Final May Thoughts

Studying has paid off for Noah. He's just received 17/20 on his Biology exam and an 84% on his last Chemistry exam. His last math test he received a 95%. This coming week is finals, so you can guess what he'll be doing. Noah says, "I still think I'm going to fail Chemistry, but it's getting better." It has too. His test scores since he changed the way he studies have been a lot higher.

Today we're trying to get motivated to do much of anything, but we're having trouble. The weather's too hot so we don't want to do anything outdoors, such as ride our bikes or work in the yard. Money is tight, so we don't want to waste gas going anywhere or paying to do something. Instead, we watched a couple episodes of Heros Season 2 and one episode of Sea Quest. We did do a load of dishes and some laundry and a bit of cleaning, but not much. We're hoping to get the motivation to go work on the yard for a few hours this evening when it's cooler.

Yesterday I had went to my friend Monique's baby shower. It was fairy-themed, which meant that she and most of her family were in fairy costumes, complete with wings and fairy dust. I didn't have any wings or sparkles, but Noah did my eye makeup to be more fairy-esque. It was surprisingly fun. Not your usual run-of-the-mill shower at all. We played some entertaining games her aunt invented and her mom cooked up some delicious food. My favorite game was the clothes-line game. Each "fairy" had a basket of clothes she had to hang on the clothesline (with at least one clothes pin per item). While hanging the clothes, she also had to be holding the baby and carrying on a conversation on her cellphone. The fairy with the fasted time won. I went second and had a time of 2 minutes 23 seconds. The fastest gal's time was just over 1 minute. At least I didn't drop my baby! It was fun to see a couple of the ladies I used to work with at Insight, but it also reminded me of how happy I am not to be working in such a crazy, unstable environment.

I was looking at Craigslist at all the cute puppies and kittens and ran across a post with all the numbers of animals euthinized at the Tacoma Humane Society. The kitten rates were through the roof with 1,551 healthy kittens euthanized in 2008. That, of course, had me in tears. I turned to Noah who read it and asked, "What do they even do with the 1,551 bodies after they euthanize them?" Needless to say, that did not help stop my tears.

First day of a long vacation

We are celebrating because Noah received his best score so far on a chemistry test! Way to go, Love! He stayed up until 2 am studying for it, so it's nice to see his hard work rewarded. He got 12/22.

Noah's excited to go see Wolverine tonight with the guys. I'm still debating whether or not to go. It depends on how I'm feeling. We're trying to decide if it'll be cheesy or awesome. Hopefully the second since we thought the other X-Men movies were great.

Last night my parents dropped off some boxes filled with assignments and projects from my childhood. I'm looking forward to going through them and remembering.

May Day, Mayday!

Let me tell you how the world ends.

Ok, well, Noah insisted that would be a good opening sentence and help inspire me to write. I would disagree, but I am writing, so....

Today Noah was, as he so loving puts it, "fired for being incompetent" from his job at the coffee shop. It sucks because there was no warning. We went in to pick up his paycheck and Michele pulled him aside and said, "I'm taking you off the schedule." At least she offered to be a reference.

I feel angry over the whole thing and, perhaps worse, justified in my anger because I don't understand why they would let him go. He's great with people, is a hard worker, and is great at the food prep. So even if he did mess up a coffee a day, he was still new and learning and at least he tried and cared. And I'll admit, I am completely biased in my view. I love him to death and think the world of him, so when someone hurts him, it really upsets me. I can't even imagine what I'll be like when we have kids!

Noah can't really explain how he feels. He says he thought he was doing ok, but clearly he wasn't so he doesn't feel his thoughts hold any weight. After talking to Michele, he understands the logistics of it - Their business is based on repeat-customers and if they're complaining, then their business suffers. But he just wishes he had known that something was wrong. He would have done anything from taking a paycut, to reducing his hours or spend more time training to avoid losing the job and having to go out and try to find something new. It's not that he minds failing. He doesn't like it, of course, but it doesn't bother him. What does bother him is not improving and to not even be given the chance to improve really gets to him.

So for now we'll go back into survival mode for a bit. And tomorrow Noah will start searching for a job. Maybe something in a lab. A little experience in his field of study would be good.