Day 83

Good evening everyone. I am already half way through week number 3 of both my first 2 classes. What's even better is I received my financial aid award letter today. Basically it looks like they managed to get me loans and grants enough to cover my first full year, and that is without even taking into consideration the fact that I will be receiving the GI bill. The GI bill will go directly to the school to pay for most of my tuition, and then my loans and grants will pay the rest and there will indeed be a surplus. I'm looking forward to being able to make random phone calls to creditors and say "How much can I pay you to settle this account and close it?"

As it is, it looks like with the pell grant and the loans, I got an award letter for roughly about $12,000 ish. It's a relief to know that it officially has been processed and that is how much money I've been awarded to pay for my school. If I can plan it right, maybe after just the first year I can pay off all the debt except for school loans, and then maybe I can cut back the amount of lending I would accept and only take what I need in order to finish my degree. I'm hoping that my GI bill will last all the way through my degree so that I can really cut back to bare minimum. I should be able to keep receiving the pell grant, so hopefully I would be able to not really get anymore loans. I guess I will have to wait and see how things turn out.

So, 3.5 weeks in, My Introduction to University Studies class I am sitting at a 100% in the class, and my Health and Nutrition I am sitting at a 96%. Not too shabby so far. I'm not letting up. I've already got my assignments done through tomorrow so I am good to go. Next thing I need to do is do the assignments that are due by 11:59 PM sunday evening. That way come the weekend, I will once again not have anything I need to worry about. That was pretty nice last weekend. The first weekend that followed the first week of class was hectic. I was trying to get into the groove and so when it came sunday, one of my assignments I turned in a minute before it was due. After that week I tried to save assignments as drafts so that I already had them done, then on the day they were due, I would post them and then respond to two class mates posts.

So, in closing, for a while I would have both good days and bad days health wise. One day my stomach would be fine, I could eat regular meals, drink my mountain dew during my shift, drink lots of water, etc, and other days my stomach would twist and turn regularly, sending me bolting for the bathroom. Erin's mom sent us these pills calls "Beta Plus" which are supposed to help with the digestion process. When we received them many many months back, I didn't think I needed them. At that time I wasn't having any problems. A few days ago I went ahead and started taking them before meals and instead of one good day and one bad day, I had about 4 or 5 good days in a row. I thought "ok, so apparently I do need to take these." Well then come today, suddenly even with taking the pills I have had to run to the bathroom about 4 times already.

The only difference is today the main thing I ate before we ate dinner around 7PM was I ate a very large bowl of oat meal. Could that have done it? I don't know. I guess we will see. Erin herself has not been doing the greatest either. She has had an itch in her throat lately and it results in such a powerful cough that today she threw up because of it. I wish I knew what I could do to help her. It's got me really scared because I don't know what's going on, and what we can do to help it. I got her mucinex and cough drops hoping that would help. I think they help a little bit but obviously she still coughs pretty bad at times.

Also, even though it was a rough day for her cough wise, today is Erin's birthday! Lex and I made her a star cake made from a strawberry supreme cake mix with strawberry frosting. Lex looked at me and said "4 candles?" when I only put 4 candles on the cake. I said "Yup, i'm not putting 32 candles on the cake. Sorry lex." Especially because they were trick candles, which are always fun. I told lex that just for her I will put 10 trick candles on her cake next time we celebrate her birthday. ;) So I think on that note, I will call this it for the night. I will write more for you all tomorrow.

Thanks for being here.

CB