I feel sick...oh, wait. I am.

This has felt like the longest week. And guess what? It's Tuesday at 9:30 in the morning. I got strep throat last Friday (well, probably before then, but that's when I started feeling the effects) and was sick all weekend. I swear(!) I've never had it this bad before. My lungs hurt. My throat hurts. My body aches. I'm having a hard time breathing. And to top it all off, I'm so groggy headed I can't think straight (if you knew how many times I had to try to spell straight right just then, you'd laugh).

The one thing I always appreciate about being sick (especially when your lungs and mucus are involved) is how your voice drops an octave. I sound like a man (at least in my head). For some people this might be considered a bad thing. However, I, who sound like a girl most of the time, get the chance for a few days to imagine what I would sound like had I been born a boy. Another thing about being sick that goes along with this is the spitting. Now, I don't mean to say that only boys spit, because that just isn't true. However, when I think of spitting, I think of baseball players and cowboys. Well, the point is I am spitting up lots of phlegm. And I feel like a man.

Last, I think that I would like to say that part of the reason I am so sick is because of the stresses of my new position. I love what I do (meaning I love working), but sometimes it gets to be a bit overwhelming. There are times at work like now, when no one is here, and there are times when it is super busy and 15,000 people are standing around your back asking you questions all at once. I've just got to get used to it. I figure that it will slow down after these first couple of weeks. I guess we'll find out...

Sitting at work...hoping to finish sometime in the near future

Well, for those of my faithful readers who don't know, I was recently "promoted" at work. This doesn't include a pay raise, and it doesn't really give me a lot of authority or anything, but it does give me some new tasks and no longer makes me the "office bitch." My official title is Assignment/Circulation Editor. I am in charge of editing press releases and helping the main editor come up with and pass out story ideas. We have opinion, entertainment, and sports editors that I will work with directly. They will filter their ideas through me, which I will then give to Cassie and to the respective writers assigned. Right now I am working on the circulation part of my job. I had to decide how many papers were given to the 45 places we deliver to, and who got which spots (technically, the staff decided where they want to go). This is a tedious process because we do not always receive a certain amount of papers, and we don't always know which spots will use the most papers. It is basically a big guessing game right now, and I'll probably have to tweak everything next week. I didn't really have a lot of time to write, but I wanted to post something since it had been a while since I had done so. Hopefully things will slow down here in the next few weeks.

How the expectations of Family and Marriage make me feel 30 instead of 20

Lately I have been noticing the ever-growing pressure for people in society to marry and have children. While this may seem to be way out in left field, it makes a lot of sense if you know the things of importance that have been happening in my life as of late.

1. My close friend Stephanie giving birth to her baby boy, Hayden. Readers of my blog will already know of this, since I have already posted an entry about this. Stephanie is only a few years older than me, and she is already a mother (granted the pregnancy was a surprise, not planned).

2. Two of my friends from high school got married. I went to the ceremony with my friend Jessica and my mother and sister. We happened to see several people we knew from high school, and as Jessica put it, it felt very much "like a high school reunion." Although the ceremony was beautiful, the bottom line is that my two friends are now husband and wife.

3. I've been very involved in my two best friends lives right now, as both of them go through different personal crises (don't know plural of that word, and don't have style book handy). However, this has just further brought to my attention that they both have boyfriends, while I don't.

After spending some time with one of my friends last night while she waited for her boyfriend to get out of a meeting, I went to Wal-Mart, with the indescribable need to spend money. (I ended up spend $140 on crap I didn't really need to buy for myself but had to have anyway.) I found myself spending the majority of my time in the home furnishings section, planning what my future home would look like once I moved out (which is lightyears away, Mom). As I turned a corner I ran into a friend from high school that I hadn't seen since graduation. He had grown up a bit (can I just say, whew), now sporting a beard. We sat and visited in the aisle, and I asked him what he had thought about our mutual friends' wedding (as mentioned above). He said what I now believe is exactly how I feel: "It just made me feel really old."

I'm 20 years old, so it was only two years ago that I graduated from high school. In fact, two years ago this time, I was in a great relationship, I was moving to Tulsa for school, and I could see the possibility of getting married in less than five years. Now, two years later, I have no boyfriend, I live at home again (in my parents' pool house, though, which is like my own place), and I definetely can't see myself getting married in the next decade. The problem with this is that due to circumstances around me, I can't help but feel that I'm supposed to be trying to change all this. Today, as I drove around town (by myself), I noticed at least three different guys driving in economic cars with baby shades on the windows. Not just any guys, though; young, cute guys, who couldn't be much older than I am (in fact, I'm pretty sure a friend used to date one of them). After running into my friend last night (who was then carted off by a girlfriend, maybe) and seeing all the Mr. Moms that are my age, I decided that I needed to vent some frustration. I know that everything I am doing is fine, and it really doesn't matter to me if I have a boyfriend or not, so long as I am happy, but I think it's safe to say we've all been here before.

Hey, remember that old School House Rock song "Interjection"?

"Intersession! Intersession! Intersession!"

That's what I was humming in my head to the tune of that "Interjection" song.

I'm on a break right now from my intersession class (as in a break in the middle of my four-hour-a-day long class). We just got finished taking our second test. I feel pretty confident, but you never know. Anyway, I was just sitting her thinking about random songs, and that one popped into my brain.

I'm really looking forward to Friday. Because Friday is the last day of my two-week intersession class, and then, for the first time since January, I will have a BREAK in school! I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. I'll probably just explode from the lack of not going to class. That or I'll lay out by the pool everyday and go visit my brother in Tulsa. Maybe even more! The possibilities are endless!

Break's up. I better go back to class for now. At least this class only lasted for two weeks, rather than four weeks, eight weeks, or sixteen weeks.

Hayden Pavat Lander is born!

I'm so excited! My friend Stephanie had her baby yesterday around 6:30 p.m. He's a beautiful baby boy named Hayden Pavat Lander. (Pavat is the last name of the father's best friend.) Mom, Molly and I went to visit her in the hospital today, and she was nursing him when we got there, but he stopped eating and we got to see his face (see picture above)!

Hayden was born on July 31 at 6:32 (I'm about 75% certain of the minute) p.m. He had 10 fingers and 10 toes, light brown hair and blue eyes. He weighed 8 pounds, 9 ounces and was 17 inches long. He was a stargazer (face up), so he has a bruise and blister on his head, but that will go away soon. In my opinion he looks like his dad in the eyes and nose, but he has his mother's smile (well, more mouth than smile, he's been too busy being a newborn to smile a lot).

Stephanie looked exhausted when we went to the hospital, but she was really happy to be through being pregnant. I haven't seen the happy father yet, but from what I hear, he's ecstatic to have a boy (he already has a girl from a previous relationship). He and Steph's mother were there by Steph's side while she pushed, and Steph's mom has stayed up at the hospital with Stephanie for as much of it as she could.

Although Stephanie thought she would get to go home today, she will probably have to wait until tomorrow. She's not gotten any rest, yet, and probably won't for years to come. But she's always wanted to have kids, and now she has her first one, a baby boy. I couldn't have picked a better person to be a mother, and I'm so excited for her and Shawn. I hope to be a part of her child's life, and I plan on making Hayden call me "Auntie Sarah," even though I am not related by blood.