And the beat goes on....

After an almost year-long hiatus, I'm back. Miss me?

Life here is pretty much the same in alot of ways. Still living with my mom, still broke, kids still driving me nuts. But things have changed too.

For one thing, I'm a grandmother now!! Three weeks ago my daughter gave birth to the world's most beautiful baby. And she named her after me. I was in tears. And yes, the bunny and hat were knitted. By my daughter. The blanket was a gift from a friend of mine.

Also, my kids now have visitation with their father. And I get a (very) little child support. So far they'd seen him three times. After seven years of nothing now he expects them to be all happy. They don't even know him. Another rant for another day though.

I'm also back in school - nursing school this time. And I'm actually really enjoying it. Even though I have three tests this week. I made an A on the one I had today. And the one tomorrow I've over-saturated myself studying for. The one Friday is Anatomy. This test is in biochemistry, and since I'm already a biochemist I'm not worried. My only problem is I want to over-answer the questions, like "define ATP". I went into a long explanation about the chemical structure and chemical equations and reactions and stuff. They just wanted "ATP is used by the body for energy". No joke. At least it was only homework. And my teacher counted it right because I did mention energy somewhere in my answer. Next time I'll just try to keep it simple.

As far as the knitting goes, well, slowly would probably be the right word. I'm working on a sweater for my youngest child, almost done actually. We recently acquired a knitting machine, and I'm waiting for fall break so we can crack it out and play with it. SO far I think I'm really going to like it for making blankets (I've made four baby blankets this year) big pieces for sweaters. For fancy stuff it seems like it would be easier to hand-knit, but I really haven't had a chance to do much playing around.

Finally got my autistic child into the sleep lab. They put her on melatonin at night and gave us a light box to sit her under in the morning. It has helped SOOOO much. At least, she's sleeping at night, so now I can sleep some too. She's now getting 7 to 8 hours on a good night, where she was only getting 3 to 4. And she's doing better in school, though we do seem to be having alot of "autistic moments" in the afternoons. I chalk it up to the visitations and the new baby. I gave her a hard rubber teething ring to bite (as that's generally what she likes to do when stressed) and that has also helped.

Hopefully I can update other stuff soon. Good to be back.