Thursday, October 27, 2011

Pick One

I was just going to ask for you to vote on these, but I decided to make it educational.  For Halloween, I'm not dressing up, mostly just because I'm lazy, BUT I'm going to paint my face like a calavera.  I could teach you about them on my own, but I'm feeling lazy and my husband is getting jealous of the computer, so I'm gonna give you a link courtesy of good old wikipedia.  You could also Google it, but you'll mostly find a bunch of stuff about Calavera County in California.  I suggest Google images.  Some of them are pretty.  Until then, vote on these!  Should I paint my face like the flowery, colorful one?  Or the cool, black and red one?  1 or 2?  I'll reveal the winner sometime after Halloween ;)



Monday, October 17, 2011

Now I Know My ABC's


Back in the day when people still used Myspace I was addicted to posting surveys about myself on the bulletin board.  I'm a little bit of a narcissist.  So, when I came across this ABC survey over at MrsPriss, I just couldn't help myself.  Here we go;

A. Age: 20 years 6 months and 5 days......approximately
B. Bed size: Umm....double?  I think that's what it's called.  Whatever it is, it's TOO DAMN SMALL.
C. Chore that you hate: Washing dishes.  I have issues with touching other people's food with bare hands.  Plus I have severe eczema and dermatosis (really dry skin) on my hands and if I have to get my hands wet too many times a day, I'm left in serious pain.
D. Dogs: I prefer big dogs as long as they don't jump up on me.
E. Essential start to your day: Changing a diaper.....
F. Favorite color: purple?  Today it will be purple.
G. Gold or Silver: SILVER or white gold
H. Height: 5’3″
I. Instruments you play: Piano and various percussion instruments
J. Job title: Temp. FML
K. Kids: Isabel Riley.  And as soon as we're out of my parents' house and on our feet, you best believe I'll be popping out another one.
L. Live: Northern Utah?  That's kind of sad.
M. Mother’s name: Lora
N. Nicknames: Joe, JP, J-Pard (that one's my dad's nickname for me...I don't get it either) Guera, Chuchis
O. Overnight hospital stays: Just when Isabel was born.
P. Pet peeves: Grown men that still think it's okay to be getting in fights, other grown men that think it's okay to beat on my friends, people that won't help themselves, Rent-a-Center........and that's just today.
Q. Quote from a movie: "I just feel like I'm excited, and I feel relaxed, and I'm READYYY to PARRRTAYYYYYYY oh, with the best of them, and I'm gonna go down to the riverrrrr!!!! -Bridesmaids
R. Right or left handed: Righty for almost everything.  I'm left handed when I shoot a gun.....because I'm left eyed, apparently.
S. Siblings: 3 brothers.  Riley 19, Mike 32, Vic 33
U. Underwear: Boy shorts or bikini or you know, thong, or whatever haha.  You name it, I own it.  I LOVE underwear.
V. Vegetable you hate: Brocolli, cauliflower, almost every other vegetable......
W. What makes you run late: My husband's hair.....or mine.
X. X-Rays you’ve had: Teeth, wrist, finger, other finger
Y. Yummy food that you make: Salvadoran rice, goulash, and creamy cheesy potato soup.
Z. Zoo animal: Like: Elephants!  Dislike: Snakes and bats...........and I'm afraid of hippos.

I'm a Closet Music Geek

I was totally inspired by Manski Mondays over at Holly Days to tell you about my musical background.  It's not something I talk about a lot, I'm not sure why.

We've had a piano in my house for as long as I remember.  My mom and dad have both played since they were younger, and I have great memories of my mom playing Christmas songs and my dad singing along with them.  When I was really small I started playing around with it, and not banging on the piano like other kids.  We would get home from church and I would try to remember how the songs went that we sang that day, and then I would sit at the piano until dinner time trying to sound them out.  One day, when I was 7, a lady from our ward that teaches piano was visiting my mom and she wanted to see what I had taught myself.  She told my mom that she didn't usually take kids until they turn 8, but that I was already teaching myself bad habits (story\of my life) and that I needed to learn some technique before I got used to 'playing lazy'.

So, for the next 11 years, August-May every Tuesday for half an hour, I would go to Nancy's and she would lecture me.  "You have so much natural ability, if you would just........."  "Curve your fingers."  "Count"  "Don't rush" "Practice every day"  "LEARN YOUR SCALES"  Ladies and gentlemen, I HATE SCALES.  I can do them, thanks to Nancy, but I hate them.

In 7th grade, I joined percussion.  (And you best believe, I was the only one that could do my scales on the xylophone.)  I LOVE percussion.  Honestly, I thought the rest of the band kids were REALLY WEIRD.  For example, the trombone player that ate paper and glue and one day, blew chunks all over the band room.  Then there was this really hot guy (in my opinion) that I had a monster crush on for 3 years, until I finally just gave up.  He was one of the cool ones, cause he was in percussion.  We WERE cool.  Believe me.  We were the ones telling scary stories and playing truth or dare in the back of the bus when we went to band tournaments.  The other kids were like, practicing or reading musical theory books.  Yuck.  AND our percussion ensemble won awards at every event we went to and they never placed.  So.....we win.

After 9th grade I quit band.  I didn't want to spend ALL SUMMER marching around in the heat and I DID NOT want to wear a stupid hat.........and the other kids were weird.

At least I still had piano.  My grandma made me a deal that when she died, she would leave me her piano as long as I took lessons until I was 18.  I would have liked to have quit sooner, because as soon as I got my license and a job (and a boyfriend) I had other things to do.  Grandma is still alive, but I have the piano already.  She moved from her great big house to a little apartment built on to my uncle's the summer after she slipped on ice in her drive way and laid there for who knows how long.  There's not room for the piano there (and she doesn't know how to play, anyway) so I got the baby grand early.


It's the piano my dad learned on.  He plays really well considering that whenever my Grandma gave him a check for the piano teacher, he would tear it up and go fishing.  She also forced him into playing saxophone in the jazz band, but he ended up liking that better than piano.

I really miss percussion.  I miss it a LOT.  Playing the marimba was definitely my favorite.  It's almost the same as the xylophone, but it's sound is much more......Latin?  Maybe that's why I liked it so much.  Honestly, if I was given the chance to play marimba again, whether it be for an orchestra or band or for ANYTHING I would take it in a heartbeat.

This is why.  It's so damn fun!  I played this song in 9th grade, and now Carmen is my favorite opera.

The kid in the video used wooden mallets which is PERFECT for this song, but they also have yarn mallets and rubber mallets.  

So, there you go.  Deep down inside, I'm kind of a music geek.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Blog Stalk, quitting job, stuff like that...

It's time for Blog Stalk Friday again over at Rockin' Mama so go link up and then check out some other blogs! You can also link up your Twitter, Facebook, or whatever else you want.


In other news.....I know I've been kind of MIA recently.....I don't have any good excuses except that I'm reading 'The Help' and so whenever I get a spare minute I READ.  So far it's fantastic, FYI, and ya'll should read it.  When they make a book into a movie, I always try to read the book before I see the movie because (depending on the book) you find out what's going on in the characters' minds instead of just hearing what they're saying on screen.  ALSO, just something else to throw in here, I am a Harry Potter freak and if you haven't read the books there is no way you can fully appreciate the movies, so don't tell me that you do.  Anyway, I'm really looking forward to finishing this book and then seeing the movie :)

Last Monday (as in not Monday this week, but the one before) I gave my 2 weeks notice at work.  I'm really upset.  I LOVE my job, but they won't give me more than 19 hours a week and there's no benefits.  I'm just not making enough money, not to mention I spend a good portion of my check every month on gas to get to work.  It's completely on the other side of the Valley.  I cannot express how freaked out I am about this.  I know the girl that's taking my place, and she's a great girl, and she's smart, and I know that she'll care about the kids, but they're MY kids.  For the majority, I know their individual little quirks and how to get around them to make them get motivated to go to class or to get their work done.  I check all of their grades every week and keep track of what it is that they need to get caught up on.  For my students that don't speak English, I feel as though they rely on me because I'm the link between them and their teachers.  I make sure copies get made of the class materials in Spanish so that they can do the work and get credit for it.  I'm helping teach these kids an ENTIRE LANGUAGE.  Let me tell you what, you don't realize how absolutely ridiculous the English language is until you try to teach it to someone.  Like why choose and lose sound the same instead of choose and loose.  I spent 15 minutes on that the other day.  I'm just worried that some of these kids are going to get pushed aside and not get taken care of.  They KNOW that I care about them, and that's not something they get a lot from people.  They know that even though they can trust me and come to me with their problems I WILL NOT take any of their shit.  UGH anyways.  I'm getting upset and starting to freak out again.

Hopefully, I'll have more stuff coming soon.  I have some stuff up my sleeve ;)

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

My Genius Husband

This last week has been absolutely NUTS!  Mostly thanks to my genius husband.....


He's wasn't winking at the camera!  His eye was swollen shut!  It was kind of blue and purple too, but since his skin is so dark it doesn't really show up on camera.

Tuesday at work they called me to the office over the intercom.  The secretary told me that my mom was at the hospital with my husband and that I needed to call them.  Duh, I needed to call them!  So I call my mom, I can here Cangrejo MOANING in the background and all I really understood was that he drove the 4-wheeler to my mom's work and he crashed and they were in the emergency room.  Fantastic.

So I get to the hospital and his face is all bloody and his eye is GINORMOUS and he keeps mumbling about how it hurts and he keeps asking me for Isabel.

This is what happened:  He had the day off from work and he got bored so he thought it would be a good idea to go on a 4-wheeler ride.  (Now let me make this clear...our 4-wheeler isn't like one of those little, light, sporty ones that are made for like sand dunes, and trick riding, and stuff like that.  It's a Honda 4x4 Rancher, so it's really heavy duty.  Heavy duty like, my dad uses it to haul dead animals out of the mountains and to plow sometimes up to 5 feet of snow.)  Turns out, it wasn't such a fabulous idea!  He was going up a hill of dirt and the wheeler didn't make it and flipped backwards on top of him (not wearing a helmet).  One side of the handlebars hit him in the eye and the other side hit him in the chest causing the handlebar to BEND IN HALF.  He said he thinks he passed out for a few minutes and when he woke up there was blood GUSHING OUT OF HIS FACE!  He couldn't see out of one eye so OBVIOUSLY he starts freaking out because he thinks that his eye has fallen out of his head.  So thank goodness for adrenaline he somehow flips the 4-wheeler back over and drives it about a mile back to the house.  He tries calling me and my mom on our cell phones and neither one of us answer.  He went to my aunt's house next door and no one was home, so what does he do?  He gets BACK ON THE 4-WHEELER AND DRIVES 2 MILES TO MY MOM'S WORK.  He had to go on the highway to get there.  So he gets to my mom's work (she works at an elementary school) but he couldn't remember what room she was in.  His English is no bueno, but he goes to the office and asked for my mom by name.  So the secretary (who is a really scary lady) called to my mom's room and told her to come to the office.  Picture this: Hispanic man, one eye swollen shut, clothing torn, blood all over his face, can't really speak English, and this lady gets an attitude with him asking "How exactly do you know her?  Why do you need to talk to her?"  My mom gets to the office and he hugs her.  My mom tells her that he's her son-in-law and the lady suddenly changes her attitude, "Oh, would you like me to call 911?"  Uhh.....no thanks.

So my mom took him to the hospital, they got hold of me, and I got there.

They came to get him for a CT scan and x-rays of his chest.  Want to know something really funny?  I can only share this because 1-he doesn't read my blog and 2-even if he did he couldn't understand it anyways.  They injected him with some liquid when they did the CT scan.  The nurse explained to him that he would get a sensation like jumping into a jacuzzi and that it might feel like he wet his pants, but not to worry, because he wouldn't.  So they injected and he told me that his body was getting really warm and then all of a sudden he exclaims "AY! MIS HUEVOS!"  Which roughly translates to "OH! MY BALLS!"  I would have completely lost it at this point, but he was genuinely freaking out so I had to just try to calm him down.  I'm cracking up now just thinking about it.  SO we were there a while longer while the looked at the CT scan and then they sent us home with a pain prescription and an antibiotic (because he hadn't had a tetanus shot in like 8 years).  

Now get this, we had been home for TWO HOURS and the hospital called to inform us that they FORGOT to take x-rays of his chest and we needed to go back right away.  He had a CHEST CONTUSION and they FORGOT to take an X-RAY of his CHEST.  So we took him back to the freakin hospital and they took x-rays of his chest.  Says there's nothing wrong (thank goodness) and not to be alarmed if he coughs up blood for a few days (which he did.)

Thursday we went to a PLASTIC SURGEON (OMG I never thought I would go to talk to a plastic surgeon about anything).  Here's the low down.  Usually, you break the bone that's under your eye.  My talented husband broke the bone that's in between his eye socket and his nasal cavity and the muscle that moves his eye is in the place where the bone is supposed to be.  Fabulous.  If they operated they could do damage to other muscles and his eyelids could go all droopy SO we're hoping it will heal itself up.  Until then, we have to go back to the plastic surgeon once a week to check on progress and he's out of work for a while because he can't get dust in his eye or do to much heavy lifting.  Hey, doctor, this shit is gonna be expensive!  So yesterday I gave my 2 weeks notice :(  As bad as I don't want to be a temp and work in a factory, I'll be making more than double what I'm making now.  Poop.  At least he'll be home and I won't have to pay a babysitter :)