Hard Times

Yes, last week was a very rough week and I thought I should elaborate for the curious.

Now, I'm working on getting my RN through a tutorial school called Ivy Hall Academy of Nursing. I'm getting my RN from Excelsior College and so far it's been nothing but the biggest money-pit my parents ever helped me out with. Ivy Hall has had issues with money and finding cheaper and cheaper places to teach to accomodate what *I* think is a director with a hole in his pocket (the worst were the 'taped' lectures with a crappy video camera where the sound quality was just wretched and the picture quality prevented us from even seeing the notes on the board). Money that wasn't his must have burned that hole. Anyways, I wasn't informed when Ivy Hall went down and all the prepaid tuition (which included pay-as-you-go exam expenses) went with it. I only found that out on the Tuesday that I went to the S'n'B SLC because, surprise!, I never got the reimbursements for the exams I paid for that I turned in at the end of NOVEMBER and I was trying to figure out when I might get them. It was very hard, I was very upset at the dishonesty of it all, felt quite betrayed, but my mom is going to work on a lawsuit and we'll try to get *some* of the money back.

And so I persevere. That Thursday I attempted to make it to the exam I had scheduled. And it looked like Life had it out for me because it was uncanny the amount of things that tried to stop me from going. For starters, the huge snowstorm that hit that Wednesday night. Snow everywhere and my little Honda Civic just couldn't get over it (she's a bit of a wuss). It took an hour of digging, trying to rock the car out, pushing, pulling, but finally a very friendly neighbor came by to pull me out. The next obstacle were slick roads where I ended up going a very cautious 20 mph while everyone else just flew past me. And then there was the train that was eternally long and infernally slow. But once I got to the testing office, I felt confident about the exam.

The exam was one of those online, multiple choice exams and I'm good at the MC and the computers. I went over those answers thrice, felt good about 89% of them (I counted). Imagine my despair when the computer processed my grade and gave me...a D. Fail. Another $215 down the hole. I could have made two beautiful sweaters, maybe three, with that money! I felt devastated. I called my mom in tears, telling her I didn't think I could do this anymore. It just felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall. Mom tried to talk me into a calmer, more optimistic state, but I just felt like life had kicked me in the balls once again.

So I got home and did what I could to stop feeling SO upset. A hot bath, some Little Women and just taking the day 'off' helped. And then I plunged into my textbooks. 3 hours a day every day is the rule now. Of course, three hours of textbook reading constitutes only about a chapter. It's like one of those terrible dreams where a great monster is chasing you and you're running as fast as you can, but it's just harder and harder and you're not going very fast at all.

So, come Saturday, I take my friend (who was in a lot of pain from personal body issues but willing to still brave a drive with some Lortab) to the Unravelled Sheep to do a little consolation stash enhancing. It was amusing to see some Stashalongers there and I thought it was fun to mention them in the blog. Let me just say, it's not like it's a terrible sin to bend a promise to yourself when it comes to yarn. You're not hurting anyone, really, not even yourself, though perhaps your pocket book and stash space take a blow. And I can understand it, I love yarn too and I applaud the brave men and women who are trying to break themselves from the addiction. I know I didn't have the bravery to try it, so I didn't join.

But I guess my humor didn't come so clearly in that post because the email I got chastising me for bringing it up was a painful blow when I already felt so bruised and sensitive. I'm sure there was no intention of hurting, just a chastisement for *almost* pointing fingers. I just didn't take it well. And so I'm reconsidering a few things.

Anyways, I have been doing better (really!). I've started up a third pair of socks for 2006 using a bit of my own stash. It's yarn that I got in a swap and I'm not sure what it is, but the colors remind me of spring. There's the brown of mud, the pale green to dark green of plant life breaking through the mud and a lot of pink, which reminds me of the one thing I look for every spring and always made me smile when I saw it when I lived in Kansas, which is the crocuses. I'm calling these my "Welcome Spring!" socks.

As for this past week, it's been a bit rough, too, but that was more my attitude and you notice I deleted the Guilt rant because it was just a bit too "Hey look at me being a rebel!" which is rather disgusting. Then again, here I go again with the "Look at me, life is hard!". You'll have to excuse me, I'm terribly self-centered and vain. I've reorganized the blog a bit for 2006 and I'm considering moving it, though I'm not sure where to yet. I want something with 'tags' though so people can search my entries by rants/WIPs/FOs/etc. And I want free because, well, I don't want to pay for yarn AND a blog. You know how that goes, I'm sure.

If you read all this, thank you, I just had to get it out.