Leap day!

I had to post on leap day because we won't have another one in well.....4 years.....right? I had a blast last night at Chili's celebrating my friend Joseph's birthday. There was about 15 of us in total. I like Chili's for multiple reasons, first of all their food is awesome, and secondly, they do A LOT for St. Jude. We have a new Chili's care center that should be opening soon that I believe was funding entirely by Chili's. I can't wait to see it in action! And one day a year they donate all their proceeds from that day to St. Jude. I love eating there. Before we ate, me and my friend Melissa met at Target and did a little shopping. I got 2 pairs of dress pants for 19.99 each! I was beyond excited. Target makes a pant called modern fit boot cut, and I love them! I've gotten way more expensive dress pants from express and Victoria secret, and I like the Target ones way better. I have to wear dress clothes sometimes 2 times a week for site visits and patient care class, so I can never have too many dress clothes. Also I found a belt that's....get ready for this.....REVERSIBLE. I thought that was pretty awesome, it looks like a dress belt, but you can wear it brown or black. I was pretty excited. Well I'm about to go to work (yay!) and I get to wear a new pair of scrubs :) Joseph is in the blue-striped shirt

My friend Melissa in front of Chili's

Me!

Life at the moment......

is pretty uneventful. I guess that's a good thing, no news is good news right? I finally got my $200 scrub allowance from my work so on Tuesday I had a grand time picking out new scrubs. I had this idea that I'd photograph myself in each set and post a "scrubapalooza" post. They're pretty funky, but I like wearing funky scrubs to work. Keeps things festive. We also went to get our taxes done the other day. I was pretty excited to be filing my first joint taxes...yeah I'm a big dork. We got a decent refund coming, but sadly we weren't able to deduct anything from our mortgage yet, we haven't paid enough yet since we just bought our home in July, but the lady said next year we'd be able to. She also advised us to start saving all receipts from anything we buy for work, property taxes, gifts to charity, etc so I have 2 whole receipts saved from a lab coat and set of scrubs for work. LOL. I had my first patient to present on Wednesday, she was a 41 yo female who's had Crohn's disease for over 20 years. I did really good on the presentation and knew ALMOST all the questions they asked me. I made some cool stuff in lab this week, a lotion for acne, Kaopectate, and a troche aka a gummy candy thing with medicine in it, the one I made had benzocaine in it. I made the mistake of sleeping in this morning, I have a class from 8-10, but I decided to skip it today and slept in till 9, the whole morning I was having dreams about being in class with my pajamas on and not being able to find my class, and stuff like that. I think my body knew I was supposed to be in class LOL. My good friend Joseph turns 20 today (yeah he's a baby) and a bunch of us are going to Chili's tonight to celebrate so I'm excited about that, well that's it for now, got a bunch of tests coming up so posting will be sporadic!

Grains of Gratitude

1. I'm so Grateful I got another 89% on my 2nd pharmacology test and an 88% on my first over the counter drug test. Yay! Now if I could just raise my scores a few points I'd be getting As.

2.Grateful that my pharmaceutics test and lab test are over, I won't know what I got on them for a few days at least, but I'm very grateful that they're over. Shew!

3.Grateful I found the strength and motivation to clean out my car. Nuff' said.

4.Grateful I finally made it to the Memphis National Cemetery to take some photos. Now I just need to go downtown, by the Mississippi river, the botanical gardens, shelby farms, and the zoo to take pics!

5.Grateful I had an extremely productive day of learning at St. Jude on Friday and I'm off this whole weekend. Yay, I got some extra time with W.

6. Lastly I'm grateful that I was able to squeeze some housecleaning into my busy schedule today ;)

PS-hope everyone likes my new siggy.

Montage time!

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Memphis National Cemetery

I took an trip to the Memphis National Cemetery(it's only 3 miles away from our house) to take some photos. I've been meaning to do this for awhile since I got my new camera, but today was the first day I had time. W thinks I'm crazy, but I like cemeteries, I always feel so peaceful when I visit them. It's so quiet, and there's usually very little people around, it's nice. But anyway here's some shots I got and a few other random pics.

So.....I'm kind of a big deal....

LOL not really, BUT I had my first real shift working in the chemo room at St. Jude. I don't post much about my job on here, but for those who don't know, I've been training in the regular IV room aka where we make the "normal" stuff such as antibiotics, stuff for nausea, stuff for fungal infections, pretty much everything except chemotherapy. Well I've officially began training in the chemo room since my elders deem me competent enough, so yay! So far, I LOVE IT, seriously I feel really important like I'm making a difference. Those kids need their chemo done right, and I have the best teacher in the entire world teaching me! His name is Matt and he's a 4th year student so he's graduating in May and I'll be taking his spot. I'm learning so much, I feel like a sponge. I learned calculations today and even did some on my own! I don't know why, but today everything just really started to click! I figured out how the paperwork works, and who needs chemo hand delivered and who doesn't and which ones aren't stable enough to make until right before they're going to be administered and what some of them do in the body and all kinds of stuff. I'm 100% confident I'll be ready to work alone by May, probably before then, but I won't need to work alone until then. Ok well I'm done with my giddy ranting, hope everyone has a great weekened!

Grains of Gratitude

1. Grateful that I got my car back and it's in perfect working order again. It was in the shop about a week and a half, so that entire time I was carpooling with W. Two Words: Not Fun. It wasn't that bad I suppose, but he gets up eons earlier than I do, so I had to accomodate his schedule. I'm just glad to have my car back.

2. My dad turns 50 this year! I'm grateful that my aunt has decided to throw him a party. Now I don't have to feel the guilt that I was unable to throw him one. LOL My aunt rocks.

3. Grateful that I had a good experience at work this weekend. I did have to work 16 hours, BUT I'm being trained by the best student intern there. He's a P4, so I'll be taking his place when he graduates in May. I'm learning more from him than I could ever imagine.

4.Grateful I think I passed my Antibiotics exam hopefully with a ......B?

5.Grateful I got to try a new Thai restaurant on Friday with a few of my girlfriends. It was amazing!! It's called Bhan Thai.

Tessa

I've made a difficult decision

Ok not really, I hope that title didn't sound too serious. I've decided to remove my belly button ring...permanently. I got the silly thing when I was 16 and it served it's purpose. Made me look cool, sexy, risque, whatever look I was going for at that age...now I'm not really sure why I got it. It hurt like Heck and even got infected once. I just feel like I need to move on and leave my younger days aka belly button ring, behind me. I'm also worried about what it is going to look like when I have kids someday. A friend of mine left hers in until she was in her 6th month and it looked really bad when she finally did take it out, like a giant horrible stretch mark. So I figured the sooner I take it out, the sooner it will heal up...if it heals up.

I've realized something.....

I used to consider myself pro-choice when it came to abortion. I mean, I didn't think a woman should get one just because it was an accident and she didn't want to take care of a baby, but I did feel there were certain circumstances where it would be appropriate. Through some self-education I have changed my mind. I came across a website advocating against abortion and I read a lot of the information and viewed a lot of the videos they had up. Let me tell you I was shocked and appaled. Maybe I'm niave, but I've never seen what goes on during the abortion process and honestly never really thought about it. Well my eyes have been opened to the horrors associated with the horendous process. I don't want to go into detail, BUT it's horendous. Then I started to think to myself, why doesn't everyone who has an unwanted pregnancy just give their babies up for adoption? So many families want all types of children and for me, giving someone that kind of joy would give me unmeasureable happiness. Then I started to think about what I would have done if I'd gotten pregnant as a young teen and how I'd choose the family that I would have given my child to and I came to a realization. I'd choose a very different family then what my future children are going to be raised in. I guess not quite so different, but here it goes. I'd want my child to go to a Christian hetero couple that was unable for medical reasons to have children of their own, maybe they've tried everything and it just won't happen. Then I'd want the father to have some sort of good successful job and I'd want the mother to be a stay at home mom. As I thought about this it dawned on me that this is different than the way it's going to be when we have kids, I mean we ARE christians BUT I'm going to be a working mom (a pharmacist). Why then, if for some reason I had to give up a child would I want it to go to a family with a stay at home mom? And is it ok to feel that way? I mean I most certainly possitively 100% want to have kids (4 to be exact), but I want to have a career too. Is it possible to do both? I mean I know it is because women do it all the time, but seriously these are the types of things I think about at night when I can't sleep. Sometimes I feel like I wish I could quit school and start having babies right now and just let my husband make all the money.....BUT I'd create ALOT of dissapointment with my family who just can't wait until I'm Dr. Turner....and honestly I'm excited about it too, I love pharmacy and learning about drugs and the prospect of educating people on their drugs and doing everything else I'm going to be doing, but there's part of me that wishes I could just start my life after school...right now. I've been in school too long, maybe it's just like that saying everything's always greener on the other side of the fence. I know there's people who wish they could do what I'm doing, but sometimes I just wonder how it would be if things were different.....

Valentine's Day

I haven't written in a few days due to being EXTRA busy studying for my exam tomarrow, but me and Will were able to spend some quality time together today for our 1st Valentine's day as a married couple. I saw this on Big Blueberry Eyes, and I thought I'd love to participate, I hope that's ok. I'm supposed to write the story of how I met my husband. First I'll tell how I met my wonderfull hubby and then I'll tell about how we celebrated Valentine's day.
My mom actually met my husband before I did. She is a labor/delivery RN at Blanchfield Army Hospital on Ft. Campbell, and my dear sweet hubby was an LPN in the Army working with her on the same shift. My mom was fond of Will because she would tell me about him when I was about 17-18 and he was a young soldier, 21 years of age. My dad, however, had a strict policy for me, I was not allowed to date soldiers. My dad was in the Army for 21 years, so I guess he knew how some of them can be, but anyways Will went to Iraq and I was supposed to write him, but I never did. I didn't think much of Will after that. Fast forward to the summer of 2005, I was now 20. I had to retake organic chemistry during the summer semesters. I walked in the classroom and there was only 2-3 people in the room, one of them being a cute guy with curly blond hair sitting in the front row. I'm not usually a front row sitter, and if there are plenty of desks available, I usually won't sit right next to someone unless I'm friends with them. For some reason I sat behind this guy and I remember his shirt was from studymasters and had a guy disco dancing on it. During our first break someone who new me and my mom introduced me to this guy as Will Turner, "he used to work with us at the hospital....." So I had finally met Will, and he was easy on the eyes to boot. I was pretty smitten with him from the beginning, I immediately was crushing on him. He was cute, funny and had a smile to make any girl melt. I sat behind Will that whole summer. I guess I should mention one little tidbit that makes this story a bit more interesting. I was engaged to another guy, but from the beginning, it just never felt right. Because of this fact, Will never really showed any interest in me, but was always extremely nice and friendly. Fast forward to beginning of next fall semester, Will invites me to one of his fraternity's parties and I go, after having a few drinks, then having a few more at the party, I experienced a loss of inhibition. I flirted like crazy with Will that night and he seemed very interested as well. My heart pitter-pattered like a young girl when she gets her first real kiss, I knew what I had to do. I broke it off with my current fiance and immediately wrote Will an email telling him how I felt. He emailed me back, it was short and sweet, and pretty much said "yeah me too." We started dating that September 20, 2005. Will proposed to me exactly one year after we started dating on September 20, 2006 and we were married a little over 8 months later on June 1, 2007.
So that's how I met hubby. Now on the our Vs Day. Every Valentine's day since we've been together we've went to Red Lobster, it's kind of a tradition. Even though we're in Memphis this year, and there are an abudance of restaurants to choose from, we still went to Red Lobster. We got there around 4:50 and it was jam packed! We waited for an hour to be seated, but it wasn't horrible. We got some time together to talk and laugh and play with each other like high school sweethearts. When we did get our table, it was a perfect little table for 2, usually I don't like booths for 2 because they're so small, but this one was bigger than normal. The lighting was perfect, not too dim but not too bright. We got excellent service and we loved the food. It really was a great evening.

Grains of Gratitude

1. First and foremost I am extremely grateful that we didn't get any damage from the horrible storms and tornados that passed through our area last Tuesday night. Our county wasn't even hit as bad as some other counties. I was scared a few times listening to the mournful tornado sirens blaring outside our home off and on all night, but by the grace of God, we weren't hit. We DID have some water leak into our den, but that's a far cry from the many lives lost and the people who went without power for days. I continue to pray for those people who were not as lucky as us.

2. I'm grateful for my wonderful friends. We were able to get together last night for Sushi at Sekisui pacific rim. It was delish, but what I enjoyed most was getting together with our friends and having a good, non-stressful time when we didn't have to talk about school, we could simply just be.

3. I'm really grateful that I got to sleep in Saturday and today. It's something my body desparately needed. Since my car has been in the shop, I've been hitching rides with hubby everyday to school. He likes to be at school SIGNIFICANTLY earlier than I do, so I had to get up before 6 almost every morning. Being able to sleep in was a Godsend.

4. This may seem very insignificant, but I'm grateful that I found something that clears up my face. I've had mild/moderate acne for quite some time now and proactive always did the job. Well now that we're trying to save a little moolah, I've been searching for something effective and inexpensive. I found just that in Olay's Cleanse and Clarify face scrub. This stuff is great, I've been using it for about a week and my face is already nearly clear. I use it twice a day followed by a salicyclic acid toner and a lotion at night and the results have been great. That is really saying something because I've NEVER found something I could buy at walmart that worked for me and I'm seriously grateful.

5. Grateful I got to pump up my shoe collection. Nuff' said.

6. Grateful I got 2 hours of unexpected studying done for my next exam which is Friday.

I'm addicted....to shoes!

It all started when me and my husband went to Tunica, MS for my cousin's 21st birthday celebration, we shopped the outlet mall and I got 2 pairs of boots for very good prices and I was stoked. I then began to realize that I don't have very many pairs of shoes, but I have TONS of clothes. Somehow this crazy mind of mine felt I needed to bring my shoe collection up to par. After the Tunica incident, I bought a pair of cute red ballet flats from Victoria secret on sale, then a few days later I got 3, yes THREE pairs of pumps from piperlime.com, all on sale of course. I thought I was done, but today I wondered onto target.com and decided to look at the clearance. Target.com brings clearance to a whole new level. I bought jeans for 5.74 each!! And a cute pair of black patent peep toe pumps to boot. So I've increased my feeble shoe collection by 7 awesome new pairs of shoes and I think I'm done for AWHILE. Partly because with my recent car troubles, my funds are getting low, and partly because Will is NOT nearly as happy with my shoe buying endeavors as I am. Go Figure, you'd think he'd appreciate a sexy pair of pumps on his banging hot wife.....haha ok I made up that last part. Ciao!

Worldess Wednesday-Naked tree & Tiny Tortoise

When it rains.....it pours part II

Yeah unfortunatley another not so good post, but the only reason I post these is so that I can post when they get better. I got some not so good news about my poor car. We had to take it to the mechanic after it overheated the other day and apparently I blew a head gasket (whatever that is). To replace it would be 1300-1400 dollars. The mechanic also said that with the way my car is running he thinks something else bad is going to happen soon (well he didn't say it exactly like that, but we trust him). He reccomends that we replace the entire engine. With all the constant problems we've been having, I think he's right. It's been one thing after another with this car the last few months. To replace the engine will be 2300-2500 dollars and that includes labor fees. I tossed around the idea of just trading in that car for a new (used) car, but decided not to because I don't want to commit to a monthly payment when we have mortgage and other things we MUST pay. With the new engine it will be like starting over. I didn't take the best care of my car in the beginning, I was young and oblivious, you get the idea. So now I wait while my car gets fixed, my old engine that's been with me the last 6 years will be gone and in it's place a new engine for a brand new start. *sigh* Just wish it wasn't so rough on the pocket book, but apparently that's a good price. Also we had some nasty storms this evening with several tornados touching down very near our home, luckily we didn't get hit or lose power or anything, BUT water seeped under our walls in the den (where we pretty much spend ALL our time) and me and Will were running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to dry up the water. Sadly the whole underside of our sofa is wet and must be aired out. We really have no idea how this happened, but alas I will make it through LOL. All this and I have an exam tomarrow to worry about studying for. Thanks for listening to me vent.

Meet Me Monday

I'm starting a new thing called Meet Me Monday in which I will introduce someone either in my family or someone close to me every Monday. This will serve two purposes: Allow me to showcase the people I care about, and will let you know a little bit about the people I mention in my blog. My first blog will be about.....
My Mother

My mom was born Vicki Jo Strobel on Feb. 16 (year withheld) in the great state of Florida to Bobbie Lou and Darwin Dee Strobel. She grew up in Sarasota, FL with 1 older sister, Marilyn, 1 older brother Charlie, and 1 younger brother Dee. She excelled in school, but wanted out of a dysfunctional family situation and joined the Army at age 18. The Army brought her together with my father and they were married May 28, 1982. She had me, her first child, when she was 24 and my sister Janice, when she was 25. Janice also has Down Syndrome, so my mom had it rough for a couple of years adjusting to having 2 small children 11 months apart and one with Ds that was very unexpected(the Ds that is, not the child LOL). When I was very young my mom decided to go to nursing school at Cameron University to become an RN. I remember being very young and my mom studying and me doing my "homework" right along beside her. My mom made me who I am today, plain and simple. She read books to me when I was a newborn until I was able to read them myself and then some still. She bought workbooks for me and flashcards and worked with me on all kinds of stuff. I could say my ABCs at 18 months seriously! She has kindled a passion for learning inside me ever since I can remember. I also believe I inherited my intelligence from her along with my eyes, wrists, fingers, and general body type. I also got my love for all things girlie from her: clothes, shoes, fine handbags, and makeup. She got her RN degree and has worked as a nurse ever since. She got out of the military and did the reserves for quite some time afterwards. She currently works as a nurse in labor and delivery at Blanchfield Army hospital on Ft. Campbell, KY. My mom gets 90% of the questions on jeopardy right without studying and is by far the smartest person I know. She loves to read and her current obsession is Luxor (some kind of crazy computer game). She also suggested that I become a pharmacist, which I am currently working on. I could write so much more, but I will end here. I love you mom!

Grains of Gratitude

1. First of all I'm grateful that I somehow made it to school on Thursday when I locked myself out of my car and I even made it in time for my exam which I thought I did really bad on but.....

2. I'm grateful that I did NOT do as bad as I thought on my exam, I actually made a B+ on it!

3. Grateful that me and Will got to go out on Friday with a bunch of other couples (and Laura). We went to Sauces for some mojitos and then Swig for some desert and Martinis. We had a wonderful time, but we ended up having our first real big fight at the end of the night but....

4. I'm grateful we got through it in a productive and timely fashion, we're just fine now. :) It makes me feel good to know we can get through things like that because I'm sure they'll be more fights in our marriage, but hopefully not TOO many.

5. Grateful we made it to the 8 month mark of marriage (on Feb. 1). I can't believe how fast time has gone, before I know it we'll be celebrating our first year anniversary.

6. Grateful I was able to do some housework yesterday and today, I still have a lot more to do though!

A Saturday Salad

Just a hodgepodge of random stuff. First of all I've been having a reoccuring dream that I'm pregnant, but there's always something wrong or off about the pregnancy. Once I was carrying my child in the lower left quandrant of my body and I could see the whole outline of a 4 inch baby, it was weird. Last night my stomach looked normal, but my boobs started to sag way way more than normal. I wonder if these dreams stem from my intense want to have a child. I want a baby so bad it hurts sometimes. I won't be able to have a child until me and hubby are out of grad school, so probably not until 2013. It makes me sad to have to wait so long, but I guess I should just enjoy my life as it is now and not wish it away.





Another weird thing that's been happening to me at night is I have intense cold sweats. I wake up soaked and absolutely freezing! I have no idea why this is happening, but I can only assume I'm having bad dreams at night....Yikes!





Lastly I wanted to share some random photos.

Martini anyone?


Hubby looking dumbfounded


My baby being silly


Our diva kitty Tessa


Tessa watching Madison play

Plato's Closet

Plato's closet sells very gently used name brand clothing, some of it even still has the tags on it. Today me and hubby went so that I could look at the clothes, but there was just way too many for me to really get to look at eveything and hubby was getting impatient (imagine that). So I briefly looked at the guys clothes and found a practically brand new pair of banana republic jeans in Will's size and a nice abercrombie and fitch collared shirt. He refused to try them on, but agreed to let me buy them. I made him try them on when we got home though, and everything fit! I was so excited because getting Will to buy new clothes is like pulling teeth, but I think even HE was impressed at the prices. His jeans were $18 and his shirt was $10, really good price for practically brand new nice name brand clothing. We're going to eat dinner with 3 other couples tonight at a swanky little place down town and I'm excited he has some new clothes to wear. It's funny we went for me and came back with clothes for him.