Life should always be in bullet points

My life these past two weeks in 10 bullet points

• Celebrated Thanksgiving with my family after coming home from Arizona.
• Worked a ton.
• Moved into my new house!
• Picked a wedding date and have begun planning a wedding that will be very similar to this one.
• Am amazed at how a wedding as simple as that can still cause so much drama. Why do weddings make people crazy?
• Got sick... twice and am still recovering from a horrible cold. 
• Watched my new 3D TV that Chris and I scored on black friday. 
• Did some serious coupon shopping... more on that to come in a future post. 
• Am amazed at the generosity of my new family... seriously I am the luckiest girl alive cause my future in-laws are the best.
• And on that note I want you all to check out this video. My future sister in-law who is incredibly talented is trying to win a contest and she needs a lot more views for her video. Trust me it will be worth your time. This girl can sing!

Happy Monday Friends!

Grateful

Working in a veteran's hospital you see a lot of things. A lot of substance abuse, mental health issues and alcoholism... PTSD is rampant in our patient population. It can be a rough place to work sometimes. It wears you down. People are bitter and angry and broken... lost and many times forgotten. 

It is not uncommon to have patients in our unit that have no visitors during their entire hospital stay. It is also very common to have families with very complicated backgrounds and delicate family dynamics. Often times we are not only caring for our patients but we are caring for their families too.  I think one of the reasons I fell in love with the VA is because of the people. One of my deepest passions in life is to show people their value and their worth. I think that is one of the things I have always valued about my faith also. Jesus was a man who loved people... the worst people too. The rejects and marginalized people that no one else wanted to fight for... he fought for them. 

If anything I hope that would be the one thing I can show people. That they are worth it. That they are valued... but most of all, that they are loved. 95% of the time it is not easy working with the patients in my hospital. There are moments though where it clicks and the 5% makes up for the rest. The moments where I am able to step outside of my own crap and realize that these guys are just hurting, broken people who need good care... those are the moments that matter.

I had a patient last week who was unlike the others. This patient had a large, close family. This patient did not have substance abuse in his background. He was a physician and a professor at a very prestigious medical school in the area. Still he chose to come to the VA for his care. His wife was saying how much he appreciated the care he received at the VA and she expressed how grateful she was too. Through foggy, tearful eyes she stroked her dying husband's hair and told him to keep fighting... and that she loved him more than anything in this world. She said that he was her best friend and that she was so grateful for everything he had given her in their life together. The love she had for that man was pouring through every tear she cried and the pain she was feeling was tangible.

It broke my heart and I had a hard time holding it together as I managed the care of this extremely sick man. She asked me how long I had been working in the unit and asked if I liked my job.

I stopped what I was doing because I wanted her to know how much I meant what I was about to say. 

"I love my job. It is an honor to serve these guys. They truly have given so much and the fact that we are able to cater to our veteran's in such a specific way really is so special. I love knowing that we can give back in that way... and especially that we can give such good care to people who often times are not appreciated or understood. I really love what I do and even on the hard days I am still grateful that I have a job where I can show someone that they are valued by the care that I give."

She looked at me and smiled ever so slightly as tears began to fall down her cheeks. 

In the midst of an incredibly exhausting week it was a 5% moment and even now... days later it brings a bittersweet joy to my heart and it reminds me of just how lucky I am.

 

Image Credit

My Shameless Plug

I have talked about "my girls" on here a lot. They recently made a big move to the great state of Texas but they used to live in Colorado.

This is my best friend Ami and two of her little girls. My last post had a picture of her oldest.

This is her husband Andrew. Two of Andrew's brothers back in Colorado are in a band called The Host Club. I have been following their music for some time now and I can say they are pretty darn awesome.  They recently made it to a top 5 list on a radio station in Denver and will be playing at an event called The Big Gig 2011, alongside My Chemical Romance, Blink 182, Rancid and more.

Check them out on their Facebook Page and if you like their music you can download their E.P. on iTunes! (It's less than $4!)

7 Quick Takes Friday

1. I DID IT! Marathon #2 is in the books friends! It was much harder than San Diego in many ways. My time showed it as I was a 8 minutes slower in this race. Can we says hills, hills, and more hills?! Parts of the course we're beautiful though and I loved the cool weather of Seattle.

 

2. Had a complete and utter melt down around mile 23 of the Seattle marathon and called my friend Tim to inform him that I would NOT be doing anymore marathons. He bet me ten bucks that in a few days or so I'd suck it up and decide to do the final marathon in SF on July 31st. "I feel like you're just intense like that Andi" haha thanks Tim... and he was right btw. I'm still planning on doing the SF marathon. This time I'll be doing some serious hill training before.... that includes a somewhat hilly half marathon race this weekend. Yay for having two marathons under my belt though! Isn't my medal pretty?

3. These past two months have been insane... between marathons and work and life in general I haven't had much time do anything... let alone blog. Today though has been good and I feel like for the first time in a really really long time I am pretty much caught up on stuff. I even spent the day editing Seattle photos... (all of which I love!) I will do a whole other post of them and the trip itself soon. :) sneak peek for now.

4. I have decided that July is officially the worst month in the ICU (at a teaching hospital). Mainly because everyone and their mom is on vacation = we are always short staffed. Also because medical school ends in June and residency starts up in July = folks who were medical students yesterday are now interns taking overnight call in the ICU the next. It's a scary time people... makes a nurse's job a lot more difficult when you deal with doctors who don't know anything but think they know everything. Luckily they aren't all like that but I have already had my fair share of run ins with people gettin' crazy. Post soon to come: How to survive July in a teaching hospital. haha

5. This week Chris had surgery. Somewhat an emergent one too. He's okay thank goodness but he tore the meniscus in his knee and hasn't been able to walk since Sunday. So that means this week has been full of doctor's visits, MRI scans, surgery and recovery time. I have been nurse at home and nurse at work. Truly "on call RN" is so fitting. I love being able to offer help and comfort in that way though. Now its just 3 weeks on crutches and a bit of physical therapy and he should be good as new.

6. Had my annual performance review at work this week and it went really well! Yay for that. My manager wants me to take the charge nurse class this fall and she also wants me to start precepting nursing students. I'm willing to try it... even though I honestly don't think I'd be that good of a teacher. I try to be an encouraging person but I know I am also crazily Type-A and I have a tendency to be a micro-manager/control freak. Don't know how well those two things will go together. I guess stay tuned and we shall find out? haha

7. Happy belated 4th of July to my American readers! I spent it at work again. (dumb dumb here forgot to ask for it off even though it's one of my favorite holidays) Did anyone get to see any great fireworks? Even though I was stuck at work, I was thankful to be serving our veteran's on a day that celebrates our nation's freedom. One of my favorite photos from Seattle... part of the war memorial garden in downtown. 

Incredibly moving.

Have a good weekend friends!! Anyone have anything fun planned?

Green hills and nostalgia

Road trips always seem to bring out the nostalgic side in me. It's something about the endless miles of road, the music, the people.... or lack thereof, that sends me into a lull of memories. A few weekends ago I was able to take a road trip with my BFF's to see a play that my friend had been the assistant director/stage manager of. It was a quick trip and it was jam packed with visits of friends we rarely get to see. It was great to see them and catch up... even if it was only for a meal or a few minutes at best. It was also really wonderful to be able to see into what my friend had been pouring her heart into these past few months and so glad to know that she is incredibly happy with the work she has done there.

The drive was incredibly beautiful and it lit a small fire to the travel bug that has been quietly put to rest since I came home from Lebanon. I love seeing new places... or old ones in a new light. Truly, California is a place that is so diverse it is hard not to see its beauty in new ways each time you drive through the countryside. The entire trip down I just kept saying, "This is basically what Ireland was like! I can't get over how green this is!!".... lush and stunning from every corner. I'm pretty sure by the end of the trip everyone got the point. haha



This is my BFF TK and one of his multiple attempts (and only successfulone at that) to jump into my pictures. haha definitely a keeper. I heart my friends. :)

It's funny how the randomest things can spark a memory. A good portion of the trip we were listening to Jason Mraz's first album... "Live at Java Joe's" and I was instantly thrown back to my first year of college. I had a CD player (yes a CD player... the days before iPods ) that I would carry in my back pack, headphones threaded through the top with that album playing non-stop for basically an entire year.... I rode my bike everywhere and would listen to it the entire ride to school and then to work and then home later that night. Listening to those songs I can picture the exact rode and the exact bike I was riding. The feeling of hope and fear of entering into an adult world where nothing was set out for you like it was in highschool. The naive spirit I had coupled with the feeling that I had to do anything I could to make it through... even if it meant working insane hours to support myself through college. The excitement in knowing that I had so much ahead of me and the feeling that I could do anything if I just worked hard enough....
and it got me thinking... about the dreams and hopes of that 18 year old girl I once knew. I wonder what I would think if I took a snapshot of my life now and showed it to myself 8 years ago and said, "So... this is your life.... is it all you'd hoped it would be?"

I think in many ways I would be incredibly proud and relieved to be out from under a lot of the turmoil I used to live under. In so many ways I am still shocked at how seriously blessed I am... and how far I have come. Just today at work I had to stop for a minute and think to myself, "Yes, Andi.... you really are a nurse...working in the ICU for almost 2 years now! You actually did it!" I can't believe it sometimes. God has had his hand in my life... no doubt about it. Still... there is a part of me that thinks I would look at my life and be really surprised at where I've ended up. Not in a bad way... just a surprised way. At that point in my life I don't think I had any clue where I was supposed to be... I was planning on being an art therapist but really.... I just knew I wanted to help people... and I knew I wanted to travel. There is still a part of me that feels that pull towards other cultures and people and I just wonder.... 8 years from now... who knows where I'll end up?
Kind of an exciting thought, huh?

What about you friends? What kinds of things make you nostalgic?

Photography

For those of you who aren't familiar with The Sartorialist you should check out his blog. It's a photo blog... a fashion blog... full of amazing pictures of eye catching people and clothes and the little details of New York, Milan, Paris...

Recently, he was the subject of a short documentary and in the film he said something that spoke to me... he described taking photos like "going out and allowing yourself to fall in love a little bit.." I have felt that way about photography so many times. When I have my camera with me... I see the world in a different light. I see the shadows and highlights. The lines and geometry of objects. I see the composition of places and the beauty in the mundane. The details of every day life become vivid and more prominent. 

The crisp sounds of winter and the earthy colors of fall.

 

The details of a barn door stop me and the rustic features capture my eye.

Moments that capture a feeling... a sense that you are taken into a different world. When I take photos I am able to narrow an entire world... an entire scene down to one image... I am able to say "Hey... this is what I want you to see!" It is a wonderful thing and every time I take photos I realize that I am falling in love with the world I am in just that much more.

Could not have been put in better words... I think I might allow myself to go out and fall in love a little bit today. :)

Great Giveaways!

Some of my favorite blogs posted about the same giveaway recently and I wanted to share about it because it is just that darn cool!

Modern Bird Studios is a company ran by a husband and wife who wanted to make art personal and affordable for everyone. What they do is this. Basically, you send in a photo and they make it into artwork! How cool is that?

If you want to enter one of the giveaways check out these blogs!




And don't forget to head over to Modern Bird Studios to check out their amazing artwork!