State Fair

Horse Dressage

Gabby rides again

Hercules (Unrelated to topic, but so cute!)

For fun we went to the State Fair in Springfield last Saturday. It was a state fair unlike any I'd ever been to before. We walked a lot, ate a lot, and then were sore and achy a lot. We saw horse competitions and arts and crafts exhibits. My favorite part was taking the tram ride across the whole park and seeing all there was to see that way. The Mid-West is known for its farming, and they take their state fairs very serious. We saw stables and animals a-plenty. Great fun for all. John somehow survived it all walking around with his broken toe. He wanted to stop at Godfather's Pizza while we were there. It was there that John's dad noticed our car was making a funny noise or something. So we went to the gas station and got some oil to put in our car. Not much longer, on the highway (late at night) we got a flat tire! It was similar to that movie, "A Christmas Story," and it took forever to get the tire changed. Finally, we were ready to drive 2 hours home on our spare tire. Good times.

Other misc. pictures

The Hercules/John Staredown
The Crocs at the St. Louis Zoo

Gabby feeding fishes

Gabby and John in Nauvoo.

Pictures of me With Other people

This cat just loves me. A little too much sometimes.

Johnny Angel

Diego Rivera, Mexican artist who brought his art to the masses with his frescoes.
His art tells the history of Mexico-instilling pride and a sense of beauty in Mexican life.

I just finished a class on Modern Latin America, and this is something I want to remember from the class.

So,
I finally weaned myself off of wellbutrin, and now I just have to get off of caffeine and sugar and I'll be good to go. I bought "Body for Life" at a yard sale for 25 cents today. I'm gonna see if any of these so called "health" books do any good. They all say I need to stop eating junk food. Shyeah...as if! It's really hard for me to not eat the sweets, therefore, I must be a sugar addict. Ah well. I hate the popular phrase usedin the weight loss bizz, "nothing tastes as good as it feels to be thin." I beg to differ, else I'd be thin.
But I have put on some weight here in the last while, and since the wellbutrin didn't help me take any off (what a crap load of wasted hopes that proved to be,) I will have to try the good, old fashioned way to lose weight: exercise and cutting back on tasty eats. I did read today that they actually use human hair in store-bought bread and pizza dough for a taste enhancer and preservative. Blech! If that is true, then I should be able to get off the bread. They actually grind up the hair and call it L-ceistine or something like that. Sick.
But yeah, this summer I think will be a good one. I'm actually beginning to like it here. I really like the neighborhood we live in. I don't really know any of my neighbors, but the houses and yards are soooo cute! I took a good long walk around the 'hood the other day and I must say, I was quite impressed with people's landscaping skills. Someday I'm going to have a well-manicured lawn and a well-groomed garden. It will also be in a yard with a patio built for patio furniture and a nice grill. Yep, I have plans all right; good plans.
My plans for my future rock. I'm finally going back to school this summer and I'm going to teach English in High School. This is my dream. Also, I still really really want to travel.
I would love to take my students on tours to Europe. Ummm.....so I am going to do that and it will be nice and lovely. As I looked through my folders and papers for Lit courses I've taken, I realized that I really dig being a student. I really miss it. One of my teachers kept writing on my assignments expressing how good a writer I am. That makes me happy. Although, I'm not sure whether she meant my writing skills are satisfactory or that she actually likes how I write.
Anywho, I'm going to start waxing prolific one of these days and turn out some kick-ass theme papers and stories. Yep, mmm hmmm, good plan. :)

Reminisce about the things you miss

I was driving to work today and I was thinking about High School. It made me laugh and I think I was happy for about a tenth of a second. But as soon as I realized it it was gone. I've been suffering from horrible withdrawals lately; rendering me meloncholy and agitated. See, I decided to get off my"happy pills" because the side-effects were no longer worth it to me. The problem is that it comes with horrible withdrawal symptoms. Yucky, no good. My brain felt strange. "It is strange and I am strange in it." Plus, I have horrible nightsweats and for a while there hot flashes. I thought I was the youngest woman to go through menopause. Panic attacks came back. It was all so very disconcerting. I don't like drugs. The problem is that I think I may need them. I'm going to try herbal sups and exercising. Something out there has got to work. Maybe the anti-depressants aren't all they're cracked up to be. Maybe Tom Cruise was right.


Anyway, back to my point, I was saying I think I may have felt happy for a little slice of time. High school. It's funny, you know. I remember that when I was in high school, I hated it, and looked so forward to the day I would be free from high school. Now, I miss it. I miss the mischief and fancy-free fun of my youth. I don't seem to really have fun anymore. I look back at high school, and even though I know I hated it, I don't seem to dwell on the negative things. I only think about the fun times I had.


I wanna go back. Honestly, I don't much care for it here, in St. Louis. Sucks, really. But I have to get past this. I have to put the horrible withdrawals behind me and find a way to beat these blues. All I ever want to do is go back. Back to Utah, New Mexico, Mexico, wherever I've been that I enjoyed. There's got to be a way out of this feeling. Things aren't so bad. It's just my brain that's a little messed up. Anyway, I'll keep this updated. Laters.