Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Birmingham

I'm coming up on two months of living in Birmingham, and I am finally getting around to writing a post about my grand new life. And actually the reason that I haven't posted anything yet is because every time I start to think of what to say I realize that I don't really have anything that epic to tell anyone about. And today is no different. So I apologize. I'll try and muster up a brief synopsis of what I've been doing the past two months.

The first thing that happened was the very close bond I formed with my GPS. We are best friends. We go everywhere together. I have the feeling that once I know the area more I will realize that I didn't do that awesome thing that every young single person aspires to do and move off all on their own to a huge metropolitan city, but at this point I kind of feel like I did. So as for now I'll keep viewing myself as some awesomely independent person that does cool things like that. Except that here is the list of things I have been really excited about lately:

1. Learning to cook.... for one
2. Getting all the way to Walmart without my GPS
3. Planting mums. (They are ugly, but they are an improvement from what was in the planters, AKA dirt and dead things)
4. Shaping up the hedges in my front yard
5. Wearing a bathrobe until noon on days I don't work (okay, that one isn't new)

So really, anyone who knows anything about what I actually do with my time knows that I'm really not living some kind of super edgy life. But I don't mind if you continue to imagine that I do, because that's what I'll be doing. 

When I'm not living the life of a 70-something year old, I'm pretending to be a nurse (I mean, I don't really feel qualified yet.) Work has been great so far. The orientation for my floor is 10 weeks, and I just started week six. This Sunday night is my first shift on nights, and I'm honestly a little worried about it. But like I said, so far everything has been great. The nurses I work with are very willing to help and answer questions, and even give words of encouragement like "don't worry, it's way harder to kill someone than you would think." That was actually really comforting to me.

I've become really comfortable with the idea of most likely getting whatever my patients have, because I'm pretty sure my new morning routine is to get to the floor, get report from the night nurse, and then immediately get some type of bodily fluid on my face. I'm kind of like a walking Petri dish of diseases. (But not really, Mom. Don't freak out.) But beside all the disease and stuff, I have really loved all the patient interaction I've been getting. I imagined most of my patients wouldn't be able to communicate, but it hasn't been like that at all. Which I'm really happy about, because I really love talking to my patients.

Well, that's all I can muster up today. I've got things to do. Like go to Hobby Lobby.

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