Excuse me, I was away from my desk.

(Except I don't have a desk. I have some random computer tucked in the corner of a beeping, shrieking, desatting wonderland of critically ill babies). It's good to take a vacation from that work environment sometimes right? Right. I love it more when I come back.

In the past few months I have been all over North and Central America, and I must say I really enjoy the traveling life. I have been to...


West Palm Beach on a crazy Chicago to Florida road trip with my best friend Amy...


New Orleans for a crazy nights of fun before leaving on our spring break cruise (Jessica did have fun, I promise, and the beads were thrown at us with absolutely no "effort" on our parts, I also promise)...


The gorgeous beaches of Mexico, where $1 tequila shots will sneak up on you unexpectedly and lay you out flat...



Beach shack bars, where you too can be serenaded by a man who will not take no for an answer...


Las Escobas (the waterfalls) near Puerto Barrios, Guatemala...


The surreal blue waters of Belize...


A white sand beach on a tiny island near Belize, and yes, my friends are crazy, and yes we have a Barbie and yes there is a very long story behind that which, trust me, is hilarious...


Crazy Cozumel, which is exactly like Miami except for the trucks of policia with machine guns in the streets and the hazy threat of being kidnapped on the horizon...


And a week and a half after returning from the sunshine (after Joshua had already taken a quick trip to Minneapolis) I tagged along with him on his business trip to Boston so I could eat a lobster...

and more importantly...


I was able to catch up with my beloved family, who I have not seen since Thanksgiving and who are all unbelievably funny and cute and I really tried to fit them in my luggage for the flight back to Chicago, but Southwest Airlines said no, sorry, you exceeded your carry-on limit. And then I cried.

We are headed back to Massachusetts in 3 weeks for my brother Jared's senior play, and after that I will be back on the east coast in June, July, and August (2 weddings and a sailing trip off the coast of Maine, can we say I am a lucky girl to be living this life?!). I have another wedding in Tampa in September and another in Massachusetts in October, and in the middle of those two we have a big trip "planned" for September - we are deciding between two totally different vacations and haven't decided which one it will be. The biggest hurdle - getting my time off from work - has already been accomplished. Night shift girls love to travel? That should be our floor's motto. We currently have no vacation time available through the middle of October.

I'm sure I will continue to post here sporadically and I can't promise that won't mean June. I should probably start picking up overtime shifts to pay for the plane tickets that will allow me to actually experience all these vacations.

Actually, I am turning 25 in three weeks and I'm sure I will have something to post about my quarter life crisis shortly.

Friday the 13th

And a very short update just so I don't forget this blog exists....

We said NO to the granite countertops and stainless steel appliances and homeowners association fees and fixing things ourselves and property taxes and decided we are not buying a condo. I don't really know...I went on a road trip and somewhere between Mississippi and West Palm Beach I started to feel incredibly trapped by all that a mortgage entails.

We said YES to 50 miles a gallon and bought a PRIUS the weekend I got back from Florida. It is silver, shiny, totally baller, and someone hit it and cracked the bumper within 24 hours of us having it here in the city. Which isn't even that big of a deal, but totally confirmed me NO I DO NOT WANT TO OWN EXPENSIVE THINGS LIKE A CONDO. Because I do not want to have to repair them. Lesson learned, homeownership can wait.

We are leaving three weeks from tomorrow on a CRUISE, and in honor of spending 7 days in vastly less clothing than I've been wearing in the Chicago winter, I am doing the 30 Day Shred like everyone else here on the internets. Bullet points: it is fast, it is hard, i have muscles, and i'm hoping for abs sometime in the next 3 weeks.

I have been having a lot of fun lately. Too much fun. I need to haul myself back on the responsibility horse so to speak and start making some serious progress with organizing my life, my future, my priorities. I think Joshua would appreciate it and I'm sure it would be helpful for both of us. But let's also be realistic, I will start that sort of personal rejuevenation after the cruise. I'll call it detox.

#1 Most Inconsistent Blogger Award Goes to ME

OH. My blog. Maybe I should write something on it?

Hello, busiest holiday season ever and getting used to life as a RN (surprise! someone has to watch the babies on Christmas and it will obviously be the new girls). Hello, baby niece Lina who decided she would like to make a dramatic entrance on December 30, managing to avoid being born on any holiday at all and thus ensuring herself a full haul of gifts and an another excuse to celebrate each year. Hello, brand new President and sparkly First Lady. Hello, hope, change, and tax refund and stimulus packages just around the riverbend! (Right? Right.)

2009 is the first year I have not planned for and filled with concrete expectations before it even began. In 2005 I will get married, in 2006 I will start nursing school, in 2007 I will figure out what field of nursing to pursue, in 2008 I will graduate. I know that in 2009, Joshua will graduate with his MBA and I will turn 25, and even those momentous occasions only carry us through the first week of May. I'm going to Florida next week with my best friend, and then on a cruise in March with my other best friends, and so basically I've packed tropical drinks in my schedule until it's actually spring and then my life is just stretching and yawning out in front of me, ready to surprise me (maybe with more tropical drinks? I accept.)

So far in 2009, Joshua has gone back to school, I've continued to settle into my role as an official, orientationisoverandyesIwillbeyourbaby'snursetonight RN, and we've started looking at condos. So, basically while I wasn't paying attention for the last few years of birthdays and engagements and weddings and friends having babies and bills and loans...we all grew up. And today I said something to the effect of "I am very serious about having granite countertops, but I could do without this backsplash" and then the transition-to-selfish-yuppie-adulthood was complete. Why don't I just get a yellow lab, name it Wrigley or Addison, put on my Cubs hat and roll over and join the ranks of 20 and 30something Chicagoans who live on the North Side and are also very serious about granite. WHO IS SERIOUS ABOUT GRANITE? I felt a sudden impulse to screw the condo idea and move to someplace sexy and exotic where tropical drinks are the rule, not the exception and maybe I could just make drinks at a swim-up bar or something? I am alternately intoxicated with my adult responsibilities and loathing of them.

Luckily, working only 3 days a week and having no kids and generally self-reliant cats allows me some freedom. So it's ok that I spent approximately 6 hours lounging on the couch yesterday watching the inauguration and today I will spend my night catching up on Facebook and tv shows and eating potstickers and then getting my ass kicked (literally! we do butt kicks!) by the 30 Day Shred. And in 2009 I have decided I'm going to enjoy this limbo time, between being old enough to have a real job and real paycheck (and real vacations) and between having serious responsibilities like kids and a mortgage and GRANITE, damnit. I'm going to enjoy that we could buy a condo, or we can do something totally different and adventurous. In 2009, I am going to appreciate what I have been blessed with, and not take it for granted. Because life's flying by (25 years old...really...) and I want to look back on this time in my life and say, YES. I had so much of everything - time, love, friends, laughter,wine (so much!) - and I knew it, and I took the time to say, thank you, this really is quite amazing.

You may be three weeks old, but hello 2009.

BEARS WIN!

It was a horrible game that they should probably not have won, but thanks to a blocked field goal attempt, overtime, the sheer luck of the coin toss, and finally a Bears field goal (thank you Robbie Gould!), the Bears scraped past the Packers at Soldier Field. Joshua and his dad were among the frozen fans that braved windchills of -2 degrees to see the Bears stay alive for another week. (When they first got tickets, I was very jealous, but once the weather forecast for this week came out, I laughed myself indoors).

I watched the game from a pub with Joshua's mom (yes, I did drag her teetotaling self into a BAR...i love it), although we left at the end of the 4th quarter to drive downtown to get the guys, so we were on Michigan Avenue admiring the Christmas lights and listening to the game on the radio when it ended.

My first hometown team is of course, the New England Patriots (stop booing, I can hear you), and if you follow football you know that Patriots fans are despised the country over because they are a) obnoxious (I will admit this) and b) everyone else is jealous. I know this year has been rocky, and last year ended in utter devastation, but overall Pats fans have had lots to be happy about in the past five years or so.

My adopted Bears are more of a heartbreaker team, and I'm getting used to that. My learning experience with the emotional upheaval that is a losing football team began in the 4th quarter of last year's Super Bowl, when I held myself together until all our friends left (they were cheering for the Giants, I should have kicked them out) and then I cried on Joshua's shoulder for twenty minutes. Maybe that gives a little insight into how serious I am about football (you don't have a choice, growing up in New England...please see above: obnoxious fans). Joshua was a little stunned, but he has seen my family watch football (where there is yelling and screaming and stomping and occasionally the throwing of inanimate objects), so he handled it well. My hatred for anything Manning runs deep.

But beyond football...today we woke up in a snowglobe. Chicago looks absolutely gorgeous blanketed in snow, and yet I am already over it. We have had to use chains twice to get out of our ridiculous city parking spaces, which are really ice ruts and it is not even January yet. Sigh. I am spending the day inside wrapping presents and cleaning the apartment until I have to leave for work tonight.

Two days til Christmas and 98% of my shopping is done, 75% is wrapped and 0% of the Christmas Day meal/baking is completed. Overall, with the exception of some baking I should definitely have started yesterday, I would say I am making excellent progress.

I have not accomplished much Christmas shopping since my last post (Joshua has, although last time he went out he came home with a brand new HD TV. For...us.)

I work three 12 hour night shifts a week, including every 3rd weekend. This is my weekend. I suppose it's ridiculous to complain about a 3 day workweek, but with the way we are scheduled I sometimes end up having long stretches of time off and long stretches of time ON. I'm the middle of one of those long work weeks right now. From last Wednesday to this Wednesday I'm working 72 hours. Then, I admit, I will have 5 days off, but I'll be honest this 'week' is dragging for me. I had to go downstairs to the cafeteria at 4am last night to buy M&Ms and hot chocolate (from a machine! a new low!) just to keep me going through the last 3 hours. My babies were sleeping soundly and didn't need me to wake them up for anything so I organized their bedspaces, finished my charting, and then I gave up and ate M&M's and read an old issue of People. NICU nursing can run the gamut of terrifying to mind-numbingly dull, I guess.

And when I work 6 out of 7 nights in a week, I definitely miss my husband, my friends, my cats, and my bed. I do not have time for Christmas shopping. And I eat too much sugar.

So...the holidays are flying by at an astonishing speed (goodbye, Thanksgiving, hello, panicked Christmas shopping) and I have barely kept up with it all. I think anyone who has known me longer than 5 minutes knows I am definitely not your overprepared, wrap-the-presents-by-October type of person. I grew up in a family that considered tearing through department stores on Christmas Eve, an hour before we were supposed to be at Grandma's, practically tradition. Actually, we would typically run in to my extended family there as well. This is in no way an exaggeration.

Which is why we have arrived at December 11th with not much crossed off the list. And what is crossed off happened between last night at 10pm, due to Joshua taking advantage of Amazon.com while I was at work, and today at 7pm, after I finished a few hours of wacked out, sleep deprived shopping with Amy as my driver.

I have made exactly one handmade gift (Joshua's mom's scarf) and I'm very happy with the gifts we've found for friends and family so far. I have not bought one thing full-price, which is obviously very tacky to say, but I am not always the best bargain hunter (see: lazy, easily distracted, swayed by slick packaging, also lazy). So I am proud to say, if you are getting a gift from me, don't expect to return it for full price.

In other news, Joshua and I are the proud owners of the world's ugliest Christmas tree after my delightful husband convinced me to buy a tree in a net laying outside at at Home Depot. I will be honest, there were warning signs that things could go badly (the tree was in a net, hello) but he was swayed by the low price (warning sign!), ease of transport, and...I'm not sure what else. I'm not really sure what overcame either of us, but we were in a state of extreme exhaustion following our whirlwind Thanksgiving trip to New England (32 hours in the car, people, unacceptable).

As you can imagine, the tree comes with all sorts of lovely quirks. It's not exactly the triangle shape we all imagine a Christmas balsam fir should be. It's exactly the kind of tree that I would laugh at were I to find its sad little self hanging out in the woods. However, it's very green, the needles aren't sharp or brittle, and it might have the strongest branches of any Christmas tree I've ever had. Which is why all the ornaments are hanging off the very tips of the tree, 'disguising' the various holes. It gives off the effect that the tree is slightly disgusted by all the bedazzling we've imposed upon it, and is holding all the glitter and bells at arm's length.

I have not even begun to discuss how I much I am looking forward to filling the kitties' stockings. And Joshua's. So I will have to post again before Christmas!

Yesterday morning I reached into the freezer to pull out Joshua's lunch (a Trader Joe's frozen meal, sorry I am failing at my wifely duties here) and it was Not.Frozen. So I put my hand back in the freezer and very gingerly poked a pork chop. Soft.. The whole refrigerator had died overnight. And judging by how thawed the frozen food was, it had died early in the night.

Luckily it was thirty degrees out and with the help of my friends (I highly recommend living on the same exact street, within a block, of 2 of your best friends and your sister in law) we got the food out on the back porch and took all the pictures and magnets off the old fridge.

Then I left for a day of caramel corn making and watching The Business of Being Born (highly recommend that as well) and when I returned after a few more errands, voila! new, nicer fridge and bonus! they had put all the food from the porch back in the fridge.

I can't wait to own a place, but sometimes I am totally thrilled to be a renter.