Snow in May… it DOES happen!

We had inches of snow on the ground the other night! Snow in May! Can we all say blech?! How disappointed was I to look outside this past Saturday morning and see snow covering the ground… very! Definitely sucked! Oh and I definitely have pictures of it, however, I’m too lazy to upload them right now. I’m currently sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by school papers and wrapped in my heating blanket. I’m freezing!

I just finished with my ABR online final exam and I’m just hoping that I pass the class. I didn’t think that the exam was overly hard, but there were a few questions on it that definitely tripped me up a little bit and I don’t think that we really talked about them in class either. I had until midnight Thursday night to take the exam, but I wanted to get it out of the way right away and I did. We were given two hours to take the exam and I finished in an hour and 20 minutes… not too bad considering it was only seven questions.

Last week was our last week of classes and I’m so glad to be done, however I was on campus a LOT longer than I had wanted to be today. On Friday we were in Madison listening to capstone presentations all day and they went well. Pretty boring for the majority of the day, however it definitely beat sitting in class all day and we got some yummy free food!

Soccer was cancelled on Saturday due to the snow, total bummer, or NOT since it meant that I got to sleep in. We left for my mom’s house just before 10am and got there just in time to help start lunch. My sister and I gave her the Mother’s Day gift that we had made. I’ll have to see if I can attach it somehow, but right now, you guessed it, too lazy. It’s pretty cute and hilarious too! We spent some of the afternoon there before heading over to Jay’s parent’s house.

Ayden and chilled out there while everyone else went to church for Steven’s confirmation. Afterwards a bunch of people came over, we had supper, and then I left to come back to Point with the intent of getting my take home test done on Sunday. Oh… and getting to sleep in my bed all ALONE on Saturday night. What a great Mother’s Day gift, lol!

Yes, I do enjoy sleeping in my bed alone and I slept SO great Saturday night and even got to sleep in on Sunday morning which hasn’t happened in a LONG time! Of course, I shouldn’t complain because some parents never get to sleep in, even on a rare occasion. Speaking of Mother’s Day (of which I didn’t mind spending alone getting homework done and soaking up some Lifetime), Jay and Ayden surprised me with a new lens for my camera. I was very surprised and excited! It is a zoom lens, not a mega zoom one, but one that will work for trips to the zoo, one that I can use for zooming in on Ayden when he plays soccer now. I’m excited to get to use it at his next game.

So today I went out and bought some Kiss Everlasting fake nails and let me tell you, they do not disappoint. I’ve only ever gotten my nails professionally done once and I will never do it again. First, it was expensive, and secondly, I didn’t have them professionally removed and it took over six months for my regular nails to grow back and I hated that. My regular nails have been very brittle and crappy for the past couple of months. I’m sure that means that I’m not as healthy as I should be in some form or another, right?! Lol… anyways, because of that I keep them cut pretty short. But I’ve been seeing these nails on TV and wanted to try them out.

I’ve tried fake store bought nails many years ago and did not have very good success with them. Don’t know if it was the brand or what, but wasn’t going to try that again either. This time, I couldn’t resist though. And let me say, wow, total surprise, definitely not a wasted $5! At quick glance, you can’t even tell that they are fake nails! Even at a longer than quick glance. Actually, only the thumb nails look like they have a fake nail glued onto them and it isn’t even overly evident. They feel kind of weird, but I remember that from the time I had them professionally done. I also got the short kind because I am used to my nails being short and they look good. I’m excited to have ‘cute’ looking nails for once, lol!

So, I’m taking some family pictures for a friend this weekend. This is a friend who I haven’t taken pictures for yet. Another friend of ours will be there too. Well, I was just asked by this second friend if I would be able to give the first friend the pictures the same day as I took them. Said second friend and first friend are a little closer than me and first friend and said first friend asked second friend to ask me. Confused yet, lol! Anyways, although I’m not in business, not getting paid for any pictures I take, I normally don’t give any pictures to people that I take some for until I’ve edited them. I’ve taken pictures for another friend twice now and I’ve edited the pictures and then sent them to her along with the originals that I liked good enough to keep.

I’m rather hesitant to give this friend her pictures before editing them. I know I can take at least halfway decent pictures, but its the editing that ‘fixes’ them and makes them look more than just someone was taking a snap shot. I like editing the pictures I take and then showing the people that I took them for because I know they look better than the originals. I don’t want my friend to be disappointed because they are not perfect out of the camera. Secondly, I don’t want to her have them before I edit them because then she will have free reign to put up the unedited ones on facebook. Now, she has every right to do what she wants with the pictures, I don’t care, just so long as she doesn’t take credit for them. However, the credit will go to me and I don’t want people seeing unedited pictures of mine and thinking she’s not all that good.

No, I should not care what other people think. Yes, by putting mostly edited pictures up on facebook I am giving people an unrealistic expectation of what my skills are, but yes, I do say that the majority of my pictures are edited in some way. I don’t know… I guess it just bugs me because its like editing is the fun part for me, well I have fun taking the pictures too, and if she wants the pictures right away, then the fun part is sort of sucked out because I can’t take what I have in camera and create something really great for her because she’ll already have seen the pictures. Oh booger! UGH! What to do? What to do?

CIAO! LOVE ME!

Ayden’s Hearing Sensitivity!

I took Ayden with me to the clinic tonight because I had to use of the machines for my final exam. I wasn’t going to, however, he wanted to come and I didn’t think that we would be there that long so it wasn’t going to be that bad. What I needed to finish was going to take like five minutes, if I could remember how to use the machine, lol.

I was right, it did only take me five minutes to get done what I needed too and then… I grabbed the chance to look in Ayden’s ears. I don’t know if I’ve said anything before, but he has this big chunk of ear wax (or what I’m assuming is ear wax) in his left ear, so much so that I can’t see his ear drum in that ear and it’s been there since LAST August (that I know of because his doctor said something about it at his five year old check up and then I’ve been keeping an eye on it at school). His doctor said that it would work its way out… and it hasn’t moved AT ALL! You know, because I’ve been checking. Yes, I admit that I have what might some consider a sick obsession of looking in my son’s ears. I’m a future audiologist, so sue me, lol!

And so, the ear wax hasn’t moved yet. I also looked in his other year and saw what I thought was a retracted ear drum. However, I can’t be sure since I haven’t actually seen one in person yet, just pictures and it didn’t look overly pulled back. Well, to determine if it was or not, I ran tympanograms on him. That test tells me how well his middle ear is functioning. On previous times that I’ve run this test on Ayden, I’ve gotten abnormal results, but both times, he had a cold and so the results were explainable. This time… NORMAL! So excited! I was about done then, but Ayden really wanted me to play the ‘beeps’ for him. IE: give him a hearing test.

Well, at his five year old check up, the nurse did a short hearing screening with one of their tools and said that he wasn’t responding at the lowest levels for a few frequencies. I don’t remember what they considered the lowest level, but his doctor wasn’t overly concerned. She said we could follow up with hearing test with an audiologist or just wait and see at his next appointment how it was, since it wasn’t exactly a loss. I wasn’t concerned because I knew I could test him at school, versus having to get it done at the doctor’s office.

I tested his hearing a couple of months ago, but didn’t really get reliable results since he wasn’t responding as he should and was fidgeting the whole time. This time, I just tested one frequency quieter than what we consider the ‘highest’ normal level, both for the tones and speech. And… he’s NORMAL! I wasn’t concerned that he had a hearing loss, but I did want to know what he was hearing. And since I didn’t actually find his thresholds, I’m sure he hears a little better than what I stopped at.

Below is an audiogram of where some everyday sounds fall. On the left side you see the levels in decibels. It goes from 0 (which is really quiet, and actually we test down to –10, up to 120 which is really loud) IE: leaves rustling are quiet and lawn mowers are really loud) and along the top are the different frequencies from 125 really low pitched sounds, to 8000 really high pitched sounds. We consider anything 20-25 dB and lower normal hearing. Ayden is hearing at 15 dB, possibly even better because I only tested that low.This is an audiogram of what someone’s normal hearing thresholds would look like once plotted.So, after all of this, I wanted to try and take a picture of Ayden’s ear drums with this otoscope camera we have at school. However, I couldn’t get it to work. BOO! But, I will, and I will bring Ayden back in to take a picture because I’m crazy like that! We are always looking for something different to take pictures of.

And then, I went in and tried to get rid of that ear wax! I want it OUT! Unfortunately, it was not to be moved! Its hard and dark, like you needed to hear that, and not moving anytime soon! But this was the first time I had Ayden at school where I had the materials I needed to really get a good look at the ear wax and even attempt to remove it. Ayden sat really good and still in the chair and I even got to pick at it a little bit and he said that it wasn’t hurting. I didn’t try too hard to remove it because our professor was adamant about us not going any further than we were comfortable with and well Ayden’s my son, so of course I’m going to be extra careful.

But seeing that it hasn’t moved any in almost a year, at Ayden’s six year check up, I am going insist that his doctor remove it, and/or if she can’t, that we be referred to an ENT who can remove it. ENTs usually remove ear wax with an operating microscope. Jay’s asked if I could get one of my supervisors to remove it (the one who taught us) and I was like no way am I having him put something in Ayden’s ear! I’ve had him look in my ears before and it’s not necessarily very comfortable, I don’t want Ayden scarred for life, lol!

Okay, not that you really want to read a whole post about ear wax and hearing tests… but if you got this far, you did anyways, lol!

And since Ayden was such a gem while I was at school and even let me look in his ears, I treated him to Cold Stone when we left! YUM!

CIAO! LOVE ME!

Taking a hesitant deep breath…

Last day of class for the semester today and it all went pretty well, surprisingly enough. Go figure, right?! I was on campus by 7am and class didn’t start until 9am. Why? Because during my 9am class we had our final exam and the amount of studying that I had one the night before was just a little more than nil. The two extra hours of studying I got in before the test are was solidified the ease with which I flew through the test with. Overall, I was really happy with the test, mostly because every question on it came from the study guide exactly. The first two questions kind of threw me because I was under the impression we would be able to chose the mini-conference labs we wanted to write about, and then she had those chosen already for us. I wrote what I could for it though. The whole test was A LOT of writing, but I felt pretty good when I turned it in and am not worried about my grade in that class at all anymore.

My second class went kind of slow, but I made it through it just fine. Glad to have it done with. That class has a take home final which is super long, but I just finished reading through the test and it doesn’t seem too hard. I’m thinking it will take about two hours or so for me to get the whole thing written up, but that is okay. Much better than having to study for it and worry about getting a good grade. This is one of those classes where I know the professor wants us to learn the material versus worry about getting a good grade in the class. She said we can even ask her questions about the test, just so long as she doesn’t give us the answer. She is VERY accommodating which is great.

Speaking of exams… I had my overall hearing evaluation practical exam yesterday and it went GREAT! I by no means did perfect, because there is always stuff that I can do better with, no one is perfect, but I think I did really well. I’ll be happy with anything A- or better, definitely don’t think I deserve anything lower than an A-. In any case, I was anticipating being A LOT more nervous with all three supervisors in the room with me watching every move that I was making, however I was SO calm and laid back and just went through the eval as I would with any other patient.

I was one of my classmate’s ‘patient’ for her practical and she did so great right up until the end where she totally flubbed up one part of it. I was sitting in the sound booth feeling so horrible for her because I knew what she was supposed to be doing and she wasn’t doing it. About halfway through that portion of the test she realized that she had messed up. I think she was just super nervous about it because she does it fine during regular clinic evals every week. She’s really worried that she is going to have to do it over. I don’t know if she will or not, but I still feel bad for her because I know she can do it, we practiced it together. It will all work out as it should!

After her practical, we had our big written exam for being a first year grad student and I was SO miffed to find that almost the entire test had to do with stuff that we don’t regularly do during clinic stuff. Thankfully, we were warned ahead of time by the second years that it would so we were mostly prepared, but some questions still got me. This test we keep retaking until we pass. I’m relatively certain I passed the first time, however won’t be too surprised if I had to retake it. I’d like to not have to do that, however you can only get like 6-8 questions wrong before having to retake it and there were at least that many that I wasn’t too confident on when it came to the answers that I was writing down. So yeah…

Anyways, my last class of the day, which is like my least favorite class of the semester because it is almost two hours long and it has been super boring all semester went a LOT faster today than I think all semester. It was actually halfway decent too and I liked the way the professor organized the material and I think I got the most of this class than many of them throughout the semester. I was happy with that and then headed to pick Ayden up from school.

We came home and practiced his soccer some and then had supper. After supper I ran off to Kohls because I had $10 in Kohls cash that was going to expire today along with a 15% coupon, I mean who could pass that up?! So off I went and when I found this tee shirt I couldn’t pass it up! I mean, it is SO me, right?! Take a look for yourself!Yeah, I thought so! Other than the fact that my hair isn’t blond or long enough to put up in a ponytail like that, I’m always behind the camera, so I definitely thought it was fitting, hehe! I’m totally wearing it this weekend! I’d wear it tomorrow, however, since I am such a dedicated student, I am accompanying my classmate tomorrow afternoon for her clinic slot where she will doing an ABR on a newborn. I wouldn’t be doing it, but first, it’s a baby, who can pass up seeing a newborn? And second, its with a supervisor who I haven’t seen do an ABR before, and thirdly, I definitely need the practice for my ABR practical coming up in two weeks, so all in all, it will be a good thing since it won’t take but maybe an hour a half to two hours and I don’t have anything else really scheduled for the day other than maybe starting my take home test and working for a little bit.

And then ALL day Friday… I’ll be in good ole Madtown listening to capstone presentations. I’m kind of looking forward to it, but also, I’m just ready for this week to be over with! More so, the semester… although soon enough!

CIAO! LOVE ME!

Efficient what? Overmasking, huh?!

I swear that I will be dreaming about efficient masking levels, overmasking, and sufficient masking levels ALL night long! I’m so masked out and I haven’t even had my practical or written exams yet! I’ve studied what I could tonight, but know that I will need to do a lot more tomorrow during my free time, which unfortunately won’t be all that much.

I plan on heading into campus around 8am… going to study until 9am at which time we will have our clinic meeting in which we will learn cerumen management by irrigation. After that, I will have an hour from 10-11am to study for my practical exam which will most likely run from 11-12, maybe a little shorter, maybe a little longer. Then, more studying for my written exam until 1pm, at which time I will then be a ‘patient’ for my classmates practical exam. I should only be needed for about 45 minutes, maybe an hour since she works a little slower than I do.

Then… another half hour to study before my written exam starts at 2:30pm. Definitely not looking forward to it, but I know that it doesn’t involve a TON of writing, but it does involve a LOT of masking, which is why I’ve been trying to study it so much.

Unfortunately, Tuesday night will not bring any more relaxing, as I have another test bright and early on Wednesday morning at 9am for my Hearing Science test… a test that I just started studying for a little bit tonight. That’s great, right?! And in the midst of all of this, I’m supposed to be finishing a lab write up! Will most likely get started on that lab write-up Wednesday afternoon before my last class of the day. Well maybe, since we haven’t met with our professor yet on the lab and the equipment wasn’t working last week. Katie and I joked that maybe he will say that he is too busy to grade it and that we won’t have to turn it in. Hardly! If anything, he’ll be upset that we haven’t met with him sooner and then grade us extra harshly! I swear, if I don’t get at least an ‘A-‘ in that class, I’ll be mad!

This past Saturday marked my ‘two year blogiversary’!Happy Blogiversary to me! I can’t believe that I’ve been blogging for two years now! It’s really pretty crazy, isn’t it?! It totally doesn’t seem like it has been two years, time flies SO fast! There are a lot of posts that I’d like to go back and erase completely… I’ve changed a lot in the past two years, but at some point, I might decide to print this ‘ole blog of mine off and keep it like I have my old journals. Then again, maybe not, but in any case, I can’t get myself to erase them because even thought I may regret some of the things that I’ve done in the past, I can’t change them, they’ve changed me, and continue to do so. So here’s two the last two years, and the next years to come!

Because, even though I may not have a wealth of followers, I don’t need them. I enjoy blogging, and if time continues to stay on my side (wait, my bad, time on my side?! What’s that?!), I mean, if I continue to need an outlet, I’ll be here! Sharing my stories, sharing my pictures, and enjoying the feeling that just getting almost everything in my head out gives me!

CIAO! LOVE ME!

Not Enough Time

I’ve been meaning to blog all week, however it just hasn’t happened. After Tuesday night, the rest of the week just seemed to fly by! I went to bed relatively early for the rest of the week too, well Wednesday and Thursday night that is. Well, not actually to sleep, but laid down in the bed earlier than normal. Just didn’t feel like blogging, even though I had stuff that I wanted to blog about. Even now I’m not really in the mood to blog, but I have lots of stuff that I want to write, so I thought I’d start and see where I end up.

Wednesday at school went okay. Found out that I didn’t do as well on my online test for my ABR class as I would have liked. Didn’t fail it or anything, however for it being open book and online, I would have liked to done just a bit better. All the more pressure to do good on our online final, right?! I am seriously looking forward to that class being over with!

I started watching Avatar on Wednesday night and got through the first hour and really didn’t think it was all that great of a movie. I mean, it wasn’t bad or anything, but definitely not something I would want to go see in the theater. Plus, its a long movie and so I turned it off after the first hour and went to bed.

On Thursday I didn’t do a whole lot. I didn’t have class so I didn’t need to be on campus. I went in for about ten minutes to finish some reports and then went to work for a little while. After that, I came home and relaxed on the couch for the majority of the afternoon until Ayden got home. I should have studied or worked on my lab report or done something productive, but with it being so close to the end of the semester, I’ve lost pretty much all of my ambition to do anything school related or take on any extra work. It definitely sucks!

Friday wasn’t a whole lot different. I had my practical exam for my amplifications lab and I wasn’t too worried about that. Turns out that I didn’t need to be because I only got one point off for the whole 120 points it was work… awesome! It wasn’t that hard either. After that, I went to work for a bit, and since there wasn’t a whole lot that needed to get done there, I came home. Actually, I spent the majority of Friday afternoon running errands which kept  me quite busy and hoping that the bad weather would stay away.

Friday night was the awards banquet to which my mom, dad, and dad’s wife, Wendy, came along to. Jay and Ayden stayed home, which was probably a smart thing to do considering we really didn’t get a meal, the room was VERY crowded, and it cost $12 a person (outrageous for the crap amount of food we got!). My mom spent the night and came to Ayden’s soccer game with us in the morning!

The weather has been great this weekend which makes wanting to study a lot harder! I have a test on Tuesday afternoon and one on Wednesday morning, as well as my practical hearing evaluation mid morning on Tuesday. Which means that at some point today I will need to study, or at least start to study!

After Ayden’s soccer game Saturday morning, my mom treated us to breakfast at IHop and then Jay, Ayden, and I headed off to Green Bay to meet up with my sister and go to a benefit my friend was having for her disease (myathesenia gravis). It was at a bowling alley and we all got to bowl three games for $10 (it was only $5 for Ayden). I thought that that was a good price! Ayden had lots of fun bowling and I had fun watching him. I bowled only semi decent, but I never said I was a good bowler, lol!

Then we went on a hunt to find one of the waterfalls in Green Bay with my sister. We found it all right! We didn’t get as close as I would have liked, but it was a little muddier down there than I had originally anticipated that it would be and I didn’t have the proper shoes on to go any farther towards it. Maybe if I had rain boots on or something I would have gotten closer, but oh well! It was neat getting to see it! We also went down to the bay by campus and I took some pictures down there. It was definitely a good Saturday, especially since we stopped at Hu Hot in Appleton on the way home for supper, lol! What beats Hu Hot?! Not a whole lot, lol!

Today has been pretty relaxing a well. I took Ayden ‘fishing’ this morning down by the river. And by that, I mean, I took him with his fishing pole that had a little red fish tied to the end of it so he could practice his casting down by the river, lol! Like I would take him fishing by myself?! Maybe someday, but not today, and especially since I don’t have my fishing license for this year yet.

And then this afternoon we went and got some flowers to plant in our flower beds along the back of the house and did that. If you’ll notice, not once have I mentioned anything about studying. That’s right, I’ve managed to bypass everything and anything to do with school this weekend. Oh ugh!

Still have a lab for ABR to finish, and need to make it through Wednesday, then all should be well because the rest of my tests will be take home or online and only one practical left after that. Keeping my fingers crossed anyways!

I’ll leave you with a cute picture of the little dude! CIAO! LOVE ME!