Pathetic Update

I promise I will catch up on my blogging--the very blogging I haven't been doing because I've been too busy having fun.

But first I have to finish two things:

1. The cumbersome task of turning one year of my blog into a book because my Groupon expires on August 3rd. Michelle made it look easy, and it is proving to be anything but easy for me. And that's only doing one year of blogging. Let's hope the next two years are easier.
2. Panicking about being an unemployed nurse. Well, the panic part probably won't end until I am actually working as an RN. But I need to finish with today's panic attack, and that won't be complete until I've checked the job boards for every hospital within 30 miles, as well as Craigslist and Monster, and then applied for any jobs that seem like they might possibly entertain the thought of hiring an inexperienced but very enthusiastic new RN. (And just a warning, if you write in my comments that there is a nursing shortage and that hospitals should be begging me to work for them, I will get on an airplane and fly to wherever you are just so I can personally punch-you-in-the-FACE. There is not a nursing shortage. And telling someone unemployed that there's an abundance of jobs in their field is as mean as telling someone overweight that you don't have to try at all to stay thin.)

So yeah. That all sounds like I'm not enjoying my summer, but I am absolutely 100% enjoying my "summer." (Did you know that Seattle has only had 78 minutes of temperatures above 80 degrees so far this year? It's true). And I will be back soon to catch ya'll up on the fun we've been having.

Onwards and Upwards, Part 2

After two years of this:

I put on my cranberry scrubs for my last clinical shift.

And then twelve hours later I took them off and danced on them and burned them. Okay, not really. But I wanted to.

And now I'm pinned! And graduated!

Thanks so much to this guy for supporting and encouraging me and getting the girls off to school in the mornings and running them to activities in the middle of the day when I couldn't.

My sister Jodi flew up to surprise me, somehow keeping it a secret through the 50 phone calls we had while she designed the announcements and program for the pinning ceremony.

I think we are all suffering from swollen tongue syndrome brought on by eating 4 pounds of candy. Don't worry. I'm a nurse. I know how to treat it. (With a diet coke stat!)

See. She's all better.

So I got an award. With money. That's pretty awesome. I'm pretty sure I'm using the money to pay for another round of clinicals this summer (but this time as an RN and hopefully not cranberry scrubs!)

And these beautiful girls tried their hardest not to slide down the stairs in their dresses. They didn't always succeed, but they tried very hard.
And that's it! I'm all done. It still feels strange to me.

I don't have a job lined up yet (which is why I'm going to do summer clinicals--hoping it will make me more marketable to do another rotation on an adult medical-surgical floor, and also hoping it'll be a good networking opportunity). My NCLEX exam is scheduled for July 5th, and then I will get to add the R before the N.

Onwards and Upwards, Part 1

It seems like she was just here:

And now she's here:


I cannot believe how fast the last six years have gone. I adore this little girl.

Shut your pie-hole.

A couple weeks ago the girls were raving about our friend Milo's pies to a friend, claiming that his pies are the best in the whole world, especially his berry pie. Well, I let it slip that Milo taught me how to make pie, which at first elicited squeals and cheers, but then accusations that I've been holding out quickly followed since neither Madeline nor Amelia could remember me ever making a pie. Which is understandable because I'm pretty sure it's been at least five years since I have. (I love this old picture of Milo teaching a bunch of swim-suit clad baby girls how to make pies at our house in Portland--I think this was 2005).
To redeem myself, I promised to make a pie a week this summer.

We'll see how long this lasts.

Last weekend we were headed to a barbeque at Milo's, so we made a couple of pies to take to his house. First we made a strawberry rhubarb pie:

And then we made a banana cream pie. It was my first attempt at baking a pie shell without filling. It did not go well. Pretty much a pie blob, but once I layered it with chocolate, banana cream pie filling, and whipping cream, it was presentable.

I have to say, that strawberry rhubarb pie was the best pie I've ever made. Not quite as good as Milo's, but not too shabby either. My pie-hole did not complain. I'm sure it was my fantastic assistant pie makers that made the difference.

This week I got lazy. Mint Moosetracks Pie with an Oreo crust.

I've decided I need to invest in some mini-pie tins because leftover pie will not do at all. One piece of pie per week is sustainable. One piece of pie per night is a very bad thing...

Today

Source: None via Becky on Pinterest

You can tell a lot about a girl by her Pinterests

Have you seen this website? It's my new favorite way to waste time. Although, according to this print on Pinterest, it is not actually time wasted.

Today I saw a list of my Pinboards, and it pretty much summed me up. Food I would like to eat. Places I would like to travel. Quilts I would like to make. Hair I would like to have. Ha. I was worrying that it really was not the best use of my time, and then I decided that it's my "Vision Board." You know--those exercises where you make a collage of everything you'd like to see happen in your life and look at it daily to motivate you? I've decided Pinterest is my vision board.

Looking at my "Wanderlust" board daily should be helpful in achieving my goal to travel more:

However, looking at my "Food that makes me drool" board? Only helpful if I want my clothes to shrink.

Those cookies on the bottom right? Those would be browned butter bacon chocolate chip cookies. Jillian and Zuzana would so not approve. I'm making them tomorrow.

Spicing things up with JM

It seems a little weird to blog about this bee-otch, but I've decided it's finally time to introduce her since we talk about "Jillian" in this house almost as much as we talk about kale and banana smoothies.

Last September, after a summer of running on beautiful trails outside, it was time for me to hit the gym again. And I was in a funk. I just was not feeling it. So I decided I needed a plan. Something to spice things up and give my workouts a purpose. I dusted off this book that I'd had for a couple years and hadn't used (except once--I did one workout when I bought it and decided it was too hard.)

But those shoulders. They continued to call to me. I pulled it out and skipped over all the diet stuff because slow, medium, and fast oxidizing sounded like her own pseudo-science, or at the least rebranding of existing diets. And I got to the workouts. The plan consists of ten 45-minute workouts, done 4 times per week, with two of those weekly workouts hitting the muscles on the front of the body, the other two workouts targeting muscles on the back of the body. If you've done any of Jillian's workout videos like the Shred series, these are similar high-intensity circuit training workouts. I committed to it for 30 days to get me back in the swing of things at the gym.

I questioned that commitment 35 minutes into the first workout when I was sitting on a weight bench with my head between my knees, willing myself not to throw up.

And then I questioned it again 35 minutes into the second workout, with my head between my knees, willing myself not to throw up.

I think it took 3 weeks before I stopped feeing like I was going to lose my banana smoothie during the workouts. They were hard, but by the third week I could feel myself getting stronger, and it felt good to come to the gym with a fast, efficient workout that made me push myself every day. I felt like I had a trainer, and I only had to pay $6 for her because I got her at Half-Price Books.

After the 30 days I was enjoying it so much that I decided to keep doing it. Around that time, I coaxed Kolby into trying it out. I told him I just wanted to see what he thought of it. He said, "Isn't it a girl workout?" I said, "Probably. Just try it for me." He said, "I'll have to do each circuit three times instead of two." I said, "That's cool." And then I sent him to the gym with my little printed out workout. And I waited anxiously.

He walked in the door and I said, "So?"

Kolby came around the corner looking a little pale. A little green. And he said, "I couldn't finish. I had to walk around for a while so I wouldn't barf." And I clapped my hands and laughed my most evil laugh because he'd had his ass handed to him by my "girl" workout. And no, he did not do each circuit three times.

It almost made up for the time he knocked me down with a medicine ball.

Since then, we've both stuck with our "Jillian workouts" and I'm still "enjoying" them. I hate them, especially that first workout because it still makes me feel like puking, but I like the structure they give me at the gym, and I feel like they are still making me stronger, and they actually give me that runner's high sometimes. When I first started I couldn't do more than 2 or 3 non-girly push-ups. By the second month I could do about 10. Now I do all of the push-ups without modifying them, and I can do all of her push-up variations as well. (Although I can only squeak out 5 plyo push-ups at a time. And they are barely plyo).

After nine months, I'm starting to get ever-so-slightly bored with the workouts, so I'm modifying them a bit, substituting a few exercises from her videos (her new Ripped DVD is a great one!), and some exercises from my new workout bee-otch who I was introduced to by my cousin, McKell. This is Zuzana and her heaving breasts. I call this "Workout Porn." And I actually prefer the adorable Zuzana to Jillian hollering at me not to "phone it in."

My ambitious workout goal for the summer: be able to do one pull-up.