Night Shift

It is a rite of passage as a brand new RN to work the night shift. A necessary duty required of the newbies. Now that I've put in 4 months worth of graveyard duty I have some thoughts and feelings I need to purge onto the blogosphere.

Let's start with the positive aspects, shall we. 

Night shift workers get a bit sensitive when people say this, but honestly, night shift is less busy than day shift. OK, I said it. It's true. Not that it can't BE very, very busy sometimes, but in general - it is less busy. You don't have PT/OT, social work, case managers, dieticians, and the rounding MD's and their teams calling you every other minute. For this reason I think night shift is quite ideal for a new graduate nurse because after you have passed your meds and completed your assessments you have some down time where you can actually sit and think about your patients, read the progress notes and look up their disease processes. It's a great opportunity to learn and soak up information.

For that reason I have enjoyed night shift. I like that there's a more laid back feel to it, particularly coming from working as an LPN on day shift at a busy rehab center. It has been such a nice transition in that regard.

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HOWEVER, working night shift has been incredibly difficult for me. If you don't wish to hear my complaints and woes I beg you to go no further.

So here we go.

I hate that I feel like I am in a constant state of exhaustion. It doesn't matter if I get 15 hours of sleep, the dark crevices under my eyes only continue to etch themselves deeper into my face. My sleep/wake cycle is completely messed up. I've taken to just staying on the night shift schedule even when I don't work because it's just too hard to try to transition from sleeping during the day to sleeping during the night and then having to switch back again two days later.

If I was a single person with no need of social interaction this would be an ok lifestyle, but all the people I love and care about do not share this schedule with me. That results in me being awake at 2 AM like I am right now, sitting all alone in the living room, while everyone else sleeps. No one to talk to or hang out with. It also makes me really, really miss my husband. He often doesn't get home from work until after I have already left for work, this can lead to days that I don't even see him. I also work every other weekend and so I don't even get to see him that often on his days off.

Night shift has left me feeling pretty lonely.

Night shift has also left me feeling fat. I have no idea when I should eat and when I shouldn't. Eating a huge meal at 1 in the morning just feels wrong, but I'm usually ravenous with hunger at that time, and no one has any self control at 1 AM, so I end up eating a basket of greasy fries and 7 packets of peanut butter with a cookie on the side. My old exercising habits have also all but gone out the window, because no gym is open in the middle of the night, and it's not like I'm about to go on a bike ride or a run by myself at 3 in the morning.

Night shift has me also feeling pretty spiritually depleted. I work every other saturday night and I'm just too tired and unmotivated to try to come home, shower and go to church after a long night shift when all I want to do is crash and sleep.

This post is sounding complain-y so I will stop now, but I've just been feeling a quite worn down and needed to vent.

I don't think I was meant to be a night owl.

Our Summer

School starts up again tomorrow for me and just like that another summer is gone. It's been a rather busy couple of months for us - we moved back in with my parents, and I started a new job!

I moved out of the house when I was 18 and haven't been back since. Who knew 7 years later I'd be sleeping again in my childhood bedroom. Certainly not the situation I'd ideally imagined we'd be in after being married for five years, but when we were getting ready to move away from Ogden and trying to think of where to live next, I just couldn't help but feel like we needed to move back in with the old folks for a little while. With the housing market as hot as it is at the moment, we really felt like we needed to save a big chunk of money for a good down payment, and moving in with my parents so we didn't have to pay rent while we are trying to save money just made the most sense.

So here we are! And I really am very grateful that they've allowed us to move back in with them. Even though I miss having our own space! But I know it's only temporary.

We've been doing a lot of fun stuff since we moved, however. We saw "Oklahoma!" at Sundance's outdoor theater with some family.

Nate bought a new (old) truck and so we took the dogs up the canyon to go swimming and play fetch! Melon has turned into quite the little swimmer.

We also spent a weekend up in Idaho - camped one night with Nathan's friends, and went floating down the Teton river and huckleberry picking with my in laws!

We also rode four wheelers to Packsaddle Lake, and swung on the rope swing - but I didn't jump in, the water is wayyy to cold for me.

My aunt Toni invited us to go to the Thanksgiving Point Gardens with her and rented us a golf cart. We zoomed around and enjoyed the wonderful scenery.

I'm still hand making lots of felt donuts for my etsy shop - PetuniaFeltCo! I've slowed down on it a bit since I started my new job, but am still consistently getting orders here and there.

And it would not be summer without going to a rodeo with this crew!! Usually we go to Strawberry Days but we were a little slow on that one and the tickets sold out, so we went to Fiesta Days instead. Which was still so much fun.

Shelby came out to Utah for a month and had her baby shower! Can't wait for little baby Brimley to get here.

Soooo.... that's all I got for ya! Sorry this post is lacking in any entertainment value. I'm working night shift and my brain's been a little fried these days. So this post is really for my own documentation purposes. I'll try to come out with something a little more interesting about my new job, which I really want to share and write about how that's been going.

ALSO... big news everyone, I'm going to Disneyland in October! Which I cannot even express to you how excited I am for all the Halloween decorations. Just had to share that little tidbit with ya.

Over and out.

A June Trip to the Happiest Place on Earth

As some of you, more dedicated readers may know (which might actually be nobody - whoops) I graduated with my RN back in April. For the 6-8 months leading up to that event I begged and hinted to my mom to take me to Disneyland for graduation.

I am pleased to announce my hard work paid off and I was able to go to my favoritest place on this green earth back in June.

Oh sweet Disneyland. You'd be hard pressed to find something that elicits more joy in me than this place.

Typically the menfolk for whatever reason get excluded from our Disneyland trips. So all girls it was!

Pixar Fest was going on while we were there, and sadly we were about a week too early for the Pixar Pier grand opening, but there was some small things that were open and available. The shop across from what was formerly Ariel's Grotto is now filled with all sorts of wonderful Pixar merchandise! I wanted to buy it all. Also the good old ice cream shack has now been converted to the "Adorable Snowman's Frosted Treats". I'd seen these lemon/blue raspberry concoctions posted all over Instagram and Pinterest and I just knew I HAD to try one. They were sooo delicious. Next time you're at Disneyland, make sure you get one of these.

Overall I think the whole Pixar Pier thing is pretty cool. As a mostly Disneyland traditionalist, change can be hard for me, but I feel like this is a good change! I am a huge Pixar fan and love to see that it has more presence now at the Disneyland Resort.

One change that I am not too excited for however, is that Bug's Land is getting the nix and is being replaced with "Marvel Land".

Yuck. I'm not going to talk about it anymore because it upsets me so let's just move on.

Luigi's Rollickin' Roadsters still stands as one of the best rides.

So I've ridden Splash Mountain my fair share of times in my life. Too many to count. In that time on RARE occasions I've found maybe a pant leg soaked at the most, but even that was rare I'd get that wet. Each time we road this ride this trip we got soaked! They must have upped the water levels or something because even though we had these ponchos we were still walking around in squishy water logged pants and shoes.

I don't typically sit and find a good spot to watch the fireworks, but we did this time and I'm so glad we did! They had a Pixar themed show and it was so magical :) (the old lady in the cape standing next to us is the best)

I'd just gotten back from New Orleans just a couple days before we left to Disneyland, so I had to make sure to get some Mickey beignets so I could reminisce.

Then the beignet turned on me, making it look as though either something went terribly wrong with gold bond, or that I had a bad case of dandruff.

Ah the mint julep, a long standing favorite treat of mine.

Wish this trip didn't have to come to an end! Sadly I've long since been introduced back into reality.... but more on that later. For now let's just bask in the joy that is Disneyland.

New Orleans: Part 2

I mentioned in my previous post that my vision of New Orleans included a lot of pirates... well that vision also included a lot of ghosts. So a visit to a cool old cemetery was only natural. I'm extremely fascinated with how people are buried above ground in New Orleans. Hundreds of years ago, through trial and error they discovered that burying people underground just didn't work because every person they tried to bury underground would eventually come back up above the ground after the rains and floods came in and softened the earth up. So to avoid that minor issue they eventually decided on burying people in above ground tombs. We did a tour at the St. Louis #1 cemetery, which is regarded as the oldest surviving cemetery in New Orleans. Our tour guide was the lady pictured above and she was awesome. There is so much fascinating history surrounding these types of cemeteries, and if that thing interests you at all definitely do some research.

That strange looking pyramid type tomb is the future resting place of Nicholas Cage. Not even joking.

The above tomb is the exact reason I wanted to visit this particular cemetery! It is the tomb of the famous voodoo queen Marie Laveau. Who is a very interesting character to learn about. If you're interested in New Orleans history, she is a must to research.

One of the days I was there Shelby, Scott and I drove out to Pensacola, Florida to hang out at the beach. I'd never been to a white sand beach before!

The water was so warm and perfect! Towards the end of the day though we saw a shark and that was the end of us swimming, haha.

One of the days we signed up for a swamp tour.

It poured rain and we totally got soaked, but it was so worth it.

Our tour guide was a legit Cajun. He showed us his scrapbook of all the alligators he's caught in his life. Like, I probably wouldn't be surprised if he's made an appearance on Swamp People. He was pretty awesome.

The swamp did not disappoint! We saw a ton of alligators. Which are so scary, but I've read they're not really that aggressive. I guess crocodiles are the ones you want to watch out for, but alligators are actually not too bad?? But honestly if you stuck me in a room by myself with one I would still be horrified. From the comfort and safety of a boat though, they are really fun to watch.

Our Cajun tour guide keeps pet alligators and so he passed it around and let us hold him. I thought this baby one was so cute. I mean look at those little arms just hanging helplessly at his side! Such a cutie.

Another amazing thing about New Orleans is all the food! We ate at some of the most delicious places and one of the highlights for sure was Commander's Palace (which is the restaurant that Emeril himself started out at as a chef, cool eh). You pick out three courses - appetizer, main course and dessert and it was all SO GOOD. I'd never had fine dining before this experience and now I don't know how I went my whole life thinking I knew what good food was. But guys, I didn't know what delicious meant until I ate at this restaurant. If you are ever in New Orleans I HIGHLY RECOMMEND. There's even a documentary about the lady who started it - Ella Brennan on Netflix, it's called 'Commanding the Table'.

Whelp guys, thus concludes my documentation on New Orleans. It was a dream come true for me. Luckily Shelby and Scott will be there for several more years and so I plan to make even more return trips!