Amusing Anecdote

So I treat a kid with an unusually loud voice. This kid can project big time. This talent unfortunately for him is not useful until drama or debate team in junior high. He is currently in preschool. This occurred during circle time(you know you remember it :)

Preschooler C: I NEED TO SAY SOMETHING AND IT IS SO IMPORTANT!

Me: C, you need to be quiet right now your teacher is talking.

Preschooler C: But Teacher, This Is So Important ...

Me: C! I said you need to be quiet!

Preschooler C: (whispering) but teacher that flower in yellow and ...

Me: C, close your mouth.

Preschooler C: ...


"Be quiet" a phrase that could mean stop talking or lower your volume. Got to love preschool :)

First Week

So I finished my first week at my new job last week. It was CRAZY!!!! The craziness actually started before my first day so I’ll explain some of the background stuff first.

Background

After I got hired I had to wait 30 days to start because they had to give notice to all the contracted Speech Language Pathology Assistants (SLPAs) because they wanted to hire SLPAs directly. During my interview I was asked if I spoke Spanish, which I do … kinda. Well I went in about 2 weeks after getting hired to see if I had enough Spanish to do preschool screenings, which we all decided I do. I will mostly be asking “Que es esto?” and recording what they say so I can handle that. Well after this screening thing the lady that hired me, Lori, told me I would be at two schools with Vicki and I should go do some training 2 weeks before I started. So I went to the school Vicki was at for the morning and it was great. Well during lunch we got a call from Lori saying that since I spoke Spanish they needed me at Emerson to do preschool there. So I left since I wouldn’t be at that school anymore. Not too big a deal. Lori told me to report to Emerson at 9:00am on Oct 11th and not much more than that. Then Lori went on vacation for 3 weeks. The district HR people emailed me that I needed to come to the district office to get some paper work done on my first day. So on to the first day.

First Day

I get to the district office at 7:50am because I hate to be late to things to I tend to leave way early. I get there, do my paper work stuff in like 15 min. Well now I have about 45 min to kill since Lori told me to report at 9:00am. Did I mention that I didn’t know who I was supposed to be with this day since she just told me I would be working with Rebecca and Deb? Cause I didn’t. Well after 15 min I decide to go over there and just be really early. I get there introduce myself as Elena the new SLPA and ask the office staff where Deb is. This is what they respond with “Deb isn’t here on Mondays.” I’m starting to freak out. Me: “Well is Rebecca here?” Office staff: “She already left.” At this point I am fully freaking out. Me in my head: ”They apparently didn’t know I was coming. WHAT AM I GOING TO DO NOW?!??!?” The office staff: “I think Bianca is still here. HEY BIANCA!” Bianca: “Oh hi, Rebecca was waiting for you but had to leave. I’ll draw you a map and you can meet her at the school” (walks me into the speech office) Ok well at least SOMEONE knows who I am and that I was coming. I’m calming down to just moderately freaked out. Ends up that Lori told me the wrong time, which wouldn’t have been a big deal to me if someone had just told me in the beginning that Rebecca was expecting me and to meet her here. So I got to the school, played with the kids and had a good time. I ate lunch. Then Rebecca showed me a room, gave me a schedule and a bunch of pictures to use and I did therapy for groups of kids for the rest of the day. By myself. On my first day. With kids I knew nothing about. Why yes that was an extremely stressful situation for me, thanks for asking.

The rest of the week

Went by without any major stressors. I absolutely love my supervisor Deb, who has been doing this for 30 years and still loves every minute of it. I had a super great time with all the preschoolers. They are so fun and cute. There is even a little Downs girl that is my new best friend, she is non verbal and I got her to say 3 words to me! Very exciting. I even got some really nice complements by the teachers I work with, which is always a good thing :)

All I can say is that I haven’t looked forward to the weekend that much in a long time!

(So I have been waiting to post this because I have a “Elena’s first day of school” picture but it won’t download so no picture)

Clean!

I like to clean. I savor being in a freshly cleaned apartment. Sometimes I clean because I’m bored, other times because something is actually dirty, and another reason even more important reason. That reason? I am especially maladroit (don’t know what it means? Look it up! or wait till the end of this post). I drop things ALL THE TIME. So in order to salvage whatever I dropped, spilled or slashed I keep the house really clean. It’s really just silly to see an adult, a semi athletic one at that, spill all over the kitchen floor, bathroom floor and pretty much every other surface in my small apartment.

There was the salsa disaster of ’09 when I attempted to shake the costco size bottle of salsa by turning upside down and not holding the lid securely enough. Yes what you are envisioning is exactly correct. I spilled salsa all down my pants and the floor ( thought I had a picture because I remember Aaron laughing really hard and getting the camera but I can’t find it). Or the time when I was cleaning the bathroom floor and dumped all the water all over. Granted this one is not as bad since I was washing the floor already. Or tonight when putting the left over spaghetti sauce in a bowl I slop it all over the counter. And this is not a few speckles of red, it’s an entire serving of sauce. On my counter. Fortunately it didn’t make it to the floor so I could scoop it into the back into bowl. See what I mean? If my counter was dirty I couldn’t do that and there goes my lunch. Who knew that cleaning all the time means I get to eat lunch?

Dictionary.com says that this is the definition of maladroit: acking in adroitness; unskillful; awkward; bungling

I especially love bungling :D

Amateur Artist

I am an amateur artist. Not a particularly good amateur at that, but I like to try. It all started when my dad got a sample set of water color paints, the kind preschoolers use including the shedding brush. My mother had grown some beautiful flowers, I think they were sweet pea blossoms, and I felt the unusual desire to paint. The picture below is my first attempt at painting since elementary school.

Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. Fortunately, the subsequent attempts have not been photographed since they are not as good as this one. After the startling discovery that I actually enjoyed painting, (I am most definitely not the artistic child in the family) I went out and bought some real art supplies not preschool quality. It’s fun even though I’m not that good. Well I found out from very artsy-fartsy people that watercolor is one of the hardest mediums to work with so I was looking for something else to try. Pastels kit, including pastels, workbook and technique book, on sale at Borders? Why yes I think I will buy that. I’ve been having more fun with pastels because it is WAAAAAAAAY easier to correct mistakes with pastels than watercolor. Pictures you ask? Alright here is today’s project. I’m fairly happy with the way it turned out, since it is very close to what I envisioned.

And here is where I paint … in the middle of the living room :D

Well that is all for this post. Enjoy the Art!

Keep on keeping on

Well I don’t really have a lot to blog about but since I love to read other people’s blogs I figured I should blog more. I was going to try to write about my brother but I can’t today so I’m not going to. Ok there is some exciting news, I have a job interview! I’m very excited. It’s as a SLPA in Phoenix elementary school district so it’s pretty close. Any encouraging thoughts/prayers are welcome this Thursday ath3:00pm

Other less exciting but still kinda cool is that fact that I conquered the GRE (test to get into grad school for those of you who don’t know). Much studying and stress was involved but overall I’m happy with my scores. If you or someone you love has recently taken it you should comment with their scores so I can see how I did compared to real people. I’m not going to post my scores here because really they don’t mean much to anyone who isn’t a grad school registration person.

Aaron started school yesterday which is exciting to me but less so to him. He’s taking 15 credit hours: 4 upper division computer classes (I haven’t the foggy-ist what they are called even though he has told me multiple times) and religion 100 (internet class that looks pretty easy). Aaron cut his hours at work down to 25 a week so that’s great that he doesn’t have to try to work full time and go to school full time. He is still loving his job and I’m loving that he’s home all the time.

Ah, I forgot something every exciting! I gained some weight! Now, I know that most of you are probably slightly disgusted with that statement made with enthusiasm but I’ve been trying for YEARS to gain weight. At 5 feet 9 inches and 125lbs, I was a little too skinny for my taste and frankly my health. I’ve had some yucky health issues over the years and ! part of it was not having enough fat reserves but it’s hard to build fat when you use all of the calories you eat everyday. It was a terrible cycle. But after approximately 4 years I finally have gained enough weight that my body is starting to be happier. I now weigh about 140 lbs! Woohoo!!!

Lena Can Cook!

The title of this post is a throw back to the days when I would watch cooking shows with my mom on saturdays while we cleaned the house. There was a show called “Yan Can Cook!” He was a funny little asain man. Anyways, since I’ve been finding housewifery unfulfilling I’ve been trying new hobbies such as decorating. Well decorating costs money so I was looking for a cheaper alternative (and something that I’m better at) and Aaron suggested cooking. I do like to cook, really I just like to bake desserts but it’s time to broaden my skill set. During my “Only Girls Colorado Trip” we played Iron Chef and one team made lettuce wraps, really, REALLY delicious lettuce wraps. Thus with my new inspiration to try cooking I decided to go Asian. I looked up recipes so I could make sure to have all the ingredients and plan accordingly. Well of course I find out that cooking is expensive too! At least till you have a strong base of ingredients. Now I have all the asian ingredients I could ever need. Last night’s adventure was curry and veggies with rice. Pretty tasty even though my apartment still smells a little like curry (it cured the weird apartment smell though, overpowered is probably the better verb, so I’m not too upset). This morning’s adventure was homemade biscuits! Here are some pictures:

They were actually very delicious, I am excited that they turned out! It’s good to know that Lena Can Cook!

Jobless

No Aaron has not lost his job, thankfully, but alas I am still jobless. People say that being unemployed is a full time job and it is! I send out my resume to at least 3 places a day. Right after graduation I had some very promising interviews but didn’t get either job. That was in May. It’s now August. So I decided to widen my job search area. No longer am I looking solely for a job as a Speech Pathology Assistant now I’m hunting for any job working with special needs children. Preschools, daycares, respite care. Nothing so far. Now that those avenues are also looking bleak I’m searching for anything. Do you know what I do since I have A LOT of free time? I clean our house, I do the laundry and I’ve started decorating our apartment. I’m not the best decorator, in fact I’d go far enough to say that I’m almost a bad decorator but with the help of sisters and sisters in law it’s happening. Nothing is done yet so there are no pictures but when it’s done I’ll post lots. Ok blogging world it’s now up to you to help me find a job. Networking is key so anyone out there that knows of a job in Tempe, Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert or Phoenix let me know. Thanks everyone!

P.S. I’m scheduled to take the GRE (test to get into grad school) in two weeks and I just realized that blogging is a great way to practice writing. Woohoo!

Graduation and new jobs (at least hopefully)

I found this draft from a few months ago so I figured that I would post it.

So I graduate one week from tomorrow and I am VERY excited! Aaron and I are also moving to a much nicer apartment here in Tempe. I can’t really decided which makes me more happy. Walk in closet or no more school? Hmm tough decision. I’ll tell you next week. There is actually even more exciting news. Aaron started his new job consulting for Kodak Gallery. He gets to work from home, which was a great excuse for him to buy another computer

. Not just any computer, a 21 inch Mac computer. It cost a pretty penny but fortunately for us we have been very blessed financially. I, on the other hand, am still looking for a job. I got my license for a

Speech Language Pathology Assistant but since it’s a relatively new certification not many companies even have that position. So I’m a little stuck but I’ll figure something out. Bettijo Hirschi created a very beautiful card to send out kind of like a christmas card/graduation announcement combo deal.

Yay for Europe!

So it’s been a few months since we got home but as always I have been distracted from blogging by life. Europe was so fun. It so cool to be there in the winter with all the snow; I say all the snow but there was at max a few inches. And even though there wasn’t much snow it was still my first cold weather experience. I know that is hard for most of you to believe but that is the longest I have ever spent in a cold place. It was a great adventure to me even though Aaron constantly teased me about my excitement. I would exclaim silly things all the time, such as “It’s like the Chronicles of Narnia!” or “Aaron, it’s snowing!!!!” We got to see so many awesome sites. It’s fun to watch TV and say “We’ve been there” (followed by knuckles). I don’t have the space or attention span to upload all the pictures to the blog but you can go topicasaweb.com/boushley to check them out. The really pretty or artistic ones Aaron took … I’m almost jealous. Oh ok I am jealous but at least someone in our family is. Maybe another time I will write my favorite memories but now my mind is occupied by other,less happy remeberings. I will try to explain those another time as well.