Looking Up

I've been trying to focus all of my attention on the wonderful things about Christmas, and so far it's going pretty well. I'm putting a lot (maybe too much) thought into what I want to write in Arianna's Christmas card, her brother S's card, and her parents card, but it makes my heart smile to know that I even get the privilege of sending anything to her family at all. I went shopping with a friend last night and bought wrapping paper for their gifts, and tried to find a card, but none were all too fitting. If you had told me last year that this year I'd be shopping for gifts and wrapping paper for my daughter with a friend I would have thought you were out of your mind. This aspect (gift buying) of Christmas last year was awful. I'm 99% sure I was in tears in Target trying to pick out an outfit for her. I like to be alone when doing things like that - I guess I'm weird in that way. I don't even like my mom watching over my shoulder as I order her something online or something. I suppose it's because it's the one way I'm closest to my daughter, and I selfishly want to revel in it all by myself, or something. Anyways, it worked out well, because she helped me choose among the 53 different papers I had to choose from. :)

(If you couldn't tell, I love wrapping gifts. I'm that person at the Christmas party who coordinated the color of the wrapping paper with the gift, bow, and 'to and from' tag...)

Other aspects of my life have been looking up lately, also. I've been sleeping a thousand times better with the Ambien, and I hope to not have to take it for too much longer, but for now, it's doing the trick. I'm going to continue to take it at least through the end of the semester (which, by the way, I cannot wait for).

I got a call this morning to schedule an interview with a company I sent my resume to on Monday! It's not necessarily in line with my major and/or something I want to make a career of, necessarily, but it's a nice job with good pay in an office setting, which is more than I could ask for nowadays. If this falls through, I think I'm just going to apply for seasonal work in retail (the thought of which makes me cringe, because I've been there before and the holidays in retail are NOT pretty, but I can't be picky). I've also set up an interview for a few days before Christmas with an advisor at the Harvard Extension School (or, Harvard night school). It has much, much lower standards than Harvard University and a much lower price tag, but the programs that they have are perfect for what I want to do and the classes - while being double the cost of the ones where I go to school now - are still affordable with a small loan. I have two or three classes I have to wrap up at school in the Spring semester, so I won't be attending whatever school it is that I transfer to until the Fall of 2012. But I'm still on track to have my Bachelor's by the time miss Arianna turns four, which is a little promise I made to her and to myself.