Bits and pieces

Life in our house is crazy right now. It's good, but it's crazy. On Monday I woke up and thought, "If someone decided to send child protective services to my house today, they would take my kids away from me." The house was a disaster. And there were Trisquits in the cupboard. Only Trisquits.

The other day we were sitting at the dinner table and the girls were arguing over something. Madeline was making a pretty strong case for why that thing should be hers, as big sisters are so good at doing. She finished off her argument with "And it's even in the shape of an M, which is for Madeline."

Without missing a beat, and with the perfect amount of exasperation and eye-rolling, Amelia flipped it upside down and said, "No it's in the shape of a W, for what-ever."

(Have I mentioned how much I love the black pepper Trisquits?)

Today I had one of those "forgot to go to class all quarter and now it's the final" moments. I decided my lab was going to be easy today, so I spent the morning cleaning, doing laundry, and going for a run, with just a glance at my textbook. I walked into the lab and said to a classmate, "We should be out of here early today--we're just doing central lines." And she said, "Well yeah. And complex dressing changes and TPN and wound care. I've heard there's 4 quizzes today." Wah???? Good thing lab is pass/fail.

And so I'm accomplishing nothing

What I have to do:

Finish writing my nursing concept map (due today)

Start working on the reading and case studies for Monday

Finish the reading for last week that I've been neglecting

Get in a workout

What I want to do:

Organize closets and cupboards

Surf the web for decorating ideas

Go skiing

I even wore my ugly white nurse shoes

I think my excitement about my new clinical rotation got lost in the stress and excitement about the house. But this quarter we are working in the hospital in "med-surg" which is where ya'll go after surgery, or when you have swine flu or pneumonia, or when you're alcoholic a$$ is found face-down in the gutter outside the bar.

I have an amazing clinical instructor this quarter. No matter how "dumb" our mistakes, she is constantly reassuring and encouraging us, reminding us that we are students and that every mistake we make is a learning opportunity (but more importantly, to call her for assistance before doing anything we are uncomfortable with!!!). And I've discovered that all those hours I spent volunteering at the hospital and then working as a doula, have made me MUCH more comfortable in the hospital setting than I was in the nursing home last quarter.

This week we were assigned our own patient to take care of. Four months ago I would not have thought it possible that I'd be ready to take care of a patient one day post-op already. But guess what? I was! Yesterday the patient's nurse kept a pretty close eye on me and taught me quite a bit, but today I was almost entirely on my own. I took vital signs, did my assessments (i.e. listened to her heart, lungs, assessed her pain level, etc.), helped her shower, charted everything under the sun, and gave her her medications including her injections! Guess what? Giving an injection to a human is almost exactly the same as practicing on hot dogs in my kitchen. Weird.

I'm certain every week won't go as well as the last two, but I'm so glad I had a couple of good weeks to get my feet under me. And I'm really glad that the last two weeks have affirmed that I really am on the right path.

But more than anything I'm glad I had on these ugly, but very washable shoes today.

Mutual Acceptance

So they fully accepted, and the house will be ours on the 25th of February! As long as the inspection and appraisal go well.

See how I like to do that? Get all excited, and then kick myself in the knees. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe in the inspection we'll find out the attic is full of raccoons and bats and porcupines. Maybe the appraiser will decide the house isn't worth the price of a stick of gum." (Say that in your best Eeyore voice.)

I'll show you the pictures if you promise you can look past the green carpet. Look deeper. There's hardwoods under there, and they have the potential to be as beautiful as the hardwoods in the living room.

And I know that wallpaper is in style again, but sadly, I will not be keeping the wallpaper in the laundry room. (I am contemplating keeping the wallpaper in the bathroom though. It's almost cool.)

So there you go. I told you there's plenty of room for you to come visit me. Unless we decide to convert the guest room to a habitat for the raccoons and bats and porcupines. And we might.

I am fickle.

Maybe this is a rebound relationship, but we've alread fallen for another house. Actually, that's not entirely true. We've fallen for it's bones. We're hoping it'll change into the house we want it to be. Ha.

So this is probably a better house for us. It has four bedrooms (so you can come and visit me!), and it's within eyesight of the girls' school, and it has neighbors-with-children across the street from us, and it has great mid-century modern potential and several other things that meet my criteria (i.e. laundry room and a "powder room" or as we prefer to call it, a "pooper room"). But it also has has popcorn ceilings, which are muy mal. And forest green carpet (but with hardwoods underneath!). But it shows great potential for change. And not very expensive/labor intensive change, which is good.

But overall, we are very much in love. We've made an offer. They've sort of accepted. As long as the stars align, it should be ours.

$%^!

So despite my earlier post cursing home ownership, we are in fact planning to buy a house after 18 blissful months as renters. We actually fell in love with a house in our neighborhood and made an offer on it this weekend. On the second round of negotiations the sellers got cold feet and decided they didn't want to sell afterall.

We are incredibly disappointed.

And I know everyone says that something better will come along, and it probably will, but right now I'm in that wallowing stage where I prefer to mope around and believe that we just lost the best house that ever existed in our neighborhood and we'll never find anything as amazing.

TGIF (I kind of hate that acronym)

BARF. That's how I feel about the exam today. I passed. And not with flying colors. Many people did not. There were tears. Let's hope things improve.

(Did I say I wanted this quarter to be tough? Why would I say such a thing?)

Senoritas Spanky Pants

This is what I live with. Except it's not my husband, it's my sweet daughters.

They come rolling out of bed on weekend mornings, with messy hair and morning breath, and decide they are too warm in their p.j.'s so they strip down to their underwear. Then they will remain in nothing but their underwear for as long as possible. On a perfect day (for them) this will extend all the way to bedtime. By that time they have wrestled with the dog, built forts, made an infinite number of snacks, and played some Wii all of which has left the rear of their spanky pants sagging to the middle of their thighs.

I alternate between being mortified that I'm the mother of these little Homers, and thinking it's the cutest thing ever.

Week One

I have a little crush on my second quarter of nursing school.

Endocarditis? Cardiomyopathy? Beta-blockers? QRST complex? Music to my ears. First quarter was apparently all about "milk before meat" and it left me a little unimpressed. Second quarter is starting off quite nicely with information that requires pulling out the poster paper and markers to draw large intricate diagrams to map out complex interactions and compensatory mechanisms. It's like a huge puzzle. This is the stuff I loved in A&P and I'm so excited to be working through it again.

I looked around my lab today and saw 18 students in white lab coats hanging IV bags and drawing up syringes and I couldn't wipe the silly grin off my face.

Home Owning is for the birds.

Yesterday I talked to the mortgage company about our house hunting progress.

Right after that I called Roto-Rooter to fix a clogged kitchen drain.

That "clogged drain," like most home repairs, turned into much much more. I just wrote a check for $4600 to Roto-Rooter to replace what turned out to be a cracked sewer line caused by a sinking foundation. Luckily, my landlords are mailing me a reimbursement check today.

I'm just wondering why on earth we are looking to buy a house? Do you know that we've paid $1000 LESS per month to rent this house than we would if we had bought it? Do you know that the landlords have paid $8000 in home repairs on this house since we've lived in it? And the house has depreciated in value AT LEAST $100,000 since we moved in? That means we've saved $126,000 by renting. Okay, with taxes maybe that's more like....$110,000.

That $110k more than makes up for the weird sea-foam green carpet I've had to live with as a renter.

Tell me again why home ownership is so important?

I can see all obstacles in my way...

Madeline told me she couldn't see the board at school a few weeks ago. I thought she just wanted glasses because we'd told her how cute she looked in her friend Emma's glasses. Nope. Turns out she is a little near-sighted. She picked these out herself, and absolutely loves them.

Christmas Recap

Can we just rewind three weeks and do that all over again? It went by way too quickly.

Christmas break was so wonderful. We spent a weekend in Portland with our friends, the Burrells. We made yummy food and did a little Christmas shopping (new tires for my car...woohoo!) and went to a "dollar movie" at Kennedy School. Let's not talk about the part where I smacked my head while getting into the Burrells car, or the big bruise I'm still sporting on my forehead as a result.

Then when we got back home the girls had a little party with some friends from school where we made our tradiational graham cracker gingerbread houses.

We made(and ate) lots and lots of cookies--a couple batches each of gingersnaps and mint chocolate chip cookies...mmmmm.

Christmas Eve we weren't sure what to do. Since moving to the NW, we've gone to the Nelsons on Christmas Eve. We weren't about to drive to Portland and back in one day, so we decided to try something new. Night skiing, our first choice, was closed. We ended up having a Jewish Christmas Eve--going out for Chinese food and then walking through the Botannical Gardens to see the light displays.

We had a great Christmas at home...the girls both got (imitation) American Girl dolls from Santa. They were a big hit, which was shocking because the girls have never played with dolls. For some reason, Madeline has asked for an AG doll for the last three years. I guess Santa finally gave in.

He also gave in and finally brought us an Xbox. He even brought it early so we could stream Netflix movies while I could actually watch them. That Santa sure is a thoughtful guy.

But the highlight of our holiday break was our trip back to Utah. I'm still struggling with returning back to Seattle. It was just such a great trip, so good to see family, and so hard to leave. I really felt a sense of HOME while I was there, and returning to Seattle hasn't eased that for me. Madeline didn't make things easier by weeping as she said goodbye to all her cousins, and begging her aunts and uncles to bring them up to Seattle to visit. :( I'm already looking at graduate school options for me in SLC.

We got in a few days of skiing while we were there--two days with kids up at Brighton, and one day without kids at Snowbird. The girls were cruising down black diamonds--and not just any black diamonds: UTAH black diamonds--by the time we left. Cory brought Logann and Aidan up to snowboard with us the last day (their first time, and they did great!), and the girls loved having them up there. I can't wait until next year when we can all ski/board together.

Kolby and I skied at Snowbird the day after a big storm. Oh my. That was absolutely the best day I've EVER had skiing. Absolutely amazing snow. I don't know what that white stuff is we have on the mountains here in Seattle, but it's not snow. It's a snow-like substance. A snow product. A faux snow. Snow colored rain. Something. But what we skied on in Utah? That's the snow I remember. Soft, dry, powdery heaven. In real mountains.

But it's all over. We're back home. I'm happy to have my bed and my own space again. I'm happy to have a reason to stop eating all those damn cookies. But I'm sad it's all over.

I went back to school yesterday feeling incredibly homesick for Utah, and guess what? My new professor talked for the first five minutes about her 20 years in Utah living as a ski bum by day, nurse at the U of U hospital by night. She even pronounced Alta correctly.