Hello friends! Long time no see. 🙂

I know I should post some Christmas pictures, comments on New Years and my goals and yadda yadda yadda, or maybe even pictures of my seven year old’s birthday celebration on November 1st and I haven’t even managed to do THAT yet, OR, better yet, pictures chronicling the joys and pains of the past 10 years of marriage that I planned to post on or around our 10-year anniversary on May 9th, which was…yeah, that would be 8 or so months ago…

But not having a decent camera is seriously hindering my blogging. I hate to just TALK. Who wants to get bogged down in a bunch of written facts without the pictures to go with it??? NOT ME…

So please understand that its not that I don’t want to show off my precious little family, my newborn niece, or our holiday memories….I’m just hindered at the moment, since Santa did NOT bring me the camera that I wanted. 😛 I’m limited to posting only pictures I can scan, or steal off the internet.

(I did get a Kitchenaid Mixer, though, so I’ll let Santa off the hook.
For now.)

So until Santa comes through for me, I’m going to go with an idea I got from one of my favorite blogs. Pioneer Woman asked her readers which was their worst year in school, and I thought about my answer and had a hard time choosing just one.

The first one that came to mind was Sixth Grade, which was BRUTAL because I was tossed from the innocence of 5th grade where red, yellow, black, and white are *ALLLL* friends, I had twist-a-beads and Izod shirts and the right winged haircut, and a teacher who liked me and good friends to spend the night with, to the lions den where I was suddenly 6 inches taller than EVERYONE, seriously built like Olive Oyl, gangly, awkward, and desperately in need of braces for my GI-nor-mous TEETH (I could have eaten an apple through a picket fence), *AND* to top it all off, I had the nerve to wear the same pair of pants twice in one week and Cavan made fun of me from THEN ON for “wearing the same clothes all the time.” All the Guess jeans, JAMS, and Kaepa shoes in the world never could cancel out that ONE blunder. I wanted to die. Literally. And Middle School never got any better for me after that, even after I got braces and a perm.

Then there was the 12th grade, when my beloved grandmother, who lived across the street from us, and two boys I had been to dances with ALL died within 3 months of each other, and I went to my first three funerals. All within three months…did I mention that? And oh yeah, I got badly dumped by my first real boyfriend. I mean, BADLY dumped, as in, he moved off to Dallas and didn’t give me his phone number DUMPED. One day, he was bringing me roses and talking about our wedding plans and telling me how much he looooooooooved me, and the next, POOF, he was GONE. I cancelled my plans to go to Texas A&M for this guy, and stayed at Harvard on the Hill (Tyler Junior College for you out-of-towners) because he wanted me to stay here, and within 5 minutes of leaving the old ball and chain behind he had a new girlfriend, and A&M didn’t want me anymore.

Oh yeah, the reason he was going to Dallas was to attend seminary to be a preacher. I can’t leave out that wonderful little detail. It wasn’t just an Average Joe who dumped me so brutally….it was a Man of God.

(If anyone who knew me in college remembers how I treated members of the opposite sex between 1991-1995, does it all become clear now? Do you understand now why I could never be seriously interested in anyone, much less a ministry student, and deliberately married a NON-MINISTER? Anyone care to psychoanalyze?)

So my worst year in school? Hard to say. But I think I’m going to go with 6th, because I recovered from my senior year. I still grieve over my grandmother, and probably think about her at least once a day, all these years later. But I’m ok. Life turned out ok for me, though I’m not a real Aggie because of a dumb, stupid, dumb decision I made to change my life’s plans for a stupid BOY, and I’m still sad about that…though I’m not a real Aggie, I’m ALL Aggie on the inside. It’s ok; I’ve got my B.A. from ETBU and that’s …. almost….as….good (ahem). And I thank God I didn’t marry that loser; I found the man of my dreams after I grew up a little. So my senior year, though it sucked, didn’t define me.

But 6th grade? I have to say I still haven’t recovered from that one. No matter how confident and hip and trendy I am now (yeah, I hear you laughing), on the INSIDE I’ll always be dorky Olive Oyl who doesn’t wear the right clothes and who never wants to smile for a picture because of my big honkin’ teeth. My closet and the closets of my girls are overstuffed to the point of clothing gluttony lest any of us EVER “wear the same clothes all the time.” You won’t catch US doing that, that’s for sure! I have a psychotic need to overbuy clothing for my kids so they won’t experience that humiliation. Its truly a sickness, I tell ya.

So now its your turn….what was YOUR worst year of school????