Much needed weekend

This weekend has been nice and relaxing, and it was much needed. The past week has been a little crazy. I wasn't feeling great in the beginning of the week and then worked a 14 hour day Thursday and a 10 hour day Friday. The managers out at New Start 1&2 have been sick so Thursday, I was at New Start 1 so the managers could sleep. I ended up staying there until 10 (curfew) and then finally going home. Friday was an early morning as I went to court with one of the residents and we had to leave at 7:30. After having a late night the night before and not sleeping very well, it was rough waking up. Then Friday afternoon, I was at New Start 2 so those managers could rest up. There was a lot going on at New Start 2, and being already exhausted and having people asking for stuff (most of which should have been taken care of) got me even more frustrated. After finally getting home at 5:30, I went for a much needed run and got out a lot of my frustration.

After running, we went to the JV house for dinner which was really nice. It was both of the JV houses so there were about 17 people altogether. Then I went to bed nice and early. Saturday, I went for a run then spent the day cleaning and organizing our apartment. It's much nicer now, it was starting to stress me out before. Today, I woke up early, went to church, ran and now am sitting on the couch for the rest of the day watching the Patriots! Maybe after the game, I'll even take a nap...who knows:) After this relaxing weekend though I'll be ready to go back to work in better spirits than Friday.

Update

So no news on what happened behind our house. It was apparently just some sort of take down that unfortunately happened very close to us so all excitement associated with that is over.

My time since being back has been good. It was hard to leave home but nice to see everyone out here again, they made my transition back a little easier for me. Other than that other night, life has been pretty uneventful out here. Tina is back in the office after her maternity leave so I'll be doing some different stuff. Probably spending more time at the programs but I'll be trained to do assessments and be able to get more information out of people. It should be interesting and I'm excited for what's to come.

This weekend we went to the Pinecove bar with some of the JVs. It was a lot of fun. Then Saturday I did laundry. I know this doesn't sound very exciting but I haven't been able to do laundry very easily recently because the washer we usually use broke. I have done it at the programs a few times but it's kind of hard so it was nice to have the day to do all my laundry that I had.

Sketchy Happenings

First, I apologize for having out of order posts here but this just happened so I wanted to get it in before finishing up my catch ups. I was sitting on the couch in our apartment when I hear sirens go by. Not really anything new but these were really close so I opened the shade to see them go right by our corner. Then Meghan came out of her room asking if I had heard "that." I said that I had seen the sirens and she said no, there was someone behind our house yelling "get down on the ground now." We went into her room and pulled up the shade just enough to see out and heard more yelling. We couldn't see anything because of our fence, thank goodness, but there were 8 or so cop cars on the street right near us. I'll take a picture tomorrow so it's easier to understand but it was definitely a little more than sketchy. I'm going to keep checking the news online to see if anything comes up.

Home for Christmas

Wow, it's been quite a while since I last posted but here's the beginning of a few day catch up. I was home for a week and a half for Christmas and my birthday and it was great. I got home the 19th and surprised my mom by going into her classroom where I met all her students. The next few days I worked on cleaning my room. I had left it relatively clean but while I was gone, my parents redid the carpet and as a result, had all my stuff dumped in my closet and on the floor. Christmas eve came before I knew it and after reading the Night Before Christmas, we all went to be to wait for Santa! Well he came so I guess we had all been good! I got some good stuff but the best part was seeing all of my family.

The 26th, I went out to do some shopping and got a new phone for my birthday! That night, we went bowling and out to dinner. I didn't do too well bowling but it was a great time. I'm going to have to start going more often to get some practice in.


The next night, Stephanie, Brian, Kevin and I went out to Cleary's and then the Bee Hive in Boston for our sibling night. It happened to be my birthday at midnight so they sang to me in the bar. It's great now that we're all over 21 so we can actually all go out together. When we got back to Stephanie's, we had some delicious cupcakes that she had made earlier.

Friday night, we went to my Uncle's for another family party and it was great to see everyone who hadn't been at our house for Christmas. Overall, it was a great time at home and it was definitely a little hard to leave.

Busy Busy

This week and next week are looking very busy. Tuesday night we had dinner over at Chris and Dan's (the ex-nun, ex-priest founders of Loaves and Fishes). That was a fun night, the JVs were there along with other volunteers our age from Loaves and Fishes. Yesterday, we had Sister Libby and Dorothy over for dinner which was also a fun night. Tomorrow, we have to go speak at some dinner for people who will hopefully donate money to Loaves and Fishes. Saturday, the JVs have their famous Christmas party and then Sunday, we have some concert during the day and then dinner with Sister Bridget. Next week, there's a party at transitional with New Start 1 & 2. We're going to have games, prizes and karaoke! I'm going to make some of Stephanie's sugar cookies and decorate them at New Start for the party. It should be a blast. After all this busy-ness, I'm going home! I don't anticipate a very relaxing vacation while I'm home but I'm very excited to see my family and friends, it's been 5 months!

Mouse!

So that nice little mouse that we caught behind the paper shredder and let free down the street came back. This time, it made a home in the copier machine. I copied a letter for someone and it came out on a half eaten sheet of paper. I opened the drawer to check out the situation and when I took the paper out, I could see the body of what I thought was a dead mouse. Manny happened to call at this point and I told him it was in there but that I wouldn't get it out. He called someone and had them come get it and when they lifted the part it was trapped under, it ran away! I'm finding that mice apparently don't die easily and I'll continue to have near heart attacks when they start moving. I'm just going to have to start assuming they're alive and until proven otherwise.

Fangs

Yesterday, someone came in the office to do an intake and had fake gold teeth, a grill if you will. The front top teeth were all gold which was creepy enough but the two teeth on either end, where normal incisors are, are fangs. They extend much further down than normal teeth should so he looks like a gold toothed vampire...quite creepy.