Rainy Day

Rainy days are awesome for doing absolutely nothing at all and pretending like you have an excuse for it. Houston hasn't had a rainy day in months. Since February I think I can remember a total of maybe 4 times that its rained and all those were in the last 3 weeks and only lasted about an hour, until today. It rained most of the day. I woke up just before 11 and it was dark in my room, even Willow was still asleep (very rare). I was going to hit up the gym and break in my new climbing shoes but my Wednesday climbing partner cancelled on me and who really likes driving in the rain? Not me. So then I got on gmail chat with Nick who is getting paid to do nothing today, I wish I would get paid to read all day and sit on gmail chat. Of course I wouldn't love to hang out with rednecks in the heat of South Texas and have to live in a truck or a hotel room. Nor would I really want to do anything that involves tools or stuff that looks likes this

No thanks, I'll take my sick kiddos over that any day. But back to my rainy day. Like I said its been months which means I haven't had a real excuse to do nothing all day in a long time. Although I promise the lack of precipitation has not kept me from taking advantage of my idle time. However, its already near 7pm and I've browsed Pinterest, then facebook, then various different blogs and tumblrs, then I baked cookies, and then ate the cookies and that's about it. Yes I did all this in an 8 hour time span.

If Nick had been home I could pretend like we just got to hang out all day and nobody would think I was being lazy. But he's not home, however, we did hang out all day. Kind of.

This is why my computer is now 500 degrees.

Does anything look different about Nick? Like say, his face? Because its naked. Yup, those crazy oil drilling Canadians down in South Texas made him shave the beard. Don't worry though, it can grow back in about 24 hrs.

Even though he's getting paid to do nothing today he did miss out on these

Chocolate cookies with peanut butter and chocolate chips. I got the recipe from the back of the Reese's peanut butter baking chips package and then just added 1/2 the package plus 1/2 a package of chocolate chips. They're so yummy and chocolaty I may die. They're all  I've eaten today, plus an egg because I wanted to eat protein and pretend like I did something good for my body. I recommend eating them with a glass of milk, which is also really good for your body. Trust me I'm a nurse so therefore I know how to live a healthy lifestyle, obviously.

Don't worry though because tomorrow I'm climbing and working all night. I just had to take advantage of my opportunity to relax. Its not everyday that I get to sleep for 11 hours and then wake up and do nothing. Nope, that only happens 4 days a week.

Things I'm loving- Kindle and Willowdog edition

Wow I haven't written a post in over a week, oops. I had intentions of writing one this weekend, but it is rather difficult to find time when you are taking a safe driving course in order to avoid points on your drivers licence. Its also even more difficult when this course requires that you spend a certain amount of time on each page so that a total of 6 hours is spent completing it. Hypothetically speaking it would also make it even longer if you were to fail the test at the end of the longest section simply by not reading a question correctly, therefore forcing you to go back and redo the section. I, of course, would never put myself in such a situation and, consequently, would never end up staying awake until 3:30 am on a Saturday night to complete the course. Nope, not me. But that is neither here nor there.

Plenty of other things have been happening around here. Most of these things do not include interacting with real humans. Unless you consider attending to constant beeping IV pumps at work for 2 day straight an interaction. Trust me, its not. Its difficult to spend time with humans when you work all night and your
boyfriend has to live in South Texas for several weeks drilling oil and sucking up to obnoxious Canadians...don't ask. So without further ado here is my next post about some things I'm loving lately.

I always enjoyed reading but let's just say that my new toy has definitely "rekindled" my love for books. I love how nice it is to carry one small, lightweight item around instead of large bulky books whose covers often get destroyed in my purse or work bag. And when I'm out and about and I finish a book I can just order another one and be reading it almost instantly. This actually happened at work the other night, and I just searched for a new book during my lunch break and was reading it before I had even finished eating. The only downside is that it makes it super easy to spend money. I just download books and amazon automatically charges my account which makes it feel like nothing is happening until I see 3 5$-10$ charges on my card, but lets not talk about that. You can also lend many kindle books to other kindle users for 2 weeks which is a pretty cool feature. There are quite a few books that are lendable too. And while not all books are available on kindle there is a surprisingly good collection and everything is usually between 5$-10$ making it cheaper than buying the hard copy of the book. I just wish that the HP series were available : (

Another awesome feature is the screen, its so so easy to read and when I'm at work I dim the lights around my desk and I can actually still read in dim lighting. You can't read in the dark but it is a lot easier than reading an actual book and it looks very realistic.

Aside from the actual kindle itself I am also obsessed with my case. Its super cute and it stands up on its own which is awesome. Plus who doesn't love yellow flowers?

I'm thinking I'll put together a summer reading list of books I recommend and a few books that I plan to read.


I also realized that I never did a Willow birthday post. I'm such a bad parent. We didn't end up at the dog park but she did get some vegan peanut butter cookies shaped like squirrels, topped with peanut butter and peanut butter ice cream. Anyone want to guess what her all time favorite food is? Unfortunately I am a bad mom and did not get a picture of her devouring the treat, but trust me, she did, quite rapidly too. However, I do have a pic of the cookies 

The recipe is also really yummy if you are a human as well, its one of my all time favorite desserts to make. I would say Willow is a lucky dog for getting so many treats, but really I am the lucky one. She so much fun and always makes me smile. I absolutely love how crazy she is when I get home from work in the mornings, its so nice to come home to such a sweet, happy dog. I love her

Night Owl

I love kids, babies, puppies, pretty much anything cute, but what girl doesn't? So considering how much fun children can be it would seem that pediatric nursing would be the best job ever, right? How wonderful to spend 12 hours holding and feeding sweet little babies and actually getting paid for it. Fortunately there are nights where that is exactly what I do. However, I think people can often be confused when they think about what it takes to be a pedi nurse. For example there are the countless 13-17 year olds I care for who overdosed on tylenol, various antidepressants, benadryl, etc. There are also the 6 year olds who are diagnosed with borderline personality or bipolar disorder. Seriously, how is that possible? They’re only 6! And my personal favorite was my severely malnourished 15 year old, who was OCD, and compulsively did backbends and back flips, over, and over, and over. If you’re wondering, yes, it is really difficult to eat more and gain weight when you won’t stop doing back bends. 

As crazy as it gets sometimes I’m still so so happy to not have to care for adults. If had to deal with dementia patients or the absolute worst thing ever: bedpans (bleh) I think I would hate my job. I prefer my little people, thank you very much. Even if I sometimes have to stick needles in them at 4am and make them hate me : ( Its always worth it to go back into work and see a kid start getting better and actually start acting like a kid again, because that is, after all, the reason that I enjoy working with those little people.  

 And speaking of nursing here’s another thing people don’t realize; how much night shifts mess you up. Yes, I wake up around noon most days, and yes, most nights I go to sleep around 2am. My sleeping schedule is actually worse than when I was in college. I am not much of a real person, obviously. So what do I do to keep myself occupied when the rest of the world is sleeping?

Well there’s the internet, duh

There’s also baking

And more baking

And then eating what I baked

There's Netflix instant queue

Then, Workouts because I baked waaayyy too much

And the most recent addition (whenever it arrives) will be hundreds of new books at my finger tips, or so they say. 

Currently it is just after 2 am in Houston and I'm not tired, oops. Fortunately I have benadyl. Yeah, I know, I'm not really much of a role model nurse. 

Things I'm loving

On one of my favorite blogs, eat live run, the writer sometimes does a post called “what I’m loving now.” She usually writes about a type of food, item, or activity that she has been interested in lately. I always enjoy those posts and decided to start doing my own. I’m going to attempt to do one post each week, with the idea being that I’ll at least post something on here every week. We’ll see how it goes…

My first topic is going to be rock climbing. I had tried climbing a few times in college but never took it very seriously. In September of 2010 Nick went to a rock gym while working out of Oklahoma city. He immediately became obsessed. It worked out well since I always wanted to get into climbing but the timing never really felt right. We got some gear and started going 3-4 times a month, in January we started going more consistently. I now go 2-3 times per week and even learned how to lead climb.  

I have always enjoyed working out. It makes me feel good, it’s good for me, and I enjoy being productive. But when I started rock climbing I eventually realized that it’s more than a physical challenge. It’s a very mentally (and often emotionally) challenging sport. It requires a lot of focus and confidence and also some creativity when trying to figure out a route. Being that I’m afraid of heights and danger it seems somewhat counterintuitive that I would choose climbing as a hobby/sport. However, I love that it challenges me to overcome a lot of my fears and pushes my physical limitations. It’s also a lot safer than some people think, you just have to relax and be smart. Anxiety hinders climbing and can make it more dangerous. Some days when climbing I’m weak, nervous, and retarded the entire time but when that happens it stays on my mind and pushes me to improve during my next trip to the gym. I’ll constantly visualize myself completing a challenging route with no falls and no takes. And lately, the next time I climb it actually happens! It’s always a rewarding feeling to know that I got an awesome workout and pushed myself to become stronger and more confident.

Here are a few things some people don’t realize about rock climbing:

1. Its not as simple as just laddering yourself up a wall. It requires technique to figure out how to move toward each hold because there are not always two perfect hand holds directly above your head and two foot holds directly above your feet.

2. You use your legs more than your arms. Surprised? Whenever I see first timers at the gym they are always trying to reach and grab with their hands but complain when they have not holds within reach. If only they would realize that if they just stepped up with their feet they could easily grab the next hold. Its scary at first but it actually makes climbing so much easier when you realize the importance of footwork.

3. You fall a lot but you rarely get hurt. This is basically what I mean when I say that climbing is a mental sport. You can be up on a wall about to make a difficult move and the only thing holding you back is an intense and irrational fear of falling. I still have problems with this from time to time. When that happens sometimes all I need is an intentional fall to remind me that I won’t die. The awesome thing about climbing is you are attached to a rope, when you fall your belayer and your rope catch you.

It’s so fun to have a hobby that allows me to stay in shape and see new, exciting places. I don’t intend to be an awesome advanced climber but I enjoy the satisfaction of watching myself improve and I know that I’ll travel to and climb at some beautiful new places in the future.

Puppy love

I was in the middle of writing a post about how I got cancelled from work tonight (again) but Nick deleted it on accident because he was attempting to post about a missing dog on an online listing for lost and found pets. If there was any night that I should not be at work, this was it. Who doesn't love surprise visits from awesome, friendly dogs? 

Nick went outside to get the mail and immediately ran back in to call me out to meet a sweet golden retriever mix who was lounging in our neighbor's yard. After giving him some love, some water, and a treat we started looking around for someone who may be missing a dog. He had no collar and none of our neighbors seemed to recognize him. So being the kind-hearted dog lovers that we are Nick and I invited him into our backyard. We called the police department and then animal control who told us to call back on Monday. Nick responded to this news by giving me a serious look and saying that we can't get too attached to him, I of course figured we had a new addition to our little family. 

Just to be safe we started driving around to look for people who were looking for a dog. Just as we left some neighbors pulled up into their driveway and I noticed their gate was open. We called out to them asking if they had a dog and were greeted by a slightly drunk man and his VERY drunk wife. The dog's name was Bear and he belonged to their son who had just moved in. They had been gone all day and didn't realize he was gone. So, unfortunately we will not be the owners of a sweet new doggy but its probably for the best because I think the 30 minutes Bear spent with Willow were a little too much for him. He was a great sport though, its not easy to sit outside in the heat with an obnoxious puppy jumping on you non stop. Hopefully no more cute animals stop by while I'm at work tomorrow. 

Also speaking of puppies, this puppy will be turning 2 years old this month.

 I know what you're thinking, they grow up so fast! We don't actually know her real birthday but its around June/May so I decided to make it June 12th so we would at least have a specific day to celebrate on. Perhaps I'll have a special b-day celebration post next weekend, and maybe a trip to the dog park...