Keepin' Busy

I have an hour before it's time to hit the sack so I figured I'd check in with ya'll. It's been a full past 48 hours. To put it in a nutshell, our Halloween decorations are up, I'm through week 3 assignments (and working on week 4) in all my classes, and have even done some yardwork.

I can hear everyone now...."you have your halloween decorations up?" Heck yeah! The stores definitely got to me with having all their stuff out and I figure if we put so much time into decorating, we're going to enjoy it. With that being said, in all honesty we're still in the process of decorating. The lights on the fence and garage have to be put up, but the porch, bushes, and inside of the house are done. We almost decorate all the way up to Halloween night. I must say though, considering we're decorating so early it leaves no time for "fall decorating". And I just can't get into Thanksgiving decorating too much considering Halloween is at the end of October and then right around the corner we decorate for Christmas. It just isn't worth it. And as always, by the end of the "season", no matter what holiday, I'm ready to take decorations down and sometimes even start that night. Yeah, we all know I'm crazy.

So far this semester seems to be going quite well and as always, I'm learning a ton of information. It looks as though they've scratched the video assignment for the one class I was expecting to do this semester. Whew! One less thing to do. I'm not complaining. This is my second consecutive semester of doing 3 classes and I haven't lost my mind yet. So that's good too. We're also preparing for our AAHA inspection that is in November. So everyone's busy at work getting things where they need to be, basically crossing our t's and dotting our i's. With that comes responsibility, which tends to land on me since I'm there everyday and mostly since I've gone through this before. For those who don't know, AAHA stands for American Animal Hospital Association. It's something that you have to strive to achieve and isn't easy to acquire or maintain. Once you acquire accreditation you are inspected every few years to verify that you're doing everything up to par. Basically it's jumping through the hoops for the sake of the animals we treat...from certain record keeping, safety measures, to the quality of care that we administer. And technically all we get out of it is a plaque on our wall, but it's comforting to me to know that we are doing things "right" and our clients can be assured that we are taking appropriate measures to make sure we are. There's only about 13% of veterinary hospitals in the United States that are accredited and I've been lucky enough to have 2 of my 4 hospitals that I've worked for be AAHA. Okay, enough information about AAHA.

Now, for the yardwork. We've finally decided to work on the back corner of our backyard. It's the part that was originally a square "garden". Last year we angled it off and planted some foliage in the corner, but the outline of a square was left. I wanted go an entire year, verifying that I got all the grape hyacinth and other bulbs out. I could only imagine planting grass and then having to dig it up again. That'd be a bummer. So tonight we went to The Depot and got 6 huge bags of soil and grass seed. As the sun was going down I was still spreading and watering the stuff, but it's done....atleast I think so. In all honesty I think we'll need more soil since I think it's going to settle lower than hoped, but David says it will be fine. We'll have to see. It will be great when we have grass and not a huge dirt area. I also spread some seed in a few bare spots in the lawn. We're lucky to have a great quality of lawn due to the previous owners, but of course you always dream of that beautiful carpet-like lawn. The kind you lay down and say, "ahh...." Ok, maybe that's just in my dreams and in the commercials. But that's alright.

The fall weather has diminished and it looks like we're back into summer mode for the next few days. I'll appreciate when the fall weather comes back. I like that cozy, comfy feeling. The kind that makes you want to pick apples or something. Okay, so I've never actually been apple picking, but I think you get what I'm saying. Oooh, apples means apple cider. Sounds good. Soon enough!