Happy Mother's Day!

Yes, I know it's 4:30 in the morning on the day after mothers day, but since I haven't slept yet it's still mother's day to me.

For mummers day, I took mums and grammers out to Feast, a yummy restaurant in wicker park.  They both thought it was soooo good.  huzzah!

When we sat down, our waiter came over and greeted us.  He said, "Hi welcome to feast, and Happy mothers day to you and you!"  (he was talking to my mom and my grandma).  This kind of irritated me for some reason.  Do I not look like a mother?!?  How does he know I didn't leave my kid at home?!  I was very offended that I didn't get wished a happy mothers day.  Seriously.  There are several 27 year olds out there with kids.  Rude!!!!!!!

Hahahah... actually, I didn't really care but I did think it was interesting that he assumed I was childless. 

Anyhow, here are some pictures of our delicious meal.  I had some issues with flash-- the issue being that I didn't want to use flash and I probably should have.  Sorry man.

Here is mother and her dinner.  The only picture I took with flash.

Mum, me, and Grammers with extremely full bellies.  To quote grammers, "I am horribly uncomfortably FULL. <pause> <smile> ... it's a good feeling"

Three generations of Smalley women!  Since I'm DD i'm the only one without wine stained teeth.  (DD meaning designated driver, not developmental delay... nice try).

Now-- quite quickly can we discuss the city wide disaster drill that took place on Saturday at 1:30am?!  That was the WORST.  These LOUD alarms kept buzzing and waking up our kids!  On top of all the children waking up freaked out, I had to call every staff member on our unit at 1:30am and wake them up... including MDs, Social workers, RTs, etc., saying "This is a city wide disaster drill.  If there was a real emergency, how long would it take you to get to the hospital?"  ... As you might guess, I am now everyone's favorite person. 

I wanted to go down to the ER and see the action! Evidently Navy guys are lined up in the ER with note cards stating what happened to them in the fake emergency.  The ER has to triage them and find appropriate staffing whilst still taking care of their real patients.  We actually got an admit from them during all the commotion...  she said the ER was a nuthouse with everyone all worked up about the drill.

Alright, I guess that wasn't as quick as I hoped.  Welp, happy mothers day!  I hope all those mothers out there got some good stuff (not including me, because as people can CLEARLY see, JUST by looking, there is no way I could be a mother....  )

Free-dom

It's that time of year!!!!  "What time of year?"  you ask?

It's nurses week!!!!   Normally, I would not be that excited... but unlike other professional weeks, nurses week tends to include getting TONS OF FREE STUFF.   I admit it, I'm a sucker for free stuff.  When I hear something is free, I can just feel my neurons firing, and a nice extra amount of serotonin sticks around for awhile.  Ahhh, even thinking about it excites me.

At Children's, they always give every nurse a good amount of gifts/free stuff.   There are tons of mini-parties,free goodies brought in, and gift packages given to each nurse in the hospital!  However, there is also a daily raffle, and a red carpet raffle.  In addition to the work place giving out free stuff, the community also seems to recognize nurses week as places like Cinnabon and Swirlz Cupcakes gave away free goodies (SIDE NOTE: you would think that for nurses week, since we're healthcare professionals and all, they'd give out healthier stuff, like "receive a free beet at salad world" or "show your hospital ID for a bag of spinach at the flea market"  the sad part is i'd be just as excited even though i can't stand beets... but I do enjoy spinach...)!

So this week, I went to Cinnabon to get my free cinnabon, and the lady asked me "How many do you want?"   SERIOUSLY!??!?! It was so tempting to say something like 50... but I just said one.  I guess the fact that I don't like cinnabon might have played into my answer.  My plan was to get it and bring it to my mom, but my mom left for Ohio and I didn't have time so I ate it.   For a food I don't particularly enjoy it was QUITE good... probably because it was free.
Swirlz cupcakes gave me 2 free red velvet cupcakes this week!!!!  Yay swirlz (now those things are good).
For our nurses gift at work, we got Borders gift cert, potbelly gift cert, pens...  WAIT, I didn't get the gift yet.  The only reason I know partially what we got is that I asked my manager at the nurse's meeting because I COULDN'T WAIT to find out.  hahahaha....
So I haven't won any raffles yet--- but I plan to.  Last year I did not win any either.  Krista won a gift certificate for a meal for two at Ann Sather.  My friend's coworker on the ID floor won a 50$ gift certificate for a spa.   There is an exhaustive list of all the raffle stuff you can win!  I guess they are still raffling sat/sun/monday so I still have a chance.

Being Christian and identifying Christ as my Lord and savior, I admit I feel a little guilty getting so excited about material things.  For clarification sake, I must say that better is one day in His courts than thousands elsewhere, even if the thousands elsewhere include days and days and days of awesome free stuff. :)

Anyway, since it IS nurses week, I thought I'd share a story with you all that describes why I am such an awesome nurse... ;)
It was my last day at Rice Children's Home, and a 12 year old girl came down for an episodic visit as she had banged her head against the wall in a restraint.   She had a huge swollen area on her head from blood vessels leaking fluid under the scalp.  These are sometimes known as "goose eggs"  because they look like.... goose eggs.  Anyway, my note to the pediatrician read something like...

XYZ is a 12 year old female reporting to the clinic due to head trauma resulting from a restraint.  Large nest egg noted.............

NEST EGG! 

Well, I had no idea I wrote this until I got a call from the pediatrician the next day making fun of me.   Yes.... I do things like that all the time....welcome to my world,  le sigh.

Anyway this entry needs a picture, LOOK WHAT BOB ATE!

what a lucky duck.

*edit* For good measure, I made another word blunder last night that I found rather amusing/embarrassing.

I was triaging a patient, so to give the fellow on call a slightly easier job I asked about their insurance.  They said BCBS.  I then clarified with them "Is that an H2O or PPO?"

As SOON as I said it, I was mortified and corrected myslelf... "Ohhh I'm sorry! I mean HMO...."  mew...

hello chi kaaaa! go.

Yes it's true.  I waited 6 hours in line to see the Ellen Degeneres show.  All this the weekend before finals week.  If I am not a good student, no one is.  You heard me!

As a side note, my grandmother cannot say Ellen Degeneres so she calls her Ellen Degenerative.  She does not do this to be funny.  She really thinks it is her last name.  Ohhh grammers.

My story begins early in the morning, whence (hee hee) I arrived at NBC plaza.  The sky was clear, the weather was warm, my banana was ripe, my hopes were high!  Here is a picture of the stage at the time I first got in line.

You can see it says Ellen behind that strange piece of cloth.

Anyway, shortly there after Allen, my partner in crime arrived.  We chatted in line but quickly got bored of each other and started commenting on the dogs that walked by.  Allen started to exhibit symptoms of paranoia (" I think that guy knows me!  He is looking at me!  Look at them in the car... they are suspicious!  Someone is going to tow my car!  That man has a dog on his belly...." etc).  I got a text from Andre who was on his way to detroit.  He brought us starbucks and snickers!  Yay!  Thanks andre.

Allen and I then decided to use our snickers to bribe Ellen into letting us in the VIP line.  The problems with this plan were 1. we didnt know where ellen was 2. she can probably get her own snickers 3.  we ate our snickers.

At this point, I started thinking that everyone around me was Ellen in disguise.  You know how she dresses up as others and plays jokes?  I thought it'd be such an Ellen thing to do to stand in line and trick others!  There was a large person dressed up as a dog named Reagle Beagle.  i was CONVINCED it was ellen.... but Allen pointed out the fact that he had brown man hands.   I tried to come up with a theory of how Ellen disguised her hands but alas....I did not.

Once we got past the security check point things were easy breezy.  Well, we still had 3 hours left of standing to, and the temperature continued to drop, but we knew we'd get in at least.  At one point, I tried to hide under this large man's coat who stood infront of me.  It just looked so cozy....... but I decided that would be inappropriate on several counts.  The people behind me were having conversations about psychiatric meds.   I always feel awkward when people are spouting out faulty information about things that I kind of know about.  Of course I didn't say anything but I always feel this inner conflict or something.  Or I wonder "would they want to know?  or would they find it rude?"....  yeah, what do you guys do?

SOO FINALLY our line started to move, we were wet and cold and our bladders were distended -- but at the same time were were joyous and thankful that the show had finally started!  These angry ladies almost trampled me.  I was like step off, foo!!  .... no, i wasn't.

Anyway the show was fun.  Robin williams drove by us in his fancy car.  Oprah gave us free pizza.  Ellen looked pretty cool in her green hoodie!  I might be on TV!!  actually, my goal was to avoid being on tv, we shall see how that panned out.  Anyway, here are some more pictures.  We couldnt take cameras in so mine are all outside of the show.  Allen used his camera phone inside the show so sorry about the poor quality of photos!

Our #'s in line.

So close yet so far.

I got me a T-shirt!

Ellen and Robin W. on the jumbo tron

Ellen and Robin W. chatting on stage.

The Pizano's pizza truck sent to us by Oprah

Happy, although wet and tired... Ellen fans!

and now begins finals week. The end of my second year of grad school.  The end of my 3rd year of post-bac studies.  Huzzah!  On tuesday I will be done until summer session starts.  Expect a party.....you heard me!

I have to confess something.  When Talley lived at my house, I didn't take her out on walks very regularly.  I let her peep and poop out on my balcony.  Before you judge me!!!!  I tried to take her out on walks-- or even just out right infront of my building several times.   She'd start whining and shaking and it was really sad.  One time this woman even stopped and said "IS YOUR DOG OK?!"  and I was like "yeah she's just really old."  ... if I tried to take her on a walk she would walk in circles between the shivering and crying and really it was kind of ridiculous.  So I made the decision to let her use my balcony.

Needless to say, it was kinda nasty out there.  I mean, I picked stuff up but u know how it is.  So come the warm weather, I decided to clean it.  In my head, I had envisioned power washing my balcony.  So I went to take out my power washer....waiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit..........

So I went to get my hose...waiiiiiiiiiiit....

So I went to get my extremely large bucket........ le sigh.

What I did have was a large cup.  My plan to power wash my balcony with a large cup had several faults.... looking back on the incident, it was a little grandiose of me to think that i had enough arm strength to power wash my balcony with a large cup.  I think I might need tommy john surgery.

After injuring myself, I had a moment of brilliance.  GARBAGE CAN!  My garbage can has this inner removable bucket that you take out and it's quite large.... my sink also has a removable spicket (did i just use that word appropriately?  i don't know.  i don't want to say faucet b/c the whole faucet doesnt come out, just the top part) so I could leave the garbage bucket on the floor and fill it up with soapy water.  BRILLIANT!

I dragged the bucket over to my balcony and decided I would add force when the water hit by kind of swinging the basket first.  Well, I underestimated the weight of the water and the sturdyness of the basket.  One swing, the basket breaks, it goes flying out of my hand the wrong way.... and suddenly a huge bucket of water is broken and all over my livingroom floor.   Yes, it was about up to my ankles.  So I started running to unplug all the outlets, slipped and fell in the sudsy mess twice, got my pants and socks SOAKED... then ran to my bedroom to get towels and started THROWING them on the the floor.  At some point I changed into my rain boots. Then I thought "AHH!!  I just use my water sucker upper thing!!"..... yeah.  I don't have one of those either.

An hour later the wetness was gone.  My balcony was still dirty.  I was quite dirty as well.  I finally decided to use bleach and a swiffer to clean my balcony.  At last, my task is finished.   The sad part is things like this happen to me all the time.  I'm like a disaster waiting to happen!

After that I passed out on my couch.   Anyway.... nothing like friends (and family) to make a hard week into a week full of realized God's blessings!!  Ahh, i feel so meeeeepy. meeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Here are me and the ladies at berry chill.  SO much fun!  :)  Yisoo, come back from boston more often (or better yet.... COME HOME!) and esther.... stop working so much.

I don't know why but I love this video.... so does the rest of the world, evidently.  I watch it at work all the time.

Does it work?