outdoor 'adventures'

We enjoyed a sunny walk to the park the other day.

Wheee!

Yee-ha!

We went to the flower store to get flowers for Doug's mom for mother's day and we saw these HUGE peonies. So I am now the proud owner of a 'peony tree' :)

Our homeschooling lesson this week, Jesus calling his 12 disciples.

Added compost to my garden beds and more cedar chips in the path. The strawberries are already flowering from surviving the winter. Doug made me a mobile of CDs to hopefully scare the birds away. And today I planted beets and lettuce seeds.

This sweetie is starting to walk.

There has been so much generosity from the community for frontline workers. Doug entered my name to some place that was giving away a free skincare kit and it came today. It is nice stuff! Eye repair gel, charcoal cleanser, 2 different masks. It was very generous. Thank you #skincarepackage! I've also gotten so many free meals at work from restaurants delivering and even a local church bought orchids for us all. Wow.

Corona

Man I didn't want to write a coronavirus post, but it seems to be impacting everyone. I just found out my floor at work is turning into "the coronavirus ward" for all known and suspected cases. So I'm pretty worried about it. My first shift since that changed is tomorrow so I'm hoping I'll feel more settled and ok about things once I see what we are doing to keep everyone, including our staff, safe. I don't have a ton of respiratory failure experience, so I am nervous about the patient care aspect of this illness as well.

I saw this on FB and hope I can keep this in mind when caring for people:

We are supposed to fly to Florida this week for a much looked forward to vacation and are wondering if we should cancel it. We weren't going to go to Disney, but were looking forward to beaches, and being in nature preserves. On one hand I'm wondering if it's being socially irresponsible traveling around, on the other I'm thinking that we're going to low population areas anyway, I just don't know. Also wouldn't want to get trapped somewhere.

In other news, Doug and I had a movie date yesterday. We saw I Still Believe, and it was SO GOOD.

Go see it! (we were the only ones in the theater)

Also made a batch of lactation cookies for Liz, her baby is due tomorrow. 

And this girl is pulling up on furniture now. Life moves by so quickly!

weekend update

And by "weekend" I pretty much just mean Friday as I worked all weekend. But Friday was a good day. Jill and Becks came over in the morning for breakfast. Which ended up being brunch as my quiche took forever to bake. It said bake 35 mins, yeah right, it ended up being over an hour and was just ok. Anyway, the time with Jill was nice.

Becks and September remain wary of each other.

Thursday Doug went with me to sign up at LA Fitness. I really liked my personal training group exercise class last week, but when I did the math it would cost me $248 a month. Um, no. So I started thinking about it and found out that LA Fitness was only $30 a month. I think I'll still do the bulk of my exercising at home, but they have cycle and bootcamp classes and I will aim for 1-2 classes a week. I love that it is only 5 minutes away and will get me doing exercises I am not used to while also pushing me more than I push myself. Also those classes are usually 45-60 minutes so that's also longer than I would do at home. I'm excited.

After brunch with Jill on Friday we went to Doug's parents to borrow their van. We were on a quest to Ikea to look for a new couch. Doug's dad wanted to come with us so the 3 of us headed off to Ikea. I was worried with a third person he'd be rushing me or opinionated and I was pleasantly surprised that wasn't the case at all. Unfortunately Ikea did not really have anything really great. Their catalogs look so nice, but in person everything seemed much smaller and sometimes cheap looking. We got lunch there (my vegetarian sweet potato and quinoa meatballs were good, but Doug's meatballs he said were pretty meh) and ended up only buying this cute little $1 mouse for September.

Speaking of mice, chewed bags and droppings have been spotted in our pantry. :( I'm trying to think of a scenario where we can just co-exist. Like storing all our food in glass/plastic containers, Doug thinks they might be in the attic and they could just live up there while we live down here. But then I keep thinking of them multiplying and multiplying until our house is dripping and crawling with them. And I heard they can chew thru electrical wires and stuff like that. So Doug bought some mousetraps. But I saw them on the counter and there is this little drawing of a curious sweet little mouse looking into the trap as the bar is about to decapitate him and I started crying. I would love for Doug to get live traps, and build a little mouse condo and we could stock it with old rags and food and take it out into the woods. He was not as excited about that plan. I think he's just going to kill them and not tell me. Which is not great either, but how many more options are there? :(

So yeah.

We also went to a couple more furniture stores with Doug and his Dad. Maybe those salespeople don't work on commission anymore because no one was willing to barter. So home we went. We ended up looking online and found on the art van website a couch very similar to the one we'd seen, and cheaper than the store prices, we figured it would be close enough to the one we tested and we bought it. Coming in February. So that was good. We have a futon in that spot, but now the futon will go over into the mantle room and the new couch will go in the living room.

Then worked all weekend. Both days I had 6 patients which pretty much guarantees a rushed day and feeling always behind. But there were moments of good times. I had this cute little old man patient who everytime I came in the room he'd ask me if I was married and how many kids did I have, and why didn't I have kids, and I should have kids. Haha. I told him I had a husband and a cat and showed him the above picture and he says "which one is your husband?" and I said "the one that's not a cat!" and kept laughing about that all day. In his defense he is an old man and it was a small phone picture with Doug up in the corner, but I thought it was so funny.

So today I'm back to catching up with bills, groceries, and homework. Always something to do!

Christmas Update

Christmas was a little different this year as it was my holiday to work.

It was an ok day. Pretty much the usual busyness of a day at work. Even with our humidifier I guess it's been too dry for my nose...

And now a few days later I've got a full blown cold. On my day off in between working I'm sitting here sniffling, coughing, and reading blogs instead of being productive. Oh well. Some days you just can't.

We had a really nice Christmas eve with my parents. Went up for dinner, Dad and Doug trimmed the last 2 of our new bedroom doors that were too long, had a delicious meal, opened presents. Mom and Dad got me these wonderful new slippers.

We went to the candlelight Christmas eve service at their church. Always nice. And then back home to be ready for work in the morning. After work Doug picked me up and we went out for dinner and then opened gifts at home. I've been totally missing out of all kinds of photo ops lately. My friend from NC was in town and we had a girl's day out, no pictures, had a girl's night with Jill and Kim, no pictures, and I didn't take any pictures either of Doug and I. Although I do have several cat videos of September playing with her new toy. Priorities! Too tired after working I guess. Doug got me a remote car starter which I'm sure will be appreciated on the long cold walk from work to my car.

The day after Christmas we went out to a lunch with Doug's extended family and that was really a lot nicer than I thought it would be, so that was nice.

Poor Doug yesterday had a headache from the moment he woke up to when he went to bed, and was throwing up too. We are not a great pair right now I guess!

But overall we have so much to be thankful for and very blessed. My heart is heavy for my cousin's brother-in-law, who at my age, found out he had a brain tumor and was dead within a week on Christmas. I saw on his wife's facebook a post so beautiful it made me cry. She just shared how loving and giving that her husband was that he chose to donate his organs and she (and their 2 children) were thankful that 2 families were going to receive a miracle this Christmas that their family did not. It was so heartbreaking, my thoughts and prayers are with them.

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas.

day in the life (work day)

Every workday I wake up at 6am. Ordinarily Doug is already gone, but this last Friday he had off. Normally when I get up Doug has already given September her breakfast and she's snoozing again in her hammock. But since I was the first one up she was eager to meet me as I opened our door. She's so cute how she runs down the hall to her bowl, glancing over her shoulder to make sure you're coming to feed her. Then she politely waits by her bowls.

Every workday I eat the same thing. 1/4 c. oatmeal made with water, a spoon of chia seeds and splash of almond milk. Usually I top it with a small handful of chocolate chips and slivered almonds. But I was out of both, so I did a sprinkle of brown sugar, cranberries and pecans. It's a good breakfast and usually keeps me full for several hours.

My little family

Load up my pockets, grab my lunch and water bottle and I'm off. I'm out the door usually 6:35 and I love living so close to work!

I have to park so far in the very back of the lot, I don't even know how far, maybe a quarter mile when you count the lot, then thru the parking structure, then down the hall to my elevator. Dark sky!

quick selfie while trying to not be seen taking a selfie

I never know how my day will go, but that day I got to take my first break at 12. (we get a 45 min break so most people split into 15 breakfast and 30 lunch later). But there are other days when I am too busy for a break at all. Our managers had got stuff for 'walking tacos' for some appreciation day. And it was appreciated! Pretty much ground beef put into a bag of fritos, they had cheese, lettuce and tomatoes and then you could hypothetically walk off. I however, sat and watched a bit of HGTV :) very tasty.

I snuck away again around 3 or 4 for my other break and ate what I had packed for my breakfast break.

Everyday seems like a busy day at work.

Walking back to the car around 7:45pm. Getting dark again already!

I get home around 8 and am usually hungry, tired, and either cranky or borderline cranky unfortunately. We reheated the cheeseburger soup and made corn-on-the-cob for a quick dinner together. The next day I was only working a half day in the afternoon so we stayed up a bit.

Icecream and the Age of Adeline, it was ok/good.

While I was at work Doug went to pick up his new Jeep. Hopefully it will be a reliable ride for many years.

Without sharing any of the excitement/drama/but also tedium details at work, that's a typical day. Go-go-go for 12+ hours and then come home too tired to do much of anything. But the days at work do usually fly by.

tingly spidey sense

Imagine my horror to glance down and see this on my leg at work

Luckily my double take revealed it to be just a string. And double luckily I hadn't screamed and brought lots of people running! I blame end-of-shift exhaustion.

let there NOT be light

So anyone following along over the last year knows by now that I am a very light sleeper and was having a hard time with the light that came from the street lamp right outside my window. I finally think I have it under control!

I had this ghetto cardboard box in the window for probably 6 months (sorry Jill!) and I even tried foil (too rustley)

That does look pretty bad. Recently my friend Jenna suggested a new idea, so I tried that

One ugly long tablecloth from the salvation army

Painstakingly lining it with duct tape

Sewed it up, and hung on one of those tension rods

Sewed on little straps with velcro on the other side so I could roll up the window

And there it is. I had to get a heavier duty tension rod so it wasn't so saggy in the middle, and I still have to use my 'light blocking' curtains in addition, but MUCH better.

I still have ol' clanky heating pipes that I can't figure out, but I ordered a 'shake awake' alarm clock on amazon that goes under the pillow. I hope it's strong, usually I wake up every morning face down and like a foot under my pillow for some reason. Anyway, that way I can wear my earplugs and hopefully not sleep through work.

Speaking of work, my first day at my new job went pretty well! Some nice people already, and I hope to soon be in the swing of things and learning and trying to be as helpful as I can be. Although I do miss my days of on-the-job facebooking and blog reading... oh well, it was good while it lasted!

Free Day

This morning as I was getting ready to go to clinical I turned my phone on and had about 5 messages telling me our instructor was sick and we don't have to come in today. Yay!

The heater noise is back already, and that combined with trying to get to bed earlier last night, worrying about not waking up in the morning, and 'busy brain' kept me awake long into the night and I would have been a huge grump anyway.

So now I am at the computer, with a little Pomeranian on my lap researching clocks for deaf people. They have an alarm clock called 'the sonic boom' which I'm not sure I want. And they have ones that put a little vibrating thing under your mattress and shake your bed awake. But might be a good idea, then I can sleep blissfully unaware of all these noises with my ear plugs in, and still not worry about sleeping thru my alarm, and missing school/work/etc.

In other news, I got a new job!!! My friend from church literally created a job, asked the hospital to approve the position, and recommended me for it. WOW. So next month I will start in the hospital as a nurse tech. I got the official call this morning and am very excited. It will be great experience and really be a great foot in the door for when I graduate. I am a bit sad thinking about leaving my paralegal job. I actually like what I do, and am good at it. And I love my co-worker Cristy. I will really miss hanging out in her office everyday and talking to her so much. I hope there will be some nice people at my new job!

This weekend was a good one. Hung out on Friday night with my friend Liz. Saturday I had an awful migraine for a good part of the day, so random, but it had cleared up by the time a few friends came over for game night. We played Mad Gab and Smart Ass and ate this White Pizza Dip I made. Sunday I helped out with my church baptisms, I really didn't do much, but it felt good to be a part of a church where Jesus is moving and bringing people to Himself. Like 10+ people made decisions during the service to believe and be baptized. Awesome.

After church I made corn chowder with donut croutons. I just found the chowder recipe online, and toasted donuts Liz gave me from the cider mill. I wish my soup was a little thicker, the recipe called for 2 potatoes, but I didn't have any and used butternut squash chunks which didn't really break down like I had imagined. But it was tasty, quite tasty in fact with the donut croutons :)

Mmmmmm... fall food!

Appreciation Day

The other day was National Assistant's day, and although I'm really a paralegal, my boss celebrated me :) A few weeks ago he said his club was doing a fancy appreciation lunch and he sent me an email about it asking if I wanted to go. I wrote back with one thing:

He was like, "seriously?" and Yes, always Yes.

I used to go every Sunday after church with Andrew, but no one to go with anymore. My cholesterol is probably thankful, but so good.

So he took me there and then later in the day he calls me into his office and gives me this:

So pretty. Some of my favorites tulips, pretty zinnias, some pretty purple thing, and none of the stinky lilies that I hate. And a card that said: "To a great assistant - I guarantee that no doctor or hospital will appreciate everything you do as much as me. Thank you!" So nice. And probably actually true. I hope I'll have the occasional grateful patient, but it seems like most nurses are overworked and under appreciated. Can't wait ;)

Last night I found out my patient lived on exactly the same street as my parents, small world! She was suffering from MS and I just felt so bad, there wasn't much I could do for her. I mostly just sat, and fed her, and let her know she wasn't alone.

This morning when I got to my paralegal job I saw that the door was open to the roof.

It always looks so inviting.

One time I asked the guy if I could climb up there, but got denied. "Too risky". Not sure how, me climbing up there doesn't mean I'm going to run to the edge and jump off. One time I started climbing up there, but just stopped short of peeking my head out. Too chicken I guess. Maybe someday!

Hospital Experience

Today was my first time in the hospital, I won't start my for real clinical until January, today was just a 'taste'. I felt so awkward at first, I totally bumbled my blood pressure, but the rest of the day went by pretty good. I did vitals, gave a bed bath, changed a bed with my patient in it, and then I watched my classmate change a guy's ostomy bag and I looked at his stage 4 pressure ulcer. Ouch. His nurse came in and evaluated the wound to see how deep it was and if it was tunneling, it was, and it started to bleed. I was almost crying imagining how it hurt and just to see a giant hole missing from someone's back and to know it will probably never heal. Sad. But all in all a pretty good first day.

After that I was still able to make it to my work Christmas party. I didn't think I could make it so I called my boss and told him no one could make fun of me in my scrubs while they were all festive/business casual. But I'm glad I went. Who passes up free lunch at Andiamos?? We had appetizers, salad, I got gnocchi, and chocolate dessert. Mmmmmm. And more and more I'm really loving my co-workers. They are so fun. Over the past months we've started doing girl's dinners, baseball games, and we're planning to go dancing next week. And it was just super fun today. It totally sucked getting fired from my old job back in January, it made an already worst month of my entire life even more terrible, but besides the paycut and loss of benefits, I'm glad I don't work there. I really love my job now and am a lot happier here. I finally feel like I know what I'm doing, I'm pretty good at it, and I just love my co-workers and boss. So I am thankful. I hope God has more good things for me up His sleeve in a nursing job someday 2 years from now!

hard day's work

So my boss just called me at work and asked me to look up movie times for his son who is off school today. I told him his options and then (jokingly) said that he should come in and work and I'll take Nick to the movies because I wanted to see that Hotel Transylvania movie and he said I should come meet them there. I said, 'um, shouldn't I stay here and work?' and he said 'no, come meet us.'

Um, ok!

Then later tonight after work Jill and I are having a dinner and game night. That is something I really like doing, and wasn't sure how it'd be now that I'm not 'in a couple', but it seems like it's going to be fine. I'm looking forward to it and it should be fun!

easy day

Yesterday was a super easy day at work. My boss took me out to lunch at his favorite Mexican restaurant, aka my new favorite Mexican restaurant. At least my favorite one in this state. My #1 favorite is 3 Margaritas in CO, and my #2 favorite is Guerro's Taco Bar in TX... anyway, it is nice to finally have a favorite in my own state!

We got back to the office and pretty soon he called me into his office to watch youtubes. Ok, if you want to pay me to watch and give my two cents on your favorite U2 songs that's fine with me. Haha.

Then it was back to work, but it is really nice having a fun relaxed boss.

Last week I was supposed to host the girl's Captivating book study. I got stuff in the crock pot in the morning before work and stayed up the night before to make cookies for dessert. Salted Mudslide Cookies. These cookies were a group effort, they needed coffee liqueur, and I mentioned at work I wasn't sure what that was. One of the other girls, after teasing me, said she could bring me in some so I didn't have to go buy any. How nice!

the dry ingredients

the wet ingredients

all mixed up

pretty tasty!

I didn't end up hosting the next day because one girl got sick and we decided to reschedule. So instead Jill and I ate the dinner and some cookies ourselves and watched some Downton Abby :) and I took the cookies to work and small group. It all worked out!