rhondalicious

So I decided to write out the scales the way my clarinet teacher likes us to play them at school, I might as well upload it and share it, since I spent the last 3 hours making it exactly the way I wanted it! I guess it’s good I took the music tech class last semester, but some of the things I needed to know to make this file, I still had to learn on my own :-D

Major Scales

So lately I’ve been really into making “rinchies”, which are little round 1″ circles with art on them – I’ve mostly been making them into bottle cap necklaces. I also plan on making a few magnets from the flattened glass marbles, and some little pins/badges from the bottle caps as well.

In the spirit of giving, I’m going to share a freebie graphic I put together of the Barbie logo – my daughter wants a Barbie bottle cap necklace, and so of course I had to make a full sheet of rainbow logos. It’s a 4×6 print, perfect to get printed on photo paper, to create a really bright and vibrant project.

Click the preview to download the image!

Hosnap! 3.86 GPA for my first semester back in school! This old lady has still got smarts…

Anthropology = A-
Music Tech = A
Brass Practicum = A
Aural Skills = B+
Music History = A
Percussion Practicum = A

Not too bad at all. I’m still a little sad that my cumulative GPA is only 3.51 due to the semester I had to end early when my son was born before finals, but even so, 3.51 isn’t bad, and it’ll go up if I have 2 more years of grades like this :)

So I noticed that time flies when school keeps a household busy! I’ve successfully survived most of my midterms, a month of basketball, and now we’re heading into ballet recital preparation!

Last month when I went in for my ADD meds checkup, my doctor started asking me about weight, since I hadn’t lost any since my previous visit, despite me stating I was starting to exercise – and yes, I promise I have indeed been exercising multiple hours a week, walking to class from parking spots a quarter mile away, biking to school when it was warmer (too cold now! I’m a baby).

Anyhow, based on past bloodwork trends, last year I was looking to be pre-diabetic, which is why I was trying really hard to stick with whole grains, low-ish glycemic snacks and treats, with only occasional indulgences (I was using the No-S method, no sweets, no seconds, no snacks, unless it’s a special S day). Since that hasn’t been making a dent on my size and symptoms, she asked me to start a more strict method of nutrition (not really a DIET because that leads you to assume that someday it will be done and you can go back to your “normal” eating habits).

When we have insurance again, we will actually check my levels of insulin/thyroid/whatever, but in the meantime, I think the evidence tells. I lost 7 pounds in the 14 days I spent on the Belly Fat Cure Fast Track, and I’m on day 9 of the 14 days on Belly Fat Cure (less strict than Fast Track) and my weight completely stalled. Which means my body is most likely highly insulin resistant, probably type 2 diabetic, and I need to wave goodbye to my friends sugar and refined flour.

I’ll try to write again soon, I’ve always got lots on my mind, it’s just hard to find time when I’ve got to keep my kids on track and my house tidy-ish.

Is it just me, or do books cost way more than you’d expect? If I bought all my books on Half.com it would be $500 plus shipping (45 bucks for it to come in 5 to 7 days, or else 90 to 100 bucks to get it in 2 or 3 days) and then waiting. If I get them locally, most of them aren’t available used, and so it would be more like $1000. Looks like online may be the way to go, even if it means not having my books till next week. So far only one class is assigning homework from the books. Oh, and don’t forget that I need $50 for a kit of percussion sticks. YIKES.

First day of music history, and I already discover that the oldest known composer is first of all a woman, second of all a priestess, and third of all a princess! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enheduanna

See, I am already learning fascinating stuff. School is awesome, kids!

OK, Now I’ve got the bare bones of the new Orem Children’s Chorale website up, and it coordinates with the already existing website for The Orem Chorale – I made it so that they use the same layout, but with different headers. The adult choir has some medieval sheet music as the background, and the kid’s choir has some easy piano sheet music. Subtle, but enough to make it so you know exactly which website you’re looking at.

If you feel like looking, http://www.oremchorale.org and http://childrens.oremchorale.org are the two sites.

I also made a basic information flyer for the new choir to go to school for open house. I’m using the website header on the flyer, so everything has a uniform look. I hope that people like it!

So here’s the skinny. I’m fat, and I need to do something about it. I’m 192 pounds on the nose according to my Wii. I wear size 14, sometimes size 16 pants, and an XL shirt/dress size. My measurements are 46/36/46 – wearing a 38 H cup. Oh, and I’m 5’1&1/2.” I think the closest I have to a “body twin” is model Denise Bidot (except she’s 5’9″). There is really only two things I dislike about my body, and that’s my scoliosis and my loose belly skin from having my kids. Neither one is fixable without surgery, but supposedly both would be benefited from dropping some weight. The funny thing is, I’m pretty fit for being “obese” – I can jog a mile, I can do a 5K (slowly). I can hike and dance, but I feel like I could do these things better if I was even more fit.

So I need to exercise more – I already eat pretty few calories, and what I do eat is OK. Not fantastic, but not terrible, and I don’t feel deprived at all. I also know I have a tendency to fall into disordered eating habits if I get too anal about calories. So since my calorie intake is already under 2000 calories a day, I don’t want to push it there.

So, exercise. I think I need to get my bike fixed. I already walk some, but I get really bored just walking around by myself, and because of my bustiness running is physically painful. Biking is a good way to get cardio without the bust bumping around, but my brake line was cut by some punk kid 2 summers back.

I do really enjoy working out on my Wii, but I hate being called obese by the taunting little voice on my Wii Fit. I have a long time to go before it will stop scolding me, and sometimes I think I’ll never be able to get below 150, but if I’m going to do something about it, now is probably the time.

I wonder how feasible it would be to bike to school – maybe I should try it before school starts?

So I guess now I can write about my life more, since the state can’t re-license us as foster parents, which means no kids in my home that I have to preserve privacy rights for (too bad, though, you get to hear about my own kids whenever I want to write about them!). Apparently if you cannot support your family financially WITHOUT the foster care monthly disbursements, then you are not allowed to be foster parents. Since my husband lost his job back in February, that means we are basically untouchables. The state had to remove the girls from our home, to a new set of foster parents, all because this economy is crud.

My poor husband is feeling even more stress and pressure, growing pretty much exponentially day by day – he has had 52 interviews since he was laid off. It’s been about 25 weeks. More than 2 interviews a week, not counting phone interviews. He has been applying for dozens of jobs a day, hundreds of jobs a week. His resume has been chosen as “one of the top 2 or 3 candidates” a few different times now, and so far they have always chosen “the other guy.” Well, that’s great for him, but I’m starting to feel like it needs to be my husband’s turn to be “the other guy.”

Right now he is at some sort of working interview – he’s going in to work a half day, then do a presentation on what he learned. I hope that he does well – he gets nervous speaking on the fly in front of crowds, but I also know that he is determined to do whatever must be done to get a job, even (or especially) if it involves going outside of his comfort zone.

So sad that an intelligent, educated, well experienced guy like him has to be dragged through the mud and made to feel like he is worthless because someone is always “better suited for the position” than him.

I also applied for a few jobs on campus. If there’s something I can do while the kids are at school, that can bring in enough money to help even a little bit, I’ll do it. I haven’t heard back yet, but at least I know I have experience in one of the jobs I applied for – newspaper delivery for the school paper! At least doing it for the school will be infinitely easier than doing it for the Daily Herald, Deseret News, Salt Lake Tribune, USA Today, and NY Times(yes, all at once. That was insane.).

My baby Tink is starting kindergarten, and my little Peter Pan is starting second grade. I really liked being room mom last year, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it this school year – maybe for Pan’s class, I can do all the room mom stuff in the afternoon when I don’t have school myself.

This year, the kids get a new experience – school breakfast. One of my classes starts at 8 am, and so I’m going to get the kids in the breakfast program so that on Tuesdays and Thursdays I can drop them off on my way to school. At least it means a little less work for me in the morning, since I won’t have to cajole them into eating before we have to leave… I just need to get them dressed and over to the school before they complain too much about being hungry!

Oh, and haha. I just noticed that I’ve mentioned me going to school a few times, but I don’t think I’ve written much about that here on the blog – back in April, I attended a foster care symposium, and one of the speakers told us not to let caring for traumatized kids get us burnt out, and another told us to accomplish our dreams, and don’t talk ourselves out of it. Well I already knew I was queen of convincing myself not to do things, so my husband told me to just go for it. I initially had things set up to go to summer semester, but with my last foster care case that ended up being impossible. So in a way, having the foster kids go is a blessing, because it opened up fall semester for me. I’m going back for a Bachelor’s of Music Education, back on the road I started on waaaay back in 1999 at CSULA.

So that puts me here, in this new position of mom and student. If I can do this, and get everything done in the next 2 or 3 years, then I will become a teacher and can bring a lot of blessings to both the community I teach in, and to my family. If we are ever put in a position again where my husband is laid off, then we can have my education and career to fall back on.

Right now it’s kind of like I’m sitting in one of those white water rafting boats, floating in a lull, but able to see the rapids ahead. It’s going to be wild, scary, and probably at least a little dangerous, but afterwards the experience will bless me (as long as I manage not to lose anyone over the side of the raft along the way!).

Wish us luck!

I made a cute flyer for the lesson I’m teaching today, I figured I would put it here to share with anyone else who might want it:

This flyer was assembled from the Shabby Princess PlentifulKit and the Augie font.