Spring Break 2011

Instead of releasing all my nursing school stress at a College Girls Gone Wild in Florida Spring Break, I opted for a more low key experience. I'd never been to the Griffith Observatory and I'm anxious to cross off all of LA's landmarks so that's where we headed.

It had recently been renovated. It was a cool, free night in LA, I s'pose. I'm much more interested in life sciences, so space is kind of boring. We did watchh the documentary on The Griffith Observatory narrated by Leonard Nimoy which was fairly redeeming.

Einstein getting a little fresh!

I call this "Luke floating in Outer Darkness."


This is us in some kind of thermo sensor camera.

I also spent the rest of my break in one of my favorite places, San Diego. My BFF, Crystal had her baby and I went to partake in his cuteness! Overall, great break!

Grapefruit

I have been known to go through food "phases" fairly often. One day, I'll start an obsession with a certain food and go crazy. In a while, I'll get so sick of it, I can't even stand the thought of it (I'm still recovering from the chili phase of 2004.)

Right now my thing is grapefruits. Which is sad because the can be so expensive, or so I thought. I'd heard of a place in Simi called Valley Produce and I keep meaning to go out there, but I never had the time. Then I got the ad, 4 grapefruits for $1. That was all the motivation I needed, people! Look at these bad boys!


So then the real controversy begins, how do you eat a grapefruit? Do you peel it? Do you eat it with a spoon? Do you know they even have fancy grapefruit spoons? Well, let me share my method. I slice in half and continue slicing til I get little wedges. Like so:


Then pull apart and enjoy. Do not add sugar. Do not add salt. Just enjoy what mother nature gave you. Pure joy.

An additional plug for Valley Produce: I got a TON of stuff for less than $15 including a 10lb bag of basmati rice. They have awesome variety! Can't wait to try to replicate Lalo's chili relleno burrito with the gorgeous anaheim chilis I got. Wish me luck!

Nursing, in theory

Today was my first day at the hospital, but only for orientation. I get my first patient next week, but I wanted to write down some of my thoughts on nursing before I get thrown into the "real world" of care. I've only done book work so far so I feel like my knowledge or "experience" is only based on a perfect world, highly idealized and I'm pretty sure I'm headed for a shock next week.

But, so far this is what I really like about nursing:

1.) Nursing deals with whole people. Not just the physiological part of you but the psychosocial, developmental, emotional, spiritual, etc parts of you too. If you are in the hospital, we care about your pain, your anxiety, whether or not you have a support system, if you have financial resources to pay for the healthcare you need. People are complex...I like dealing with all the pieces of the puzzle.

2.) In nursing, you get to take all your prejudice and preconceived notions about people and put them in the trash. I'm sure I'll run across people who are drug addicts, people who abused their bodies and are now paying the price, child abusers, etc along with sick innocent children, sweet grannies with dementia and good people dying of cancer. No matter who they are, I get to care for and love them as children of God. I think that is so cool.

3.) I like that there will be variety and real people in my day. Some moments I'll be charting, some moments I'll be helping people to the bathroom (or cleaning up if someone didn't make it in time,) I'll be administering meds, calling cranky doctors in the middle of the night, etc. etc. In my last job, I worked in a grey cubicle doing the same thing day in and out while only interacting with the same handful of people. Maybe I'll come to appreciate those days, but for now, I'm excited for the change.

Will there be days that I'll deal with difficult people? Will I get frustrated, burned out and cry? Most def. But for now, in my safe bubble of nursing textbooks and mannequins I think nursing is the bomb!

On a side note, I'm also really grateful for the support network I've had for the first 6 weeks of school. Luke deals with a lot of stress crying, being trapped in the apartment because I'm too tired to go anywhere, practicing assessments AND he gets up super early to help me carry my books to my car. Did I score an amazing husband or what? My parents and in-laws have also been wonderful by sending a steady supply of food, praying for me, being excited when I do well on exams and listening to me drone on about school. I'm blessed and truly grateful!

DIY

When we decided to stay in Moorpark for nursing school, I thought...now where am I going to do my homework? We needed a desk. I went online and searched. And searched. And searched. Nothing was looking good on craigslist and I didn't want to pay nearly $200 for a particle board desk from Target.

So I went to Salvation Army on their 50% off day and bought a desk. But it was ugly. Very ugly. I needed to fix that.

I forgot to get a true "before shot," but this is a mid-paint shot.

I've never been a DIYer. I've always figured, time is money and I would rather pay to have someone else do it for me. But now that I'm a full-time student, my time is worth $0/hr.

So I did A LOT of sanding. And some painting. And my daddy let me use his tools and garage and helped me aka did most of the painting. Thanks Dad!

All it needs are drawer pulls and a chair!

Now I've joined the elite club of DIYers and have a little study corner so I can study my rear off!

Still in love one year later....

We took our caribbean cruise to celebrate our 1st year anniversary and as a last hurrah while we were still living in double income bliss. But it was about 1 month before our actual anniversary. I think the first year of any marriage is full of joy and learning. You are learning to live with another person and their "culture." You are learning to communicate and what your home life will be together. I can say that we did survive! And we still love eachother! Yay!

I just thought I'd share a journey through photos. This is one of my favorite photos together. We had just started dating and were playing "dress up" with some friends. We have so much fun together!

Then we got engaged. What a horrible and lovely time engagement is! Ha! We were so affectionate at this stage! Still are, but we couldn't stand to be apart!

This was our wedding day on 1/2/10. Our first steps as man and wife! What a happy and beautiful day! I sometimes wish I could live that day over and over again (minus the stress!) Ok or maybe just get into a big white dress and be surrounded with flowers and eat cake!

And this is us one year later. We celebrated with a dinner at Cheesecake Factory and seeing the movie, True Grit. I think it will have to be a tradition to get cheesecake for our anniversary. Our wedding cake was cheesecake and I think it's the best way to celebrate a happy occasion!

I hope our next year is as good as the first!

Last Hurrah!

As our last hurrah before nursing school and to celebrate our one year anniversary, we decided (more like I decided and did a lot of persuading...) to take a cruise from Puerto Rico.


I don't want to bore anyone with a play by play of our awesome vacation (that would probably make you jealous and sad too) so I'll just run through some highlights.

LAX>JFK>SJU (what I like to call the scenic route.)

Sketchy, sketchy cab that wasn't a cab ride to our hotel in San Juan. Thought I would die. Honest.

Explored Fort San Cristobal which was crawling with iguanas.

Boarded the Caribbean Princess.

Walking Dead marathon until 2am...what can I say? I love zombies. Really.

Snorkeling in 80 degree beautiful waters of Aruba with the Jolly Pirates. Saw sunken shipwreck of WWII ship and found 2 conch shells.

All you can eat pizza on board discovered and exploited.

Bonaire was sticky hot. Tried to rent 2 mopeds which ended up in an epic failure. Whitney is a danger to herself and others.

Movies in the hot tub.

More snorkeling in Grenada aka Isle of Spice. Hung out on Anse beach with Canadians. Islander Miguel sang me a song and tried to rub aloe on my body...would have been flattered, but I think he wanted me to pay him.

Pool and pina coladas.

More free pizza.

Room service USA.

River to ocean kayaking in Dominica. Luke and Whitney aren't such great kayak partners.

Ferry from St. Thomas to St. Johns. Most beautiful beach ever: Trunk Bay. Underwater snorkel trail.

Russian lady telling me I'm too old for school and that I should make babies.

Long, long plane ride home. Long enough to watch Pearl Harbor.

The End to the most perfect vacation ever.

(P.S. Despite this being our 2nd cruise in 2010...we are not cruise people. We swear!)

Oak Glen

At what point do we become our parents? I remember growing up being forced to help weed the garden, pick green beans every morning and being dragged to Oak Glen every year. I think I enjoyed it as a younger child, but when you are the oldest child, I think you grow out of activities that your younger siblings still enjoy. So you suffer.

But guess who had the urge to go to Oak Glen this fall? Me. Guess who wants a space for a garden? Me. Guess who likes to make weekly menus and grocery lists just like my mom? Me. When does the switch happen? I don't know, but I'm on my way to becoming my parents.

What is Oak Glen? Basically, its a ton of apple orchards east of Redlands, CA. That's it. Apples. Stores with pies, apple butter, apple cider, apple blossom honey, apple patterned aprons...you get the idea. I begged Lukie to take me there for a romantic fall getaway.

Friday night we headed up to Riley's Farm for a theatrical dinner production of Sleepy Hollow. (The video is totally worth the watch! )

The food was great, there was dancing, a seed spitting and pie eating contest. Cheesy, yes. But it was a great night!

Saturday was spent picking apples straight from the orchard. Perhaps you'll notice in the picture, a sign that says, "No Stealing Apples" meaning you are not allowed to eat apples in the orchard. Apparently Luke did not read the rules and I caught him eating apples and rejecting apples after he'd picked them and tossing them on the ground. He pretty much broke the 10 commandments of apple picking. I would say we narrowly escaped confrontation with the apple police.

It was a wonderful trip! I'm just sad we didn't buy 3 dozen caramel apples. I'm pretty sure this will become one of our yearly traditions.