what's new with you?

here i am in pittsburgh visiting my sister. nothing new or exciting happening, just wanted to let you know where i am and what i'm doing. yup, just here watching elmo for perhaps the 1000th time. my favorite episode is when elmo is in "lord of the dance"...but that's probably my own personal biases coming through.

the other day we went to the children's museum and my sister forced johnny to strip down to just a diaper and t-shirt under is raincoat to go play in the water room. i completely agreed with her because the last thing i wanted to do was carry a soaking wet child through the museum and across the parking lot after it was all done. but it just made me remember my own personal childhood humiliations, some of which refuse to be forgotten. (i am speaking of a certain incriminating photo that a specific member of my family had blown up and framed as art in her home). guess things never really change.

Ash Wednesday

so my mom sent me this link and i will be honest, i started bawling as soon as the music started playing. i'm linking both the video and the story because it's so beautiful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4B-r8KJhlE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDnrLv6z-mM
it just makes me think of all the little kids i see everyday who are lying in bed all the time, in and out of the hospital. in general these kids have the most awesome families. i am always inspired by the love and patience that their parents have for them. how they can just give and give and never expect their efforts to be recognized or appreciated in a way that we, as people, want to be recognized or appreciated.
Today is Ash Wednesday, i've been trying to think of how i want to spend my Lent this year, i tend to go a little over board with my goals and make things a little unrealistic for me. this year i'm really trying to find a balance between how and when and where and what i should be sacrificing. i just always end up feeling guilty like i should be doing more than i am, because hey, Christ did die for me. I just think about how much Christ has done for us in our lives and continues to do and i feel like i'm not measuring up and i need to be doing more. the problem is that i start piling all these things on my plate telling myself i need to give up everything that isn't absolutely necessary to my existence and then i get frustrated that i can't follow through and then i give up. each lent i generally have to restart my Lenten plan at least 2 or 3 times. but i do so love that feeling at the end, when Easter finally arrives and there's no more fasting or abstaining. you really do feel like you just finished a race.
I need to go back to sleep now, i'm on nights for the next 2 weeks and i have to go in tonight. night shift isn't horrible, but it does mess with your head. i never know when to eat or sleep or get up. and it's always the harbinger of illness in me. in general i try to stay away from caffeine and just drink herbal teas while i'm on nights, and then i take lots of vitamins. i down Emergen-C like it's my job. this combo seems to keep anything from truly devastating my immune system. also i have the country of Ecuador and all it's 3rd world ways to thank, for really boosting my immune system in general. i figure if i can eat a week old chicken that's been sitting out on the kitchen counter for a week without getting sick than there's not a lot my digestive track can't take.

my blonde moment

as i drove home tonight and passed ambulance after ambulance and police car after police car (or rather they passed me). i couldn't help but think how this is the case every night and it made me so sad. because i already feel like DC is such a dangerous place to live and this just seemed to confirm it. and then i remembered.
I work at a hospital, on a campus that has 2 other major hospitals on it, next to other hospitals in the immediate area. and isn't the main purpose of an ambulance to transport patients to a hospital? yes, it is.

My aching feet

so it turns out that your feet can swell to approximately 3x's their normal size when you are either A)Pregnant or 2)working a 12 hour shift that somehow becomes a 14 hour shift. in either case it's really not pretty. i would take a picture to show you all, but i haven't shaved my legs in quite some time and i don't think the world is ready to see that, besides i might get kicked off blogger for posting objectionable content.
well i want everyone to be proud of me, i made it to mass today! it was such a feeling of accomplishment. it's very hard when you work a weekend shift to get off of the floor for an entire half an hour together becuase that means someone else has to watch all of your patients plus their own, that could mean one person taking care of 8-10 patients depending on how busy we are. so i worked super hard and got all my kids ready so that for 30 minutes straight no one had any needs and i could get off the floor. we have an african priest at the hospital who says mass and i love him, he takes the time to actually give a homily and he asks questions and expects responses, he challenges people to make changes in thier lives, makes it clear that there is a standard they are held to, without sounding judgemental. and he gets genuinely excited to see people in mass and makes everyone so welcome.
i must go to bed now, i feel a little naseaus (to tell you the truth it's because one of my families brought in a huge bag of chocolates right at the end of shift and i ate so many that i'm now sick and having flash backs to Easter 1988 when i ate my entire chocolate bunny in one sitting even though i wasn't supposed to and then proceeded to throw it all up.) but i need to feel better tomorrow because i have to go back and do this all over again.

Cheese, it's what's for dinner

Today was my day off, i had such good intentions for my day. I had such big plans. I was going to go to the gym (and get a membership), i was going to try to find out why exactly my "check engine" light keeps coming on in my car, i was going to clean my apartment, and i was going to research long range digital cameras. Most of that stuff didn't happen, I did buy a bottle of wine and some cheese. It was once i got back home that i realized that i didn't have any other food in the house. Lucky thing it's damn good cheese.
I did research the cameras and subsequently bought one, the Canon PowerShot S3 IS, i'll let you know how it works out. I think it's a family trait that once we make up our minds about something we don't see the need to wait to accomplish it. In some cases this can be a good thing, it could even be described as a go-getter/can do attitude, but in other cases it can be more to my detriment. Case in point this camera. Did i really research it enough? Is this really the camera for me? Did i find the best deal? These are questions i may never know the answers to. However, what's done is done and i'll be honest, i'm not going to do anything about it now that i own the thing. I did have the presense of mind to purchase the extended warranty, i say you never know when your parents are going to get drunk and throw your camera off a table, in which case it's a good idea to have coverage for that.
Oh and Kell, I have been thinking about the sewing machine, don't let me forget it next time i come for a visit. i'm thinking the next "craft" i should attempt is curtains for my apartment. Half the blinds are broken and those that aren't are an incredible shade of ugly.
Before i go though, i have to share this story from work, perhaps i blog to much about life at work but i feel like i need to tell these stories somewhere and at least this way you can scroll through the parts that bore you. Anyways, when i was at work last thursday for some reason i was given all the MR/MRCP kids on the floor (that's Mentally Retarded/Mentally Retarded Cerebral Palsy for those not in on the lingo) one of which was a 16 year old girl. Who when you looked at her seemed completely normal, in fact the night nurse didn't even realize she was particularly delayed, she just told me that our patient was a little bit slower than most kids her age, turns out she had the mental age of a 6 year old. Picture this, this black girl, so beautiful, sitting in a hospital bed by herself watching Barney, not just watching but singing along, doing the hand motions, and in general oblivious to the rest of the world around her. She told me that Barney is her favorite show, when i asked her if she watched it at home she told me no, because the other kids told her she was too big for it and they made fun of her and told her she should be hanging out with boys. I told her that's ok, she can watch Barney if she wants to, she's not to big for him, and she doesn't need to hang out with boys if she doesn't want to. Then we watched and sang along to Barney for the next half hour.
It was the highlight of my day.
When I got her all packed up to go I gave her some princess stickers and one of the Child Life workers brought her a "bratz" doll, i have never seen a smile so big in my life! She gave me a big hug and told me she'd miss me, somehow i believe her.

Let It Snow

Day 2 of my new life as a blogger. Things are going well i think, although i need to tell my sister about my blog. She is the one who encouraged me in the first place so it's only right that she should be told about it first.
So today my big accomplishment was making it all the way into work and not dying. You see it started snowing yesterday afternoon and through the night. So as i drove my small 4-door compact car down side roads and through major 5 lane freeways buried in snow i couldn't help but wonder, what i was doing? It had taken me 20 minutes to chisel the ice off my car and then another 10 to dig out my tires so i could get out of my parking spot, now the only thing left was to drive the 14 miles to the hospital through unplowed streets and freeways. Needless to say i was the only person out at 5:30 in the morning doing this. There were a few maintenance workers who were out plowing the sidewalks but they looked at me like i was insane. that one i already knew though.
I love working in a pediatric hospital, kids are so much better to work with than adults. I spent my whole day just playing with the kids, it was great. at the end of the day we got a tiny little guy transferred over to us from out NICU, he is adorable and oh so very small, only 4 lb's. i helped feed him and as i watched him eat i was so amazed out how something so tiny knew exactly what to do even though up until recently we'd been helping breathe.
It is now 9pm and past my bedtime so i should wrap things up. These 12 hour shifts really pretty much beat the crap out of me. one more day though, then i have a day off. what will i do with my 24 hours of freedom though? Most likely i will sleep, although that makes me feel a little lazy when i read my sisters or my cousins blogs and they talk about how they are always out running errands and cooking things, and sewing or knitting or in general being creative and creating cozy little homes. Oh well, maybe i'll do something crafty next time i'm off.

When it's time, it's time

So when I came home yesterday after a weekend trip to visit a friend in NYC, I looked around my small one bedroom apartment and thought to myself "i think it's about time to take down the Christmas decorations"

This past weekend was great, i had three whole days off in a row. that hasn't happened in some time so i took full advantage of it and got the heck out of town. Coming back was so hard though, and going back to work today was even worse. The worst part of the day was when the charge nurse came up to me and let me know that the weather was really bad outside and that the hospital was opening up an old unit so that employees could spend the night at the hospital. I didn't care how bad the weather was, there was no way i was going to sleep at the hospital. In the end, I finally made it home. It only took me an hour longer than it normally does but i'm here. Now i'm going to get some sleep because i have to go back and do this all over again tomorrow.