For those of you who tried to visit this blog in the past few days, you may have had the experience of loading a completely blank page. This was a disturbing error for me, too, because I couldn’t so much as load WordPress to edit whatever had gone wrong. At this moment, I’m still not sure what caused my blog to spontaneously white itself out. Fortunately, Ricardo came to my rescue. All my posts were saved, which I’m not sure is a great boon for posterity, but my WordPress themes and many other elements were lost. Essentially, we had to migrate everything from the old nickyhicks.com database into a new one and any questionable files were not part of the migration. For details, ask Ricardo, the WordPress/MySQL/FTP/webpage hero of the day. What makes it interesting for me and you, dear readers, is that I’m having to find new themes so you may find for the next few weeks (or however long) that this page will look different every time you visit. I’ll try to settle on something soon, but I make no guarantees since I’ve seen a lot of interesting themes out there!
Another error is that, for whatever reason, I can’t unzip the file of Ricardo’s pictures from the Dallas Audubon so I can’t post those until I figure out how to fix that. I’m more tech savvy than a large number of people, but when I’m stumped I either end up taking quite a bit of time to figure it out, or running to my fiance for help. In the meantime, I do still want to post some of my own pictures from my trip to San Antonio to celebrate graduation and my birthday. I will schedule those for a post tomorrow.
As for the third part of my title, the wisdom of teeth, it’s no big secret that I had my last wisdom tooth pulled this past Thursday. Unfortunately for me the level of pain took a turn for the worse yesterday and I’ve gone from thinking I’m almost better to knowing that if I don’t have some painkillers and a bag of ice handy I may just hurt someone. I think the complication is the same as when I had my last wisdom tooth pulled. The tooth was on the bottom, which left an open extraction site in the back of my mouth close to where all my food goes. Since I’m not willing to either starve or take nutrition through a tube, that means I probably managed to get food into the extraction site like last time. I’ve been rinsing daily and chewing carefully, but somewhere I must have messed up. I can’t tell from looking that I have food in there, or if it’s dry socket because it’s all hidden nicely by the tooth that’s right in front, but that’s my best guess. I will probably be back to the oral surgeon’s office soon, asking them to fix it for me. I am, for the time being, being careful to eat soft foods and trying to keep them all on the left side of my mouth. I’m so glad this is my last wisdom tooth. I absolutely hate being down sick for any reason and I’m feeling pretty sorry for myself at this point. Blah.
The silver lining to all of this is that it happened after my graduation, after my birthday, and before I had started really working at a permanent position. I did however, miss out on a pretty good temp position because of this and that has made me extra bitter about this whole ordeal. Not only would I like to have something to do all day, but I need the money and I like feeling useful.
Right now, I’m not feeling useful.
Fortunately, I do know that this is temporary and I’m doing pretty good (present rant excluded) at looking at that fact.
I also seem to be making progress on helping my grandmother move – I got a call today from an apartment locating service and the woman there told me she’ll email me a list of places later today. I discovered through trial and error that finding a handicap accessible, reasonably priced apartment is not an easy thing to do and doing it with only about two weeks to find it is nearly impossible. I’m hoping the service will find something soon. So far all I’ve managed to do is get my grandmother on the wait list for a really ideal apartment, but since that could take months before an opening it’s best not to pin everything on that. With any luck, she’ll be packed and ready to move in time, and with lots of luck we’ll be able to move her straight into her own place rather than making do with moving her in with me until something suitable becomes available. (It’s not that I would mind having her here with me, but she needs the independence, we both need the privacy, and it’s not easy for her to get around in my place!)
Anyway…look for pictures in the next post, and prepare yourself for frequently changing themes on this page!

I’m taking a break from working on a paper and decided I should update on wedding stuff. We still haven’t set a date, but I have ordered my dress. It seems weird to order a wedding dress when we don’t have a date set, but it was on sale and from what I’ve seen it can take two months or more for the dress to come in…then it has to be altered…and stuff. Besides, it was on sale and I didn’t want to pay more later for the same dress – or worse find that dress gone and have to pay more later for a different dress.
So…Ricardo was kind enough to drop me off at David’s Bridal today so I could order the dress (my car is in the shop) and I walked out a little poorer, but with the dress on order and a veil, which thankfully did not feature beading, sequins, inordinate amounts of lace, or weird ribbons. I’m sure the woman helping me thought I was insane for getting such a plain (and frankly, cheaply priced) veil, but it suits my taste.
Anyway, I’ll post a link to a picture of it if anyone is interested in seeing what I picked out. Ricardo hasn’t seen it, but as long as he doesn’t see me in it before the wedding, it’s cool.
The Dress courtesy of theknot.com since David’s Bridal won’t let me show a picture without revealing the price, which seems tacky. I was torn between that dress and another in a similar style, but honestly…this one is what Ricardo and I referred to as the “crying dress” because when I tried it on I got all teary-eyed. I’ve never had clothing make me want to cry, but that just about did it.
It will have to be hemmed. I swear they deliberately make those dresses a foot longer than they need to be just so you have to pay for alterations. I had the same problem with the bridesmaid’s dress I wore in October.
Anyway, I’m happy with it, and I’ve got the veil, too, so that part is out of the way. The rest can wait until we set a date, and that can wait until after I graduate.

Ricardo asked me to marry him yesterday, and I said YES! I’ve told most of my family and friends, but I feel so happy right now that I *have* to tell the world, via intarwebs. We’re engaged!
And, by request, here are some pictures of my engagement ring:

The Engagment Ring - in the box

My engagement ring - on my hand!

the picture from online - the bridal set

Yay! We’re engaged! (Have I said it enough??) Yay!

Happy New Year! I had a great time bringing in the New Year with Ricardo, we watched the celebrations on tv and had a midnight steak dinner. I made sure we had black-eyed peas (last ones in the store!) and we had a great time. I was glad we avoided going downtown for the big celebrations – it had rained all day and it was freezing cold overnight – plus I’m not big on being in crowds that are packed in the way they were in downtown Dallas!

After the New Year we watched tv for a while and listened to some of the crazies outside. We heard fireworks or something outside several times, but fortunately no gunshots – though though something sounded like a nail gun to me. (Go figure.) I hope you all had a good celebration and a safe New Year, and I wish you the best for 2010!

School starts for me January 11th and I’m looking forward to my last semester of college. Now I need to really figure out what I want to do! I would love to write for a living, but I know that isn’t going to pay the bills right away even if I do manage it later on, so I’m looking into everything I can think of. A lot of people have suggested I just go straight for my Masters degree, but I really think the life experience would serve me better at this point so my plan on that is to wait five years and then, after that time, if I still want it I’ll go for it. There are a lot of opportunities out there for A&H majors, no matter how many disparaging remarks I’ve heard, and I’m looking to explore as many things as possible since, for me to be happy, I’d have to have a career that is interesting, challenging, and involve some change as time goes on – which is a little harder to find than a stable, and somewhat repetitive, job. I doubt I’ll find a career – vs a job – right away…and hey, I’ve got to get my degree first…so encouragement and suggestions are welcome. I’m looking outside of teaching right now because I’d have to spend more money and time on getting certification, and I’m tired of being a student at the moment. However, everything else is fair game.

Hopefully, by the time I’m ringing in 2011 I’ll be making good progress on all of that. Wish me luck!

My best friend’s grandmother, whom I have known since I was about 4, is in the hospital and I’m really, really worried. She’s a really awesome lady and she’s always treated me like family, but her health has been in steady decline for a while so I’m not sure how much longer we’ll have with her. I’m going to call her tomorrow at the hospital to see how she’s doing…she’ll trivialize everything…and then we wait, I guess.
Tomorrow, Ricardo is off from work so he’s going to come to class with me. I hope my teacher doesn’t find some way to embarrass me in front of the class because though he’s given permission for me to bring a visitor, he has a very quirky sense of humor.
I’ve got essays to write, books to read, and topic proposals to invent so the updates may be few and far between. Best wishes to everyone and goodnight.

I feel like I’ve been running around like a chicken with my head cut off lately. I had two papers and a rough draft due last week, then a midterm on Friday. Next week I have to turn in another paper, a take-home exam, and Tuesday is another midterm. Two weeks from now is another paper, and then a major ten-page paper is due in November – researched and with a proper bibliography.
So, today I crashed and burned, but tomorrow it’s back to work so I can make next week a little easier on myself.

I finally have an evening where I actually have some free time because I finished my homework and studying early…
and nobody’s available for me to spend my time with.
*sigh*

I had a pretty busy weekend. Ricardo came into town Friday, and we ran errands, took care of cleaning up my (trashed) apartment, watched some movies and I did homework. We did about equal parts working and just hanging out. His flight left at 2pm today. I will miss him, but around thanksgiving I’ll get to see him again and start planning my move to Dallas, where I’ll get to see lots of him.

Then, I found out my mom and grandparents were coming into town today, so I joined them around 3. My mom picked me up so we could meet up with my grandparents at a care dealership where they were finishing up buying a new (to them) car, then we all had dinner at Jalisco’s, after which we came to my place to visit until about twenty minutes ago (it’s just after 8pm now)!

The good: Two free meals today, and my grandparents got to replace their totaled car with a new 2007 Ford Taurus.
The bad: I had to answer several questions about ten times for my grandpa, and keep reminding both grandparents that my cat is, in fact, a he, not a she.
The ugly: I’m exhausted and I have a couple of major assignments to take care of by Friday.

Fortunately, I’ve done a lot of preliminary work on the paper I need to write, Ricardo can help me via phone with the math homework, I only have one class tomorrow and Thursday which leaves me the whole day to work on what I need to do. And, thanks to Ricardo, I have food, drinks, snacks and a clean place to do it all in. Also, I must note that my mom brought me some awesome munchies for the week ahead.
I was glad to see everyone, but I have to say I was almost as glad to see them leave. Ain’t that the way?

The following is a short response I wrote for a question in my Non-Fiction class. I doubt we were even supposed to type it up, but I get my thoughts out faster this way and honestly, I feel like I could make a four or five page essay out of it because it interests me. I just like the thoughts it brought to mind and thought I’d share because I can!
In A River Runs Through It, Maclean talks about “spots of time” as a phrase used by poets that he came to understand as a fisherman. He talks about a fish that got away from him while he was out fishing with his brother, and how the moment when the fish got away was a spot in time for him. I think the phrase itself just refers to a moment in time that seems, to us, to last longer than it really does, and that stays in our memories forever for some reason. As someone who has done quite a bit of fishing – though not fly-fishing – myself, I can really understand what he means about that moment. He says the whole world becomes a fish and suddenly the fish is gone, and says “I shall remember that son of a bitch forever.” It makes perfect sense to me, because fishing itself can really seem “a world apart” as he describes it and when you’ve got a big fish on the line you get completely focused on bringing it in. There’s always a sort of victory in bringing in a big fish, but almost a deep sense of loss at losing a fish because the fish has not only gotten away, but taken some of your credibility with it. (Everyone who fishes has a story about “The One That Got Away”.)
After I got to the end of the story and reading about his brother’s death I can imagine that not only was being informed of his brother’s death a “spot of time” for him, but that the earlier scene shared much with that moment. In each scene, there’s a sense of loss, the idea that the memory will be with him forever, and a feeling that something in the universe has gone awry. I can really relate because when I think about it, my own story about “the one that got away” and times when I have unexpectedly received news of the death of someone close to me, the moment seems frozen in time. I feel a deep sense of loss and for a time, that the world itself has gone wrong somehow. In the case of a fish, it’s wondering how it happened. How could that beast have gotten off of my line? Didn’t I have it hooked? What could I have done differently? The last question also applies to the latter scenario. After someone dies we wonder if we could’ve changed the outcome, if we should’ve have visited with them more often or told them we loved them more openly, and I’m sure that’s how Maclean felt as well. He talks, in the end of the story, about how he and his father ask each other, “Do you think I could have helped him?”
Spots of time are essentially seem to be moments where we ask ourselves a question that can never be answers, or that are imprinted on our minds just because of the strength of emotion we feel in that moment.
©

Lovey is in the hospital now. She was admitted last night. They are monitoring her heart very closely from what I understand. They’ve already done quite a bit. Here’s the list: CAT-scan, chest X-ray, new diuretics, antibiotics, blood cultures, 1 shot to help her breathing, and they’ve upped her daily dosage of Loritab and set it for every 6 hours. She was a little woozy, I think, when I talked to her last night, but she said she wasn’t hurting so that’s a good thing. I’m planning to call later today to check up on her – last night she mentioned her blood sugar level was in the 200s and they hadn’t brought her insulin yet. I told her to call the nurse about it as soon as we hung up, but since she was so out of it, I’m not sure if she did or not and I want to make sure that the nurses are on their feet with her because she has too many health problems for them to focus on just her heart, or just her breathing, or just her diabetes. I want them hopping, and I want to make sure there isn’t a debacle like last time when they weren’t there to bathe her and help her get up when she needed help.
I plan to be as much of a nuisance as I can be without making them just hang up on me and ban me from the hospital, even though I am stuck in Lubbock.