My Birchbox is Here, My Birchbox is Here!

... my Birchobox is here! I literally just ripped it open and I am already on here to tell about its contents :-) 

1) & 2) AHAVA Mineral Hand Cream: "A mineral-rich salve that softens and smoothes without any residue. Its smells pretty darn fresh, too" + AHAVA Dermud Foot Cream. Full-size retails for $20.00. I can vouch for the part about it smelling fresh... I tried it out immediately and it is definitely a purse-stuffer, as I develop a twitch when I'm not within arm's reach of lotion or lip balm. I haven't tried out the foot cream yet (I'll wait until after my shower tomorrow morning) but I always lotion my feet after a shower, so we'll see how it compares to my usual.

3) Laura Geller Spackle Tinted Under Makeup Primer in Bronze: "This hydrating primer gives you flawless foundation for makeup - plus a subtle glow. It works on all skin tones - we tested it!" Can I emphasize enough how much this excites me? You'd think with my makeup obsession I would own makeup primer, wouldn't you? I keep meaning to buy it but I just haven't yet (we'll chalk it up to my already-flawless skin not needing it). I am very eager to try this out tomorrow morning (after the shower, after the application of my other creams of course). Good thing it works on all skin tones, because I am so fair I usually recoil if you approach me with a product that has "bronze" in the name. Here's hoping!

4) Ouidad Moisture Lock Leave-In Conditioner: "This light treatment infuses hair with antioxidants and vitamins, then seals strands to keep moisture in and humidity out." This I am going to save for a day when I go curly. I was too lazy didn't have time to straighten my hair pretty much all summer, and now I am starting to get back into it. I remember back in the day I hadn't gone a moment without straight hair for years in succession, but now I like to give it a break every now and then. Anyway: I have my own hair-straightening products that I like to use (like the Miracle Leave-In by It's a 10... that stuff is manufactured on an assembly line run by angels) so I usually don't use conditioner on days when I'm going to straighten. Combining conditioner in the shower with It's a 10 results in borderline-oily hair. So on a day when I go curly I'll be sure to try this Ouidad out.

5) Juno Transformative Lipid Serum: "Celebs and models swear by this luxe cocktail of 13 essential oils, which absorbs instantly to replenish, firm, and protect skin." I hope I hate this stuff because I can't handle falling in love with a miracle serum that costs $125.00 for a full-size bottle. If you look at the includes it's literally just a mash-up of 13 oils. They weren't kidding. I'll try a pump tonight before bed.

All the reviews I've read of Birchbox are good. Some are die-hard Birchbox enthusiasts while others day you need to give it a new months before you get a really good box. I'm satisfied with my first box - it's an easy $10.00 and it's something to look forward to each month. This box seemed to be filled with skincare items, which is fine, but I am so excited to open up a box and have some cosmetics in there ;-)

Me: Let's clean the apartment when I'm done with my homework, yeah?
Nick: I helped last time.
Me: If we both do it, it's done in 45 minutes.
Nick: Yes but if only you do it, I get to continue doing nothing while you clean.


Love him.

If This Doesn't Make You Happy, There's Something Wrong With You

A Weekend Without School Work!

I feel so incomplete not having volumes to read this weekend, it's like some sort of miracle. I was explicitly told by the teacher that I don't need to hole myself up in the bedroom for 48 hours to read the ridiculous amount of pages he usually assigns, but it still feels like I'm slacking off or missing something. I'm sure I'll get over it.


Yesterday at work was complete insanity. I clocked in at 8am, received my first mission at 8:05, and didn't stop working and running around the hospital like a chicken with my head cut off until 4:25. I then clocked out at 4:30 and said a little prayer to God, thanking him that it was over (but I did get it all done, which means I'm the best worker ever and/or some sort of hero). Anyway, to recuperate, Nick and I went to my favorite shopping center ever: the one that features a Target, a Bed Bath and Beyond, a Michaels, and a TJ Maxx (among many other things, but these were of the most interest to me). Buying things sometimes makes me feel better when I'm all wound up, and last night's retail therapy was exactly what I needed to calm down.


We ordered a new bedset over Labor Day weekend and it just arrived a couple days ago. We couldn't put it on the bed as soon as it came in because we needed new sheets and Euro pillows and all that jazz, and I just didn't have the energy to wrestle with it after work during the week. But with the new bed comes the knowledge that the cats will want to ruin it like they did the last one, so not only did I need to buy new sheets but I wanted some sort of blanket to lay across the bottom of it for them to lay on (as cute as it is when they kneed and get comfortable, my comforter usually suffers the consequences). I don't think you should own animals if you don't like them enough to let them on the furniture, so I was willing to make the extra purchase.


The bed looks fabulous, by the way. There are so many decorative pillows I don't even know what to do with myself. I like it like that, though - makes it look more like a real bed when you have expensive-looking, no-purpose-serving accent pillows. The good news is that it did come with the ottoman you see in the picture, and we are able to shove the little pillows in there at night (in addition to the 3 the set came with, we also had two from our old set that match this one perfectly, one is beige and one is white). I've tried about 2000 times to take a decent picture of the bed with my Blackberry but it never comes out right, so just trust that it looks nice. The only thing that's killing me are the wrinkles that are in the comforter from having been shoved in that box during shipping. I refuse to buy a hand steamer for this so I'm sure hoping they release over time. Do they?


I also have been wanting to make these coasters and haven't had the chance to even buy the supplies before this weekend, so I was able to get that out of the way. Now I just have to make them. Nick convinced me to buy scrapbook paper that I'm not sure I love but we'll see how they turn out. The paper is like  50 cents per sheet so it's not a big deal if I need to go get more, but I'd rather not have to trek back over the Michael's. So cross your fingers they turn out ok. I usually have decent luck with DIY projects just because I'm crafty by nature, I just never have the time to fine-tune my craftiness - so if these suck I'm blaming the fact that I'm out of practice.


AND! I discovered a little site called Birchbox that I can't believe I hadn't heard of before this weekend. I discovered it on another blog I read (It's the Small Things, you're welcome for the free advertising) and I trust her judgment because she is cute and stylish and seems to appreciate other cute and stylish things. So it didn't take long for me to sign up, and now I just have to wait and anxiously anticipate my first box. I read some other online reviews before joining, just to make sure it would be worth the $10/month, and it sounds like it's worth a try. Especially considering you can cancel at any time with no charge. Trust me I'll be posting pictures of my first box as soon as it arrives (which should be around my birthday)! Good timing.


Besides all that, I have lounged in my pajamas, painted my toes, watched a movie with Nick, cuddled with Daisy, listened to Ty whine all afternoon because he's such a glutton that he ate his entire day's worth of food before 11am, and avoided doing housework =) A low-key weekend indulging in tiny little activities I never have time to do otherwise is totally what I needed.

Rain, Rain, Go the Hell Away!

I want to start by declaring that the weather we've been having lately is complete bullshit. I am so sick of driving in torrential down pours. It has rained hard every day for the past two weeks and I'm so over it. 


Last week I had to sit in my car, in the dark, in the rain, while construction workers repaved the road on my way home from class. I stayed in one spot for 20 minutes waiting for that jerk to flip his little sign from "STOP" to "SLOW." Then, I learned to detour through a residential neighborhood to avoid the road repaving (though I hate that because it makes me nervous I'll hit a cat or something as karma for illegally using a neighborhood as a through-street), only to be stopped when I was 10 minutes away from home because of a fallen tree. I had to turn around and join the caravan of people maneuvering their way through neighborhoods that my Blackberry's map app didn't even recognize. My class gets out at 8:50 and I didn't get home until 10 that night! (Side note: I get filled with rage when I am lost and Google Maps keeps telling me to turn around and get on the main road I can not get on. It's too stupid to have a re-route button for instances when the main road isn't a friggin option). 


Cut to this past Tuesday when the air conditioner was broken in our building and our classroom was so damn hot I was dripping sweat 20 minutes into the class. The professor let us out early was because he said he felt too guilty watching the pregnant chick in the front row swelter to death. Had there not been a pregnant woman in the room who knows what would have happened to all of us. He decided to call it a night at 7:10 and I was stoked out of my mind that I was going to get home at a decent hour and actually take a shower before going to bed (I used to think taking showers was just a part of civilized existence but I've come to learn that, when you don't get home until 9:30 and your goal is to be asleep by 10:15 and then up at 6:15, that shit's not happening). Back to the point: as soon as he throws it out there that he is going to let us leave, the Evangelical Christian girl in our class (the one that cried, remember her?) speaks up and says, "I'll give you til 7:30." What are you doing!?! What kind of douche-canoe OFFERS TO STAY IN CLASS AN EXTRA TWENTY MINUTES FOR NO REASON?! The teacher put it to a vote:


Teacher: Who is willing to stay til 7:30 and then head home?
Whole class except for me: *raises hands*
Teacher: Who wants to leave right this second?
Me: *raises hand*


He then gave me a half-assed apology for being outnumbered and there I sat until 7:30. Mind = blown. I can't even wrap my head around why she would volunteer to stay longer when he was perfectly happy with letting us go home. Maybe it's for the Bible tells her so. At least we didn't have the rest of the class outside. That was another proposal. I would have outright refused. I don't sit on grass. Anyway, cut to the very next night and the AC is still broken. I walk into the classroom damned and determined to drop the fact that our other professor let us leave early because of these despicable learning conditions. My Wednesday professor entertained the thought for a little while but decided to just open the doors in the back of the room, instead. Same thing as letting us leave, right?


Mind you, Wednesday I drove to class in a storm so violent I was 6 inches away from the windshield the entire ride, cursing my wipers for not having a speed faster than their current maximum. I swore I was going to pull over every 30 seconds to let the storm pass but then I was too worried traffic would be worse by the time I got closer to town and I'd be late for class. The highway is white so it was literally impossible to see the lines on the road... driving in weather like that stresses me out so much. I try not to slow down too much, though - I don't want to be one of those tools who rides their breaks while everyone else is trying to get down the road. I figure if I just keep going I'll get through it quicker. I always get wrapped so tightly that I look like some old woman behind the wheel, one of those "get off my lawn!" old women. I'm always sure to flick off the people that pass me without any lights on, and then I remember they can't see me because it's raining so hard that, from the inside of my car, it looks like I'm sitting in a car wash (seriously, though, who forgets to turn their lights on in all that rain)?


Whatever: so the back doors to the classroom are wide open in an attempt to cool the room down. It cooled down, alright. It was storming SO HARD outside and it was so windy that the rain was literally flying into the classroom and hitting me in the back of the head. I am in the second row. These doors are in the back of the room. I was getting stormed on and I was in a building. I kept glancing backward and glaring at the trees outside that were blowing sideways, as though they were going to catch on to the fact I was annoyed and apologize to me for being blown around in the storm. It wasn't their fault they were being blown around, nor was it their fault my stupid teacher wanted to keep the doors open. My friend who sits next to me (also getting stormed on) finally decided to get up and shut the door. She waded her way back to her seat in the inch-or-so of water that had accumulated on the floor. My professor is really too much of a hippie for it to dawn on him that opening the doors was a stupid fucking idea, and my friend actually got some nasty glances from our classmates as she shut the door. Seriously, what is wrong with these people? Sometimes I just want to go over to some of them and smack them in the face with my binder. Just one by one: smack, smack, smack. That'll show 'em!


We weren't dismissed early that night, so it was another evening consisting of driving home on a two-lane road in the pouring rain without a shred of daylight left. Did I mention I had forgotten my umbrella in the car earlier that day when I was at work? So before all this ever happened I had to clock out of work and run to my car in the rain just to go to class, where I was rained on some more. I did bring my umbrella into class with me, though. I should have opened it when I was getting hit in the back of the head with rain drops. It would have served as a symbolic binder-smack in the face to everyone who took offense to it :-) 

This Pretty Much Sums It Up

I like to think I have calmed down a little bit since my last post. If I think about all I have ahead of me I have a panic attack (which is ironic considering the chapter I read today is about anxiety disorders) so my friends and I have agreed we'll just need to take it one week at a time. It's necessary to salvage our sanity.


However, I need to vent a little bit about the dynamics within the classroom. I was told by a couple other women I know who graduated from this program that things are awkward, at first, between the Advanced Standing students and the students that had to go through the first year of the program. They all said it just had something to do with them already knowing one another and the Advanced Standing students having a newbie complex, so it all takes some getting used to on everybody's part. Well, "awkward" is the understatement of the century, because there is some major fuckery going down in my classes. After 2 weeks of class, here are my observations: 

1. It bugs me none of them graduated from college with a degree in Social Work and now they can get their MSW without any prior knowledge or degree in the profession at all. When I was an undergrad, I had to sit through all those classes that I felt would never impact me or my future career because they were all just requirements for the University to keep its accreditation. Now that I'm in the workforce, I actually practice what was preached to me all those years and it totally paid off. I'm trying to use it all as I go into my Master's program and I'm thinking it's already helping me a little bit. All these people who graduated with psychology and sociology degrees just don't know what it's like. They're not Social Workers, they just have jobs that they consider close enough to have decided they want a Social Work degree. I know I sound like a brat, and I'm sure I'll struggle just like the rest of them, but I just don't see how an entire undergraduate program is somehow equivalent to the one year's worth of Social Work classes these people went through last year. How is that the same thing at all? 
2. You can cut the tension with a knife. They don't like us and we don't like them. Some are tolerable and friendly enough, but others are annoying, opinionated, and argumentative, and it's crystal clear they aren't exactly welcoming us into their little group. Not that any of us care, because our little group of 5 is perfectly happy remaining a little group of 5. We didn't enroll because we wanted to make friends with the people we'll never interact with after graduation. But it still makes for uncomfortable classes because everything we say gets picked apart and over-analyzed by some argumentative bitch on the other side of the room. As a result, we end up keeping our mouths shut as they all voice their opinions on various topics they don't know much about.
3. Isn't it funny how, when you don't know people very well, you just associate them with the few things you do know and that first impression just sticks to them forever? A lot of it is based on appearances but some of them are based off the bits and pieces of their personality that has come through in the measly 6 hours I've known of their existence. Here are some examples:
• Girl in front of me was a political science major in school, so I consider this a radical career-change for her. That, and she has curly hair that SHE BRUSHES. Rule #1 of having curly hair: don't brush that shit.
• Two women have Autistic kids. These women have bonded because of that fact alone. One of these women really really really likes to talk about having an Autistic kid.
• One will always be known as Girl with Pink Hair, because dammit, she has pink hair.
• Another is Leader of the Masters Program and wants everyone to know that she is the go-to-girl for any and all questions or concerns throughout our time in grad school. She wrote her personal cell number on the board during orientation. We haven't figured out if she was somehow appointed as the Leader by the professors, or if she's just the type to elect herself for things like that. It would probably be really useful if she wasn't just as scared and clueless as the rest of us. I have also learned that she commutes from Pennsylvania, and last class she started crying because she thinks  Social Workers discriminate against Christians. 
• The one guy in our class always walks into the classroom 45 minutes late.
• Another student identified herself as a Steeler's fan so that's how I'll identify her forever.
• One girl was at the very first class and I haven't seen her since, but she will forever be remembered as "Girl Whose Ponytail is Falling Out"
• One of the older women works with addicts and she is a former addict... so, basically, if you say anything about an addict or an addiction in general, she jumps all over you for being wrong. Because apparently, no one in the world knows addiction like she does. She jumped on me the very first class. We are off to a good start. For the longest time I tried to pinpoint what it was about her face that was so unusual, and then I realized she had a mouth just like Wallace from Wallace and Gromit.

Say what you want, but it's impossible not to associate people with that superficial bullshit until you really get to know them. And these people don't want to really get to know us, so I guess the little bits of their personality I pick up on will be how I think of them until I graduate. I'm not trying to be mean, but if you sit in a room full of people you don't know, you have to pick up on something to decipher one from the other. If it's not physical appearance, it's something they said or revealed about themselves. I'm probably known as "Girl Who Wears Scrubs to Class." In general, it's just not a friendly environment. You can tell they have chips on their shoulders because they were there last year and we weren't, but we have chips on our shoulders because we are Social Workers who know two shits about the profession and they don't.


The classes themselves are very different, also. My class on Tuesdays is much, much, much more interesting than my class on Wednesdays. Tuesday night is Psychopathology (aka: abnormal psychology) and I learn all about the different mental disorders, mental health treatments, and the theories behind how and why some people have mental health problems. It's interesting and relevant to my future, considering I'll be doing psych assessments on patients with my degree. Time flies by during class and I get to listen to actual facts that I can take notes on and study. Not a lot of discrepancy to be had when you're listening to facts (though the girl who brushes her curly hair did question the definition of the word "stigma." Definitions aren't up for interpretation, chickadee, they're definitions).


My Wednesday class is equivalent to sucking your own brain out with a crazy straw. It is everything I hate about class rolled into three long, torturous hours. Rather than giving me concrete information I can take home and study, this class is 'all about the discussion!' I think there is a time and place for "discussion," and sometimes that discussion can be very beneficial and enlightening. Other times, I sit there questioning whether the professor even had a lesson plan at all. Unless our tests are about the difficulties the girl across from me has faced leaving her small, country town where she had never seen a black person, I'm not down with 'discussion.' This class is Human Behavior in the Social Environment, which is a continuation of the exact same class I took in undergrad. I don't remember it being this stupid. So far all we have managed to talk about is race and discrimination, and we have filled countless minutes listening to the Chatty Cathies in our class talk about times in their lives when they felt discriminated against (that's when the Evangelical Christian started crying and the mother of the Autistic kid talked some more about being the mother of an Autistic kid). I learned about White Privilege, and discovered that you are not only racist for taking advantage of White Privilege, you are also racist if you deny the existence of White Privilege, because that just means you take it for granted. And while I like the professor as a human being in general, his teaching style blows. He is so up in the air he couldn't even describe our assignment in a way my friends and I could understand. It was something like, "Well, I wrote down that assignment was due on September 14th, but do you really want it due then? We can always change it. I wrote down the requirements for the paper but you can always change them around if you want, and there's no length requirement. Is September 14th too early? We can delay it a week if you want. How does everyone feel about this assignment?" JUST TELL ME WHAT I NEED TO DO AND WHEN IT NEEDS TO BE DONE. That shit drives my friends and I CRAZY (but the rest of the class is fine with it because, "oh, they had him last year"). I'm telling you: it's ugly in there. Institutes of higher learning can be a dangerous place late at night. I'm not even being cynical - all the girls I am familiar with and do the majority of my associating with just look at each other during class with expressions that read, "what the Hell was that about?"


It bums me out I've had to turn down all baking offers from coworkers (how's that for a complete lack of segue?). The Katy Shop is shut down for an indefinite period of time. I had to cancel the bridal shower cookies I would have made for tomorrow (had I been going home, which I can't do because I have relinquished all personal freedoms), I had to cancel the monster-truck themed birthday cookies for my coworker's son, I'm unable to bake cupcakes for our coworker's birthday, and I had to tell the Director of Nursing that I am unable to bake cupcake favors for some nursing appreciation thing she's doing in two weeks. It's so depressing! Baking is something I enjoy doing and I literally can't until Christmas break (when I will undoubtedly make so many Christmas cookies I'll likely be glad I can't bake again until next year's Christmas). 


Yesterday, Nick and I went out to dinner. You never appreciate little things that are normal to so many other couples until you don't do those things ever. I know I live with him but it was good to spend time with him outside the confines of our apartment, talking about work and doting on the cats (speaking of the cats, I bought them a new cat tower yesterday after work and seeing how excited they got made my life). I'm celebrating Labor Day by not laboring at all on Monday, so the long weekend is allowing me to space out my reading for school so I have some more time to relax. Today I split my time reading and watching Just Go With It (which is cute but predictable), and tomorrow I am devoting to laundry and more reading. Hopefully all school stuff is done by Monday so I can truly veg out. My friend who is still in school asked me to accompany her to the store because she needs a new wardrobe for student teaching (and she is bad at that sort of thing, so she says) so maybe that'll be part of my Monday. Who knows! All I do know is that this blog is way too long.