Last of the year!

Tada! Last post of the decade! Cool. I am now typing on my new computer. Awesome pants. It has a camera built in, but don't worry...I don't like the sound of my own voice. I highly doubt I will be posting videos here. In sad news though, my old computer is a butt head. Looks like I may have lost it all. Bub's Andrew is going to try to get stuff off for me over in London, but it doesn't look good. Sigh. That computer lasted me so long.

Congrats to my cousin Stephen and his wife Jen on the birth of Lucy Colleen! Dec 27th! baby! Fun fun.

Tonight for new years we are of course watching Gonzaga play. Then home with the parents and Bub for some champagne. It will be chill but good. I return to the land of satan on Sunday. Creighton isn't satan. Omaha is. Icky

What else have I done? Um...Grandpa's mass was good on the 23rd. Sad w/o Grandma though :( On the 24th we changed things up and had prime rib after mass. It. Was. So. Good. Christmas day was wonderful. Warm and yummy and full of love. Matt surprised me and came to Spokane on Monday. We hung out with the KTO (I really like that kid). He left yesterday via the big grey dog. I feel bad for him. He says the people on there smell and are crazy. Crazy. I had enough of them these past 2 months. I am excited to start surgery! Gotta keep up that attitude, or it could be a long 8 weeks. I'm all about the attitude. Let's do it!

Christmas Time!

I swear I wasn't ignoring all of you. My computer pooped out on me, so I was sharing Matt's with him. Turns out we aren't great at sharing. Plus I had to study. So...psych. While it was interesting and entertaining at time, it is not a field that I will be pursuing. While I strongly feel that the mind is so incredibly amazing and does some really cool stuff, I just can't work in a field where your odds on curing someone are so incredibly slim. To just change doses of medicines to see what off the wall thing the patient will say tomorrow doesn't sound like a fulfilling life to me. I am not knocking those in the field. Because those that I met were AWESOME at what they did. So much patience. Great ability to earn trust quickly. Infinitely broad knowledge of all those drugs that sound exactly alike. Good for them! We need them too!

As for the shelf, it went. I am never sure how I feel after these things. They say psych is hard to fail, hard to honor. For Creighton, to honor the shelf you need above the 85%-ile nationally. To fail, below the 5%-ile. Most shelves have those cut-offs. I think with psych though people vary so much in how they do that the percentiles are all over the place. Who knows.

I am now home! In spokane! No snow this year! Thank goodness. Omaha got dumped on 2 weeks ago (Matt got 3 snow days, I got 1). Spokane has a few small piles in places, but it has mostly been warm (40s) and rainy. Trust me, I will take this over 5 ft of snow any day.

The adventure of my flight home: I was to fly into Spokane on Saturday night, something I booked because I wanted more alone time with my parents. The rest of the siblings were to drive from Seattle on Sunday evening. Well, my flight out of Omaha was delayed to the point where I had to look like an idiot and run to my next flight. I barely made it. But I did! I was so proud of myself. We got the announcement that we were to land in 35 minutes through some fog. About 40 minutes later, I am wondering what is going on, because we didn't really seem to descend that much. Then bam, "due to fog, we are going to Portland." BLOW!!!! We land, they keep us on the plane for about 30minutes to figure out the plan. We get off. Another plane arrives that we may be able to use. Alas, all worker flight peoples would be over their hours!!!!!!!!! Ughs. Bring on the chartered buses! We left PDX at about 130am and got into GEG at about 730am. OMG. That took me back to my Regis basketball days. Needless to say, it was annoying. Unlike a majority of the people on the flight, I didn't get all up in arms. Yes, I was annoyed. But I knew there was nothing any of us could accomplish by getting mad. People standing in line all angry...you really don't think they thought about rebooking people in the morning? Or getting another flight crew? I don't like getting mad. It wasn't their fault. We legally couldn't land in Spokane in the situation. People were also taking it out on the bus drive. Again, not his fault. He probably was woken up from a nice little sleep he was having to come pick up our cranky butts. Nuff said. Okay, shopping to do. I update more. I swear!

Sigh

For those of you who read this and are related to me/know me...you know why I haven't updated.

I just finished my 6th week of Psych (out of 8). My first month was at the Residential Treatment Center for kids. Ages 6-18. I had great hours and got all the free diet Pepsi I could drink. None of these kids were out of control, and it gave me a lot of practical experience in interviewing. Still though, I should have accomplished more during those 4 weeks.

I am currently now on adult inpatient psych at Immanuel hospital. It is...interesting, exciting (at times), and....wow. Some times I just want to shake these people. The delusions, the psychotic, the violent, the suicidal. I definetly thank God everyday for a normal, working mind. The brain really is crazy in what it can and can't do. A delusion is a fixed, false belief in spite of evidence to the contrary. For anyone who has seen "Lars and the real girl," that is a perfect example. We had a patient who believed commercials were sending him messages. Problem is...his mom was feeding into his delusion. His wife was resisting but not in the best of ways. Needless to say he changed inpatient doctors. Wow. A patient also broke the glass around the nurses' station. Yeah psych!

Matt and I moved our TV over, which means we now have a full wall on which we can put seating. We are trying to find a chair to put over there. Problem is, neither of us likes to spend money. It isn't that we live paycheck to paycheck, but we just don't like to spend money. We are weird.

It feels good to update again, but I am still having a hard time. I struggle with sadness every day. I know I just have to take it one day at a time, but it still is hard. I ask that you all keep praying for my family. That we feel the loving embrace of God through every part of our day. That one day we all may be there dancing with Grandpa.

Peace

Sorry I'm not sorry

No updates for a while. I know. My grandma got sick, so I just haven't really been in the mood to update. Finished Peds. Started Psych. I will update more some other time. I took my Shelf early and then flew home Friday to see Grandma. Let's just keep praying for her and our family. Peace out

#200

I think this is my 200th post. Go me!

I am newly obsessed with mousse. No, not the stuff you put in your hair. Not the animal moose. The yummy yummy dessert. On Saturday Matt and I had his coworker and his fiance over for dinner. She has Celiacs, so I was trying to come up with something gluten free for dessert that wasn't too boring. Now, I know they can do some ice creams, but the one I know for sure (Tillamook Vanilla Bean) isn't available down here. Instead I decided to do a chocolate mousse that my cousin Jeff, the chef, suggested. I was nervous because I had never made a mousse. For some reason I thought it would be really hard like a souffle or something. Wrong. Pretty dang easily (with Jeff's directions at least). The chocolate mousse called for dark rum, but I looked it up and some Celiacs can't have it. Good thing I omitted it because she did confirm that she can't handle it. That would have been embarrassing. What else did I make you ask? Miso marinated fish (I need to find a better type of fish, and mirin, then it will be good), wasabi mashed potatoes (my new favorite), and DeDe's salad. mmmmmmm. It was great. My next food to tackle is....more mousse! I want to try peanut butter (with out it just being frosting) and pumpkin! Maybe this weekend.

As I have learned with cooking bacon, there are just some smells that like to linger. Bacon being one of them. Fish, alas, is one as well. Icky. It has kind of smelled fishy since Saturday even with lots of candles going. Ick. I would take the smell of bacon any day. ANY DAY!

Fall has hit Omaha. For about 2 weeks now we have had some pretty comfortable if not chilly temps. We went from the mid 70s (comfy) to the 50s (chilly). Problem is.....we may get frickin' snow this weekend!!!!!!!! I am not ready for that. It was 73 yesterday. Snow possible on Sat and Sun with highs in the mid 30s. Hello January! We skipped about 3 months there. A lot of people ask how fall is here. I think many judge a place on its fall. Or at least they pretend to. Lots of pretty colors? Nice temps? Well, Omaha sort of misses out on the colors of fall. Sad. And I think I figured out why. In Denver they sort of missed it because of the SUPER crazy weather. Here we miss it because it is so darn windy! The second a leaf dies just a little bit, it gets blown off the tree! Goodbye pretty colors!

Okay, time to go...do something.

Oh glorious outpatient

Hello to sleeping in and staying up to normal times! I just recently started (on Monday) outpatient pediatrics. We work 2 weeks in a community clinic, one week in the newborn nursery at Creighton, and one week in the Creighton peds clinic. I am on my 2 weeks in the community. And it is great. Not because I am enjoying the profession (not to say that I am not though either) but because of the hours. Her earliest patient is 10am. She had no scheduled morning patients today, so she just told me to come from 2 to 4pm. Woohoo. I spent the rest of the day being pretty productive though, which is good. I was really looking forward to outpatient as to get more studying done. And I am. Yay!

Matt and I went to a coworkers wedding on Friday. I know, Friday wedding...weird. I am assuming it is because they didn't want to miss the Husker's game. These people are insane. It was fun though. Really good food. The DJ kind of...stunk. The dance floor was totally not hoppin. I got to wear my little black dress, which is always fun.

I am really trying to think of other things I have done. And I can't think of anything. We went to a local sports bar for Sunday night football. The place was dead but pretty cool on the inside. Tons of TVs. Might be cool for March Madness. You know, I really do think of good things to say on here during the day. Good, deep, life changing comments, but by the time I get around to typing I have totally forgotten. Ughs. I am going to be way fun when I get old.

Slacker

Peds has kept me pretty busy. A bad excuse. But an excuse none the less. I finished up my calls last Thursday. Yay! Only 2 more inpatient days. Yay! It isn't that I haven't enjoyed it (it hasn't been that bad for me); it is just that I like things moving forward. I like feeling accomplished. We had Dimensions in Clinical Medicine on Friday. Lame. Matt and I are also going to a co-workers wedding that evening. It should be good times.

What have I been up to? Good question. Reading. Sleeping. Eating. Little working out. Repeat. This past weekend I went to go get my oil changed at which point they showed me my tire that was about to blow. Oops. So glad it didn't do that to us in Minneapolis. So then I had to go buy 2 new rear tires. It now smells like new tires in my garage. Ick. They also had to fix my alignment. Gosh darn car.

Other news? I am heading to Seattle after the Peds Shelf! Granted, all who read this probably know that. Still. Bub happened to be coming to the states, and with everyone else living close we thought, "might as well." I am excited.

I saw dog costumes at Target tonight. I miss my Guster. I wish we got trick or treaters here in the apartment. Sigh. Holidays aren't as fun when you are a young adult.

The weather finally cooled off (for 2 days at least). It has been in the 80s over the weekend, which is too hot in my opinion for September. And our pool is closed.

Anything else? Nope. Other than a resolution to update more often. I'll remember more that way.