farm in Corinth Kentucky. She has no children and several other dogs that were considered dangerous at one time. My husband and I took her to her new home today. This was the hardest thing I have ever done. Seeing that sweet face that we raised from 5 weeks old, just staring at me not understanding what was going on. Watching her whining as we were driving away will be a thought that haunts me for the rest of my life. Trinity wasn't just a dog to us, she is family. Everything in the house is a painful reminder of her. I hope and pray that she adjusts well and is happy. I miss her terribly, and things will never be the same without her. It never ceases to amaze me of how attached you get. For 3 years she was part of our family and in a blink of an eye she is gone. There is a void that is left that I don't think will ever be filled. Who will I play frisbee with? Who will sleep on my legs? Who will protect my family? I love you Trinity and time or distance will never change that. You will always be with us in memory and spirit. I wish for you a long, happy, and satisfying life, and some day I hope you will understand that we did what we thought was best.

A Piercing Day!!

Well today I decided to get my ears pierced. I had them pierced in the past and the last time I had earrings in was when my best friend shoved them into my ears at my first wedding, more than 10 years ago. Anyway allow me to give you a bit of background here. I am deathly afraid of needles and the idea of piercing anything on my body reminds me of needles. I decided long ago that I was going to do everything in my power to overcome this fear. Now how to achieve this goal? I can't just go around with a needle pricking myself, and I know that my Doctor, (who by the way when he has to send me to the lab for blood work, just walks in the room with the dracula nurse, since the lab is upstairs from the office, to assure that I do not escape), won't just stick me for the heck of it because he fears for his life. So I decided that piercing my ears is the first step. I decided to do this at age 30, I am now 33. Only 3 years not bad!! It wasn't too bad, but man I was scared to death!! There was a lady in line after me who had her 3 month old daughter there to have her ears pierced. I felt very much the fool, that is until the reality set in that this woman was piercing the ears of a 3 month old, then I just got mad. Either way I got through it and lived to post about it on my blog.

Update on Merrick

Merrick is doing much better. She no longer looks that a Halloween experiment. She had her tubes removed from her back and the holes are healing up nicely. She is getting a bit lonely. We still have to keep her separated from the other dogs when we are not home, so she gets the luxury of staying upstairs during the day, while the other two have to stay downstairs. We don't want the other dogs licking her wounds. Thanks so everyone for the healing energy it worked!!