Parker is Menopausal

The other morning Parker was so upset because I wasn't letting him do something he REALLY wanted to do. He started crying, and after a few minutes I told him that is was enough-If he couldn't stop he could go upstairs and take a rest. He came in to the bathroom to get a tissue, went out wiping his face, sucking in air trying to calm down. After another minute I told him again-and he came back into the bathroom for another tissue and said "I can't stop crying. (wiping his face) I am trying to, but I just can't stop." I pulled him up on my lap and held him for awhile telling him it was okay. (b/c truly I understand)

the 5B 15

Every nursing unit has it's own culture. To the other oncology floors we are know as the Princesses (not very fair to the men on staff) because we are overstaffed, have the best ratios and also get the newest equipment the fastest - what can I say, we have great management and leadership.

To the doctors we are known as the most anal nurses, I have overheard MD's comment they develop ulcers while rotating through 5B, what can I say? We like things done a certain way, it's for our patients saftey...

To everyone we are known as the "unit that likes to eat" what can I say, I was drawn to this unit for something, certantinly not for the patient survival rates. Our days revolove arround food; lunch orders are put in at 9am, the soup hotline is on the phone list right underneath the blood bank, the bulliten board always has a pot luck sign-up, for various holidays, celebrations of just plain "Stuff Your Face Thursday." All the doctors come to our unit for holiday meals, we roast turkeys on Thanksgiving and Christmas, grill burgers on Memorial Day and 4th of july, and the Easter desserts this year included creme brulee, baklava, tiramisu, and decadant chocolate cake.

It's no wonder I am constantly working out to stave off the extra calories that just seep into my digestive system when I go to work. The weekends are especially bad, take today for example:

8am: Dr arrives with his required weekend breakfast, Dunkin Donughts I can usually last unitl 10 am before I start crashing, and my shrivled orange just doesn't compare to the perfect chocolate glazed donught, I'll just eat half....for now

10am: pt in room 5 lays out three bowls of left over Easter candy, and heckels you each time you leave the room until your pockets are stuffed, we've stripped them from so much pelasure already, you just can't turn him down.

Noon: the well meaning family members of Room 16 bring in two boxes of Voccarro's cookies (the best Italian dessert restuant found outside of Rome), she hasn't eaten anything in two weeks and immediatley turns the cookies over to us, who immediatly devour them.

1pm - staff orders lunch from Nacho Mama's. Let me just say, it's not a vegatarian resturant

4pm - the afternoon slump hits and it's time for a Starbucks run. By the time the desginated nurse gets back, all the whipped cream on my hot chocolate is melted, luckily there are still cookies left to dip in it.

To be completly honest, it is widley reconized that we manage the stress and grief through the joy we get from food and the bonding over our luches and other food rituals. The other units have de-breifing sessions with psychiatrists and social workers, we have pot-lucks and take-out from Outback.

Happy Birthday Leland!

FINALLY!!

I LOVE Kristen's stories. They crack me up.

We had a fine Easter weekend. We went to NC from Sunday to Tuesday. Chuck visited Wake Forest which was fine. We would like the area to be close to family but nothing really impressed him about the law school. We also went to William&Mary which was great. He loved the school, met with the Dean, and had a tour with a student. He really wants to get accepted there and trying to not to get his hopes up too much. They could let us know a decision as late as June?!?!

When we got home he finally got an acceptance YEAH!! California Western in San Diego. We could settle for that if it was the only place. It is definitely a load of Chuck's shoulders. Now he can relax and just wait for the next 8 or so.


We visited my dad and when we got there Layni (my dad's daughter) and Leland were wearing coordinating Easter dresses. It was so cute so we went outside and took a bunch of pictures together. Layni is 3 now and her and Leland played together so well. When we first got there Layni was sitting in my lap going through everyone's relationship - "your Leland's mommy", Chuck's Leland's Daddy", (pointing to Leslie) "that's my mommy", and THEN "That's my Daddy" and I said "That's my Daddy too!!" She looked at with the most confused look on her face and said WHAT?!?!?! It was so hilarious we were all laughing so hard. I think she forgot about her confusion because everyone was laughing so hard.

I'm very excited about our weekend together. I have one problem I may not have a car all day on Saturday and I will have Leland. So we will have to just keep that in mind for planning. Chuck's trying to find a ride to where he is going in DC but I should just on him having the car.

Imagine Carrie Bradshaw, age 8

Easter is uaually my favorite holiday, and it still is, but this year... nothing special. I love the flowers, the dafodils and tulips, all the pretty pink pastel colors, the chior singing, the cherry blossoms in my back yard at home, new dresses...

Weeks before the big day my sisters and I (mostly I) would scoure the pages of the Sunday Lamonts and Bon Marche adds, carefully selecting the perfect Easter dress, my grandma usually bought us our dresses, or if she was delusional that year and couldn't differentiate between us and her long dead cats, then my mom would sew our dresses. (I got new clothes twice a year, two outfits in Spetember for school, and a new dress at easter, I got by because I barley grew at all and could wear the same clothes for three to four years, and I was the third daughter with pleanty of hand me downs) I have vivid memories of all these dresses, my favorite being from the age of seven or eight probably. It was a standard girls dress pattern, little puffy sleeves, sash waist and full skirt, but what was special about it was the fabric, the under layer was a plain cotton blend with two shades of gray, thick vertical stripes, with a white chifon overlay with a pale pink flower print, and a pink satin sash. It was stunning, the stripes just peeking through the flowers. I must have promised to keep my room clean for a week to get my mom to also buy me a pink satin bow hair clip. Just picture it, my soft bown curls half up with silky pink ribons, just pricesless. To this day I haven't looked better. Forget about Easter bunnies and baskets, coloring eggs and hiding them, Peeps? What are peeps? It was all about the dresses.

Our neighbor was known for her sweet rolls; sticky cinnamon, gooey carmel pecan and sweet orange. She would make them every Easter morning and drop a batch off to us at right after the sun came up. (for some reason all of my easter memories consist of bright sunny mornings, even through I know that was not pocssible in Seattle) After gobbiling mine down I was off to primp. Before church we took our anual easter pictures, the one day out of the year we were all decked out and looking cute and sweet and like we actually liked each other. (I will try to get some old pics from my dad to post, they are funny) The photo sessions seemed to take hours, my dad would have to set up flashes and reflectors, and we were posed just right on the hearth or the foot stool, squeeze together a little bit more, just a little bit more now . Between the sugar and hairspray high we ended up feeling like child stars and actually cooperated with big, sweet smiles, flash, flash flash.

Easter was the one Sunday out of the year I actaully liked the fact that church was 3 hours long, 3 glorious hours for me to prance and parade arround as close to looking like princess as I would ever come. Good thing they never taught sunday school lessons about vanity and worldliness on those days, I was too busy trying to catch my reflexion in my shiny shoes.

Here we come!!!

It is FINALLY official. we are coming out there for the weekend.
I believe we will drive there on Wednesday. We have a hotel somewhere in town-i will ask Tim and post the detail later-for Wed, thur. and Fri. night. Then he is going down to his parents house Sat. We are probably going home on monday. So i can stay the weekend alone then with you girls if you can give me a ride to his parents-which i also don't know where that is! hehe
Maybe soon i will be better informed-but at least we finally know for sure what town we will be in.

We have the house on the market finally! so now we can breathe a little- and i can blog again.

I also love the Scott in the tub picture.-i have been waiting for that one.

Also-your vacations are making me jealous-my big vacation is coming there in May!!

Love you girls
Can't wait to see you.

Home sweet home??

Sorry, I've been home for a few days, but have not had a chance to get online much. I finally uploaded a bunch of pics, tried to weed through the 500-plus that I have (I took a picture of every single bird and flower, seriously) This link should work: KodakGallery

So here's a quick synopsis of our trip.

Day 1: arrive in SanJose, very sleepy but excited to get our "adventures" started. We stayed just north of the city in the little town, San Rafel, in a little "Villa" it was so cute and comfortable, not at all what I was expecting. While Ay's dad (note: I never call Ayesha "Ay" it's just easier to type.) was trying to work with the manager to figure out our internet situation (who files their income taxes the day before they go on a 20 day vacation??) her mom, her and I went exploring. We found a cute little church and lots of shops. After making lots of comotion at the local grocery store (they said they took dollars, but then didn't know what to do with them) we headed back to the villa and met Jim at the cuban resturant/bar on the corrner (Note: Ayesha's parents eat a lot, our whole trip seemed to revolve arround the next meal, and the next time Jim could smoke his pipe - somehow I actually lost weight on the trip) Ay and I ate something or other while the 'rents drank, I watched the bar tender make the weirdest drink, tomatoe juice and vodka (I think) and a raw egg yolk, disgusting - no one in our party had one. After Ay and I were finished we headed back into town so The 'Rents coud got some dinner (still not sure why they didn't eat at the Cuban place?) I was exhausted by this point and just wanted to sleep, we returnt o the villa, Ay and I are relaxing, getting ready for bed and Olivia (mom) come rushing out of her room, "where's my purse, has anyone seen my purse? It has all the passports in it" (well not mine, I don't turn over all my rights) So we tore the house apart with no luck, the evening rains have come and are pounding down, but Ay and I slip on our flip flops and jog down to the resturant (#2) hoping it is still open and they foudn it. What luck, when our sweet waiter (note: CostaRica's hospitality industry is great, everyone is polite and good looking, and so nice, I was very impressed, and Ay fell in love with all of them.) saw us he went right back into the back and produced the lost item.

Day 2: (don't worry, I'm going to make these shorter) drive all day, reach our next destination, the rainforest/jungle of LaFortuna by mid afternoon, it is so green, birds flying arround, singing everywhere, our "bungalow" is on the river and the lodge is on the other side, you have to walk along a little dirt path, lined with bright orange, red and yellow flowers to a suspension bridge taking you to the other side. It seems we are the only people at the ranch, we try to arrange a horeback ride with the receptionist, but Ithink we arranged an 8 hour tour of something, instead of a horseback rade at 8am. Hmm. Ay and I entertain ourselves by playing ping-pong and comment how lucky we are there are no other guests to be hit by our haphazared shots.

Day3: SPen the morning shooting birds and flowers and very patiently trying to get pictures of hummingbirds and butterflies, then we meet our cowboy for our horseback ride, he's a quite sullen fellow who doesn't speak english, so we just follow along, we go through feilds, cross rivers, (one was so high I was wet to my ankles!) and slowly make our way through the jungle, filled with bannana plants, and huge bright blue butterflies ( no pictuers of those, virtually impossible when on the back of a bumpy horse) I hear the howler monkeys for the first time, they are really errie sounding, can't really descibe howe they sound, except that you feel like you are in a horro movie (Or Lost) After our horseback ride we went on a tour of arenal volocano, the most active volcano in the world, while we were hiking arround it it "rumbled" at least 5 times, and you can see the boulders tumbling down the side. (check out the pics) we got to the closest safe place (the lava flow line of 1992) and had great views of the volcano and the lake below, it was jsut getting to be dusk and very pretty, afterwards our whole group went to a hot spring to relax and get dinner.

Day4: Dr ive to the beach, long, long drive, the roads in Costa Rica are the worst, incredible pot holed, and the streets have no names (where the streets have no names...) The 'Rents had directions form someone that went something like this; drive south until you get to the church, turn left, turn right at the large soccer field, go three blocks... ok, there's the church, does that look like a "large" soccer feild? does that alleyway make it a block? You can see how is goes. Eventually we made it to Coco Beach, Ay and I practiaclly ran from the car to the room, to the beach. it was sunday afternoon so the beach was quite busy with local Ticos enjoying their weekend, and bothering us, after about 5 meters we were ready to go back to our room and not come out. But we wlaked all the way to the other end where my guide book told us "if you are adventureous enough to walk arround the rocky crag you will find a quiet, secluded, white sandy beach..." Coco Beach is the color of it's name. Ay is skeptical about trying to venture over the rocks, while the tide is comming in, basically we are waking along the bottom of a bluff, with surff crashing onto us every few minuites, my sturdy Chacos hold up fine, but Ay's flip flops are not made for these sorts of "adventures" (on day 6 Ay states, I'm not brining flip-flops on a vacation with you again.) We pass a good number of people returning from the "secluded" beach and finally round the corrner to find a yes, very small, normal colored sandy beach, littered with all the weekends trash and debris, with teenage Tico boys jumping off the bluff above us. We instanly turn arround mand make our way, slowly back. After dinner (at the fancy spa/resort - not worth it for Cocco beach) Ay and I head into town for some entertainment (we saw some surfers comming in during the afternoon and are hoping to find them) We pass the Lizard Lounge, which seems to be full of lizardy guy types and keep going to a small bar, El Bohio by the beach, it's a dive of all dives, with a spinldy little waitress and wobbly stools, we are soon joined by a smooth private tour guide who trys to get us to hire him, luckily while he is off doing something else, another gentleman asks us if he and his friend can buy us a drink, I think his friend is pretty cute (Ay was trying to figure out if they were gay or 'just European' earlier) they are very nice, after alot of half-assed answers, and my proding we figure out that they are crew mates aborad a private yacht (which we noticed in the bay earlier, whole scrambling over slipery rocks, who I stated we needed to meet.), let me clarify, a very large, (200 ft) very expensive ($50 million) private yacht, owned by "Mr.X" an american whose identity they can't reveal. Mr. X is not on board, but has sent Helios;the yacht, check out this link - Helios; on a round the world tour, they are 5 months out, with a total of 26 months. Mr. X and his guests will fly to the ports they want to visit, (coco beach not being one of them) So we spend the night trying to figure out who Mr X is and asking lots of questiosn about their lives on the boat. Oh sorry, Erik is the old Sweede, and Grant is the cutie Aulstralian, they are the enginerees of the boat. Grant is on watch the next night, but Erik tells us he'll come back ashore to hang out with us.

Day5: We rent snorkeling gear and head to another beach, Ocatal, to play, we have a good time in the morning, neither of us are very good at it, and somehow, once, again end up trapsing across slippery rocks (this time in flippers) in seach of the guidebooks recommended snorkeling spot, only to rtealize when we get there, there is no real way to get in the water, other than hurling yourself in, and once in, we can't get out unless we swim arround the rock we just climbed over, back to shore, since neither of us are good swimmers we decide the best is just to wade in from the shore. In the afternoon we try goign again, but the surf is rough and we get knoced arround, and I get knocked into a JellyFish or two, so we call it quits. After another exciting dinner, we head back to El Bohio, our sailors are not there, but some entertaining Ticos and two tourist grous are, all doing Karoke. I don't know what got into me, but we sang, twice, and they loved us, it was halarious, we had a great time, met two ther local resturant/bar owners and some dive instructors as well as the drunk tourists.

Day6: We are both beat form all the hiking, swimming and partying we have been doing, so we are lazy, hanging out byt he pool, just walking on the beach, exploring the other end, trying to find the ever elusive Howler monkeys we hear and every local has told us "I see them at the mango tree by the post office, or Ed resturant, or the little bridge every day at 8am, 2pm, 4pm etc" We have our best and only notable dinner this night, at some Peruvian resturant, it was excellent, yum. Even though we are exhausted, we go out, we promised the divers to sing wiht them again, and want some pictures with some of the locals we like, (although we didn't get any) We do run into our sailors, and the rest of their crew, all foreign, all good looking, the girls were all very nice, and they guys all very flirty, and in an hour we are on their little dingy headed out to Helios, oh it was so pretty, granted they had everything covered up, all the outside furniture strored away, but we toured Mr. X's private quarters, his bath tub is the size of a small swimming pool! and felt like celebrities ourselves, they heated up the jacuzzi on the sun deck, the plasma screen came down, the sky was sull of stars, and at 6am, it was really hard to get back on the dingy and go back to reality. But, the captin Dave (my favorite, although he didn't stay up with us, understandable - he has to drive the boat) invited us back any time (when Mr X and his guests are not aboard), so Ayesha and I may just become Yacht groupies! Next stop Fiji! We also promised Erik we will visit his house in Spain next summer.

Day 7: after no sleep at all we packed up and left the beach for antoher long day in the car. Luckily at lunchtime we stopped in a biological preserve and finally found some monkeys! They were white-faced monkeys, not the howlers, but they sure were cute! then drive, drive drive back to San Jose, to sleep for the night. then it was home.

Sigh. It was definatley one of my favorite vacations, very laid back, but still full of adventure, can't wait to leave again. And I now have a back up job for whenever nursing gets to be too much, or I turn 30 and hate my life, off to a private yacht for me!

update

So no word on law schools yet. It's driving me crazy. Although Chuck does have an interveiw next week with the job for Town Manager of a small town in NC. He applied in August last year and interveiwed then too, but never heard anything else. But they called and we were already planning a trip to NC over Easter so we set it up. Random - 8 months later. So I did a little research and it turns out that it took a 76 year old member of the Town Council to die for them to realize they needed to fill the Town Manager position. The man who died was who Chuck did his first interview with. Even funnier the man who took the deceased Town Councilman's position is also 76 years old. Some how I don't think that was very wise.

Leland is doing well. Almost walking. She takes a few steps on her own then just sits down. We finally have a real crib and don't have to use the Pack-n-Play anymore. After Chuck set it up we both got this feeling "Wow we have a baby LIVING here" It was this funny feeling like this kid is not here temporaily. I guess after a year we should have realized she wasn't leaving.

I love the spring time. It just makes me so happy for it to finally be warm and all teh flowers blooming. I pulled out all the summer clothes today. Leland has such cute stuff that I forgot that I bought for at the end of the summer last year.

I hope you are doing well. Kiki I can't wait to hear your vacation stories. I'm excited about our girls weekend.