I guess it happens to everyone at some point...maybe women are just more aware of it than men...but I don't think anyone is ever really prepared for it.
I'm talking about that single moment in which you look in the mirror and don't recognize the person looking back. I had that moment just now, in the bathroom of the nursing building. I looked up from washing my hands (while singing Happy Birthday, to make sure I washed long enough...I'm such a dork) and was almost frightened by the reflection. Bags under my eyes, lines in places that didn't used to have lines, a deer-in-the-headlights look in my eyes, and really poorly-styled hair that needs a good cut. This semester has really taken a toll on me, I guess. It's a good thing that nursing school is preparing me to make good money because I'm going to need it to start doing more self-maintenance.
I just handed in an essay that will count for a good chunk of my grade for the summer. I have to say, while everyone else has been freaking out about having to write a 5-page paper (which is NOT a big deal), and making sure their APA format is correct, I actually really enjoyed the assignment. The topic of the paper was not one I would have chosen myself, but the task of writing is one that I know I can complete...I am confident in my ability to write, especially when I have time to draft and revise. The essay was probably one of the first assignments this summer that I actually felt certain I could and would earn a good grade on. It is nice to finally find a piece of nursing school I know I can do well.
I'm almost done for the summer...one more week, and then I have a few weeks of vacation to relax, recoup, and re-energize. "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can," said the little blue engine...
July 30, 2008
July 22, 2008
Tired
The summer semester is winding down...finally. My last skills mastery test will be on July 31, and then my last final is August 6. One of my classmates emailed recently with the comment, "Does anyone else wish that today was August 7???!?!"
One of my professors had mercy on us last week and condensed material so we would have an extra day off this week, which was yesterday. Not much of a day off, really, because while we weren't in class as much, we had more homework to even it out. I woke up this morning, after sleeping for 10 hours, still feeling really tired. I realized it's the kind of tired that isn't going to go away with a day off or extra sleep or anything...it's being tired of having things to do always hanging over my head and having no relief from huge stressors (the skills masteries just freak me out...I start shaking about two days beforehand and can't eat until about 5 hours after it's all over...assuming I've passed...). As soon as you wrap up one, there is another one looming on the horizon.
Every morning I tell myself, "You just have to get through today. Just this one day." And I make it. And start all over again the next morning. It's getting old.
I really need an end. I wish today was August 7.
One of my professors had mercy on us last week and condensed material so we would have an extra day off this week, which was yesterday. Not much of a day off, really, because while we weren't in class as much, we had more homework to even it out. I woke up this morning, after sleeping for 10 hours, still feeling really tired. I realized it's the kind of tired that isn't going to go away with a day off or extra sleep or anything...it's being tired of having things to do always hanging over my head and having no relief from huge stressors (the skills masteries just freak me out...I start shaking about two days beforehand and can't eat until about 5 hours after it's all over...assuming I've passed...). As soon as you wrap up one, there is another one looming on the horizon.
Every morning I tell myself, "You just have to get through today. Just this one day." And I make it. And start all over again the next morning. It's getting old.
I really need an end. I wish today was August 7.
July 12, 2008
Zipping right along...
What a crazy time! We spent our 4th of July weekend moving across the metroplex to a fun little duplex...it is a great place with a big yard for Jasper and so much more space inside than our old apartment. Plus it is not on the third floor. I can't tell you how appreciative I am of that fact when Jasper needs to pee at 3am.
We are pretty much settled in now with just a few random items still needing a place (or a trashcan). Moving in really takes a long time when life outside of the move doesn't slow down. School keeps rapidly firing the work at me, and Nate's duties at his job actually increased right about the time we moved, making more demands on his time and energy...so the fact that we don't still have rooms full of unpacked boxes is pretty significant.
This past Wednesday marked the beginning of a new 5-week summer semester for me, and after only one day (and several hours of reading assignments), I feel like I have a renewed spirit about this whole pursuit of a nursing degree. Up to this point I've become increasingly down-trodden, feeling crushed by the workload and discouraged about the difference between my picture of the nursing world and the reality that I've been observing in the hospitals. Without knowing it, my scope of vision had been slowing narrowing until I was only thinking of nursing in terms of a list of skills I needed to master (quickly!) and an extensive list of dos and don'ts for every shift. Not very inspiring or encouraging. I had lost sight of the bigger picture: the place of a nurse in society, the significant role the nurse has played in history, the overarching goals and priorities of nursing, and the general sense of pride a nurse can take in her/his work: knowing it is an act of service done for the betterment of a single patient, and therefore of all mankind.
I just finished reading an article in the American Journal of Nursing by L.L. Dock and am feeling very inspired by her words. She wrote about our duty to continually be advocating for the fair treatment of everyone, not just ourselves, fellow workers, and patients...like our role as nurses expands far beyond the hospital or clinic we work in, reaching out into other professions and into society in general. For example, she wrote that a newspaper had printed an article comparing the grossly underpaid teaching profession to the nursing field. She chided the nurses who had responded to the article by pointing out the inherent dangers of the nurse's work as justification for the salary difference, saying they should instead have used the opportunity to advocate for the teachers and say, "Yes, they are underpaid! We should do something about it!" The general tone of the article was just so...noble, I guess. The way she wrote about the work of the nurse...to be associated with an emerging profession that is generally aimed at helping, encouraging, uplifting and supporting people rather than doing whatever it takes to scramble up the proverbial professional ladder first creates such a sense of fulfillment for me. Not that I am above scrambling up the ladder, but that my profession expects me to be. Even though she wrote the article in 1913, I feel like her words are as relevant today as they were the day she penned them.
I have so much work to do today...I've got to get back at it. I just couldn't help taking a few minutes to (for the first time since I started nursing school) vent the pride I take in my line of work.
We are pretty much settled in now with just a few random items still needing a place (or a trashcan). Moving in really takes a long time when life outside of the move doesn't slow down. School keeps rapidly firing the work at me, and Nate's duties at his job actually increased right about the time we moved, making more demands on his time and energy...so the fact that we don't still have rooms full of unpacked boxes is pretty significant.
This past Wednesday marked the beginning of a new 5-week summer semester for me, and after only one day (and several hours of reading assignments), I feel like I have a renewed spirit about this whole pursuit of a nursing degree. Up to this point I've become increasingly down-trodden, feeling crushed by the workload and discouraged about the difference between my picture of the nursing world and the reality that I've been observing in the hospitals. Without knowing it, my scope of vision had been slowing narrowing until I was only thinking of nursing in terms of a list of skills I needed to master (quickly!) and an extensive list of dos and don'ts for every shift. Not very inspiring or encouraging. I had lost sight of the bigger picture: the place of a nurse in society, the significant role the nurse has played in history, the overarching goals and priorities of nursing, and the general sense of pride a nurse can take in her/his work: knowing it is an act of service done for the betterment of a single patient, and therefore of all mankind.
I just finished reading an article in the American Journal of Nursing by L.L. Dock and am feeling very inspired by her words. She wrote about our duty to continually be advocating for the fair treatment of everyone, not just ourselves, fellow workers, and patients...like our role as nurses expands far beyond the hospital or clinic we work in, reaching out into other professions and into society in general. For example, she wrote that a newspaper had printed an article comparing the grossly underpaid teaching profession to the nursing field. She chided the nurses who had responded to the article by pointing out the inherent dangers of the nurse's work as justification for the salary difference, saying they should instead have used the opportunity to advocate for the teachers and say, "Yes, they are underpaid! We should do something about it!" The general tone of the article was just so...noble, I guess. The way she wrote about the work of the nurse...to be associated with an emerging profession that is generally aimed at helping, encouraging, uplifting and supporting people rather than doing whatever it takes to scramble up the proverbial professional ladder first creates such a sense of fulfillment for me. Not that I am above scrambling up the ladder, but that my profession expects me to be. Even though she wrote the article in 1913, I feel like her words are as relevant today as they were the day she penned them.
I have so much work to do today...I've got to get back at it. I just couldn't help taking a few minutes to (for the first time since I started nursing school) vent the pride I take in my line of work.
June 18, 2008
Shadow Day
This is an excerpt from my nursing clinical journal...I think it paints a really good picture of the struggle I'm having in school so far:
Shadow day at the hospital. I definitely felt better about today than I did about orientation day...what a world of difference being one-on-one with a nurse made. I think I am still experiencing a little bit of reality shock, though. For some reason I just seem to have a picture in my head of what a nurse's job looks like each day, and it is not jiving with what I am seeing actually happen. I can't figure out if this is because I am seeing a Med-Surg unit and that's just what Med-Surg units happen to look like (while some other unit matches my mental image), if it is because I have not yet seen a nurse who performs nursing care the way I envision myself doing it, or if it is because I really just have a skewed picture of what the nursing profession looks like. It is a little bit discouraging, but I keep reminding myself that the nursing field is so broad; somewhere out there is a niche for me. I just have to find it. :)
I think another little point of discouragement is the reality of the nursing shortage and all that follows because of it. We are reading Bed Number Ten for Cheek's class, and I was horrified to read of all the miscommunication between staff and the lack of loving, personal care to each patient. I thought I was reading about a rare unfortunate situation, but I'm finding out it is reality. There really are lazy nurses, there really are communication breakdowns (frequent, actually), and there really is a lack of warm, personal care, simply because nurses are stressed, busy, and overloaded. I don't want ever to become that kind of nurse, and I'm afraid that working in an environment that repeatedly puts me in that situation will mold me into that shape.
On the bright side, I am really looking forward to relationship-building with my patients, and I am thankful that I will only have one patient to really focus on each day, leaving me with lots of time for personal attention. Even just the small amount of time I had with first-time acquaintances today, I experienced the emotional high of helping someone get to the bathroom. Sounds weird, I know, and it probably won't last, but I felt really good being someone's rock--meeting such a real and tangible need. I enjoyed helping. I really think that med-surg is going to be a difficult unit for me, just because of the rapidly changing clientel. I see myself doing better in a unit such as oncology, or even in a nursing home, where I am able to interact with clients for longer periods of time, getting to know them as people with lives rather than just bodies in beds.
That's all for today, I guess. Mental note: stuff more PB crackers in my scrub pockets next week. I gave mine away and was really shaky by the time we got out of post-conference today. This is not conducive to learning!!
Shadow day at the hospital. I definitely felt better about today than I did about orientation day...what a world of difference being one-on-one with a nurse made. I think I am still experiencing a little bit of reality shock, though. For some reason I just seem to have a picture in my head of what a nurse's job looks like each day, and it is not jiving with what I am seeing actually happen. I can't figure out if this is because I am seeing a Med-Surg unit and that's just what Med-Surg units happen to look like (while some other unit matches my mental image), if it is because I have not yet seen a nurse who performs nursing care the way I envision myself doing it, or if it is because I really just have a skewed picture of what the nursing profession looks like. It is a little bit discouraging, but I keep reminding myself that the nursing field is so broad; somewhere out there is a niche for me. I just have to find it. :)
I think another little point of discouragement is the reality of the nursing shortage and all that follows because of it. We are reading Bed Number Ten for Cheek's class, and I was horrified to read of all the miscommunication between staff and the lack of loving, personal care to each patient. I thought I was reading about a rare unfortunate situation, but I'm finding out it is reality. There really are lazy nurses, there really are communication breakdowns (frequent, actually), and there really is a lack of warm, personal care, simply because nurses are stressed, busy, and overloaded. I don't want ever to become that kind of nurse, and I'm afraid that working in an environment that repeatedly puts me in that situation will mold me into that shape.
On the bright side, I am really looking forward to relationship-building with my patients, and I am thankful that I will only have one patient to really focus on each day, leaving me with lots of time for personal attention. Even just the small amount of time I had with first-time acquaintances today, I experienced the emotional high of helping someone get to the bathroom. Sounds weird, I know, and it probably won't last, but I felt really good being someone's rock--meeting such a real and tangible need. I enjoyed helping. I really think that med-surg is going to be a difficult unit for me, just because of the rapidly changing clientel. I see myself doing better in a unit such as oncology, or even in a nursing home, where I am able to interact with clients for longer periods of time, getting to know them as people with lives rather than just bodies in beds.
That's all for today, I guess. Mental note: stuff more PB crackers in my scrub pockets next week. I gave mine away and was really shaky by the time we got out of post-conference today. This is not conducive to learning!!
June 15, 2008
Picking up a second income...
My mom is an expert at finding money. She saw some program on TV once about all the places you can find money, and once she started paying attention and looking around, she found all kinds of change in all kinds of places. Dollar bills in the car vaccuum filter, quarters in the newspaper and vending machine returned coin slides, random money in random parking lots...we have paid for ice cream at Dairy Queen with Mom's found change on more than one occasion. Free ice cream tastes really good.
It appears I have inherited this talent for finding change. Or maybe just the appetite for free money (but who doesn't have that??!). I have gotten pretty good at finding money in the parking lot of our apartment complex; I usually make anywhere between one and five cents every time I take Jasper out to poop (letting him out to pee doesn't take me far enough into the parking lot...has to be #2). Today, though, I hit a personal high of 56 cents, mostly in pennies and nickels. And I found it at the beginning of our walk, which means I held onto a dirty handful of change for 30 minutes while we walked around the neighborhood. It was gross, but I was not giving up my free 56 cents.
Don't laugh. It all adds up, you know. I've calculated that if I find just two cents every day, I can pay off my tuition loans in about a million years...that's faster than the billion years I'm looking at without that free change!
It appears I have inherited this talent for finding change. Or maybe just the appetite for free money (but who doesn't have that??!). I have gotten pretty good at finding money in the parking lot of our apartment complex; I usually make anywhere between one and five cents every time I take Jasper out to poop (letting him out to pee doesn't take me far enough into the parking lot...has to be #2). Today, though, I hit a personal high of 56 cents, mostly in pennies and nickels. And I found it at the beginning of our walk, which means I held onto a dirty handful of change for 30 minutes while we walked around the neighborhood. It was gross, but I was not giving up my free 56 cents.
Don't laugh. It all adds up, you know. I've calculated that if I find just two cents every day, I can pay off my tuition loans in about a million years...that's faster than the billion years I'm looking at without that free change!
June 12, 2008
Lab Specimen
Interesting day at school today. I was not really prepared to take my shirt off in front of everyone in my nursing lab.
We were practicing musculoskeletal assessments today, so we were doing all kinds of range of motion exercises with our partners, assessing gait and looking for any kind of abnormalities. You can only practice range of motion for so long, so to kill the extra time, my partner suggested practicing checking for scoliosis. No problem there...I have great posture and have no problem being a model non-scoliosis patient. So we went behind the little curtain thing and I whipped off my shirt so she could look at my spine. When I bent over, she said, "Hmm...this side looks higher than this side. And your rib cage looks uneven." I totally thought she was joking.
Right about then one of the instructors walks in and says, "Oh, my..." I'm thinking, "Oh, crap." She palpates around and calls another instructor over and they poke around together. Before you know it, the curtain is gone, and the instructor is pointing out my problems to everyone in the class. Everyone is looking at my back, gasping and leaning forward, trying to palpate my back muscles and get an idea of what an abnormal musculoskeletal finding looks like. That was kind of an awkward moment, to which I responded by exhibiting diaphoresis (excessive sweating), making palpating me that much more fun...and by that I mean embarrassing.
In the end, the instructors diagnosed me as having one leg shorter than the other (which I suspected after doing inversions in yoga...my legs always looked uneven to me). Apparently this has caused my hips to be unequal in height, my back muscles to develop differently in order to compensate, leading to a slight side curvature in the thoracic spine and an elevated right shoulder. Great. So funny that something like this can go on and I have no idea about it. Not even an inkling. I don't walk strangely, I don't have back pain, I really do have great posture...apparently things just aren't so perfect on the inside. I'm actually kind of impressed at the body's adaptation skills.
For the rest of the day my partner, Dy, and I kept making jokes about peoples' reactions to my "deformity," we called it. People kept asking me if it hurt to walk, if I'd broken my back, if I wore special shoes, etc., like it was even a miracle to them I'd made it this far in life. We were just cracking up. We wondered if maybe I could get a handicapped parking pass out of the deal, which would be stellar because those are about the only open parking spots on campus. :)
We were practicing musculoskeletal assessments today, so we were doing all kinds of range of motion exercises with our partners, assessing gait and looking for any kind of abnormalities. You can only practice range of motion for so long, so to kill the extra time, my partner suggested practicing checking for scoliosis. No problem there...I have great posture and have no problem being a model non-scoliosis patient. So we went behind the little curtain thing and I whipped off my shirt so she could look at my spine. When I bent over, she said, "Hmm...this side looks higher than this side. And your rib cage looks uneven." I totally thought she was joking.
Right about then one of the instructors walks in and says, "Oh, my..." I'm thinking, "Oh, crap." She palpates around and calls another instructor over and they poke around together. Before you know it, the curtain is gone, and the instructor is pointing out my problems to everyone in the class. Everyone is looking at my back, gasping and leaning forward, trying to palpate my back muscles and get an idea of what an abnormal musculoskeletal finding looks like. That was kind of an awkward moment, to which I responded by exhibiting diaphoresis (excessive sweating), making palpating me that much more fun...and by that I mean embarrassing.
In the end, the instructors diagnosed me as having one leg shorter than the other (which I suspected after doing inversions in yoga...my legs always looked uneven to me). Apparently this has caused my hips to be unequal in height, my back muscles to develop differently in order to compensate, leading to a slight side curvature in the thoracic spine and an elevated right shoulder. Great. So funny that something like this can go on and I have no idea about it. Not even an inkling. I don't walk strangely, I don't have back pain, I really do have great posture...apparently things just aren't so perfect on the inside. I'm actually kind of impressed at the body's adaptation skills.
For the rest of the day my partner, Dy, and I kept making jokes about peoples' reactions to my "deformity," we called it. People kept asking me if it hurt to walk, if I'd broken my back, if I wore special shoes, etc., like it was even a miracle to them I'd made it this far in life. We were just cracking up. We wondered if maybe I could get a handicapped parking pass out of the deal, which would be stellar because those are about the only open parking spots on campus. :)
June 08, 2008
A New Brother!!!
Last weekend we flew home to Chicago for my sister's wedding...absolutely fantastic. The ceremony was beautiful and the reception--my favorite part--was just the kind of thing she had talked about having when we were kids. Somehow she landed on this farm that rents out their two barns for huge social functions, just minutes away from the church. The farm was on this huge spread of land covered in the greenest grass I have ever seen, bordered by a creek with a golf course just on the other side. The weather could not have been more perfect for that kind of occasion--everyone was completely comfortable milling around between the two barns in dresses and tuxes. We really had a wonderful time, and it was hard to come back to Texas, land of hot. There has been talk that we'll head that way when I finish nursing school next summer, but then again there has been talk about heading in 40 different directions when I finish school, so who knows where we'll end up. :)
Speaking of nursing school, I finished my first semester just before we left for Chicago. It was a mini-mester, which means we packed a whole normal semester of Pharmacology into three weeks. I can honestly say I have never worked harder at school in my entire life, and I don't say that to brag at all. School has always come easily for me with not a whole lot of effort...this time around, I am really having to push myself. Nate jokes that I was more in love with my Pharm textbook than with him those three weeks, which could possibly be true, if you look at the amount of time spent with each. ;) Anyway, I am now one week into the summer semester, in which we'll cover fundamentals and history of nursing, plus I get my first round of clinical experiences, starting tomorrow. I am so excited!! I have been assigned to a terrific hospital about 10 minutes from our new house and am really ready to jump in and soak up the experience. I am hoping I get to spend a few days in the oncology unit, which I think is where I want to end up, but last I checked that was still up for debate. We'll see.
Other than that, things are just moving right along for us. We've been trying to take advantage of fun things to do that are close by, so we've taken in a few Rangers games and have plans to go to Hurricane Harbor in a few weeks. The Rangers games are pretty cool...we like to grab drinks and just hang out in the cheap seats, enjoying the outdoors during the only time of day that Texas heat is bearable. Makes you feel like a real American, especially if you get a few $5 hot dogs to go with your $5 soda. :) Going to the games reminds me of two favorite pastimes back home: when I was little, my dad used to take me to the dog races in St. Croix, and we always got $5 sodas to drink while we (he) bet on the dogs. We called them bladder busters, which back then, they really were. I'm also reminded of the Eau Claire Express baseball games I went to with Dad before I got married...what's crazy is that it was $6 a ticket for those games, which were definitely not major league games, and down here we are paying $6 a ticket for games that definitely are major league games. There are definitely advantages to city living. :)
May 06, 2008
Don't expect me to cover your butt anymore.
There is absolutely no feeling I hate more than that of being taken advantage of...it stirs up within me some of the most deep-seated rage I've ever experienced. This feeling pops up in sometimes the most unexpected places, but always for the same root reason. The store charged me a price higher than the tag said. The mechanic got me to spring for repairs I didn't really need. My hair stylist "just dried" my hair and charged me extra for it without disclosing that fact beforehand. The wranglers are supposed to pool their tips from the multi-guide rides; everyone but me pockets their money, so I wind up making about a third as much as everyone else. Some kid in school really wanted me to be her partner for the project...because, as I later learned, she knew I would work for a good grade even if she didn't do a darn thing, which she didn't. A boy I was totally in love with and would have roped the moon for...well, let's leave that one alone.
The latest issue has been with other employees at Starbucks. We are going through a bit of a transition time right now, training new employees and losing two faithful workers (one of them is me), so there has been sort of high stress anyway. On top of that, yesterday my relief person called one minute before my shift ended to say he'd just woken up and would be about an hour late. I didn't stay to cover until he got there because he has overslept on numerous occasions, doesn't do his job when he does show up, leaves messes for everyone else to clean up, and I'm tired of covering his butt. Then again today, my relief person didn't show at her scheduled time. I called my manager several times to see if she'd called, asking him to call her, asking him if he'd reached her, etc., for an hour and a half, with absolutely no helpful response. Finally, it was time for me to leave and she still hadn't shown, nor had my manager bothered to let me know what was going on, so I just left. And I don't feel badly about it. I am really tired of being the responsible one who gets shafted because no one else feels like being responsible.
Grrr.
Finding the good in the bad: anger is a phenomenal motivator in kickboxing. I kicked butt tonight.
The latest issue has been with other employees at Starbucks. We are going through a bit of a transition time right now, training new employees and losing two faithful workers (one of them is me), so there has been sort of high stress anyway. On top of that, yesterday my relief person called one minute before my shift ended to say he'd just woken up and would be about an hour late. I didn't stay to cover until he got there because he has overslept on numerous occasions, doesn't do his job when he does show up, leaves messes for everyone else to clean up, and I'm tired of covering his butt. Then again today, my relief person didn't show at her scheduled time. I called my manager several times to see if she'd called, asking him to call her, asking him if he'd reached her, etc., for an hour and a half, with absolutely no helpful response. Finally, it was time for me to leave and she still hadn't shown, nor had my manager bothered to let me know what was going on, so I just left. And I don't feel badly about it. I am really tired of being the responsible one who gets shafted because no one else feels like being responsible.
Grrr.
Finding the good in the bad: anger is a phenomenal motivator in kickboxing. I kicked butt tonight.
May 01, 2008
Terriffic in Texas Number Two
Sonic Happy Hour. There is nothing better to do between 2 and 4pm than get a cherry limeade for sixty cents!!
April 30, 2008
Hi Nancy :)
Thanks for dinner tonight..and for REAL Dr. Pepper. I am so relieved to finally know the true original taste of those 32 flavors! :)
April 08, 2008
Terrific in Texas
Texas is not exactly my first choice of places to live on this planet...getting used to it has been full of challenges. However, I've discovered that when I look for them, there are some really great things about this state (which, might I remind all you Texans, is exactly what Texas is--a state. One state that together, with all the other 49, make up the UNITED States, which is a nation. Texas--albeit a very big state--is not a country or nation in itself, despite what you are apparently taught here. Sorry for bursting your bubble. Actually, I'm not. You had it coming.).
Okay, so I thought it might help me to remember these good things about Texas, the state, if I wrote them down. So as long as we live here, every time I think of another excellent feature of life in the state of Texas, I'm going to post it. Maybe by the time we leave I'll have convinced some of you to move down here!! :)
Today's Terrific in Texas is the extended Autumn and Spring seasons. I was very disappointed with the "cold" season and am still deeply mourning the loss of a meaningful winter (one in which I actually wear my winter coat), but on the flip side, there are really long periods of time where the weather hovers between 50 and 70, which is what I believe Heaven weather will be maintained at. :) It's the kind of weather that, to me, doesn't really belong in any season and does not make me feel like it is any certain time of the year (which is why I think it'd make excellent temperatures for eternity), but it is just plain nice, easy, uncomplicated and undemanding weather...it doesn't interfere with outdoors plans or make other tasks (like hauling groceries up three flights of stairs) difficult (or any more difficult, I should say).
Someone will have to remind me this summer, when it is over 100 degrees for 30 days in a row, that I actually was thankful for Texas weather at one point. :)
Okay, so I thought it might help me to remember these good things about Texas, the state, if I wrote them down. So as long as we live here, every time I think of another excellent feature of life in the state of Texas, I'm going to post it. Maybe by the time we leave I'll have convinced some of you to move down here!! :)
Today's Terrific in Texas is the extended Autumn and Spring seasons. I was very disappointed with the "cold" season and am still deeply mourning the loss of a meaningful winter (one in which I actually wear my winter coat), but on the flip side, there are really long periods of time where the weather hovers between 50 and 70, which is what I believe Heaven weather will be maintained at. :) It's the kind of weather that, to me, doesn't really belong in any season and does not make me feel like it is any certain time of the year (which is why I think it'd make excellent temperatures for eternity), but it is just plain nice, easy, uncomplicated and undemanding weather...it doesn't interfere with outdoors plans or make other tasks (like hauling groceries up three flights of stairs) difficult (or any more difficult, I should say).
Someone will have to remind me this summer, when it is over 100 degrees for 30 days in a row, that I actually was thankful for Texas weather at one point. :)
April 02, 2008
Still kickin'!
Hello? Hello? [tap tap tap] Is this thing on? Can you hear me? [loud screech of feedback] Oops, sorry about that.
Um, hi. :) I know it's been several months since we've posted anything new...to be honest, I haven't had the motivation. I've sort of been in hibernation mode this year, preferring to think things through quietly and privately rather than in front of the general public. Today, though, I suddenly felt like connecting to the outside world again, and I thought this might be a good way to begin. :)
We are doing well here in Texas. I think we've adjusted well and have settled into a decent pace of life; we are connecting well with other people and we are finding our own niche here. I think this might be the first time in our married life that we can say that! It is nice to feel like you belong to the community you live in. Nate is now a Manager at Macaroni Grill and I am working at a Starbucks, eagerly anticipating (finally) starting nursing school on May 12.
On a deeper level, God has been doing some major construction on us both this year...lots of healing, lots of learning, and, thankfully, lots of laughing at the realization of how silly and ridiculous we can both be! I sort of feel like we are at the point most couples are at right before or right after they get married; we are growing together, learning how to do this dance without knocking each other over. When we got married almost three years ago, neither of us understood how much individual growing we both had to do or how marriage would magnify those shortcomings, and it took two years of wrong turns and bad decisions before we saw what a mess we'd created. So we've spent much of the last few months trying to undo the damage we did in ignorance throughout our first two years together...it has been messy, but very, very beautiful. :)
We are excited about what lies ahead for us in the next few months--I am thrilled to start nursing school, and we are thinking about buying a fixer-upper down here and plugging our money into that instead of paying so much in rent. Houses are very cheap here right now; we are able to buy a good-sized home for much the same as my parents would have paid for their first home thirty years ago! Then, when I graduate next August, hopefully we'll be able to sell it for at least what we put into it. If not, there are several large universities in the area and rental property is in high demand. So that's something we're looking into.
*whew* Lots of changes, but lots of good. We thank God every day for the rich blessings He has bestowed upon us and the grace He has shown us this year!!
Um, hi. :) I know it's been several months since we've posted anything new...to be honest, I haven't had the motivation. I've sort of been in hibernation mode this year, preferring to think things through quietly and privately rather than in front of the general public. Today, though, I suddenly felt like connecting to the outside world again, and I thought this might be a good way to begin. :)
We are doing well here in Texas. I think we've adjusted well and have settled into a decent pace of life; we are connecting well with other people and we are finding our own niche here. I think this might be the first time in our married life that we can say that! It is nice to feel like you belong to the community you live in. Nate is now a Manager at Macaroni Grill and I am working at a Starbucks, eagerly anticipating (finally) starting nursing school on May 12.
On a deeper level, God has been doing some major construction on us both this year...lots of healing, lots of learning, and, thankfully, lots of laughing at the realization of how silly and ridiculous we can both be! I sort of feel like we are at the point most couples are at right before or right after they get married; we are growing together, learning how to do this dance without knocking each other over. When we got married almost three years ago, neither of us understood how much individual growing we both had to do or how marriage would magnify those shortcomings, and it took two years of wrong turns and bad decisions before we saw what a mess we'd created. So we've spent much of the last few months trying to undo the damage we did in ignorance throughout our first two years together...it has been messy, but very, very beautiful. :)
We are excited about what lies ahead for us in the next few months--I am thrilled to start nursing school, and we are thinking about buying a fixer-upper down here and plugging our money into that instead of paying so much in rent. Houses are very cheap here right now; we are able to buy a good-sized home for much the same as my parents would have paid for their first home thirty years ago! Then, when I graduate next August, hopefully we'll be able to sell it for at least what we put into it. If not, there are several large universities in the area and rental property is in high demand. So that's something we're looking into.
*whew* Lots of changes, but lots of good. We thank God every day for the rich blessings He has bestowed upon us and the grace He has shown us this year!!
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