To fill in the spaces

That's Tico, you know.

Right now I'm listening to "I've Got You Under My Skin" and thinking I should probably eat more than pop-tarts if I don't want to have a growly stomach in church. Last night I got dressed up and went to the Meeting Place with Nicky for Moriah's birthday. I didn't have a present. Nicky showed me some spiky grass growing in planters outside and told me it cost a thousand dollars to get that kind of banded grass.

Today is my last Sunday at St. Elmo Pres. It's annoying to keep thinking of things in lasts...I've only been here six months! But I always do that anyway.

I need to go pick out a skrit and cook some eggs.

Mud

Guys, it has been raining for 3 days and everything is muddy. Yesterday on my way to work in the pouring rain I thought about my old theory that it was my mother's fault that it rained, because every time we went to Ace Hardware that's what would happen.

If you like a girl, you should write her little notes. We like that.

Packing day

This is the street you turn on to get to my apartment. Mine is the one with the smallest windows.

Yesterday was a better day. I got all my blood draws and made sure to balance the centrifuge before I turned it on. And then I washed all the speculums. I had to wear special glasses. 2 different people came in to check on my scrubbing technique. First they soak, then we scrub them, then we put them in the dishwasher, then we put them in the autoclave. Autoclaves are much less important-looking than you would think.

Around 10 am there was a big storm, and the sky was so black that when I looked out the window I saw my own reflection. The flourescent lights were flickering in the hall.

We are on the 3rd floor of the building. Women still ask if people from the parking lot can see them while they are changing. They can't.

I ate lunch with 5 other women in the kitchen. We talked about Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt's romantic attachments. Every time the phone rang, it was like "yeah, we're at lunch" but they looked at the caller id anyways.

When I got home from work I painted my toenails again.

How it goes

Today when I was trying to get some blood out of this lady's arm, I couldn't. I stuck the needle in, connected the tube to the end, and NO red dribble. Tried to subtly reposition the needle, but no luck. So I undid the tourniquet, and tied it around the other arm. I found a vein and thought about the angle it was running at, got a new needle and stuck again. Nothing. Then I was frustrated so I let go for a second to reach some gauze and the needle went sideways! What?
I only give it two tries. So another nurse came and stuck the back of her hand.

Later I went to spin the tubes of blood and I didn't balance the centrifuge right so it jumped violently across the counter and people kept coming in to see what all the noise was about.

All day long people tell me details about how to do things, and I just think, "thanks for telling me, but I'm probably going to have to hear it again tomorrow" and feel kind of dumb. There are a lot of details. It seems to have very little to do with all the stuff I learned in school. Anyways I'm annoyed and tired right now.

I leased an apartment...I'll move in on the 29th. It has 2 bedrooms upstairs, and a fireplace downstairs. I'm going to live alone. It'll be brilliant. You're all invited for dinner in the carpet capital of the world.

wood bees

More apartments today. All the wood bees are out hanging in the air right now, I tried not to freak out. They make a perfect round hole, I guess they actually eat the wood. Zzzzz. Do you know, there are a lot of really ugly, dark places to live. I wonder if the people who live there stop noticing after awhile. I saw one apartment that was different. It had a big kitchen with a lot of counter space, and sunny bedrooms, and a fireplace, and a patio, and large closets, and Berber carpet. I hope it's for me.

This afternoon I shot a bb gun. I was fantastic. I hit everything I wanted to.

I hate it when I smell like my car. Car is better than latex gloves, though.

This time next week I'll be in scrubs again

So now I'm looking for a place to live. I'm thinking about roommates, boxes, w/d hook-ups, and wondering where in the world my immunization record went, because I need it again. Yesterday I went through my "files" and found stuff I didn't know what to do with, like my SAT & GRE scores, my high school transcript, grades from Oxford, and some resumes from the summer of 2002. There was this whole folder called, "Stuff to do if I never get into nursing school" that went in the trash.

Last night I was trying to fall asleep and I kept thinking about the apartments I'd seen. They were built in an old cotton mill, with high exposed ceilings, brick walls, wood floors, huge windows. Oddly shaped rooms, lots of open space, that kind of thing. The woman who was showing me the place talked on her cell phone the whole time, just unlock a door, turn on the lights and keep talking while I walked around. Some of the windows started at my chin. When we were done, she asked me what kind of work I did, and after I answered she looked at me with her mouth open and said something dramatic about "little babies." I said yep. And then she said something about me being 18 years old. So I left.