Frat parties and toddler breakfasts.

This is the scene every morning in my garden now.  It's like my vegetables have been raging all night long and this is the aftermath.  Frat party sponsored by the cucumbers!!

Actually, this is my pathetic attempt to keep the soon to be terminated rat(s) away from my precious seedlings until they're too big to mess with.  I took dixie cups, cut holes in to allow for air circulation, and placed them over the seedlings.  It looks ridiculous, but when I'm eating my own lettuce in 2 months, it will all seem worth it.

On a totally unrelated note...

First off, let me say that for all my snarky yet affectionate stories about the Tall One- I love him to death.  Can't get enough of him, really sad he's leaving me for 10 days to go have fun at the El Sal house.  And surf 80 degree water.  And drink Bahias w/ lime while floating in the pool.  Anyway, that being said- he submarined my pre-exam breakfast this morning. 

I have to buy two kinds of milk in our house- nonfat for me, 1% for him.  I get a lot of flack for the nonfat, about how it's milk flavored water, not real milk, blah, blah, blah.  Well, he ran out of his milk and decided to drink the rest of mine last night- only I didn't know.  So I get up for my first OB exam, that has been driving me nuts for about a week and causing me headaches, pour myself some Cheerios and top them off with banana, open the fridge to get the milk and... all we got is cherry juice, OJ and margarita mix.  I even considered for about 3 seconds taking the remaining 1/4 cup of fat free half & half and diluting it with water, but decided I had my limits.

So I went to the corner market to get a little one serving carton.  They're sold out!!!!  And I'm out of time.  So while driving to school, I got in touch with my inner toddler and proceeded to eat my Cheerios and bananas dry, with my fingers.  I started out with the three digit combo of thumb-forefinger-middle finger, but by the end it was all fingers, just cramming it in.  Good times.  And I bought more milk after class.

FRAT PARTY!!!

RAT FARTS!!

Dammit, the rats are back.  

I have lost 3 spinach plants, 4 lettuce plants and 4 broccoli.  In two days.  I'm so mad I could spit nails.

My food!!!!!  MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE!!!!!!!!!

They're dead.  So.  Dead.

***9:30pm Update***

This season's rat(s) apparently like(s) bleu cheese, because that's all I had and when I came home I found two traps debaited and still locked and loaded.  I don't care if I have to use $10 Gruyere cheese (what economic downturn?)- death is imminent.

Cloud of funk.

Remember on the old Peanuts cartoons, where stymied and frustrated characters (mostly good ol' Charlie Brown) sat around with scowls and gray squiggles and scribbles above them?  That's me today.  I'm in a funk.

It's my first week of 8 weeks of OB.  I have a great, enthusiastic and hilarious instructor and pretty cool people in my clinical group.  I'll be at Saddleback Memorial in Laguna Hills which has quite possibly the best computer charting system on the planet.  And minus the whole "we have to wear goggles during childbirth because the RN's know when and where to move to avoid flying body fluids- we don't" thing, I'm not too over clinical yet.  However, I did watch a video clip of a C-section and dang- that was disgusting.  Miracle of childbirth???  For anybody thinking that a C-section won't hurt as much as childbirth- you should see what they do to your abdomen to get a baby out.  

And then... I found out that I've lost priority for registration and I won't register for almost 2 weeks after spring 2009 registration opens, meaning my clinical choices are limited.  Worse, I had some rude, rude, rude lady in admissions and records treat me like dirt when I just tried to get answers.  I wasn't demanding she change it.  I wasn't even blaming her.  But she was rude, unwilling to help and treated me as if I was a waste of her time.  Hey, if you can't handle your job well- perhaps you should get a new one?

And then... I came home and my ridiculous neighbor insisted on adding Bob Marley to my musical hate list by playing the Legend album incessantly.

And then... my unexplained allergic reaction/possible spider bites on my hand refused to get better.

And then... the Tall One blew off my text message about aforementioned allergic reaction because he thought I wasn't serious and that it was ridiculous.

I'm an itchy, blister-bearing, Bob Marley-hating, late-registering pile of self pity.  I'm going to go find a corner and go eat worms.  God knows there are plenty in my garden to keep me full.

Your tax dollars at work.

Apparently, God had a lawsuit pending against Him recently and since there is no address to serve notice, it has been dropped.

The plaintiff in this lawsuit is a Nebraska senator.  I don't know a lot about Nebraska beyond that they are big into corn, it's fricking cold in the winter and they turn out some pretty stellar college football teams (because really, in Nebraska, is there much else to do other than play football?).  Now, I know that Nebraska citizens voluntarily vote into office some pretty bored individuals with a divine grudge, a little too much expendable income and some staggeringly weird logic.

If I was one of that guy's constituents, I'd be pretty much bummed to know that my taxes were helping a guy pursue legal action against a deity.   

I love internet news stories.

Say hi to ya mother for me.

It's totally inexplicable, but every time I watch this it makes me start silently laughing and I can't breathe.  And it almost makes me tear up I'm laughing so hard.

Perhaps it is still 1983 somewhere.

I just came across this story and I'm pretty much speechless.  And not in a good way.  

If you're too timepressed to read the quick news note, it states that South Africa's new health minister effectively ended 10 years of an "ostrich head in the sand" stance on AIDS by stating that HIV causes AIDS and must be treated with conventional medicine.  The former health minister and president have for a decade denied any sort of link between HIV and AIDS, denying that HIV is the cause.

What?!?

How many people around the world and how many millions of dollars have gone into research... and you're going to mislead an entire country and tell them that there is no link between HIV and AIDS???  That AIDS can be treated with garlic, lemon juice and beetroot?!?

I find this incredible.  These are the people running countries and running the health programs of those countries and you know what they have to show for it?  An estimated 5.4 MILLION people with HIV, the highest amount of people living with the virus in the world.

Now, I make a lot of backhanded comments about people when they make idiotic comments about HIV/AIDS (like vocalizing that an entire school in Zambia has AIDS just because many are orphans of AIDS and they're in Africa... in front of some of the students) and when they ask things like "So um, I can't get it from like, shaking their hands, right, it has to be blood, right?" I huff and puff about how this isn't 1983 and we don't have to wear gloves and masks to say hi, and I roll my eyes and shoot people my withering glance that I often don't know I'm sending.  For God's sake, this is America and we have lots of education and medical resources... we can't even make sure our citizens are aware of this?!?  If only so that we don't sound completely detached and ignorant of something a majority of the world struggles with?  And here is another country- totally in the dark about this virus.  And it's 2008.  But you want to know the difference?  In South Africa, scholars and medical professionals can now breathe a sigh of relief that they can now talk about the truth without fear and threats against them from the government.  

What's our excuse?

Save the Pubs!

Did you know that in Britain, 5 pubs go out of business every day?!?  Newsweek doesn't lie.  This is just sad.  Senseless.  Preventable.  

Forget going "green", saving Trestles (at least for a few minutes), or trying to decide which candidate is going to screw up our country less- think of all those lonely pubs, struggling to stay open.  Travesty.  

Sniffle, sniffle.

It's 3pm and I haven't studied!!!!

Yeah, new look for the blog!  It pretty much reflects the hippie road I find myself going further down.  And it's now almost 3pm and I haven't even flipped over a flashcard.

Yeaaaah....

Aaaaaaaaaaap-paloosa.

I saw a kick ass movie last night.  

We, along with the newly bikeless Sohns (their beautiful beachcruisers were stolen about a week ago- don't get me going on that) went to see Appaloosa last night.  Now, I haven't seen a western in a theatre (obviously pronounced thee-a-tray) since Tombstone, and it's not really my genre.  Actually, I wasn't sure which movie came out last- Tombstone or Young Guns II.  Thanks to IMDB.com, we can all rest assured that Tombstone was the later movie, released in 1993, while YGII came out in 1990.  Hmmmm.  Moving on...

Anyway, Appaloosa was totally entertaining.  And who knew Aragorn from Lord of the Rings could kills orcs AND cowboys?!?  He can!!!  Amazing.  There is a low point, and that happened about 15 minutes or so into the movie when Renee Zellweger got off the train and ruined the token chick role.  Her face usually looks excessively scrunched up and painful- in this it was even more so but also dried and tanned.  Positively awful.  In one scene, she asks Aragorn if he thinks she's pretty and there's a pause and I said out loud, "No."  That elicited an elbow shove from the Tall One.  It was like a cruel joke when she entered the movie, I felt sneak-attacked.  I knew Aragorn and the Mission Control dude from Apollo 13 were in it, but I did NOT see RZ coming.

So go on out and see the movie.  It's pretty stinking funny, we were laughing about half the movie- but we were the only ones laughing.  There were some great one-liners, and it was like nobody was getting it!  It felt like when I saw Pride & Prejuidice with my brainiac girlfriends and we were cracking up and nobody else was because they couldn't understand British humor and there's no such thing as British-American subtitles.  Sigh.  

It's funny, I promise.

Study-schmudy.

That's not OJ in that glass! So, is it a bad thing that I'm drinking mimosas at 3pm while studying up childhood immunization schedules and preventable childhood diseases?

Since I've calculated that I can essentially get a D on my final and still get a B in my class, my motivation to study is at an all-time low. There's so many better and funner things to do. Like going for a run. Checking out your suburban farm. Killing caterpillars. Making awesome grilled cheese sandwiches. Need I go on? Since I have a full brain and am unable to learn about diseases we can vaccinate against, I got some things to clear out of my head- make some room for useless knowledge.

This is my first ever apple pie.  I made it, and it was good.  I bought the apples in Oak Glen last week, since I couldn't pick them because Monday is apparently "Ghost Town" day in Oak Glen and they don't do U-pick Mondays or Tuesdays.  I'm not still bitter.  Anyway, my mom gave me the recipe and I think there were less than 10 ingredients in this whole thing.  It was easy, the smell while it was baking filled the house and it was a hit.  I've still got half a bag of Pippin apples left, I think this weekend will see Apple Pie 2.0.

I'm not even a Dodger fan, but their refusal to play baseball while in Philadelphia is angering me.  I'm rooting for them- do something!!!!!!  I think they're down by 50 in the 4th.

I think it's an even trade that if the Tall One is going to DVR freaking UFC/Ultimate Fighter crap, I get to DVR Charmed whenever I want to.

Best grilled cheese sandwiches EVER:

Lightly cover two slices of bread w/ mayo, put some cheese on one side and some fresh diced jalapeno pepper.  Cover with other slice and zap it into the microwave for about 20 sec.  Sprinkle some grated cheese in a skillet that is fully warmed at exactly medium heat, and sprinkle some crushed red pepper seeds in the cheese.  Put the sandwich on top of the cheese and let it cook until the outside cheese doesn't stick to the pan and the inside cheese starts to melt.  Repeat with other side. 

Surfing will ALWAYS be more fun than running.

I hate studying. 

Nightmare on Med Error St.

It's official. After 2.5 semester of nursing school, it's finally starting to get to me. I can deal with sleepless nights from school, worrying about clinical the next day or an upcoming test. But now I'm starting to have nightmares. Of the nursing kind.

The first time was last weekend. I dreamt that I had given an antibiotic through an IV, but hadn't done any of my safety checks and just went into the patient's room, hung the IV bag and gave the medicine. To a child. Not that it makes it any better if it's an adult, I'm just terrified of killing children. A short while later (still in my dream), the stupidity of my actions dawned on me and I proceeded to have a meltdown. I had to come over the mental loudspeaker in my dream world and tell myself to wake up because I didn't need that kind of stress. And I was- I was starting to stress out in a real physiological way about something that never actually took place. I woke up with my heart pounding and I had to sit and think for a few seconds to remind myself that what just happened really didn't happen.

And that brings me to last night. Sometime in between midnight and 5am, I had my second medication error nightmare. In this one, I again grabbed an IV antibiotic out of the fridge (we like 'em cold, sometimes) and didn't bother checking names or anything like that and set it up for my patient to receive it over 30 minutes. At about 26 minutes (I can STILL see the IV pump machine screen in my head!) I decided to actually read the IV bag and I realized that not only was it the wrong patient, but my patient was getting twice the potassium that he was supposed to (which is bad, google high potassium levels and you'll know why). And that should've been my first clue- the pharmacy doesn't put potassium in antibiotic bags. But I was dreaming, so that was beyond me at that point. And this time, I took it one step further. In my dream, I tried to calculate how much extra potassium I'd given my patient and some other stuff, before my sub-sub-subconscious saved me and told me to wake up again. Math. While sleeping. Sigh.

So, I'm pretty freaked out. I've never had a med error. You don't get to your third semester of nursing school making med errors. And now twice in one week, I've done it in my dreams. I'm really hoping this isn't some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Needless to say, my instructor made sure I gave meds with her today and not with my nurse.

And on a side note, my mom phoned me from Mt. Rushmore this afternoon. Being the red/white/blue blooded proud American that I am, I promptly asked which four presidents are depicted at Mt. Rushmore, because I have no idea. I have to know the immunization schedule for children, 12 congenital heart defects and about 90 other common childhood conditions for my final on Wednesday- there's no way I have room in my head for the presidents featured on some mountain in South Dakota. And what's sadder- I was only 100% sure with Washington and Lincoln, and I guessed on Roosevelt. She phoned me back minutes after we hung up to tell me it's composed of Washington, Lincoln, Reagan and Bush. I called her a liar. I hope she knows I was kidding.

Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Jefferson. There, now my brain is totally full.

Lightning bolts from heaven.

Don't be near standing water, trees or metal poles while viewing this video.  Rubber soled shoes might not be a bad idea either.

Save your soul, and still play rock 'n' roll. Or ska. Ska will work, too.

Zap!