I went into Donald's work today to take him lunch, and one of his co-workers asked me if I knew of a good daycare. I told her that I didn't, since I stay home with Lauren I've never really looked into it. I asked her why she was looking for a new daycare, and she said that the one her son is in now is turning him gay. I thought she was joking so I laughed! Turns out, the class is mostly all girls, so her son is spending the day playing with girls. His teacher told mom that her son was learning to jump like a cheerleader, and now mom is freaked out that her son is going to "turn gay" and is taking him out of that daycare. Oooookay! I asked her if working with mostly men would turn her into a lesbian, and she of course said no, but I don't think she made the connection. Geez!

Just a few quick updates:

*We're going to Vicksburg tonight and staying at the Ameristar hotel for Donald's birthday. I told him he could go alone, but he insisted that Peeler and I come with, so off we go. His friends at work gave him some money for his birthday, so he's going to have a good time in the casino with it. Hope he wins!

*After being insanely busy last week, I have run out of steam. I haven't done a damn thing all week. I really need to get busy this weekend and finish up my schoolwork so I can just be done!

*I hate McDonald's Monopoly. Donald and I are both on diets (7 pounds down, whoohooo!) and this damn game is making it difficult. We sent in for some free game pieces, but who knows how long it will take for them to get here. This is the closest to the lottery we have here in MS, and it's kinda like crack.

*I know I haven't posted any pictures in a while. This is because I haven't taken many. The kid doesn't sit still long enough any more. Also, I can never find the camera. I promise I will try to do better.

Gazelling

The closest thing I can think of to describe what I've been doing lately is "gazelling". For anyone who is familiar with Dave Ramsey, you know just what I'm talking about. Only I'm not doing it for debt - I'm doing it for savings. Gazelling is basically working your toosh off to make as much money as possible in as little time as possible. Dave Ramsey recommends it for paying off credit card debt, but like I said, I'm in it for the savings. I've been working about a thousand piddly jobs lately to make as much money as possible. For all those interested in what I'm doing -

*ExpoTV pays anywhere from $2-$10 per video you submit to their site. This means making videos of yourself reviewing products, editing them, then uploading them. I usually make between 5-10 videos a day during Lauren's naptime, then edit and upload them at night when I'm doing other things. Between Donald and I, we've made over $2,000 doing this in the past two months. Not bad!

*SharedReviews.com pays me $10 for every product review I write. They have a limit of $100 a person, so you can only do 50 reviews. Right now they're in beta testing and only have $10,000 to pay out during this time, and they've already paid out $5000, so I've kinda been in a hurry to get my reviews in before they run out of money. I just found this site 2 days ago, and since then I've written 27 reviews. I need to finish up the rest of mine, plus do 50 for Donald before they run out of money. This will only get us $200, but every little bit helps!

*Of course I've been teaching my Kaplan course on Saturdays. I've also been picking up proctoring hours when I can. Proctoring only pays $7 an hour, but all you have to do is hold a timer for 4 hours while the kids take the tests. I don't even have to stay in the room with them! So, I just go in the conference room and work on other stuff during this time. Not bad!

*I just picked up a student for private ACT tutoring through Kaplan. This gives me an extra 2 hours of teaching pay a week, plus an extra 2-3 hours of prep pay.

*I've been doing demo events at Wal-Mart. These are really easy and pay pretty well ($70 for 5 hours). I could do more, but of course most of them are on Saturday mornings when I'm teaching my class. I've done two in the last week on weeknights, so hopefully more will pop up soon. My next scheduled one isn't until October 28.

*Brainfuse tutoring starts in two weeks! I'm hoping to get in at least 10 hours a week doing this for an extra $400-$500 a month.

And this, folks, is how we are able to save anywhere from $800-$1000 a month. We can only save about $50-$100 from each of Donald's paychecks, so most of it is on my shoulders. It's okay though. Even though I bitch, I like staying busy. THANKFULLY I am working on my last class for school and should be done in a few weeks, so that is one less thing to worry about. That is, until I start student teaching in January. That's when things will get interesting!

Heard on the radio today:

"It's going to be a great week weather-wise. Highs in the high 80s, lows in the 60s all week. No rain in the forecast. I just love this wonderful, cool fall weather!"

Umm, yeah. While I agree that this week's weather is much better than previous weeks' weather, this is NOT "cool fall weather"! Not even a little!

I love fall in the North. Adore it. After a hot, humid August and early September, there is nothing better than being able to open your windows again and let the cool breeze come through your house. Real fall in Wisconsin starts in late September, or early October, depending on when Indian Summer comes around. Real fall weather is lows 60s for highs and 30s-40s at night. It's just cool enough for a sweater but not cold enough for a jacket. It's simply wonderful.

Fall up north is leaves burning in ditches along side the road. Yum. And speaking of leaves, you can't beat the fire reds of the Maples. Which of course coincides with the annual "leaf book" project at every elementary school. You know you are from the north if you know how to preserve a leaf between two sheets of wax paper!

Donald and I started our fall tradition the first year I was back in Wisconsin for college. I decided one day that I needed to carve a pumpkin, and conveniently that was the day that my lovely Corsica was not running. So, we borrowed a wagon from Brian's house and we walked all the way from Brian's house near 5 Points (if you know Janesville) to the fruit place way out on 51 South, past Burger King. I don't know why, but Donald ended up pulling me in the wagon most of the way there. It had to be at least 2 miles from Bri's house to the pumpkin place, but we had a great time. Every year after that we always went to the pumpkin place a few weeks before Halloween to get a few pumpkins to carve. That first year was the only time we walked though :o)

Mmmmm, fall. Homemade apple pie, crunchy leaves, frosty breath, yellow-orange-red wonderful fall. This is always the time of year that I want to go home because I miss it so much. Last year we were up in November, but by then the "good" fall had already passed - the trees were bare, the pumpkins were frozen, and well, it was just cold. Sadly I don't think we're going up this year for fall either. Ahhh....a girl can dream!

This week I did two college fairs for Kaplan. Basically I just had to go to the school, set up our table, and talk to students (or more likely - their parents) about our classes. It was interesting, and strange at the same time, being back in a high school. It'd been a long time since I'd been around high school kids. It went well, though. It was fun talking to them and talking to other college recruiters, too. Kind of depressing at the same time, though - if I'd have known in high school what I know now I would have probably went to a different college. Not that I didn't like Madison, because I did - I loved it. BUT - there's something to be said about leaving college with no student loans. Ah well. Can't change the past!

Anyway, I teach my first "real" class on Saturday. Last week I just talked to the parents while the kids took their diagnostic test. I think I have 5 kids in my class, and their scores range from a 14 to a 27, so there's a big variety there. I'm looking forward to it, so hopefully it goes well!

Everything else is fine. Donald isn't annoying me as much this week (maybe it was PMS?), so I guess I'll keep him :o) It's finally starting to cool off, but I wish it was still about 20 degrees cooler (60s would be nice).

Had to get Lauren ANOTHER pair of shoes today because she's out grown 4 pairs in the past few months. The kid is breaking me with shoes. In March I got her a pair of Keds sandals, size 5 that were huge on her. She wore those until about June, then I got her a pair of cheapo sandals at Target, size 6. Only took her about a month to outgrow those. She outgrew her sneakers about the same time, so I got her a pair of New Balances (6.5) in July. Now they're too small! So, she got a pair of Nike mary jane sneaks today at Kohls (size 7!!!), so I'm hoping those will at least last her through the fall! The kid has some huge feet! It's really annoying buying shoes all the time. I looked at some at Target last time I was there for some sneakers, but they were so stiff that I just couldn't bring myself to making her wear them. The shoes we got today from Kohls are so light and flexible that I wish I could get a pair!

Donald has this horrible habit that when he takes clothes out of the dryer, he just throws them in a clothes basket. This drives me nuts because then the clothes get all wrinkly and I either have to iron them or run them through the dryer again. I've told him that this drives me nuts time and again, but he never listens. I don't know why I bothered, but a few nights ago I told him again to PLEASE not do this, but to either lay them flat or take the ten minutes to fold them.

So tonight he put in a load of laundry before he put Lauren in the bath. After I got done putting her to sleep, I came out and noticed the dryer running. Of course curious to know what he did with the clothes that were in the dryer, I searched high and low for them. They were no where to be found. Only when I opened the dryer when it buzzed I discovered where the clothes were. He put the wet load in with the already-dry load and just ran the whole thing like that! The dryer was so full that I don't know how he got it all in there in the first place! Needless to say, the clothes were no where near dry, so I had to take out half and re-run them! So, now it is going to cost us three times the amount to dry that dang load. Not to mention the fact that now I have to stay until this load is dry so that I can fold them and run the second load before they get mildew-y. MEN!!!!

Let me tell you about my horrible week....

Yesterday I was getting ready to go to Target to pick up a few things, and decided that I'd better check to see how much money we had in the checking account. When I pulled up our account, I was in for a shock - our rent check had bounced! I about passed out. Turns out I forgot to write down our trip to Cozumel for lunch one day last week, which made our checking account $12 short when the rent check went to go through. Yeah. So of course we have every penny of our extra money sitting in our HSBC high interest savings account, and couldn't just transfer the money, so I had to go talk to our apartment manager and let her know what was going on. I ended up bawling my eyes out in front of her (yes, I totally felt like a douche bag), and she was really nice about it and everything. She said that we'd have to pay a late fee now as well as a returned check fee (an extra $50 - youch!) plus pay the rent that day with a money order. We still use our credit union in Wisconsin for our checking, so I couldn't just run to the bank to get the money out. I had to seriously DIG through all of our filing cabinet to find our ATM card for our savings account, the dig to find the PIN (we've never taken money out of this account before!), then go to three different ATMs in order to get out enough money. I finally got it all taken care of, but jeez I felt stupid. That's the first time we've ever bounced a check! Then when I came back to the office to give them the money order, I ended up bawling again. Ugh. That's so unlike me - usually I'm able to hold it together pretty well, but I was wreck yesterday. I guess between the situation and Donald and then Lauren being in a cranky mood it was all just too much. Donald was pissed, but I think he's over it now. Oh well. Life goes on I guess.

Then today I wake up and find that almost all of the videos Donald made last month for ExpoTV have been rejected! We've been making video reviews of a website to make extra money for our savings account - we've made over $2000 so far! Well, last month they decided to change some of the categories to $10 a video, so of course we made a ton of $10 videos. They rejected them all for "poor audio and video quality" when we used the same set-up we'd used on every other video that was approved! So, by them rejected those 50 videos or so, we lost $500! We are going to email them about it so hopefully they change their minds, but geez! This is too much!

So on top of all this, I've been trying to finish that damned SAT. Yeah. Not going to happen. Apparently the SAT is a hell of a lot harder than the ACT. Heh. I sat down to do the math sections the other night and just laughed. I emailed my supervisor and told her that there's no way I'd feel comfortable teaching kids this stuff right now, and she hasn't emailed me back yet so she's probably mad. Whatever. These kids (or their parents, I should say) pay nearly $1000 bucks to take this class, and for that kind of money they deserve a teacher who knows what they're doing. If I had a few months and could actually take the time to re-learn this stuff, it would be a totally different story. I told her I'd be happy to study for a while and then try to teach an SAT class at a later date, so we'll see.

So yeah. I hope my first ACT class tomorrow goes better than the rest of the week has. I told Donald I need a free vacation! Free because I don't want to stress about having to spend any money on it! Too bad I don't think that's going to happen :o(

Tonight was my last session for Kaplan teacher training. I guess they like me because they've given me two classes already. The first one is for the ACT and starts this Saturday! The second is for the SAT (which I've never taken) and starts next Sunday.

I'm VERY nervous about the SAT class. First, I don't know jack about the SAT. I have a test that I have to do and score at least in the 90th percentile on to be able to teach it, but my trainer seems to think that won't be a problem. Hah! Second, I'm starting half-way through a class. The guy who is teaching it right now is an awesome teacher, so I'll have big shoes to fill. Third, the guy who's teaching the class right now told me that there's a kid in it that is a mighty big pain in the rump. Terrific. I'm going to go in on Sunday and observe the class, so hopefully I won't find out that I've bitten off more than I can chew.

I'll also have two students that I'll tutoring privately once a week each for the SAT. This again makes me nervous. These kids (well, their parents) pay big bucks for private tutoring, and I kind of feel like a sham, since I really know nothing about the SAT. I guess I have a lot to learn in the next few weeks!

The good news is that I will be done with both classes by the beginning of December and I may or may not take any thing else after that, depending on what happens with student teaching. I'm happy to be making some extra money for the savings account, though! Every penny of what I make from all my little side ventures is being saved for the move, so I'm happy to contribute more!

Things I'm pondering right now...

1) Why is it that I'm the only person in this house that knows where the dishwasher is located and what it does? I swear I'm the only person who ever puts anything in it or puts anything in it away. My dad doesn't even touch it when he's home. Must be a man thing. Either way, it's annoying as hell.

2) Why is it that when I buy a gallon of milk it just sits there in the fridge, and half of it goes bad before it gets used? And when I only buy a half-gallon, it's gone in two days.

3) Well there was a 3. I forgot what it was.

I PASSED

both of my Praxis II tests! With really good scores! 193 on Curriculum (K-5) and 182 on PLT (5-9). I got a National Excellence award for the 193 (top 15% of scores nationwide) and was 2 points shy of getting it for the 182. Haha...Donald says I should re-take it. NOT! This is such a big weight off my shoulders...so glad it's over!

Had my second-to-last Kaplan training session tonight. It's still going fine but I will be glad when it's over! I'm not sure when I'll get a class yet. The final session is Sept. 5, so I have this week off to hopefully get some school work done - 4 papers to go and they are all at least 4-5 pages, so we'll see. My goal was to be done by the end of the month, but I'll be happy with finishing by Sept. 7. Then hopefully I can finish up the last class by the end of September and have Oct - December free. That would be nice. I'd be able to really focus on my tutoring with Brainfuse and teaching with Kaplan (if I get a class).

As you can see at the top of the page, I put up two counters; one for days until we move, and the other for our savings. Donald and I were talking yesterday and we both agreed that time is going to fly between now and our move. 8.5 months to go! Seems like forever but it is not really that long. We are still thinking about where we want to go. We'd almost settled on Eugene, Oregon, but now we're leaning more toward Portland or even Vancouver, Washington. We still have a lot of research to do but I'm loving the sounds of Portland more every day. Seems like a wonderful city.

Anyway, I'm going to try to get to bed early tonight - if you call 12:30 early. I try to start the week feeling fresh :o)

Score one for the good guys....

Donald and I have really been trying to eat healthier. In reality that translates into me not buying junk food when I go to the store anymore and trying to cook better meals. If it were just me and Lauren, this would be easy. We'll both eat almost anything. Donald, on the other hand, is the world's pickiest eater. He won't eat rice, any vegetable except corn, green beans, and peas - and only canned. He hates all seafood, fish, wheat bread, cream cheese, sour cream, any fruit except watermelon and canned pears, or anything even the least bit spicy. Needless to say, it's getting difficult to find healthy things that leave out these ingredients.

Over the past few months, I've figured out that once of the easiest ways to eat more vegetables is to throw baby spinach in everything. I put it in my lasagna, spaghetti, smoothies (yes, really - just toss in a handful - it'll turn your smoothie green but you won't taste it at all), sandwiches, wraps - anything. Of course, anything that I put spinach in, Donald won't eat. So I usually end up making two different versions, one with spinach and one without.

I got sneaky tonight, though. I decided to make Shrimp (Chicken for Donald) Penne with Creamy Pesto, and Donald of course got home from work before I could throw in the spinach. I'd already decided that I was putting it in his and he'd just have to deal with it. I had the spinach all chopped up with the garlic and in a bowl on the stove. When he came into the kitchen, he asked - "What is that green stuff?" I told him it was parsley, hahah! He bought it to, and ate his dinner, spinach and all, and even said it was good. I win!

No, I did not tell him he ate spinach. He would then just say something like, "I thought I tasted something funny in there". I'll let him believe that he's eating parsley for the rest of his life. MEN!

Hats are Fun!

I rather like this look :o)

I know I'm cute!

Okay, enough of this!

Oh man, my schedule has been kicking my butt the last few weeks. Monday through Wednesday nights I spend working on school work. I'm trying to get the last of my work done before the end of September. It's going to be cutting it close, but I really want a couple months to relax before student teaching (and then moving). I have five papers left for Math/Science, then seven for Social Studies/Health/Art. So if I can continue to get 2-3 done each week, I should be fine. Thursday - Sunday I spend prepping for my Kaplan class. It technically shouldn't take me that long, but do you know how long it's been since I've done trig? A very long time (and I wasn't that good at it in the first place). The algebra came back pretty easily, which I was surprised about. Anyway, class is going well. Teaching is actually fun (probably a good thing). We'll see how it goes when I get real students, haha. I have two more weeks of training and then hopefully I'll get my own class to teach.

I know I'm going to be so much busier during student teaching and I am so dreading it. I already hate locking myself in the spare bedroom at night so I can get things done. It totally sucks, but I suppose it'll be worth it soon. To top it off, Lauren has been going to bed later and later (11:20 tonight when she finally fell asleep), so I get less time at night to work. This is probably because when she wakes up in the morning, I'm so beat from staying up until 2-3 the night before she usually ends up nursing back to sleep. If we actually got up the first time she woke up around 7-8 instead of going back to sleep until 10, she'd probably go to bed earlier. And then wake up earlier. So I'm screwed either way. Heh.

Yeah I know I'm complaining. Except that I'm really not. I do like being busy - I get more done when I have a lot to do. Better time management I think. Anyway, so if you don't hear much from me in the next few weeks, you'll know why.

Playing in the Tunnel

I'm craaaaazy!

Okay, this heat is just getting ridiculous now (right now - temp 100, heat index 109). All of my Mississippi friends can relate, I'm sure. Lauren and I stayed inside this week because it was so hot, and I was looking forward to next week for some more reasonable weather (read: not over 98 degrees). I just checked the 10-day forecast, and now the highs are over 100 every day for the next five days. It's not supposed to be anywhere near bearable until next Saturday, with a high of 94. Yay. Another week of being stuck inside.

I had to get out of the house today. Since school started yesterday, I thought it was safe to assume that the playground at McDonald's would be free of big kids. I was wrong. When we got there, there was only one other little boy playing. Within 10 minutes, a whole slew of boys showed up. With their moms of course, but they may as well have been there alone. They were demon children if I've ever seen any. They ranged in age from probably 4-7, and they were craaaazy. The moms didn't seem to care - they just let them beat the crap out of each other. The other mom of the little boy came and sat next to me and was giving the other moms dirty looks, and I can't say I blame her. I know boys will be boys, but damn, control your kids! So, needless to say, we didn't stay at McDonald's long.

I'm starving. I had a cheeseburger at McD's for lunch and some of Peeler's Happy Meal fries, and I just ate a plum, but I'm still starving. Guess that means I'd better cook dinner....

Lexy went back to the doctor today. She was diagnosed with Fibrocystic Breast disease. It's nothing life-threatening or anything, but she does have to go back in for a biopsy the 24th, I think. She has one lump that they are concerned about that they just want to make sure isn't cancerous. She is supposed to limit her fat and caffeine intake and also take a Vitamin E supplement. So I guess she will be fine, pending the results of the biopsy of course.

Speaking of, she's still going headstrong with the wedding idea. I'm supposed to be finding a red dress to wear to her wedding at the courthouse :o| I wish I could just convince her to get pre-martial counseling, but she "doesn't have that kind of money". Whatev.

Whew! We had a busy weekend! We left right after Donald got off work on Friday for Meridian. We got there around 7:30, checked into the hotel, and then went in search of food. We ended up eating at the hotel restaurant, but I think we'd have been better off going to Waffle House. Donald ordered the chicken strip dinner for $7.99 and got 3 chicken strips and about 4 onion rings. After dinner we went swimming, then went right to bed.

Neither one of us slept for crap Friday night. I had to be up at 5:30, and I don't think I got any real sleep until around 2:00. The plan was for me to just drive myself to the test center so Lauren and Donald could sleep in, but of course Lauren woke up the minute I got out of bed. Donald ended up taking me to the test so that Lauren would hopefully fall back asleep in the car, but of course that didn't happen.

I had to be at the center for my first test at 7:30. Testing was supposed to start at 8:00, but our proctor was horrible and didn't manage to get us started until almost 9:00! This first test was Elementary Education: Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment (K-5) which I honestly found to be easy. There were 120 multiple choice questions in 120 minutes. There were only 2-3 questions that I really wasn't sure about - one involving meiosis, which I'm still not sure of the answer even after looking the info up online. The other one that I remember was something involving a pre-writing activity and I kept second-guessing myself. Other than that, I really knew all the material so I think I did pretty well.

I got done with the first test around 11:00, and didn't have to be back for my second exam until 2:15, so we went to the mall, just for something to do. When we walked in, I noticed a sign that said something about a drawing for a $500 mall gift card, so we went and signed up for that. You had to be present to win, so we went to Goody's and I found a few pairs of pants for cheap and then had lunch at a Mexican restaurant. We went to the drawing, and discovered that they were actually giving out 10 gift cards, ranging in value from $25-$500. They first drew the 10 names out, and Donald was called! He went up on stage, and then from the 10 people the drew for the specific cards. He ended up winning $50, which was awesome! We didn't have any more time to shop, though, so now we have a gift card for the Meridian mall and we have no idea when we'll ever be back to Meridian. That's okay, though, because that mall and the mall in Janesville are owned by the same company, so we can use the card in Janesville next time we go home.

I got back to the center at 2:15 for the next test, which was Principles of Learning (5-9). This test was rough! It was four case studies with three constructed response questions for each study, plus 24 multiple choice questions in 2 hours. That basically gave me 5 minutes to write each answer, which is not a lot. I really wasn't that prepared for the content of this exam as I should have been either, which didn't help matters. The first case study was about the social and emotional development of adolescents, and my program has really focused on the under 12 set, so I had to dig waaaay back to my undergrad years for this one. I probably screwed it up. The multiple choice questions were again easy, so hopefully I made up some ground there. We'll see in a month!

After the test, we drove to Philadelphia to play at the casino a bit. Donald and I each had $20. He lost his in a matter of 15 minutes, but I was able to keep mine for at least a half hour before I got bored and we decided to leave. I cashed out with $21.07, so I won a buck. Yippie. We then had dinner at a Chinese buffet, then drove home. We ended up getting home around 10:30 last night. We both passed out promptly. Heh.

Of course Lauren woke up earlier than normal this morning, so that sucked. I spent the day prepping for my Kaplan teacher training course, and Donald picked up the house. My course started at 5:00 and lasted till 9:00. It wasn't as horrible as I'd expected. We had to prepare an introduction, so everyone presented that and then we listened to the trainer yak for 2 hours. Then we had 5 minutes to prepare a lesson, and then had to teach that lesson. My lesson was on verb tense. Considering that it was the first time I'd really ever taught, I think I did okay. I stumbled on the imperfect tense and felt retarded, but other than that I survived. For the next class, I have 2 teach-backs to prepare, both in Reading. The class was interesting, but I'm really not used to sitting in class anymore. I had a horrible headache by the time we were finished.

Okay, well....that's it I guess. I'm POOPED so I'm headed to bed!

Lauren and I went to Lenny's Subs for lunch today. Afterwards, we walked next door to Micheal's craft store. I still had my cup of ice tea with me, so I let Lauren hang on to it while we were in the store. She was drinking what was left of it while we were waiting in line, and she was being quiet, so I left her alone. Then this old biddy behind me in line asks just what I'm letting my baby drink. I should have replied, "Jack and Coke" but I didn't, and just said tea. Then she said, "Well, I guess that's better for her than Coke." Damn old ladies need to mind their own business. I never give my kid soda and she's had tea about 3 times in her life. 98% of the time she drinks either water or milk. I know what's good and not good for her, I don't need an old crabby lady telling me! Man! Maybe I'm just uptight about these things....

In other news, I'm taking the Praxis II this weekend. We have to go all the way to Meridian for it. I have no idea why there wasn't a test offered in Jackson (it being the biggest city in MS and all...), but whatever. So we're driving down Friday night and coming back Saturday night. I test 7:30-10:30 and 2:30-5:30 (I think). I haven't studied for it at all, so I'm really hoping I pass. Good thing MS has the lowest passing scores in the country. Hah! It kind of irks me that I even have to take it - my initial license will be in Oregon and the Praxis isn't required there - they have their own state exam. But because I'm student teaching in Mississippi, I have to pass the Praxis before I can do that. Anyway, I really wanted to get to Barnes and Noble to read through the study guide, but I don't know if it's going to happen.

Finally, our internet has been crazy slow lately and I hadn't been able to figure out why. We set up a wireless network a few months ago and I guess we never got around to configuring the security settings because last night I discover that there were two other people stealing our internet! Dang them! Paul and Ebony whoever you are...no more stealing my bandwidth! Well they can't now because I set up our security tonight. Took me FOREVER but I think I finally got it figured out. It's going much faster now!