We finished!

I am still experiencing technical difficulties and Flyboy is in full diagnosis mode. Thank goodness for technogeeks! Anyhow, just wanted you all to know that we survived our race on Saturday.

We both finished! Flyboy took one hour and two minutes and I took one hour and three minutes. That last half mile was the hardest and I might have caved had it not been for my friend Millie who was standing at the check point screaming "You go girl!" to me. She was my motivation to enter the race and my motivation to finish. The fact that Bruce was singing Born to Run in my ears really helped too. What a great feeling....we are already talking about next year.

Ellen told Flyboy and me to think of it as a date - hand holding, good music and heavy breathing! :)

The Day has arrived!

Remember in March when I committed myself to training for the Outer Banks Half Marathon....and in May when I actually signed up for it? Well, the weekend has arrived and I should be running the half marathon. To make a long story short....during my "months" of training, I tore a meniscus and discovered I have a cyst on my knee. Surgery? Cortisone shots? Anti-inflammatories? Nothing? I did anti-inflammatories for two weeks and did not run during that time. It worked but set me back big time.....then life, school, piano lessons, hockey practice, hockey games, family and two jobs took care of the rest. I have not run or even donned my running shoes in two weeks....... Did I give up? No. Instead of 13 miles, I am running an 8K (5.1 miles). Instead of running with friends, I am running with FlyBoy. All in all, it should be fun and the weather is predicted to be ideal. Good family time and Ellen is coming too which is an added bonus.

Will let you know on Tuesday how much we ran and how much we walked but we will finish! And I am sure we will have some pictures to share.

Technical Difficulties

I have been trying every day this week to email myself pictures from home. Why you ask? Because I took some awesome photos of my backyard in its full Autumn splendor and some very funny photos of JBM. Each night I send them and each morning I get to work and they are not here! They must be floating somewhere in cyber space and someone is enjoying them saying...why am I getting these #@*#@ photos?!

TSAnnie and I even tried to access them directly from the memory card from the camera and my ancient block of computer on my desk cannot see them!

Technology is wonderful as long as it works!

Happy Thursday.

Space Geeks!

JBM has an opportunity to share some of his love of space with his classmates. During academic choice (what exactly is that?), he has been reading books about Mars and the Mars Rovers and wants to share his new found knowledge with his class.

We have agreed upon what will be shared and have been chatting about how. I was hoping for the simple approach of a story board with facts he wrote himself and photos cut out from maagazines and front internet stories. How gauche of me! My two space geeks (JBM and Flyboy)have decided that this project requires technology.......Power Point, links to the NASA web site using the SmartBoard in the classroom.

Alas, I guess the days of dioramas and stick figures have gone by the wayside. And at some point, I will be overpowered by geeks or I might have to become one in order to survive in my house!

Will let you know how the presentation goes....Power Point in the third grade...oh my.

A Conundrum

I feel like all we talk about these days is H1N1....on that note, school nurses are caught in between helping to assess children who are ill and trying to keep ourselves healthy. Just today, our supervisor asked us to keep our physical assessments to a minimum so to minimize our exposure to ill children in school. We had our H1N1 vaccines but it takes up to 10 days to build true immunity.

Anyhow, my struggle is trying to be a good resource to parents. If their child becomes ill in school and we need to send them home, the first question a parent will ask is what are the symptoms we found. Does their child have a fever? Is their child wheezing? Is their throat red? Do they have swollen glands? I cannot answer those questions if I have to stay several feet away in order to keep myself healthy.

I might have the wrong idea, but it is more important to me to provide valuable information to a parent then to save myself. Isn't that why I went into this profession to begin with?

And...if I get H1N1...a few days off would not be bad even if I do feel like crap (oops I said the "c word")! Down Nurse Nancy...Down off your soap box yet again!

To Vaccinate or Not to Vaccinate.....

That is the question I have been getting each and every day for many weeks now. Alas, I do not have the definitive answer. While I do firmly believe in the seasonal flu vaccine....get one every year as do my boys (since we all have some level of underlying asthma), I have been unsure about the H1N1. Some factors in the past week have helped me make up my mind.

1. The local health department is supplying vaccines for all the school health professionals in our town free of charge. If it is that easy for me to get, guess I should get it. Received it yesterday. Guess if I blog tomorrow you will know I survived.

2. JBM's doctor's office has a supply and gave an appointment for him. Since it affects younger children in a far bigger way than those at my youthful age, I am not giving him a choice. He will get his later this evening and hopefully will stay well enough to receive the next one in a month.

3. Flyboy is hopeful that his company will be giving the H1N1 at the same time as the seasonal vaccines. I do not think that is likely but I guess we shall see.......tomorrow.

My party line to parents who ask? Get the seasonal vaccine for all the kids in your family and for yourselves. If anyone in the family has an underlying condition, get the H1N1 for them. It is truly a personal decision whether to get one for yourself and also a matter of whether they are even available to get.

Most importantly, wash you hands and stay away from sick people and, if you are sick, from others who are not. So ends this public service announcement which has not been approved by the local health department or the CDC :)

By the way, for those of you who are interested, Army lost again to Rutgers on Friday night...but a good time was had by all. JBM spent the game sitting next to an injured player for Army who had just had knee surgery and did not have to suit up for the game. He now has a new insight on the game, the team and "high fiving" a cadet the correct way....although he will not tell me what that is.

Army v. Rutgers

Tonight my boys and Ellen's boys are headed to West Point for the Army v. Rutgers game. Last time the two teams played on a Friday night, it poured rain and the winds were close to hurricane force. We thought that would be to Army's advantage since they are training to be in the military and fight in all types of weather......we were very wrong!

This is a new era and JBM and I are both confident that Army will hang in there and put up a good fight! We are not making a prediction one way or another but we do know that a good time will be had by all....... Oh and, by the way, the weather forecast is for rain.

Ellen, JBM wants to know if BigJ has permission to buy himself a treat at the game tonight?

Go Army! Beat Rutgers!