This is me being immature...

Awesome

Brandon Flowers from The Killers

hellllp

My faith in humanity was restored today at Costco. While standing outside unloading groceries I got to the worst part, lifting a case of 70 water bottles into my trunk. I think I must have just been standing and staring at it when a guy came up and said, "Can I help you with the water?" I tried to play it cool for a second but I was so tickled, as my dad would say, that I couldn't help but reply with a weirdly enthusiastic, "YES!" before he was even done offering. Whatever, I don't care, I have been in a similar situation so many times where I desperately need help carrying something and people just walk by, so who cares if I was a little over zealous. I just wanted him to know how grateful I was. Even if it made him regret offering almost immediately..

(I'm the old, grateful, lady)

Before coming to the ER...

Here are a few things to ponder:

Do I actually have a medical emergency? What constitutes a medical emergency you ask? Excellent question, lets delve right in shall we?

*Medical emergency with blood: vomiting blood, peeing blood, bloody stool, bleeding from your eyes, bleeding from an artery, bleeding due to loss or near loss of limb, bleeding varicies because you can't put the bottle down, and bleeding from a gunshot wound or any other other penetrating object.

*NON-medical emergency with blood: Most head wounds (try washing away the blood and you'll see that the scratch causing the mess is less than a cm wide and bandaids only cost like $4 at Walgreens), bleeding from a large pimple you've been scratching, bleeding from a hangnail, and very importantly, bleeding because its the 15th of the month again, please understand, this is in fact, normal.

*Medical emergency with chest pain: You feel like there is an elephant having a tea party on your chest and tums are NOT working, you have a history of like 20 heart surgeries and you've decided to stop taking your medicine, the pain is accompanied by extreme shortness of breath.

*NON-medical emergency with chest pain: You've had a cough for 7 months and it makes your chest hurt, you were punched and/or tackled playing flag football, you smoke 7 packs a day, or you've had a recent chest wax (gross).

This list could pretty much go on forever, so I'll just throw out a few examples of where, I promise, if you stay home, it's all good:

-You got soap in your eyes (I don't understand, is it made with turpentine? what's the problem here...)
-You feel sad (rest assured whomever checks you in will put a large sadface emoticon next to you chief diagnosis)
-You have a weird rash X5 months
-You were watching Discovery health and you think you're overweight (here's an apple?)
-You prefer an $800 pregnancy test to a $5 OTC pregnancy test (The one's a hospital uses are probably cheaper than the dollar store brand...)
-You think you have the flu. Well good thing you came because we just barely came up with a cure for Influenza...wait, no, no we didn't.

Its a disease

Pretty much I've quit everything else to just start crafting 24/7

Rob is awesome

So its definitely been over a month. Yikes. Sorry. I have been adjusting to life in Houston, the new job, new place etc. Everything is going well. Work is awesome, our apartment is awesome, and Houston is growing on me. Although, the heat is not. I know I live in Texas and sweating at 9pm at night is a norm, but here in Houston its a whole other ball game. The humidity is BRUTAL. Anyway. Boring.

My real incentive for writing is because Rob and I celebrated our 2 year anniversary on Friday (did we really make it two years?) and it was AWESOME. Let me explain. I had worked a 12 hour shift and on my way home called Rob to see what he was up to (even though I knew the answer: working). He told me to call when I got close to the apt and he would meet me there. About twenty minutes later I called him and he told me that I needed to go upstairs, hop in the bath (which was already drawn), and be ready for a car to pick me up at 8:30 to take me to the ZaZa. Whaaaat. So I did both and around 8:30 a black towne car came around the corner. Awesome. I felt so important...looking out at all the other people that had to drive their OWN cars. HA! Not me, suckaa! Anyway, so I got to the hotel, met Rob, (and in the nick of time too, as he was being propositioned by a lovely pride of cougars about 5 drinks deep) and went to our room which was right on the corner with an awesome view of downtown and a big fountain display. The hotel had sent up chocolate covered strawberries and a chilled bottle of Martinellis. Rob later explained that he had requested a non-alcoholic beverage be sent up in lieu of the Champagne due to his wife struggling through recovery...the hotel graciously obliged. We ate dinner at the hotel restaurant which was delicious annnnd skipping to breakfast, we also ate at the hotel restaurant, which was again, delicious.

Pretty much Rob is awesome.

The end.

K Anderson, RN

I passed my boards. Longest 48 hours of my life, though its nothing compared to Rob having to wait 3 months to find out if he passed the bar...still. I woke up at 7am on Thurs and had to wait until exactly 8am to find out. Not 7:50, not 7:52, not 7:55 and not 7:58...despite my desperate attempts to change that by refreshing the screen over and over again. Once I got to the screen they make you pay $8 to find out your fate. Don't have $8? In that case you have to wait 3 months for the results to be mailed. Seriously? Anyway, I paid my stupid $8 and then got to the most anticlimactic screenshot possible. There was a bunch of personal info and then the last line said "Result pass." What?! No clip-art balloons? No little trumpet sound clip? I felt like I needed to win a game of solitaire after that to get some sort of celebratory animation. I let it sink in for a second and finally forgave Pearson for their unenthusiastic delivery of my results and rejoiced but jumping on Rob and forcing him to wake up and tell me how happy he was for me.

What a freakin relief.

Because who wants to buy a calendar in the middle of the year?

Naturally I've been doing everything in my power to avoid thinking about my boards. This has included but is not limited to:

*Making my own reusable calendar
*Going to Six flags with Rob and some of his coworkers (which was surprisingly fun...we were all close to vomiting by the end of the day so mission accomplished, I suppose)
*Reading the following books by A.J. Jacobs which I highly recommend-The Know It All, The Year of Living Biblically, and The Guinea Pig Diaries
*Making black raspberry pulled pork BBQ...um delicious
*Biting all of my fingernails off

Well, I took my boards this morning and now have to wait for the results. I had lots of big plans for today but feel way too worried to move or go anywhere. I feel like if I go and enjoy myself its like I'm saying I know I passed, which I don't, and I don't want to jinx anything. I guess I can go and do something I don't enjoy which would keep me busy as well as prevent any jinxing from occurring. Ideas? All I've got so far is laundry and working out, both perfectly anti-fun ideas.

Cheers to 23

It all started with breakfast in bed. This consisted of a well-mixed Carnation Instant breakfast from my husband who thinks he's awfully clever (which he is from time-to-time). I then went out to run errands in the morning and was surprised by a phone call from Rob that he was taking the afternoon off to hang out with me. Super exciting considering his appearances lately have been rare and usually only consist of a short lunch at home and maybe an hour for dinner in the evening (and by dinner of course I mean a protein shake/cheese stick...the cooking thing hasn't really caught on yet). So he told me I could pick our activities for the day and so naturally we both went and got pedicures. Rob was new to the experience and but ended up approving with his only qualm being that he was "weirded out a little."

We hung out for the rest of the day and I suppose I just talked and talked and talked which is one of my favorite things to do, and since it was my birthday I think Rob tried to muster more attention for the many things I had to share (which as always is greatly appreciated). For dinner I remembered that I had gone to the Aquarium in Houston when I was 18 and had dinner inside a fish-tank restaurant. In my head, it had been the most delicious food ever and a very exciting meal. Rob was skeptical, as he is prone to be, but I insisted and off we went. Well. When they valeted our car it was parked out of site in a corner, my assumption is that it was too offensive to be parked out front. When we arrived inside we were greeted by plastic fish decor and swarms of small children. The food was pretty mediocre and nothing compared to what I had remembered it being those 5 years ago. Rob had some sort of sweet and sour fish while I had trout stuffed with what seemed to be remarkably similar to Stouffer's Stovetop and my promised scallops added up to only one. While I was still enjoying watching the giant fish, eels, and stingrays in the fish-tank my lovely evening was suddenly disrupted with a party of 5 for a 16th birthday. She wore a crown accompanied with a light-up sash. I felt like she was sucking the celebration out of my birthday, making me feel, for the first time in my life, too old for an establishment.

Rob and I escaped the sad scene and we laughed as we told the valet to just give us our keys since he had only parked our car about 30 feet away in the bushes. We then rented a terrible Adam Sandler movie to finish off the evening and went to bed. Lessons that I learned? I love having a day dedicated to my birth. Also, people think we have a crappy car. Rob, this once was justified in his skepticism of a magical-under-the-sea-birthday-celebration. And most importantly, I picked a really good husband.

Home Sweet Home

When I come home (to MD, which is where I am right now) I spend a lot of time wandering around the house examining things, seeing if anything is different and what has stayed the same. Sometimes it's fun to see what rooms or nooks have been altered to accommodate the nieces and nephew (just one little guy so far, and he's pretty small and can't really do much but we keep him around). The one thing that always stays the same though is chores. My mom had an unconventional style of divvying up tasks growing up. She would leave very specific instructions on a paper plate. A plate for each child marked J, D, Kj, and K. A paper plate...who knew not everyone kept their "to-do's" on a paper plate carefully propped between two candles? I guess I thought this was common practice. Maybe this is just an example of a desperate mother pleading with her children to do something, anything, just please, I don't even have the energy to write this note out on anything other than a used paper plate that one of you probably unmercifully tossed on the floor after dinner. Or maybe she thought it would get our attention better than the traditional pre-made "To-Do" pads that hang on the fridge. Probably a good thing because children and teens tend to be much more interested in what's inside the fridge rather than what's on it.

Anyway today I was instructed to clean the kitchen, and pick up the living room (also to police our Memorial day event and strictly prohibit all brownie and ice cream consumption on her "good" couches...which can get confusing because my mom doesn't really have what you would call a "bad" couch). Very unlike my childhood, these days I'm happy to oblige. First of all, I love to clean and my parent's house, being quite a bit larger than any apartment I've ever owned, offers up this grand sense of satisfaction after a good cleaning. Also, I think, well crap, my mom has been cleaning up clothes, hairbrushes, polly-pockets (are those still around?), her Clinique toner and blush (that made my Barbies look natural yet still classy) so many times how will I ever catch up? Since Rob and I don't have babies yet (to everyone's great dismay, yeah, yeah) we don't have the leverage of bringing a drooling, little tot of a thing home to help them forget all the times they ended up finishing my paper-plate list. And since I'm probably past the point where I can trace my hand on construction paper and scribble something about always being their little girl I will just have to go back to the basics, a good tidying-up, especially if it isn't my mess, small gifts sans painted macaroni and some old-fashioned flattery.

Schedule of Events

5 more weeks
5 more clinicals
4 more exams
1 more paper
1 more project
...and then I will be shipping off to beautiful Miami with Rob and some friends the day after graduation to celebrate.
...and then off to take granddaddy exam and 4 hours later I will officially be Kasey Anderson, RN (hopefully). Oh and there will be some studying in between all of that but it makes me nervous to mention it.

Once I graduate I plan on the following: observing the cultural differences between Houston and Austin via restaurants and shopping facilities, finally freaking learning how to sew, choosing a few new friends to replace the homeless man in the dumpster outside who never fails to keep me company on cold, dark mornings. Maybe cooking dinner again...I don't know, I don't want to get too crazy too soon. Embracing the 100 degree, 100% humidity which will be sure to lend my hair to fit in with the rest of the Houston crowd, learning how to incorporate phrases like "fixin to" and "up the street, there" into my every day vocab and finally, something I've needed to spend some time on for a while now...learn how to read a map. I never know where I am. Ever. Am I north, south, east, west...really? I have no idea. I'm going somewhere, on some street and who knows to be sure if I'm even in the same state. It's sad really, and I mean for me, because I feel so sad when I am lost ALL the time. I'm determined to minimize the amount of time I spend wandering the highways of Houston every day. And maybe you think, no, thats a great way to learn how to get around, WRONG. I'm not scared to drive the same street every day for 3 days in a row and still not make the connection that it is in fact, the same street, ever time. I'm so ashamed.

When couples have babies their blogs die and go to baby blog heaven. Maybe one day I'll appreciate it, but for now, its just one extra space on my google reader up for grabs!

Also I graduate May 11...whaaat?!

And I'm moving to Houston

So...cyaaa

If everyone would just stop with all the crack...

Brain talk

This morning I went to a Stroke conference. The speaker was incredibly knowledgeable and I was definitely interested for the first hour. It was after that when things started to go downhill.

It all started with my water cup (it says, "K-Beezie, keep it easy" which is one of Rob's favorite things to say)...


You know, and then they went on about some stuff about tPA and I started slowly losing focus (I was handing these out to my peers near me who were also slowly slipping into the abyss that is a 4 hour lecture)...


And then the slides on the power point could not GET any less interesting...



...and then came time to talk about different research and how to "snare clots" so naturally only this came to mind...



Well and then by the end...



So anyway, I learned a lot...

Tsk tsk

Worked my first Sat overnight shift in the ER. I've worked Fri and Sun nights, but Saturdays...oh Saturdays.

I saw things nobody should ever have to see. Lots of X, lots of fighting, and lots of the root phrase, "well I was just out drinking and then..."

Let me oblige you with some of the follow ups to that phrase:

-I don't know how I ended up in the back of that car and my clothes just weren't there, but I didn't take them off. I didn't do anything!

-I took off my shoe cause I was so mad and I just started hitting her with it. (stilleto-shoe-brawl...makes for quite the bloody mess)

-we went to this paint party and I thought he was offering an Altoid, I didn't know it was X.

-the next thing I knew I was in the woods.

-where am I?

-please don't call my dad!

Its 76 degrees here.

p.s. Rob is a great study partner because he's the only one I know who can sit in a room with your for hours and not speak. I get a lot done, until I get lonely and decide to blog.

Once I get my internet back I swear I'll be better at posting. For now, here's an update:
-The semester has begun and I think its going alright, we'll see. There's a lot of stupid applying for your license/boards etc. But I graduate May 11, so there's that!
-I had a nightmare I have cavities in every single bottom tooth, it was traumatizing
-Rob has started his new job and I don't really know anything about it...but if anything noteworthy comes up I'll try and share.
-All I do is work and school so everything I see reminds me of something in healthcare, I'm hoping that will go away eventually.

That's pretty much it. Pretty lame.