School, Career and Weekend Festivities!

Goodness... I have sooo much to write about! Respiratory therapy, the A's game, the races and our new friends.... Okay, deep breaths. One thing at a time... lol


First off, respiratory therapy is soooooooooo where I want to be! I've never been so excited for something. I really do think this is the right fit for me. The difference from being a nurse is that I'll actually be responsible for saving lives. They could hand me a newborn baby that is blue and I will be responsible for bringing it back to life. I'll get to work all over the hospital in every different area, where as a nurse I would only be in one area. It's extremely fast paced, and I really get the chance to help people full on. The schooling is expensive, but worth it. The couselor I spoke to said that I am an extremely good candidate for this school because I already have a degree in health care. They only accept 30 students ever 3 months. She said that they don't like to accept students that do not have any higher education, so that's what makes me a good candidate. She also said that the fact that I'm financially stable, and that my boyfriend supports me is another huge part to me being a good candidate. As long as I pass my tests, I should have a very good chance of getting accepted right away. I'm hoping for October. I won't have my car paid off yet, but my parents will be able to help out as much as possible. I'm hoping my work will be okay with me switching to part time (Mon-Fri, 8-12) because I'll have class Mon-Fri, 1-5. Everything about the program is so perfect and exactly what I want. The schedule, the fact the curriculum is all jumping straight into learning all medical related stuff, no more general ed... After 9 months of classroom, then I switch to 6 weeks of clinical/externships at a hospital. When that time comes I go 3 days a week for 12 hour shifts, 3 days in a row. That's going to be intense, but so exciting! After 6 weeks, I do 6 weeks of class room, then more clinical, then classroom... I do that 4 times and then I'm done with school. It's a 22 month program. So basically if I start this October, I should have my career by the time I'm 26, almost 27 instead of 30 had I decided to be a nurse. Perfect time to start a family :) hehe

Okay, so now onto our weekend. It was so much fun! Mat's mom came into town on Thursday. He went to pick her up at the airport and I rode with Sara out to the softball fields where we met them. It was a good time as always. Then Friday we went to the A's Giants game. It was a blast!

Me, Mat and his mama

A few weeks ago, Mat found green cons that he'd been wanting for A's games. He got some yellow shoe laces the day of and voila!

I think he's so handsome in his black A's jersey...

Well that was Friday night... Saturday we worked on the yards in the morning until mid-afternoon. His mom went to go hang out with her friends, and we headed to the races in Stockton. While in the parking lot we met these two couples. They were drinking beer too, so of course we sparked up a convo with them like we always do. After 30 mins in the parking lot of hanging out, we all had realized that we got along WAY too well. The girls and I were immediately joking and being bitchy with each other and laughing and mat got along great with the guys too. So we all sat together at the races and took a ton of pictures. Megan only posted one so far....

From left to right... Ben, Gina, me, Mat, Megan and Greg

We all exchanged numbers and swore we have to hang out. Ben wants to play softball with Mat which would be awesome cuz he's hilarious! It was such an awesome night. To top it off, the kid that one the main event is this 17 year old that mat is really close to. He had never won a race before so Mat got all teary eyed when we went to see him afterwards and congratulate him. Us girls climbed through the ropes and took a picture with him... with legs wrapped around him and all haha

Sunday was my brother's birthday so I went to his triathlon with my parents. I felt bad because that was the big "work" day at our house. They got rock for the front yard and planted the plants and his mom pulled all the weeds in the back yard. Luckily Javi came over to help Mat. Mat and his mom didn't care that I couldn't help, but I still felt bad. However, the front yard is finally done and looks amazing!! Everything is coming together :)

It's nice how even though the house belongs to Mat's mom, since I live there and she knows how crazy Mat and I are about each other and that we want to build a life together, she asks my opinion on everything. When we were planting flowers she asked ME where I wanted her to plant them. She doesn't have to do that, it's not my house, I'm not paying anything to live there... It is nice though... I'm truly grateful that Mat and I are both lucky enough to have mom's that are so giving and helpful, and have insured that we have homes to live in.

On a negative note.. I have a stupid cold! I got it yesterday. I've been taking my zicam so I'm really hoping I can kick this cold's booty before Weds morning. I want to be feeling great for Disneyland, Universal Studios, and Hearst Castle!!

Career Change?

I suppose I should give a little background on my previous schooling before getting into this and asking for advice. I decided I wanted to be a nurse 2 years ago. I enrolled in University of Phoenix to get my Associates in Health Care Administration. I knew I'd have to take some science classes at Delta before I could apply for their 2 year nursing program, so that wasn't surprising. However, after I finished my degree and enrolled in a history class I was told I would need, I sent in my evaluation. For those of you that don't know, this is where they see which classes transfer over and which ones do not. $20,000 later.... more than half of my classes do not transfer over and in order to apply to nursing school, I'm going to have to re-take around 13 classes.

Second part of this scanario: I live with Mat. I do not pay rent (to his mom because it's her house) or for any of the utilities. He takes care of that. I help out with groceries as much as I can and that's about all I can do. This bothers me, but what else can I do? I can't pay anymore than I do and neither one of us want me to move back home. So, with that being said... I won't have my car paid off until next February or March. When that happens, the only bills I will have will be my car, gas for my car, and my cell phone bill. In order to get all these classes done just to be able to APPLY for nursing school, I'd have to quit working full time right away, which I can't do until beginning of next year. Then on top of that, nursing school usually takes a while to get accepted, and then that's another 2 years of not being able to work.

My cousins are respiratory therapists and they absolutely love it. Their mom was telling me all about it and how they make $40/hr, get to work all over the hospital, and that they really enjoy their job. One of the programs is only for 18 months. It's Monday thru Friday, 8-5, so no work then either. However, it's for a lot less of time and I'd have my career in a lot less of time too. I'm really leaning towards this. I wouldn't make AS much as a nurse, but it would be just as rewarding. Like Mat said also, if I want to do the nursing thing down the road, I can always do that. At least with this, I'll get to a career that makes good money a lot sooner.

Money is my biggest issue here. My parents say they'll help me as much as they can, and I think they understand that I really don't want to have to move back home. Mat couldn't even fathom the idea of that being an option to me. If luck is on my side, he'll get a nice raise when the time comes for me to quit working and go to school full time and then it won't be as big of a worry :)  hehe  He can't complain for that, 18 mths compared to the rest of our lives of me making some damn good money for us! :) 

Any advice?

Improvements...

We've been working on the house a lot lately. Nothing too drastic, but everything is slowly coming together. To be completely honest, Mat has done most of it. He had a few earlier days and a couple days off in the past few weeks so he started cleaning up the office/man cave room. We went and got some book shelves for all Mat's hundreds of DVD's and like the 20 I have and moved them into that room. Now we have more space in our room and we can bring over my big nice dresser. It doesn't exactly match, but it'll look fine until later down the road when we can afford to buy all the kind of furniture we want. Mat also cleared out one of his dressers completely so I have a ton of more room for all my clothes. It's so nice to FINALLY have room for all my clothes. Before I've always had to stuff things in drawers while they were overflowing, I never had enough hangers, and everything was just disorganized because I didn't have the room. Now I have a walk-in-closet, and more than one dresser. I think I need more clothes to fill it all  :)  hehe

I think I've already talked about all the flowers we planted in the front yard. They've really been growing! We've been really good (more-so Mat than I) about watering and they've grown so much! They look so pretty. I'm really proud of us on what we picked.

The most exciting news happened last night. We saw an ad this weekend about how Best Buy had the no interest deal going again, but this time it's for 3 years! It was on anything in the home theatre section over $1,000. Mat's t.v. is pretty old and we've been talking for months now about how much we can't wait until we can get a flat screen.... well the time has come! They had some awesome deals going and we got a 47" LG, with a blue-ray home theatre speaker system, free wi-fi connection (for my instant netflix videos!), and free installation all in a very cheap package. We got a t.v. stand there too and a wall mount for it. We decided we definitely either needed a wall mount, or the mounts that are on the t.v. stands because of the dogs. The only thing that sucks is that we don't get it until next Wednesday because that's the earliest they could do the free installation. Really, we could have done it all just fine, but if it's free, why not take it?! We are soooo excited! Mat deserves it. As much as he loves to watch all his sports and get the UFC fights, he really needed this. He works hard and on top of it works hard to keep me happy too. This is a nice little reward to ourselves.

Next is the pool. We have to do this pronto! As in.... be done in a week. It needs to be drained and the new pump installed and a few other things that I have no idea about. I'm really looking forward to fixing up the pool because then we can work more on the back yard. However, I'm dreading that pg&e bill every month. I know it won't be horrible because it's not like we're heating it, but it will definitely go up from having to run the pump all the time.

Two weeks until our vacation! One week and one day until Mat's mom flies down. It's going to be a lot of fun. I'm so excited. I just hope I can portray to her how grateful I am for everything that she does. I know she does it to help her son, but she easily could have told him I couldn't live there, or she could have demanded I come up with some kind of money in order to stay there. The things she does to help him, in turn help me now too, so I am extremely grateful. On top of all that, then she's taking both of us on this awesome vacation to Disneyland, Universal Studios, and Hearst Castle... and all we have to bring is spending money. I hope I am able to have enough money to be able to pay for all her meals at the least.

Life is so good. For once, there is no underlying lie to that. I really am so incredibly happy. I didn't think this feeling was possible, at least for me. I never though that so much that I had hoped for would actually happen for me. I got really lucky. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just so overly happy about it and think Mat is so amazing because of how shitty I had it before. I don't think so though. I think I'm more grateful for it because of what I've experienced in the past, but it doesn't make Mat any less of a man. He seriously has treated me wonderful, and how I want to be treated. Nobody is perfect, but the best part is that we work through each other's mistakes and accept them.