Phew... THAT's Over!

I had my interview with the grad admission staff this week. It went AWESOME! I was so nervous, especially because one of my interviewers was the advisor who has been screwing me around all this time, but she didn't say anything about it (although she knew who I was), and neither did I. They seemed to have only a tiny knowledge of my portfolio, because they were only briefly looking through it when I went in, which was frustrating, but it turned out that it *was* helpful that I had put it together, because all the questions they asked me correlated directly to what was in there.

The best part was, as it turned out, everything I have ever done in my life has led me to this. Every job I have had has either involved my learning something new, my teaching other people something new, or my working with people in education. The fact that I do a lot of volunteer work helped a lot, too. Anyway, they were laughing by the end as they tried to write everything down, and told me that they were exactly what the program was looking for, and I shouldn't have any problem getting accepted (it's a competitive program, with only so many slots). I'm not going to count my chickens quite yet, but it certainly was encouraging!

Yesterday, I picked up the forms that the 'needy' families filled out for the Elf Project at the school. There were six forms, with ten children, and I knew of another family that was for some reason not included in the office's list, so I called them up (I know the mom well) and asked if she'd like a form. Of course, she said yes - they have four kids and are basically living on food stamps and local Food Pantry items. So, we will have seven families and fourteen children, if no other forms trickle in next week. I hadn't thought about it, but of course the families included younger and older siblings on the forms, kids who aren't in the school. I don't know how supporting families will feel about that, but I'm going to change the letter that will be going out on Monday to mention casually that they have the chance to support their children's 'classmates and siblings' rather than just the classmates, and leave it at that. With fourteen kids total, it shouldn't be too hard to find enough people to help out, but I will make sure that the school kids are taken care of first, and any siblings afterwards.

Tomorrow is the first birthday party for my twin nieces. I've pretty much decided that I'm going to go. DH and the kids were always going, but I wasn't sure if I could stomach my SIL and her husband for yet more family time this week, since I'll be seeing them all at Thanksgiving, too. My original, official excuse was going to be that I had a trig exam tomorrow, but that's been moved to after the holiday. The rest of the family won't know that, so I could still use that excuse, but I would feel like a really bad person. As disconnected from those kids as I feel, I should be spending all the time with them I can to try and establish some kind of relationship before they're old enough to sense that on of their aunts really isn't that interested. That's not a person I want to be. So, hate it or no, their Auntie will probably be there tomorrow, even if it *IS* with irish-cream-spiked-coffee in a travel mug.