I would like to make this blog space a little prettier. Not so plain. Not so much Hi, This is a HUGE Picture of My Shadow How Artsy is That. But I have very little expertise in anything html and my husband works full-time and goes to school full-time and gives me death glares when I suggest little homekeeping ideas. Like taking out the trash. So I am thinking, Huge Picture of My Shadow it is! Someday I will spend some time figuring out how to do this. For now, I'm pretty content to spend time moaning about it.

Last night I had one of those realizations, the kind that make you stay awake late and then wake up early, unsure of why you are up but completely aware of your own unease. Right? I hate those. Anyways, I realized that I do not have a clue how to do many of the things that Joshua usually takes care of in our lives. The Man Chores. Last night, the air conditioner in our bedroom was making a snap crackle POP kind of noise, a noise that in my mind precedes smoke and combustion. So he shut it off and pulled this filter out of the side which was absolutely disgusting. Covered in dust, cat hair, probably my hair, who knows. The point is I HAD NO IDEA AIR CONDITIONERS HAD FILTERS. They sit in a windowsill! Butt to the outside! I thought they just circulated cold air in and all that other stuff got sucked out.

Inexplicably, this really bothers me. I've never lived alone in my life, which I do not regret at all (I sleep over at my friends' houses when Joshua is gone. With no shame. I may be scared of the dark). But in the transition between living at home, other people's homes, college, and then with my husband, I have never had to do things like clean out air conditioner filters. Joshua tells me when the car needs an oil change even though I am sure I could interpret the little sticker on our windshield fairly easily. I wouldn't know, because I never even remember to look. I can't make coffee. I CAN'T MAKE COFFEE, me of the caffeine addiction fame. (I would like to point out this in some way rationalizes my exorbitant spending on coffee) Yet, it is also quite a life failure.

So I should learn how to do all these things I suppose. Ask Joshua what else in our apartment comes with a filter (A. coffee pots B. air conditioners. I am on to something!) Check the oil change sticker. Take out the trash once in a while. Maybe then he will have a minute to fix my blog for me.

Today is a super important day for me.

I have been waiting for this particular day for a verrry loooooong time.

I am literally filled with anticipation and possibly even glee. Although I don't experience glee very often, so I am just assuming this is what it (maybe) feels like.

Tonight is the...

season premiere of The Office!!!

I can't wait.

And neither can Pam Beasley or Hala Jan Levinson, our cats who have only seen a few episodes of the show from whence their names came. They are just sitting in the living room right now, staring at the TV. I think they know.

I think they can feel the excitement.

I am so over this week. Not this technical week - since it is only Tuesday after all - but this work week, which started for me on Saturday and ends tomorrow at 7:30pm. 4 days of 12 hour shifts and 1 day of 12 hour babysitting is apparently too much for my fragile little self to handle. Yes, agreeing to babysit on my one day off was stupid, but I have been watching these kids for 4 years now and so I can't say no. I never say no. I got up in the dark and came home after dark every day this week. I know this is a normal American thing to do...and I am fortunate to have a stable job in this insane economy...and I should just shut up, check my bank account and be thankful....but the ADJUSTING. IS. HARD.

Anyways. Enough whining. I can't even handle myself lately.

I started reading the Twilight books - yes, the young adult vampire books. Because I am a sucker for a mystical fiction series? Because I miss the excitement of brand new, unexplored Harry Potter books? I don't know. I finished the first book today, and it was...pretty decent. It took a long time to get started, and I am a little creeped out by the description of the main character Edward (stone cold, pale as death, yet inexplicably mesmerizing and radiant? One sentence describes him as having 'pale lavender eyelids'. Uh...not my kind of guy). But of course I will get the rest of the books soon, because by the end I was caught up in the drama and basically, I just want to know if he's going to bite her (the mesmerized female main character), kill her, or let her stay a human. And I might as well read 4 books in the process. This is why I graduated from college, right, to pleasure read? Right. If you know what happens to Bella and Edward, don't tell me. I am sure if I get impatient I will Google it.

In other news, we are going on a cruise! In March! Which will hopefully be right at my winter breakdown point, when I absolutely cannot take one more day of Chicago mush and slush, and so what could be better than going to the Gulf of Mexico with some of my best friends and drinking my weight in margaritas (luckily, I think alcohol poisoning is out of my price range, so that's a bonus). I cannot wait. AND, our cruise leaves from New Orleans which is a city near and dear to my heart, so we'll get to spend a night there before we go! It's all very exciting and yay and wish it was next week-ish, especially since my last week has sucked so much (one of my patients DIED, yes, coded during a procedure and couldn't be revived so this wasn't a stellar week in my orientation experience. Ugh...adding to the frustrations.

The Tiredness is hitting me hard right now, so I think I need to give in to that. In 22 hours, I will be done with this ridiculous five day stretch and then maybe I will feel like more of a person instead,

My cats are so flipping cute. I think this is hardly worth writing about but I'm currently home during the day - something I used to do too much of and now I can't GET enough of - and I am really enjoying watching Pam and Hala go about their little routines of chasing each other and flopping around on the laundry (they both love to sleep on something we have worn or used. Last night Pam crawled all over Joshua's shoes, turned herself around a few times and then snuggled her face INSIDE THE SHOE. Which, ok, gross, but also - adorable.)

Our neighbor is out on the back porch shining his shoes, and both cats are up in the windowsill like, "who is that? why he is sitting on an antique chair? what is that horrible smell? is he going to hurt himself with all that vigorous shining? because he is approximately 100 years old!" These may actually be my questions, but I am assuming the cats share my line of thinking. His shoes are actually so shiny that it's a little disturbing. They make him look like a very quiet and unassuming man with an unfortunate taste for Hot Topic footwear.

Fancy Feet just went inside and left his antique chair and shoeshining kit (which includes multiple tins of black goop and rags and a LARGE bristle brush) outside and the cats are totally confused. They keep looking at the chair, his back door, and me as if there is some answer for what we have all just experienced. No. I found it as interesting as you both did. I'd like to ask him about the whole Old World setup (and some other questions too, like why he lives alone and does he have any family and does he need a pie or something) but I'm kind of nervous because he seems sort of intimidating. Our back porch is small, and where I am sitting in the dining cannot be more than 8 feet from his chair. I think if I opened my mouth I might startle him excessively. If he was still outside, of course.

I am sitting on the dining room floor right now typing this because my computer battery is dead, so my laptop needs to be plugged in at all times, and I do not want to bother unplugging it and moving somewhere more comfortable. Can we say LAZY!? I am making eggplant parm tonight but i am not ready to start cooking (motivationally speaking) so I guess the dining room floor is good for now.

This week I feel like I got a handle on some things at work that were stressing me out - basically just skills I am feeling more comfortable with - and I haven't left at the end of the day so burnt out. It finally occurred to me (lightbulb, seriously) that I have actually been working for less than 2 months and I have a TWENTY-TWO week orientation. I won't be done until the week before Christmas! So I still have two thirds of my orientation left to work out all the craziness in my brain.

Someone is smoking on the back porch of our building, and it actually smells amazing. Which, if you know me, should shock you because I am the anti-smoking champion of my social circle. Clearly I have reached a critical level of stress despite not even having to work on the floor today. If anyone is available, please bring me a cigarette. This may be the only time you'll ever see me smoke, because I have a serious reputation to uphold.

What other discombobulated ideas can I express here...on the dining room floor...this weekend we caught the Red Bull Flugtagon Saturday afternoon and Germanfest that night. Both were hilarious and I think I went approximately 13 hours without thinking about work once, a new record. Maybe 21 hours, if you count the fact that I passed out diagonally across the bed and woke up Sunday morning fully clothed, makeup on, looking EXTREMELY unattractive. And I only had one stein!

I am sitting pretty close to the cat food right now, which is unfortunate and kind of nauseating. I also have a killer headache. None of this makes me want to start cooking, but I am getting hungry and I should probably get on with that. No one has brought me a cigarette yet. I know Joshua will be THRILLED to hear about this craving, but I'm hoping it passes before he takes it as license to smoke half a pack before bedtime. Eggplant here I come.

I took the summer off from blogging. Not because I am "too cool" - thanks Kristin - but because I was (am?) too busy and too overwhelmed by my new life as a nurse. Every time I started to write something here it turned into some rambling business and I just couldn't finish it.

Suddenly it's fall. It snuck up on me - it was 95 degrees on Tuesday and by Wednesday it was cloudy and chilly. I had a pumpkin spice latte in my hand on Thursday morning. At this rate it will probably snow next week.

Just kidding. I have no illusions, Chicago will probably be a sauna again by next weekend. But this is the first fall in a long time that I haven't gone back to school, and in my mind September is still for settling back in to a routine, creating new schedules, getting organized. Back to blogging and actually doing responsible things like balancing the checkbook and grocery shopping regularly.

It's hard to write about work here. I think I scare people when they ask me about it, because I always say it's overwhelming and seriously, how am I expecting them to respond to that? They just kind of nod and say ohhh. (Which is what I do at work a lot actually). But work IS overwhelming, I can't come up with a better word for it. Neonatal ICU is an incredibly odd world, where the patients are smaller than the IV pumps and ventilators that are keeping them alive. We took a 700 gram baby to MRI the other day, which required 5 people to push the isolette, the vent, the IV poles, and the nitric oxide. I had my hands in the isolette bagging the baby during the whole trip, which was entirely surreal and made me feel more like I was acting in an episode of ER than participating in my very own career.

I think I've learned more in the past 6 weeks I've been working than in all of nursing school. But the difference is, I figured out how to be good at school, and the real world is not a multiple choice test. This sounds stupid obvious when I write it down, but in my actual life it's been jarring to transition out of school mentality and into the oh shit one of my patients is screaming his head off because he needs to eat and the other one is dropping his heart rate and oxygen saturations and clearly i cannot handle both things at one time I am only one nurse and a BRAND NEW ONE ANYWAYS.

But I really love it. I do. I have a great preceptor, and my only complaint is that she is SO thorough in teaching me things that we are always behind and I feel like I can't catch up because we spent half the morning discussing our patient's disease process and meds. But I know as much as I possibly can at this point about all the patients we've had, and every time I remember more and more. I have my other new grads who started with me - all TEN of us - to commiserate with, along with my nursing school friends who are experiencing the exact same stresses and overwhelmingness as I am. Actually I went out to dinner last night with 3 of my nursing school girls and despite having so much to catch up on, we were all basically asleep at the table. It made me happy to know I'm not the only one who is being ruined by 12 hour shifts.

I could continue to ramble on and on....and on...about work and how much I hate getting up at 5:30am and how caffeine-dependent I am, but it's a Friday night and I am supposed to be somewhere at ten. So I have to take a nap now in order to handle than kind of late night activity.

This is my new life.