Happy Thanksgiving!

I love Thanksgiving. I am so thankful for a husband that loves to cook, especially cook Thanksgiving dinner. He has perfected at least 2 different kinds of turkeys. You can find our "Ultimate Thanksgiving" menu at techkitchen.com The dressing is great. It is cooked in the crockpot all day freeing up the coveted space in the oven. The turkey is always brined. Mashed potatoes are sometimes chunky and sometimes creamy, just depends on who is making them. Green bean casserole is a must. This year we are trying Alton Brown's (from the food network) recipe for making the green bean casserole by frying our own onions and making our own cream sauce with real mushrooms. That's exciting!

I worry for Thanksgiving sometimes. It seems to get dwarfed as a holiday by Halloween and Christmas, which seems to be starting earlier and earlier every year. Don't get me wrong. I love Christmas just as much, but while society has perverted Christmas by taking attention away from the true meaning of the holiday, Thanksgiving has maintained its meaning of being thankful for the founders of the country and thankful for those in our lives whom we love and care about. A time to count our blessings.

It is for that reason I write this entry. Not to talk about food, or complain about the commercialization of Christmas, (I'll save that for another entry) It is to let all who read my blog know that I am thankful for each and everyone of you. Thankful that by caring about the little and big things that are important to me, you therefore care about me.

Shutters!!

Wow! Has it really been nearly a month since I've blogged? How lame am I? A big thing happened this weekend. After 2 years of being in this house and having tacky looking window coverings, we finally had shutters put on a few of our key windows.



This is the dining room. The window is HUGE! I love that I can open the blinds and get lots of sunshine without feeling like everyone can see in, since the window is in the front of the house. I will take a picture of the rest of the room once we finish it. We still need to hang things on the walls, but we need to put our baseboards in first. Then I will post more pictures of the room.



This is the mushroom room. This one is on the side of the house, but it is the one window that the sun beats down on ALL DAY LONG! Even today when it was probably only about 70 degrees outside, when I felt the shutter it still felt warm. Imagine how much that shutter is going to keep the room cooler in the summer. Take note of the red phone on the dresser in this room. Nathan got the phone for free, painted it red and bought a red cord. All under $10. We call it the batman phone.



This one is in the guest room. This window is also in the front of the house.

Fire Season

The 16 or so fires that are burning all around us right now are a reminder of how there isn't a fall season here. It's replaced with Fire season. All this week temperatures are supposed to be in the 90s. Sunday, when the Santa Ana winds were blowing like crazy, everyone knew fire would be a problem.

For any of you wondering, we are surrounded by fires, but we ourselves are not near any danger. The Malibu fires are WAY North of us. (a few hours away) There is a fire along the toll roads we take into Orange County. (about 40 minutes away) There is a fire up in the mountains where we spent some time last weekend. The most devastating and astounding fire is in the San Diego area which is about an hour away. There are multiple fires there and when you look at a map of where all the fires are, San Diego is surrounded. We have friends down there that are safe for now, but have housed some relatives that were evacuated. The only thing that affects us is the extremely poor air quality from all the smoke. A lot of people have decided to leave the area completely and go to Las Vegas or Arizona for the week. Please keep everyone in your prayers.

Happy Birthday, Micayla!

I never thought this day would arrive. My youngest sister turned 18 today. For some reason, I always called her "kid" while we were growing up. I still call her kid to this day and I probably always will.

I still remember one day when she was only a month old, everyone else had gone outside to play in the snow and go down to the frozen creek. I was watching Micayla and she fell asleep on my chest. Anyone that has ever had this happened, knows what a great feeling it is. She was so tiny!

It's also fun to think about what an older sister can make a younger sister do. There was the stage of, "she's my cute little sister." When she was 4 years old I used to make her sing songs for all of my friends. "God is bigger than the boogieman" and "We all live in the yellow submarine" were 2 of the favorites.

Then there was the time that she would be my little servant. The best was in the summer when it was really hot outside. I had her trained to get me a glass of water. Not just any glass of water, a "glass of water in a glass glass with 2 ice cubes" No more. No less.

Then, when she was 10 years old, just starting to discover who she was herself, I moved away and have missed seeing her grow up all these years. I still go back to visit and am amazed at how old and grown up she is. If there is one piece of advice I can give her. "Don't be so fast to grow up. You'll be there before you know it"

Love you, Kid and Happy Birthday!

Forever Friends

Strange how friends come and go. It all depends on what decisions are made in life and where those decisions take us.

One of my best friends from high school got married this weekend. I was blessed to be able to attend Nicole's wedding. It was a very short trip, but worth every minute and every penny. I flew out Friday morning and arrived in Minneapolis spending the evening with my family and touring a cousin's newly purchased home.

Saturday morning I met up with another good friend, Sara, from high school to drive up to the wedding with her and her mom. I have not seen Sara since she came out for my wedding 5 years ago! Strange to be on a road I have not been on for a good 10 years. The drive up to the cities gave us a chance to chitchat and catch up.

The wedding was beautiful. It was in a chapel on a college campus requiring no additional decoration. Being that it was October, the wedding colors were brown and cream and were perfect being that it is technically fall. Even though I think the high temperature that day was almost 90 degrees. (warmer than it was in CA) The leaves have not really changed. My friend was beautiful. The dress was perfect for her and she looked great. It was fun to see her family again.

Through Jr. High and High School all of my friends were Catholic. The wedding ceremony had a mass service which brought back all kinds of memories of a Catholic retreat I went to in Jr. High. (This is the trip where the infamous "peeing in a cup" story comes from) That story is really my all-time favorite "Angi story"

The wedding was at 11:00 and the reception wasn't until 5:00, so we went out to eat with my cousin and her boyfriend. They went off and did their own thing after lunch while we went to get a pedicure and check into our hotel for the night. The reception was at a beautiful historic home on Summit Ave. Dinner was fantastic and it was fun to once again chit chat and reminisce.

It's good to know that while the 3 of us are not as close as those days through High school. Miles separate us with one in Tennessee and the other in Florida, we will always be friends even if from a distance. We had a lot of drama through those years (what girls didn't in high school?) We had a our spats and wondered if we would ever be friends again, but here we were attending her wedding. Seeing what a great man she is marrying and getting teary-eyed knowing that while a lot has changed in 10 years, the joy and happiness we want for each other hasn't. And I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

We have a patient on the unit that can be exhausting. She loves all of us on the unit. She is in her early teens and has some delays. Her voice is loud and carries extremely well. Unfortunately, she is in isolation and not allowed to come out of her room, so she stands at the door all day long watching and commenting on everything going on. She can be heard all over the unit. We are constantly reminding her to use her inside voice. She talks to anyone that will listen. "what's your name?" "What are you doing?" "where are you going?" Once she learns someone's name, she starts to say phrases like "I love you...so and so" "I like your hair" "I like your shirt" "you're nice" "you're cool" "you're silly" "what did you have for lunch" She asked me that 5 times one day and each time I said "What did I say the last time you asked me? (we just had an earthquake!)


The other day she was cracking me up. She knows the housekeeper and janitor's names. When she sees them, she knows what their job is and continually reminds them something needs to be done and won't leave it alone until it is done. The janitor walked by to empty her linen. She saw him and wheeled the hamper outside her door for him before he even finished walking down the hallway.

The other thing that cracked me up. After coming out of one of my patient's rooms, she informed me that another nurse was looking for me. You can't hide from her. She sees everything. If it wasn't for HIPPA I would totally video tape her for a few minutes.

As much as she gives me a good chuckle, and for as annoyingly loud as her voice can get. I have to admit she makes me feel good about myself. Even though I know I am the 10th person she told that day "I like your hair", it still feels special to have her say it. Every time she tells me she loves me, it never gets old.

Happy Birthday Annalía!

My sister's little girl Annalía turns one today. Here is a picture from this summer when my entire family spent a few days on a lake.

Here is Kylie catching a fish with Josiah looking on.
Here's some more that have my other sister's kids in them. Elyssa is the same age as Annalía and Abrielle is now in Kindergarten.


I really like the one with them on the dock. Too bad Kylie wasn't in that picture with Abrielle and Josiah.

Now for some exciting news. We had 2 little earthquakes this morning. There was a bigger one in the same area on August 2nd. I was in San Diego that morning and still felt it. They say Earthquakes don't happen any particular time of the year, but in my short time here in California, it seems that they always happen in Sept or Oct. When the weather is about to cool off.

Hodgepodge

We have been working on the house a lot over the last month. A friend of ours has helped and done a lot of the work himself, with Nathan helping when he could. We now have window sills on most of our windows, painted a few rooms and put 5 inch baseboards in with crown molding in what we are calling the mushroom room. We finally put tile in for our back splash in the kitchen. It looks a lot better than the ripped dry wall we had for the longest time, that's for sure. Our white appliances look a little funny right now, but...that will just have to wait for now.

We have our last 3 windows on order and as soon as those get replaced, we will be able to put in shutters to cover 4 windows. Unfortunately by the time that gets done, the 105 degree weather will be gone. Until next summer anyway:-)

We are also in the middle of painting the dining room. I'll post pictures when all this other stuff is completed. I'm hoping before October, but we'll see :)





Monday night (tuesday morning) we stayed up late to watch the lunar eclipse. OK...Nathan stayed up to watch the lunar eclipse and woke me up at the beginning, middle and end. We actually only watched it go to a full eclipse, but didn't stay to watch it go back. A friend of ours described it accurately saying that watching an eclipse confirms that the Earth is moving. Watching it made me vaguely remember watching one on our deck late at night when I was a kid.

Carpooling

A co-worker of mine lives fairly close to us and we've often seen each other on the road on the way to work. She is soon going to be living even closer so we have talked about carpooling. Our hospital has a carpooling program where you can get 5 gallon per month gas vouchers. That's about $15 a month in gas. There is also a section of the parking structure, with prime parking spots, reserved for carpoolers. It's tempting.

This morning I called to look into the program and was disappointed. It appears that the program is designed more to alleviate the parking structure congestion during the week than to encourage helping the environment by carpooling. A few of the "rules" to receive the gas voucher through carpooling is that we would need to drive together 2 out of the 3 days we work. This won't be too difficult as long as we can get the scheduler to work with us.

Here are all the rules to receive the voucher:

1. Must drive together 2 out of the 3 days we work a week
2. Must start work between 6am-10am (we start at 7am)
3. The days you drive do not count if it is a weekend (we work every 3rd weekend)


This bothered me. This means that people working nights and weekends can't benefit from carpooling. Good thing I work days, but... I'm still bothered.

Late Night (or is it early morning?) Musings

Well, I can't sleep and you all get to suffer from it (or benefit) depending on how you look at it. I appear to have pink eye. I was suspicious yesterday when the corner of my eye seemed a little more red than it usually does. Then, I woke up a couple hours ago with that classic crusty, pus stuff. So, I called into work and now my Saturday will be spent at urgent care for eye drops so that maybe I can go to work on Sunday. It will be pushing the 24 hours on eye drops rule before returning to work, but we'll see how it goes.

All things causing me to be up right now can be blamed on Nathan:

1. A couple weeks ago he had pink eye. I was trying to figure out what I hadn't touched in that time that I touched recently. Then I realized I have been driving his truck the last couple of days. Mystery solved.

2. I am driving his truck while he has my car in San Diego for Comicon. Something about my little Corolla getting better gas mileage than his honkin' Tacoma truck.

3. He is not in bed with me and therefore I can't go back to sleep.

I would get up and be productive, but anyone that really knows me, knows that once I am in bed, I don't get out of bed for anything (yes, even to urinate...I hold it) and that obsession was reinforced tonight when I heard strange noices that I couldn't identify. I figure as long as I stay in bed, the boogieman can't get me. This will inevitably cause a problem when the goop in my eye gets so thick, I will need to add a warm compress to my eye.

There's a plus to not going to work tomorrow. I don't have even the slightest chance of being assigned to a patient that I politely refer to as a "pistol." I won't get into it. I will just say "grrrr" and move on.

The upside to anticipating a 3+ hour wait at Urgent Care is I can finally read the book I've been wanting to read "Angels and Demons." I am not going to read it now for obvious reasons. #1 it's in the living room #2 Its a dark, scary book.

OK the red battery light is blinking and yep, the charger is in the other room. My time is up.

Goodnight!

Gotta Love SoCal

Here's a story that doesn't involve a patient. I was at lunch at work and there were a few other nurses in the lounge. I can't remember what our conversation was, but out of nowhere a nurse said:

"I saw a llama for the first time the other day"

We all were silent waiting for more and wondering at the same time where she was going with this, so someone asked:

"where did you see a llama?"

With such enthusiasm in her voice she said: "The Orange County fair!"

I still don't know why it was so funny.

Cute, Yet Simple Story

At work today I was the circulating nurse which basically means I didn't have a list of my own and just went around and helped anyone that needed it. I heard a medication infusion pump beeping, so I went into the room and saw that the medication was finished and needed a saline flush. I wanted to know what fluids the medication was connected to because the patient had both TPN and regular IV fluids running. So, I thought outloud "where is this going?" The 5 year old patient looked at me and said "It's going in me" That made my day and I was still chuckling hours later.

Roadtripping

We just got home from a roadtrip to MN to see my family. It has been a long time since we've been on a roadtrip. We had a great time. We accomplished a lot of things in the 10 days we were gone. The theme of the trip on our way out was Sonic. (I love how they have tator tots!) Nathan had all the Sonics mapped out along I-80 and I-70. Our first stop was Arches National Park in Utah. Then, we stopped in Denver to visit a childhood friend of mine that I hadn't seen in years. After that, we ventured onto Lincoln, NE to visit more friends. Then, we spent the next night in St. Paul, MN with my cousin and drove up the next morning to meet my family to stay on a lake and do some fishing. Fun stuff.



After spending a few days with my family, we drove down to WI for both a family reunion and a friend's wedding. Once again having a great time seeing people I hadn't seen in years. The trip back was much faster. We left after the wedding and drove to St. Louis. We arrived around 1am, drove up to the arch and decided to keep driving to get a hotel room. We woke up the next morning and had an early lunch getting St. Louis BBQ. Then we drove a few more hours and stopped in Kansas City to compare the BBQ there. No offense, St. Louis, but I think I like Kansas City BBQ better. After that, we pretty much just kept driving (got pulled over in the middle of Kansas and got a speeding ticket...oops) Nathan didn't want to miss the midnight showing of Transformers. He looked up theaters and we found one in Denver that had a midnight showing. Bought our tickets and had really good seats. It was awesome by the way. We drove for a few more hours after that and stopped early morning to rest for a few hours. We arrived home Tuesday evening.

Race Across America

Our friends are participating in Race Across America (RAAM) again this year. We joined them last year serving as crew for the race. Last year we raced with team ViaSat. This year they are racing with the Northcoast cycling team. They've been at it for almost 24 hours. They are in 4th place right now out of 8. Looks like team ViaSat is right behind them. Team ViaSat is supposed to have live internet feeds again like last year, but is not up on their website so they must be having problems like we did last year. The Northcoast team has called Nathan a few times to go to the RAAM website and tell them what the standings are. Its crazy to think people bike all the way across the country and some people even do it solo. They are all stronger than I.

They have a blog that is updated periodically. If you are interested, visit here.

The race started in Oceanside, CA yesterday and ends in Atlantic City, NJ. If you're interested you can also track their standings here

Every now and then I wish we had made time to join them this year, then reality sets in and I remember how stressful it was and am just as happy watching from the sidelines.

Updated backyard

I talked about the backyard for so long I thought it would be wrong not to show a picture of the grass all grown in. And good news...the dove eggs in our patio hatched. It was fun having the nest there. There was always a bird sitting on the nest and every few hours, they would "change guards" as one bird flew in the other would fly out.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today is my Dad's birthday. This picture was taken almost 5 years ago. I guess its time to get an updated picture of me and Dad. If any of you know my dad, saying that he is a quiet man is incorrect. He may be "soft spoken" and a "man of few words" but his actions always speak a thousand words.

I always enjoyed watching my dad watch M*A*S*H* reruns. He would sit in his chair and I wouldn't even know he was laughing until I looked over and saw him smiling while his whole upper body would bounce. He was always independent as I was growing up going about his day doing his thing. He worked at home a majority of the time, so he would get up early and do some work, eat some oatmeal, have some tea and get on with his day. He was usually the one driving us all over to sports practice, play practice or piano lessons. Just to come home, make dinner and stay up late at night working depending on what he needed to finish. He rarely asked us to help him. It was probably easier to just do it himself than to fight and argue trying to get us to do anything.

As I've grown up and started having adult responsibilities, I often regret not paying more attention to the things Dad did. He always had a pretty large garden and I never once helped him plant, weed or maintain the garden. I remember him canning, freezing and pickeling vegetables at the end of the summer. Can I tell you how he did it? Nope. I just remember husking the corn and cutting the corn off the cob. Somehow it involved a pressure cooker to can. He wouldn't have needed to say anything, if I had just watched him more clostly, I would know how to do it to this day.

Dad always has a creative way to get a point across. We kids were always leaving things on the floor. One time I remember Dad asking who picked up a quarter that had been on the floor. I don't remember who 'fessed up. But he asked why they didn't pick up the empty pop can that was next to the quarter. My dad had purposely placed the quarter there trying to prove the point that if someone was going to bother bending over to pick up a quarter, it shouldn't be any more difficult to pick up the pop can as well. I still think about that today as I'm tidying up.

The road we grew up on had horrible pavement with pot holes for a good mile. You couldn't drive on the road without hitting a million potholes. After a mile the pavement turned into gravel. There was a road sign at the end that warned drivers "Pavement Ends." My dad painted a sign and hung it below the sign that said "Thank God" Eventually they fixed the road.

Then recently, Sears did something to really disappoint Dad. He's been a faithful customer for years and when this issue happened, Sears wouldn't do anything to "make it right" or apologize. So he not only cut up his Sears credit card, he mailed it to them.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Tagged

Being tagged is sort of a love/hate relationship. I love that Meigan thought of me, yet I am not excited to come up with 8 facts/habits about myself.

1) Post the rules of the game.
2) Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3) People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things.
4) At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5) Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

1. My comfort food is grilled cheese sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, or cheese and crackers are you seeing the theme?

2. I remember when I learned huge life lessons. The first being, when I was about 5 or 6 years old. I wanted to wear earrings but my parents wouldn't let me get my ears pierced until I was 8 years old. So, at the store I saw some huge, gold, clip-on earrings and put them in my coat pocket. I walked around the store feeling terribly guilty knowing it was wrong to steal, so I finally put the earrings back. The second lesson learned is that smoking is bad for you. I was on a walk around 8 years old. I came across a used cigarette on the road. No joke, this is kind of embarassing. I picked it up and pretended I was holding it being all cool. The thing is, I didn't feel cool at all, in fact I felt really dirty. Hense...smoking is bad.

3. I have hairy toes and therefore...I shave them.

4. When eating chocolate (especially dark chocolate) I MUST have a glass of cold milk already poured before I put the chocolate in my mouth. Then I chew a little while savoring the chocolate. After that, I drink the milk until there is not a trace of chocolate left in my mouth. Yum!

5. I'm kind of a speed demon on the freeway. The way home from work is the worst. I'm in such a hurry to get home. I accelerate down the entrance ramp and quickly cross the 3 lanes of traffic positioning myself in the left hand lane. Which leads me to #6...

6. A couple weeks ago (again on my way home) I was turning right at a traffic light. As I approached the light I started to make a right on red. I thought I had stopped completely, but I don't know. It was dark and the cruel, hidious, obnoxious red light camera flashed. Blinding me, really. Did I get a ticket? I don't know. It's been over 2 weeks and I haven't received anything in the mail. They say if you don't hear within 2 weeks, you probably didn't get a ticket. But ever since, it's not much fun to get the mail dreading what might be in the mailbox.

7. I have a terrible habit of leaving lights on.

8. I am on a personal mission to change people's minds about peas. None of our close friends like peas. When I found that out, I asked if they've ever had peas fresh out of the garden. They said no. Right there a mission was born. So, I have a pea plant out in the garden and I have already had a few people try them and they admit that they are good. This isn't the time of year to plant them in California, so I hope to plant a few more in the fall and continue with my mission.

There. I did it. Now this wouldn't be a tag if I didn't tag someone so, KARLENE Tag, you're it!

If Elevators could speak

We started watching Grey's Anatomy this season after catching up on the previous seasons on DVD. The elevator on Grey's Anatomy is almost another character. Alot of things take place in the elevator, conversations, exchanges of looks, surgery (it is an unrealistic drama) and even silence. The elevators in my hospital tell a different story.

One of our main Staff elevators has been down for at least a month, if not more. (due to it being old and parts being difficult to come by) This makes the elevator right next to it slow being that everyone wants to get on this elevator. I choose to frequent the elevators around the corner. They go up faster and have less traffic on them. Today however, I may have been converted (ie forced) to taking the stairs for the rest of my nursing career.

I got in the elevator with a fellow co-worker and 4 other people. I pushed the #4 button. Up we went. Have I mentioned this elevator is super duper fast? It must be so fast that I think it got confused this morning. It shot up, then dropped what seemed to be a few feet, then went up a little bit more. We found ourselves up on the 5th floor (one floor higher than it was supposed to go) and I noticed the #4 light had turned off by this point. I looked at my co-worker and said "I think I can handle one flight of stairs down" So, we got out of the elevator, turned the corner and went down the stairs. For the first time I can remember in a long time, the elevator made me tachycardic, not the stairs.

So, now I'm wondering. Tomorrow morning, what do I do? Give the elevator another shot praying it was a freak thing and is fixed or do I just give in, do my body some good and take the stairs? Here's the problem. I am a creature of habit. I may intend to take the stairs tomorrow, but habit will most likely take over. I will park in my same spot in the parking structure, I will use the same outside door I always use. I will walk down the same hallway past the research labs, past the A level CT, past ER and onto the elevator I am so accostomed to taking in the morning without even thinking. Taking the stairs may not even occur to me until the elevator door opens and I get that Dejavu feeling.

Central Service

Every day on the way to work I pass a billboard for a hospital that features a new person every month. This month they are featuring a person that works in Central Service. (where all supplies for the hospital are kept) In quotes is the person saying "Everyone in the hospital is integral" I would agree with this wholeheartedly. Sometimes I wonder if the physicians realize how much goes into carrying out their orders. It might seem like the nurses just snap their fingers and its done, but it often takes a combined effort from a variety of people to carry out the order to completion.

Even the people I have never met, help me care for my patients. For example, Diane* in Central Service. I have never met her, but there is something that gets me super excited and relieved when I call down to central service for something (espeially when I'm not sure what it is exactly called) and I hear Diane 's raspy, most-likely a smoker voice answer. Our conversation always starts out the same.

"Central service, this is Diana, how may I help you"

I say "Hi, its Angi from 48. I need the thingee for the thingamajig that goes on the end of the whatchyamacalit. I'm not sure what it's called"

"you mean the..."

"yes, that's it"

"what room, hon?"

"4806 bed 1"

99% of the time, she knows exactly what I am talking about. If I don't realize something comes in multiple sizes, she knows exactly what sizes are available.

One of these days, I need to go down and introduce myself to Diane so I can see how accurate the picture in my head is.

*name has been changed

It's the Season

Signs of warm weather are all around. Last night, I turned on the air conditioner for the first time this season. Today Nathan showed me doves that have taken residence under our patio roof. Then, we went to our neighbor's garage sale and passed several garage sale/moving sale signs in the neighborhood. We also drove through our neighborhood and saw a group of teenagers out in the yard taking pictures before heading off to the prom. Then, this afternoon, the air and sky filled with smoke as we could smell a fire that was nearby. One of the pictures is ash that had fallen onto our concrete patio. I haven't seen the doves this afteroon and I hope the fire didn't drive them away forever.