Challenges and Gifts

Today has been full of challenges.  I knew last week that this was going to be a very busy week for me.  My schedule is incredibly packed and I needed to be much more organized that I was when I left my house this morning.  I left my house this morning knowing that my first challenge of the day would be re-interviewing for my job.  You'd have to know my history with job interviews to fully understand why interviewing causes such paralyzing fear in me, but the closer I got to Oklahoma City the sicker I felt.  Our day didn't turn out quite like was originally planned.  Instead of interviews the way the were originally scheduled, we met with our supervisor briefly and individually to see if there was anything that she needed to discuss with us.  Then this afternoon we completed a written version of the interview questions.

That written interview was followed by a test.  Yes, that's right a test!!  I had no idea I'd be taking a test today.  It was a test covering material that we learned in our literacy training last summer.  It was a pre-test for our upcoming Train the Trainer sessions.  For the first time in my life I literally wrote "I don't know this" for one of the test questions.  Never in my life have I answered a question like that!  I always know at least something to write down!

After training I had to go to David's Bridal to pick up the dress that I'm wearing for Kyndall's wedding on Saturday.  I ordered it the last time I was in Oklahoma City and needed to pick it up today.  Then I ran to the mall and bought some new black shoes and other accessories for the wedding.  After which I made a quick trip to Target for a couple of things that I forgot in my chaos and disorganized packing.  I finished all of the errands in enough time to get to the capital for dinner.

Dr. Barresi hosted the REACH Coaches at the capital tonight for dinner.  It was kind of our end of year celebration.  We watched a slide show of pictures from the year, visited over dinner and listened to speeches of gratitude and encouragement from Ramona Coats, one of our supervisors and Dr. Barresi.  As an appreciation gift, each of us was given One Thousand Gifts Devotional book by Ann Voskamp.

We were challenged to look at each day as a gift and to count our blessings each day as a way to remain thankful and grateful to God for our lives.  I look forward to reading the devotionals in this book.

Tomorrow will hold challenges all its own.  We continue our math training with Ratios and Proportions which will be a challenge for me, math is not my strong suit.  I'm getting better, but I still have a lot to learn.  My other major challenge tomorrow will be a physical one.

I told you I bought new shoes right?  Well the shoes that I bought have a wedge heel, which I don't typically wear and being new (as in directly out of the box) they were slick on the bottom.  Slick shoes, wedge heel and slick marble floors at the capital meant that my ankle turned and I busted.  Yes that's right, fell.  The only part of me that didn't hit the floor was my face.  Luckily I was alone when I fell so the embarrassment was kept to a minimum, although putting it on my blog and facebook opens myself up to embarrassment I realize.  I'm very bruised and sore but otherwise I'm fine.  My right knee took the brunt of the fall so it's very purple, my left knee is tender.  My left ankle is sore and I can feel the bruises in my elbows, wrists and palms.  I've loaded up on Tylenol for tonight and tomorrow will make sure to take lots of ibuprofen.  Luckily for me my dress for Saturday is long enough to cover the purple...I think...