Twas the night before NCLEX...

Life has been filled with the process of becoming a nurse lately...from exit exams to finals to pinning to applying for permission to take boards to actually scheduling boards. I received my permission to test yesterday morning and quickly moved into scheduling mode. To my surprise the only test date available for the rest of August in Birmingham was this morning at 8am...a mere 20 hours after I actually received the approval to take my exam to gain registered nursing licensure. So...in the whimsical, spontaneous and ever-prepared fashion in which I live (and with a little prodding from Dad and Jeff), I scheduled myself to take my boards this morning. No pressure or anything...just a test that represents the culmination of everything I have been working toward for the past couple of years and which could make or break my future career. So with this looming, why not throw caution to the wind and go to a baseball game?!?

Regions Field with the tarp to protect the infield from the torrential downpour of the evening

We all caught frisbees with free Alabama Adventure tickets attached. There were so few people there due to the rain that everyone in attendance got one.

And it was quarter weinee night...Jeff and Dad did well to have only 6 hot dogs between the two of them.

It's hard to be the only woman in a crowd of testosterone but I guess I gotta say that I love it...my goofy men and all.

There's no better way to spend the night before boards than with two of my favorite men at a quarter weinee, frisbee-filled, rained out minor league baseball game.

Whats-a-happenin

Guess who's back...
DAD! He drove over 700 miles home to Virginia, got bored and decided to drive over 700 miles back to B'ham. That's either some super strong boredom or he just loves to be around his children...which is your guess?!? :)

Sooo now that I am out of nursing school, I have time to really focus on the important stuff. Like, when I have my baby girl, which tater tots will I buy to feed her belly? The ABC's or the Smiles...

Hee hee. I vote for the ABC's right now so that we can make a little educational lesson out of our food. So that some day, our baby Lily can be as smart as her mommy...

I got my diploma and you can't really see too well but if you look to the right of that little arrow you will see the words "Magna Cum Laude". That means "with highest honors" in Latin and requires a 3.75+ GPA. Not to brag or anything, but I think I'm a little bit of DA BOMB right now. Too bad those words don't translate to automatically passing the boards or to the perfect job that is eluding me.

RIP favorite flip-flops

My pinning ceremony did have a casualty. I changed my clothes at the church and, somehow, I lost one of my favorite flip-flops. So now I only have the left one. I am still holding out a little hope that righty will turn up but you know the statistics...if it's not found in the first 48 hours then it's a goner. The clock is ticking...

Nursing School is HISTORY!

Yesterday was my nurse pinning ceremony so it's official....I'm a nurse!! My parents have been here all week and my bro J@son, sister Br@n, Leslie and Ricky all were there to cheer me on - and cheer they did :). It was a great day and now I am really not sure what to do with myself.

Notice - no bro in these pics...that is by special requests :). Thanks everyone for making it a special day!! Now on to studying for boards...

My unhappy refrigerator

It's the day before payday and I am trying to live in true "starving student" style. My favorite place to get groceries is, indeed, Trader Joe's. I love it. I will drive the 290 mile round trip to fill my fridge. I don't mind...whatever it takes to make my fridge happy. And can you hear it? It's calling for some Trader Joe's right now.
Bring on the roasted red pepper chicken, hummus, fresh organic produce, pretzel slims, no guilt baked pita chips, olive oil and sea salt popcorn... I could go on and on. The point is that I need a trip to Trader Joe's to make both me and my fridge happy. :)

My notecard contraption

This is a product of my summer. A jillion notecards in funky pen colors covering Neuro, Critical Care CV and Respiratory, Mental Health, Burns and SIRS, Sepsis and MODS, hole-punched and bound together. This is how I roll...taking information from several sources and consolidating them into my own formula for my own special learning purposes. I am a geek with a cramped up hand. But now I am a geek with just one more week until my very last final exam of nursing school!! I will have a few more notecards to add to the mix but the end is drawing near!

Over the top

I like tattoos. I have 2 of them as proof of that fact (of course mine are teenie and inconspicuous but still...). I actually sometimes day dream that I am a rocker and can just ink up my body with reckless abandon but then I wake up and realize that nurses just don't need visible tattoos that have the potential of freaking out sick folks.

Although I do have a penchant for the inking, I do think that you should draw the line somewhere...
Like at tattoo-ing your face. As women we try our best to keep extra marks (ie. pimples) off of our face. Why would you want to put them there permanently to emphasize inevitable wrinkles or crow's feet??

I do like the style of Lydia from the new Big Br0ther that Jeff and I are watching (as promised). She avoids her face, does the sleeve bit and has a good mix of color and black tattoos. She's funky fresh for sure.

But, as a side note, I am not a fan of all this season's BB people. Some people go over the top on tattoos and others go over the top on pumping iron and protein shakes.

Not cute.

Tied in knots

As my previous post says, I graduate from nursing school in less than 2 weeks. You would think that I would be ecstatically happen and excited...but for some reason I'm not. Instead, I'm tied in knots. Stressed out. Full of tension. Anxious. Overwhelmed.

Obviously I have my ups and downs in moods and am in a little bit of a struggle mode these days. I can give you a list of all the things on my mind but it really will only serve the purpose of stressing me more.

So instead...what are some solutions to this "tied in knots" feeling? I know I should exercise, stay productive, focus on the positive. Maybe I just need to untie myself, simplify life. I can pretty much talk myself in to anything so how can I talk myself in to feeling better about things?

Less than 2 weeks...

Remember this day ---> http://nicolesdoodlings.blogspot.com/2008/01/my-first-day-of-school.html . My journey through nursing school is coming to a close and, like most things in my life, it hasn't turned out quite as I'd hoped. There are NO JOBS! Anyway...I am trying to put that major little stressor aside right now, finish up with finals, study for boards and get myself on track to force someone to hire me. It's hard to believe that I am finally finishing this journey that I really started on in 2005 with a Psych class that I took at UAB. With any luck, I will be sticking with this career until my old age forces me to retire...or teach :).

Graduation is a little bittersweet. I have met some amazing people in my nursing school experience and really hope to make them lifelong friends. It is amazing to me how some people decided to pursue nursing straight out of high school and others get well into their 50's, live multiple careers and decide that their calling lies in nursing and caring for others. My class has all sorts and I am looking forward to celebrating with them in less than 2 weeks.

New side bar

If you haven't explored my blog lately (which I know everyone has so much time to do - NOT), then take a look at the right side. I have added a box that says what is happening with the adoption, where the CCAA is in respect to referring our baby girl and what the estimated referral date is. Take that date really with a grain of salt. I do. I have to for my own sanity. It is good information, though, and if you are interested then you can take a quick look there and always see where we stand.

As a little side note, referrals have just started arriving for this month's batch and they are covering 2 measly LID dates. This isn't good news. What can you do though? I refuse to pout today. :)

Salsa, sunburn and school's ending

Things are kinda nuts these days. Jeff and I have so much going on and haven't really taken much time to do anything. Until this weekend that is. Jeff was a sweetie and took me salsa dancing. This was our first time and there was an hour long lesson...just enough for us to know that we need way more than an hour to learn how to "work it". Here we are about to go out...Jeff just LOVES when I pull out the camera, can you tell?!?

And then Sunday I spent most of the day on the deck studying for a major test I had on Monday. The sun burned my skin and must have fried my brain cause I got out the camera and tried to take a picture of my crispy back. You can see that the tag was out on my tag top when the sun was delivering it's cancer causing rays to my skin. And you can see a little evidence of the 25-30 lbs I have put on during nursing school (which is a source of major stress and sadness for me these days).

And finally...today was my VERY LAST clinical of nursing school and I made Jeff take a picture of me garbed up in my marshmallow attire at 5:30am before I left. Yes I look like a dork...but a dork that has now finished ALL of my clinicals for nursing school, passed the exit exam that is supposed to be 10 times harder than the boards and has just 2 tests and 2 final exams between me and becoming an RN. So there...eat my dust.


That wraps up this episode of salsa, sunburn and school ending. Until next time...

I'm a decontaminator

It appears that the Department of Homeland Security is responsible for more than just taking our money every 18 months and giving us a piece of paper allowing us to bring our Lily in to the country and make her a US citizen (reference to our immigration approval process). They also do these neat disaster preparedness trainings like the one that I went to this week. My nursing school class went to this center in Anniston:
to become a different kind of marshmallow person (other than the ones we become in our white outfits for clinicals).

I am now officially ready to decontaminate you...consider yourself warned :).

Yes, I'm a Democrat...

and so proud of it...

...that I take pictures of myself with Barack pictures.

I know I'm a dork...no need to tell me.

I have a new job

Cutting Jeff's hair.

BEFORE

AFTER

I have new respect for those barber men. But I think he looks like a hottie ;).

My Communication Issues

This blog post is a confession and a jumble of my thoughts. I am a horrible friend. I blame it on school, being busy, etc. but I am really just a bad communicator. I usually think of calling my friends in the middle of the night when I can't sleep and then I get completely distracted during the day and don't make time to do it. My communication lapses got worse with school but they have always been a little crappy.

I need a 12 step program because I have been thinking about this a lot lately and feel pretty bad about it. I don't want the people who I have come to know in life's journey to think that I don't care, don't want to know what they're up to, don't appreciate them and their lives and the contribution they have made to mine. I just don't know how to maintain good communication and balance my life at the same time.

All of this has peaked today because I have a friend who had a baby 7 months ago. I saw her right before he was born...and I haven't seen her or talked to her since. And her mom is now sick and in the hospital. I am a bad friend. It is sad for me because I truly love this friend and want to know all that is happening in her life but we are separated by hundreds of miles and the inability to meet for coffee, lunch or play dates. No excuse because I could make the best of the situation by just picking up my "free nights and weekend" cell phone.

I am sad that I feel I have lost good touch with most of my old friends. I want to just immerse myself in them and their lives and try to forget my own for a little while. I have a hard time biting the bullet, saying I'm sorry and trying to re-connect. A really hard time.

Anyway...it may seem trivial and a jumble of muck but I am really thinking hard about this today. My life is made so much richer by having great people in it and I hate to think I have lost some amazing friends because I suck at keeping in touch. How do I fix it? How can I keep it fixed? How can I give myself as a friend without losing touch with my own life? How can I make sure my friends know that, although we lives hundreds of miles apart and I can't hop in my car every weekend for casual lunches and trips to the mall, I still love them and want to share life with them?

This is a personality flaw I need to fix before Lily comes home. I want her life to be full and I want her to feel as much love from friends and family as possible. Life really is more live-able when it is shared with others. That's all I want.

Summer TV Sucks

As much as I hate getting wrapped up in the TV, I am giving in and committing to Big Brother this summer. There is absolutely nothing else on TV so it's not like I'm sacrificing Ugly Betty or anything.

We watched it last night and I wasn't too thrilled about the way they are putting the participants in to high school like cliques. There are the "brains", the "athletes", the "off-beats" and the "populars". As if high school wasn't painful enough...

Anyway...in absence of anything else really spectacular to blog about, I may just be giving a Big Brother update every now and then. Feel free to skip my TV posts if you wish.

4 weeks left

I graduate from nursing school in just 4 weeks and 3 days. Trying to find a job, finish up exams, clinicals, paperwork and maintaining some sense of order is enough to keep me super busy physically and mentally these days. I have lots to do once graduation is behind me and I am looking forward to getting my life back, getting fit again and making some dinero. The stress of having no social life (except Judge Judy and Facebook), gaining 25 lbs and being broke on top of the never-ending adoption has brought me to the brink. Probably why I have been a bad blogger lately.

I got my class composite picture (see left)...this will hang on the wall in the halls of my school with the pictures of my classmates and the classes of nursing students who have come before me.

Let the real countdown begin...

View from the deck

I have been really enjoying sitting on our deck for the past few weeks. Jeff and I stole Mom and Dad's outside table and chairs and I have put them to really good use. Studying, soaking up some rays, listening to the birds sing...

and crocheting a blankie for my baby girl.

This same sun that shines through the trees of our backyard may be shining on her thousands of miles away. At least I'd like to think so.

Legend

It's undeniable that Michael Jackson was an icon of my generation. The one-gloved, sparkly be-decked wonder gave us the Moonwalk, spastic but awe-inspiring dance moves and a devotion to zombies worldwide. It is so sad that he has died so young and after such a public fall from grace in recent years. Regardless of the controversy surrounding his life in later years, I think we will all remember the talent and originality he brought to the world of music from his time in the Jackson 5 through his songs like Rock With You, Billie Jean, Thriller, P.Y.T, Bad and on and on.
I think the world definitely will mourn this loss of an era. I saw someone post yesterday that this is one of those moments you will remember much like the assassination of JFK and the Challenger explosion. You will know where you were or what you were doing when you found out that Michael Jackson died. While he was no president or rocket scientist, he was a legend in his own right. I know I will be playing some MJ music this weekend and remember being 10 years old and practicing the Moonwalk in my living room.

Happy Father's Day!!

For all the Dads who are no longer with us...

And the ones who are miles away but always in our hearts...

To those who have been teachers, fans and unconditional supporters...

And those who will be all of those things some day soon...

Happy Father's Day!!!

Keep it moving

In an effort to get that yucky "before" picture of me down the page a bit, I am doing a little update on referrals. They have just started arriving for this month and it looks like they are covering the period of LIDs from March 15-20...6 days worth. If you remember, March, 2006 is a MONSTER month for people to have submitted their adoption documents so we want it gone and outta here.

I will do a better update later but for now, 20 days of March down, 11 more to go...

Getting my hairs did

On a lighter note, I got my hairs did the other day...it had been a few months and I am not the regular primper. Here is me before... And immediately after... (ignore my no make up self)
I do adore Erin at Kuttin' Up...she is so sweet and I always feel more pretty after I visit her.

The next chapter

We have our meeting with our social worker on Monday evening for our 3rd home study update. Since we've been through this multiple times now, we know what to expect and our social worker is great so that's no biggie. She actually is an adoptive parent herself and has both a bio and internationally adopted child so her perspective on this process is pretty informed. She understands all about attachment, post-institutionalized behavior, delays, etc and will be a great help to us once we return from China.

Anyway...so we have this meeting and it has made me really think about all that has happened in our lives since the last meeting. So much has happened but really Jeff and I are the same parents in waiting that we were 2 years ago. I am almost finished with nursing school, Jeff is struggling with the stress of work and trying to take care of us while I am not working, we have had some bumpy times in the past 2 years and we have survived...hopefully stronger than before and more prepared to parent the child that we have loved and longed for for so long.

I have talked a little more about the adoption lately and it feels good. There are only a few people in my life who I open up to about this process because, at the core, it has been painful. I would be lying if I said that I enjoy having to have my life scrutinized with a magnifying glass, being afraid every time we go to the doctor that we will be diagnosed with something that will halt our adoption process, having a panic attack when we get a speeding ticket because it will go on our "record". This process doesn't make for happy and content parents-to-be. But it's not meant to go on for years like it has. Anyone can deal with a few months of this cautious anticipation...that is the reason that human pregnancies only last 9 months (although you don't have to prove health and virtue before you can conceive).

The point of this post is just really to touch base about the adoption, mark this next chapter as we meet with our social worker again and for me to talk myself down from the ledge a little bit. I want to believe that this is the final phase of our journey...the last update before we go to China. We have to have our biometric fingerprints updated in October/November for Homeland Security and then I am hoping with all that is in me that we can just sit back and wait for our referral. We have 92 LID days ahead of us and if there are 6 days referred per month then we have a little over 15 months left to wait.

I just really want to transition and make this about the sweet baby girl that will be our lives at the end of this process and not so much about the painful wait for her.

3 whole years

Today is our 3 year LID-versary. We are still waiting ever-so-patiently for the day that Jeff and I will become parents. I wanted to do something special to mark this day but instead we just decided to stay home, relax and I let Jeff watch Nascar with absolutely no complaining on my part. :)
So happy 3 year LID-versary to us. I have read that you are supposed to get leather gifts at 3 years...maybe a purse? a belt? Let's hope I don't have to google what you get at 4 years. Fingers crossed that this might just be our last LID-versary !!

Lunch Bunch Reunion

Today I had lunch with some of my favorite girlfriends...who I have not seen in FOREVER! Amy, Mel, Colleen, me and their slew of little ones gathered today at Moe's for Moo Moo Mr. Cows and catching up. There were 6 kids and I almost had a little panic attack since I have not been around this many people under the age of 7 since I was a summer camp counselor in 1995. It was fun and I just love to be around all the kiddie giggles, baby smiles and proud mommas.
Not to mention that we all used to work together at the Girl Scouts...years and years ago.

Me and Mel

Me and Mel's newest little one...sweet baby girl

Amy's little man drinking salsa

I am such a horrible communicator that I don't get to enjoy my friends too often so I really treasured today. I pledge to become a better friends...in just 8 weeks (when nursing school is OVER). :)

Dad's Visit

Mom had to take off to Germany and Italy on a work trip so Dad decided to jaunt to the 'Ham to visit while she was gone. It was great to have him here and I always hate when he leaves...boohoo. How great is it that I have such fantastic parents, huh? They are gonna be awesome grandparents to our little Lily.

So we went to the Alabaster City Fest to see Tonic...but it was so hot that we stayed for like 10 minutes and left. Oh well...we did make it to the Peach Park to stuff our faces with pie and ice cream.
And we went to Newk's for Dad's most favorite Fire Roasted Tomato Soup (we actually went twice so he could get his fill).

And we had countless hours of Wii Golf tournaments with Jeff and Dad...

It was a fun time and I can't wait till he comes back for another visit...maybe I can convince him to let Mom tag along ;).

Saying Goodbye

Saying goodbye is never easy. Whether it is in the morning when I say goodbye to Jeff, to Dad or Mom when they come visit or when you have to say the final goodbye to a loved one who has passed...never easy and never welcome. This week, Aunt Betty lost her battle with a long time illness. She was my Grandma B's sister and also one of her best friends. I remember Grandma waking up at 5am during our visits to have "girl talk" on the phone with Aunt Betty before we woke up. She didn't know that I was actually awake listening to them gossip.

I have seen a lot of our family post photos and memorials to Aunt Betty on Facebook this week and it touches my heart to share some memories with them. Of course, the loss of Aunt Betty reminds me a lot of Grandma and all the great times she gave to me and the rest of our family. I have been so blessed in this life to be able to be loved and love my family so greatly. It makes every goodbye so hard but so precious.

The father of my child-to-be...

...is not so photogenic.

Of course, what kind of wife would take a picture of her husband trying out a mattress at Sam's? *Nice jorts, honey*

Or enjoying their very first s'more....before it could be chewed?

And what kind of wife would click the "take picture" button right as her husband, in a fit of anti-camera rage, shows his beanie weenees?

Why, me, of course.

P.S. You know I love you, right? ;)