Weird Week

Okay, no pictures to go along with this blog, just a whole lot of me going on about my life...no kids, all me. You can skip it if it's boring, I don't blame you. This is mostly for the sake of 1)venting and 2)journaling.

School. Well, as you may have read before, I was supposed to be in school right now. You know, finishing up those five classes I had registered for. I'm not. Here comes the story: When we returned to Hawaii, I knew I was going to go back to school at Kapiolani Community College to complete my AA. I was 16 credits away from that special piece of paper. I was also going to have a baby in November, so that meant that by some miracle I would have to complete 6 courses in one summer semester. I checked out the school schedule and it all fell into place so perfectly! So I re-applied (you have to re-apply if you have been away for a year or more) which involves an application, TB clearance (more to come on that) and an updated shot record. Then I applied for financial aid. Thus far, I have been able to pay for all of my schooling with grants and scholarships, so I was relying on these once again to pay for my education.

So on Monday, I called the financial aid office to ask where my money was (I know, why should I be expecting it, I'd been away for a year and I was only asking for it for one summer semester). As it turns out the scholarship and grant funds for the 2006-2007 school year had already been exhausted and all they could offer me were loans (no thank you, not going to tack that on to what we have already incurred with the future Dr. Todd). So I asked when the last day to withdraw from classes was as still get my full refund. It was the next day at midnight. I had a big decision to make within the next 24 hours. Summer tuition is almost twice as much as a regular semester, so it was a lot of money, not to mention the $600 in books that I still needed to purchase.

I also met with an academic counselor to discuss transferring credits to the mainland, as it looked like I may have to finish somewhere there. The counselor made me feel a little bit better. You see, Hawaii requires you to take certain courses that are only related to Hawaii and Asian Pacific Studies that are not required on the mainland. My A.A., had I gotten it, would only be accepted among other University of Hawaii campuses, not on the mainland. If I took it to the mainland, I would be required to take other courses to make up for the classes that they don't accept. Do you call all of this a "tender mercy" or what?

So, I came home, talked it over with Todd and did the saddest thing ever...I withdrew from the last five classes. It was hard, but knowing that it was probably best that this all came about was a good thing. I got an awesome dance class out of it and the info about TB. Here comes the other part of the weird week.

Okay, like I said before, UH system requires that you have TB clearance before being admitted to school. I took a TB test and it came out positive. I took one in 2004, and it came out negative, so as the detective Dr put it, "somewhere between 2004 and 2007 you have come in contact with someone; whether it be at the grocery store, a plane, walking by them on the street, who has TB. These TB particles are so microscopic." This particular Dr. was very serious and almost made it sound like whomever got this was going to die right away. I am an optimist and not an extremist. His explanation was all a little over the top to me. Lame, Whatever, I was bored.

I admit to taking none of this very seriously. It all seems a bit like a nuisance to me and I have ZERO of the symptoms and the way they (the Dr.'s) have kind of lazily gone about all of this makes me not too worried. I took the test in April and just now I am having the X-ray (okay, well that was because they had to wait until the baby was further along). And, I am getting conflicting advice on the TB antibiotic being taken while pregnant. So, I had the x-ray, if TB shows up in the x-ray I take this medicine for 6 months. If I don't have TB in the x-ray, I take this antibiotic for 9 months. Big deal, it seems like either way I have to take some sort of pill. I find out tomorrow the results and I will get a third Dr.'s opinion on the TB antibiotic.

Any of you ever tested positive for TB?

Another weird thing. We ordered a sofa March 1st. I hate living on a rock in the middle of the ocean for maybe only this one reason...it takes so long for things to get here! I have called and hounded and hounded these people asking where my sofa is. It is made in California, has to be put in a carton and shipped across the ocean to get here. A week after I ordered this sofa I had buyers remorse and asked for them to cancel the order. They said they would, but they would keep $350 as a restocking fee. $350...to restock what? They hadn't even started building the sofa, it was in California, not in their showroom! AAUUGGHH!! I was so annoyed.

I also explained to them that I was very unhappy with the quality of the "crap sack" that we got. We were told that it was just like a Love Sac. It is called a siesta sack and ours, well to put it in Todd's words, is a "crap sack." Connor has a good time with it, so that's good.

Back to the sofa, On the receipt, our salesman wrote that the sofa would arrive in 4-6 weeks. 4 weeks came and went, 6 weeks came and went. I called and spoke with their cute lady in charge of shipping. She couldn't get a hold of the company in California because of the time difference. When she finally did get a hold of them, the company sent the wrong sofa. I asked her just to cancel our order and have the company in California pay our re-stocking fee. We weren't even going to live here long enough to enjoy the sofa at this point. She called back the next day explaining that the sofa was sitting on the dock and would be shipped out with the next boat.

Today, May 24, almost 3 months later, they have our sofa here on the island and are supposed to be delivering it today. We'll see.

Now to the computer keyboard. I was in a cleaning frenzy on Monday and took the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to just about everything, including the computer keyboard. It must have been too wet because once I was through and sat down at the keyboard to do some blogging, I realized that the E, Y, U, T, the space bar, and delete key weren't working! I shorted out our keyboard. It was one of those nice ones that is supposed to help you from getting carple tunnle or something. I called Todd and we laughed about it and he brought home and old one from his office. So now I am getting carple tunnle typing on this keyboard (just kidding).

Anything else? Hmmm, not yet! Oh, a cute story:
Yesterday Connor came up to me and asked if we could go swimming. I told him no, because Abi was sleeping. He got really sad and kept saying "water" over and over again. I held him and said, "what do you want" and he took my hand and walked me into the bathroom. He wanted to go swimming in the bathtub! How cute! Of course I let him, it was the best of both worlds, Abi could sleep while he "swam."