*hums* Busy! Busy! Horribly busy!

*suppresses enormous yawn which threatens to make her lower jaw pop off and send her teeth flying hither and yon across the room to the horror of her family, friends, and other near relations*

...

I become very gruesome when I'm this tired. I sincerely apologize for the mental image I know you all just experienced.

*cough*

Anyways, I've had so many different things going on lately it's not even funny. Definitely fun though. :D

First off, I just got home a couple weekends ago from a nine-day trip to...MICHIGAN!!! :D I had a BLAST!!! I drove up with one of my bosses and surprised the daylights out of one of my bestest friends ever (*waves enthusiastically* HI HANNAH!!!!!!!! Love ya, girl!!!! ;)). I had been planning this with one of her other best friends for a long time now, but as it turned out Hannah went on a trip to Cedar Point, Ohio, on the day I was supposed to get to her house. So I had to wait around from about 2 in the afternoon until she got home around midnight. She was going to spend the night at her friend's camper, so when they got home they went straight out to the backyard where it was parked. I turned the video camera on and opened the door, and then the next few minutes after that were a crazy blur of excited shrieks and hoping Hannah wasn't going to faint. ;-) I literally thought she was either going to pass out or haul off and slug me. Fortunately all she did was hug me to death. :-) <3 And the entire time I was up there we were doing stuff....we went to a wedding, danced for four hours straight at the reception, drove up to Mackinac Bridge, went to the Enchanted Knights store (*wiggles eyebrows*) and a VERY SPECIAL fudge shop (*wiggles eyebrows some more*), and we spent a few days up at Houghton Lake in her families' camper. Despite the blazingly hot weather it was a lot of fun. :-) And then I got to fly home! My first time on an airplane, by myself! Take-off was amazing. It's one of my new favorite things.

She's planning on coming down next June and staying for a little while, so I'm trying to come up with all sorts of fun things to do while she here -- go into D.C., go swingdancing....actually that's about as far as my list has progressed at this point, but I'm sure we'll have a blast! :)

In addition to encouraging my newly discovered inner globe-trotter, I've been working like crazy. Just last week we spent five hours going to Georgetown for a doctor's appointment. Georgetown is really very pretty though. Then later this week we have an interview with a girl who is (hopefully!) going to be taking over from me as the main attendant, at which point I will be doing respite care only.*

*Respite care is a sort of "back-up", in case the attendant can't make it for some reason. I would also be picking up the extra hours, for example if the parents were to go out, they would get a regular babysitter for the other children while I was there to take care of the individual child.

Next week I'll be starting for the family whose little boy has Dupe15. I can't wait! :D I've been doing a TON of research into it and the program they're using and stuff like that. Here's what it is, exactly:  http://www.idic15.org/Chromosome-15-duplications.html

In addition to all this, I'm hopefully going to be finishing high school before too much longer (PRAISE BE!!!!!!!). This will technically be my senior year, but I came up with a Scope & Sequence plan, and it turns out I don't have quite as much left to do as I thought I did. *stress melts just a little* But with any luck I'll be taking the SAT this October (possibly again in the spring), and then finishing the up sometime early next year! Another thing I'm really excited about is.......

*drumroll*

I'm applying to college! In like, a month! Or maybe even less, if I find time to write an essay on how my faith relates to reason (which shouldn't be THAT hard...hopefully). I'm applying to the college of Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More!! They have their freshman year online now, and are planning to have their sophomore year up by next year! I'm only applying for their Associates Program for the moment, because I don't need to give them an SAT score, and I'll only be taking one course this year while I finish up high school, but I'm soooooo freakin' excited!!!!!! I feel like I'm actually getting somewhere, ya know? I think I'll be taking Rhetoric, too, which will be really cool (random question: what did we do before somebody thought of using the word "cool" to describe something other than the current temperature??).

So school is coming along well, and jobs are coming along well. I just wish I could get more sleep...but I guess I'll get used to it. ;-)

~Grace