A great example

"I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with grass stains on my shoes from mowing Sister Schenck's lawn. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor's children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someones garden. I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived." -Marjorie Pay Hinckley

Trashing my blog

So I have been a victim of spamming on my blog. Do people not have better things to do that post random, dirty links on my blog and hope that someone will click on them? It makes me very upset. So to balance out my frustration with dumb people, I will post few happy thoughts here.

1. I got an offer for an externship(same as an internship) at a mother-baby unit at Northwest Medical Center here in Tucson. I was hoping for a L& D position, but they had filled it before I even interviewed.

2. Ben & Jerry's with scripture study. Troy and I have been enjoying few spoonfuls of ice cream every night this week as we do our scripture study. 

3. Girls weekend in March. I'm planning on visiting my girl friends at BYU; girl friends make life so wonderful. 

4. Healthy body. After being sick for few weeks and being around sick people as a nurse, I am so grateful for my healthy body and its amazing ability to adapt. I'm constantly amazed how my body can increase in endurance as I train for my longer runs. I wanted to title one of my posts as "the miracle of human body" and talk about my training and I bet most people would have thought that I'm announcing the arrival of a little Grossarth.

5. Loving husband. This week, like all the other weeks, has been insane and my wonderful husband has cooked for me every night except tonight when he's working overtime. I even got a long foot rub after my 12-hour shift yesterday. (Though he did tell me that I smelled like hospital as he gave me a welcome home kiss. )

6. Sleep. I love sleep! I slept 9 hours last night and I feel like a new person. 

Chocolate Sensation

In spite the fact that Troy has been very sick for the past week, he spoiled me on Valentine's day. We are not big "Valentine's Day people"; I can't even remember what we did the year before. This made Troy's surprises and thoughtfulness much better. Things are never that fun when you expect them. At 5 am on Thursday morning Troy was coughing and it woke me up. With a little boy voice he asked if I would go and make him some chocolate. I was way tired but decided to be a nice wife and show him some love. So I walk to the kitchen and flip the lights on and put the water heater on. As I turned around, I noticed a gift bag and some flowers on the table and I was totally taken up by surprise. First of all, it's 5 am and I was not expecting anything except maybe a nice dinner.

Troy's surprise was a beautiful pearl ring. I absolutely love it. I'm not a big jewelry person nor do I wear or have many fancy things, but it made me very happy:) Thank you, sweetheart!
On Friday night, we went out for our Valentine's Day celebration( or just to have an excuse to enjoy good food). Troy surprised me again with a dinner at The Melting Pot. It was such a fun experience. We had some artichoke spinach cheese fondue and milk and white chocolate fondue. I was in heaven.
They also gave us a meat, sea food and pasta assortment and here is a picture of Troy with his wild mushroom ravioli. I think it looks like an exotic butterfly.
What a blessing it is to be loved and love someone. And the best part is that you don't even need silly things like Valentine's Day to enjoy that blessing!

I know(I hope) I'm not the only weird one...

Now that all of you guys think I'm insane, I would love to know what are you guys obsessed about? Maybe I can re-direct my grade obsession toward something else. At least my grade obsession will last only for three more semesters:) And  I should say that I made myself look little crazier than I really am for the sake of an entertaining post.

Just Numbers??

I do not like math that much; however, numbers seem to rule my life. Ok, that may be an exaggeration, but they do have a huge impact on how smooth my days go. Let me give you few examples. I, like many other women, worry about the numbers that show up as I step on the scale. I time my runs religiously so I can track my mile times and my training process. I'm also very frugal so I calculate money related things very often. The most extreme example of the impact of numbers is my grades. I calculate and re-calculate my grades and GPA throughout the semester and I always know exactly what grade I need to get on my finals to get the grade I want for the class. This was a source of great humor with my BYU roommate and best friend; she would make fun of my obsession all the time. (However, she knew who to come to when she needed some calculating done:))

I get in a terrible mood when I feel like I didn't do too well on my tests. Troy always prays for me when I have a test because he wants me to do well, BUT more so to have his wife around and not the "i didn't do well on my test-monster" to deal with for the rest of the day. 

So today was my first medical/surgical test and what have I been thinking since 9:10 am when I was done with the test...."did I miss #26?" "if i missed 6, I will still have an A and with 7 missed questions, it would be high B." Ridiculous? Yes! But I have not been able to change that about me, no matter how many times I have tried to "relax about grades".

So numbers are never just numbers...

Double Post Today!

So I meant to post about this last weekend, but somehow I didn't get around to do it. I decided that Troy should take me on a vacation as a graduation present...yes, it might be little bossy but once I'm done with this nursing school business, I feel very entitled to some pampering.
We are planning the vacation for the upcoming August since it is hard to know how everything is going to be once I graduate. So here are the three options that we are thinking of, let me know which would sounds the best:)

1. 10-day Alaskan Cruises from San Francisco.
2a. Hawaiian Cruises-probably a roundtrip from Honolulu
2b. Just saying in Hawaii for a week or so.
3. Train ride across U.S-start from San Francisco-Chicago-NYC-Washington D.C-New Orleans-Home

Sick and emotionally unstable

That is exactly how I would have described myself in three words yesterday. Mondays are long exhausting days as I start school at 8 am and I have lectures until 4 pm. Yesterday, we also had the "externship fair" at the College of Nursing so I went to talk to few hospital representatives. Then the fun really started....I drove to NMC Orovalley(about 15 miles from school with afternoon traffic it was like 40 minutes) and printed out all of the patient information I needed. Then it took me about 45 minutes to get home. After eating a quick dinner(Thank you Troy!), I started the process of doing a nursing care plan. Those of you who are not nursing students or involved in nursing, we need to research all of the drugs that the patient is on, the pathophysiology of their diagnosis, their lab values, diagnostic tests and come up with nursing diagnosis such as "Risk for Infection" or "Excess Fluid Volume" and then pick the interventions that we are going to implement. Around 11 pm and after I had worked on it for 4 hours, I just had to go to bed. I was so tired and I was sick and just wanted to cry and wondered "Why do I want to do nursing?"

This morning, I woke up and I am still sick with cold and started my 45 minute drive to the hospital. ANd I got through the day!!And I actually even enjoyed it and I got to put an IV in this little lady.(My very first time!!!) Well I got the needle in her vein and then her vein rolled and the needle wasn't in the vein anymore...oops! However, my instructor commented on my great technique and she couldn't even get the IV started. So this is little bit of bragging, but when you are feeling as miserable as I have been feeling in the last few days and the amount of school work weights on your shoulder like a herd of elephants, little accomplishments sure make a difference:)

This cartoon is a classic example of nursing instructors and the variety of advice on"right ways of doing things" we receive as students and they wonder why we get confused sometimes!