Where to begin, where to start...

First of all, let me apologize to my legion of fans (like, all 8 of you) for being MIA. School started and next thing I knew, it was 4 weeks into the semester and I haven't gone on and on about how flipping AWESOME second semester is! It is the absolute best!!! I can chalk it up to nothing more than answered prayer, so if you happen to be one of those praying for me- thank you, thank you. So like I've stated, where do I start? I will attempt to summarize the last 4 weeks in quick 1-2 sentence fashion. Yeah, we'll see how THAT goes...

School.
Did I say that it is going AWESOME? I have way more confidence and feel so much more comfortable in the medical setting. I have been taking care of patients for the last 3 weeks and I've been blessed to have a great patient every week. I'm at Saddleback Hospital in Laguna Hills and it's big and crawling with Saddleback Nursing grads, so they remember exactly what we're going through. I've learned how to start IV's, and I've already had a community health rotation in which I spent a day on an outpatient unit, prepping people for surgery and pleasant procedures like colonoscopies. Ewww. But it was good times. And there's no drama! It's like I walked out of 1st semester and left the drama behind. Sigh. So nice.

Super Bowl.
Flipping Patriots, man. What the crap? I throw the first party of our married life, we had a huge turnout, and I even bought a Patriots balloon for the front door... and they freaking tanked! Is it bad that everytime the Eli Manning Disneyland commercial comes on, I curl up into a ball, pull the hood of my sweatshirt over my head and cover my ears until its over? I hate the Mannings. All of them. Grrr.

My sweet little garden.
It's so cute. Like I say, some people have kids or puppies, I have a garden. This past weekend, I had an experience that I can only describe as female caveman. I provided for the household. Since, Thanksgiving, I've assumed that I had 4 broccoli plants. Well, on Friday I discovered that two of the large BUSHES were not broccoli, but arugula lettuce. Two, ginormous bushes. We had so much lettuce, I've given some away. I've now added serrano peppers, lavendar, butternut squash, some more herbs and we're working on radishes, take 3. Once again, my sproutlings did not survive. Which leads me to...

The escalation of the rat situation.
I realize that most people do not want to read the detailed play-by-play of my tangles with vermin. But tensions are high and the situation has escalated. The rats have not abided by the no entry law I have established, so I have been forced to take things to Defcon 2. That's right. Rat poison. Little, black trays of turquoise , anti-coagulating death. And I don't even feel bad. During halftime of the Super Bowl we don't speak of, I noticed the missing sproutlings. By Tuesday, I had re-created the rat-trap minefield and put out the poison trays. By Wednesday, one of my snappy traps had done its job. Me-2, rats- 0. Damn rats.

That about sums up the highlights of my last few weeks. And looking back, I seriously need to get a life. I'm pathetic.