It occurred to me today that I have not posted on this here blog in quite some time. For those of you not aware, my dear daughter turned out to be just fine. Since my last post she has had numerous trips to doctors, specialists, and the wholey hell that is the ER for various medical reasons that I shall not expound upon here, but she is fine. My poor little daughter has had more tests and procedures in her short little life than I had in the 27 years before I started trying to get pregnant with her. I feel for her, and I have many new found annoyances with the medical community and there oh so over the top fears of litigation that often lead to unnecessary tests.

And stepping beyond my dear daughter, I have recently found myself at the center of my own mini medical drama. I received a phone call from my employer today informing me that I was exposed to TB while at work and pregnant. I was exposed for a good long time as well. This, does not a happy camper make. I was ready to hand in my resignation right then and there. Alas, I will not. What I will do is beg for the blood test instead of the skin test so as not to expose the poor babe through my milk supply. And then, I will pray. I will pray that I do not end up on a cocktail of meds that leaves me unable to continue to nurse my beloved daughter.

I have been doing far too much praying that (insert medical drama of the hour here) turns out negative lately. Seriously.

Alas, an apple a day does not always keep the doctor away

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It has been four days since I officially (or I suppose unofficially since I don't actually march across the stage until the 21st) finished my degree. And so now I am faced with the question, what now? The story of my life over the past days has been "another day, another rejection letter". If I had ten dollars for every rejection I've received over the last months. I wouldn't need a job. But, so it goes. It does get easier, I guess. You start expecting the rejections to come and they are a little less surprising/aggravating/irritatiing/making you want to scream than the last time. Sigh.

But thankfully, N and I are flying far away to Boston for the next four days. Sweet relief from feeling the obligation to wake up every morning, brew extra strong coffee, and page through endless job posting after endless job posting on the internet trying to find something I can live with. I have to say, it was much cooler when I got to say "I'm a grad student" than "I'm an unemployed social worker". Ha.

So..what now? Only time will tell. Keep your fingers and toes crossed for me.
 
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Month #2 of Job searching begins.....Number of resumes sent out: more than 30. Number of interviews: 0. Number of even potential interviews: 0. Number of leads that have fallen through: 3. Mood: growing more crazed by the day. Anyone know any good social work jobs in the Chicago land area??
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And no, not in that crazy dancing to awesome music kind of way. I have spent the last months (yes, months) battling some evil head cold/sinus something or other. This has, in turn, put a damper on my running which, as most of you know, is one of my most favorite de-stressing activities. All I have to say is Thank God for N, or I'd be spending my days bawling my eyes out from frustration/exhaustion/illness/depression. I am told that many people who begin working in a hospital experience at least one long bout of illness they can't seem to shake in their first year. I'm hanging on to that theory and trying to silence all those irrational voices telling me I have somehow contracted some deadly disease. In any case, the former explains my somewhat long absence from blogging-land. In an effort to get back to my more positive, sunshiny ways....Some random funny pics of things that make me smile, and will hopefully do the same for you....














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Another semester...but thank god, it's the last!! And let me tell you, I've never been more relieved...who wouldn't be, given that I am now spending the majority of my days filling out worksheets. Yes, you read that correctly, I said worksheets. I have been blessed with an asinine professor who has taken it upon herself to give me the pleasure of revisiting my days in the sixth grade, or perhaps the fifth..I honestly can't remember the last time I spent hours searching through a text book to complete a fill in the blank sentence, poured over reading material to answer true and false and match questions, or copied, word for word, so many useless statistics onto a piece of paper. As if that isn't bad enough, I will be blessed with quizes and a midterm based on said worksheets....Now, tell me, I'm studying to be a social worker, which if I recall correctly, entails communicating with people. Meaning, there are not too many situations in which having the ability to regergitate information verbatim from a textbook will come in handy at all. I mean, at all. But this dazzling professor could not be so kind as to say, offer me an education that might actually pertain to my future work, or, for that matter, give me the opportunity to do something interesting with the information I'm reading about, like say, oh, I don't know, apply it to a real situation. That would be, you know, too practical. Instead, I will, in fact, be spending the majority of my time filling in blanks, circling letters, and copying phrases from my book. Thank God, that my other two classes seem interesting and useful, and that I managed to waive one class in favor of an independent project that will hopefully be published one day...It's the little things in life. T minus 4 months 'till blast off back into the working world.

And btw, I have NO IDEA how my blog got spammed, but it did. The entry right before this one is some weird spam thing that I can't delete. Poor blog. Ok...enough ranting for one Friday night.
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All I can say is, I'm officially freaked out. After biting my nails down to nothing on 9/11 waiting to hear from my brother who lives in Manhattan, watching a good friend of mine bite her nails down to nothing not once, but twice while  her sister is in London, I'm freaked out. As if the world is not scary and tragic enough with diseases, long term ilnesses, and natural disasters, now we are faced with the possibility of bombs and attacks on nothing more extraordinary than an average work day. What is this world coming to that people feel the necessity to blow each other up? It saddens me....war, all the horror, the fear.I mean, I can't even imagine how awful you must feel about your life to be willing to kill others and take your own life. Nor, can I  imagine what it must be like in countries where your life revolves around bombs being dropped on your home, people being killed constantly on your streets. I just hope one day those that think killing is the answer will wise up and see that if we all worked together we could get much farther in life. And in the meantime, I hope that my loved ones and I remain safe and sound, and that there are fewer and fewer bombings and killings instead of more and more....
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Why?
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I'm fighting the blahs...
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