COLLEGE!!!!

I canNOT believe I am finally here!! I have dreamed about starting college and learning and... okay, I'll just put it out there, I've been excited to start paving my way to being a doctor.

So now that I'm finally here--the place I thought would never come--it's a lot of fun! ...and it's so hard! Well... okay... just Calculus II is hard, actually. I spent so much time in the Engineering Building last week doing last week's homework and now I have another assignment to look forward to and it's all about parametric equations. I, personally, have never heard of these things so this will be quite interesting. And it's too bad that I don't have any math tutors within my house (yes, my dad is an engineer, but he doesn't remember anything) so .... I shall become intimately acquainted with my book and with internet resources. (I am home for Labor Day weekend.) When I get back up to Logan, though, I'll have to continue to expand my study group.

Anyway, on to the fun stuff, my roommates are awesome! We have so much fun at night, hahaha. This past week I was accosted in my room by Caitlyn and Tina with hairdryers, we went through club initiation by jumping on Caitlyn's bed without catching ourselves, we baked cookies at 12 a.m., Heather and I had tickle fights, Heather egged me on to dance to Michael Jackson in my tank top (I was in the process of getting ready for bed) while Caitlyn, unbeknownst to me, was videoing me on her phone and after 30 seconds of me dancing, I finally spotter her and squealed and slammed the door in between us. (This video was later shown to countless people on campus.)

Last night we watched Ironman on the HPER field. (This is where all the pictures were taken.) It took a while to get the movie up and running so we messed around with a bunch of boys in another apartment. They're fun (and... nice to look at) but then some "snobbish" girls came over and ... were annoying so that put a damper on things haha, but Caitlyn and I still had fun taking funny pictures and I met my fifth Justin. :)

Anyway, college thus far is fun. Right now, however, while I am home, I need to get...

contacts

turtlenecks and sweaters
food

a PHONE (companies rob you blind and I HATE them all)

laundry done

Calc homework done... huh... yeah right... all 10 hours of it

50 pages for US Institutions read

to play with my nieces, my sister, my mom, and (shocker!) my dad!

(He informed me today when I was worrying about phone plans and money how advantageous not-having-friends is. It's apparently much cheaper to not communicate with people or even know people in general. Hmm.... some food for thought there.... )

Now I realize I need to get photos of all my roommates on here so you can see them (like I have the pleasure of doing every day). :) Caitlyn is my crazy buddy, Heather is my tickle-and-everything-else-buddy, Lisa is fun to talk to, Tina is a fat lard.... hahahaha just kidding, we love her, she's funny and she gets that all the time, and Meagan is my boy-crazy roomie--such a cutie. She actually hooked up with one of the boys from our "brother apartment" over in Richards.

(This picture was taken by Chad, of Caitlyn, but trying to keep me in the photo while I'm trying to get out of it, with Steve's hand in the middle of it.)

TIRED!

Since I would never say that my job is a piece of cake, I am always very ready to head home at the end of 9 hours. On Saturday, at 3:15 pm (45 minutes after my shift was supposed to have ended) I was heading out when I learned that my replacement--the guy that was supposed to be working my section during the evening shift--had pulled a "No call, No show". He'd sent his brother in an hour after his shift had started to inform the nurses that he wouldn't be in that day. (Can you say "self termination"??) My supervisor was on the verge of tears as she plead with me to stay for a double shift. She told me she'd spent 90% of her day on the phone trying to find replacements for various spots on different halls. I tried to sympathize with her with my comments and eyes, but I really had no intention of working a double. That was something I'd determined not to do.

"Maria, I don't even know how to work evening shift. I was trained for morning only."

"Oh it's so easy!"

Then the phone rang.

"There's your replacement, Maria..." :)

She gave me a look and then answered the phone. After I heard enough to know it was no replacement, I said, "I'm slipping away, Maria..."

I walked down the hall, all the while feeling awfully guilty. I clocked out, walked to the car, drove home, all the while thinking about how I'd feel if I were one of only two CNAs on an entire hall. Overwhelmed.

I got all the way home and decided that if I couldn't get a hold of Brant--whom I'd made plans with for that night--that I'd go back. I couldn't, so I did. After about an hour of being there, I came out of a room in search of some clean pants for a patient when a figure caught my eye leaning against the wall. Brant. He said he'd missed me by 15 minutes. :( Pooh. I had to trek to the laundry to find pants so I was glad for the excuse to walk around with him and talk for about 5 mintues. I was swamped, though, so he left quickly.

By 10 my patients were commenting on how tired I looked. By 11:15 p.m. I was home.

The next day I forewent 8 a.m. church as my mom suggested and went to a missionary farewell with Tacy at 1. Haha, we accidentally went to the wrong ward! When the lady giving the invocation mentioned the missionaries name, Tacy lost it. When the prayer was over she told me that wasn't his name and we left the church laughing. I pointed out another steeple from the parking lot and we decided to try that one. It happened to be right. :) Her friend had clearly been on the football team because everyone there looked like they were on the team. . . especially one guy. He looked straight out of the NFL. He was very tall, very muscular, had a strong jaw bone, very defined features, and carried himself as if he really did make millions every year by throwing a ball. After we'd gone up to talk to Skyler, the fare-welling missionary, we passed the NFL guy (whom I'm sure had in actuality just gotten out of high school) and Tacy whispers, "Take a look..." I didn't look right then because I hate feeding guys-like-that's egos, but I at length glanced up and he was focused somewhere over my head. No surprise. :)

As Tace and I were walking out, though, she goes, "He looked straight at you!"

"Oh no he didn't."

"Yes he did. I looked up at him and he wasn't looking at me! He was looking right past me--at you!"

"Well when I looked up he was looking over me too, so maybe that's just what he does." hahaha

So did you all like my pointless story? Haha, good.

Second Camp Installment

SATURDAY

Heather Young and I spent the morning quickly packing and then headed out to the airport to pick up Brant at about 12:30 p.m. We thought we'd be late getting him, but his plane ended up being really late.After a LOT of fretting, I found him. Haha, when Brant first saw me while waiting for his luggage, he didn't recognize me at all with the really dark brown/burgundy hair, but thankfully when his lightbulb finally turned on, he said he liked the new look. We hope he wasn't just being nice. :)


We left after we got his baggage and got to Tooele at about 2:30 or so. After a get-to-know-you game in the lodge, the counselors split up and helped set up different buildings like the lodge or pharmacy or craft house. Afterward, a few of us went into the Tooele Walmart because Heather Herd and Heather Young and Mazy (another counselor) forgot to bring Sunday clothes and we wanted to go to chuch the next day. It was fun and even though I had brought Sunday clothes, trying on dresses looked so fun that I couldn't help myself and I got in there (the dressing rooms) with the rest of 'em and ended up getting a dress!

That night my co-counselors and I had a fright.

Yes that's right.

A fright.

I dreamt I was in a bluish-dark room, in a bed, looking at the door, when a SWAT team crashed through the door and ordered me OUT at gunpoint. So here I was having a perfectly benign dream when suddenly something from the world of on the light and descended my bunk to try and fix the problem. We didn't know how to turn the bloody thing off, but we also didn't know whether we ought not to try--maybe it was alarming us about another bad gas or something that we couldn't see or smell. So when I wasn't jumping so high my toenails curled because of the unexpected, poignant, screeching, I was trying to figure out what button to push, or if any of the buttons werreality split through and into my world of fantasy and tweaked it. And this little bit of reality that so piercingly threw fear into my subconscious was very loud and very weird. At 4 a.m. we were shaken awake by our own nerves by the loudest beeping in the world. Yes, you guessed it. Fire alarm. But it was a fire alarm on drugs or something because it was sporadic and weird and eerie. I turned e off buttons ... but to no avail. We finally decided to just pack it up and trek to the lodge for the rest of the night so at 4:30 we climbed the stairs of the lodge and bedded down yet again, admitting that we were sure glad it had happened that night instead of Sunday night. If that would have happened with seven ten-year-old girls in the cabin... AHH!!!!

When I awoke the next morning, I had the stiffest neck. I thought about not going to church and sleeping more because of it ... but then I realized I'd hate myself for that later so I got myself up and went to awake Heather.

SUNDAY


I got up around 7:30 a.m., got Heather H. up, and we got ready, got breakfast, and drove into town with Brant, Mazy, and Heather Young. We at length found a church building and luckily sacrament was starting, though we were a little late. It was crowded and so we ended up sitting on the very front row--not good. We were visitors; we were late; and it was hard to stay awake!

So after listening to two talks on good parenting, we headed back to camp. My co-counselors and I decorated the cabin with French colors (blue, red, and white ... haha nicely convenient that they are "similar to" America's colors and it happened to be July... :) ) and then a bunch of counselors ended up in our cabin and we talked and listened to music and told funny work stories. My first girl came way early (her parents took part in camp, that's why) so the counselors cleared out and the rest of the time we just waited for our other girls while creating a cabin flag. After they were [almost] all there, we had dinner and then commenced Opening Ceremonies--the theme for this year was the Olympics. :)


We all marched up the ampitheatre-of-sorts stage with our flags and afterward listened to a wrestling coach who had the opportunity to run the torch in the 2002 Winter Olympics.

After roasting marshmallows (I believe that was Sunday...), we got the girls ready for bed. The first night, however, is always loud and crazy and basically don't even expect to get to sleep before 12:30 or 1. The girls are excited, hyper, they like to freak about the moths (MADDIE! HOW are moths SCARY?? And the giant ... things are not big mosquitos. They don't bite.) and the thousand other bugs that swarm the light, and it's like a ten-girl sleepover to them. I used to get worked up about them falling to sleep earlier... but then I realized it just can't be helped. Let 'em freak out. The next night they'll be zonked and the novelty will have worn off a bit. ("Cassidy, please shut off your flashlight."
"I thought somebody needed it!"
"No, nobody needs it."
"Well, Maddie has her flashlight on..."
"Maddie's reading. If you want to read, you can have your flashlight on. If not, then shut it off please."
"But there's bugs!"
"That's because you have your flashlight on!!!")

CAMP WYATT!!!

Y'all know how much I look forward to Camp Wyatt every year and I'm happy to report that I had yet another fabulous year at asthma camp with the ALAU (American Lung Association of Utah). It was extra fun this year, however, because I got to bring my two USU buds up with me, Brant and Heather Young. My girls were so cute and fun this year--I had the 10-year-olds.
Cassidy~ Short brown hair that always had to be pulled back when it was wet, mind you, shorter, somewhat pudgy cheeks, pleading eyes ... that never plead, detail-oriented, precocious, a bit edgy, down-to-business, high-strung, cute, repetitive, concerned about everything, had a crush on Brant. ;)
Maddie~ Blonde, girly face and personality, funny, contagious giggle, slow mover, bipolar I swear! (no not really), affectionate in a closed sort of way, had a crush on Jaron (the Playboy of camp).
Meghan~ Light brown, curly, long hair, funny, hilarious laugh, down-to-earth, precocious ... at times, lots of step siblings, chubby and tan, told me who everyone had crushes on, haha.
Megan~ Blonde, beautiful skin, larger teeth that she somehow pulled off, had one of those news anchor faces... even though she's only ten .... :) freaked out when a little boy told her he liked her (don't we all), I was her favorite counselor :), pushed me into Brant a thousand times at the dance saying, "Kiss him! Kiss him!", very cute girl, even-tempered, fun to be with
Lindsey~ Spaz! Little redhead with a funny/weird personality, cousins with Megan, contentious, silly, catchy.
Rylee~ Chill, even-tempered, taller, blonde, cute hair, docile, easy-going, easy to get along with.
Aurie~ Completely oblivious, very slow, cute in her own ditzy way, brown hair all in twists with square parts (that I kept sunscreened to the hilt!), got there late, no packing list so no swimming suit or towel... unless you count us counselors having her use ours. :)
Emily (Emilina) Nuttal (junior co-counselor)~ Brunette, glasses, kind of overweight, nicest girl ever, totally willing to work with you, took being a counselor seriously--in a good way, also had a crush on Brant (and Skyler), love her!
Hannah (senior co-couselor... haha I was the "senior senior counselor" lol)~ Tiny! Light brown hair, somewhat curly when wet, prettiest eye-upper-nose-eyebrow line I have ever seen, funny, looooooooong straight eyelahses, docile, also very willing to work with you, kept a lot of feelings inside and I only realized that we had a lot of that same perceptions toward the end of the week when she started to let them out haha, one of those people that became more charming the more you got to know her, and more gorgeous the closer you looked at her, fun to be with, hard to say bye to. Emily was also hard to tell goodbye. :(

(The next Camp Wyatt installment will be coming soon. :) The pictures will also be coming later...)

Scholarship Surprise

A few months ago I went to what felt like a lof of work in order to apply for a $5,000 scholarship given by my dad's work: the GE Healthcare Surgery Scholarship. I figured it was worth it, however, considering the amount. :) As it turned out I was one of only four that made the interview. So about a month and a half ago I drove out past the airport to interview for it. Yes, it was inimidating. Yes, I naturally totally forgot to mention my "most impressive" service achievement. And yes, I was up against the Valedictorian of Hillcrest (going to Stanford), two Roland Hall students (one of which was also going to Stanford, who has won national awards, and who has like one of the top 40 SAT scores in the nation).

Now clearly the scholarship is not going to me with this kind of competition, which is FINE ... except that I learned that high-end schools give big scholarships, but then you have to declare to them outside scholarships and they deduct that money from the school scholarship. DUMB! Why steal it away when it won't even help you???

Later, however, I was glad to find out that it would help the Stanford students after all and so when I found out the the Einstein (he really is! -he gets 800's on the SAT but can't remember where he lives) it wasn't a surprise nor was it unpleasant. He deserved it and it will help him. I'm excited for him and his future because I have every confidence it will be full of success. Frankly, I didn't expect even to be a runner up--and even if I was, all they've gotten in the past have been pens. Yeah, winner takes all, runners up get pens.

. . . .

But no!

Some days later I received a gift card in the mail from GE Healthcare. I opened it with my friend Brant there and we were both thinking it would be worth something like $20. Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh . . . try $200!! Sweet action I'm goin' college shopping! GE may not have paid for my schooling, but they're sure as heck paying for my kitchen and bathroom supplies! Yaya!~

Happy Birthday, America!

I've always loved the Fourth of July. What's not to love with the parades, fireworks, patriotism, summer, barbeques, etc?

So what did I do on this day? Worked!

This was the day after my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day so I was in kind of an interesting state of mind. After work, I came home fast, took care of the neighbor's house, got ready, and prepared to drive to Centerville to sorta relive what happened the summer before my ninth grade year--aka, Addison, Luke (who just got home from his mission!), their friends, Centerville, fireworks, etc. My parents had a little problem with me driving back late at night alone, however. Either I am going to get a flat and the guy who stops to help me will prove to be my rapist, or I'll get hit by a drunk driver--because it's obvious they head home at 11:30 p.m. and not 2-3 a.m. I usually never fight with my parents and just kind of work with what they give me because I usually see their logic. But not this time. And I got seriously bugged when, after my week, they were going to prevent what I had been looking forward to.

Long story short, Add made four trips between Centerville and Sandy so that we could watch fireworks together in Farmington (instead of me coming back at 10 and watching them in Sandy). I felt SO BAD. And he wouldn't let me pay for the gas I totally owe him. :'(

Anyway, when we got to Centerville we went to the Jensen's--my brother-in-law's family--where we ate dinner with them and Luke's and Add's friends. Most of the dinner conversation consisted of cell phone plans and missions, but ya know . . . to be expected.

Afterward, a lot of people met up at a girl Lauren's house to carpool to the Davis fireworks in Farmington. There, we killed time by playing Uno, having shoe-tying contests, finding port-a-potties, and meeting more people. The show was good--better than Eaglewood, they said--during which Jake flirted with Addison more than I did (lol) and later I met Addison's brothers: his youngest brother Thadeus (17), who is actually the same year in school as me, and Corbin (20), who played baseball in Kansas but is home because of a knee injury.

(This is a picture of Addison's family at Thadeus' graduation that I stole off his camera.) I hear a lot about these guys so it was neat to meet them, but I regretted that I was quieter than I wanted to be. It also didn't help that I find Thadeus ... eh-hem ... attractive ... and that he flirted with me. Way to make it hard! (I don't think Addison reads me blog ... I hope Addison doesn't read my blog...)

Anyway, while meeting them I didn't mean to be awkward, but by then my agitation about work the next day, getting home on time, and my migraine were getting to me and I found conversation difficult.

When we got back to Lauren's (where Add's car was) I spent half an hour or so listening to him and Jake speak in Chinese (kinda boring after a while of not being able to join in) and I finally admitted to wanting to go home. My headache was getting so bad it was hard to keep my eyes open. We dropped Jake off who had no problem going home early, having gone to bed at 10:30 since he got home from his mission anyway, and Add and I drove home, talking about education, politics, careers, school, etc. And once we got to my door, as attractive as Add is, he was no match for my bed, and I went straight inside. ;)

I hope all of your Fourths of July went awesome-ly and now I look forward to watching the 24th of July parade in downtown Salt Lake with my mom, sister, and niece(s) when they come for the last part of summer. Yay! See you soon, Rach, Lance, Izzy, and Beth!

Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

I think a lot, if not most, people have had this experience: You have a horrible day at work and afterward are simply terrified of going back the next morning. Well, I had that happen this past week.

On Thursday, I was assigned a new unit to work on in a hall I wasn't familiar with--a hard hall. I learned at much as I could from the graveyard aide, but that wasn't enough to give me confidence in getting all the patients up and ready and to breakfast. Usually the mornings are the worst because you have so much to do for so many people in so little time, but on this day it just got worse and worse. I kept messing up. I wasn't equal to my tasks. I had hall duty during meals and this means I am responsible for about thirty patients. Can you say "OVERWHELMING"??

Naturally all the patients needed everything when I had the whole hall and everything went wrong and it ended up that the executive something-or-other guy and the director of nursing for the whole facility were out doing my job for until I could get a hold on things. --except that I never did! One man kept going unresponsive and we knew he was close to death. His wife came and complained that his call light had been unanswered for half an hour. A VRE (scary, horribly infectious, antibiotic-resistant disease that is passed easily) patient (who hates everybody) was yelling at the top of her lungs for help. A foot amputee took forever to tell me what she needed and even though her needs weren't top priority, refused to let me leave and get back with her. A recent admit (just discharged from the hospital) took a lot of time and had intense pain every time I touched her. A man had been vomitting that morning and also had ... well, I'll spare that detail. Another lady had just been given a laxative and needed to be rushed to the bathroom every five minutes. Another lady's body wasn't being too nice to her that day and every time she did anything would have to rush to the bathroom--she's 350 pounds. One lady needed a shower and to have her colostomy bag emptied. And while all this is going on, I'm trying to pass out cold breakfast trays and having everyone that I pass them to tell me to get them jelly or pepper or instead of orange juice, cranberry juice and hot water, or to stir their coffee, etc. And at the end of my shift I found that I had forgotten to change the lady in so much pain and she was lying in a puddle.

THEN I had two staff meetings, where they naturally went over everything I had done wrong that day. No, they didn't point me out, but the things they reminded all the staff and CNAs to be doing were things I had messed up on that day.

So by the end I was weeping a bit. I didn't let anyone see at work, though. On the way home I had to stop and get bungee (is that how you spell it?) for my neighbors' tree that was falling over their driveway whose house and yard and animals I'm taking care of while they're in Chicago at an "advanced meditation seminar." I guess it was just hard to handle the excentricity after that day and I must say I was a little resentful of having to do so much. They helf this tree up with bungee cords connected to some kind of wire thing that they had nailed into the house .... ugh! It was so impractical and, being at my wit's end, I was annoyed at having to try and invent some way of holding the tree up, seeing as how their bungees hadn't held up during the handyman's digging for sprinkler controls right next to it. Ah yes, and I had to deal with their sprinkler problems and their section of dying lawn and calling the sprinkler guy and trying to convince one of their entirely-too-spoiled-dogs to eat because he had been "abused as a puppy" and trying to find my way through their maze of a house--not because of the floor plan, but because of the wacky way they set things up and how everything was in everything else's way . . .

SO! I went home thinking of only one thing: going to the temple with my mom--that was what was getting me through that day. . . . . but no. Again I'll spare the details--yes, my recommend is current, no I haven't done anything abominable--but I ended up not being able to go. My mom went without me and so I didn't have my mom to comfort me that night as I was fretting worse than I have ever done in my life--no exaggeration--and I didn't think I had the presence of mind to make sense to anybody had I decided to call a friend. It was a bad night and I was utterly terrified to go do it again the next day--I was so convinced they'd put me on the same hall and an even harder section--the one with the two MRSA patients, one VRE patient, and all the heavy, over-demanding patients. I was scared. I was exhausted, yet hardly slept.

I read the scriptures trying to find comfort through them and prayer. It helped a little, but I was still very upset.

I awoke the next morning with what I can only describe as a resolute determination to tackle whatever they threw at me and that this job was not going to get the best of me.

As it turned out, I was assigned to my favorite section. I know the patients. I could handle it. The day went ok. But I saw that the next day I was again assigned to what I had done the day before. And I must say that put a damper on my Fourth of July, but I got through it okay. It was still scary at times, but I got through it. The man that kept going unresponsive died on Saturday during my shift--no I didn't kill him--but touching and covering his limp body was ... ya know, all in a day's work. :)