Back to our regularly scheduled blogging

I guess since Padrone has typed his last blog post, it's my turn again. Oh well, it *was* nice while it lasted! (I truly don't mind typing here, but a break was nice, especially since the blog kept going)

I've started working again, as planned. I'm teaching 5th grade self contained students, and it's a challenge of course. I go to work every day feeling unprepared and as if I am playing catch up constantly. I can't stand that feeling, and I'm trying hard to get mentally organized. There may be changes coming soon, as well, which may help but also may just confuse the issue totally. We'll see.

My last class for my Masters degree starts this week as well. I already have the syllabus and assignments required, as well as my comprehensive exam questions, and I've begun to think about the answers to them. They are very comprehensive (well, duh), and will require a lot of thought and pulling together information in order to answer the questions. Then I have to plan units and individual lessons within the units, videotape myself teaching those lessons, and write a 10 page philosophy of educating students with mild to moderate disabilities. Plus I'm taking another course as well, but *that* course should help me with some of the specific students I have in my class this year so that will be good.

Padrone's life remains "interesting". They are also in the midst of a severe heat wave, and air conditioning is not as common in homes there as it is here. At least not central units. So they are suffering but managing so far. Yes, I do worry but don't tell him that. ssssssshhhhhhhh!

I have also had mammogram and pap smear, as well as a complete blood count. I'll go back in September for a look at some suspicious spots on my arms, and in 3 months for a repeat breast ultrasound. There was a very small spot found, which the radiologist thinks is a cyst with echos (complex cyst, not typically dangerous at all) in my right breast. So I go back in November for a repeat ultrasound, and the doctor said probably 6 months after that one, just to monitor any changes that may happen. I'm also on a strict diet due to both the effects that long term stress has had on my body, and the fact that my overall cholesterol raised 39 points in 4 months. I can't exercise yet due to the heat *here*, but I'm losing a bit of weight anyway, and I feel better with a better overall diet.

So I've had a little bit going on as well, but nothing like Padrone so far. December 14 is my graduation, and yes I plan to walk across the stage wearing my cap and gown, just as if I were a 20-something! It will be a fabulous culmination of a lot of hard work and effort on my part, and a lot MORE understanding and listening and comforting on Padrone's part for sure! And it is viewable online, so Padrone can watch, which is highly appropriate and wonderful, and I am extremely grateful that the technology exists for that to happen.

I do love his posts, as I am sure y'all may imagine. I love his words, his thoughts, and the fact that he spent so much time to follow through with the results of the wager. I love this man more than I could ever express.

Padrone, I know this post is quite vanilla, and quite boring to you who know all of this, but it is what it is today. I am yours, my Padrone. So beautifully and gratefully yours.