You Jelly? Totes

I am happy for them.  Really.  But watching the numbers count of my nursing school classmates who have taken the NCLEX and passed get higher makes me cry.  Yes, I cried happy tears for a few ( read=one) but when I see more and more people add up I cry because of what I have done to myself to ge me here.  Looking backwards past the struggle just get to get through nursing school, and into the mindset of an 18 year old teenager who never thought about the future, never thought anything she did would affect her life negatively down the road, I want to reach back in time and smack myself!
I want to grab myself by the shoulders and scream in my own face WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING!!!!!  Don't do it. It's not worth it.  I could be an RN by now if that self-centered too big for her britches little girl had just gone home that night.
I can recall it.  I can see it.  I can feel the cold, the heavyness of my varsity jacket, the look on the cops face when i attempted to smart mouth him.  Hind sight is always 20/20, and in this case it certainly isn't getting blurrier.
I try to implore to my children that everything they do matters and will come back around to them eventually.  This took me 20 years but here I am.  Lying in bed crying because that little girl 20 years ago thought she was so cool. 
Tomorrow I get to go down and get fingerprinted.  Ironic, its 2 days shy of exactly 20 years after my arrest.

"Who wants to go shopping with me?"

Fateful last words of a semi-sane Amber this morning. Truthfully the girls who went with me really were quite awesome.  However they decided to wait until we got home to drive me crazy. 
Actually...it was after our last stop.  We were discussing dinner (our new thing is cooking hotdogs over a fire) when my 15 year old said "did you get the hot dogs?"
"CRAP!"
i hear snickering from the back of the van
"Shelby you didn't tell me I forgot hot dogs."
(Frantically she replies) "I didn't mark it off. You didnt tell me you forgot it. I didnt know"
"It's ok.  We'll figure it out"
(Once again from another kid all snarky and smart-like) "what are we supposed to cook over fire then?"
(Me) "I guess I'm making soup"

So we get home. Everyone pulls groceries in, and kids start pulling butter out of the box, asking to eat random things I bought at the store, and "forgetting" where things go and getting mad when I say "thats not where that goes"  I also love it when 2 hours later I find a bag of groceries NOT put away.  At least today its not perishable.
And every time I say "never again, what was i thinking?" Yet I always sau "Who wants to go to the store with me?"

Parenting sucks

Forget just parenting, it should be life.  Life really sucks.  Or maybe just being an adult?  No, being a responsible adult sucks.  Seriously...it really sucks.

We are having a small problem with one of our girls.  I met with the vice principal on Friday, we talked about moving her school schedule around (we have decided to co-enroll her in virtual school). When I got home and started talking to my husband, he reminded me that I had forgotten that she has lunch with the "friends" that we are trying to keep her away from.  So I'm trying to type out an e-mail to the vice principal (she said to e-mail her, or I would've gone into the school again). Problem is, I can't find the words to say.  I know what I want to say, but for some reason every thing I put down on paper sounds like I'm a blubbering idiot who has no idea what I'm talking about. 

Either I have to have my daughter give up a class I think she'll benefit from, or the school will have to give up a class they think she'll benefit from (not that I think she won't...just not my 1st choice to keep her in).  OR the other possibility is that my husband will have to drop her off and go get her twice in one day.  I don't really seeing that as a viable option.  Seriously, that's a little bit stupid. 

Why does life have to be so rough and difficult?  I mean, can't I just snap my fingers and it all be poof?  Can't I click my heels together and make it work?
I know that I could sit back and just be all "Whatever man, she's a kid, let her be a kid" and I know that is what some people do and think, however I can't just sit back and let my kid do things that will negatively impact the rest of her life.  If it was a short term fall, that would be different, I'm all about real world consequences, but this is something that could potentially follow her for the rest of her life.  I'm not going to sit back and just let her go. 

So, I will go, and try to sound as coherent as possible, because I want what's best for my daughter. 

uhgggg  /facepalm

Sometimes, it's the little things

While I was combing one of my residents hair today, he said to me "That feels so good".  It was then that I realized that it's the little things in life that make it good.  Yes, we have BIG things that are awesome, but most of the time, it's the little things.  Things that make us smile because we know someone was thinking enough of us to do something little for us.
Like when someone brings me a bottle of pop I didn't ask for(that's soda for all you non-yankee's).  Or when my child makes my lunch for me.  It's these kind of things that put a smile on my face and make the day just a little bit brighter.

So, here are just a few little things that I love about my family.

Making my lunch while I was attending school.
Sending me random stupid texts.
Voicemails full of song.
Random post-it notes with little sayings (The current one says 'poop' LOL) .
Setting out my scrubs when I forget to .
Freshening our bed sheets.
Resetting my phone's background picture (although sometimes it's annoying, most of the time I find it awesome).
Tweeting to me (My older 2 girls sometimes get a little carried away with this)
Incorporating my likes into their school work.
Random run by huggings.

There is so much more I want to add, but I think you get the point.

I think I'm going to die.

Today is ONLY day 3 of training.  Shelby will never know this (unless she reads my blog) but I think

 I'm DYING!

Seriously. 

I took a bath (at hubby's persistant coaxing-which I'm thankful for), just so I could relax my muscles.  So, I took the time to watch an episode of DS9.  But now, I think it's time for bed.  This day shift stuff is rough.
Today was my first day back on day shift after being on 3-11 for about 6 months.  However, I was ready to quit by 8:30am.  I start work at 6:45.  I'm trying to remind myself that this is just a means to an end. 
I got permission to come in early every day so that will help me with my assigment, giving me slightly more time in the morning to do the things they think we should be able to do. (which they totally need to get on the floor and work an assignment, and THEN tell me it's do-able.)  Seriously, when we are 5 on the floor, that gives us 12 people each to care for.  Well, we have an 8 hour day, so that is 40 minutes a person.  Sounds reasonable when you put it like that right?  Well, lets break this down.  On day shift we have 2 meals, taking an average of 2 hours each.  So, there's 4 hours gone.  We are now down to 4 hours.  that's 20 minutes a person per day.  Not 20 minutes at a time with the patient/resident...20 minutes PER PATIENT PER SHIFT.
Now, each patient has to be tolieted every 2 hours.  If we have 12 patients, and and toliet each one of them, and say we ONLY take 5 minutes to do this; it's an hour.  So, by the time you walk from one room to an other, you have an hour between tolieting people before you have to go back and toliet from the begining.  Normally, however it takes more like 10 minutes to toliet someone, so now your looking at 2 hours, which means it's time to go back to the begining and toliet the first person. 

So, I only have 4 usable hours during my shift that I'm able to give one on one patient care.  This is not counting taking vital signs, walking from room to room, collecting linen (either clean or dirty), reporting things to the nurse, doing paperwork, answering questions or giving showers. 
Seriously, you wanna talk about not having enough time in the day?  You wanna talk about stress? 
I'm not going to break everything down right now, but sometimes I feel overwhelmed and I wanna scream. 

 I don't, but I so want to.


OH YEAH!
Happy New Year!!!!!

Happy New Year!!!!

Well I was up for  my annual 10 minutes of celebration with my family happy new year