Loving the outside

 

As my friends will tell you, I have always had a disdain for yard work.  My frequent quote was “I hate Outside” from Logan’s Run.  Between allergies and an intolerance for heat I’ve avoided yard work as much as humanly possible.  While I was working and going to school full time, I was able to justify hiring my yard work done.  Now that I have more free time than extra money, I’ve decided that it’s just time for me to learn to like it, and maybe even learn to love it.  So this morning I went out with the goal of getting my front yard at least presentable and non-citation-able.

It’s the little things

My first year as a nurse is starting off pretty well.  I have management and preceptors that are doing a lot to help me succeed at my first job out of school.  No place is perfect, but I think I ended up in a good place for me to start out.  My patients are a challenge for me, and being in an ICU setting, I get to focus on 2 or 3 patients as opposed to some of the staffing ratios I’ve seen for other settings.

So here are my first entries in the “Things I’ve Learned as a First Year Nurse.”

Work Update

I hadn’t realized it had been so long since I posted anything about what has been going on in my life.  So here’s the update.

Just add to the chaos…

New puppy

As if my life weren’t chaotic enough… we added a new family member this week.  Say hello to Kaylee (formerly named Tinkerbelle.)

Rejection

I’ve been trying to catch up with my YouTube subscriptions, which means I watched a lot of zeFrank. I still think he’s absolutely brilliant. Some days, his vlog entry is light-hearted and amusing. Some day’s it’s not, and it resonates with me. This time, it’s his entry “Dealing with Rejection.” It’s talking about college applications, but it spoke to me on other levels as well.

Cleanliness is next to

 

I was disturbed by a couple of related items in my orientation for my new job.  In fairness, I tend to be a little more OCD about germs than most people.  I’m not so paranoid about it that it impairs my ability to care for sick people or deal with icky stuff, but I take the whole hygiene thing very seriously.  Apparently way more seriously than most.

Sixteen

Today at 8:13pm my daughter turned sixteen.  In some ways it seems like forever ago that I was recovering from a labor that didn’t go the way I’d planned, and in some ways it seems like it was only a little while ago.

 

This is my favorite baby picture of my kiddo.  What a wild ride it’s been, through good times and bad, and even though she’s now taller than I am, she’s still my Munchkin.  It still amazes me that I’m at least partially responsible for such a cool person being in this world.

Tomorrow she takes her driving test and cuts one more apron string to Mom, takes one more giant leap toward her life’s adventures.  Part of me wishes I could hold her back, and part of me just wants to make sure the wings I’ve tried to give her are sound.

Anyway, happy birthday, kiddo.