Kiki Does Chicago

Excuse me, I was away from my desk.

2009-04-06T15:53:00.000-07:00

(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

2009-02-13T09:39:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-21T03:03:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-12-23T09:09:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-12-14T14:26:00.001-08:00

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.

2008-12-11T17:45:00.001-08:00

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!

2008-11-19T09:26:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-11-17T12:49:00.000-08:00

I am pleased to announce that two very monumental events have occurred today, and it's not even 3:00pm yet.

First, I hauled out all the Christmas decorations and started the massive process of bestowing holiday spirit on every room in this apartment. I am about halfway done, but I had to take a break since I am also in the midst of processing 6 (SIX!) loads of laundry. (We have been busy). So far I've put up our nativity, our stockings (including two new tiny ones for Pam and Hala, comments are closed on this issue except theyaresoflippingcute!!), changed over all the dishcloths and potholders to their Christmas versions, and pulled out all the Christmas candles. I've also made two holiday stations on Pandora, one contemporary and one classic. I just told Pandora to never play NSync's version of Merry Christmas again, so I haven't completely lost my senses in the holiday hoopla.

I do know that it's pretty early to decorate. I wasn't planning on diving into this lovely disaster until this weekend, but I have today and tomorrow off and then I work 6 out of the next 7 days after that. I leave straight from work Wednesday morning at 7:30am to drive 14 hours across the country to see my wonderful family. That clearly left me with no choice but to decorate today, since I absolutely cannot return home from Thanksgiving to an undecorated home! That would be tragic.

Secondly, in terms of the monumental events, I have secured a written contract from my younger brother telling me he will move to Chicago next summer. Ok, it was a text message, and maybe he was slightly more vague than that, but I am taking him seriously. My youngest brother was just here visiting my alma mater, and he also tells me he wants to move here. I have a VERY good track record of convincing (coercing?) people to move to Chicago, which is why you could be out at a bar sometime and overhear an entire table of people talking about their childhood in Massachusetts. Those are my people. Anyways, convincing both my brothers to move here within a year would really be the ultimate triumph for me. Because with all three children in the Midwest, my parents would also be forced to seriously consider relocating.

They call this a coup, I believe.

Oh! And one more thing. After having spent an inordinate amount of time wandering the aisles this morning (and after watching that 30 Rock a few weeks back where Oprah guest-starred), I would also like to promote a few of My Favorite (Holiday) Things (Which can be Purchased at Target).

1) Method Frosted Fir Hand Soap

2) Snowmen Acrylic Dinnerware
Ok, I only bought the glasses. But tell me the whole set is not adorable?!

3) Snowmen Christmas Stocking
Joshua and I both have stockings at our parents' homes, but have never purchased our own. These look like they will wear well over the years. I can picture our (rambunctious) children ripping apart the Christmas boxes and yelling, "I found mom and dad's stockings!" (then they will grumble, "here are Pam and Hala's stupid little stockings") Somehow I find this mental picture hilarious.

2008-11-06T17:51:00.000-08:00

I finished Joshua's mom's scarf today, making it officially the first wearable piece of knitting I have completed! I've crocheted several scarfs and hats and made valiant attempts to finish the random knitting I've started, but this is really the first thing that I finished well. (Naturally, I kind of want to keep it! Because I am a horrible, selfish knitter. Don't worry, it's definitely hers). I would post a picture, but my camera won't connect to the computer lately. It's feeling lazy, apparently.

The cats love the yarn. They lick it and bat at it and are generally transfixed by it. This is a serious stereotype, right? Cats and yarn? I am the kind of person who owns CATS. Who KNITS. I really enjoy this new hobby, and I adore my cats, but the reality of being a cat-owning knitter is rough on the ego. I am too young for this.

I Bleed Blue...

2008-11-05T06:04:00.000-08:00

"This is our moment. This is our time - to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:

YES WE CAN."

- Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States of America

All I Really Want To Say Is...

2008-11-03T20:40:00.000-08:00

2008-11-02T20:39:00.000-08:00

We had a very calm, relaxed Sunday. We went to church for the first time in months (the night shift and the weekend trips to everywhere and nowhere have kept us either in bed or out of town for a shockingly long time).

We got coffee at a local coffee shop where I accidentally ordered a tall and was glared at by the barista. Yes, I have sold my soul to Starbucks. For the convenience. (See also, the night shift).

We stopped in local yarn store next to the local coffee shop and I bought two skeins of thick, wintry yarn that will hopefully become scarves for Joshua (gray and white ribbed, very manly) and his mom (a heather blue chessboard pattern). I already started on his mom's scarf and as it's on size 15 needles I'm hoping to finish it before it hits 75 degrees on Wednesday. Seventy-five. Seriously, November? Are you for real?

We watched football. Kyle Orton got injured and Rex Grossman managed to take to Bears to a win over the Lions, even though he looks just as frightened and confused as always. After growing up in Patriots country, Tom Brady country, poor Rex makes me physically cringe.

So, it was a very ordinary day and yet it wasn't. I took a leap of faith which I can't really discuss here, but was terrifying and also absolutely the right thing to do (no I did NOT throw away my birth control pills). I had one of those experiences at church this morning where I was smacked in the face with something that I really needed to deal with. It wasn't even subtle, I mean I opened up the study guide for the week that goes along with the sermon series, and I could have just inserted my name in the questions for the first day. In what ways does your life reflect x...y...z? (um, it doesn't? I'll get back to you at 10pm when I've made some steps in the right direction?) Sometimes God is a whispered breath, and other times, a bulldozer.

2008-11-01T13:34:00.000-07:00

I don't think it's a big surprise to anyone that I love the city. I have always been a city girl, since the very first time I went to New York City to visit my relatives. I don't think I can overstate how hard I fell for city life. I loved the crush of people, noise, lights, the smell of Chinese takeout and bakeries. I almost got killed by a cab, and to my parents' horror, I was thrilled. I went back as often as possible. When I was junior in high school, I spent three weeks living with my cousin in Greenwich Village. My hippie performing arts school had a whole month of what we called Paideia. We could spend a month doing anything from intensive hiphop to mock trial. I chose to do an independent study and attend a writer's series at the New School.

I never went. I don't remember why, I think I was intimidated by the thought of college students (college students!) critiquing my writing. Instead, I went to ballet class at Broadway Dance Center (It kicked my ass, I should have been more intimidated by it). I wandered around New York City, taking the train to places that sounded interesting all by myself while my cousin went to school. I saw Rent and a few other plays. I got carded in a bar and saw Kirsten Dunst in Dean and Deluca. I basically did nothing except explore and pretend I lived in New York. Oh, and I started artfully slinging scarves around my neck (scarves make you urban, did you know?) I made plans to move there immediately after I graduated. With a lot of scarves and not a lot of money.

Obviously my life didn't play out how I envisioned it when I was seventeen, but I still ended up in a city that I love. And I love Chicago more than New York, for reasons I didn't care about when I was in high school. It's cheaper. Friendlier. You don't have to be glamorous or edgy (or both) here. New York is exceedingly cool, Chicago is just...itself.

I think one of the best things about living in a city, besides the easy access to sushi and museums and art we never take enough advantage of, is actually getting out of the city. It makes me appreciate trees. Even the flat, empty cornfields that I hated when I first moved to the midwest look somewhat stark and lovely to me now. We're at Joshua's parents this weekend, just hanging out and drinking coffee and doing free laundry and watching hdtv (him) and leisurely blogging (me). It's quiet and not at all how I want my life to be every day,but I do appreciate it. Have I totally grown up?

2008-10-31T07:33:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I really wish we could take pictures of our precious kiddos in the NICU. Yes, it would totally violate their privacy and HIPAA and all those boring legal technicalities, but I think the world at large would benefit from seeing them all dressed up in their Halloween costumes! Because nothing jazzes up IV lines and oxygen tubing and cardiac leads like a velour pumpkin outfit! Who will notice your trach when you are wearing a fluffy white lamb costume with actual hooves?? (Hopefully your nurse will notice, but it might be difficult for a minute. We are falling over from All.The.Cuteness!)

I've actually never been a huge fan of Halloween - probably because in the adult world it is a quite a bit more skank than sweet - but I think I changed my mind last night at work. These families have never had the joy of bringing their babies at home. If they've been outside, it was only for the briefest moment between an ambulance and an emergency room door. They live in a hospital . Watching their parents wrestle them into pumpkin suits and I Love My Mummy onesies made me realize just how important it is to us as humans that life goes on normally, despite overwhelming obstacles. We keep our traditions, no matter how strange. We cope with costumes.

And I will say, I think it works. I had a new patient last night whose parents were understandably overwhelmed and scared that their brand new baby boy, who had been just a perfectly healthy 3 day old, suddenly ended up in the NICU with a heart issue. They didn't know they would be able to hold their baby, now that he was attached to his leads and lines. They didn't think they could bring him clothes from home to wear. They didn't know they could change his diaper, take his temperature...basically parent him, while he was in the hospital. But I watched them stare at the family across the room as those NICU veterans figured out how to get their almost 6-month old, who comes decked out with hiflow oxygen tubing, a G-tube, and a central line, into a jack-o-lantern costume. Mr. Jack-O-Lantern posed for pictures with his parents for the next oh, hour, or so while half the unit came to coo over him, and I could see the new family visibly relax. The mom actually whispered to her husband, "Everyone is so nice here!" And then they tried to figure out what she could bring back the next day for their son to wear on Halloween. Does anyone want to be in a NICU with their baby, ever? Of course not. It's terrifying. But there is so much joy in making it a better place for our families than they expected.

I am beginning to really love what I do.

2008-10-26T04:38:00.000-07:00

I cannot consistently update this blog! I don't know why, I think I just run out of things to say for awhile...get busy...get lazy. I love to read other blogs (maybe to the point of gently stalking?) but I struggle with my own words.

Right now it's 6:40am and I am really excited for the day shift to come in at 7am so I can go home. Not to sleep, which would be the healthy/smart/normal choice, no I am keeping my ass awake all day to celebrate Joshua's mom's birthday. (We will start the celebration with a LOT of coffee to keep me sane). It was a slow night, with a stable preemie who didn't require much hands-on care other than my assessments and one blood draw which I HATE doing because these kiddos are so tiny and every little drop counts! (Seriously. Did you know preemies have only about 90ml per kilo of circulating blood volume? This kid is only 600 grams...so he has maybe 50ml of circulating blood. And I had to take one away from him. My job is so weird).

I have only 4 more weeks with a preceptor and then 4 weeks after that with a resource person who won't be with me every minute, but will always be there during the shift if I have issues. Then I sail my own ship the week before Christmas. I'm actually starting to get excited (just like everyone told me I would) to be on my own. Although, still, it's terrifying. And I think it should be.

The day shift should be here in ten minutes. I'm thrilled.

2008-09-30T06:52:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-09-25T09:06:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-09-23T19:03:00.000-07:00

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,

2008-09-12T08:46:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-09-10T15:19:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-09-05T16:20:00.000-07:00

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.

I am such a bad blogger...

2008-07-17T09:29:00.001-07:00

because I never blog!

This has been quite the jekyll and hyde summer for me - at times lazy, slow, and full of books and putting my feet up, and at other times absolutely crazy with packing, moving, and unpacking. It has also been a break from this little thing that is generally well-regarded in the adult world - um, employment?

That will end on Monday, with my first day of work at a grown-up job as a (license-pending) professional. I am really excited, mostly because I absolutely love orientations. Learn things? About the company? Free catered lunch? While getting paid? I AM THERE. Orienting sounds like the best parts of nursing school, with the added bonus of direct deposit.

But between now and Monday I have several things planned that will hopefully make the Summer of my Unemployment complete...

Jason Mraz in concert
good friends wedding this weekend
sister-in-law's birthday is tomorrow
in-laws are in town for birthday celebrations and house settling (they are moving here in two weeks, many more posts to follow on that development)
scrub shopping

Can't wait.

KikiChicago, RN, BSN

2008-06-30T09:45:00.000-07:00

status: pass

PASS!!!

I am now officially a neonatal intensive care Registered Nurse.

I actually burst out crying when I saw status:pass underneath my name. That's not really my style, but apparently the momentous occasion called for an unusual emotional outburst. It was this kind of interesting, very short-lived, heaving sobs type of thing. Nursing school catharsis.

Advice For Myself

2008-06-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

Don't go to Home Depot on a Saturday morning before 9am if you are 1) a woman 2) alone and 3) wearing anything other than a turtleneck, baggy pants, and maybe a head scarf. I do not think any girl deserves the kind of lechering, grinning and mental pawing that I encountered while trying to pick up packing tape this morning. Girls, please remember - Sunday afternoons at Home Depot are packed with families and therefore safe. Saturday mornings are for contractors who forgot to stop and refocus after getting trashed ogling girls at the Admiral on Lawrence. Avoid these people at all costs.

Never say to your husband, "Don't worry honey, I will have the apartment all packed up when you return". Because, HA! You will drink too much the night before (and fall down the stairs, WTF) and you will not want to pack all day. And your cats will frolic in the open boxes like it is the kitty Wisconsin Dells (slide, pam, slide!) and shed all over your pots and pans which were previously the only items in the house which had not seen the underbelly of a feline.

Do not check the NCLEX website every 5 minutes to see if your results are posted. THEY ARE NOT. Every message board and piece of official literature tells you they will not be available for 48 hours. So relax. Your fate as a RN is in someone else's hands and just because you are a highstrung nursing student (and possibly, a nurse, but how would you know?)those 48 hours aren't going by any faster.

Do not think of combining drinking and packing. Especially before noon.

Wait until at least 12:30pm.

Fin

2008-06-27T12:32:00.000-07:00

My exam is over.

75 questions.

One hour.

Not as horrible as I expected.

Not as good as I hoped.

15 select all that apply.

2 med calcs.

2 correct the order.

Many many priority.

Infection control.

2 questions on fosamax of all drugs?!

Never heard of tumor lysis syndrome.

Never heard of most the meds.

I really hate select all that apply.

75 questions.

15 of which are trial and don't count.

So in 60 questions I either demonstrated my competence or not.

And I will find out in 2 business days.

2008-06-20T08:09:00.000-07:00

One week from today, I will be on the el headed downtown to take my nursing boards. I have been studying constantly and I am beginning to think in multiple choice questions. In so many ways, it feels I have been holding my breath for two years, and until i see the words PASS on a computer screen, I will not be able to let it out. Nursing school was a compressed, intense, overwhelming experience that doesn't end at graduation, no matter how excited you are to see your diploma (mine came in the mail this week) or how soon your student loans bills are coming (november, along with my impending heart attack). Nursing school ends somewhere between the minute your test shuts off, the next 48 hours of anxiety (and heavy drinking) and the moment you see P-A-S-S with your name next to it.

This morning at 5:30am, through random circumstances involving Joshua's increasingly crazy job, I saw one of my favorite professors and his wife, who are both nurses. Standing with them was a woman who just passed her NCLEX on Wednesday. I don't believe in luck, but I believe God comforts us in mysterious ways...and so I was really relieved to have met that woman and have seen my professor again (a small-ish man who was wearing biking spandex and those strange clomping bike shoes; let's be serious, this situation was actually hilarious. In addition, Joshua will be traveling in a van that follows my professor and other bikers for 230 miles, driven by the woman who recently became a registered nurse. If I have anything to do with it, he WILL shake her down for all the info).

This apartment is getting packed up...and messy...and dirty...and my nursing books and CDs and paints chips for colors we are thinking of in the new place are everywhere and although I did just talk about feeling comforted, the physical space around me sucks right now. I need to get off the computer and organize something.

That is a phrase I do NOT use often.

Random Thoughts

2008-06-17T13:47:00.000-07:00

I am a sucker for catchy songs, I can't get them out of my head for days and I can become sort of obsessed with playing them over and over. Pop-y, summer-y songs usually stick with me the longest, and I would like to complain about the lyrics of my current keep-on-repeat:

I kissed a girl and I liked it is not exactly doing wonders for my marriage. Joshua is less than thrilled with me humming under my breath, "it felt so wrong, it felt so right"...and etc. But the song is like crack, I cannot stop hearing it in my head.

Speaking of crack, I have not been drinking coffee lately. At all. I had iced coffee before church 2 weeks ago, and only really drank about half of it, and that was the very last time a drop has passed my lips. I've had iced tea since then, but the coffee has been dead to me. I don't miss it, I don't crave it. I think at some point over the fall, probably when I start working the night shift, coffee and I will reconcile. But for now, it's kind of nice to go through the day feeling like I am not being propelled from behind by a venti cup.

More thoughts...Amy and I ran a 5k on Sunday. Without any training (except for some fatigued half-mile runs in 100% humidity). I was happy with how well we did, crossing the finish line around 36 minutes. We ran all but about 1/4 mile of the course, including a cobblestone bridge which was basically a pool of standing water from the fierce thunderstorm we had that morning, and a hill. (A hill! I run at the lake and in the neighborhoods in one of the flattest cities in this country, so no, I did not run up that big fat hill during the race. I wouldn't know how). It was so fun, and really encouraging to me because I was not half as tired as I thought I would be at the finish line. Two new goals: 1) finish another 5k this summer and 2)do it in under 30 minutes, no walking at all.

I have now been sick for over a week with a nasty summer cold. I can't get rid of it and it's driving me crazy. Every morning I wake up and the symptoms are just slightly different - one day more in my nose, the next in my throat, and so on. It's all just so interesting and unpredictable. My cats make these horrified faces when I blow my nose, which makes it fun.

During my "illness", I discovered Gyminee, a nicely done website that helps you track your weight loss, food choices, and workouts. I am not by nature a calorie-counter or a very disciplined exerciser, so it's kind of fun to see exactly what I am putting in my body and how that translates to the amount of fat, carbs, and proteins I should be eating. Left to my own bread-craving devices I think I eat about 60% carbs, 30% fat and 10% protein. So this has been helping me realize what I'm actually putting in my mouth all day long, and I've already started to change my eating habits (waaaaay more protein! waaaaaay less carbs!). Plus, the food-finder feature is super helpful. For instance, for lunch I tossed pesto with cannellini (as opposed to my typical capellini!) and the food-finder has nutrition facts on the exact brands of both the beans and the pesto I used. Of course I will not be able to do this every day, but it's a good eye-opened none the less.

Lastly, I am packing up our apartment and studying for NCLEX every day and hopefully (fingers crossed, practice questions in hand) next Friday I will officially become a Registered Nurse. Then a week later we move to our new place and our happy, financially solvent life as DINKS - Dual Income No Kids - can begin.

OH! And I have a secret. A happy secret. (I am NOT pregnant, there is NO baby, CALM DOWN. Like I could keep that quiet). A very exciting future development secret.

(I love the summertime!!!)

$40

2008-05-28T16:50:00.001-07:00

Today I took $40 out of my bank account at approximately 9:30am. I was on my way to the farmer's market with my friend Kristin and her friend Bri, and I needed cash. I really had no intention of spending all of the $40, but it's definitely gone (should I really be surprised?) and as I was thinking back over the events of the day, it kind of just...randomly dissipated..

At 6:45pm, with my $40, I have acquired:

-Two bunches of spring onions, one white and one red
-One bunch of radishes
-Half a pound of crimini mushrooms
-One pound of fingerling potatoes
-One bunch of flowering chives (which are quite beautiful and also have purple, edible, onion-y blooms attached)
-One organic cheddar and dill scone that was excellent but also the weight of a brick
-One pair of $5.99 sunglasses to replace a pair I scratched in Florida
-Tangerine shampoo that smells like summer
-Two gallons of Benjamin Moore paint, one chocolate brown and one tan (actually kind of a nasty color) which I found on Craigslist for $5
-One sneaky item for a friend which is actually from her husband, which I purchased in Target while she wasn't paying attention, and then forgot to give him and get the money he owed me (oops)

And I actually do have a few dollars hanging around in my purse.

I have been everywhere from downtown to the northwest suburbs today and I had big plans for dinner with roasted potatoes with purple chive blossoms and pasta with asparagus and mushrooms...who knows if that will happen.

Still Alive

2008-05-27T12:37:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's been more than a month since I updated - more than 2 weeks since I checked every single thing off that list in the post below.

I was offered a job in Labor and Delivery, and I turned it down the Monday morning before graduation. That afternoon, I was offered a job in the neonatal intensive care unit (please see below - DREAM JOB!!) and I took it. So I start in July and I am alternately overwhelmed with excitement and scared sh*tless. Because my patients will be babies. In intensive care. At a hospital where babies go when they are too sick to be treated at other hospitals. And I do not feel at all qualified for that kind of crazy responsibility - but apparently, my degree makes it so.

Speaking of my degree, here it is:

along with my friend Kristin, who will be working at the same hospital as me on a transplant floor (yikes!). Although I don't think we look alike in the real world, we kind of do in this picture. Must be the tassel. Anyways, the night before graduation I got this:

A plaque with my name on it, because I received one of the senior awards at our pinning ceremony. They handed it to me during the ceremony which was awkward because I had no idea what to do with it...and then my mom stuck it in her bag so we could take some photos after and one of my professors came along and snatched it out and said, "sorry, you can't keep this!"

Oh really? I was planning on hanging it on the front door.

It was kind of a funny end to nursing school. Did they really think I was trying to steal the plaque that I have seen hanging in the office for the past two years??
I am really not that kind of girl!

After graduation of course I did this:

and partied with Joshua and my friends. Who are crazy. As you can see by this:

And also this:

Crazy fools.

So now all the hoopla and bells and whistles of graduation are over and I have gone back to just being a semi-employed housewife with too much time on my hands. We've moving July 1st to a smaller apartment closer to downtown and the el, which will be wonderful because it has a dishwasher and a breakfast bar and a big back porch where I can put tomato plants and a patio table. Also, I can basically see into my best friend's apartment from my living room, because she lives directly across the street. Another one of my best friends lives two buildings away. It will basically be one big party.
But the bedroom is smaller and we're going to have to get rid of some furniture to make everything fit...and we've lived in our big apartment now for 3 years. So overall, it may be a hard transition.

Which I will write more about later, because right now I have to bring Joshua back to work and then head to Starbucks to do my new favorite activity...

Study for boards.

Countdown

2008-04-17T15:41:00.000-07:00

'Courtesy' interview for much-wanted position at a very nice hospital where there is actually no position currently available...6 days.

Going to Florida for a wedding, which requires flying, one of my least favorite activities...8 days.

Getting ridiculously sun-burned and showing up to a wedding looking more like a lobster than a human...9 days.

Job interview for DREAM position at SUPER NICE hospital where one million other people will also be applying...12 days.

40 page paper, which has been seriously on the backburner, due...15 days.

24th birthday, beginning the downward spiral into my midtwenties, AKA the first time I have really not looked forward to being another year older...16 days.

Parents come into town, mother is extremely allergic to cats, so apartment must be essentially decontaminated...19 days.

Pinning ceremony, at which I will be giving the class remarks, even though I am unclear exactly what class remarks are...21 days.

Graduation ceremony,at which I have absolutely no responsibilities other than grabbing my diploma and not falling over on stage in high heels...22 days.

Third wedding anniversary, for which we have absolutely no plans, and for which Joshua will be lucky if I wake out of my post-graduation-catch-up-on-the-last-4.5-years-of-sleep catnap...26 days.

Having absolutely no special occasions, life plans, obligations, or anything at all in planner (unless I get a job in the next 4 weeks)...27 days.

Procrastinating

2008-04-13T11:55:00.000-07:00

I do the most blogging when I am supposed to be doing the most studying.

I don't want to work on statistical analysis of income brackets in Rogers Park so instead I am writing this even though it is not helping me achieve my goal of finishing a 40 page community assessment by May 2nd. Basically, I have learned absolutely nothing about time management during the last 20 years I've been in school. I have yet to finish a paper more than 12 hours before it's due, and I have never started studying for a test more than 48 hours before I have to take it. I think I am physically incapable of doing anything school-related when I am not completely stressed out about the fact that I left it until the last minute. Grad school will truly be a catastrophe.

I spend a lot of time thinking about all the free time I will have when school is over and before grad school begins (we're talking years). I am aware that this type of daydreaming wastes more time that I don't have, but I'm also convinced that it keeps me sane.

So in no particular order, here are some of the things I plan to do as a gainfully employed non-student:

Become a better knitter. Knit a sweater. Bonus points if I can finish a Central Park hoodie. Learn how to sew. Take a class at Quiltology. Give homemade gifts. Bake bread. Blog consistently. Throw away junk mail and file bills before they have the chance to sit on the desk for 3 months. Run the half-marathon. Because the whole marathon would kill me. Start swing-dancing again. Work on the Obama campaign if he wins the primary. Have a personal political crisis if he doesn't. Travel with Joshua. Learn Spanish . Write. Roadtrip. Become an expert in my field. Call my grandparents more often. And my parents. And my brothers. Read novels, not textbooks. Make dinner. And dessert. Go to Vegas for the weekend. Volunteer. SLEEP.

Hala Jan Levinson

2008-04-12T20:19:00.000-07:00

Since we named our first cat Pamela Beasley, we felt guilty that our second wittle kitty wouldn't also be an Office namesake. Since she is a feisty kitten who bosses Pam around, we felt Jan Levinson was the most appropriate middle name.

Doesn't she look like she has an authority problem and an inexplicable attraction to a somewhat incompetent regional manager of a mid-range paper supply company?

As far as I know, she hasn't had a boob job.

She seriously couldn't be cuter, mostly because she likes to climb up my stomach, wrap her head and front paws over my shoulder, and fall asleep. I am a little ashamed to admit how incredibly hard we have fallen for these cats - of all animals, cats. I can't imagine coming home and not finding Hala and Pam curled up asleep in the living room (of course, the white and tan cat has made herself at home on the one black chair we own, and the black cat spends her time on the tan couch. I would not expect anything more).

Joshua is quite smitten with his girls as well.

Because the cats have taken over our lives, I have little else to say about what is going on in my world except that finishing up senior year sucks and I am not doing a good job of it. I have only one job interview scheduled and that is for my dream job, which is apparently the dream job of many, many other people who are also in the application process for this particular unit at this particular hospital. Frustrating. I like to think that I handle stress with grace and charm, which is a fun illusion until suddenly I have an emotional breakdown and become physically ill for at least 48 hours. It's neat. So was calling out of work today (see: currently ill for at least 48 hours), when I've been cancelled off my past two shifts and have literally contributed $200 to our gross income in the last two months. Stressed, sick, not a financial contributor to our marriage. But I have cats.

Introducing Pam Beasley

2008-04-06T15:42:00.000-07:00

We love dogs. Big, slobbery golden retrievers and smug wobbly pugs. Blue-eyed Huskies and energetic chocolate labs. We stop and pet them on the street. We look for dog-friendly apartments. We dogsit for Joshua's coworkers and the people I babysit, even when it means living in the suburbs for a week and pretending to be commuters. We've talked about our first dog in the same rapturous way some people talk about their first children (you should really hear us talk about our first children!)

So it is kind of hard to explain this:

Definitely not a dog.

This is Pam Beasley, a sweet one year old kitten/cat (kit? catten?)who caught our eye last weekend at PAWS, a rescue shelter here in Chicago. The fact that we even went to PAWS is entirely the fault of our friends Jessica and Jakob, who were looking for a kitten of their own. (Let's be honest, they also lured me in with visions of adorable kittens welcoming us home from school and work and I am a sucker for a nice hello). Joshua and I (the dog lovers) suddenly woke up after falling into the deep dark hole of cuteness that is the Kitten Room at PAWS, and found ourselves the proud parents of a C-A-T.

Pam is entirely a sugarplums-and-fairy-dust sweet animal. She's a rescue from a hoarding situation in Uptown, where she was found abandoned with THIRTY other cats that looked just like her (we are seriously choosing not to think about the genetic implications of that sad feline home). She spent a month at PAWS before we adopted her, which is unusual for a cat as young and as pretty as she is. Apparently, she was very shy and reclusive. But we think Pam was just biding her time before we got to her, because after only a week of salmon treats, a mouse on a string, and lots of love, she has blossomed into quite the social, attention-loving kitty. (I told this to the woman at PAWS on the phone yesterday, and in all seriousness, she GOT.CHOKED.UP.)

The reason I was talking to a woman at PAWS on the phone yesterday was because we are not just casual cat owners anymore, no, we are OB-SESSED. One of Pam's roommates at PAWS was a 12 week old all-black kitten named Hala, who wrapped Joshua right around her tiny paw. Unfortunately, right as we made the decision to adopt her, the tech decided to take her temp because she looked just a little too sleepy. Without saying a word to us, they rushed her right out of the room, into a kitty carrier and off to the vet because she was running a fever of 104.5!

It was a blessing in disguise, because with Hala mysteriously gone, we decided to adopt Pam. However Joshua couldn't stop thinking about our poor sick kitten, and he called PAWS back that day to let them know that as soon as she recovered, we would like to adopt her as a friend for Pam.

So on Thursday, right before THE OFFICE COMES BACK ON AT 8/7 CENTRAL (and Pam can watch her namesake living la vida Scranton), we will be picking up Hala. We have no idea how to have two cats, we have barely scratched the surface of what it means to have one. Hopefully, Pam and Hala get along marvelously and keep each other entertained while we are away. Less optimistically, I will be totally fine if they just ignore each other, as long as they don't turn our happy home into some sort of feline war zone.

As soon as we move into a bigger place, with a yard and room for playing and romping and animals that must do their business outdoors, we are still planning on getting a dog. We will be that family, with the two cats and the dog, and hopefully a bucket of children (small bucket, maybe like a pail) somewhere in the next ten years. And I love that.

I Know What It Means...To Miss New Orleans

2008-04-05T17:50:00.000-07:00

March was an extremely busy month for Joshua and I. It was full of all our usual busyness, school and work (well, barely for me, I have worked a grand total of ONE! SHIFT! since before Christmas. oh yeah, i am ensuring our financial freedom). But it was also full of this:

New Orleans, baby. Ok, I'll be honest - we were on a rebuilding trip with school, so no actual bourbon was consumed on the Rue Bourbon. Which is fine, because the French Quarter is actually quite skeevy and I would be literally afraid to be inebriated with some of the characters around. Like this one:

Yikes. But the real reason we were in New Orleans, the land of jazz, beignets, jambalaya and po'boys, was of course the fact that the city is still (2 and a half years later) devastated from Hurricane Katrina. No matter what natural disaster strikes, after 2 and a half years should an American neighborhood still look like this?

How would we feel if the poorly constructed safety system for our city failed, like these levees that broke and flooded the Lower 9th Ward?

I'm going to bet that if your house was washed away, your insurance didn't cover your home, and your government housed your family in a trailer for two years (and then told you, oh hey! those trailers are full of asbestos! we had no idea!) and then never sent you the money you were promised to actually rebuild your home...I'm going to bet you would agree with the woman I met who stood crying in front of me and shook her fist and said she would like to see George Bush go to prison for crimes against humanity. One of her friends died on a rooftop waiting for help. And another of her friends died in the Superdome, which is where the 'help' was supposed to be.

We worked on several different projects in New Orleans. We helped put up a circus-sized tent over dog kennels at Animal Rescue of New Orleans, which is still working tirelessly with only 3 full-time employees to shelter and care for hundreds of animals that were abandoned in the storm. We also drove all over the city with Greenlight New Orleans, installing compact fluorescent light bulbs in homes for free. This non-profit organization is helping reduce energy use and save residents much-needed money on their energy bills, which are very expensive in New Orleans. We also weeded the gardens at City Park, which is larger than Central Park and a huge source of revenue for New Orleans.

While the needs in New Orleans are overwhelming, there is an amazing amount of hope in the city:

It was an incredible experience, one that Joshua and I want to have again. We've been home for three weeks and our time in New Orleans and the people that we met are burned in our minds and hearts. (and bodies - we wandered into a tattoo place the week after we got back and two hours later found ourselves the proud and somewhat shocked owners of fleur-de-lis body art). It was very hard to come back after an intense week of new faces, new friendships, new emotions, and 70 degree weather. It felt strange to go back to the mundane everyday-ness of life in Chicago, knowing that the needs in New Orleans are still there each time we wake up to go to work and school. We want to go back and we don't know yet when and how.

One thing I do know - five weeks from today I will be celebrating (maybe with bourbon, but probably tequila) the fact that I will have GRADUATED COLLEGE.

And six months and five weeks from today I will be weeping over my first student loan bills. So that may be a good time for a trip to New Orleans, don't you think?

I Don't Know How to Quit You, Blog

2008-02-20T09:52:00.000-08:00

...and yet I do quit, for months on end, while I still manage to make enough time in my day to read what so many other people write on a daily basis. I have been caught up, in a strange and stalker-like way, into the world of infertility blogs, twins/triplets/quads/quints bloggs, cooking blogs, knitting blogs, blogs of people I know through people, super famous blogs, juicy celeb gossip...you name it, and I can name for you several dozen blogs in the chosen category.

Kind of sick.

It's addicting. It's how I distract myself between my homework, shifts at the hospital, the housework that I hate doing.

2008 came in with a whimper for me, seeing as how I entered the year with a broken arm and a bad attitude (thanks to the First and Last Great Snowboarding Trip of 2007). But I am actually very excited about this year and all the surprises ahead. Please see my list:

THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2008

1) Spring. Um, please hurry up because this winter has been horrible and I am sick of sliding down my sidewalk and using chains to get my car out of a parking spot on a FLAT street in a MAJOR US CITY.

2) Graduation. After 4.5 years of straight up gettin' edju-ca-ted, I am done and would like to move on to the next phase of my life. Straight up getting PAID.

3) Getting a J-O-B. Please see above.

4) 3 Year Anniversary. Joshua and I will celebrate three whole years of marital bliss and bitching about who does the dishes this May and I could not be happier (when he does the dishes). No, I really am thrilled.

5) Passing NCLEX. Graduating and getting a job will be slightly less exciting if I cannot get a license to actually work as a nurse. That is generally looked down up and frankly illegal.

6) Running a half marathon in California. My current best run ever has been about 2 miles of sheer, dyspneic terror. So this will be an accomplishment for the ages.

7) Everything else that I can't possibly imagine yet.

It's two months in...and I guess I'm feeling pretty good about 2008.

One Month Later

2007-12-19T14:05:00.000-08:00

One month anniversary of not posting. Hooray. It's so, so ridiculously typical of me that I'm just going to blow past that.

Since I keep getting cancelled off all my shifts, I am spending the afternoon baking and watching movies and deleted scenes from the The Office. I just bought Something's Gotta Give (one of my favorite movies of all time, seriously, LOVE Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson) and I have to say that the sequence where Erica (Diane Keaton) just can't stop crying is so deliciously wonderful I have watched it twice. I love it because she is just so over the top dramatic with the crying on the laptop and in bed and especially when he IMs her...if you haven't seen it, and you can handle copious sobbing and Diane Keaton (some people don't like either), you really should. Its fabulous. I'm currently starting the movie over with commentary because my Christmas shopping is done and I haven't summoned up the enthusiasm to start cleaning.

In other news, Jamie Lynn Spears (age 16) is now pregnant and proud, along with Jessica Alba and Lily Allen and a whole lot of other people, famous and not famous, who haven't yet celebrated their 25th birthdays. So the world has officially come to an end while I was busy not blogging this past month.

PS what am I baking?

raspberry shortbread bars from Epicurious via Deb
chai shortbread from the latest issue of Cooking Light
oatmeal chocolate chip cookies - Joshua's mom's recipe
crispy cookies - Joshua's mom's recipe
black and white icebox cookies from the latest issue of Cooking Light

... and that would account for the more than 2 pounds of butter I have used in the past few days and way I am currently muffin-topping (what a great expression) my skinny jeans. Loooove those holidays.

There are no words

2007-11-19T12:27:00.000-08:00

My weekend started off wonderfully - Joshua and I celebrated his 25th birthday on Friday by going out to dinner and then falling asleep at a geriatric-approved early hour (I blame the wine).

Saturday took a turn for the worse, when Joshua skipped off to a men's breakfast at church, telling me he'd be back after it ended at 12:30. I bummed around the house, reading blogs (but not updating this one - sigh), and pretending to organize. At 12:45, I started to wonder why he hadn't called me yet. Joshua and I always call each other. To the point of being obnoxious. I don't think either of us has ever really wondered where the other is since we got married. We just know.

12:55 - Starting to freak out a little. Sent one text, called his phone once.

1:10 - Freaking out quite a bit more. Follow-up text, two (maybe five) calls to his phone.

1:20 - Wringing my hands, wondering exactly where he crashed our car (not an unlikely thought, and those of you who have driven with him will understand) and wondering when the police would be arriving at my apartment. Also at this time, I had to call work and get my assignment for the shift, all the while wondering if I would be calling back to cancel because Joshua was in some ER somewhere with 3 broken bones or worse.

1:30 - Frantic. In my scrubs, walking down the street towards church, in the rain, looking for the crash site. Church is a good 4 miles away, so I'm not sure exactly what I was hoping to accomplish here.

1:35 - Joshua finally calls me back. The breakfast ran LATE! His coat was on the other side of the ROOM! His cell phone was in his COAT! It was all so damn LOGICAL! And naturally, I could not translate my overwhelming fear that he had lost life or limb into anything appropriate other than yelling at him. And then I ran back home (still in my scrubs. still in the rain), feeling totally ridiculous, but definitely assured of the fact that I love my husband and don't ever want to be without him.

I realize this story makes me sound like a possessive freak, but really I am not. The take-home here is that when your husband routinely makes questionable decisions while driving, even a short amount of time when he cannot be located is petrifying (he is going to love me for posting this, I'm sure). And what did people do before cell phones!?!? The dark ages, I am sure.

However, Sunday went right ahead and topped Saturday in terms of distressing events. Yes, I can now say that I have been sexually harassed by an incontinent elderly man while in the middle of changing his diaper (don't worry, this happened in the context of my job. Which sounds awesome, right? Some nights as a nursing assistant make me wonder why I quit the Gap) Really, the story is much more dramatic than that but I do not feel comfortable writing about it as his comments were totally inappropriate and beyond that, I know I should be preserving my patients' dignity along with my own.

Ahem.

So now it is Monday and I have had too much coffee (NO I WILL NOT BE STOPPING. No one was really on board with that idea. Joshua was frightened.) I bought all the ingredients for my Thanksgiving pies this morning, along with actual real ingredients for meals - a novel idea - and now I have officially postponed my homework to the very last possible second.

Tonight we're decorating the place for Christmas! Three days early, but we won't be here for Thanksgiving, and I don't want to miss a moment of Christmas decor when we return.

Waaaayy too much coffee this morning.

2007-11-14T13:19:00.000-08:00

My obsession with espresso is well documented. Especially in our checkbook. I think I've alluded to my truly awful Starbucks habit, which began when I lived in Seattle for 5 months, pulling off only one feat in my whole time there - gaining about 15 pounds. I was so naive when I hit the west coast. I honestly did not know you could ask for nonfat milk, and I didn't understand the sugar content of flavored syrups. I did not know that my daily vanilla AND hazelnut WHOLE MILK latte was just a 10% post-consumer recyclable ticking time bomb for my hips.

By the time I left Seattle for Chicago, I was a little wiser, a lot poorer, and absolutely not thinner. But don't worry, I am still not reformed. In the past three days, I have had two peppermint mochas with whip (and nonfat milk, the ultimate hypocrisy) and I have loved every glorious, minty-chocolately, lick-the-cup-clean sip. Worse, over this past weekend, I actually went to Intelligentsia twice in one day. To be fair, it is the best espresso I have ever had, but I don't think it excuses the fact that I showed up at two SEPARATE locations in 6 hours, looking for a fix. We had friends in town from California, and I'm pretty sure they are now more familiar with the decor at our local coffee haunts than they are with the tourist attractions we saw while trying to accomplish our real goal - getting more coffee.

Ok, what I am trying to say is, I have a problem.

The problem goes beyond the pounding headaches and 3pm listlessness I experience if I don't start out my day with caffeine. I have begun to feel naked without a beverage at hand, especially now that it's getting colder, so you can add psychological dependence to my list of coffee issues. But let's face it (I DON'T WANT TO BUT I MUST), it's a big waste of money to buy $4 espresso drinks on a regular basis. Twice in a day is roughly equivalent to tearing up dollar bills for fun.

We don't have an espresso machine, but we have a decent drip coffeemaker, as well as a Bialetti and a french press. We buy good beans and grind them ourselves and we have no shortage of travel mugs to haul to school and work. Our coffeemaker even has a timer, so we could theoretically wake up to the scent and sounds of brewing coffee on these dark, cold November mornings.

Or, we could forget about that the night before, oversleep, race out of the door because we're about to be late, and manage to grab Starbucks at some point that morning (and afternoon?) to pull us through the day. Everyone is busy, and a lot of people out there are probably busier than we are.

So how do I quit this thing?

NaBloPoMoNoMore

2007-11-13T09:57:00.000-08:00

All I can say is...

I might not be a very consistent blogger, but I spent all my time this weekend with good friends and too much wine and I laughed a lot and barely studied and I absolutely do not regret a thing.

All that being said...

I will still be trying to blog as much as realistic for me and my life this month. If that's every day, that's great. If not, I'm generally having more fun doing whatever it is I'm doing (I have no problems blogging on a day full of homework and studying expectations, so count me in for posting excessively during finals week).

Both Joshua and I have midterms this week, the sink just got piled up last night with dinner dishes, the apartment kind of fell into disarray between 5pm and midnight,and we're out of clean clothes and coffee. So all is right in our world again.

2007-11-09T15:55:00.000-08:00

I am beginning to think that posting on a blog everyday is ridiculous. Narcissistic. Annoying. And it's been less than a week!

I don't have a theme, you know? "Food Blogger", "Mommy Blogger", "Crafting Blogger" (um...there are a LOT of knitting and crocheting blogs. A LOT. People are out there knitting CORAL and all sorts of craziness.) I do not have the mad creative skillz to recreate sea barnacles in yarn. Also, I have no children and I cook sporadically. Thus, my little blog begins to bore me and my 4 readers.

Thanksgiving is less than 2 weeks away, and Joshua and I are bringing the salad/vegetable/dessert portion of the meal. We'll be celebrating at his brother and sister-in-law's new townhome in the 'burbs, after I work the night shift from 11pm on Wednesday until 7:30am on Thanksgiving morning. (Let me count the ways that I love the profession I have chosen!) I am not trying to make this into a cooking blog, but I need some ideas for said salad/vegetable/dessert.

Thoughts, 4 readers??

NoMoreTimeToday

2007-11-08T12:48:00.000-08:00

Note to self! If you have clinical in the morning and need to be up at 5:30am, do not go out for coffee at 7pm the night before and order a grande caramel latte! You will dearly regret the caffeine and sugar when you wake up at 1:40, 2:15, 3:23, 4:18, 4:40 and 5:02! When you cannot get back to sleep after 5:02 and realize that you just had a dream about one of your professor failing you for skipping a clinical (which has never happened. not ever.), you will be bitter.

You will also be bitter when, despite wake-me-up chai tea at 7am, and a keep-me-up latte at 11am, you fall asleep waiting for your clinical instructor to sign off on your charting.

You would think after two years of this, I'd have developed some better habits with the caffeine and the sleeping. You would be wrong.

I happen to know that at least one person out there is having a much more thrilling day than me - while I was packing sterile gauze into my patient's gaping surgical incision, (don't worry, I was quite alert at the time) my friend Tricia won $1000 from a local radio station! Lucky dutch.

Compost. Let's Get This Out of the Way, Shall We?

2007-11-07T13:52:00.000-08:00

The first time I saw a compost bucket in someone's house, I will admit to being a little freaked out. This particular compost receptacle was an old ice cream container, a faded yellow tub full of banana peels, coffee grounds and egg shells that set next to the kitchen sink at one of my friend's houses. I was 16 at the time, and that bucket was like, so disgusting.

My friend caught me eyeing this festering heap of trash, so she explained very nonchalantly that her mother used the compost to enrich their garden soil. Clearly she did not think it was a big deal, and I felt she was slightly cooler than me, so I immediately placed compost in my Actually Kind of Cool mental category. It's still surprising that this made such a big impression on me, because I'm pretty sure we then we ran out the door to drink someone else's mother's vodka or smoke cigarettes or something horribly teenage-ish.

I only knew one thing about vegetable gardens at that time. We had one in my backyard when I was a child, and we were forced to sod over it when the snapping turtles from the pond down the block decided it was the perfect place to lay their eggs. Our cat, who had been abandoned at that very same pond as a newborn kitten, had a hero complex and thought he could battle snapping turtles. Before you know it, my father was in the front yard standing between a fifty pound pregnant killer turtle and a twenty pound hissing feline with a shovel raised above his head, yelling, "The garden has GOT TO GO!"

And it went. So did the cat.

Here we are, seven or so years later, and I have compost in my kitchen too. Not on the counter, since we don't have anywhere 'out back' to dump it every day. No, I have a shoebox in my freezer lined with a Target bag, and into that shoebox goes our eggshells, coffee grounds, potato peels and all other non-meat food waste. Joshua and I walk it down the alley to a compost container that sits in someone's backyard. The compost we contribute to then gets hauled over to a neighborhood garden, which is growing organic fruit and vegetables. We are doing our (very!) small part to contribute to decreasing post-consumer waste and support community, urban gardens.

Soapbox moment: Composting is extremely easy to do if you have either freezer space, or the desire to drop it off somewhere every other day or so. It's expensive to buy mulch, so you are not only reducing your local landfill, you are helping out local farmers and gardeners. Two bonus points: Less trash to take out. And the look on your friends faces when they open up your freezer!

Day 2. Or 7. Depending on How You Look At It.

2007-11-06T11:13:00.000-08:00

The past two weeks have been defined for Joshua and I as The Time For Soup. As in, it has finally gotten consistently chilly here, and the market is overflowing with all sorts of root vegetables and meat and things that I want to throw into a soup pot and keep it on my stove all day making my apartment smell delicious.

We have made soup five (5! like the days I missed of NaBloPoMo! how ironic!) times recently, starting with winter squash soup which came from allrecipes, although now I can't find the exact one I used. It was a little blah, I can't lie. I know it involved butternut and acorn squash, along with sage, cumin, cayenne, and cinnamon. I really needed to ramp up the spiciness, but I was a little afraid of the flavor combination. One of my friends came over later that night and threw in a lot more of all the spices, then declared it amazing. So...I will need to rethink my hesitation there. Also, she is the last person I expected to dive into my fridge and eagerly pull out squash soup, so this has the potential to be a winner.

Soup #2 came Straight From The Farm, one of the many food blogs I read to a level of near-obsession. Roasted rosemary potato leek soup is as amazing as it sounds, although I am not a very careful measurer, and I overdid it on the rosemary a little. Next time I would add more leeks and tone down the rosemary to balance out the flavors. And if you are not really into soup, this can be just a great recipe for rosemary roasted potatoes.

Soup #3 was created out of a need to finish off a chicken that Joshua and I had picked up at the farmer's market and then roasted Ina Garten style (lemons stuffed in the cavity, over some yellow onions that just char as the chicken cooks...um, she is my hero. The recipe is from her book Barefoot in Paris, one of my favorites). I shredded the leftover lemon-y roasted chicken into our crockpot with chicken broth, chopped up onions, green beans, frozen corn, and peruvian blue potatoes. Comfort food. No recipe needed. (It was really good, but not that pretty. Especially don't make it with blue potatoes if you want to impress your friends)

Soup #4, a triumph, came from Deb at SmittenKitchen.If you are not reading her blog (daily) you should be. This sweet potato and sausage soup is one of the best things I have ever made, even though I substituted chicken chorizo for linguica (a Portuguese sausage I could not find, even at Whole Foods - although I'm sure they have it at Paulina Meat Market). If you are going to make this (and you should! immediately!), a spicier, fattier pork sausage will give your soup more flavor and heft than the chicken. I also substituted 5 color swiss chard for the spinach, and the pink veins against the bright greens and the orange of the sweet potatoes makes an absolutely gorgeous soup. I made this for Joshua and two of my friends and the overall consensus is that I will be making it again as soon as I can get my dry chapped hands on all the ingredients.

Soup #5 was really a white chicken chili that we threw together at home last night with our friend Jessica, who does not have a blog. (AND SHE NEEDS ONE. It can be about baking! getting married! so many things!) Jessica has been making white chicken chili for awhile now, and last year it even caused sort of a brawl when some of us (me!) did not really get as much as they wanted and others of us tried to take more than the allotted share. We made it last night on the stove, but I think it's even better in a crockpot when it can simmer all day. We loosely followed this recipe, and we added another can of beans and a can of diced tomatoes, along with leftover leeks I had sitting in the fridge. It was the perfect dinner to have on the first night that I really paid attention to the effects of daylight savings time, since it felt like we were eating at 9pm and really we had everything on the table at the ridiculously geriatric hour of 6pm. Sad!

I am looking for more good soup recipes so if you have any, please share! We will be returning to the previously mentioned topics of Christmas presents and compost shortly. (Like, after I have finished a very lengthy case study and care plan and learned how to administer blood products). Mmm...what a delightful way to end this post.

2007-11-05T19:33:00.000-08:00

So I decided to sign up for NaBloPoMo today, of course, because today is 5 days after the starting date of November 1st. This is the story of my life as a blogger. Excellent intentions, poor follow through.

I really have nothing to post about right now because I am very busy measuring off 0.4mm squares on EKG strips to determine if hypothetical patients are having SA exit block or sinus arrest. In the meantime I am reviewing exciting topics like mitral stenosis and dilated cardiomyopathy and also I watched a full episode of Dancing With the Stars for the first time ever.

If you thought I would put in the effort to link either medical terms or shows on ABC with their appropriate websites, you can think again. I am the one starting 30 days of blogging 5 days late. I am also the one reviewing my notes for a quiz tomorrow who just discovered an entire power point handout that I forgot about and am now kicking myself because I have about 6 more topics to cover before my 7:30am quiz.

I am really excited about 25 days of blogging though! I have dedicated approximately 30 seconds of thought to what I will possibly be writing about this month (details of my daily life clearly are not that interesting. please see above) and I have come up with two potential topics - Christmas presents and compost.

It will clearly be a thrilling month.

Quote of the Day

2007-10-30T14:54:00.001-07:00

Overheard as I walked down my block, passing two girls who could not have been more than 14 years old, as they discussed the possible age of some poor boy they have a crush on. In all seriousness, Girl # 1 says to the other:

"Omg, could you imagine if you were, like, in love with a twelve year old?"

Omg,I know, like, the HORROR of it all. What could be more soul-numbingly awful than to discover you are in LUV with an eighth grader when you've already advanced to the ripe maturity of the ninth grade? It just smacks of Romeo-and-Juliet-style forbidden passion.

Or maybe not, judging by the way Girl #2 responded:

"Ew."

I love the way middle school and high school emotions are so casually discarded.I really do. I mean,it's sort of tragic to live through, but when your hormones have flattened out and you have the benefit of hindsight, that time of life is pretty glorious. You can kill all your crushes, flick away all your emotions, change your entire opinion, with a simple, "Ew." There's a reason that period is short-lived (can you imagine, if i like, did that to Joshua? EW), but I think it's good while it lasts. Personally, I took my 13 year old relationships way too seriously and the only thing it got me was grounded for a whole summer (for sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G!)

2007-10-23T12:31:00.000-07:00

Today I started my last real clinical class. I'm not graduating until May, but that last semester is a whirlwind of an internship and community health nursing. But today we got right back into the gritty, heavy areas - heart disease and diabetes, otherwise knowns as What Kills You in America 101. This semester we're learning how to manage acute and critical care patients; how to perform blood transfusions, monitor chest tube drainage, care for people on ventilators. And then in 8 weeks, most of what I am expected to know as a new RN will supposedly be stuffed somewhere in my brain. I think this is terrifying.

Sometimes at work, I am so thankful to be "only" a nursing assistant. I am thankful to take vitals, to let the nurse know the patient has a fever, to take out IVs and catheters and help patients walk the halls or go to the bathroom. I am thankful because I don't feel ready to be THE nurse yet - to look at my patient's labs and assess why and where that fever is coming from, to jump when the tele monitors are beeping ferociously and see my patient going into v-tach or a-fib (you know you've all seen this on ER). There are nurses at work who graduated from associates degree programs and are 3 years younger than me, and I still don't feel old enough to have this kind of responsibility. I am excited to be a nurse and I can't wait to have a job (a REAL job! a grown-up job! a please-pass-the-dental-insurance-i-have-four-cavities kind of job!). But, sometimes it's intimidating to know that I've chosen the kind of career where I could easily call Joshua and say, "I'm sorry honey but I am going to be late. Yes, it is a LIFE OR DEATH KINDA THING," and mean it.

The other night I worked a double shift and left the hospital at 7:30am. The day shift had come in at 7, looking clean and caffeinated, and I was greasy and tired after 16 straight hours of patient care. And I wasn't the one who had to pass medications, do assessments, and call docs that night.

For all I complain about school and homework and clinical and getting up horrifically early and constant stress, being a nursing student is a pretty good deal. Someone always has your back, and you can always say, "I don't know." You can't really say that when you are a RN and your manager asks why you missed something crucial about your patient. I am excited for the day when I can say I am an expert in a particular field. But I am scared for the time that comes between being a student and becoming that expert...

Suddenly I'm enjoying school again.

Evidence That I Really Love Fall: My Apartment Edition

2007-10-13T07:42:00.000-07:00

please note: i am new to photography and do not actually know anything about my camera other than how to turn it on and push that one button. but i want to learn!

an assortment of gourds in a beautiful wooden platter that says give us this day our daily bread in german (but,um, bread does not really handle being a centerpiece very well).

seasonally colored candle and farmers market eucalyptus that is drying (dying? can't tell). please also note: no window treatments. have ever. been in our apartment. because i am a Big Failure at decorating.

tiny supersweet vidalias...living it up on top of some big old red onions that should probably be used, maybe, yesterday?

do not walk, RUN, to target to buy this poached (maybe spiced?) pear candle. and yes, that is my laptop perched precariously on the arm of the couch. don't tell my husband.

i don't actually store apples on the armchair in the living room, but maybe i should - they look pretty happy there.

and finally...all the fall treats one could ever want, hanging out on the butcher block.

2007-10-11T09:45:00.000-07:00

It...is...finally...fall!

After weeks of above average temperatures and one tragic record-shattering weekend that hit 90 degrees (OCTOBER 8th people), it has finally cooled down. To be fair, it dropped 30 degrees in one night and went from the record high to a below-normal low. But that's the fun of living in the Midwest I guess. Our bedroom is totally destroyed, strewn with flip flops and capris that I just buried with sweaters and scarves because I have no idea what to wear - Monday I overheated in a tshirt and last night I was underdressed in three layers of clothing. This psychotic roller coaster weather is wreaking havoc on what little organization I have in my house.

But I LOVELOVELOVE fall, and pumpkin-carving, soup-eating, layer-wearing, apple-picking season doesn't feel right until there is a chill in the air. It's hard to get excited about drinking hot cider when it's just as hot outside as it is in your mug, and really all you want to do is find your bathing suit and hit the beach (I resisted this urge, but it was hard). I am a dedicated four season kind of girl, so I get almost pathetically excited each time the weather changes, and kind of bitter when it does not. For example, I do not believe in things like pumpkin spice frappucinos. Besides being a cleverly disguised term for global warming, pumpkin spice frappucinos are wrong because no, you do not get to have the best of both worlds. Fall and summer in one syrupy cup? Ew. What is next, eggnog frappucinos? I am just thrilled that is now seriously fall, and I can take my HOT COFFEE DRINKS outside, wearing my jacket and crunch some leaves under my actual shoes (goodbye, flipflops! I love you and miss you already!). It is truly glorious.

In other exciting and new season type of news, we have been going to a new church and it is really, truly wonderful. We've struggled to find a church in the almost four (FOUR! i can't believe it) years we've been here. We went to the traditional church down the street, a big suburban church, a yuppie urban church...I think we've been searching for the kind of community we both had at our childhood churches. We have learned to continually adjust our expectations, which is a good lesson, and we've also learned what is really important to us in a church, which is an even better lesson. We've been going to Our New Church for about two months now, and all I can say is, God used all those detours and dead ends to lead us right to this place. We are meeting people, getting involved, and mostly importantly being FED by the teaching and the worship. And there is something wonderful about making this kind of change in this season of the year. It's like fall for me - comfortable and surprising all at the same time.

2007-10-02T18:26:00.000-07:00

I feel like I've been hibernating lately. I think it's partly by choice, but mostly it's like an avalanche of everything I do just fell on top of me. School has been a non-stop parade of tests, quizzes, projects, presentations, care plans. Every time I check something off my to-do list, I have about fifty other tasks waiting for me. This week was the first round of papers for my 18 freshman writing advisees. So I had to fit 18 (yes, eighteen) 45 minute slots of time into my schedule. I also have my part-time job at the hospital, which keeps me busy until midnight one to two days a week. And then...stop it now...then there is the babysitting. Joshua and I have done two overnights in the suburbs in the past month, and I've been babysitting an average of 2-3 times a week. Add that to my night class, my clinicals, my internship at a senior center, and the previously mentioned job, homework and writing advising situation....

It kind of gives me palpitations to sit back and read this all in one paragraph.

I haven't even had time to have senioritis. What I have had time to do, apparently, is completely blanket my apartment in powerpoint handouts, homework, freshman papers, receipts, clothes, dishes - you name it and it is currently a) dirty b) in the wrong spot or c) dirty and in the wrong spot and I need it THISMINUTE and I can't find it. I definitely gave a presentation today wearing my black pants Formerly Known As Clean. I've had clinicals and an internship that have used and abused those pants, and frighteningly I have only one clear memory of washing them in the past 6 weeks.

I should say that I do like to be busy. I like to feel like I have accomplished something at the end of the day, I like knowing that I've learned something. I know I am guilty of complaining about being bored as equally as I complain about being busy. But I feel like the last two weeks have pushed me past busy into some other realm where I am just mechanically achieving some sort of "done-ness" in all my activities. At 11pm last night I was at work running around checking my patients' vitals, getting a new admit settled in, and trying to finish all my charting... and I actually felt overwhelming relief to still be there. Because there was nothing else to do, no homework, no household tasks, that I was responsible for until I left that unit. I felt like I was hiding from my life by being at work.

I just have to remember that at this time next year, my life will be happening AT work. And hopefully I will have enough perspective to look back at this season of life and be grateful for it being over as opposed to just complaining about the present.

Also, I hope that this somehow, someday, can be turned into a situation we joke about. Like, "remember that month where we never saw each other and we let half the food in the fridge rot because we didn't even have time to make salads and we both wore dirty clothes in socially unacceptable situations and we went broke because we went to starbucks EVERY.MORNING?" yes...the potential for humor is there...

2007-09-26T13:32:00.001-07:00

I have decided that life sometimes gets in the way of ideals.

Joshua and I probably fit pretty easily into the granola-crunching category of people who are a little preachy about things like recycling (our trunk is currently filled with EMPTY wine and beer bottles taken home from other peoples' houses which we, at some point, plan to recycle). We buy the majority of our groceries on Saturday mornings at the market. In fact at this very moment, I am currently baking a blue hubbard squash that was grown in Indiana on an organic sustainable farm. In approximately 45 minutes, that squash will become soup - a soup that also includes locally grown onions, garlic, fresh sage, and organic vegetable broth. I've been planning this soup all week, but I just had to wait for the temperature to get below 90 frickin degrees.

But my point is this - our fridge and cabinets and even the oven may be stuffed with fresh! local! organic! food, but where did we eat lunch today?

Target. Did you see a stressed-out couple chowing down on an all-beef hot dog and asian chicken pizza hut special? Because that's us.

And yesterday?

Charcoal Delights. Chicken gyros? Us again!

Besides the obvious fact that eating out blows through serious wads of cash, I hate that we do it because then we eat the crap we are trying to avoid in our Certified Organic lifestyle. It is a little incongruous to spend twenty minutes choosing the best beets and swiss chard when really I am consuming my weight in french fries every month.

But the reality is, I do not have the time to make every lunch and every dinner. Some days, I barely even have time to eat anything in between clinicals and internships and class and work. This week has been one of those incredibly overwhelming weeks where everything collided at once and the food we drooled over this weekend is currently sitting dejected in the fridge (not the squash! I cooked the one vegetable that could probably have hung out happy and healthy til Thanksgiving!) while we stuff ourselves with fast food.

I really hate it. And I want to change. But that would require planning ahead, probably one of my least favorite things to do and something I am certainly not good at in terms of food preparation.

And now I have to go, because my squash is almost done and if I even have a prayer of finishing this soup before Joshua gets home and needs to eat before his class starts at 6:30, I should be 10 steps ahead of where I am.

fall...

2007-09-13T12:47:00.000-07:00

Somehow, months have slipped by since my last post, and the summer I mentioned last time? Totally gone, out of the picture. The temperatures are inching downward, I have officially worn a sweater twice, and I had my first pumpkin spice latte last week. Even if it hits 80 degrees again (I'm talking to you, Forecast for 9/18/07) it just doesn't feel like summer anymore. Next week will be the 4th week of school - which means that unbelievably, I'm (slacking off on) studying for midterm exams in my quad classes.

Life has not been all that lovely lately. I am balancing school and work and a sudden onslaught of babysitting jobs with full-time wifelihood (wifeness?) along with the upcoming stresses of writing advising and studying for NCLEX. Joshua started a full-time MBA program - he only has class twice a week, but he has hours upon hours of homework. Our weekends are full of studying and for me, shifts at the hospital. I knew it would happen, I was prepared for the structure and routine of fall. I was even excited about new binders and new pens (purple! to scribble all over my endless powerpoint handouts). But the actual day to day living of it is harder than I expected - I realized this when we sat down with the calendar and we had no unplanned days until the end of October. Sometimes I forget that the time between August and Christmas happens at twice the speed of the rest of the year.

I think that would be enough to fulfill my need for a crazy overwhelming lifestyle, but instead our activities are probably the least intense thing we are involved in right now. We both have friendships that are changing, and people who are coming in and out of our lives for purposes we don't really understand. I am feeling the effects of being "off-time", a little concept I picked up in Psychology 101 that has really become a light bulb experience for me . I've always done things at a different age than my peers - I didn't go to college right away, but I got engaged when I was 19. I worked full-time, then went to college, then got married at 21, and now I'm still in school while my friends graduated a year and a half ago. I don't know many other married people my age, and the ones I do know haven't celebrated their 1 year anniversaries yet. We will be married 3 years this spring. The idea behind being "off-time" is that no matter how positive your life events are, they are inherently stressful if you are not experiencing them at the same time as the people around you.

So I would just like to throw this out there - I Am Stressed.

Stressed emotionally, physically, spiritually. I have been feeling that intense, constant prodding in my spirit that always accompanies major changes in my life. I have been spending more time praying and reading scripture and suddenly I realize how much of a hassle and inconvenience it is to serve a living, breathing God. Just when we are feeling comfortable in our little lives, He shakes us out of that cocoon and asks us to do things that are difficult and painful. Just when life gets crazy, He asks us to deal with hard truths in our relationships and face things we don't like about ourselves. I have been avoiding this kind of growth for these exact reasons, but somehow the time has come and all my silly excuses have been swept away. God's timing is perfect, and I'm trusting that if He is saying NOW, then I do the hard slogging work NOW.

Hopefully I will post again before Christmas!

2007-07-05T13:05:00.000-07:00

I'm blogging twice in a week. A new record! Also known as, my days off from work bore me to tears and I'm driven to write after spending hours stalking the blogs of people I barely know, or who are in fact complete strangers.

Today has been glorious in that I slept in past nine (a new record!) and then woke up to my friend Amy texting to say that she needs to iron a shirt for her first day at work, and could she use mine, and she would be bringing coffee! Luckily she has her own keys to our apartment so I did not even have to peel myself out of the sheets (these fabulous sheets) and I was able to start the day with a latte without ever leaving bed. I don't think life gets much more spoiled than that, and that is why I firmly believe in a) working the PM shift, b) giving friends your keys, and c) owning things that other people need and are willing to bargain Starbucks for. I am hoping she never purchases her own iron.

Tonight is round two of Adult Jazz, which I am very excited about now that the cramping and pain from last week has just barely passed. We went running last night (TWO miles! If you had asked me six months ago if I could run two miles straight without begging for death, I would have laughed uproariously and then asked YOU to please bring me Starbucks in bed, that is more my style thankyouverymuch) and I think the run finally worked out my Hamstring Issue. I gave myself a Quad Issue yesterday running on concrete, so I am thrilled to see what new muscle spasms and injuries I can acquire this week. Joshua is working on a heel problem, which he likes to call a stress fracture. Our newfound athleticism is both wonderful and frightening apparently.

However, our healthy lifestyle is not getting out of hand. We are going camping next weekend in Wisconsin with our friends - not so much the commune with nature type of camping, but the float-down-a-river-on-a-tube-with-beer-in-both-hands-sort of camping . I'm pretty sure the only thing that those two types of camping share is the fact that you sleep in a tent. We were planning the grocery list at lunch today (eating Chinese takeout at the picnic table behind Joshua's office) and it involved copious amounts of condiments and processed meat and cheese and like I mentioned, beer. So chances are good that we will return from the (not so) wilds of Wisconsin unable to ever run again. Which will give me more time to spend reveling in the glory of my bamboo sheets!

I think to sum up, this is my last summer as a bona fide college student (part-time job? check. staying up late? check. wasting away again in margaritaville? check check.) It is fabulous and I love it but I'm trying to find that balance between enjoying it immensely and wishing it was over so that school could start again and I could just hurry up and GRADUATE already. I can't believe that July is here and will be gone before I know it in a whirlwind of camping, working, going to Cali for a wedding, hopefully having my brothers and Amanda visit, and then going home at some undetermined point to see my parents.

Well, when I just typed that all out, I can see that the summer is practically over now, and I just better enjoy the weather and the grilling and the gorgeousness while it lasts! And also the free time - I'm taking a nap to save up my energy for Adult Jazz!

Oh Right...I Have A Blog?!

2007-06-30T12:36:00.000-07:00

Well I think the past few months just go to show how consistency is obviously what I strive for, and so often achieve in my writing career...

um, no.

I have not actually forgotten about this blog, contrary to everything that is obvious and straightforward in this life. In fact, I have felt very guilty about the lack of posting, but then things became kind of a downer for awhile (more family cancer, although we're jazzing it up with the thyroid instead of the breast, my dad is still unemployed, joshua was working 14 hour days and weekends for a while there). Sometimes writing things down is therapeutic and cathartic and then sometimes merely experiencing a difficult situation is enough and to commit it to words just makes it even more raw and jarring.

Still, the 10 week hiatus was a bit much. After all, it is the SUMMER, I'm employed and working a crazy flexible, glorious schedule that allows me time to sun myself, keep up a demanding running schedule, and waste the days away slowly killing brain cells on the InterNet (please see Yahoo! Music Videos and the hilarity that isWill Ferrell).

However, during my blogging break, I have achieved one of my major goals - which is to get my ever-widening tush back in a dance studio before the cellulite starts creeping up my back and into my hair or something equally repulsive. This Thursday, I found myself surrounded by all sorts of dancing goodies, looking for a pair of jazz shoes to purchase for my new Adult Jazz class (please note - i used to make fun of Adult Jazz back when I was underage and flexible and could throw my leg behind my head for fun and then do double pirouettes en pointe) I might be a measly 23 years old, but that is past the typical prime of a professional dancer's life, and I've spent the last 5 years drinking my weight in lattes and cooking pasta. Right now Adult Jazz seems pretty intimidating and I would like to smack my 18-year-old condescending size 6 self in the face.

So, Thursday morning I bought these (in basic black):

and Thursday night I found myself wearing lycra and leather (please also note - not as sexy as it sounds) and attempting to perform all the steps that I once knew in my sleep...tendu, rond de jambe, battement, chassee, chassee, pas de bouree...I did not do anythng embarrassing like fall down or start crying after discovering my complete inability to even jazz walk, but I think the experience can be summed up by saying that it is now Saturday and I am still sore enough to dread things like, I don't know, changing clothes? However, I am also thrilled to pieces that I successfully did most of the combinations, and I have been torturing both Joshua and all my neighbors by practicing my pirouettes in our dining room. I have also convinced roughly half my friends to sign up for dance classes by promising them flat abs and killer calves.

I did not mention that they would also need to stock up on Icy Hot and any product ever marketed to the arthritic geriatric population, because while it is 100% true, I think it's probably a turn-off.

I'm back and stiffer than ever.

2007-05-17T07:48:00.000-07:00

I ate ice cream for breakfast.

After all, I am on summer vacation and we've been eating relatively healthy lately (grilled portabellas last night? grilled salmon two nights ago? did I mention we got a grill?)Also, the ice cream I ate for breakfast was the ice cream that we (ok, Joshua) made last night in our ice cream maker. Unlike my yellow soppy mess that never thickened and was ultimately tossed down the drain, HIS mint chocolate chip ice cream was smooth and creamy and flecked with pieces of chocolate and specks of mint leaves. (As far as edible plants go, we have basil and mint growing and thriving on our windowsills. Also we have a fish visiting us who is currently living next to the basil, but we are not planning on turning him into ice cream). I was so full from dinner that I only had a few bites of ice cream, but this morning it was even richer and yummier than I remembered. Soothing an empty stomach with chocolate and full-fat dairy...we will see if that's really a good idea.

All of these ridiculous summer pleasures - ice cream, grilling out, shucking corn, being outside in the sun and turning all shades of pink and brown - remind me of my childhood. We had a big backyard that was perfect for running and tag as kids, and then for laying out on beach towels when I got older. I remember sitting on the concrete steps that led to our back door and shucking corn into big paper shopping bags, hoping that no one would forget I was there and body slam the door open carrying a big plate of chicken or hamburgers to the grill (this was not an unwarranted fear. It happened all the time).

On Tuesday, my mom called me and asked where I was. This is her fun, stomach-sinking way of alerting me to the fact that she's calling with bad news - given the past few months, my mind was racing ahead to figure out who possibly could have cancer now. But instead she told me that my father had lost his job.

When your father is 50 years old and has struggled for all of his adult life to get ahead of the curves life has thrown at him (and there have been so, so many), I think that the news that he is unemployed is devastating. My dad takes his role as provider incredibly seriously, and on Monday he was called into his boss's office and told that he had two weeks - TWO WEEKS! it's insulting - until he was done there. They are closing his branch of the office, where he is the only salesman. My parents still have a 16 year old at home but as of June 1, neither of them has a job. And it's just so overwhelming and huge and the prospect of job hunting involuntarily at age 50 is demoralizing and frustrating. And here I am in Chicago, with my new grill and my ice cream maker, surrounded by material comfort and all the benefits that a two-income lifestyle afford. Sick to my stomach, because isn't it supposed to be the other way around?

On Monday night, while we were eating our grilled salmon and talking about our memories of childhood summers, I didn't know that my parents were sitting on their couch mourning the loss of what they do. I assumed they'd be flipping chicken on the grill and possibly knocking my brother off the steps because he's the only one left to get stuck shucking corn, and there's still no place to sit.

I know this post is so discombobulated. I wasn't sure if I wanted to write about my parents at all, even though they don't know I have this blog. But I think that it's the only thing on my mind, even though I've tried to block it out with ice cream breakfasts today, and books and movies yesterday. I'm avoiding it, but it won't let me go.

2007-05-14T16:03:00.000-07:00

Today, in honor of our second wedding anniversary, I decided to make a special dessert - sweet basil scrambled eggs.

Let's be honest, I was aiming for basil ice cream, but somewhere in the process of heating 8 egg yolks and 4 cups of milk (in my defense - to a precise 175 degrees! and never did it boil!)I made scrambled eggs instead. In one of the greatest displays of optimism I have ever attempted, I then threw it in the ice cream maker anyways. So far, it's still chugging away and the whole thing is disconcertingly yellow (it should be green) and liquid (it should be solidifying). It just goes to prove my suspicions that I am not ready for epicurious. However, I can taste the potential lurking beyond the egg-ness of it all - when my poor hardworking window-ledge basil plant regroups from this tragedy and springs forth new leaves, I'll try basil ice cream again. I will not double the recipe. Or scramble the yolks. Or skip an important "cool-down" step in the recipe that Joshua helpfully pointed out to me after it was all in the ice-cream maker.

The Great Basil Egg Ice Cream Debacle is something that I kind of regret happening on our anniversary. Besides one absolutely horrendous Moroccan eggplant dish I cooked for Joshua the summer we got married, I have surprised myself with a love of cooking and a knack for it. For someone who never wanted to domesticate, finding myself at 23 with a husband and a Kitchen-Aid mixer is sometimes overwhelming, usually surprising, and in all ways a blessing. Until I met Joshua, I had literally never thought about getting married. I was planning on moving to New York City to live in a studio apartment and write the Great American Novel, and maybe get a cat and possibly adopt a baby later in life. By myself. And for those of you who know me now, this sounds absolutely ridiculous - I am clearly fulfilled by my roles as wife, soon-to-be nurse, and future baby mama. I also hate cats and studio apartments, so it wouldn't have worked out anyways. Sorry, NYC.

Joshua and I celebrated four years of togetherness in March, and now we have been married almost as long as we've been a couple. We have had mostly bliss and hilarity - but also sheer exhaustion at the effort it takes to make a marriage and a family and a life together work. We are both fiercely independent people, and compromise does not come easily to us. God has broken our pride through the challenges of marriage, and has softened us both into more compassionate and gracious people. We still manage to do our fair share of whining (me) and complaining (me) and taking our relationship for granted (me again!) but we have also grown so much that sometimes I cannot believe I am still the same girl who walked down the aisle to Etta James singing "At Last". That girl had no idea what a privilege it would be to fall asleep every night next to a loving husband, and also no idea how annoying it would be when that man rolled over and pulled off all her covers. EVERY NIGHT!

To Joshua, the man who pulls off my covers, laughs at my jokes, eats the food that I make (and some that I ruin), supports me, doesn't pull the plug on my Starbucks addiction, gives me space and pulls me close, prays for me and loves me and tries every day to be just a little bit better...

you are my everything and i love you more today than I ever thought possible two years ago...

Sorry about the basil eggs...maybe next year.

Things I Have Learned: Finals Week Edition

2007-05-10T14:41:00.000-07:00

- Finals week is incredibly, mind-numbingly, fingernailsonachalkboard agonizingly slow. I am usually in a daze over how quickly Monday through Friday passes. Instead I am in a tizzy over the fact that it is STILL.THURSDAY.

- During the week one needs to study most, one will suddenly lose all motivation, persistence,and drive to succeed.

- However, one will discover a newfound joy in reading celebrity gossip, going to Starbucks to "stay awake", inviting people over for dinner (wha?!) and going to bed early in order to "get up early and study", which really means "get up early and go to Starbucks in order to 'stay awake'". It's a vicious cycle.

- The situation is dire when one decides that instead of grocery shopping and planning for said dinner, one will go to Bath and Body Works to take advantage of the 4 for $10 sale involving antibacterial soap and an overwhelming choice of scents. (in "one's" defense, dinner was excellent and everyone's hands smelled fantastic).

- If the flip top to one's keychain hand sanitizer has become stuck, DO NOT attempt to use your teeth to unstick it. It WILL end up in your mouth, it WILL burn ferociously, and you WILL feel like a complete idiot as you sticks your tongue under the faucet to rinse it off. I think this will remain true even after finals week.

- It is still possible to purchase appropriate cards and presents for two mothers and one grandmother, wrap and mail them on time, and do this on the same day as the Bath and Body Works sale, the grocery shopping, the dinner, and a previously unmentioned employee physical at one's brand spanking new summer job. It is NOT, however, possible to study on this particular day.

- If one has forgotten to wear their Target brand premium plus white strips during the day (due to excessive activities involving other people), an excellent way to multitask is to wear them to bed, set an alarm for 30 minutes later, and then get up, remove the strips, and brush one's teeth. This is really wonderful because one will probably not remember this activity very well the next morning. (Disclaimer!*one's spouse might not find this time saver all that amusing*)

- The craziness and the lack of sleep and the excess caffeine and the scrambling from one activity to the next and the studying and the maladjusted coping are really all worth it when you consider...

I will be done with my junior year in two hours...
I'm 75% done with college as a whole...
by this time next year I'll have a job and a degree...

and there is a bottle of red wine, a long-suffering husband, and Grey's Anatomy waiting to celebrate with me tonight!

2007-05-01T22:18:00.000-07:00

Just now, I jumped into bed, grabbed my laptop and textbook and was about to start writing a paper that was due last week and needs to be handed in at 6:45am, after I wake up at 5:45am (yes, it's 10:13 and I'm just starting)...and I'm feeling like something is kind of wrong with the situation...

And it is, because I still have my toothbrush in my mouth. Where I put in 15 minutes before and then proceeded to not brush my teeth but rather just clench it in my jaws of death (and forgetfulness).

This sort of sums up why I have not been blogging lately.

But school is out next week...and I have a job lined up for summer...and a lot more free time...and I will be trying to claw my way back into being a personal favorite of Tricia's.

2007-03-29T14:21:00.000-07:00

I am in a spectacularly horrific mood today. I don't know if has to do with the commute from the suburbs we've been experiencing this past week (dogsitting. yeah, we do that), or if it's related to the overwhelming workload of my new class, or if it's all hormonal, or if it's just sleep deprivation (please also see dogsitting). I actually can't remember the last time I've been in one of these please-God-take-me-now moods, where the only thing that sounds good is sitting on the couch in a blanket watching cable and eating cookies and thinking horrible nasty thoughts towards life in general.

There are only six weeks left in the semester, and then I can officially have senioritis. It's so close I can almost feel the heat and the freedom of summer, and the amazing realization that I will NEVER HAVE TO DO THIS AGAIN. My last time registering for classes, last winter break, last finals week, last time getting up for clinicals at 5 am. I have no delusions of nostalgia right now. This summer, and next year, and especially next summer, cannot come fast enough. Really. I spend an embarrassing amount of time thinking about our pinning ceremony and graduation and the day I pass NCLEX and the first day I get a paycheck.I know I am getting a little ahead of myself - I still have a whole year of school left to plow through before those days - but I feel like focusing on the light at the end of the tunnel is the only thing keeping me sane. Otherwise I just feel crushed by all the things that are left to do before I can scribble RN, BSN behind my name (and you better believe I will be writing that on every scrap of paper I can get my name on. People are going to have to beg me to stop).

I spent the day at Ikea - which was a horrible idea. I didn't go for myself,I was lured with the promise of free Starbucks to help a friend pick stuff out for her new apartment. Still, when you would like to be curled up in the fetal position and hanging out with the Food Network, Ikea is a nightmare. I am sad to say that I was absolutely no help at all. I kept wandering into different aisles and displays like a four year old looking at all the pretty colors, and all the cheap crap, and all the overwhelming possibilities of self-assembly. I tried at one point to pick out a large flower pot for our apartment (one of our more ambitious plants just outgrew its current home) and then my head fell off and I collapsed in a heap on the floor sobbing with the difficulty of it all.

Ok, no, I didn't. But that was what it FELT like - and so I bought myself coffee and
oatmeal chocolate crisp cookies and tried to sedate myself with sugar and saturated fat (25% of my daily value! In ONE cookie! HOW DO THEY PACK IT ALL IN?!?!). Add in the Chinese takeout we grabbed for lunch, and fast forward to me sitting in my lonely, dog-free apartment with some serious bloating and a headache. I am scrupulously avoiding Other People until I am forced to go to class at 6:30. I am also praying for some perspective and a slightly brighter outlook, because I recently walked passed a mirror and noticed that I looked like death dropping by for a visit. It's not fair for unsuspecting and possibly good-natured people to have to encounter THAT.

In other news, one of the dogs we are feeding and walking and generally keeping alive thought it would be fun to chew up the slippers my mom got me for Christmas. This is a dog that has not chewed anything for the entire week, even alone and uncrated for eight hours a day. Then Joshua stayed there sick today, and instead of being GRATEFUL that someone was there to play with her and let her out five times an hour, what does the dog do? CHEWS MY POOR, HELPLESS SLIPPER.

It just isn't right, people.

2007-03-22T13:17:00.000-07:00

Today I woke up and saw that the grass was greener on the other side of the street.

Luckily, it was green on my side as well, and really the whole point was that it was green. Not brown,not cracked and gray and looking sad and defeated, but a real, springtime, St-Paddys-beer color of green. There might not be any leaves yet, I haven't seen a flower yet, but I can see life in the green grass and in the fact that I wore flip flops to school yesterday (and then yes, soaked my bare feet in a March thunderstorm - but it's ok, i painted my toenails hot pink and so it's hard to get me down). All the plants in our house, which are kept alive and thriving by Joshua only, are having growth spurts. The calla lilies that I had no idea were annuals are suddenly 6 inch shoots. I really thought we were keeping that planter of dirt on our windowsill because we were being too lazy to throw it away.

In much more important life-affirming news, my foxy mama is just fine and CANCER FREE. It was a bit of a scary appointment because her first mammogram showed a very large area of density that apparently sent the radiologist into a panic attack. However, on the second, more precise mammogram (which sounded pretty painful and involved some nasty breast-smushing techniques), that dark area turned out to be just dense breast tissue that hadn't been flattened out enough to get an accurate picture. The only bad news is that my mom will probably have these terrifying, "get back in our office before it spreads to your bones" kind of call-backs after her mammograms every year now. The areas of density may change in size and shape and location and she will probably have to always have the Mammogram of Torture to get good pictures. But she is WELL, and healthy.

And then this morning I was reading the news and discovered that Elizabeth Edwards' breast cancer has come back, and is now in her bones. She has two young children and a husband running for president...and just yesterday the doctors told her that at this point, her cancer is no longer curable. Just treatable. Just treatable is an incredibly devastating and inevitable thing to hear. I immediately had the selfish thought that I was so glad my mother was not the one who had THAT appointment yesterday. Then I had the much more appropriate thought that no one's mother should ever have to have that appointment.

Even before my mom's scare, and before Elizabeth Edwards' terrible news, my best friend Amy and I had decided to walk these 60 miles in August. In order to participate in the 3 Day, you have to raise a minimum of $2,200. That's a lot. But I think it will be worth all the letters and phone calls and training and sweat and of course,the absolute psychosis of attempting to walk SIXTY MILES over three days. In AUGUST.

Also, I have these new shoes? These ones?

They are absolutely amazing. I have been working out like crazy, because running in these babies is similar to springing on air (or, what I imagine that to be like) and I think these shoes can take me sixty miles. In fact, I wear these shoes everywhere now and if you know me, I am not exactly a sneakers and jeans kind of girl. Or a tennis shoes and jeans kind of girl either - and they are NOT for tennis and I resent that entire Midwestern term!

In non-cancer and running shoe related news, we've been trying out this radical new lifestyle. It's called...Save Money. I know, it's shocking. We have actually eaten every lunch and dinner at home since Sunday, which has quite possibly never happened before in our lives. Have we eaten a little too much pasta? Yes. But have we also eaten more fruits and vegetables and whole grains than ever before? YES! Unfortunately, the downside of this great marital experiment is that the house looks like a tornado blew through, so I should probably attempt to fix the chaos before my wonderful husband comes home and really starts asking questions about what I do all day.

Which is, of course, work out in my new SNEAKERS and then browse the internet, interspersing homework here and there. SHHHHH....

2007-03-16T09:53:00.000-07:00

My aunt died of breast cancer when she was only 28. My mom was 18 at the time, and in the thirty years of life she's lived since then, she's told me that only one situation has compared to the pain of her sister's death. And indirectly, that other situation was caused by her sister's death. So my mom's life has been marked by this incredibly sad and twisted mess that is breast cancer and it's lingering after-effects on the lives of everyone it touches.

About five years ago, another aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was in her early forties, did well with treatment and did not have to have chemotherapy. She's a very private person and did most of her suffering in silence. She didn't want her family to go through it with her. I have to admit that I felt relieved we aren't biologically related, and then felt awful for even thinking of my connection to her personal hell.

This year, on the day my mother-in-law broke her ribs and settled in for an extended stay on my couch, my grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer. In her case, it was small and slow-growing. She's already had surgery, which was so successful that she may not even need the radiation treatments she was originally dreading. She is in her eighties, very cheerful, and she and my grandfather are determined to get through this together.

Today, my mom emailed to tell me that her mammogram was inconclusive and she needs to go back for a consult and another mammogram. I know this is not as serious as a panicked phone call telling her she needs a biopsy, and I know that she is religious about her mammograms - so whatever is there, if anything, must be small and new. However, that does not change the fact that I stopped breathing when I read those words. My mother already has lupus and sjogrens. In other words, all the autoimmune diseases a woman needs. The logical, nursing school part of my brain is telling me to slow down and put things in perspective - many, many mammograms have to be redone and there are a hundred reasons they might need a better picture. Operator error? But another part of me is already galloping down this road called Cancer, wondering if her immune system could handle chemo? Could my parents - who have one kid in college and another about to graduate, with my dad in a new job and my mom not always healthy enough to work - even afford it?

It is at times like this that I think my faith should sustain me, but instead it fails me. Even if my mom doesn't have breast cancer, which I am praying for desperately, this is a reminder that at some point I will lose her. Hopefully, to the quiet of old age and a full life. But even the idea that there is uncertainty - that something more vicious might rear up and take her instead - drives me wild. It seems so unfair. Cancer has already snatched my aunt, Joshua's uncle and several of his grandparents and other relatives. It's this fear looming over my head. 28 is not too far away for me...I can't imagine dying of cancer before I reach 30.

I can barely fathom my mom having cancer before 50.

see? she's way too foxy for cancer.

2007-03-08T07:52:00.000-08:00

Last night, I was supposed to be studying for my 8am, 20% of my grade, use-it-or-lose-it 100 question OB final. I am a horrible study-er (is it studier? that sounds like I am more of a "stud" than others, which is obviously also true). Anyways, because I am so bad at studying, I did several other activities like: search Craigslist, stalk bloggers, hang out in the library hoping to catch a glimpse of motivation, and then go out to Chilis in the suburbs to have dinner with Joshua's dad, who flew into town for a whirlwind meeting with the Higher-Ups at his company. I also managed to read a wonderfully humorous book that Mel lent to me, entitled Marley and Me. I highly recommend it - it's hilarious, easy to read, and if you love dogs like I do (especially labs!), you will love it.

Now I am going to go ahead and ruin the entire ending of the book, so if you are desperate to read about Marley with any hint of a surprise ending, STOP HERE.

Ok,you were warned. Here's the thing - MARLEY DIES. Since this is a memoir, you might think I saw this major plot twist coming, but I was just plowing through the book happily, chuckling at the many misadventures of this out of control animal. There were signs that death was impending; his stomach flipped, the vet mentioned putting him down (yeah, I know, that one should have been a BIG CLUE), and the author noticed Marley aging for pretty much the last 4 chapters. By this point, I should have been emotionally ready to say good-bye to this dog that I had never met.

Or not. If you are going to read this book, please come more prepared than I was - a box of tissues should do it. We were supposed to be getting ready to go out to dinner while I was finishing the book (who am I kidding, I was supposed to be STUDYING), but instead I was sitting at the dining room table CRYING.MY.EYES.OUT. Not a sniffle, sniffle sort of "oh, that's too bad" cry. This was the heaving, gasping, sort of crying that I usually associate with the end of Forrest Gump - you know, when he's standing at Jenny's grave and telling her how smart little Forrest is?

I never had a dog growing up (my brother's allergic, my dad's ambivalent, and we lived in a shoebox), but my grandfather always had Labs like Marley - Hunting dogs with lots of energy who are absolutely devoted to their owners and become as much a part of the family as any parent or child. My mom still tears up talking about the many dogs who were part of her childhood. Last year, my brother finally broke my father down and convinced him that despite the threat of asthmatic asphyxiation, his life would not be complete without a dog. Unfortunately, the dog Aaron brought home was a lab/pit bull mix who looked a little too pit bull and had way too much energy for the shoebox and the neighborhood. Yes, the pit bull breed suffers discrimination, and I don't want to talk about that here. Basically, my parents' homeowners insurance said, "Ditch the dog, or we ditch you."

Sunny the Discriminated Pit Bull slept on Aaron's bed. He went to bed when Aaron went to bed, and woke up with him. He followed him through the house and stuck his nose to the window when he was gone to look for him. He would run off for different reasons, but check back at the window every few minutes. When a car pulled in the driveway, he was so deliriously happy that someone was back to play with him, he would run circles around the kitchen until he slid into the stove. He would catch a glimpse of his tail behind him and instead of just chasing it in a circle, he would leap backwards into the air to "catch it". He was a wonderful, friendly dog whose only mistake was being born a stereotype. The day Aaron had to give Sunny away was the worst day of his life - if anything will make a 19 year old boy cry like that, it's a dog. He didn't speak to my parents for weeks. We still do not mention that dog's name around him.

So if you can handle the fact that Marley is going to kick it (luckily after a very long, very adventurous life), I think everyone who has ever loved a dog should read this book. We already know that the first thing we're doing after I graduate - and I mean that very afternoon - is getting a puppy. Getting your first dog as a couple seems like the ultimate grown-up activity to me. (Kids are the ultimate terrifying grown-up activity that we are currently postponing, much to the dismay of the in-laws).

I am so tempted to name our future dog Marley.

2007-03-05T09:18:00.000-08:00

Why does Monday always come so quickly?

We had a wonderful weekend that started with two amazing culinary experiences. First, we braved the wind advisory to find parking in Lincoln Square on a Friday night to pick up the Indian food I've been craving since my horrible illness (Dear vegetable korma and aloo paratha bread, I love you forever). Then, while I waited for our food, Joshua ran up to CVS to grab a bottle of wine to bring to our friends'apartment,and he found Our Favorite Wine. Not only was this the first time in almost a year that we have been able to find this amazing, velvety, perfect Pinot Noir (CVS! Of all places!), the bottle wasn't labeled and the cashier gave it to him for $12.99. Approximately 50% off - so who cares that pinot isn't exactly the drink of choice with spicy curry?

Because we are such hip young twentysomethings who live in a exciting city and just love to partyparty, we stayed in and played Disney Scene It. And because my girly friends love wine that I love to hate (please see: anything in the zinfindel or blush families), that pinot was all me and Joshua. Which worked out fine until we decided to ratchet Disney up a notch and turn it into a drinking game ("What? You mean you didn't know that Pocahontas takes place in Jamestown, VA? Take a shot!") Miraculously, I won - must be all the babysitting - but as it turns out, the excitement of even a fabulous pinot and a fabulous dinner can be offset by shooters of Malibu and Coke. I went to bed at 2am and slept til noon and I can honestly say it was the laziest and most satisfying sleep I've had since Christmas break.

Saturday was a blur of laundry and an impromptu dinner at home with Joshua's sister and my friend Emily. I made angel hair pasta with the same chunky vegetable sauce I've been making for weeks and yet I still want it EVERY NIGHT. The only absolute mandatory ingredients are corn (fresh? frozen? who cares?) and feta cheese (thrown in AT THE LAST MINUTE) everything else is whatever you've got laying around. On Saturday, it was canned organic whole tomatoes, and green, red, and yellow peppers. Saute or roast all the veggies (roasting is so much better, but we didn't have the time after the laundry took forever!) and then simmer them down into a "sauce". The corn stays crunchy and the tomatoes stay sweet and the feta is salty and crumbly and oh my gosh I want to go make another pot of this right this very second.

Unfortunately, what I am really doing this very second is packing up my stuff in the computer lab at school and preparing for my very informative presentation in gym class on HPV. So far, people have presented on rather safe topics like hypertension and chiropractors. I'm hoping to go out with a bang - and nothing's more banging than a STD that up to 65% of the American population has and doesn't know it!

All that's keeping me going today is Muscle Pump at 4:30 and Paula Deen's Taco Soup!

2007-02-22T17:38:00.000-08:00

I haven't written a post in a few days because I've been, um, kinda coughing up blood and stuff?

I'm going to skip the gory details, but the short version is I developed a bad upper respiratory infection that left me hacking and spitting for days (days in which I DID NOT SKIP CLINICAL) Then I hacked up some "blood-tinged sputum", a fun and slightly alarming term I have so far only used in the context of patients. (Since this is really the biggest thing I've got going on in my life right now, you can see why I've been staying away from blogging, right?)

Today, I went over to my local Really Crappy Neighborhood Hospital, where I had unfortunate encounters with both reception staff, med students, and a snappy arrogant resident who's "really interested in dermatology and could you just indulge me a minute? I could prescribe you erythromyocin/benzoyl peroxide cream that would really clear up your face."

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was at the dermatologist. I thought I was at a FAMILY PRACTICE because I've been COUGHING UP BLOOD.

This was after the very pretty and slightly greasy med student told me that my throat was red and I might have, and I quote, "something called strep throat". SOMETHING CALLED STREP THROAT. Because I am a third year nursing student who might have missed Strep Throat Day in class? Because I took microbiology and in fact spent a good deal of time staring at streptococcus itself? Because I have never been an American kid who got this mysterious strep throat every single winter?

Then Dr. Dermatologist also made some snitty, asinine remarks which I don't want to go into in great detail, but involved my birth control, my safe sex practices, and my history of pap smears. Again, clearly related to my sore throat, fever, and bloody cough. Apparently, he's horrified that I'm married in my early twenties. I know, it's so rude of me to have found someone to be happy with when I could have been learning how to pop zits and humiliate patients?

Fun times. Anywhoo, the blood didn't seem too concerning to him, although he did say it could possibly be tuberculosis and wow, that would suck. He said the possibility was remote, which was the only nice thing he said to me, and offered to prescribe me robitussin with codeine, which I politely declined. I'm sick, but I don't need codeine.So I went home, feeling pissed but also relieved that I am not actually dying.

And then.

And then tonight I coughed up a lot of blood.

But I'm currently watching Grey's Anatomy and just decided that I need to put this out of my mind for a few minutes and see which Grey makes into the Great Beyond.

2007-02-17T08:52:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I realized there are some very important issues that need to be addressed here on my blog. The State of the Blog, if you will. Yes, I only have 12 posts and no, I don't think any of them are earth-shattering revelations. Mostly whining, but isn't narcissism really the reason most of us blog in the first place?

But here's the thing - this blog is actually a secret. Not from my husband, or even from a lot of my friends (hello, Tricia, Erin, and Timmy). But it's a secret from my family, my in-laws,my classmates, my school...some of my good friends know I have a blog, but they don't know what it's called, and they are not the kind of people to read or write one themselves and therefore don't look at mine.

My mother-in-law found my old blog. She found it through my sister-in-law, and pretty soon they were printing out entries, and she was checking through my archives, and I got scared and stopped writing there. I read back through every post,and for some miraculous reason I had never written anything horribly snarky about my in-laws, about sex, about alcohol, or my high school escapades that could have easily filled out an episode or nine of Girls Gone Wild. My mother-in-law actually thinks I am very funny,and I think she enjoyed my adventures in nursing school and newlywedded-ness. That's nice. But in this blog I use words like "bitches". In my real life, I occasionally drink to excess (um, please see last night) and I am a bleeding-heart liberal and you better believe I will be writing about the election (a woman and a black man fighting it out for the Democratic nomination, politics does not GET any better than this). Call me chicken, but I am not at the point in my life where I want to defend myself on these things - not to my in-laws and also not to my own family.

Ever since I was little, writing has been "my thing". One of my short stories is still used in the elementary school I attended, as an example of what 4th grade writing could be. A poem about Jesus that I wrote in 3rd grade won a blue ribbon in a creative writing contest, and everyone in my family still knows all the words. I am reminded of that poem - creatively entitled A Candle in the Darkness - every time I go home. I think I am supposed to have written a best-seller by now.Probably about Jesus.

My parents are 110% supportive of me being in nursing school and becoming a nurse practitioner. They supported me when I didn't go to college right away, and they supported me when I moved 3,000 miles away at age 19 and got engaged a week later to someone they had only met once. But I think they still wonder why I'm not writing, and I don't know if they even know what a blog is. It's certainly words on a page, and I definitely wrote them, so I think that counts. It's pressure on me that I know they don't intend, but it's also a lifetime of people telling me what I'm good at and I don't like being told anything, really. It's so strange - why do we feel so comfortable throwing it all out there for strangers, when we are really hiding from our own families?

(I just re-read that last line and realized it was so Carrie Bradshaw that I am a little sick inside. I was going to delete it, but I could just hear Sarah Jessica Parker's voice as she typed away on her little old-school Mac and I'm going to keep it in here, just as an homage to the fact that I've watched every single episode of Sex and the City approximately 27 times.)

I think I've exhausted the State of the Blog. After all, I slapped a picture of my smiling face on here, so if anyone happens to stumble across this page - well, I would be the worst-kept secret since Hilary Clinton's presidential ambitions. Also, I mentioned that last night I drank to excess. We had some friends over for dinner, which involved two roasted chickens, practically every dish we own, six bottles of wine, a hookah, the first season of Boston Legal, and a glorious ending where I fell asleep on the couch and missed the part where our friends left. This morning, Joshua made me french toast (yeah, he's amazing) and then ran off to band practice leaving me with the mess that accumulates when you make two roasted chickens, drink your own personal bottle of wine, and have to get carried to bed by your (slightly) more responsible spouse.

So...I don't have time to write anymore. I'll be doing the dishes for months.

2007-02-15T12:00:00.000-08:00

I hate being let down by food.

There are a few foods that never let me down - chocolate, just by virtue of its chocolate-ness, oatmeal crisp cookies from Ikea,Alaska maki from just about anywhere,lobster from Maine, homemade pesto, big slabs of mozzarella with tomatoes in the summer and my grandmother's cinnamon buns. Other, less gourmet items that never let me down include Coke (not diet, that is for whiners and people who don't know that aspartame is spelled c-a-n-c-e-r), any kind of fried potato item available, and whipped cream straight from the can.

Unfortunately, I did not eat even one of those things for lunch today.I did eat the glorious, chocolate-y, crispy, Ikea cookies yesterday when we went there to buy six of these:

- the cheapest and loveliest dining room chairs you ever did see. But now I'm getting off the subject.

What I did eat today (and I'm taking my sweet time getting to it, apparently) was this:

The whole-wheat version. Why does whole wheat pasta have to be SO BAD? We eat 100% whole wheat bread, muffins, I even bake with 100% whole wheat flour! I believe in whole grains very strongly, but why does the pasta have to suck? It's just so...whole. And so...wheaty. And so brown, which is not at all attractive with the white and creamy cheddar sauce. I love Annie's, so much in fact that I just close my eyes and avoid the fat content as I dump milk and butter and dehydrated cheese into my "petite shells". How can you not love 100% organic comfort food with real cheddar cheese and a name like petite shells?

Well, you can hate it if it's whole-wheat, that's for sure. Joshua and I eat very healthy (ok, we eat fast food when I haven't been grocery shopping, and that's unfortunately often). I even buy organic ketchup and peanut butter because I do firmly believe it's better for us and the environment. I check for trans fat and partially hydrogenated oils and I make our own salad dressing. Our spinach is organic, we hardly ever eat red meat (hello, cheddarburgers). I guess I cannot emphasize enough that we like healthy, whole foods, and it makes me very angry that I cannot jump on the whole wheat pasta bandwagon because it LOOKS like a fun time, and yet it is actually blech.

I am comforting myself with the fact that I only bought one box, it was on sale,and I brought home enough reliable food from the grocery store that I think I can whip up a slightly more satisfying dinner. Also, I have chocolate.

2007-02-13T12:30:00.000-08:00

It's snowing here in Chicagoland. As a matter of fact, we are actually having a real, bundle up and break out your lawn chairs to save your parking spot kind of Chicago snowstorm. For some people, particularly those under the age of 18, this is a day of great joy because almost all the schools around here are cancelled (although not the world-renowned Chicago Public School system because they seem to have some official policy that resembles that of the US Postal Service - come wind or snow or sleet, whatever, you truants get to class!). However, if you happen to be a college student who PAYS for the education, particularly a nursing student who pays EXTRA, get over it because even if there is heavy snow with 40 mph gusts of winds? That's right, you are going to clinical.

In my defense, I tried to go to clinical. I dragged myself out of bed early to maniacally check the weather and school cancellations. I prayed for my clinical instructor to call and just tell me to go back to my warm and heavenly bed; the roads were bad and it would be dangerous to drive 20 miles to the suburbs. In the dark. Of course, that call never came, but one of the girls in my clinical group did call to say her car wouldn't start.

In the irony that is my life, I assured her I could pick her up, then went out to the car to discover mine wouldn't start either. Seriously. It always starts. Eventually that old beast roared to life, only to sputter out. Then start again, hesitantly. Eventually Joshua and I decided to give it a whirl around the block just to make sure I could make it.

This is the part of the story where I should mention that both Joshua and I have a torrid love affair with bad weather. He missed his calling as a meterologist, but makes up for it with breathless updates on any and all storms in all areas of the country.
("Babe! It's hailing in Tennessee. It's the size of golf balls!"
"Joshua, do we know anyone in Tennessee?"
"No, but the HAIL! Is the size of GOLF BALLS!")
Anyways, I grew up in on the East Coast, which I like to mention excessively, but in this case it's appropriate because we know snow back east. I absolutely love a good dumping of snow, but I narrowly escaped death on small New England highways in whiteouts several times, so I have a complex about driving in it. And Joshua likes the weather to be as badass and dangerous as possible in order to AVOID having to go out in it.

So there we were, in the Little Car That Wouldn't, slipping down the side roads of our neighborhood while I talked to all the poor people I am responsible for bringing to clinicals. Then we thought - let's see how the main roads are! I pulled a left turn onto the main road...and kept turning left...and the back of the car kept sliding to the right...and voila!

Perpendicular to the road. I called my clinical instructor and told her that I had made one left turn that morning, which had turned into one spectacular spin-out, and sorry, but we're not coming.

This is of course, a drama, because I have not yet figured out how to escape drama. How will we make up clinicals? Do we have to pay our instructor? - yes, they told us this would be a possibility if we couldn't make it. What if we have no money to pay our instructor? How can our instructor force us to pay when we almost took a spin into The Great Beyond at 6am? (what if that last question was also a little bit dramatic and slightly blown out of proportion?)

And why the hell haven't they cancelled our night classes?

2007-02-11T19:06:00.000-08:00

I am not a "product" girl. I have makeup, but most of it's from Target, and I have moisturizer, also from Target, and I have facewash, and it might be from Walgreens, but most likely Target. Last year, my mother-in-law gave me a giftcard to Sephora and while I absolutely adore the idea of being a product girl, clearly I am not cut out for it because Sephora gives me serious anxiety. You just walk in, and everything is So!Cute! and the packaging is adorable, and the choices are endless, and it all costs over twenty dollars, which means it must be really, totally worth it. Yet somehow, all this adds to up to just make things confusing for me.

So, I have not really bought much makeup or other girl products since that overwhelming trip. I did, however, score some good stuff back then- Benefit Bad Gal Lash mascara and Nars blush in Orgasm. I mean, who could say no to a mascara called Bad Gal? And a blush called ORGASM?!? Talk about spicing up your life. Unfortunately, I also bought this really disappointing all-in-one concealer and foundation that didn't really conceal, but it did a super job of turning my face orange. This is when things get depressing. I moved on to Neutrogena pressed powder that again, had an orange-y tint and was only slightly better at concealing my blemishes (i may be getting older, but my skin is still hanging out in adolescence) Then I upgraded to Clinique. Um, orange again? Check. When I was home at Christmas, I stole one of my mom's Cover Girl powders - she keeps about 4 colors on hand for I have no idea why _ and although it was a nasty consistency and had basically no concealing power, it did not turn me orange.

But just today, I discovered that there is still hope for me to become a product girl, and this hope was discovered at the Prescriptives counter in Macys, where a lovely girl named Maggie introduced me to CUSTOM-BLENDED POWDER. Yes, your wildest dreams can come true, and if your wildest dreams are anything like mine and include getting rid of an orange chin line forever, you are in luck. Well, let's talk about how this stuff is amazing. First they find your underlying skin tone using these little concealer sticks - it turns out that mine is blue/red. But almost all makeup is made with a yellow/orange base. Hence, the sweet potato color I've been sporting for years is actually not my fault. No one ever told me this! Then, they dump out a powder base onto this slick white slab, chop up carefully selected color pigments and mix it all in (which IS strangely reminiscent of Coldstone) and,voila! The perfect color. They can even add oil-control or moisturizer or whatever you need to your powder. You get to take home a big tub of the loose powder, and then they press part of it into a compact. And it lasts for A YEAR.

Even Joshua was very impressed. I was practically falling out of my little stool, and I may have told Maggie that I loved her and quite possibly I made a big fool of myself over pressed (and loose!) powder. Pressed AND loose! And in the perfect color! Does life GET ANY BETTER?!?!

Yes it does, because they give this gloriousness to you in a special bag that says Custom-Blended Powder on the outside, so everyone knows how fabulous and smart you were to buy this product. So, if you live in the Chicagoland area, and can find your way to Old Orchard Mall, ask for Maggie at the Prescriptives counter in Macys and she will chop up a powder just for you.

Oh, and Oprah uses it too.

2007-02-05T15:31:00.000-08:00

Well, my husband has left me...

for his first Big Boy Business Trip. And I am sad, because this is only the second time we've been apart since we got married. In our almost two years of marriage, we've only spent four nights apart, and now we are adding four more. We didn't make any You Can Never Leave Home pacts when we got married, it has just sort of worked out that we rarely had any place to go that didn't involve the other person. (Also, having limited finances helps. It's hard to whirl off on vacation when you try to buy a plane ticket and your credit card gets rejected). Add full-time jobs and school and bands and making movies, and well, there's no time to go anywhere anyways.

But I think when it comes down to it - and I thought this as I left the airport with little tears squirting out of the corner of my eyes as dramatically as possible - Joshua and I just like to be together. We don't get bored, we don't get annoyed with each other's presence in our apartment, and we have all these little, sickeningly domestic routines that we both like to follow. We argue aggressively (but that's not boring), we definitely get annoyed (again, not boring, and not due to our living situation), and we can't stand anyone else in the world for the duration of time we can stand each other. Even with our work/school/not ideal situation, we manage to have lunch together almost every day. I couldn't have lunch every day with my very best friends in the whole world. I'd want to smack them upside the head (in a very non-violent manner).

It sounds slightly sickening and cute, but isn't that the point? I mean, that's why I got married - not to cook, or keep house, or to be domestic or settle down (even the words "settle down" make me want to go out and do tequila shots). I got married because I I found someone that I could not and would not want to go one day without. I know that not everyone's relationship is like this - some people need more space, more literal aloneness. I need my time alone, but I like to have it in the same time zone as my husband.

However, I think he was glad to leave Chicago on what I am now calling Black Monday, or possibly Blame It On the (Purple)Rain, or alternatively Damn You Bad Rex For Showing Up in Miami and Crushing Our Dreams Day. I might be emotionally distraught over a week without Joshua, but I have not forgotten the pain of last night. This is what happens when you move to a new city and become caught up in their sports fanaticism. When you are from New England, and your football team gets to the Super Bowl, they WIN (go pats!). Then you move to Chicago, and not only have you had almost a lifetime of crushed baseball dreams back home (I say almost because WE BROKE THE CURSE!!), now you inherit two more heartbreaker teams. Yeah, I mean you, Bears and Cubs.

It's too much.

2007-02-02T17:33:00.000-08:00

Things I Did On Friday That Actually Made Friday Feel Like A Monday?

-dishes
-put away laundry
-file bills
-homework
-clean up kitchen
-file 2006 taxes online

Things I Did On Friday That Actually Made Friday Feel Like A Saturday On The Beach In Cabo?

-file 2006 taxes online and fall off my chair looking a federal return that ended in "-ousands"

Let me tell you, H&R Block, you have made my week a little better, a little brighter, a little richer. Thanks to you we will be able to go out and --- oh wait, you thought we were going to SPEND that money? No, you have given us a glorious trip to the bank and an even more glorious moment as I write a check to Fully.Pay.Off. the credit card that is the bane of my existence.

DEBT-FREE IN 2007.

Obviously, I'm not including student loans in my DEBT-FREE IN 2007 goals (more like 2027) but hey, you can consolidate those bitches and put them on the back burner until your kids head off to college. Anyways, paying off our stupid credit cards has been our number one goal since we got married with a load of debt that included the DJ, the down payment on the reception hall, various wedding-and-honeymoon-related expenses, and probably some clothes I now never wear. It's amazing to me how many people our age have debt. Like serious, in over our heads and still throwing the plastic around type of debt. How did we all get in this mess?! Luckily, Joshua and I are now being blinded by the light at the end of the tunnel (thank you for holding onto our money, Mr. Federal Government, but we'll take it from here!) but in the 1.7 years we've been married, we've only used the cards maybe twice, and we still haven't been able to pay them off.

I think the problem is that we (the debt-bearing generation) have other priorities and see the future as so limitless that we don't think being in debt is a huge problem. Joshua and I have bled thousands of dollars from our checking account on Starbucks, Citizens jeans, music equipment, plane tickets, sushi, wine...all those hip and urban expenses have easily distracted us from crawling out of the debt hole. We rationalize this by the fact that I will have a job in a year and double our income (ps -CAN'T FREAKING WAIT FOR THAT) and since we will be comfortably financially secure THEN, the debt isn't a big deal NOW.

I'm over this myth. I packed up all our 2006 bills a few weeks ago, and organized them in snazzy blue file folders from Target (again, a must-buy!) and in doing so, I took a good look at where our money went that year. And it went to interest. I could have bought multiple pairs of my favorite,oh so expensive jeans. Joshua could have bought a new bass, we could have INVESTED or SAVED hundreds. But instead, we merrily sent it all off in interest and wondered why our balances weren't really coming down that much.

And I am done with that. I hate being indebted, I hate owing people (or emotionless, soulless corporations!) money. So we have decided to be done with that particular shenanigan.

Let's see...with all the money we save in credit card payments, we will have so much more to spend!

And there's another problem.

2007-01-31T13:18:00.000-08:00

Today, at 11:49am I saw my first live vajayjay birth. (yesterday I saw a c-section but let me tell you it is a whole different ballgame) Today, I was able to be with the mom the whole time she was pushing. When the baby girl was born, I was holding the mom's right leg saying "oh! you are doing SO WELL!!" and I was about six inches from the "action".

By "action", I mean, the human being coming out of her vagina.

WHAT?! I'm still so surprised by the whole wonderful crazy drama of birth. First there were just four of us in the room - mama pushing, labor nurse with her hands IN the vagina making sure the baby was ok, the dad looking terrified, and me practically bursting with the JOY of it all and trying to contain this seriously dopey grin that I kept getting on my face. I really had no idea what to do, except just hold on to her leg and remember that although she needed to bear down during a contraction, I did not. (seriously. I kept holding my breath and then gasping when her contraction ended, and if I was squeezing out a child, I would not have been amused). Then the nurse is all, "Oh I have to go get something! You can handle it, right?" and I am all, "Well, of course!"

This is what I said out loud. In my head, I said, "Oh my GOD! I can see most of this baby's head! What if it just comes out right here!?" Luckily, that did not occur, but I did get to count the mom through a contraction and she got even more of that head down before the nurse got back. And I felt so proud to be there, "helping".

Then all of the sudden, a whole whirlwind of people burst in for the actual birth. The doctor suited up in her splash mask and got situated, with placenta bag and everything all ready, and suddenly the baby's head was out and because she was occiput posterior, she was looking right at us! With a massive conehead. And a pissed-off expression. One more push and she came slithering out and she cried like, I don't know, someone had smushed her through PELVIC BONES or something.

And it was pretty much the most incredible, beautiful, ridiculous thing I have ever seen in my life.

The mom and dad were crying, the baby was wailing, the doctor was stitching up a nasty tear and delivering the placenta, the nurse was weighing the baby, and I just got to watch all the excitement, and now I know that there IS something that is worth coming to work for every day. One and a half years before I sign up for L&D - the Vagina Squad - for real.

Oh, and what you've heard about pooping on the delivery table? That is the real deal, people. Trust me.

2007-01-22T19:55:00.000-08:00

Update on previous post: Hypothetical in-laws are still firmly planted on my hypothetical couch, seeing as mother-in-law is not clear to fly. Theory has become OH SO REAL.

Recent changes in my life: Increase in emotional turmoil, grandmother headed for lumpectomy and radiation (although prognosis is excellent), wonderful great-uncle who took place of grandfather passed away very unexpectedly after elective surgery, Bears are headed to Miami. A big shout-out to Rex Grossman, not for being so good, but for thankfully not being SO BAD. My heart broke a teeny-tiny bit for New Orleans (as a city), but don't worry, I repressed that just like everything else. Oh, and emotional drinking? Yes, I have that covered. Sobbing myself to sleep? Check.

I have so much to update about my recent explorations into the world of vajayjays and babies' mommas, but instead I have to get up at 5am for clinical and so I just wanted to say to the whole internet (read: Tricia), that I have not forgotten this blog and in fact I think about it longingly...but unfortunately I have found myself with other responsibilities.

Like providing in-home health care.

And attempting to keep my humanity about me.

porque dios?!?!?

2007-01-14T09:47:00.000-08:00

Let's hypothesize for a moment.

Let's say - just SAY - that your sister in law was moving to Chicago, and with her came 6 suitcases, 3 huge boxes, 6 little boxes, 3 overflowing carts worth of Target junk, emotional baggage, and a set of very generous, slightly overprotective parents.

Then let's say that this entire caravan arrived only 4 days after you and your husband (hypothetically!!) returned from a 3 week trip in which you only spent 3 nights at home, and only 4 days before you are headed back to a challenging semester of...well, let's just theorize that you are in some sort of medically oriented program.

Then let's say that yesterday, when you and your husband and theoretical brother and sister-in-law were across the street from the other sister-in-law's new dorm ordering Mexican food, your hypothetical mother-in-law fell out of a 7 foot loft (which belongs to the college-bound sister-in-law and is dangerously attired in satin sheets).

So then let's hypothesize that instead of meeting 14 of your in-laws' old friends for dinner, you and all your hypothetical in-laws spend the evening in the ER eating the Mexican food you didn't get to eat when you got that panicked phone call about The Fall.

Then let's pretend for a minute that your mother-in-law cracked three ribs during her startling escape from the loft.

And she doesn't want to take Vicodin, because this is a lady who gave birth to three kids au natural and just told you yesterday that it was "no big deal". But she can't move her right arm or right side, and she can't go home on Monday, because your hypothetical father-in-law is going on a business trip, and she can't be home alone.

So...after all this, let's hypothesize that she will be sitting on your couch until Friday. While your husband goes back to work (in theory!) and you and collegiate sister-in-law head off to class. And she's already bored.

Then, let's just say that while 8 people sat in your apartment's living room eating Kentucky Fried Chicken and swapping Fractured Rib Stories, your mom calls and tells you in a very chipper voice, "Oh and your grandmother has breast cancer."

"But don't worry - it's not aggressive."

SO LET'S JUST SAY...that you very privately freaked out in your bedroom, didn't tell anyone about your grandmother, sat on the couch til 1am watching Shrek 2, convinced the mother in law to take the damn Vicodin already, slept like a baby (@#$!), skipped church, and are about to watch the Bears play the Seahawks.

And so let's theorize that you are suppressing the emotional upheaval of your grandmother's diagnosis and your restless mother-in-law gracing your couch for 5 more days.

And so, instead of processing those emotions, you cry - CRY!! - reading pregame analysis of the Bears playoff game and you CURSE Rex Grossman for his inconsistent play, and even though you are from New England and your first crush on a quarterback was Tom Brady, you are now so overcome with desire to see Rex succeed that you are SHAKING. AS. YOU. TYPE. THIS.

But I mean, this is just a THEORY.

2007-01-11T14:10:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on blogging:

Damn you, world, for letting me try to fancy up my blog in Safari...when I could have just opened Firefox and been done two hours ago!

During my renovations, I got a site meter and I have to say, De.Press.Ing. Shouldn't people be stopping by, at least randomly? It just goes to show that my suspicions are correct: Blogging = Narcissism. Well, at least for me. According to my husband, who is convinced I will write a best-seller and we will jump on the bandwagon of famous authors who bathe in royalty checks and offers to make their novels into Major Motion Pictures, this is just a stepping stone.

Wait, what's that? That happens to only a very select few? Authors generally STRUGGLE to make it big? What do you mean, REJECTION?

To make that particular dream come true, Joshua should have married JK Rowling,or one of those easy breezy beautiful chick lit authors. He should not be counting on me, or my writing to take him anywhere. (That's why I'm in nursing school. To ease the pain when the bubble bursts. And also, because I'm a hypochondriac. Know thine enemy and so forth.)

Things I am excited about today:

Going back to school. Yes, it's true, I've actually read all the books I intended to, watched all the TV I need (well that will be true after tonights brand!new!Grey's Anatomy), and used up my laziness quota.

Things I am dreading:

Going back to school. IRONIC. But shockingly, I have really enjoyed sleeping in past 5:30am, and not having to wear see-through white scrubs in 30 degree weather.

Random fact:

I am considering not eating meat again. I was a vegetarian for most of high school and even a vegan for 7 months (that ended when all my clothes started hanging off my body in a scary, Nicole Richie-esque way and I started to loathe the smell of hummus). Recently, meat has been making me sick. I ate sesame chicken for lunch and it had the strangest taste, like someone had dropped sugar on it. At least I am hoping this is what happened, and not something more sinister.

Closing Statement:

In-laws arriving tonight. Sister-in-law moving permanently to Chicago. TONIGHT. The reality of this new development hasn't really set in yet. So I'm going to go contemplate it. Over a brownie. That I made. From a box.

2007

2007-01-10T12:45:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I can't actually believe it's 2007. And by sometimes, I mean, almost constantly over the past 10 days. I have had to pinch myself (figuratively - i'm not into that) to remind myself that I am now living in My Grown Up Years. This is what I called them as a kid, when we would sit around figuring out what year it would be when we turned 12, 16, 21, etc. It is a little dismaying to now be older than the oldest year I ever accounted for as a kid. I'm not sure why we stopped at 21, but it probably had something to do with the fact that there is nothing left after 21 to look forward to until you collect retirement at 65. And I don't think we knew that way back when. We also didn't know about renting cars at 25, or we probably would have included that as well. Helloooo, 2009.

When I was little and trying to figure out what it would be like in the Way Distant Future of My Grown Up Years, my whole life was contained in a one-mile radius. The gingerbread house where I grew up (not a joke, my family's house is a squat brick Cape Cod style house that is only lacking gumdrops and frosted edging) was less than a mile from my school and my church and the gas station, and because I am from New England, there were actually THREE Dunkin' Donuts within a mile of my house. Maybe because my world was so small, I still have a distinct memory of my first political awakening.

Age 6. First Grade.

I remember my teacher asking if anyone knew what had happened the night before, and being a brown-nosed, smart aleck kiss up, I was devastated that I could think of nothing more significant than the fact that I had a hot dog for dinner and my baby brother threw up. Of course, there is always one child in every class with overachieving, National Public Radio-loving parents, and in this case, his name was Cash and his parents were both surgeons. His snotty little hand shot up in the air - "Last night, the Iron Curtain came down."

Here is where my memory is sharpest - I laughed. Yes, as the Cold War crumbled and East and West Germany reunited and the entire world celebrated, I LAUGHED, because I was so sure that Cash did not have a CLUE what he was talking about. Who has Iron Curtains? Ours were cotton, and if they fell down, it was because they got pulled down, and that was not news, that was a time-out for one of us kids. I remember that smug feeling all smartypants brats get when another kid says something so utterly ridiculous.

Well, that feeling lasted about 3 seconds, because my teacher nodded gravely and proceeded to give us a watered down lesson about Communism (Bad) and America (Good). Because I went to a Christian school, I am pretty sure we then prayed for the souls of the Communists (Jesus + America = INVINCIBLE!). Here is where my memory gets fuzzy and I go back to being a chastised little kiss-up and drift out of politics until the morning my parents mournfully tell me that Bill Clinton won the '92 election. Yeah, the one-mile radius of my childhood also happens to be the ONE Republican enclave of an entirely blue state.

Growing up in the Ivy League Belt, and getting shown up by a 6 year old whose name was slang for MONEY made me decide that all things political were going to be my arena. Of course, I made a few mistakes along the way, especially during early elementary school and the Gulf War. I still have absolutely no idea how I got my information at the age of 7. Somehow I missed the concept that the draft was over, so I raced to the mailbox every single day after school, and anything that was addressed to my father and looked remotely governmental (i.e. pictures of eagles) went straight under my bed. One time a magazine offer came with a picture of Uncle Sam on it, and I literally.almost.died. holding the envelope. Actually I went straight to my mom sobbing, and she's still not sure where I got the idea that my father, a packaging engineer, was shipping out under strict orders from Uncle Sam. She was only 10 years old during Vietnam herself.

I'm not a political science major anymore, but I'm still a junkie for it. Joshua and I are those people who casually turn on NPR in the car, and know the names of NY Times political columnists, and check the BBC to see what's really going on, and we use Macs and shop at Whole Foods. Bleeding-heart, blue state liberals, and yeah, we also like wine and cheese, and OH GOD are our kids going to be those over-informed smart alecks like Cash (although, you could NOT pay me enough money to name my kid after it). Oh shut up - I also read People, and US Weekly, and I'm just as dismayed as the rest of the country at Britney Spears turning every night on town into a crotch shot, and yes I was surprised when Reese and Ryan broke up and as I'm typing this my damn acrylic nails are turning every word into a typo. So control yourselves - I'm not the female John Kerry.

It's weird how those little kid years, where you think about what you will be as an adult, start to shape who you are in the Grown Up Years. What if I had missed that day at school, and I hadn't laughed at Cash's outrageous statement about iron curtains? What if someone had actually set me straight, and told me there was no possible way my father was getting sent into the desert? What if I had grown up in Kansas, or California, or somewhere that wasn't 3 hours from NYC on 9/11. What if I had never flown out of the same airports the hijackers did, or what if I had NOT gotten addicted to celebrity news as a distraction from my school work (well, I think my life would probably be better for it, but anyways...) I would be a different person.

I don't really make resolutions. But I like to see how the new year MAKES me different. Just think...that retirement money won't come in until 2049!!

Christmas is...Over??!

2006-12-25T19:44:00.000-08:00

I love Christmas. Like, really-really-want-to-hug-and-kiss-it-and-wish-it-happened-every-weekend love it. And this one was so damned perfect that not only does it make up for last year's stressed out debacle, it really sets the standard for years to come. Joshua and I are here in New England, where I have spent 21 of my 22 holiday seasons, and I'm not even going to pretend to be unbiased here. Christmas is just better here.

No, seriously. I think Chicago is brilliant, with the lights on Michigan Ave, the Marshall Fields store windows (Macys? Never heard of them), Christkindlmarket, and ice skating in Millennium Park, and everything else that is so lovely and frantic about the holidays in a big city. It's festive and crazy and I really did enjoy being in the city in the holidays. But Chicago doesn't have rambling old farmhouses with wreaths and candles in every window, and it doesn't have forests of pine trees, and it doesn't have mountains, like the one we drive up every year to my grandparents house.

Most importantly, Chicago doesn't have my grandparents. Or my parents, two brothers and future sister-in-law, and a crazy bunch of aunts, uncles, cousins, and one very perfect and adorable second cousin who turned 12 days old on Christmas Eve. It doesn't have my grandmother's Swedish meatballs (which I made last year, and I was such an emotional wreck I froze them in paper towels instead of wax paper and had to pick bits of paper out of them as they defrosted. While my mother in law watched. Luckily, they turned out amazing).

I could write all about the wonderful time we had at my grandparents last night, passing around the baby, playing with the little kids, trying to manage a gift exchange for 28 people that lasted well beyond the attention span of those under age 8. Or I could write about what a joy it was to open presents with my husband and my brothers and my parents this morning, wearing matching pajamas from my mom. Our tree is short and wide and my dad had this brilliant idea to put it up on a box, which gives the illusion that it is a well-decorated, floating shrub. It has been the butt of many, many jokes and it looks hilarious, but I don't want to write about that either.

It's 11:26, which means there are 34 minutes of Christmas Day left, and like everytime I visit my family, my memories are wonderful and bittersweet. Because we'll leave in a week, and then we have the busyness of the New Year, and a new semester, and suddenly six months will have passed and my baby cousin will be rolling over and I will have missed it all. I absolutely love Chicago, and our life there, and I can't figure out how to have the best of both worlds. How can I have the life I want with Joshua in a city I love and would happily stay in forever, when most of the people I adore are a thousand miles away? This is what I want to write about - this tug I feel between the place we live and the people I love. Despite my feelings about the obvious superiority of New England holidays, Joshua and I both agree that we can't picture ourselves living here. The schools are bad, the economy is bad, we can't move to Boston because Joshua doesn't like their accents (seriously.) and that would put us an entire THREE thousand miles from his parents.

But it's Christmas, and that's depressing. This has really been a perfect holiday and I haven't gotten out of my pajamas in 24 hours and I'm thrilled to pieces about that, and I'm sitting here looking at our Christmas shrub and loving the fact that we don't have to make any decisions right now. And my whole family is around, and things really could not be better.

Merry Christmas!

The Very First Blog

2006-12-19T20:32:00.000-08:00

So. I have started yet another blog. I keep leaving people hanging with the other ones, and I can't promise any sort of success or even consistency with this one, but apparently I love me a clean slate.

I'm not sure if I should introduce myself - that seems strange, seeing as how no one knows me in the blogging world (yet!), and if you do know me, an introduction is sort of redundant. I could post one of those nifty surveys that ask you questions like: Favorite Reality TV Show? Most Desired Superhero Power? And of course I would answer, America's Next Top Model, and Being Invisible. I know everybody wants to fly, but I have an almost panicky fear of heights and I would probably be flying along with my Superhero Power and look down, and pass out, and then - YIKES.

See? Now you know so much more about me. I also think those surveys are lame, so that's why I only made up and answered two questions.Again - you have learned.

Now that we're such good friends, let's discuss what I did today. Holiday Shopping, or as it's known in my home, Maniacally Depleting the Bank Account. People are crazy out there right now! I was almost sideswiped twice in various parking lots, and a woman with painted on eyebrows followed me around the frame section of Kohls attempting to get my opinion on photo albums she was purchasing for a friend. Being the generous and friendly Christmas shopper that I am, I assumed she was really out to snatch my purse and tried to end that conversation quickly with my bag clutched to my side. This is a dangerous city, after all.

Anyways, all threats to person and property aside, it was a pretty successful trip. The key to Holiday Shopping is of course, gift cards. We have personally received $100 in Starbucks gift cards so far this season, for which I am super duper grateful and caffeinated. They are a wonderful (although not mind-blowingly creative) gift. But since I just finished up an incredibly draining semester of nursing school that involved waking up before dawn 5 days a week, dozens of tests, and real live patients with incontinence problems, NOBODY is getting anything mind-blowingly creative.

Every year, someone makes out good. Do you feel that way? And it's not usually me. Two years ago, it was my dad with a brand spanking new computer courtesy of my brother and I, who totally could not afford it and should never have even been allowed on www.dell.com. Last year, it was my brother-in-law and his fiancee, whose upcoming wedding was of such joy to my inlaws that they got the happy couple about twice as many presents as the rest of us. This year, it's my littlest brother (read: age 16) who's getting an iPod from my other brother and I, who are apparently so generous we can't be trusted to look at our bank accounts first.

No, I'm not bitter.

Really, I'm not. I know the Reason for the Season -although I'm not fond of that poetic term- and getting gifts is really not as important as other things, like, ok, Jesus? And salvation? And my mom's blueberry coffee cake that we eat every Christmas morning? And my wonderful family and cousins who I live 1000 miles away from but will be hugging and kissing and slobbering over in just a few days? (especially the brand-new one, who arrived Dec. 10 and made it just in time to get not only a bajillion Welcome Baby Girl presents, but Christmas presents too!?!)

Like I said, not bitter. I mean, it is bad form to be jealous of a 7 day old baby.

Back to blogging. Oooh I love it.