Beach wedding pics

Oh, and I wanted to post a couple of pics of Russell's mommy and daddy's renewal of their vows. They're so cute!
This was their awesome cake that Russell's aunt Norma made.

Kissy face.

All the girls wanted to make sure that granny's dress didn't get dirty because all of them claimed it for when they get married.

This is the happy couple with all of the nieces and nephews (minus one niece) + Russell's brother Steve holding the rowdy one. Logan (the one crossing her arms) had a big crush on Russell this week although she tried to deny it. It didn't help telling her older sister who is a tattle tale...lol.

Damn dirty bees

BTW, the carpenter bees have went from making small holes the size of their body, to this.....















And this....















And those aren't the only two. There are many more just like that. Some even bigger, but I didn't feel like walking out in the grass to take the pics.

It makes me cherish the memories where we killed 60 of the bastards with our fly swatters. Mmmmemories.

Bathroom poetry

So much has been going on. I finally got to go get Russell on Saturday night. It was a nice reunion. *wink wink* I missed it so much, and it was so nice to have him sleeping next to me again. Gunther has a pretty bad cold. All he has been doing is sneezing his head off since Russell left, and once he even sneezed right in my face. Thanks Gunther. Russell finished a whole book while he was gone. You can tell he didn't have much to do...lol. He had a good time, though. The first thing his mother said to me when I saw them was "I am never taking him anywhere without you again!" Hehehe. Apparently I was missed. *insert awwws here*

I had my first patient with a partner last week. I get my very own this week. I'm kinda nervous, but very excited at the same time.

I had to miss my Ohio reunion this year because it was this past Saturday when I had to pick Russell up. I was told that my great grandma likes to make up her own poems and rhymes now. I will share one with you that I recently was told. My aunt Sharon took her to the bathroom, and while she was sitting on the toilet, she made up this one:

I stink, I stink
Alas, Alas
I smell like a skunk's ass

I think I almost pissed my pants. Yes, she is becoming a little delirious, but I still love her.

Mr. not-so-know-it-all

It's nice to know that one of your Nurse Practitioner instructors gets his information wrong...

We were learning about gastrostomy tubes (the ones that go through the skin on your tummy into your stomach) and nasogastric tubes (the ones that go through your nose down into your stomach). Well, in order to check placement of the tube before you begin feedings or right after the NG tube was placed, you have to 2 of 3 possible things: insert 30cc of air into the tube and listen for air bubbles with your stethoscope, pull out gastric juices to check color, and use a pH meter to test the gastric juices to see if it came from the stomach or small intestine. Our one instructor told us that Ruby does not use pH meters, so we were to do the bubble test and look at the color of the gastric juices even though most hospitals do not like using the bubble test due to error of checking placement when the air bubbles you're hearing could be bowel sounds. We all thought this was pretty dumb of such a great hospital. Well, it turns out, he was incredibly wrong, and Ruby does infact use pH strips now. What a way to confuse me.

Today we did our unit orientation at the hospital. I am on 7East which is a medsurg unit. A lot of the people on my floor will be older. However, I will get to see and do a good variety of things on that floor. We found out today we get to have partners for our first patient which relieves some of my anxiety. I will try to keep all of you informed of some of the experiences that I have, but it will have to be random because of HIPAA compliance and patient confidentiality.

Orientations never end

Tomorrow I have my unit orientation at the hospital. I won't have any patients, but we will be going through everything so we know what we're doing next week. I don't like the fact that my orientation day is on the devil's day 6/6/06...hmph.

Russell's leaving me next week.
Haven't decided how much of a breakdown I'm going to have, yet.
5 whole days.
And the knowledge that he will be flying on an airplane.
I think I might have a minibreakdown right now.

How is this fair that I don't get to go? I work my ass off, and no vacation for me.
Other than the fact that we're going to go to Kennywood this weekend for our 2 year anniversary. I don't think that counts, does it? One day at an amusement park? It will be mucho fun, though. I'm looking forward to it. Maybe while I'm on a rollercoaster, I will figure out what life is all about and everything that I'm supposed to know about taking care of another human being will just snap. Or maybe it will be my leg.

Arrrggghhh! My head shall explode.

Sorry. Things have been so hectic lately, so anytime I think I feel like updating, I end up just getting annoyed with it, so I don't. I learned A LOT this week. They're jamming way to much info into 3 weeks that I don't feel like I'm going to know what I'm doing when I start clinicals in a week. We learned things like folley catheters, Nasogastric tubes (that ones that go through your nose down to your stomach), blood pressure and other vital signs, ostomy bags, removing impactions (with your finger...*shiver*), enemas (yes, I said enemas, Dawn), bathing, brushing teeth, moving patients, range of motion exercises, changing the bed sheets with the patient still in the bed, and much more. That's only two days of stuff. I had another test this week. I got a 100% the first week, and an 88% this week. Not bad, but some of the questions just seemed like it could be more than one thing. I guess that's true for nursing though....there is always something you could do differently whether it's the best possible way or not. Everyone needs to come over so I can practice taking blood pressures.

Oh, birthday was good. Mom just came over yesterday and brought me a crap load of gifts for birthday, graduation, and our anniversary. She's too good to me. I don't get to see her nearly enough. But, I made her and Russell dinner, and we watched a movie, but then she had to leave. She got me a lot of scrapbooking stuff, and a mother/daughter bracelet, some stuffed piggies, earrings and a necklace that match (they have leaves on them), and she got me this awesome pitcher/glasses set that I really wanted from the ABC catalog. She's the best mommy in the world. :)

Well, I guess that's enough for now. I will update more another time when I'm not super busy.