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?)