My Final Class Posting. :)

        To be perfectly frank when the semester began and I read the requirement to write two blog posts a week for this class, I was to put it mildly an unhappy camper. But I will openly admit that as the semester has gone on I have enjoyed having this blog as an outlet to vent, to solicit opinions and just to share information that I’ve found interesting in other forums. I also saw this blog going in as a major eater of my time, which any of you who have read my posts this semester know is extremely limited. Once again I was surprised; to be honest most weeks it took me longer to pick a topic and find articles for my linked blog post than it did to write both of my posts. My linked one tended to just flow and be five hundred words before I knew it and my personal one tended to be well above that before I realized it, not only the weeks I ranted, but also the weeks I talked about thing I love, for example camp.

        I’ll do my best to kind of give some closure on some of my topics I’ve talked about in my personal posts this semester. To begin: it looks like I’ll end this semester with 3-A’s and 1-C, I struggled very hard with Pathophysiology (maybe wasn’t the best plan to take it online) and have managed to salvage what was a less than spectacular grade to one that while it doesn’t make me happy, at least keeps me on track with the nursing program, which is the larger goal in life. Secondly: I’m moving to Carl Junction this summer. Officially I’ll be moving the first part of August, but due to my being enrolled in a traditional Government class this summer I’ll be spending the majority of June and July in the area. My daughter is working to find a part time job and is coming down too, plus I’ve gotten my son enrolled in a summer soccer league, so yes, he’s coming for the summer too. Guess it’ll be quiet up at our old place this summer. I’m trying to convince my soon to be ex-husband to start getting it ready to go on the market, or start working on financing to ‘buy’ it from me as I have no desire to keep it after we’re divorced, I’m starting a new life and that house has no part of it. Third: as I mentioned with my grades I’m on track for the RN-BSN program in the fall. I’m excited and am going to spend part of the time between the spring and summer sessions getting all of my paperwork in order for it. Lastly: As I’ve stated before both publicly and privately, this semester has brought a lot of changes to my world. It has in no way been an easy one, but nothing worth doing tends to be as I have noticed many times in my life so far. I look forward to where this journey is taking me, I know it’s nowhere near over and look forward to seeing where I go. I wish all of you the best and hope your dreams come true as I believe mine someday will. No they’re not the dreams I had at the beginning of the year, but I think they’re pretty amazing ones. J Signing off for the last time (for class at least) Night Owl aka. Missy

Holy Moly... How Much School Stuff Can One Week Hold???

          Okay, random thoughts that I’m sure many college students are having, but what’s up with this week???? It’s like every class is seeing how much work can be jammed into one week without making all of us quit; which would seem counterproductive this late in the semester.

          For example, let me share what all I found on my calendar for this week when I sat down with it a couple of days ago. As you all know for English we have paper #4 which is the longest one, to finish the rough draft, dredge through our tired brains to workshop three papers written by classmates and then revise ours and turn them in. On top of that we have our two blog posts & comments to write. As much as I hate to admit it, I kind of enjoy writing my blog posts and might, maybe miss it when class is over. It remains to be seen if I’ll miss it enough to continue, only time will tell. For my Economics class there are two chapters due by Friday (normally we only have 1 a week) plus a test that has to be taken no later than next Monday. For Pathophysiology there is a three chapter unit due Wednesday, plus our fourth lecture test by Saturday and the second lab test is early next week. And then my final class, Lifetime Wellness, the instructor opened up the assignments for the rest of the semester… yes, we have until the 9^th to finish them, but we have four weeks of assignments that were made available late last week. Sigh… I’ll get them done, I have most of a plan in place to make it happen, I’m just feeling a bit overloaded with all of this, plus work, plus family life weighing down on me currently.

          As any of you that have read my blog know this has been a really bad semester in my personal life. That hasn’t changed at all, in fact things tend to get worse as time goes on. I just need to make it a bit longer and will be making changes that will make my personal life better in the end. It’s still going to be rough for quite some time, but it’s going to start taking tiny steps toward getting better. I know it.

          Saturday night, a night that actually factored into my plan to get homework done, get some sleep and be able to function at work later this week found me hanging out with a bunch of people at my house. Yes, I will admit it was relaxing in a way, I just wish it hadn’t all been people I formerly considered my friends, but have found over the past year I’m not able to trust, so therefore feel on edge and guarded around them. I always enjoy sitting near a fire, so that part at least was pleasant, and since my husband planned it all & decided not to tell anyone what to bring beyond what they wanted to drink I got to have a few grins at how much he wound up spending at the grocery store to fund this evening. I know from being the one that typically plans this kind of thing that when you’re talking about seven adults and eight kids (mostly teenagers) that the only way to survive is to delegate food out to all the families. Learning experience for him, especially since he likes to buy name brand foods. Darn. J I bet he learned his lesson for next time.

          Signing off for tonight. Catch you all next week!

Creative Punishments

            Today’s topic is brought to you courtesy of me feeling the need to stay with a theme in my writing. I wrote paper #4 on school start times for teenagers and in staying with the teenager theme of the night I ran across a news article on creative punishments for teenagers and ran with it.

            We’re all familiar with the “standard” punishments, ie. extra chores, loss of privileges, so on and so forth; but what about when those things get you nowhere but frustrated. I don’t know how many times between my kids and the many other teenagers I’ve interacted with over time I’ve seen eyes rolled, the “I don’t care” line, or the “I know she won’t actually enforce this” act.  I’ve found two big schools of thought on the internet as I’ve looked tonight, both seem reasonable in their own right.

            One involves being constructive instead of yelling, lecturing or criticizing. I can see where this might be effective, although the negative versions can be temporarily stress relieving, they do sometimes lead to feelings of guilt and punishments that are too steep or radical and likely to be overturned rapidly. This article suggests using the lines, “we’ve got a problem here; let’s find asolution” and “you will figure it out and I will help you.” Now I can say as Mom to two teenagers that the first time you use these lines you’ll be met with shock, but I can see the potential benefit for using this method. The article goes on to suggest encouragement of open dialogue in a calm and non-judgmental environment. It fosters learning for both you and your teen. This article also suggests that rather than grounding your teen from something, ground them to do a chore with you. For example pulling weeds, apparently this rather than fostering resentment will put things in perspective for both of you. And also recommends keeping incidents in perspective overall, a minor mishap does not a major catastrophe make. These are all solid and decent tips in my book.

            Now onto the article that grabbed my interest. Apparently Quandria Bryant a North Carolina ninth-grader had been making choices that made her a real life “mean girl” that felt life was all about her, which included her being suspended for being disrespectful to her teachers. So her father came up with a creative punishment that involved her being embarrassed but unharmed, he gave her a sign to carry as she walked up and down a busy Highway near her school. On one side it read “I have a bad attitude I disrespect people who try to help me” and on the other it said “I do what I want, when I want, how I want it.” She apparently declined to talk to the reported but has reportedly decided to change her ways. Her dad isn’t the first parent to go this route. I also foundTrenton’s story, at 15 Trenton’s grades were well below what his parents expected and knew he was capable of, so after trying traditional punishments and being met with a brick wall as well as making sure there weren’t any physical or mental problems causing his refusal to bring up his grades Trenton’s parents had him stand on a street corner for two hours holding a sign that said he was failing algebra and English, on the other side it said “my future = shaky.” His parents stated that they wanted an out of the box punishment to grab his attention, and failing that it would be practice for the “will work for food” sign he’d be holding in a few years.

            Interesting reading on net tonight for sure, also food for thought next time I need a creative punishment for one of my teenagers. J

Finbrooke... :)

          Last week I wrote a post on Leader’s Weekend. I have realized that I really need a post on the place I grew up that led me to spend as much time volunteering and working with the Girl Scouts as an organization, and truly shaped a lot of who I am today, and who I will be in the future. This place is Camp Finbrooke (currently known as Finbrooke Program Center). I started spending time at Finbrooke back in 1983 (sorry for showing my age here) it all started with day trips to camp and rapidly progressed to overnight trips and then to spending entire weeks out there during the summer at the Resident Camp programs. Side note: when you’re 8 years old, the staff at camp seems so grown up & mature… now as an adult that has worked out there off & on for more years than I can count, I realize that when you’re that little the 18-23 year old crowd does seem old and it does take a special breed of young woman to take on that role as role model and caretaker for young girls.

          I was never satisfied with one week at camp either, I wanted to be out there anytime the gates were open for kids my age, I would literally spend Fall, Winter and Spring finding ways to make and save money to pay for camp as well as peddling cookies like no one’s business to be able to use my “cookie credit” to pay for more time at camp. I was focused. I was even willing to give up time with my horses I had to go to camp for as long as possible every summer. I loved spending time out there. Eating in the old rustic lodge (it burned in 1993, and was replaced with a modern one), putting mail in the mailbox, swimming in the pool and the river, changing in the shower house that had no roof (replaced with a fancy new one since then) hiking everywhere, crafts, singing, cooking over a campfire, canoeing, all of the fun, plus getting to be dirty all summer long too J This is how I grew up, no air conditioning in the summer, staying up late, singing, hanging out with tons of other girls and giggling late into the night. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Oh and the joy when I was finally old enough to sign up for the Counselor In Training (CIT) program, that meant I was almost old enough to do the ultimate, work at camp!!! So exciting, never realized how exhausting it was to be a camp counselor, or how much work it was, but the one summer I did it then I LOVED it.

Time and things happened and I spent a few years away from camp. My daughter was about to start school so I went to the office and signed up to be a leader for a Daisy troop in our town. My first training as an adult was out at Finbrooke, it was like I’d never left (to a point) it still felt like home. The same camp ranger was working there, the trainer for my class was actually an adult I’d played mud volleyball with at camp as a kid. It was home. As time went on I managed to spend parts of my summers at camp (which gave my daughter more weeks to be at camp too, she was not unhappy about that at all) and then landed a school nurse job. That was the ultimate, it gave me the chance to apply to be the Camp Nurse and spend the entire summer out there, which I did for more than a few years. Way too cool, not much sleep, but so much fun, almost can’t believe I’m moving on, but the time has come to embrace my new opportunities and put my summers of camp behind me. J/L

I've added a few pictures, believe me choosing just these was a major challenge. At last check I have over 1,000 camp pictures available to me, not to mention the many I can get off of other counselor's Facebook pages :)

 Above is Jake's House, the original structure on camp, we can't use the house anymore, but it is currently still standing and one of my favorite places to visit at camp.

 A view of the Finley River, we have access at two points to it for canoeing, kayaking and swimming.

 The Spring House, down by Jake's House, nice cool place to visit in the heat of the summer.

 This is a platform tent, sorry it's not a great picture for this purpose, I took it for a project at camp last year, The oldest kids get the chance to sleep in these, when I was a kid we pretty much all slept in them... now we have permatents, I added a picture of one of those too.

This is the 40 foot side of our climbing tower, it was added a few years ago & is pretty fun. That's me climbing it at Leader's Weekend last year.

 The old lodge that burned in 1993, the ranger still has the hand carved Dogwood Lodge sign and is looking for the appropriate place for it to live and be enjoyed.

 Our new more modern lodge built up on the hill. It's nice, but I miss the old one some days, lots of memories in that old building.

 The bell in the middle of main camp. Lots of memories with it too.

A permatent (the structure most kids sleep in at camp currently)

Sad Dog Stories... and Tips to Not Have This be Your Dog

This week’s subject is brought to you by one of my friends via Facebook. J I know, can’t even avoid homework anymore, no matter how hard I try, sigh. All joking aside, one of my friends posted an article about protecting your dog from lawenforcement. Makes you kind of shake your head, doesn’t it? You’d think the officers are there to protect things, not to need to be protected from, right? And to be honest that was the original take I had on this post, but then I started reading more and realized this was a well written article with some good points. The very actions that come naturally to your very well-mannered and sweet dog can very easily be seen as a threat to law enforcement officials, sometimes with deadly consequences.

         

          For example just last weekMichael Paxton was playing Frisbee in his backyard in Austin, Texas with his Australian cattle dog, Cisco when a domestic disturbance call was made down the street. An officer responded to the wrong house and when Paxton walked around his house to get something from his truck he was approached by the officer with his gun drawn and told to put his hands up. Cisco came to the area and like any dog would likely do in the presence of a stranger they perceived to be threatening their person Cisco began to bark. Reportedly despite Paxton assuring the officer that Cisco was not dangerous the officer supposedly took aim and fired, killing Cisco. Sadly even though the officer then realized he was at the wrong house, there’s no way to regain Cisco’s life.

            Another story I found told the story of a dog who ran out into his own back yard and wound up dead. The police were tracking a suspect through residential back yards in Kalamazoo, MI and a resident, not knowing the police were in their backyard, opened the door to let their dog out, the dog, reacting as dogs tend to do, charged and barked to protect their home, a totally normal action, and was shot and killed.

            Then I found the story of Rocco a Doberman who was peacefully in his own backyard in Louisville, KY when police entered the backyard during a foot chase. Rocco, upset as any dog would be in that situation began barking and jumping on the intruders into his space. For reacting as any typical dog would do in that situation, Rocco like the two dogs I’ve mentioned before was shot and killed. Even more tragic, he didn’t die immediately, he crawled into his dog house crying in pain and died there.

            No, I’m not trying to be depressing with this post, I felt the need to show these three stories from different parts of the country that are all dogs reacting as I know my dogs would and wound up being shot by officers that felt threatened by them. Which makes it hard to blame them, since adrenaline is high, in those situations, I just wonder if things couldn’t have been different for at least one of these dogs. The best advice I’ve found is if you know you will be dealing with law enforcement is to make sure your dog is restrained before the officers arrive. Now in the articles I found two of these owners thought their dogs were safe in their own back yard. The article also recommends to alert the officers using your voice “Let me put up my dog, I am putting up my dog!” This way they don’t misconstrue your actions, and hopefully you can prevent a tragedy. It also recommends if you see officers in your neighborhood to bring your dogs inside to help prevent problems and to put signs on your fence to alert officers that dogs are present, so they are aware if they must enter your yard without warning. Hopefully none of us will ever face this tragic situation. 

Leader's Weekend

                This past weekend I went to a Leadership Retreat at Finbrooke Program Center, a property out near Rogersville owned by Girl Scouts of the Missouri Heartland, our local Girl Scout Council. I’ve been attending this event since 2000 and been on the planning committee for it since the 2001 event. Every year this event has a different theme which is suggested by the participants and fleshed out by the committee. Since 2012 is the 100^th anniversary of Girl Scouting the theme this year was 100 years and shining. Some of the workshops/classes at the event relate to the theme and others are on leadership, outdoors and others on crafts. It’s a pretty busy weekend filled with learning, food, hanging out with other leaders and enjoying camp without the kids being around. It really is a pretty fun weekend overall, although I swear I’m more tired after it than I am going into it sometimes with everything that has to run smoothly to make it happen for the participants. For the past few years I’ve been a Unit Leader, which is someone with camp experience that is responsible for taking care of the participants in one unit, answering their questions and keeping it running smoothly as well as making sure it is properly cleaned and closed down at the end of the weekend. This is a pretty stressful job and with everything crazy in my life I decided to not take that on this year and join a group known as the Mafia. This is a group of long time scouts and Leader’s Weekend participants that are the ones you call if you need something dealt with that’s not serious enough for the ranger to be called, or the ones he calls when he is needed in too many areas at once. Everyone in this group has more than 15 years of experience camping at Finbrooke, I personally have 20 and am one of the younger/least experienced members of the group.  We stay in a separate camping unit and are a generally pretty relaxed group. We are also responsible for setting up and running the night hike, which is a hike at 10 PM on Saturday that is typically done with minimal lighting. There are always a few interesting things set up on the trails, such as glowsticks and reflective disks and such, which make for some fun, we even typically have a few helpers in the woods making Naga noises (Nagas are their own blog post, I’ll try to fit them in before the end of the year). The hike ends in one of the camp units where we sit around a campfire and tell legends and stories about camp as well as answer any questions anyone has about camp or camping experiences we have had. It really is a fun time and I’ve helped with it for years, as I started helping set up some of the sights and such back when I was a teenager.

                I grew up out at camp, I’m on my third camp ranger and can’t believe that I’m actually not working out there this summer. I’ve been the resident camp nurse and it hit me really hard on Saturday that I won’t be living there this year. Well that’s really all I have to say about this for now, I might come back in and add some camp/LW pictures in the future, or I might write a post next week about Finbrooke in general. We shall see J

Sometimes Rules Should be Broken

So, I had decided that I was going to go online, find some articles about knitting, my favorite hobby/way to de-stress & fill your brains with knitting thoughts. But when I got on yahoo.com tonight I saw a series of articles that changed my mind entirely.

What were these captivating articles on, you ask? Some celebrity happening or mishap, some religious blunder or so called miracle, or cute goo-goo baby stuff? While I saw all kinds of articles along these lines and others the ones that caught my eye were regarding a 17 year old boy in Ohio who in helping to care for his Mom who is battling breast cancer missed more days than his school allows and now will notbe allowed to walk at his graduation. His name is Austin Fisher and he is his mom’s only family. She has been battling breast cancer for the past six years and her diagnosis was upgraded (for lack of better terminology) to stage four which is considered terminal last year. As there is no one else in their household Austin took on working two jobs when she became too sick to work as well as taking time away from school to take her to and from cancer treatments as well as staying home to take care of her when she’s been too sick to get out of bed. All of these sacrifices on his part, made of love have resulted in him missing 16 days of school this year. According to the policies of his district if you miss more than 14 unexcused days of school your senior year. You would think that the school could look at each student’s situation and make exceptions to guidelines when appropriate, but Austin learned in a meeting with his principal that “guidelines are guidelines that won’t be changed, and he can’t walk”.

The other kids at Austin’s school have formed a movement which include a ‘Let Fish Walk’ Facebook page that has over twenty four thousand members and a petition to the board of education on change.org. As of tonight (Monday) there are over eighty-one thousand signatures on the petition.  A fellow senior of Austin’s Damon Anderson was quoted as saying “Everyone backs each other up her in Carrollton. When stuff happens we all know how to handle and help each other out and do what we gotta do to make things right. I love hearing that from a teenager, that just shows the beauty of small supportive towns.

Reportedly Teresa’s (Austin’s mom) cancer is currently in remission, but she knows it will return and one of her big goals in life is to see him graduate. Austin and the rest of the town are trying to help fulfill that goal of hers as her time to meet her life’s goals are likely limited and she won’t be able to see many of the milestones such as college graduation, marriage or her grandchildren that most of us expect to see in our children’s lives.  A longtime family friend Connie Rose Trushel is quoted as saying “He has been a rock for his mom and I truly believe that if he hadn’t been there for her my friend wouldn’t be here today.”

ere’s hI’m hoping the people of this town can make a difference. I know I signed the petition and am going to follow this article and keep my fingers crossed that he is allowed to walk. 

My Week, Busier Than I Realized...

     This week in my world is an interesting week. It’s not too horribly busy by my way of thinking, but has its moments for sure I guess. I’ve already got all of my actual working out of the way for the week, since I worked Sunday, Monday & Tuesday nights, now I just have homework, helicopter training Thursday night and RN-BSN orientation at Southern on Friday. Then it’ll be the weekend, this weekend I’m going out to Finbrooke Program Center a Girl Scout camp over near Rogersville, MO where I’ve spent tons of my life so far. This weekend is one that happens out there once every year, called Leader’s Weekend where adult Girl Scouts all get together to take classes, learn from each other, network and just enjoy camp without the responsibility of our troops being out there with us. I’ve been on the planning committee for this event for years and in the past have really enjoyed it. Like all things in life Girl Scouts is changing and with it our event that has been volunteer driven and run for years is changing too. I’m thinking that due to some of the changes causing it to not be the event I remembered it and it not being as ‘fun’ as it used to be that this is my last year on the committee and maybe even my last year participating. I used to teach 2 or 3 classes plus take on tons of responsibilities with the event, I ran myself ragged. In the past couple of years I’ve cut back on all of it, in fact this year I’m not teaching at all and have really cut out a bunch of the jobs I used to do too. I know that everything has to change, I think it just bugs me that everything in my life is changing and I can’t process one change before the next one occurs. I’m working to deal with all of this and hope that this weekend is fun and relaxing. I’m hoping to go on a hike to some of the less known parts of camp to kind of say my good-byes to camp. This will also be my first year in many not being the nurse for resident camp & I’m not entirely sure I’m ready to move on, but it seems to be time.

     Sunday it’ll be back to Ozark for a night to get stuff together for the next week and a half since due to education for work and my crazy work schedule I’ll be over here for ten days before I go back. I have realized now that even if my husband and I weren’t splitting up that moving over here would in the end be the thing to do, I’m really starting to miss my kids. With my budget being tight right now I’m really not able to go back to Ozark if I just have one night off, like tonight, so I sometimes go way longer than I want to without seeing them. My daughter will be helping out in the dish room at camp this weekend, so I’ll at least get to see her J

     To top all of this off I’m taking a traditional class this summer that’s Mon-Thurs (Government) that I have to get out of the way to keep my spot in the RN-BSN program this fall, so I’ll be spending a lot of time over here this summer too. Maybe I should work on moving the kids in May instead of August, it’s a thought. 

Contempt of Court? I Do Think so...

            The idea for this blog post came from where so many others this semester have come from. While wandering the internet looking at news articles I found one that made me shake my head & start looking around to see what else I could find on the subject. The subject of interest for this week is inappropriate clothing for court appearances. I guess finding out that some people don’t understand that court is one of those places you should at least look clean and put together shouldn’t really be that much of a surprise, but I guess I just live in a bubble and that thought hadn’t crossed my mind. Any time I’ve set foot in court for an appearance I’ve done my best to wear business appropriate clothing; I mean no power suit or anything, but nice pants and a dressy type shirt for sure. So it really caught my interest while scanning random articles on MSN.com to see the title “Sagging Pants Gets Man 3 Days in Jail” so of course I had to read it and look around for more articles on the subject.

            The back story on this article and the other I found that is based on an interview with the Judge in the case John Bush from the Circuit Court in Autuaga County, Alabama referenced the instance when LaMarcus D. Ramsey was in court on charges of receiving stolen property and was wearing sagging pants that exposed his underwear. This just seems totally inappropriate to me. I mean it’s one thing if you’ve lost a lot of weight and you’re temporarily having issues keeping your pants where you belong, but it’s different if that’s the style you have chosen to adopt on a regular basis. The quote that is really sticking with me from these articles is “You are in contempt of court because you showed your butt in court, you can spend three days in jail. When you get out you can buy pants that fit, or at least get a belt to hold up your pants so your underwear doesn’t show.” This seriously and literally made me laugh out loud. My friend sitting on the other couch thought I’d lost my mind.

            On further searching I did find a couple of other articles referencing appropriate dress in the courtroom. The most comprehensive lists some not to wear items from different jurisdictions around the country which include that you should not wear flip flops in Bakersfield, California, jeans in Inkster, Michigan or short-shorts in Dover, Delaware. While some of the dress codes might seem a bit too restrictive, really they have merit in that the set rules and regulations help maintain order in the courtroom. I mean it would seem common sense to know not to wear a Chuckie T-shirt to court that says “say goodbye to the killer” or to not wear pajamas to court, but this article uses both of them as real life examples of what people have worn. I even saw mention of someone wearing a clown costume to court. Sometimes I just shake my head at the lack of common sense displayed by some of my fellow Americans. 

Thoughts of the Week.

Any of you that read my blog posts regularly or managed to get my paper this week to open to workshop it have a decent but limited view of what’s going on in my life currently. I’m not an open person by nature so can tell you that the only reason you’re all getting this much of a view into what is going on in my world is due to the anonymity of being able to just put my thoughts out there without actually interacting socially with everyone as you learn about them. No, life isn’t easy at this moment, to be honest as many of you might have guessed much of life hasn’t been easy for years. Everything in life is a result of decisions whether they’re good or bad ones that I’ve made or had made for me over the years.

            Some of the bigger decisions that have impacted my life would have to be: (and in no particular order) the decision to keep my daughter (I got pregnant at 16 and was 17 when she was born) the decision to get married a week after I graduated High School, the decision to drop out halfway through my first semester of college, the decision to go to nursing school, both the first time for my Associate’s degree and now for my Bachelor’s degree, the decision to be a Nurse at a Girl Scout Camp for years, the decision to be a School Nurse, the decision to go work in the Intensive Care Unit at Freeman in Joplin. These are all big decisions in my life. There have also been many tiny ones that have shaped where my life has gone over the years and influenced not only the things I’m going through today, but who I am as a person.

            I’ve spent many, many hours in thought in my life. Most recently contemplating where I am and where I go from here as well as who I am as a person and how I got to be who I am today. Where I am is a result of all of these decisions and experiences in my life. Do I wish things weren’t as hard as they are now? Yes. But I honestly cannot see much of anything that could have been done or happened any differently that would still make me who I am today. I couldn’t imagine not knowing my daughter, so I can never wish I hadn’t had her or hadn’t kept her. All of the other things I listed up there plus the millions of others I didn’t were experiences that shaped me into who I am today. What I have come to realize as I’ve thought is that I like who I am. I have goals in life, I’m a good Mom (I don’t always make the best/most right decisions, but I love my kids and I truly try), I’m strong, some people tell me I’m smart (sometimes I feel so very dumb though) and I know that if I take life one day at a time I can take what has already happened in my life, what is going on now & my future experiences and shape them into an awesome future. I’ve just got to hold on, I think it might be a wild ride!!!

            So thank you all for listening to my rants, I’m nowhere near finished J

Guilty Pleasure, Anyone?

            With very few exceptions I’m not a huge fan of watching movies. Seriously, I just don’t tend to have the patience or the money to go to the theater and spend two hours of my life sitting in a dark theater with a bunch of strangers in the dark with nothing to do if I get bored and knowing that if I want to get up and move around I’m going to miss something (most likely the most interesting part of the movie). I do however sometimes enjoy putting a movie in my laptop or DVD player at home, but will admit it is extremely rare that I watch an entire movie all at once without wandering off a few times, or watch one without knitting or another craft project taking up part of my attention. The biggest exception to this is I occasionally enjoy heading out to the Sunset Drive InTheater in Aurora with a big group of people. We love to get out there right when the gates open, snag a few front row spots, set up the mini grill and make a night of it with all of the kids. I think part of it is all the stuff going on and the fact that I can knit or fiddle with stuff during the movie, so it feeds my ADHD tendencies. The other big factor is you can see 2 new movies for less than what it costs to see one in a traditional theater. This also appeals to my frugal side.  J The other exception to me not liking to go see new movies would be a series that has fascinated me for years. I saw all three of the main movies in the theater and can admit to owning all the rest at one time or another. The next one comes out in theaters on Friday, and yes, I’m thinking about trying to pull together the money to go see it.

The movie I am speaking of is American Reunion. This is the latest movie in the American Pie series.  This series consists of the original American Pie movies (American Pie, American Pie 2 and American Wedding) which follow a group of teenagers through their senior year in high school, which includes a plot to lose their virginity on prom night, through the first part of college and all the embarrassment that ensued there and on to when the slightly nerdy but cute main character Jim from the first movie marries Michelle, the flute playing band girl he lost his virginity to on prom night. To be honest these movies are my guilty pleasure. The rest of my movie collection looks nothing like these and most people assume they belong to my husband when they see them on the shelf, but they’re mine. I’ve been watching the news, trailers, reviews and directors comments for American Reunion and I think it will be of the caliber of the original three movies, therefore I must see it. J

After the first three there were some spin offs of the movies that had a few of the original characters, while they were in themselves somewhat funny movies, they were nowhere near the caliber of the original three, being from the makers of American Pie, I gave them a watch and quickly let them move from my life. If I see them pop up as I’m flipping channels I’ll stop for a bit, but I don’t go out of my way to watch any of them.

So now I’ve given you all some insight into one of my guilty pleasures. J I thought a nice light linked post was in order this week, just didn’t have the mental fortitude to write a big serious deep one!

Time is Flying By!!

Where is the time going? I mean, yes sometimes it seems to drag, but I swear every time I turn around another week has passed and the things I wanted to get done remain undone. Sometimes it’s all I can do to keep my head above water between my kids, work and school, but somehow I keep swimming. I’m sure many of you feel the same from reading your blogs.

Over Spring Break I was hoping (not sure why) to get some cleaning and stuff done around my house. Of course I was discounting the fact that I still had to work my shifts and had a Trauma Nursing course last week that many people say is the hardest class to pass that they’ve taken at the hospital. I’m happy to report I only missed 2 questions on the test, and one of them was because I second guessed myself. Oops. So I now have that under my belt and am down to two more classes to take for work, yay! On top of that I’m officially and finally off of orientation so get to take care of patients by myself. That’s pretty cool, a little intimidating, but pretty cool none the less. Needless to say my week went crazy and cleaning didn’t happen. Oh well, I did my classes and got a jump on this week’s work once I realized I had four chapters of Pathophysiology due, plus one each in Economics and Lifetime Wellness… ouch. I have to admit I was tempted to wait and blog later in the week, but decided since it frustrates me when all the blogs pop up on Friday I wouldn’t join that group and I’d try to stay ahead of the game. On top of that I’ve found it’s easier to hit 500 words if I work on it earlier rather than later, if I feel rushed I get kind of blocked on what to say.

My personal life is still a bit wacky, but I’m making plans to make all of that change. I’ve laid down some rules and outlined some requests with everyone I live with as well as opened lines of communication on all fronts in an effort to promote some peace in my world, here’s hoping it works, fingers crossed!

I’m getting a bit excited about getting into the RN-BSN program for next fall, yes the mandatory orientation is on a less than ideal day for me, but I think I have a plan in place to make it all work. I’m hoping so at least J

Oh! My poor little beat up car I bought, wow has it undergone a transformation! It looks pretty different now, I finally got my new to me door on it, we beat some of the dents out of the fender (I haven’t had any luck finding a new one) and I ordered front and back seat covers for it, so it’s looking better. Plus I cleaned it inside and out which helped a ton. Now to find some new hubcaps for it since I only have two and they don’t match and I think it’ll be a pretty decent little car for me J

Money Saving Thoughts & Ideas

Okay, nose back to the grindstone, with the whole push to the end of the semester and all of that Spring Break is over kind of stuff. J

Since my budget like many others in this world seems to get tighter with each passing day and Yahoo had a bunch of articles on saving money without resorting to the typical clipping of coupons I thought that would make a great blog post for this week.

In the first article I found (the one that started this whole blog post idea) it goes over 4 Discounts You’re Earning But NotUsing. That title made me stop & look, not surprisingly I think I qualify for a couple, and am thinking of making a change or two to take advantage of at least one of the others. The article discusses checking account rewards, and how yes they’re hard to find at your brick and mortar banks, but if you choose internet banking you can cash in. I’m going to look into this since I need to open a new account to accommodate some upcoming changes in my life anyway. The second thing is club membership perks, I am a member of Sam’s Club, so am going to look and see what other ways I can use my membership to save money, other than the obvious. Social media promotions are the third thing, I’m on Facebook far more often than I should be, so I’m going to start using my presence there to save a few dollars every now and then. The last one is credit card reward malls, I probably won’t be taking advantage of this one due to the fact that I don’t have and don’t plan to get any credit cards, but it might be worth it for those who do have them.

The second article I found went over 7 Ways You’reWasting Money Without Realizing It. I’ll hit a few of the high points. Some big ones I noticed were ignoring your credit score, this hurts you anytime  you need to borrow money and can hurt you in your job hunt too since most companies will check a credit score before they offer you a job. Failing to get lower rates follows that one, if you take care of your credit you can refinance loans to take advantage of lower rates when they are available. There have been times in my life I wish I’d been able to do so. Overpaying for car insurance was made obvious to me recently, when I bought my little Prizm I shopped around and figured out I’d been paying far too much for my auto insurance. Those are the ones that stood out to me, you’re more than welcome to check all seven out and see if the others will help you save some money.

The third article fits in too in that it gives you  9 Things You Should Always Buy WithYour Credit Card. It’s food for thought, I might put it in my mental maybe I need a card again someday file and consider it. It points out perks on appliances and electronics you can utilize with a card, also cell phone replacement perks if you pay your bill with your card and that if you use your credit card to purchase things you’re going to write off on your taxes your bill can be your receipt and you don’t have to keep track of as much paper for tax time. All pretty good ideas, plus a few more.

So those are some things I’ve learned about saving money tonight. Hope they help you too!

My Thoughts For and On the Week

Okay, I’ve gotten in the habit of just relating my week to all of you for my second blog post every week. Sometimes I feel a bit guilty, but then I realize that none of you actually have to read it, so as long as I write something and it’s fairly coherent I’m probably ok.

I got AMAZING news today. (well it might have been here a day or two, but I’ve been in Joplin working and just returned to my “eastern” home.) I got accepted into the RN-BSN program for this next fall!!! I’m super excited! I was hoping I’d get in, but not being one to get my hopes too  high (hurts to much when you don’t get what you wish for) that I wasn’t counting on it. So I’ve been floating tonight. The only minor and it really is minor down side is the mandatory orientation is the same night a leadership retreat I go on every year starts, but I’m just going to show up late to my leadership retreat, school has to come before that.

In other parts of my life the other super awesome part of the day was spending part of it with my best friend. That’s a pretty rare occurrence due to work schedules and locational difficulties, so yay!

I’ve spend the last three nights in the ICU at Freeman. I had a pretty interesting and diverse set of patients. I really learned a lot, but that’s about all I can really say on work due to all of the HIPPA laws. L I could seriously write a pretty lengthy post on any of my three shifts if I could share more details.

I had my first Pathophysiology Lab Test on Monday, I’m not super confident on how I did, but have my fingers crossed. I went right after I got off of work and was tired on top of still processing a super busy night, so maybe wasn’t at the top of my game. Oops!

Onto a subject on everyone’s mind… Spring Break. I keep hearing about everything from doing fun stuff to spending the week cleaning at home, all of that sounds nice to me. I have a Trauma Nursing course for work I’ve been putting off as I’ve heard that it’s pretty intense so I’m taking it next week. I’m hoping I can at least go out for dinner with friends or spend some time relaxing or something during the week, we will see what I can manage.

Oh, and a follow up to my post about my car, I’m feeling better about it. I have some replacement parts for it and am going to get them on next week (I have a friend that can help me on Tuesday, so I’m going to fit it in) and I spent a good part of my morning today cleaning it, amazingly it looks a lot better with what I’ve done and I haven’t even broken out the heavy duty chemicals yet. 

Well, enjoy Spring Break everyone! I’m going to do my best to J

Your Digital Afterlife

Have you ever wondered what happens to your online presence when you’re no longer a part of this earth? As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a RN in the ICU at Freeman, and though we’d love to be able to send all of our patients out the front door of the hospital whole and hearty, sadly it isn’t always possible. The other night while working I started to wonder what happens to things such as your email accounts, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, eBay and all those other lovely ways we interact with others online? Unless you’ve included passwords and your wishes in your will or other document, is there anyone to shut them down? Or do you want them left active? So many questions. So as we all do in this digital age I typed “what happens to your online presence when you die” into my favorite (of the moment) search engine Google. As we all have come to expect I got pages and pages of results.

One cool way to deal with your email accounts is to set up a Dead Man’s Switch. This is an online service that you check into periodically and if you don’t it sends you emails asking you to verify you are still living. If you don’t respond it will send messages you have securely loaded into their servers to predestinated individuals 60 days after your last check in. This is a pretty cool service in my opinion. This way you can say things you wish you’d said, or even give directions on how to deal with all of your accounts. This is a pretty neat service overall, in my opinion.  Another advantage of setting up a switch is to avoid the misery this family is going through.  The author Clare Jacobson’s boyfriend’s mother passed away without leaving anyone information on how to access/close her email account and they now receive constant spam messages from her. That is a pretty creepy thing and I think wouldn’t do anything good for the grieving process. Of course there is the flip side of that where emails are received that seem to actually be messages from beyond the grave that reference things that only the deceased would know and even events that have occurred after their death. I found a recent example of this occurring in this article about Jack Froese whose friends have been receiving seemingly pertinent messages from him since after his death from a cardiac dysrhythmia. They refer private conversations in attics and an ankle injury that occurred after he passed away.

Another concern is what happens to Facebook after you pass? Of course Facebook has a few options available, your profile can be memorialized, where sensitive information is removed and only the friends you had when you passed away can view your profile. Or the profile can be deleted entirely; these options are both available via a form in the help section. The third and newest option is that with proper documentation such as a court order your entire profile can be downloaded.

I can see this post going on forever if I let it, so I’ll wrap up with saying that another site I found TheDigital Beyond has a bunch of really cool articles on it, I saw ones about people being buried with their cell phones & spouses and such receiving messages they believed to be from them after burial (creepy!) or family members calling and leaving voicemails on these phones. (yes the family/spouse is continuing to pay the bill and continue the service. There are also articles on how to deal with your digital presence after death and lots of other information. Happy reading! 

Another Week in my Life...

Another crazy week in my world for sure. But the good news in life is I found and bought a car. The not so stellar news is that it's really not that exciting of a car. It's a 1998 Chevy Prizm with 200,000 miles on it. The only saving grace of the car for me is that it has a Toyota manufactured engine & drive train so in theory should run for another 100,000 miles if I have any luck at all. Hopefully I'll be able to upgrade it long before then, but if not at least it'll probably survive for a long time. Other not so stellar points with this car are that it has been hit on the driver side and the door is in rough shape. Add to that how dirty the interior is and the fact that I need to replace the interior door handles and it's a bit of a challenge to actually be happy about it. The up side to all of it is that I already found it a new door (that's actually the same color as the car) and bought door handles on the cheap off of eBay. So now I just need a bit of free time to try to put the car together. The super good point about it would have to be the best I can tell so far it's getting well over 30 miles per gallon which is amazing compared to the 12 mpg my Suburban typically gets.

This car is also a stretch for me as I've always been a hard core GM person, I think that's just how it works in my family, pretty much everything is a GM, except for my brother's Toyota truck and sister in law's Acura MDX. I have friends that have Toyota's with the same engine in them and they've pretty much driven them into the ground so there's hope for this car I guess. I put some seat covers on it, am going to clean it up really well and see how I feel about it then. I'm pretty sure as gas prices rise I'll like it more.

This car was just more of a compromise than I'd originally planned on, but I think it'll work for the best in the end. Not to mention I got it majorly cheaply. Plus as I was typing this I was talking to one of my friends about it and we figured out a way to make a seat cover for the back seat to cover up the nasty there. Plus her son details cars for a living and he's giving me some tips on ways to clean up some of the parts I can't cover up with fabric. This car is looking better & better all the time!

Other than that it's been busy, I worked last Wednesday, Thursday & Friday, got the car Thursday (took a nap, slept in the car on the way to Kansas City then drove back to go to work) then went to a guard competition on Saturday, worked on Sunday, took a Pathophysiology test on Monday, and have been in education classes Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week. On top of that I'm getting all of my school stuff done and studying for two tests on Monday of this next week. I'm worn out. I need some time to sleep, just not sure when that one's going to happen. 

Bribery

Bribery is an interesting thing. You, at least I, typically associate bribery with large corporations or with political candidates. I ran across an article on Yahoo tonight that enlightened me to the fact that it is a much larger and more pervasive issue than I had anticipated. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica website bribery is defined as “the act of promising, giving, receiving, or agreeing to receive money or some other item of value with the corrupt aim of influencing a public official in the discharge of official duties. When money has been offered or promised in exchange for a corrupt act, the official involved need not actually accomplish that act for the offense of bribery to be complete. The crime is typically punishable as a felony.”

Overall bribery doesn't seem to be a major and pervasive issue in the United States (or maybe I'm just clueless here) but in many foreign countries such as India or Bangladesh it is a pervasive and far reaching issue. For example in this article I found there are examples given such as to claim a legitimate tax refund in Hyderabad, India is 10,000 rupees. And that it will run you 20,000 shillings to get your child who has already met the admission requirements into High School in Nairobi, Kenya. If I didn't spend as much time as I do randomly reading articles on the internet I might be more surprised about how rampant bribery is among public officials in some of the middle eastern countries. But since I spend a fair amount of time unable or unwilling to sleep I read way, way too many articles online and was not surprised.

In fact a week or so ago I stumbled across the website I Paid A Bribe which was founded in August 2010 by Ramesh and Ms. Ramanathan along with Sridar Iyengar. It was set up with the purpose of being a forum if you will, to demonstrate how prevalent bribery is and give the people an anonymous way to vocalize their true feelings regarding bribery without fear of reprisal. The main page actually features new bribe reports as well as ones that have been voted most popular. There is even a scrolling feed of legal advice on one side of the page. When I clicked over a moment ago the newest posted bribe was from a streetwalker in Mumbai that when she decided to visit relatives in Canada was told she was too ugly for the shutter mechanism to work until she paid a bribe to get her passport photo taken. I've already spent a fair amount of time browsing through the different bribe reports, you never know what you'll see.

I personally am not a fan of bribery and find the policy of doing so to be very corrupt and dishonest. I think there should be a way to stop bribery and make things fair for all across any given country/the world. Also a point from my Economics class, bribery hurts international trade as the countries that engage in bribery must figure those costs into their trade costs which makes trade more expensive for them in the long run. 

Thoughts of and on the Week...

This week is another of those weeks where I wonder how in the world I’m going to get it all done. It’s looking like once again I will manage to fit everything I need to do into my week and maybe a bit of what I want to do too. The want stuff is a miracle in and of itself, let me tell you. On top of all the fun of it being a paper turn in week in this class, I somehow am fitting in three chapters in my Pathophysiology class (compared to a normal of one chapter) and the normal workload in my Econ 180 and Kine 103 classes. Gulp. Oh and on top of that my work schedule is a bit sideways because my preceptor is moving us from working the end of the week to the first of the week so he can have a long stretch off at Spring Break time as he’s planning to spend some time with his wife. On top of that it’s crunch time educationally for me at work, I have an Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) Prep class next week, a Non-Violent Crisis Intervention class, then during our Spring Break the Trauma Nurse Core Course (2 long days of lots of information and a test at the end) and the actual ACLS class right after Spring Break. Makes me a bit nervous thinking of all the stuff I have to arrange to make everything happen the next few weeks. But I know I can get through it, I just need to stay super organized & it’ll all get done, I know it will.

On the home front things are things. Pretty quiet here, but that’s better than what has been going on the past few weeks, so I won’t complain about the silence. The upside is that I’m working a ton the next week and a half to accomplish the adjustment to the schedule and classes so won’t be over here in Ozark much, which frankly rocks for me.

The car hunt, now that’s frustrating. I have found a car on Craigslist that I really like, but I’m starting to think the sellers just posted it for fun. I’ve tried to set up a time to see/test drive the car a few different times, but can never get them to commit to a time. The best I’ve gotten is a day and they’ll say they’ll contact me closer to that day to set a time, and then they never email or call back. Grr. This car is in decent shape, not too many miles and is priced pretty fairly as long as it is in as good of shape in person as it is online. I found another car over near where I live that looks okay, but I just get the feeling with it that I’m buying someone else’s headache… I already drive a headache that is leaking oil, antifreeze and transmission fluid on my driveway as I type. The upside is I’m making a flying trip to Kansas City on Saturday to see a Winterguard Competition and think I’ll try to set up a test drive or two while I’m up there if the cars I’m considering are still available then.

Oh well, this season in life will end. Me not being a fan of change and the fact that the past year of my life has been nothing but changes is the key to my current frustration, but I know in the end these changes will wind up being what is best for me and my kids, so I’m powering through and looking toward the bright light that’s at the end of all of this. 

Medical Tattoos

Hi all J Tonight’s thoughts are being brought to you first because of my favorite time waster/avoidance of things I should be doing, Facebook. So see, every now and then procrastination and goofing off can pay off because I had no clue what I was going to do my linked post on for this week. Thanks to my friend Jennifer for posting the original article that sparked my interest and led me to do a bit of research to see what it was about.

So what is all the excitement about? It’s about using tattoos instead of medical alert jewelry. Being a nurse and never having heard of doing this I was intrigued.  Sure I know about medical alert bracelets and other jewelry, but hadn’t ever thought about using a tattoo for that purpose. It’s a pretty cool concept now that I looked into it. Instead of the typical bracelet for example that while useful for alerting medical personnel to potentially life threatening issues and information has major limitations; such as they break, some people are allergic to the metal the jewelry is made of, there are people who are not allowed to wear jewelry to their workplace because of dangers of injury from the jewelry and there are those people who just forget to or refuse to wear their medical alert bracelets for a variety of reasons. If you’re okay with body art this could be a great option for you. Of course there are some downsides, paramedics aren’t currently trained to look for them, there’s no real regulation or consistency to location, appearance or information contained, but these are potentially easily overcome obstacles.

I found this website that is full of Diabetes Advocacy Tattoos, some of which are gorgeous and do show some consistency in information and location. I have noticed many of the alert style ones are on the forearm, predominantly the left, which works for me as that’s where I’d wear a bracelet and where I’ve personally seen many alert bracelets.

You also need to realize that if you have a medical condition, for example diabetes as many of the articles use that you need to take some precautions when deciding a medical tattoo is right for you. The guidelines lined out in Tattoos as Medical Warning include but are not limited to: use a reputable tattoo artist, do not get a tattoo in an area of poor circulation such as your feet and make sure your blood sugar is controlled during the procedure. These recommendations are fully endorsed in that article by Yimmy Householder who is the manager of NeedleMasters Tattoo Studio in Toledo, Ohio and a tattooed diabetic himself.

Another emerging and somewhat controversial use of medical tattoos is explained in this article I found that features Dr. Ed Friedlander, a Kansas City pathologist who has “No CPR” tattooed on the center of his chest. I personally applaud his commitment to his personal feelings and have considered getting a similar tattoo when I reach that point in my life. As a nurse I see so many conflicted families that aren’t 100% sure what their family member wants (even with well documented living wills) so I’m hoping this will help my family out, or at least remind them that they aren’t following my wishes should they choose a different path. The article does mention that currently medical tattoos don’t carry much legal weight, but you never know what will change in time, right?

I hope this gave you all a few things to think about as it did me, happy researching & commenting!

A Rant on Trust or Lack Thereof.

Okay, trying not to go negative here, but I have something eating at me that I need to vent about. My two best friends have heard enough from me and are supporting me fully, but in an effort to not overload and burn them out as they have plenty of their own stress in their own lives I’m going to unload on all of you.

It all boils down to I got married almost sixteen years ago one week after I graduated High School; of course at that time I thought it was true love with all the birds chirping, sunshine, rainbows etc. As an added bonus my parents hated the guy I married, yes I was just that smart. One of the reasons I rushed into the thing called marriage was my at the time ten month old daughter. Don’t get me wrong, she is seriously the best thing that has ever happened to me; she is beautiful, smart, funny and just an awesome person. I wish I was half as smart and brave as she is, not to mention committed to personal opinions and standing up for myself. She is all of that and so much more. 

Life hasn’t been easy over the years, we’ve had our ups and our downs, and we’ve made it through. The past year has been rough, I was told when I decided to go back to school that he wouldn’t put up with me slacking around the house in favor of school, I’m doing what I can and luckily my kids rock (I also have a thirteen year old son) and are doing what they can to help keep the house running. Me finding a job in Joplin hasn’t helped, but I couldn’t find a job that both allowed me the time for the kids and school as well as enough money to attempt to stay ahead of the bill collectors in Springfield (it’s a long story, another blog post in and of itself).

Things were going tolerably, not great until this past Friday. Early last week, we jointly made a decision to let our daughter drive his GMC Jimmy over to Joplin to join me for the weekend and spend some time with her best friend. All was good in the world until my parents (who tend to be controlling) found out what she had done and where she was and threw a fit. For some background, our daughter has made the trip from Ozark to Carl Junction probably forty times behind the wheel and this was her fifth or sixth trip by herself (just the first my parents found out about). He wound up calling her, yelling at her and demanding to have our friends’ address so he could come get his truck and bring her home Friday night. We made arrangements instead for my friends to bring his truck back to the South side of Springfield and drop it off. In all of this my parents (who back when it was time to get my daughter a car seemingly generously found and paid for one for her) decided she had lied to them by not telling them her weekend plans and came and took her car away. I’m really frustrated by all of this. First by how my parents are being so controlling, this isn’t their daughter, they have no right to punish her. Also she didn’t utilize the car they bought, she talked to both of her parents who agreed to allow her to drive a car we paid for to see her friend (as she has done before). The thing that frustrates me the most is that instead of standing behind his decision and standing up for his daughter my husband allowed my parents to railroad him into recanting the decision we made together and in the way I see it throwing her under the bus to take all the blame.

I’m currently only speaking to my family on a limited basis and feel I can not trust any of them. To say the least this has been a very stressful time and is helping me see some things I have previously been blind to. I think this could even qualify as a life changing event. Sigh. Sorry for ranting, but I needed to get some of this off of my chest. 

Gas Prices, Bad? Good? You Decide

Gas prices, yup, one of the subjects everyone loves to hate. As gas prices are shooting up and the internet is littered with articles speculating why and pointing fingers at everyone from gas executives to the president, I thought I’d pull a few with varied opinions and put together a blog from them. Gas prices matter a ton to me. I put from three to five hundred miles on my car a week. I currently drive a 1989 Chevy Suburban. It gets around ten miles per gallon. I’m not joking. If I put a couple thousand dollars into some mechanical work it might get fifteen miles per gallon, but some fun things like the air conditioning still won’t work. Therefore I’m in the market for a new to me car, namely a Toyota Corolla (if anyone has one that runs good with A/C power windows & locks, let me know). I figure I’m better off putting the money into something that will get better mileage for me than I am fixing the Suburban at this point.

I digress, back to the subject at hand, rising gas prices. There seems to be multiple reasons gas prices are high; crude oil prices are up again, some refineries are closed earlier in the year than normal for maintenance and some refineries that weren’t efficient are closed entirely. All these things together equal more pain to all of us at the pump. Now whether these factors will influence the election in November remain to be seen. I found this article that shows that while gas prices can be a factor, they are not totally responsible for who wins or loses the election. I personally think there are many, many other reasons that Obama needs to go, but I’m trying to stay away from political discourse as I’m just not in the mood to go there currently.

Another article I found claims that these horrid gas prices are actually good for the economy in various ways in that they encourage (force) Americans to find other ways to save money such as online shopping and other methods of conservation. I admit I do my share (possibly more than) of online shopping, but nothing beats actually going to the store and choosing what you want. Trying it on, feeling the fabric, fun stuff! Hmm, on an unrelated note I’m thinking I’ll visit my favorite store over here The Red Poppy before heading to Joplin tomorrow for the weekend. J

The third article that held my attention long enough for me to reference it in this posing talks about how even though dropping gas prices quickly might seem tempting to the nation’s elected officials they need to resist and find a long term solution with a sensible energy policy. This is a stance I can support. We need a long term solution and new ways of producing, using and conserving energy are the way to go. Otherwise every few years or even more often, we’ll be in this same situation, wondering how gas prices got this high and demanding a solution. It seems that high prices now might be more bearable if a long term way to lower them were on the horizon. That’s just my two cents on the matter. What do you all think?