Friday, March 27, 2009

Lacking in post material

Work is going wonderfully. I love my job. And when I come home, my hands and my clothes smell like a newborn. I love it. :) And yes, I have been accused of being baby crazy.

Anyway, my title says it all. And since this is the case, I will share two stories with my readers that will probably make you think I'm a total idiot, or ditz, or something. But seriously, my family, husband and I would like to know how I get myself into these messes!!!

I think I was about 16 or so when the first mess occured. Plucking my eyebrows has never been something I particularly enjoy doing, and I won't spend the money to have someone else shape them nicely for me.

Actually, I prettty much never notice eyebrows (so if mine really need some work next time you see me, I probably just haven't paid much attention to them).

Anyway, I happened to be at Walmart one day and see these "do-it-yourself eyebrow waxing strips." Sounded easy enough to me, so I bought some.

Fast forward to the next time I noticed my eyebrows were turning into a uni-brow (spelling?). It was a Saturday night, and I thought I'd give them a try. I did.

They took all the hair off. They were worked wonderfully. Hurt like all get-out, but they worked.

Sunday morning I got woke up and headed to the bathroom, only to discover just how well those strips had worked. Not only had they taken my eyebrow hair off, they'd also taken off some of the skin, and I was graced with huge scabs and swollen eyes.

Beautiful.

My mom made me go to church too.

Said it was good for my pride, or something like that.

Sadly, that didn't stop me.

Fast forward a few more years and into my married life. I've been a nail bitter ever since I can remember, and it drives my husband nuts! I've tried almost every trick in the book to get myself to stop, but nothing really works.

Even the motivation of having nice nails for my wedding failed. I bit them way down during lecture just 3 days prior to the date.

So much for nice nails.

And then I had another brilliant (really stupid) idea!! I'd use fake nails for about a week or so, and then I'd have longer nails, and they'd look so nice that I wouldn't want to bite them anymore.

I went to Walmart (again...seriously, I need to just get what I need and get out of there) and picked out my stuff. I took it home, eager to try out my idea.

Putting them on went fine, but they looked really fake, and really bad, so I decided to take them off. I soon realized that the only finger nail polish remover I had was the non-acetone stuff. And the instructions said to soak the nail in acetone fingernail polish remover.

Oh dear.

The glue eventually loosened on my nail, but because my nails are so short, some of the glue had gotten on the skin above my nail.

And it was NOT coming off. Beautiful.

I called Luke wailing about what was I going to do! Surprisingly, he didn't have any ideas.

Not even one.

So I called my trusty friend Elise, who really didn't have any ideas either.

I decided not to call anyone else, because I felt the need to preserve just a little bit of pride.

The fake nail eventually did come off, only after being pried at with a toothpick, and taking some skin off with it.

*sigh* I keep thinking that someday I'll grow out of getting into these messes. But I'll probably be getting into them right along with my kids.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

A few quick things

Today was my first day on the floor with patients. I guess it went good...I didn't kill or permanently harm anyone! 2 big things to share-one really cool, and the other really weird, but also cool.

Today I was signing off on some Dr's order, and I got to sign my name: H Knapp RN. That made me smile.

I also got to give medications. After pulling them, I took them to my preceptor and asked her to check them. She gave me a really weird look and then said "honey, you're a nurse now, you don't get your meds checked!" During nursing school, it was a HUGE thing to get your meds checked by either your instructor or your preceptor. You pulled your meds really early, and then stood in line waiting for the teacher to look and make sure you had the right med, right dose, right time, right patient. Anyway, it was a little scary to give medications without anyone making sure I was doing it right. Scary, weird, and very cool. :)

Anyway, it's 9pm and since I have to get up at 5:15am, I'm going to head to bed.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

caffeine, sleep, and too little movement

I started work on Monday morning. And I now love caffeine. I've gotten way too little sleep. And I feel like I've sat in a chair for 4 days straight (oh wait, I have!).

Yesterday morning (just the 3rd morning of work) I commented to Luke that this working thing was for the birds. He seemed to think there was a problem.

But it'll get better. Once I'm not in orientation re-learning everything I learned in 4 years of college, and I can get out on the floor, I'll be ok. Minus the 7am-3pm hours. I think I might love night shift.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Darlingness

This is my niece, Naomi. And this is her praying on the pot. I thought it was just darling, and had to share.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Plans

I had lots of them for the day. I figured after about 3 months of being at home, I should probably get myself in gear and actually do something. Anyway, I was going to run errands, paint the kitchen trim (which has needed painting since August) and the hallway wall (a certain painter missed a couple spots...shall remain nameless, but she knows who she is!). I was going to fix a healthy dinner since we ate out all weekend, and make at least 3 meals to put in the freezer.

But none of it is getting done now. Luke woke me up this morning about 7am to tell me that there was water all over the basement and that he would be running the wet/dry vac. At this point, I rolled over and asked "do you need me to come help?" sincerely hoping he would be ok on his own. But I got a "yeah, that'd be nice" in response.

Of course all the water would be over by where we have everything stored. And it's coming up through the floor. Seriously, if you've never seen water ooze through a concrete floor, you should come over. It's pretty weird to see. Our sump pump and floor drains are working over time, and I'm SOO thankful that they're just working!

Anyway, I have to stick around the house to wait for the sewer guy to come so the sewer doesn't decide to back up into the house, and I can't run any water. That puts a damper on running errands, painting, and making food.

Although, the most pressing question right now is what to do when I have to pee. There's no flushing the toilet, and I'm afraid that if I keep adding to bowl, that it'll clog (but then again, I'm pretty good at taking care of that problem...seems to happen often).

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Fines

Library fines that is...my family is kind of known for them.

When we were little, we weren't the kind of family that went to the library and each kid got like 3 books. Oh no, each kid got like 20 books. And this is no exaggeration! We had a "library basket" that I'm pretty sure was a laundry basket. Not one of those huge ones, but those smaller square ones. We always had so many books that my mom would keep the list that the library prints out for you, and we'd check them off one by one, to make sure we had them all. There was that many of them.

Anyway, we'd pack up and head to library, were all of us would spend an hour or so picking out the multitude of books we wanted to take home. We'd get them home, and promptly devour as many possible in one sitting.

Now you'd think with being able to have library books for 3 weeks, that we could have gotten them all read in time. Most of the time we did, or came pretty close to it, but then there was the matter of getting them back on time. That seemed to be a problem for the family. Even if most of the books got returned on time, there was so many books at our house that it wasn't uncommon to lose one or two (or leave them out in the rain...Adam and Wendi).

I can recall checking out books for myself at the library only to find a nearly $30 fine on my card! Yeah, and those fines are only like 5 cents a day per book. I'm pretty sure my family single handedly supported the local libraries with our fines.

Anyway, the point of this whole story is that I seem to have my mother's tendency to forget to take library books back. You'd think it wouldn't be a problem. I mean, it's just me at home, and I've been sitting at home for weeks not really doing anything. Nonetheless, I returned my library books (all 10 of them) about 2 weeks late. With no other excuse than that I forgot about them.

I'm blaming it on my upbringing.