On weddings

That one wedding where my nephew and I played the parents of my 3 little nieces aka his cousins

I think I have been subconsciously (or rather quite consciously...) planning my wedding for years now. And when I plan it, I don't usually plan it with a groom in mind. I usually just plan my wedding and there's an image in my mind where I'm standing in front of the officiant in the dress of my dreams with bouquet in hand, my arm raised above my head, because, hey, I just got married! As for the dude standing next to me, it is usually a black silhouette, a mystery man with his arm raised above his head also because he is equally happy he just got to marry me.

I think it's a combination of having such a large family that we've had at least one wedding to attend annually since 2005, and the fact that people slightly older than me that I still consider my "age" are starting to get married. It's crazy! And scary. But exciting! I just love the idea of party planning for all the most important people in your life, and looking totally effortlessly beautiful, and having such romantic vows, that even my Vietnamese relatives who are as emotionless as rocks can't help but bawl their eyes out. After, I will feed everyone and we will dance until someone breaks a piece of furniture and the venue kicks us out. Yes, I've thought about my wedding vows to black silhouette. Yes, my wedding is going to be a wild party. Yes, things will break.

I'm not saying I'm ready to get married; I am not even close to being ready to be married. I feel like I have been slowly getting little hints, like family or friends saying "you're next...", in a creepy little voice with eyes kind of scrunched and their shoulders hunched. I am definitely not next- I just love weddings. And when it actually comes the time that I do get married (years from now), I'm not going to care that much. It's not going to matter what I wore or whether the food was good, because I'm going to be so madly in love with black silhouette that I won't care about that infinite day, because it is only a brief celebration of what is going to last for the rest of my life! Right?! Just make sure I have a good photographer because anything can be shot to look like a good time.

Memorial day weekend part 2

Growing out of John's ear at Kerry Park

As with most weekends John is in town for, I had the most relaxing eventful weekend. Honestly, it felt like a vacation, where you're really busy because you're trying to soak everything up, but at the same time so relaxed. We did so much in 5 days that I am fighting off the resulting fatigue that is telling me to just close my eyes and drift off to sleep. When John comes, we're usually shuttling from his friends to his family and back to his friends so that he gets a chance to see everyone. It's fun, but exhausting!! We had to take turns driving because we'd be out all day, and it would be super tiring for one person to do all that driving. We also ate lots of Asian food because Kentucky lacks good Asian food and we had sushi for 4 meals this weekend! Ahh, what a tasty weekend. One thing we did not do this weekend was work. I don't know how I got away with it, but I'm sure it will bite me in the butt this week.

On Sunday, we attended John's friend's wedding reception at China Harbor, a big Chinese restaurant that sits on Lake Union. Too bad it was rainy all day- no one got to enjoy the giant porch that hangs over the lake! I got to see all of John's temple friends again although I really have trouble remembering all their names. Most of them have Vietnamese names that John pronounces in English, so all the names just sound foreign to me being that they're not quite English names, yet not quite Vietnamese. Also, I see them maybe 4 times a year, and I met 30 of them all at the same time, whereas they're meeting just me! I usually just smile and ask John to remind me everyone's name as we run into them. Anyway, this time, I was surprised how many names I could match to faces (I should make note cards with their faces on one side and their name on the back). Part of the reason was that John kept leaving me to go talk to other people, so I just ended up talking to whoever was sitting next to me which was always someone different, because no one was in their seat.

Ellen inspired selfie, though not as many famous people...

Whenever one of us has to fly back and away from each other, we try to plan something fun to do so that we're not moping around the house and letting goodbyes loom over our heads. Today we went to Discovery Park in Magnolia. It was a beautiful 65 degrees and sunny, perfect for a little city hike. I can't even believe this park is in Seattle city limits. There is so much green space and, I mean, that view. You can even see West Seattle from that place! 

Overlooking Puget Sound

A tiny little wildflower bouquet I made

P.S. John, thanks for coming to hang out! Can't wait to see you again!

Memorial Day Weekend part 1

Ohana in Belltown with John and Jenny

Next time I hang with Jenny, I need to step up my hair game

Because of awesome scheduling, I'm half way through my FOUR day weekend which started Thursday at 12:20 pm. So it's basically 4 and a half days. John flew in Thursday and his flight came early so I sat in class anxiously bouncing my leg and clicking my pen while he waited at the airport for me for an hour and a half. Oh, we've had so much fun already, I wish I could bottle up the next 2 days of fun and save it for a sad day!

Last night, we celebrated a friend's birthday at Bucca di Beppo. That place is so much fun. The decor is crazy Italian ecclectic and the food is family style which means you get to try a variety of dishes. Bucca has become a go-to restaurant for big get-togethers because the atmosphere is welcoming and they regularly accommodate huge groups so we don't feel like a huge burden on the poor waiter who has to has to serve 15 people that usually serves tables of 2-4. I always forget how delicious their pasta is. I never order pasta at restaurants so I am kinda, ehhh, when we decide to go to Bucca, but then I have a bite of pasta, and I am pleasantly reminded how tasty it is. After dinner, we went to a friend's apartment in Capitol Hill who had a pet garden snake. At first I was totally creeped out, until I got a closer look at his cute little face and his smooth shiny little scales! It also helped that he wasn't smelly. He was so cool, and yes, everyone did try to Britney Spears him. I wish he could've talked. I wonder if he liked me. Later that night, we ended up at 95 Slide where we saw EVERYONE. I ran into cousins and friends of cousins and friends of friends, and high school friends, and new friends. Blah, it was all just too much fun.

Carbo loading for nothing

Cool kids' car

Friends!

not!

Last day of MedSurg clinical

We survived, guys...

Wednesday was the last day of medsurg clinical. It feels so good to be done and to have one acute care clinical under our belt. It feels kind of surreal because part of me is not ready to say, "I'm in my 2nd (and final!) year of nursing school". Part of me feels like I don't want to ever leave the safety of school and another part of me feels like "I don't know anything yet!", but a third part of me thinks I need to make some money and pay off student loans.

The great thing about clinical groups is you become really close with the select few who are at the same hospital as you. In a cohort of 80-some people, it's nearly impossible to meet everyone in lecture, but clinical is small and intimate, and you are so out of your comfort zone that I think people bond over it. It might be having shared the common experience of a code brown or starting care plans only to find out your patient was discharged the second clinical day (AKA start over and throw out 4 hours of work). But I think it usually comes down to grumpy people- grumpy patients, grumpy nurses or grumpy family members. You bond over the fact that you dealt with the same grumpy nurse who saw hated having a student and talked about it in post-conference. It's like group therapy, only free. I really feel like there is a special connection within each clinical group because there's an understanding that each group has that the rest of the cohort doesn't. It's kind of weird to think that we're the only ones that got to experience this hospital, and that our group of 6 will never be together again (well, possibly in another clinical, but highly unlikely). 

I started to realize that nursing school is a different experience for every single student, even those from who go through the same program, and even more so than the nuances that students in other non-nursing programs experience. Sure, we all have the same classes to take and clinical to do, but all our clinicals are at different places, caring for different populations, working with different nurses, clinical instructors and patients. There is a lot of variability in each student's experience. It can become frustrating because sometimes it just seems like others are getting so much more out of clinical than you are. Some students are just in the right place at the right time and get all the patients needing an NG tube or a foley cath. I just remind myself all the time, "It's okay!". As long as I'm learning something still, I'm progressing and that's fine with me.

PS. I did a couple really cool things this quarter and I'm going to list the notable ones for my own memory's sake! I really need to write down these stories in a separate post, but for now I will list them so I'll remember: giving a suppository, dressing changes, taking out an NG tube, a serious code brown

UW Street Fair

Today I went to the UW street fair with great friends! The forecast was 30% rain so I spent all morning praying to the weather gods to hold back the rain until after I left the fair. And guess what? It worked. The rain fell on the rest of the fair go-ers 20 minutes after I stepped into my house.

Oh, fairs are so fun. There are babies and dogs everywhere, it's warm out, live music is on every street corner, and everywhere smells yummy. The entire street is closed off to traffic so everyone is free to roam around openly in the street. I always forget how much I love fairs until I'm at one at the beginning of the summer. This time, I got excited as soon as I saw the tops of the white vendor tents from 3 blocks away, and then even more giddy (and hungry) as soon I smelled the food. I love fair food. Everything is fried and fast, and there's a ton of different foods in one place. There's just something about fair lemonade and elephant ears, or a giant cube of fries and a foot-long corn dog. There are two challenges to eating fair food: 1) deciding what to eat, and 2) not getting too full too fast that I can't eat anymore. There's just so many things I want to try, and I never remember what I have tried before, so I really have no solution to my problem.

It's fair season, people, and I am stoked.

Jenny is really happy about some totchos.

^There is something about a man with a banjo... and mismatched socks and no shoes.^

^Kicking this elephant ear's butt^^

Smoothies

The weather this week has been so amazing! I've been sleeping with 1 (count it, ONE) blanket and waking up with a sticky face! Hooray, I am so ready for that beautiful hot weather so I can do fun stuff like paddleboard yoga with my roomie and simply be in the sun. I took two midterms Monday and Tuesday so after class yesterday I took a 30 minute walking detour on the way home yesterday because just because I could and I wanted to feel the sun on my skin. It was fabulous.

 Another thing I am excited for this summer is smoothies! My mom got a magic bullet from Costco for $35 that I am permanently borrowing. She has a Vitamix, so I feel no guilt borrowing this from her. I've been using the magic bullet for the past two weeks and it is totally awesome. Last summer, my old roomie had a blender, but it was always such a hassle because I'd have to clean the entire blender every time I used it and I'd always make too much smoothie resulting in feeling so full that it hurt and I would just lie down and wait for the abdominal pain to pass. I'm less lazy about making smoothies now because there's so much less to clean, it's easy to bring with me when I'm walking out the door and it makes the perfect amount for one person. I know I'm sounding like an advertisement, but yeah, I am.

I've been experimenting with things I can put in my smoothies. Sometimes I do carrots and kale and random veggies for a green (actually probably more like brown) smoothie, but usually I do fruits because it's so much yummier! Frozen berries and mangoes are easy because you can leave them in your freezer without worrying about them going bad, plus they keep your smoothie colder for longer. Also to keep things cold, refrigerate everything! That means all your fresh fruits, because warm smoothies are not very yummy. Other fun things I've been trying are chia seeds, coconut water (mmm potassium) and kombucha.

Also make sure to match your smoothie to your outfit

Happy hump day! Have a smoothie!

Busy busy busy

It's starting to feel like spring and I have been a busy little buzzing bee!!! I am so busy juggling all my assignments- I feel like I can only focus on what's coming the next day because if I look more than a week out, I get anxious and go watch a TV show instead... I think this is the quarter where I'm having a reality check and literally laughing out loud at all the nursing memes on the internet because ugh. That's all. Ugh.. I laughed out loud when I saw this. Maybe I am just tired, I don't know anymore.

I went to the farmer's market last weekend, and the food was so pretty I just have to post pictures. It's Friday which is my weekend, so that means studying and working. Hooray!

Handwritten notes

When John moved away, we started sending each other letters and cards through the mail. The ACTUAL mail, not Facebook or texts or email (although I really do enjoy getting emails that aren't work-related!). At first, we were really good at writing back and forth, but we don't write as regularly anymore which makes it even more exciting each time we do. Every time I look into the mailbox and see my name written out in John's scribbly hand writing, I get a giddy feeling in my gut before proceeding to rip apart the envelope. I have a smile on my face the whole time I am reading it. It's fun to see what card he chose that he thought I'd like or get a glimpse into John's head a couple days ago. With the internet and cell phones, everything else we do is very instant so it's nice to get a tiny time capsule.

I love writing the letters too. Since we talk on the phone regularly, we usually write to each other about little things like what we're doing at the moment and how the weather is. It's like journaling and I think it's therapeutic so I write them all the time, but maybe half of them never get sent because I get too lazy to send them and then forget what I wrote in them so I feel like I shouldn't send them anymore. I've been starting to address my letters in more fun ways. I feel like it makes letters feel even more like a present!

I wish I could post a picture of some of envelopes! But no, because it has real addresses on them.

I starting thinking about letters this week because I'd gotten a couple of birthday cards with little notes written inside that I truly adored! Also, I was pre-menstruating so I was probably hormonal and emotional, but really, most of my birthday cards were only a sentence or two and I loved them! I put them all up on my bulletin board in front of my desk as inspiration. I didn't really want anything for my birthday this year--- I figured I can buy myself anything that I really wanted, but I can't buy myself a sweet handwritten note from a friend. Also, I love reading handwriting!! I feel like everyone's handwriting has personality and all I ever read now is type! 'Happy birthday' in scribbles or cursive is way better than 'Happy birthday' in Times New Roman.

This is a little reminder to myself to write more birthday cards, no matter how short. I'm never too busy to scribble down a sweet sentence or two!

Another outfit ruined by nursing shoes

my pants were so neon they're white in this picture.

Today was May 1st and it was absolutely beautiful today! I woke up with greasy sweat on my face and the back of my neck sticky. It was a Seattle summer preview! The weather gods were saying, "hey, don't move away, remember this???" and reminded us with sunny 85 degree weather. I was not going to let this opportunity to wear cute close slip between my fingers, so I put on high waisted shorts and a peasant top, packed my scrubs in my backpack and headed for the door.... when I realized I had to wear nurse appropriate shoes. Damn it!

In terms of nurse shoes, I have Danskos and a pair of Nikes. I wear my Danskos to clinical because things in the hospital are disgusting and I want to be able to wipe away any crap that ends up on them with a bleach wipe. I wear my Nikes to the lab where everything is fake blood, urine or poop. Neither are cute if you are trying to be cute, and honestly, when is anyone ever not trying to be cute? Ugh. Because we were at the simulation lab today, I opted for the Nikes which made me feel like a 12-year-old boy (There's something about being 5 feet tall and wearing shorts, a t-shirt and tennis shoes with white socks that makes me feel like a little boy). So there goes another cute outfit ruined by nursing-appropriate footwear!

On another note, can I just gush about John for a second? John is so wonderful- he flew in last weekend just for my birthday. He even surprised me with a pet balloon (uh, obvious key to a girl's heart). He is smart, funny, and honest. He always answers his phone with an upbeat "Hi!", and he never yells (unless it's about sports). He can make friends with just about anybody. He is a man and a friend, he is my manfriend. Okay, enough, gross, sorry. 

Good night!

Kim Kardashian calls this a CÉLFIE