longest day ever

i wrote the national registered nurse exam last wednesday. it was pretty much what i expected. it was hard. and it was long. 7 hours long actually. thankfully it was all multiple choice, so my writing hand wasn't dead at the end of it, only my brain was.

i celebrated by going out and spending over $350 at sears and home depot on lovely things like drapery, curtain rods, wallpaper (yes, i said wallpaper) and, finally, a house number for our house. it was actually quite a lot of fun to spend so much money on long-awaited house stuff.

i had collected all sorts of wonderful things to buy a home depot, and at the register i am offered $20 off my purchase if i sign up for a home depot credit card. i want to say no. i don't want more cards. and it's 9 pm. i've been in the city since 7:30 am and written a 7-hour exam and my brain is mush and i still have to drive home tonight. but the mennonite in me wins out and i give in because i want $20 off. i fill out the stupid form and wait as the woman calls someone to process it. this takes forever. well, about 20 minutes. she comes back to me and says that the woman on the phone wants to speak to me. apparently, i have no credit history. what? i am grouchy. after bluntly asking her who she is and why i should give her my credit card number, i reluctantly comply. nope, no credit history comes up. i should give up at this point, but i can't know the future, so i don't know that i should just give up at this point. what's my previous address? still nothing. do i have a loan with a bank? i have a mortgage, i tell her. nope, no record. i somewhat rudely tell her that's impossible since i own a house and i know that my name is on the mortgage (i give her no more information than the name of the bank, which she can't even seem to find on file...). what's going on? i am not impressed at this time. all this for 20 bucks? i can tell by her voice that she's not impressed with me and frankly i really don't care. do i have any other bank loans. no. "no?" she sounds genuinely shocked. "no other bank loans? wow.... okay, that's unusual" she says to me. she tries to make me feel like an idiot, but i don't. i laugh and and respond grouchily back to her. i never really give her very much of my personal info. she's not happy when i refuse to tell her my SIN. i don't know her from a hole in the ground. she then puts me on hold for 15 minutes. i wonder at what point does one hang up and walk away. retrospectively, i should have given up at any one of these points along the way, but maybe, just maybe, this nightmare will be over soon and i can just go home and sleep.
eventually she gets back on the phone and wants to talk to the cashier again. after awhile, the cashier says to me that it's all okay and i've got my new home depot credit card and that i'll get my 20 bucks off. wow. thank you. soooo not worth it though. i plaster a fake smile on my face as i gather my packages and head home 45 minutes later than i planned.

on the other hand, i totally love my purchases!! i'll post a picture of our crazy wallpaper once it's on the wall. you'll just have to wait in eager anticipation. here are the lovely new drapes in our bedroom, which perfectly match the "chocolate fondue" walls:

and here's glimpse of the drapes in the living room. in the picture they look sheer, but they're not. they're more like a linen.

and just to impress my readers, here's a picture of me making an apple pie and a banana chocolate pie this thanksgiving weekend. yup, totally from scratch.

farmer's market

all summer there's a farmer's market once a week that i kept wanting to go to. all summer. but i would only remember about it after it closed, or on days i did remember, i was working until 8 pm.

but i finally got there today. and maybe i enjoyed it a bit too much. how can you resist all the fresh food, the colourful pumpkins and potatoes, pickles and pies. and where can one see a purple pepper, other than at a farmer's market? i learned that no, no one really eats indian corn, it just looks cool (as i thought, but i thought i had better ask). i was offered a sample of a fruit that looked like a white cherry tomato and was in fact in the tomato family. i can't remember the name, but it tasted much like a cherry tomato (something i'm not too fond of, but i didn't tell him that!). i couldn't resist buying the homemade strawberry peach jam, and somehow she also convinced me that my husband and i could easily polish off a dozen corn-on-the-cobs, instead of the half dozen i initially asked for. and when you find out the people selling the honey live in town and that the bee farm is actually within city limits - it's SO local, i couldn't not buy it. it feels so good to know that all your money (and not any more than what you'd pay in the store) is actually going to the farmers, not to some corporation.

well, it's time to go figure out what's for supper. i mean, besides corn-on-the-cob.

keep on learning

i've been working as a grad nurse now for all of 2 weeks. "how is it going?" i keep getting asked. "what's it like to not be a student anymore?" well, it's weird. i like it, but i don't really know what's expected of me. i spent 3 months working on this ward already, so i'm quite comfortable there. but i still can't really handle a full patient load on my own. i've done it a few times, but those have been very exhausting experiences, with my patients getting perhaps less than the quality care that they deserve. but see, i'm still supposed to be getting "orientated" to the ward. new nurses get a number of weeks of orientation. i got 2 days. i'm still technically in orientation, but i'm on my own, not buddied with anyone. do i know what i am doing? for the most part. when i don't know what i'm doing, do i ask someone? absolutely. if there's one thing i learned as a student, it's that you simply must abandon any hesitation, risk looking stupid, and just ask. ask a million questions, if you can think of that many. most people expect students to ask questions. of course, there are those out there who will make you feel stupid, and you quickly learn to avoid speaking to them at all. i have been blessed to be working on a ward with fantastic nurses. in all my training, i've never met such a great staff as the staff i work with now.

but i'm not a student anymore.

i still don't really know what's expected of me. yeah, i've been around for 3 months, but i'm still new at this! i have no idea how long i am being "oriented" for either, nor what that really means for me. i'm still just trying to understand and remember all the new things that i continue to learn each day. i feel like since i'm not a student anymore, i maybe shouldn't have so many questions. or maybe soon people will start saying, "she's been here for how long and doesn't know that yet?" whatever. i'm not a student. i'm not an RN. not until after the exam in october anyways. i'm a grad nurse. let me keep on learning.

burst forth into rejoicing

Nothing makes you think more about life - real life - than death. My Opa passed away this week, which has made me do a lot of thinking and brought forth a very mixed bag of emotions.

But one emotion surfaced quite unexpectedly for me. Anger.

I accepted his cancer diagnosis perhaps too easily, understanding that there was nothing they could do to treat it. Maybe it was the palliative nursing course I took only 10 months earlier, having no idea that theory would need to be put into practice so personally, so quickly. But I was not accepting it so easily today.

When I first saw my Opa in the open casket at the viewing yesterday, I was surprised at my initial response. I was mad. "That is not Opa!" was my first thought, which I whispered to my brother. I know, they never really look like how they looked when they were alive no matter how good the funeral home is. But that's not what I mean. I just couldn't believe it was him. Yes, I had seen him recently, watched as the disease destroyed his body in the past few months. But now he looked like any of the little old men that I would care for in the hospital, with the hollow face, bony cheeks, thin shoulders and oversized glasses.

Cancer had done this to him and it pissed me off. Opa was never a small, frail man. Cancer had sucked the life out of him. He was not bony, his glasses not too big (In fact, they were always too tight on his head. What had happened?). This man lying here, weighing literally half as much as he did last summer, was not my Opa, and I hated Cancer for doing this.

My anger was soon lost in the confusion of other emotions, which you can quite well imagine and I won't go into right now. But then today it resurfaced at the graveside. Once again, so mad that Cancer could come in so unexpectedly and destroy this wonderful life. How dare it. This was not Opa. But then it hit me. It WASN'T Opa. Yes, I had long realized that Opa was now in Heaven, this just being his earthly body left behind, but suddenly I knew what that meant. HE was gone. His soul, his very self, had escaped and left behind this shriveled shell.

I had to smile. I even had to laugh (inwardly). For Cancer and Death thought they had won, but in fact they did quite the opposite. They allowed Opa to be released from the confines of his earthly body. Cancer tried to crush him, Death, to destroy him. But my Opa is walking - running! - in heaven with his Creator, free from any walker or hospital bed that had just recently become the "normal" for this otherwise-healthy man. My anger dissolved into such joy.... How great it is to know that Jesus promises a fantastic Forever with Him, if we want it. And Opa was experiencing the gloriousness of it right now. That stirs up a longing in my heart. Despite, and because of, the evilness of Cancer, Opa was able to burst forth into rejoicing in the presence of his Maker.

If you're dreamin... about California.....

The other day we got back from....

Here's just a teeny glimpse of the fun we had. If you want to see the other 130 pictures, we'd love to show them to you some other time. We spent the majority of the time at Disneyland and California Adventure- sooooo much fun!! When I say the "majority" I mean that we got on the first shuttle in the morning and only left on the last or second last shuttle of the night. On our last day of our trip we spent 16.5 hours in The Happiest Place on Earth.




We made some new friends....


...went on a whole lot of amazingly fun rides....

...and had fantastic light shows every night.


One day we went to Pirate's Dinner Adventure, which boasts that it's the world's more interactive dinner theatre. Each section of the audience had a pirate to cheer for. It was super good, with lights, acrobats, sound effects, really good food and a gigantic pirate ship as the "stage". Oh and it was a musical!
this is us with Andre, our pirate.

We went to the Crystal Cathedral on Sunday morning. Yes, that's the pastor up at the front. Yes, that's a giant pipe organ, with more pipes in each wing and behind us. Yes, the walls are made of glass. And yes, there were fountains in the centre isle that would go off during climatic parts of the hymns.

We spent a glorious day at Huntington Beach, getting tossed about by the waves, watching surfers and getting a little bit sunburned.

We had a blast. And yes, it is definitely worth going to Disneyland without children. Even more so, we think, as had to endure other people's whiny kids waiting in line.

more excitement?

we just got back yesterday from a fantastic camping excursion at falcon lake. and i found out today that after my term position (which i will be working in the fall), i have a permanent position waiting for me!! yeah! no job interview, just a handing in of the little ol' resume. oh yeah, and a 3-month practicum of free labour which i am SO done. so i'll be leisuring through august with R and then starting my career as a grad nurse in september. i'll be working a 0.6, but with the current staff shortages, i have a feeling i'll be picking up a lot of shifts. i write the RN exam at the beginning of october and then i have a 0.8 position starting at the end of october! crazy crazy.

you asked for it....

....and here it is. some new house pictures! finally!

R paints the 12.5 foot ceiling in the entrance.

chris adds some "moroccan sands" to our bedroom wall. the other walls will be "chocolate fondue".

our "steel wool" bathroom. i'm excited to buy different coloured towels and change up the accent colour every now and then.

Our kitchen.....


...our kitchen with cabinets.....

.... moving into the kitchen......

...painting the ceiling in the kitchen....

.... adding some colour to the walls....

... the kitchen.


the living room. the walls here are a shade lighter than in the kitchen.

some equally exciting news is that I AM DONE MY SENIOR PRACTICUM!! this means that i'm done all my courses.... meaning i am DONE UNIVERSITY!!! YEAH! Wow.... i didn't really think that this time would ever truly truly come. but it did! and i met with my faculty adviser yesterday and i got an A! i don't know if i ever got an A in any of my clinicals, but i really feel like i deserved it this time. the thought of starting work, caring for a full patient load independently doesn't scare me at all anymore. (i've come a long way....) i'm now just waiting to hear back if i got the position i applied for on the ward i've been on for the last 3 months.

and some more equally exciting news is that i'm taking the rest of the summer off to hang out with my hunny. ....and this past week we bought our tickets for our trip to disneyland! how much excitement can one girl handle??