Fail!

Ok well maybe not fail as in a F but yea...in my EMS class you have to get an overall of 80% in the class to take your ride-along and hospital clinical rotation. My teacher averaged it out to not missing more than 10 on 3 tests. Well guess what, I've miss more than 10 on my first 3 tests...my lowest score was a 72% and my highest 78%. Still a C...but not what I need to "pass". My teacher said he will work with the 78% one since I do well with the hands-on labs, but I had to pass the next test (which is tomorrow). Normally I'm not a bad test taker (unless it was math class). But you know how normal, multiple-choice tests are...you look at your answer options and if you know it, you know it right away and if you have to think about it, usually you don't know it. Now with these tests, there are so many "trick" questions. Ugh I guess trick questions really aren't the right thing to call them...there are so many steps in EMS and they vary depending on the patient and the nature of the call. So for these tests you do have to think about the answers. But if you think too much, you'll most likely get it wrong. So where do you draw the line?

It also doesn't help that I go once a week. Sundays from 9 a.m.-6 p.m. It's a long class, it doesn't feel that long and it was a good deal with the assumption I would have a job by now...buuuuuuut my teacher teaches the chapters on power point...and doesn't do a lot of class interaction. Most teachers will do things like "why do you think this...?" before elaborating. He doesn't. He'll answer our questions and he's really cool and really nice, I just don't think he's a good teacher. This isn't just me, a few of his classes have only had like 10 students out of 30 pass....

So here is what my plan is. I hate saying it,but for this term I give up. I'm going to keep going of course (the class is already paid for!), keep attempting to learn, but I'm not going to fret over the tests. I am going to take the class next term, more days a week with a different instructor. I don't learn by reading a text book, and I don't learn by the teacher zooming through a power point. Seriously, we do like 5 chapters a day and then test on it the following Sunday. I'm just going to look at it as extra practice. It's not that I can't do these things, this guy's tests aren't easy. PLUS I have to switch from the nursing side of health care to the EMS side, and trust me, they are so different! And I'm trying to not get too discouraged. It's hard though when financially I need to be working (which I kinda sorta am. I have agreed to babysit a friend's 5 year old son, but his mom works odd hours so it's not every day...they agreed to pay me $100 a week and they bring him here and bring some food with him...so I'm not wasting gas and food. I've only done it one day so far so we'll see how it goes.)

EMS is something I really want to do! I already love this career and I haven't even gone out there and done it yet. I can already see the rewards and I enjoy the chaos in my work day that I will be. Just pretending with manikins is a slight rush. I just can't retain the information for tests when a ton is being crammed into my head one day a week. AND I've always been horrible at studying. :(

Upcoming months...Wow I write too much haha.

As I said in the last post, Adam reclassed. He discovered his orders already posted on his AKO account and here is the verdict on the new duty station (as of now...and if you haven't been keeping up on my FB lol): Fort Bliss, Texas with a reporting date of December 20th 2010. Of course it isn't one of the four on his wish list but whatever. We didn't get our hopes up about any of those for this reason. So where in Texas is Fort Bliss? El Paso....Where is El Paso? The corner of Texas. Which corner? Where New Mexico AND Mexico meet. At first we thought "ok cool, we can venture into Mexico now"...well my mother decided to tell me she just so happens to be in El Paso right now and that it is not a good place. From what I've been told, Juarez, Mexico (the biggest city closest to the American border where we will be) is a horrible city. Which then reminded me that lots of illegal Mexicans like to smuggle drugs and their kids in their rectum (ok well maybe not their kids in their rectum...but I hear they get pretty creative when smuggling these days lol) into our country. Now I'm not against Mexicans in anyway shape or form...unless you are here illegally. Anyway, so I can only assume the crime rate is probably somewhat high and I'm probably going to have to brush up on my Spanish just to live in my own country. Before we heard all that (in the hype of our excitement to finally know where we are going--or might be, you never know with the military) we looked up the BAH rates and apartments. WTF? Our BAH is almost $100 less AND all the apartments within the BAH range are either ghetto as all ghetto can be OR it will take the entire BAH (maybe even more) just for RENT. Not including electric and what not. And I don't do good with a lot of humidity so my AC will be running constantly. So we decided to go for base housing. We looked at the Fort Bliss website. From the pictures, that base is 10837401374019374 times better than Fort Carson. All but two of their "neighborhoods" are nicer than what we have here. Their "icky" ones are just the same as the normal ones here, which really aren't THAT. So we were happy about that. Plus they are opening a REAL shopping mall on post in the fall. No mini-mall for me!! So we got really excited. Then we started hearing all the bad things about El Paso and Juarez and were anxious to get on the waiting list for military housing. So today I called to see how to do that. Apparently not only do you need the duty orders stating you are going to be stationed at Fort Bliss, you have to have some leave form too. I'm assuming this is the leave Adam gets between the time he leaves Fort Carson and his reporting date at Fort Bliss he gets to move. So now we can't even get on the waiting list until it's practically moving time. BUT THEN they decide to tell me that the waiting list is 12-18 MONTHS! Freakin fantastic right? We get to take our daughter and live in the Bronx of Texas until they decide to give us a place to live in military housing.

But before we get to move, Adam gets to go to AIT for 2 months starting August 13th. The dumbass in retention told him 2 weeks, we found that hard to believe anyway, but it was a nice thought. I'm thinking of going home for a week or two the beginning of October to visit and go to a Twilight convention with a friend. I should be able to squeeze that in financially with Adam being gone. But we'll see. I need to look into how this whole PCSing thing works. Do we pay then get reimbursed? Or do they pay off the bat? So many things to figure out. First is first though, Adam leaves for JRTC in April for 3 weeks. I think he leaves the day after Easter? Ugh too much time apart already.

On a good note though, Lili's face is already healed. Actually it only took about a week to be almost gone! It's just a little red on her cheek area still but no more scabs. I don't think she'll have scars, but maybe I should get some Mederma anyway?

Lili's firt BIG boo-boo and some other updates...

So it's been a while since I wrote on here. I'll start with the most recent and big thing that happened. Lili's first ER trip for a boo-boo. Most of you have seen the pictures on Facebook. It was horrible. It still makes my stomach queasy remembering it. She and I had been driving around in the Focus all day (yes, I've been driving it by myself. I'm much better at it without Adam lol, but we'll get to that later). We were getting ready to go grocery shopping. We had just gotten home from getting the Expedition fixed so all of us were outside. Adam wanted to take the Expedition to make sure it was running good again but he needed to clear out his gear and some trash. Since we weren't leaving right away I put Lilian on the back seat of the Expedition to let her play around instead of making her sit strapped in her carseat. I do that all the time. I shut the door and turned back to the focus to get her diaper bag. Then I turned again to the Expedition and opened the door. I have no idea where my head was. I always check to make sure she isn't near the door. Always. But this one time, I didn't. And she was leaning against it. I think I had been talking to Adam so I wasn't looking at the door when I opened it, and by the time I turned to put the bag in there, Lilian was already halfway to the ground. I screamed before she even hit the pavement and had her flipped over checking her out before she could even start crying. I was expecting at least one laceration that would need stitches. Thankfully I could just tell it was a little bit of road rash, but I told Adam we needed to go to the ER to make sure she didn't have a concussion. I jumped in the back seat while he moved everything lying on the ground to the Focus and we left. I didn't even grab my purse and we were heading to the military hospital. I knew they would let me on post though, once they saw Lilian. And I was right. Lili had been crying the whole time, it wasn't a bloody murder scream either, which also surprised me. But then she tried falling asleep and that's finally when the little EMS training kicked in and I knew I needed to keep her awake. She tried so hard to sleep but we managed to stay awake. We got to the ER, got her admitted, they cleaned the dirt and bits of pavement off her face and got her triaged. When she finally got looked at, it was literally only long enough for the doctor to look at her eyes, ears and nose and ask the questions about lose of consciousness and vomiting. That's the only part of the look-over that comforted me. If I had stayed calm when it first happened, I would have realized she probably didn't have a concussion. But better safe than sorry and I would have taken her anyway. She's much better now. This happened on March 1st, she's still got road rash on her face, and a black eye that showed up later on. But she's normal and active and happy. :)

So that was that. Her first ER trip for an injury. Not fun. But on other good news, I've been driving the Focus by myself! :) As I said before, I've been doing a bit better without Adam in the car but I still have my moments. Monday I stalled a bunch, but only in like parking lots and twice going on post. Tuesday I didn't stall at all but was having a rough day shifting. No idea what was going on but I kept putting it in the wrong gear!

Still working on finding a job. Helzberg hasn't called me back, but I am still working on a YMCA interview I did and I had another one on Tuesday at a different YMCA location. I have a good feeling about that one, though I'd rather work at the first one. It's closer and a much nicer facility. But I will take what I can get for now!

For those of you who don't know, Adam has re-enlisted. But he chose to re-class (change his MOS/job) so we don't get much of a say in PCSing (moving...sorry Military is all code talk lol). We were surprised to find out he got a wishlist so hopefully they'll take that into some consideration. He got to choose four locations and he chose Fort Lewis, WA to be close to my family; Fort Bragg, NC which is close to his parents; Fort Sill, OK which is where his AIT (job training/school) is; and of course Fort Shafter, HI....of course I'm rooting for Hawaii but financially we'd benefit more from Fort Bragg. We plan on at least renting a house when we move next and I started looking at housing in those 4 areas, assuming we'd get one of them. Fort Bragg's BAH is $1065 a month and their housing is like $800-900 for decent houses. So we'll see, he goes to AIT for two weeks starting August 13th then after that we move. His re-enlistment ceremony is next week and we are hoping they'll give him his new duty orders soon so we can start planning this move. I'm excited to get out of Colorado. Not happy about leaving the like 2 friends we have here, but we can always visit each other. :)