This is my adios blog. I will not be blogging while I'm out of town.
Things are feeling better though. I checked into my flight this morning and got my seat assigned. I got a window seat which is OK. I'm so restless that I do better in an inside seat so I don't bug people when I get up to use the bathroom (which is inevitable). The row is only two seats so I can do this. On the flight home, my seat is in the inside right by the coffee bar so there will be noone across from me. Yay! So far I have the whole row to myself so maybe I can take a nap on the way home (unless it fills up).
I'm still stressed about all the different people involved in stuff but whatever. Next time I am getting a hotel somewhere or going to only one person's house and if anyone wants to come see me, they can come to me. So much less stress.
I guess you can say I've learned my lesson.
!Adios!
So a lot of good things happened today.
I called the BON yesterday to ask what the holdup was on getting my GN permit and lo and behold, it shows up today! Yay!!!! I guess I just had to bug them about it a little.
Another super duper good thing is that work finally got me in the system right and they caught it in time so that I will have my missing pay in my account tomorrow! Wohoo!!!
Two very big things taken care of and I am stressing a lot less about.
Then comes the trip.
The whole point of the trip was to go see my sister and to get out of town for some much needed R&R. Well, things didn't work out how I'd hoped (I wanted to just go see my sister and that was it but flights were prohibitively expensive to get to where she lives). So now I am flying into Chicago, which is great. I totally HEART the Windy City but now that I'm going there, it seems that everyone wants a piece of me and I'm only one person and can't please everybody.
What was once supposed to be a nice trip to see family now has too many hands involved (partly because I have a hard time saying no, although I did say no to a few ideas that my mom came up with)
I always wonder why I do this to myself. I do have to admit that it has gotten better but it's so hard when I go home to see family because they are so spread out about northern Illinois and Iowa that I can't possibly spend the time with everyone that they would like me to and that I would like to do as well.
I think next time I want to see family I will tell them that I will be at "X" and if they want to see me, they can come along. AND I WILL MEAN IT!!!!!!! *insert sarcasm and a stubborn foot stomp*
Ok, now that's off my chest I can go back to work stuff. I'm super excited to have only one more day of classroom stuff. Tomorrow morning is free to us to work on our annual competencies and then in the afternoon we have a lecture on..............ta-da!................stress management! This could not have happened at a better time.
I'm now in disbelief at how fast these past two and a half weeks have gone by. I can't believe they are going to release me to the floor now! I know I'm going to be eased into the process but this is it folks! In 12 very very short weeks, I will be out and practicing nursing on my own and I'm so scared!!!!
My mantra for these next 3 months is probably going to go something like..........."I don't know crap but I know I will rock this job" or some variation thereof. I imagine at first it's going to be more of the "I don't know crap why did I even go to school" variety and over the weeks I'm hoping to transition into "I KNOW I can rock this job".
Wish me luck! I hit the floor next Thursday!
So after my little mini breakdown that I had the other day, I'm feeling much better.
I'm still concerned about getting my GN permit and all that but right now I'm more excited about my trip to Chicago/home.
Before I start that, I wanted to let you know how TKD is going. Tonight was an unusually large class because they had to switch our schedules for a going away party for a couple of the kids in the school so we started at 5:30 instead of 7:30. It was really nice.
Mike was the instructor tonight. He always works us hard. We did a lot of kicking drills, 510 kicks altogether for the class. We did the kicking in between our patterns. We were all wiped but it was an awesome workout.
I just wanted to mention TKD because it's starting to fall into place more. Things are coming out a lot easier than they were and my kicks are getting better in both form and speed. Plus I'm just feeling stronger overall. TKD is a wonderful sport!
I'm already trying to plan what I will bring with me on my trip home. I'm not quite sure yet but I want something cute and girly to wear. I plan on brining a summer dress or two but from there, I'm not so sure. I am going to pack some workout clothes so that I can do at least one good TDK workout while I'm there. Maybe I will even get someone to do it with me!! That would be fun!
I'm hoping that once I get back to a regular schedule, regular being working 12 hr days and being off for 4 days a week, I will be able to get back into a regular running schedule.
I'm really starting to miss running. Just a little bit.
It's really hard trying to plan a run when you are working 5 days a week. I am not a 5 day work week kind of gal. I love my 3 12's and can't wait to get back to them and my regularly scheduled life.
I don't know if I'm officially lost or what but I am still not an official nurse in the system at work yet. This is driving me absolutely nuts! This is my biggest stressor right now by far because this is messing with my finances and you don't want to mess with a girls finances!!
I've been called and emailing HR every day and now have my unit manager, the nurse residency manager, and her assistant on the case so the poor HR person is getting it from everyone! I figure the more noise I make and the more heat I put on them, the quicker it will get fixed.
I still don't have my graduate nurse permit either and I think it may be because of the HR issue. Gah!!!!!
On a good note, I only have three more torturous (however you spell it) days in the classroom and then I am set free to go do my nurse thing. Yay!
Being in the classroom has been wearing on all of us. We're not learning anything new. It seems like they just put us there for putting us theres sake (I hope that makes sense). It's completely pointless.
After Friday it won't matter much though. I will be flying to Chicago to spend time with my family who wasn't able to make it down for my graduation and pinning and I'm totally excited about that. My aunt, cousin, and I are going to stay the night in Chicago on Saturday and then come home on Sunday, hopefully Sunday evening so we can spend some extra time in Chicago. I will be there through Tuesday.
Then I hit the unit on Thursday. As the day gets closer, I get more and more scared. I've at least walked through the unit now so I know what it looks like and know the general layout but even still. The only neonates I've ever delt with have been of the healthy kind, not the sick kind.
I know once I get in there I will be OK it's just having my first day looming over my head like a cloud along with the pay stuff and waiting for my ATT to take the NCLEX which I hope will come soon.
I know I've said it before but I just want to get this thing over and done with!!! Once I take it, I know that some of this extra weight I've been carrying on my shoulders will be gone.
The stress has just been getting me lately. It's actually been worse than when I was in nursing school. I'm sure the hormones from coming off birth control aren't helping but even still! Yeesh!! A girl can only take so much before she breaks and I totally broke yesterday. I'm not sure what it was but there was a straw somewhere that totally broke the camels back and it broke big!
At least I feel better today. I am exhausted and can hardly keep my eyes open but at least I'm not like this crazy monster who is angry and yelling at one minute and crying the next. I feel very even keel and if I have to be tired to feel "normal", I'll take it any day!
Now for some ice cream!
Yay for the weekend! It started off pretty busy. Yesterday morning I ran with the group and then went to breakfast at a place called The Grove downtown. It was a nice place. After that I came home, showered up and tried to lay down to take a nap with no avail.
Our friends had a birthday party for their girls last night so we went to that. It was good times. I really enjoy our friends and their two daughters a lot. They are the kind of good people that you want to keep around in your life forever.
My job came up for just a little while and it's amazing how I'm still in disbelief that I got this position. Even though I'm going up and down in my feelings about it, it all comes down to the fact that I still feel blessed for this opportunity.
Other than that, things are going fine. The hormones are still all over the place since stopping birth control. It seems that about 85% of the time I feel normal and the other 15% of the time is spent biting my tounge because the evil twin seems to come out. I don't like it when that happens. I'm glad I'm able to recognize it though and try to do something about it. Each passing week it's getting better and better. I'm hoping that I get all straightened out soon.
I talked to the guy who owns the tae kwon do studio that I go to asking him when we are going to be testing so that I can make sure I am off that day and I get a text back from him saying to not worry about it, he will work with me on it. I thought that was really cool of him. I do still want to go to the formal testing day though. I want to cheer on my fellow teammates as they also rank up. I love watching the higher belts test as well. It really inspires me to go home and practice so that I can be at that level one day.
Today was Albuquerque's annual bike to work day which is the high point, to me at least, of the Strive not to Drive week.
I didn't have to be to the hospital until 9:30 so I decided to go for it! It's something I've always wanted to do but with working 12-13 hour days, I would be too exhausted to ride home and I'm not so motivated to get up at 5am either. Another nice motivator is because it was a special bike to work day, a local organization http://www.bikeabq.org/ had special tables set up around town on popular commute routes and it just so happens that the route I take to work is one of them.
We biked on this day last year but it wasn't for a commute, we just went out and it happened to be a special day so we hit up the tables and got all kinds of goodies. I really enjoyed it and wanted to do it again this year and was starting to plan a ride until I got a job. Then I realized that today is a late start day for me and I got very excited and started planning my commute. :)
My husband wanted me to have some backup just in case I got into a pickle and needed some bailing out so I set that up. Turns out that my backup rode the first 5 or 6 miles with me this morning and made her daughter our backup now.
I really enjoyed having company for the first half of my commute this morning. Although it did slow the pace, I still enjoyed it and, not counting making a stop at the train station where bikeABQ was at, still made it to work in less than an hour.
It feels so good to know that I got my exercise in during my commute (talk about multitasking!) AND also helped the environment, not to mention, save a few bucks in gas as well. I wish we lived just a little closer so that I could make this a daily habit.
On the way home, I caught up to a guy at a street crossing and we started to talk. He apparently recognized me from the stop this morning so we hung out for the last 2-3 miles of the commute since we were both going to the same place. His name is Dave and he commutes by bike about 4 days a week, 18 miles round trip.
Speaking of which, it was amazing how differently people treated me on the way home (there were more people out on the way home than on the way in since I went in at an odd time). I got lots of nods and "How's it going". The feel was totally different from when I'm out for exercise on the bosque. But then again, the bosque has a crowd all of it's own you could say.
Today I burned about 1200 calories round trip, saved 2-3 dollars (about a gallon of gas, my car gets good mileage), and had a blast doing my part of getting cars off the road and decreasing emissions.
For some reason I'm just not seeing myself in the nurse role. I say this because I had to sign a bunch of paperwork today for my job and the title line said RN. I'm so used to being in a different role that I feel like I don't fit in with RN yet. I know that one day it will kick in and I really will fit and see myself as the nurse but for now I just want to say "Let me get the nurse!"
