I Don't Know How to Quit You, Blog

...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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.