after a week off, i finally went to work the other night.  During that week, i went to Atlantic City for a Nursing Symposium with Dee and Carol.  We stayed at Taj Mahal where the lectures were held in the ballrooms. Topics covered Critical Care, CCRN review, ER, PACU, Peds, and Neonatal. The whole place was so nice! We also visited Tropicana, Borgata, and Caesars.  We had a lot of fun.  Pictures are up on my FaceBook. 
If you're signed in, click here: CCRN Parade.

it was business + pleasure, but mostly pleasure... because our job is fun! hehe

When i finally came back to work, i was warmly welcomed by my coworkers asking how it was.  i wish they all came with me! We always have a good time when we're out.  Every month we plan a big dinner outing.  Unfortunately this month the dinner was the same time i was in AC.  This weekend they're all going on an overnight cruise on the Hudson river! Even my manager will be there!  Man, i would SO love to go, but since everyone else is going, somebody's gotta stay and work! LoL.  Plus i spent a good amount of money already at Atlantic City... those roulette tables are the devil! well, there's always next month.

Anyway, yesterday morning when we got out of work, a bunch of us decided to grab breakfast.  Our nursing assistant drove us all to Queens to that famous Filipino restaurant, Krystal's, for some gooood tapsilog, pan de sal, chicken bbq on a stick, pancit sotanghon, and sago!! lol it was a feast! Two of the Filipino nurses ended up treating us all.  We converted our non-Filipino coworkers! lol. We bought her a kasava cake to bring home... and i bought a whole loaf of brasso de mercedes!  It's my mom's favorite dessert hehe.  After all that, we were driven back to Manhattan.

I slept so good when i got home. hee-hee.

pea'S'e

This time, i mean that metaphorically!  I'm talking about my insatiable appetite for Life.  I'm always hungry.  And I'm having my cake AND eating it too!  Who says that's impossible?  I'm living it. 

I have a fulfilling and rewarding career that i love!  I work full-time, but i have enough days off to do other things.  I work 13 nights a month! That's 3-4 nights a week.  Which means, 3-4 days off a week!  I also have enough vacation time, Holidays, and Personal days, and enough Sick days just in case... *knock on wood*.  So i have an abundance of time off!  Yea, i work 12 hours straight during the night shift.  Yea it get's hectic sometimes.  But at the end of it, i still find it amazing what i do: I help sustain human lives.  Truly amazing.  I work with the best staff, from our assistants to the physicians, to housekeepers and engineers, to the administration.  The teamwork is like no other.  Positive attitudes help me get through the night.  It's all about optimism and taking responsibility.  I'm glad i chose to work at this hospital.  My manager is great!  She really listens to the nursing staff.  She also gives me awesome schedules!  Gotta love it when i get 5 days off!  I really can go on mini-vacations every month, but I'm managing my finances, and boy is that complicated!

Finance... when in school did i ever learn about that?? Certainly not when i was studying Nursing!  At first it was like another language... I'm making all this money, and i didn't know what to do with it!  Now it's pretty exciting!  It's exciting because i take full control of my finances!  I decide how much i want to put into my student loans, my credit cards, my savings account, and my 403B... and believe me, I square away a big chunk of my paychecks into those categories.  I hate the feeling of being in debt, and i love the feeling of a safety blanket of savings.  So i feel much better when i put alot into both.  With my 403B, i began planning my retirement when i started my career!  And also at the same time i started my career, i started saving to go back to school!  I'm not about to take another student loan.  Debt is evil, so i'm trying to get of it asap.

You know what else is evil?  Renting an apartment when you don't have to.  Doubly evil is renting an apartment in Manhattan when you don't have to!  The rent is extraordinary!   At the end of my year's lease, I decided not to renew it.  I moved back home-- i missed my mom and brother.  I missed my car!  The city is wonderful, but then at times it made me feel claustrophobic.  Peace and quiet in the city are rare.  Space in the city is rare, not to mention expensive!  I felt it was unnecessary for me to rent when i can still commute from home to my job.  It wouldn't make much of a difference to me, except maybe tens of thousands of dollars in my wallet!   It was such a relief to sign that last rent check.  And it felt good to be close to my brother and mom again.  it's also nice to know that i can live on my own if i wanted to!

My pleasures in Life are simple: friends, family, and love.  I'm becoming more and more of a minimalist.  Too much material possessions just end up being clutter.  For example, I don't wear any of the "sick" Jordans i used to collect anymore.  What value do they hold but egotism and bragging rights?  They may be worth a pretty penny on Ebay, but i'm mainly just trying to get rid of them.  Now they're just taking up space in random stacks of shoeboxes on my floor.  That example is no different from the rest of us women who collect fancy bags and shoes.  My room is a mess!  I could take at least 75% of the things in it and tell you that i fully don't need/use/want them anymore and can throw it out or donate to charity.  It's such a huge daunting task, though... one of these days i will complete it!  It certainly will get me a few tax breaks!

Love.  Besides my immediate family, i have a precious handful of friends who i consider close enough to be like my family.  These are the people i've grown up with or just recently met and made immediate connections with, confided in, and learned to trust.  With them, I share individual and unique bonds which I believe could last a lifetime.  I also have a boyfriend who loves me completely and lets me be myself, who won't--and refuses to--leave my side even in bad times, even when i'm being totally irrational and too stubborn to admit it.  Because he gets me.  He just gets me!  I've never met a guy who treated me that way.  He's taught me many things, of which the most important i learned when he didn't even utter one word.  I'm too lucky to have him.  It brings tears to my eyes, the kind of love he shows me.  He never falters.  I have to thank his parents for bringing up a such a gentle man.

So this is how i'm having my cake and eating it too.  I really can't complain, especially when i work alongside physicians who work twice as much as i do!  Or maybe i just prefer to see things with optimism.  It could be as beautiful as that. Simply beautiful.

<3 Xox