One More Final Till Christmas!

I've got one more final (Pharmacology...shockingly, my favorite class) tomorrow at 1 pm! So today is Clean The Apartment (which looks like it was hit by a tiny VERY well aimed tactical nuke), pack all my stuffs, study for pharm, all that good stuff. That way I can shove all my sheets and towels and such into bags in the morning, put everything ELSE in the car (if I don't do it tonight), and go straight from the final to the ROAD!
I looked the car over, gassed it up, checked/equalized the tire pressures, I am all KINDS of set. I also located ALL THREE of my window-scrapers (you never know which one you will need, or if somebody will take one and not give it back).
Mildly inconvenient that I'll be going home at about 3 pm and not getting home till 10 or 11, but hey, it's better than driving through rain / ice / snow as I go farther north. There's BOUND to be that awful band of nasty ice around Massachusetts. And Mass drivers are batshit-crazy WITHOUT ice. (No offense Massachusetts drivers, you're nicer than CT drivers, just crazier).

Pre-Christmas Madness

Today I went to Target, got a few final things for Mama's stocking, came back, wrapped EVERYBODY'S presents, including stocking stuffers. This is VITAL, because otherwise when I go home Thursday afternoon or Friday morning people will PEEK! O Noes! In fact, I'm so sneaky that I'm not even going to say what I got ANYBODY, as I know that at least my dad knows how to find this blog. HAH!
Made another Eggnog Coffee Cake, this one for some family friends. I'm going to the German Christmas Market with them tomorrow, and the Reading Terminal Market. Squee! Christmas lights! I LOVE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS!!!
Then more pharmacology studying.

Final Grades: Part 2

Second final exam for the week, finished, 5/7ths of the way done for the semester! Yay! I can't wait to be doing REAL nursing next term with REAL procedures instead of just AM care stuff.

Final Grades: Part 1

Took my first final (of THIS half of the semester) today, grades already posted. That makes 4 As so far...but sometimes I feel as if some people in my school are rather anti-intellectual. The sort of people who have a mantra of "Bs and Cs get degrees!"
It's people like that who make me HIDE MY TEST SCORES.

Another final tomorrow, and then six whole days of Nothing, before the last two finals. During that time I will wrap presents, go to the Christmas fair, maybe ANOTHER Christmas fair, and then hopefully be able to also go back to the hospital for another OB shift when there might be active laboring, and/or a scheduled C-section.

OB-servation

Today's OB shift was COOL...even though we didn't get ANY active labors. Drat. On the bright side, (bright for me, bad day for the baby) I got to see a circumcision. Kid came through it like a champ, didn't cry once, even during the lidocaine shot. Also got to see a NICU admission. Poor little peanut. Lungs went all cloudy on it, hopefully it'll clear up soon.
VERY COOL, wonderful nursing staff. I brought Eggnog coffee cake, it was fun. I'd love to go back another day (yes, i was invited back) hopefully to see some actual labors.

My Weekend Plans

So I turned in the final paper of the semester! (That's the good news). The BAD news is that the apartment looks like a very clean tactical nuke went off in the vicinity of my closet. Which means that MY Saturday plans involve a THOROUGH cleaning and tidying and dusting, vaccuming, scrubbing, and cleaning of the whole place. Also laundry. Gotta do the laundry, or my uniforms (which are Godawful) might still have Nursing Home Cooties. Once I'm done with that, I'm thinking of a nice brisk 2 mile walk down to the J. Crew to pick up some gloves for my mother that she requested (no J. Crews that I know of in The Frozen North). Four miles is a nice workout. THEN I have to make an Eggnog coffee cake to take with me on Sunday, when ~glee~ I get to do my Obstetrics observation day at a place called Riddle Memorial. Hope i can find it at 0630. That's bloody early.

Last Day of Clinical (for the semester)

Woah. That went fast. In only four clinical days, I went from complete disorganization and panic to performing (admittedly VERY basic) care so fast I had NOTHING TO DO. I wound up running errands for the nurses and stocking bedlinens, because my patient didnt need or want anything. That's what you get with stable patients!!!
Sadly-ish, one of my fellow students lost her patient this morning, just before we got there. It is sad, because nobody was there, and my classmate was very upset, this being the first dead person she had ever seen. NOT sad, because this woman had a NASTY stage IV sacral pressure ulcer, no healing ability, in pain, terribly terribly fragile, not especially consious, you get the picture. She went very peacefully, in her sleep. I helped the funeral home move her body to their stretcher, because they needed help, and the two techs were REFUSING to assist, as they didnt want to "touch a dead lady". Geez. It's just a dead person. If it were a zombie, or somebody trying to bite you, I could understand freaking out. But these are people who work as nursing home techs! How do they manage NOT to touch dead people?

The Granite of The Northlands in their Muscles and their Brains

I really am a northern girl at heart. It's December! Where's my snow? Last winter up in The Frozen Northlands, we started getting lovely snow round about mid-December, and it didn't leave until mid-April. BEAUTIFUL. I like it best when there is about 2.5 or more feet of snow, and the trees are COVERED. I was the little kid who read The Lion, the Witch and the Warderobe and got sad when they got rid of winter. Especially in the old Wonderworks movie version filmed in Norway. Winter looked DAMN good to me!
Other things that are nice about northern winters: No black flies, mosquitoes, or slugs; wood stoves smell nice; you can add as many blankets to the bed as you want; nordic skiing; all the lights in all the towns look all sparkly and pretty; the snow evens out the potholes so the roads are smoother than they are any other time; you can use the mudroom as a secondary refrigerator!
Yes, I totally have to live in the north.