some tunes

GIRL TALK.
Molly @ Orangette linked this (Thank you!) It is so fun and also...free.

Oh weather. You!

I am off tomorrow but my roommate is not and I have a job interview in the afternoon -- plus all these people I like (like some of you! :) ) are not off tomorrow and I work Tuesday, early morn, as usual. As the weather talk got rollin' (Ice! up to 18" of snow! ahh!!) I found myself sliding in there into panic mode as well (har har) and then after awhile, while sitting in a steaming hot bath (see? post-bath high here) I talked myself out of that and realized I was wasting an awful lot of energy on worrying about the weather which I sure can't control! I thought..but what if I can't get to work and they get mad at me?! I'm sure I'll get to work fine but I truly do hate driving in the nasty. Before 2005 when I bought my wee car I always had 4-wheel drive. I drove an F150 truck. ha. Anyway, where was I? Weather, gonna try not to worry about it and just be careful.

Aside:  I love carnivaly, circusy looking things. Esp .
old ones.

The new Decemberists album is great!
Also, coffee. Beautiful. I look forward to it.

I daydream about naps sometimes.

Went to see the twinnies today. They are 9 days old now! They're still in the NICU but doing well, breastfeeding with a little breastmilk through their feeding tubes too. BFF is doing awesome but I can't imagine how hard this is. She's juggling her 2 older kids, spending days in the NICU feeding/pumping/feeding/pumping/pumping/pumping and the 2 older kids miss their mom and she misses them and she wants to spend time with the babies and...wow. I'm sure she's exhausted.

In other news, I sent in an application to be a substitute school nurse and I have a job interview tomorrow at a pediatrician's office. I think I'm done with floor nursing for awhile. Perhaps in the future I will do some certification to be a lactation consultant or maybe learn massage therapy so I can do some post-partum care goodness. I still think pregnancy/labor/delivery/etc. is magic but the hospital tears me I struggle feeling like the enemy at the hospital. I struggle with the assembly line'ness it has at times. I want it to remain magic for me. When I think about getting out of the hospital this very tangible feeling of relief washes over me. I do not MIND working. It's this..chaos/life&death stress/myassisonfire stress that is no fun.

This'll be a happy post!

This is my first day of a little stretch of a few days off so that always mean the world is rosy and filled to the brim with possibility. Now the day before I go to work for a stretch of days? Apocalypse.

This morning I've been looking at my "America's Test Kitchen" cookbook (I love that book) for some instruction on making awesome apple pie. Thursday is Roommate's birthday. He'll be 31, like me! He prefers birthday pie to cake. He usually gets key lime pie but I think he's getting tired of that birthday ritual a bit.

When I woke up this morning I was immediately excited to come downstairs, get a cup of coffee and a pile of books. I've been wallowing in "The Backyard Homestead" on these cold days. My mom and dad always had two huge gardens. We had an insane amount of homegrown food for ourselves to eat, preserve (can/freeze/etc.) and share with others. I'm only now realizing how much my mom knows in the way of growing and old farmer tricks and natural gardening methods. She's amazing and I am sooo excited to own this wee rectangle that we can start planting on!

I got totally distracted writing this because Beebs got up and we talked awhile and I got more coffee and..alas. Last week, BFF had her twin girls at 34 wks 1 day. They weighed 4 lb 1 oz and 4 lb 10 oz. They are tiny and lovely. They'll be in the NICU a couple weeks. After being in and out of the hospital with her a couple times I ended up missing the birth. I was so sad! She was alone when they were born. Can you imagine? I mean, hospital personnel were with her but no family or anything. I can't believe I missed it. She let me know she was dilated to an 8 and we were racing to the hospital (Beebs and I) and it was about 30-40 minutes after she was an 8, she was done pushing and the girls were here!

So babies at work, babies with BFF, pie, days off, Roommate's Birthday! Yes!

Ideas. Jobstorming.

There's a Dr's office down the street -- I could walk to work.
Post-partum helper lady?
Look into massage therapy - egh - school sucks and I don't really want to pay for it right now.
Thought about staying home to watch BFF's twins instead of them going to daycare but..I don't know.
Stay at home mom for awhile?  no, not yet.
work at whole foods?
see if morning glory espresso is hiring?

More stolen minutes after the 0300 hour.

Oh hey. Roommate is behind me snoring like nobody's business. I mean..wow. 
I'm just up ordering a few goodies for BFF's babies. They have made us think they were coming several times now but are still working on their land lungs so gooo babies!! She's lacking in items for twin girls so seriously, if you have any gear I might be able to buy from you, let me know! She's also looking for bunk beds for her two older kids (4&5)!

Roommate's job situation is changing slightly which could allow mine to change. Ready.

What is it about hats with ears that is sooo irresistible?
I got BFF some long sleeved onesies from Old Navy that are priced from $2.97-3.00.  Not bad!

This snoring is about to kill me. gah.

Stayin' up late..again!

Being off work has perked me up inside and that's probably why I'm been posting here.  I feel a little bit more like myself.  I've been staying up late after the fam goes to bed and doing a few productive things and a few relaxing things.  Feels good. 

Tonight for our bedtime wind down relax time we looked through photos of Beebs with her.  She loves that.  There were a few videos of her at like 8 months old and she was totally mesmerized.  She kept asking "What I'm doing?"  Our response was mostly BEING CUTE!  aha.  There was one of her feeding herself yogurt and she just wanted to watch it over and over and over.  I must admit..it is super cute!  She got a ton of new books from fam for Christmas and we got her The Story Tree CD with Hugh Lupton and we happened to get a huge bag of books at the library the other day so bedtime has been fun with so many books to choose from!  I'm glad she enjoys books so much at this point.  Beebs also likes for us to make up stories in the dark.  She usually requests one about a green monster and a purple monster.  Sometimes I find myself trying to be as outlandish as possible and totally drawing a blank.  Like..the sky's the limit!  Crazy detail and uh.....I can't think of anything!  Must utilize that part of my brain more often apparently!

Tonight I was baking granola after we'd had dinner and Roommate and Beebs were sitting on the floor in the living room playing and I felt like such a sap that all of that made me so delightfully happy.  Could someone pay me for being here and soaking that up?

What do you think my first kinship dinner night should be like?  I was trying to truly think of something very me..not worrying about what's like..I don't know..cool or planned out just sort of like..what kind of dinner gathering would I feel comfortable at and enjoy? 

Tomorrow, err..today..Monday, is my last day off work since I had surgery and all that crap.  OH being home has just been so great.  I am sad to go back to work. 

Oh!  One last thing.  I hadn't really found a listening-to-music solution that worked well for us here at home.  I had missed filling the house with music since we use portable devices to play music..our phones/ipods.  I bought some speakers from Amazon and they are fantastic!!  The sound is full and wonderful!  Right now they're in the kitchen and we've been enjoying them so much!  I can link if you're interested.  I don't know what you do for music at home..we're kind of behind the times a bit but I'll say these speakers are perfect for us! 

Careful if it gets snowy. 

Oh hey, just lookin' at tote bags.

I KNOW.  TOTE BAGS.  Absurd, right?  I mean, ooooh, tote bags!  They used to be lame..now they're cool?  I don't know.  We used to carry stuff in them and then we stopped, err..our moms did and then we didn't and now we do?  I don't know.  My mom had this GREAT tote bag when I was younger, bright yellow with kermit the frog.  She loved it, I loved it and at my old house it got ruined in our flooded basement.  Sad.  Everything old is new again?  I was looking at tote bags that are made out of old feed sacks.  I'm a sucker for stuff like that.  I seriously kind of get high off of looking at things like homemade tote bags and etsy stuff and gardening stuff and organic tea and people that are vegan and bees!  Oh, I love to read about bees.  My mom wants to become a beekeeper out there on her little farm and go for it, Mom!  My mom would still just love for us to move out there on a little corner of her farm and how can I not but..for some reason I don't think I can?  It would probably change my whole life for the better.  I could quit my job and stay home with babies.  Heh.  That'd be awesome.  And I could have chickens and my mom could school me on her MAD, crazy awesome gardening skills and we could be backyard homesteaders and that'd be...awesome.  I just don't know about Beebs bein' out there where the worldview is smaller...not that we can't expand her worldview/s, etc. but something about moving out there doesn't sit well with me.  Part of it sits very naturally and part of it
just feels like an old life that isn't healthy and good?  Does that make sense? 

In my college English class my Sr. year of high school I always got dinged for not starting/stopping paragraphs appropriately.  I'd blab and blab and blab and it'd be this enormous paragraph.  I do that here.  See?  I KNOW.

OH.  I remember why I started this post!  gah.  Here we go.  So a few nights ago I was up late and alone while my family slept and I felt super lonely because I am always with my family or at work and when I do have alone time I most always feel like it is sooo super lovely.  I mean, just that time like up a little before anyone else and drinking some coffee alone, you know?  It doesn't take much of it to send me into a little bit of lonely land, I guess?  Anyway..I was up late and just feeling kind of abandoned by people that once felt like friends and definitely feeling that fair weather friend vibe -- like the friends I've had were the type that might hang out with me when they were super bored on a Tuesday night but the weekends were always occupied by their actual friends.  Just over that, ya'know?  I'd LOVE to hang out with some people that invite me to shit because they want me there and I'm not the recipient of yet another last minute oh crap, guess we have to invite them invites.  Those blow.  I get those, I give those, I know, it's stupid!  So I decided I should stop being a pansy cry-baby lonely face and make some plans.  I never invite anyone to do anything and here I am sitting at home alone feeling like a pud because nobody invites me to do anything.  All that to say, last night err, now it's Saturday morning technically so a couple nights ago I had drinks with a friend and her friend and it was just lovely.  I was INVITED.  It felt good to just be in the company of others and hear what's going on in their lives and feel connected with other humans.  Then today Beebs and I had a wee bit of a playdate with a super fun kid and his mom, a lovely person I used to work with on my old unit.  We went to Cupcakes A La Mode and that whole Town Center area makes me feel like I'm on a movie set but the cupcakes were tasty and the kids had fun.  What IS that place?  It's weird. 

I know I've mentioned it a few times on Twitter and I'm being weird about it but my friends, the sisters, whose brother died?  It has really shaken me up.  He was 33 and tomorrow is his funeral -- his 34th birthday as well.  Can you imagine his mama?  Her son's birthday and she's burying him?  Life is soo unpredictable.  All the poetic stuff you've heard a million times is just..true about life being short and all that.  It is.  He was on vacation, life was good and in a totally freak, awful accident, he died.  His family is so devastated.

I wrote a friend and was talking about that tonight because sometimes when I'm with Beebs and I start imagining if I lost her.  I see people that lose their children and I wonder, if I lost her, how would I go on?  Major love to those of you that have and do.  You are amazing.  I am being a complete Debbie Downer but how can I spend time in a job I feel all stressed out about when this life is indeed so short!  Or do my coping mechanisms just suck or what?  Life coach anyone?  I know, pffftt but srsly.  meep.

I don't read blogs very often anymore and I miss you guys!  There are some blogs I recently checked back in on and I'm like OMG, of course you're pregnant!  6 months?!

Oh also guess what I did this evening while we gorged ourselves on episodes of The Pacific (which I really, really enjoyed and actually my knowledge of history pretty much doubled just from Roommate's input when asked for it).  I really need an 8th grade history class.  Like most of us maybe.  Or a lot of us.  So the thing I did, this is SO indulgent but I bought some meyer lemons because at my favorite Price Chopper on Roe, the one right by my house, they had bags of them on sale and hey o!  Yes, please!  A tarty little lemon lady makes love to a sweet mandarin orange and voila!  Baby Meyer.  MMmmm!!  I put some in a glass of water!  I know!!  Meyer lemons are supposed to be preserved into something magic like a dessert or a something but I just wanted to EAT IT and my hands are still flat out perfumed from that lemon.  SO GOOD.

A couple more days then back to work.  Did I already type out how I'm stressing about it?  We're having a "get-together" towards the end of the month -- all of the new people at a non-new person's house and involves charge nurses and our director and I feel like it might be a brain washing thing but I was thinking maybe I'll drop the bomb at that get together that I don't think I'm cut out to be a labor & delivery nurse.  Whaddya think?  Can a person just be honest like that and I'll work awhile longer and find my way into something else and leave or can a person not be honest like that without repercussions?  What kind of repercussions come from that?  Maybe I could receive some honest feedback and input into whether or not that is the case or not?  I think probably only I truly know but maybe I haven't given it enough time?  I know that I haven't but I have a sneaking suspicion I will still hold this opinion months from now.

After the funeral I'm going to my mom's tomorrow.  She went to the visitation tonight with my Beebs.  Tomorrow we'll play and have dinner together.


Feels good to write some bits here even if they're the same bits I've thrown up here before just jumbled up a bit.

We found that owl hidden in our yard after we moved here.  I LOVE owls.

In my backyard with a towel on my head.

These are my little post-bath outdoor shots with my non-focusing camera.  I couldn't email them with my last post so here goes. 

Posting via email for the first time. Hi!

I'm waiting for Blogger to load..it doesn't seem to be working properly.  I opened up Notepad and started typing.  It made me laugh because when I opened it and started typing the font was enormous and it was wingdings because that's what I open for Beebs when she comes to me and tells me she has a lot of work to do. 

The other day, New Year's Day it was, the day was so strange.  I don't know, just felt ordinary but not ordinary at all and I was tired and anyway..  In the early evening I finished reading the novel Midwives.  I liked it very much.  I loved how much the main character loved being a midwife.  It made me long for that same feeling.  I thought I might feel that in labor & delivery and boy do I get worn out thinking about explaining how I feel about my job (again!).  The thing is, I'm sittin' on the fence.  I honestly cannot imagine myself giving birth to my baby at home (ok maybe I can a little bit) but I also am not that person that schedules their induction and walks in requesting an epidural.  I'm somewhere in the middle.  My first birth turned out SO stereotypical.  If you're a person that reads birth stories online, there are lots of cases of X happened the first time (often a failed induction that ends in a c-section) and next time I want X.  Now that I work in labor & delivery I feel so conflicted at work.  I'm looking for a place to work that is a happy medium like I am.  We have a lot of patients that have complicated pregnancies so that adds to it but it is definitely the minority I work with that come in and have a birth with the least amount of interventions as possible.  I had a delivery a few weeks ago with a family that went for an unmedicated delivery and it was just..so fun!  I also get tired of the stress!  ha.  We pit pit pit and the baby's like F YOU and then...I calmly have an anxiety attack.  haha.  Hey, speakin' of...I think I want some medication for that?  What do you think?  I don't have full-blown panic attacks but the level of anxiety I feel over everyday things like..my job seems unhealthy?

That was a long paragraph! 
OH, haha..that day I was going to post this, I was so high off my hot bath.  Hilarious.  I am absurd.  I ran myself this hot hot bath with peppermint soap and lavender oil.  I also had new shampoo to try that Roommate got me from my wish list (absurd, I know! but it was like..real shampoo not $2 suave stuff and..eee!!).  So after that bath I was hot and I love smelling all that good naturaly stuff - just makes me feel earthy and hippie-ish.  I love it!  So I got dressed, put my towel on my hair and went outside.  It was cold but it felt awesome and the air smelled so...airy!  I took some random photos, composing a blog post in my head and planning to put some random photos.  It was starting to get dark outside and my toddler has dropped the camera so many times that it no longer focuses.  I don't know what to do about it!  I've only had it a year.  I've started looking to see what kind of cameras other ppl are using online - ppl whose photos I love!  Any recommendations?  I know, typical, asking for a camera rec but..I need one.  I need to work some overtime too, shoot.

I bought a couple rugs.  Would you like to see the one I chose for Beebs' room?  I saw it and was like oh, there it is.  It looks like the typical popular stuff right now but meh, whatevs, I love it!  It shipped fast and I think it'll be here by the weekend!  Had trouble finding the link so please note, I linked to the 8' x 11' and I bought the 5' x 8' and it was $157 which I think was honestly a very reasonable price! 

I've sorta drifted in train of thought so I'll stop typing now. 

thinking about..

Have been composing a post in my head since NY day when I finished the novel Midwives. Keep doing these short little blurbs from my phone so I'll post soon, like it or not, about midwives and some birth bits in general. You hangin in there?

keepin at it.

Have spent the last day with bff in hospital. Got too tired and dehydrated. Am home now for a rest. She is in preterm labor. Thank goodness I'm off since I was in the hospital...blessing because it has allowed me to be with bff and my friends whose brother died..tragically last week..his body is still not back in the states. So worn out. This has all been crazy!! Just..so much. Head spinning. Ok though.

I think my job hates me.

Really - this whole surgery scheduled before Christmas, off through the holidays bit, yikes.  Ahh well.

I think being away from work has helped me realize just how great my family is and how much I love, love, love being around them.  I can't believe how much I miss my kid while I'm at work.  I really do think I need to keep pressing on and work towards getting a new sort of job, out of the hospital. 

This morning I am so excited to make us a big, late breakfast! 
The only animal Beebs EVER has on Old McDonald's farm is a duck.  It's always quack quack here and quack quack there! 

Roommate will turn 31 this month!  I started birthday shopping for him today.  Fun!  I think I'll make him a birthday pie this year.  Don't tell him. 

Happy New Year to you!  I hope you felt good, whatever you did.  It seems like a lot of people were eager to stay in this year.  I was.  I think 2010 has been hard on a lot of people?  Or just...we're all kind of worn out right now?  Here's to an energy boost if ya need it.  (I do!)