Welcome to my life!

I'm a little unsure about this whole blogging thing, so here's the plan - I'm going to start one and not tell anyone about it. Makes good sense, right? Well, maybe I'll end up telling people. We'll see.

To start with a scary fact about me - I am THIRTY years old. Yes, 30. That is a freakin' scary huge number for a fat single girl in a tiny apartment. Not so scary for a married woman with a house and a baby or two. But for me, yes. By the way, while I'm on the subject of my age, let me say this: I am really tired of people telling me that I'm still young and have plenty of time to have babies and most people are waiting until they're older now anyway. That's fine and dandy. I am happy for those people. I am fine with them deciding that they wanted to wait. It's just not how I wanted MY life to go. Oh, well. I suppose God has his own plan out there for me...I'm just working on finding it.

So speaking of God's plans for me...I've made a lot of major life changes recently. I up and quit my job teaching Kindergarten in Charlottesville and moved to Richmond, where I got another job teaching Kindergarten. So far, I love living in Richmond. Mostly because my best gal pal, Julie (yes, I know she would love being referred to that way), lives here along with her husband Jeff and my two other good friends Katie and Jon. So we hang out a lot and that's exciting. I love Richmond. Never thought I was such a city girl, but I love all the shops and restaurants and stuff. Maybe not all the traffic...

My job has not turned out to be quite as exciting as I hoped. I have definitely learned the Kindergarten is not the place I want to be. But luckily, I just finished my M.Ed. in reading so I have gotten a new job. Next year I will be a Title 1 reading teacher. I don't know where I'll be, but it won't be at my current school. (To be a Title 1 school, you have to qualify by having a large percentage of free and reduced lunch kids, and my school doesn't qualify) I will probably spend part of my time working with small groups of kids that are struggling with reading and the other part of my time helping teachers with ideas for teaching reading. I am SOOOOOOOO excited about this!!! It means I get to do my favorite part of my job - teaching reading - but not all the other stuff - behavior notes and looking for lost coats and lunch money and collecting field trip forms and conferences and the list goes on and on and on. It's REALLY hard to get through the rest of this year, but I'm spending a lot of time praying for a positive attitude about it.

Here's another major decision that I have recently made - I'm going to have RNY gastric bypass surgery this summer. This is a weight loss surgery that staples a small portion of my stomach off and bypasses some of my intestines to that even the small amount of food I'm able to eat doesn't all get absorbed. It's completely scary, mostly because I'm going to completely have to change the way I eat and be more serious about exercise. And if I cheat I get really sick. Here's where the whole process stands right now:

- My insurance does not have the necessary rider to cover the surgery, so I'm doing this self-pay. And by self-pay, I mean that my wonderful parents are paying for it. Deciding to accept this money from them was a HUGE obstacle in making this decision.

- I have gone to an orientation meeting, and met with my surgeon - Dr. Elliot of the Richmond Surgical Group. Another doctor in that group was actually recommended to me, but I ended up meeting with Dr. Elliot. He moved here recently from CA, but he performed WLS there as well and I have heard lots of good things. He's not particularly gregarious (big word!), but I think that he will be a good choice for me.

- On Tuesday, I'm going to another doctor to begin a nutrition program for the next 4 months leading up to the surgery. (I'm waiting until summer because you have to be out of work for up to 6 weeks, and as a teacher summer made more sense) They were recommended by Dr. Elliot's office and they said that they may be willing to take me on as my primary care doctor as well. That would be good, since they obviously work with WLS patients. However, in addition to being medical doctors they practice "holistic medicine" and I'm not sure how I feel about that so we'll see how it goes...

- On Wednesday, I'm having my psychological evaluation. *gulp* Who knows what they will say about me? ;)

I promise future posts will not be this long. I'm not even sure that my life will turn out to be interesting enough for a blog ;) OH WAIT.

I forgot to tell you the most important and exciting thing about me - I'm an aunt!!!! My sister, Kay (who rocks a lot) is Mom to this perfect, adorable, wonderful 13-month old girl named Abigail. Abby is absolutely my favorite person in the whole world. I love her SO MUCH! Unfortunately, my sister moved all the way to Charleston, SC which is really far away. I usually end up seeing her about once a month though b/c Kay is really good about coming here and letting us go there. AND Kay is having another baby in September! Abby is absolutely the focus of my whole family. You should see my parent's refrigerator - solid Abby pictures. She's been walking for a while now (I know, she's so gifted) and she just is on the move constantly. She's started saying "uh-oh!" when she drops things and imitating things that people do. She's amazing :) I'm including some current pictures because I can and I KNOW that everyone wants to see her!







And, for good measure I'll add one of my whole family as well, from this past Christmas



If you want to see videos of this cute baby, check out my youtube page: www.youtube.com/sarahruth23