Thoughts From a Frazzled Mind

Our Independence Day was very low-key this year.  We packed up our campsite and arrived home before noon.  My car was filthy so I hurried and washed it.  I haven't washed a car by hand for years, it was actually quite enjoyable  tolerable.  And it felt good to get all of that dirt off of it.  I then headed right for the shower and then literally fell in bed for a good long nap.  Kim stayed and helped Mark take and dump the trailer.  I told Ash to call me when she was ready to clean it and I would help.  She didn't call and I fell asleep.  I guess she didn't wait for me and cleaned it herself and then she fell into a coma-like sleep - 4 1/2 hour nap!  Robin said that she did the same thing.  Camping is hard on people! After naps Kim and I just were lazy all the rest of the day.  Sitting in the cool, air conditioned house felt so good that we absolutely did nothing constructive.  Kim watched some tv (his favorite s...

Food  4  Thought   Friday! A little feast without the calories!!   Please visit  Jodi's blog!   She posts these for us.   Feel free to play along for some yummy fun! She will post a new one each Thursday night.   JOIN IN!!!   Food 4 Thought Friday ~ This week's questions:   ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥   Breakfast ~ Have you ever won a trophy?  What for? The only trophy I remember winning is for baton twirling.  I was quite the twirler in my youth.  Unfortunately, my instructor moved so I quit taking lessons. Lunch ~ Have any question answered, what would it be? Wow!  That is very broad . . . I think that one question I would love to have answered is why so many elderly people often end up reverting to a state where they no longer are able to care for themselves?  A state where they seldom have anything left, including their dignity. Dinner ~ What did you...

Ash and Mark just bought a trailer, it is called a Toy Hauler because the back opens, the beds raise to the ceiling, and you can park your "toys" (4 wheelers, etc) right inside the trailer.  Obviously they were excited to take it out for camping test drive.  They invited Kim and I and Kalel to stay with them in their trailer.  Robin and Cory and Corbin brought up their trailer also and Shandra, Jason, and Raelyn brought a tent and stayed in the same campsite with us.  We just went to the canyon in the mountains above our house, just about 7 miles away, but it felt like we were in a whole new world away from everything. Mark had pulled the trailer up the night before so Ash and I and the kids headed up there around noon on Friday to get the weekend started.  It was very nice, although very dirty.  The kids didn't mind the dirt at all! Later everyone else joined us except for Mark who came up the next day because he had to work.  We decided to have ...

Food  4  Thought   Friday! A little feast without the calories!!   Please visit  Jodi's blog!   She posts these for us.   Feel free to play along for some yummy fun! She will post a new one each Thursday night.   JOIN IN!!!   Food 4 Thought Friday ~ This week's questions:   ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥   A THOUGHTFUL Food 4 Thought Friday Breakfast ~  What is consuming your thoughts currently? My thoughts lately have been centered on how to balance everything – my checkbook, my work schedule, my relationship with God, my emotions, my family cares and worries, my health.  I pretty much feel as though I am twirling plates in the air trying to make sure that none fall – and just as I start to feel like I have it under control more plates are added causing a whole new balancing act to begin. Lunch ~  What is the most thoughtful thing you did this week? ...

Midterm :  a word that strikes horror in students who aren't prepared - and even those who are!  My two Pharmacology classes had midterm exams this week.  The situation was as bad as I feared.  Pharmacology is one of the hardest classes and the tests are always killer.  Before the test all of my students were between 90-98% - all A's.  After the test more than one had a failing grade.  (Nursing classes require that you have at least 77% [C+] to pass, so anyone whose grade was a C or lower gets an F).  So - time to evaluate.  Did I fail to teach the students effectively, did I fail to give them the tools that they need to pass the exam?  Did the students fail to study?  Did they study but not in a manner that would allow them to pass the test?  Do the students all suffer from test anxiety?  Was the test badly written?  I just hate it when my students don't test well. After doing some research I feel that the test w...

Food  4  Thought   Friday! A little feast without the calories!!   Please visit  Jodi's blog!   She posts these for us.   Feel free to play along for some yummy fun! She will post a new one each Thursday night.   JOIN IN!!!   Food 4 Thought Friday ~ This week's questions:   ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥   Breakfast ~  What was a happy moment this week?  A happy moment this week was playing games with Ashley and Marilyn.  I just love playing games with good friends. Lunch ~  What was a sad moment this week? Sometimes teaching is difficult.  It is very frustrating and hard when you give students every opportunity to succeed but yet they choose not to take advantage for some reason.  This week I realized that I apparently care more about one student’s success than she does.  In this world of instant gratification some students don’t care or don’t understand that the...

URRRGGGG!  Can I just say that work is consuming me right now? I truly love my job!  I feel like I worked so hard to achieve this position and I feel very blessed to have it.  However, with the addition of the three labs each week in addition to my regular classes I am buried!  Thank goodness there are only a couple more labs this semester and by then they should have someone hired to help.  I think that the labs are kind of fun - a more relaxed way of teaching - but there is a lot of prep work involved.  This week the advanced class learned how to insert naso-gastric (NG tubes) and the fundamental class learned how to administer different kinds of medications such as IM and SQ injections.  They even got to practice giving TB tests (of sterile saline) on each other.  It was fun.  But there was still lesson plans to create on heart medications and the different roles of nursing (patient advocate, teacher, communicator). Because I put in ...