A rainy Sunday
My Mom graduated with her Doctorate degree today in Educational Leadership. Peter, Dad, and myself went to watch her graduate. There was a lot of people graduating even though this was a winter graduation and only those receiving their Masters and Doctorate degrees so the whole process took a while. This is the first time I've had an opportunity to watch my Mom graduate. She finished her Masters degree while I was in high school (or maybe it was middle school, I'm not too sure) but it was through a distance learning program, so she didn't get the opportunity to go all the way out to the west coast to attend graduation.
Her graduation went off without a hitch, and I even managed to get up close by the stage to get what would have been some great photos, but two things went wrong: #1. My digi camera has a massive delay. As in click the shutter button, and wait, no wait, no wait, OK, now I took the photo!, and #2. I was so excited for my Mom my hands couldn't stop shaking so they were massively blurry. I did manage to yell "Go Mom!" and heard me and looked really happy.
Throughout the graduation, Dad and I were "arguing" about where we should go to lunch. I love my Dad, but he is so old man grouchy. At 70, he is pretty set in his ways, and wants to do things a certain way. He originally wanted to go to the Iron Hill Brewery right across the street from where graduation was, but it was totally booked up. So I spent the graduation text messaging Google (did you know you can do that? Just text the number "46645" from your mobile phone with the name of the place, the city, and state, and really quickly Google texts you back with the address and phone number of the place - I have unlimited messaging though, if you don't your carriers costs per text will apply) and trying 
to find a place for us to eat. Well we ended up deciding on Italian Bistro, which is about halfway between the graduation center and our home.
After graduation, we drove to Italian Bistro, Peter and myself pulled up and this is what we saw. Through the rain, a very, very, empty looking Italian Bistro. There were no cars in the parking lot, and it was decidedly deserted looking. We also noticed that the sign they had out front was still advertising a New Year's Eve buffet. Hmmm....We're wondering, did it close? So once Mom and Dad pulled up, because I couldn't get a hold of Mom on her cell because she never turns it on, we gave Dad the bad news that we had to keep driving until lunch. We ended up going to another Iron Hill Brewery.
Lunch was really good. Mom loved her gifts and her Mimosa. She looked incredibly happy to discover the restaurant did in fact make mixed drinks, lol.
I'm in the same doctorate program right now, and am currently in class 3. I have about 2.5 years to go. I've been feeling rather apprehensive about the whole process because there seem to be so many obstacles to enjoying the process right now.
The first is that I have to drive an hour each way to class each week. There's a pro and a con with that. The pro is that it means I get to see my Mom pretty much every week because the college campus is across the street from where Mom works. We almost always have dinner together. That's really nice, because a couple of years ago, we'd go weeks and even a month at a time without seeing one another because of schedules, etc... The con is that I have to drive an hour each way. The hour down at 3 PM in the afternoon isn't so bad, but the hour back, when my teacher lets us out, almost always 9:30 PM or later, is definitely bad. I'm always exhausted and it's hard to make it home safely.
The second obstacle is the fact that I'm essentially working a second job to help pay for the degree. I've been teaching night classes since September on Monday and Wednesday nights. In the fall it wasn't so bad because I could still eat dinner with Peter before hand as class started at 7:30, but now my class starts at 5:30 and runs til 9:30 so there won't be time for that now. I'm so sad right now thinking about that. That means between teaching Monday night, class Tuesday night, and teaching Wednesday night, I won't be eating dinner with Peter until Thursday night.
I've always been busy, ever since I enrolled myself in college while still in high school. I've constantly pushed myself to the max. I'm not sure if that is because I wanted to prove I could do something, or because I simply like to be busy, but lately, I'm really feeling the strain. I actually miss the opportunity to be able to clean my house. Peter has been keeping things up and running and our house is so nice. There's been the running joke that the house is so clean because I'm not home to mess it up, which I guess is true, but it's sad as well.
I just thought of the fact that I'm not going to eat dinner Mon-Wed with Peter this week and I have no idea what he is going to eat for dinner. I'm searching All Recipes right now for something for him to eat tomorrow. Right now I"m checking out the Roasts because I have one in the freezer. I ended up finding a decent looking roast recipe from About.com and have browned the beef roast meet, and chopped up that potatoes and carrots so all I have to do tomorrow is toss it all in the crock pot.
Peter took a ton of photos, goofy and serious, at Mom's graduation today. I'm so glad, because sometimes I have a tendancy to just take serious photos. I'm off to do some scrapping. I haven't done that in ages!