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I know this shouldn't be funny, but it is.  One would really have to know all the background to understand, but I can't help but laugh.

My oldest sister is Mama's guardian (long story behind that one).  In terms of my mother's care, she either makes decisions without thinking through them at all or makes decisions based on what she would want if she were the patient—not what Mama would want.

This was such a situation.  Mama is almost completely blind now due to cataracts.  Without asking Mama what she wanted, my sister planned for her to have cataract surgery, which was scheduled for today (Friday).  Others in the family were concerned that Mama was neither physically nor mentally able to go through the surgery, but that didn't matter to my sister.

Well, Mama was taken to the office today for the surgery.  When she found out what was going on, she shrank down into the chair, closed her eyes tightly, and told the doctor that he wasn't doing surgery on her.  She went on to say that she was one of Jehovah's Witnesses and was one of the 144,000 and that Jehovah was going to take care of her eyes.  Then she started quoting scriptures.  (I am not exaggerating when I say that I think she has memorized all, or most at the very least, of the Bible.) 

Needless to say, Mama didn't have the surgery, and my sister, who has always been embarrassed about my Mama's religion and her mental illness, was humiliated.  I wouldn't think it was funny if she had discussed the situation with Mama and/or the rest of the family before making the decision for surgery, but she didn't.

I talked to my best friend today and found out that she will be moving across the country.  She has a new job in Boulder, Colorado.  She was already living three hours away, and that was bad enough.  Now I’ll never get to see her.  I’m really excited and happy for her, but I can't help but to be sad for myself.

Since I need to go back to work, I've been trying to get my teaching certificate renewed.  This meant that I had to take 10 hours of course work.  Well, at times I've felt as though I have taken two steps forward and two steps back in the process.

First, it was hard as hell to come up with the money to take the classes.  I took two hours online in June and then didn't have enough money to take the other eight hours.  I was finally able to get the money for the other eight hours, and then I had problems even having enough money to get to one of my classes.  It was almost 200 miles away round-trip, and I had to sit in Atlanta traffic to get to it.  (I live north of Atlanta, and the class was south of Atlanta.)

Well, I made it through that, and I actually enjoyed the class even though I had been dreading taking it.  I'm generally a huge procrastinator, but I completed all my assignments with over a week to spare.  Because I was finished and had such a long drive, the instructor let me join the class online the last night, which saved me around $30.

The last class I took, a 3 hour class, was on CD (on the computer).  It was interesting and boring at the same time (boring because I didn't have anyone to discuss things with immediately), and I worked through it pretty quickly.  In fact, at one point I almost burned myself out from trying to get it done so fast.  After completing the course, I got everything submitted to the school.  I just needed to get the appropriate form back from them so that I could submit everything to the state to get recertified. 

Well, of course, with the way things have been going for me lately, you might know that it couldn't go so smoothly.  I was sent a COPY of the form I need to submit to the state.  I can't send a copy; I need the original, so I had to call them.  I'm now waiting to get the original so that I can submit everything.

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to figure out if I'm considered "highly qualified" according to the NCLB guidelines.  I won't be able to get a teaching job unless I am, yet no one really seems to know exactly what it means.  I've read different information on different websites, some that was quite discouraging.  However, based on what I read tonight on a Georgia education website, I think I fall under a special category because I got my degree so long ago.  In fact, the type of certificate I have hasn't been issued since 1990. 

I guess I'll soon find out.  I have to get through this so that I can move on to the next step.