Rants, Recipes, and Running

Good news...I think!! First off...we are both feeling better! No more vomiting. No more "feeling like we're dying". Good times! NCLEX is behind me. It shut off at 75 questions. I was the 1st person in the room to leave. Kind of an eerie and awkward feeling...to be honest. The test could be 360 questions, or 75. It all depends on how you are doing. It adjusts the questions based on if you're getting them right or wrong. So I was happily taking my test. And I answered question #75 - and the screen went completely blank. .......................... I sat in my chair and look around the room. I thought to myself "Can't I get a few more questions??!! Just to make sure I passed?!" All those hours of studying. 20 months of nursing school. For 75 questions. Wow! To be honest, I'm glad it shut off at 75. If it would've gone to 360, I think I would've opened the window and jumped. Screaming. I was on the 10th floor . I'm not ...

So there I was at 1:00 am this morning vomiting. Good morning/afternoon to all! Isn't that a great way to start out a fabulous and inspiring post?! Sorry -- too much NCLEX studying + no sleep + being sick & cynical = vulgarity . So I take my NCLEX TOMORROW at 12:30 pm. The biggest test of my life!! Ever!! If I fail this? I am screwed and my entire college education is a worthless waste. I will probably be thrown on the streets, spit on, and forever shunned if I fail. Just kidding...if for some God-awful reason I fail - I can always retike it. ....in 45 days after paying $700 MORE dollars that I don't have ;)  (but that won't be happening!) In all honesty, I was feeling pretty confident. But my husband & I got some excellent "bonding time" last night. We got the stomach flu together. How. Effing. Cute. Yeah, not happy. His flight for California leaves tomorrow morning (for work). So we both need to get better fast. Or we're ...

As many of you know, I am in a "loll" right now. Done with school, impatiently waiting to take my boards and start working. I got a test date for September 21, but that just wasn't early enough. So I started narotically checking the website and was able to reschedule: September 15 (Wednesday) is the big day ! This is a very very good thing. For, I am going........... Bananas!!!!! Stir crazy!!! I'm going LOCA. Tom Cruise style. I'm kind of used to being busy. Have clinicals, class, labs, more clinicals, clinical prep-work, silly meetings, more silly labs, 5 hour-lectures, papers to write, studying to do. Right now.....my responsibility is to study for NCLEX, search for jobs online, and studying NCLEX some more. Let me just tell you -- I know when a new job is posted at every hopsital in town. And I am well aware of the mottos and policies of every nursing home in Tucson. Today, I tried cleaning the house - and it was really easy. Then I realized......

The time has come. You know when you've been really good? You've been exercising, eating good portions, getting your 6 servings of vegetables.........and then the opportunity to go out for ice cream comes about. You do it. You deserve it. No guilt here! Well, I'm not giving you cyber-servings of mint-choco-ice-cream, folks. I'm giving you a rant . I know . So not as cool and exciting as ice cream. I try to ration my "rants". All because I don't want the world of blogging to think, "Wow, this girl is one raging b*tch!". I just like to see the world from a different angle sometimes. What's that angle? Fricking sarcastic and cynical, and sometimes irritated. So....brace yourselves - here it goes! *Disclaimer, this is just for fun! * What is my rant-o-choice this time? Yep. That's right. Grocery carts. You're all probably thinking, Why do grocery carts make this girl angry. Wow. She really is a "raging B*tch". No...

Alright, so for the past 5-6 months I have been doing the "monthly update" at the beginning of the month. I stole the format from my sister Lisa. She has gone and started her own format. Instead of being completely un-creative...and stealing her idea (again)...... I'm going to switch up the categories! Well, some of them . So here we go..... Current Book: -The HURST NCLEX Review Book, ATI NCLEX review books, basically anything that is going to prepare my frightened & scared self for the state boards test...... (which I will be taking probably next week!) -"Sh*t My Dad Says". I will be doing a little book review on this on a later date! Current Food items: (because I have some odd eating habits...this deserve a category) -Whole wheat english-muffin with Smart-Balance butter, Splenda, & cinnamon sprinkled on. It's my pre-run fuel! -Sauerkraut. -Watermelon (it's been on sale like crazy. I feel like I've been eating so much of this tha...

In most aspects of my life, I'm quite the little scheduler/planner. In fact, sometimes I feel like my brain is a constantly buzzing calendar. But many of our trips, get-aways are quite last minute. So we had one of those this weekend. We started talking Monday evening that it would be nice to do a camping trip this weekend ...... but found that the only open campsites in the area are "first come first serve" I'm not much of a "risk taker" -- and I wasn't too keen on the idea of packing up for 4 days, getting to a campground, and finding out there was no room for us! But, Thursday afternoon I made some calls around and decided it was "do-able". So I stocked up on some groceries and we packed our bags. Friday morning we were on the road to Lake Patagonia by 8:15 am! Our sweet little Honda Civic Hybrid was stuffed to the brim! Lake Patagonia is near the Mexican border. It's about 10 degrees cooler than Tucson, due to it's elevat...

Almost 2 weeks later, I am finishing my recap on the weekend my parents visited for my pinning ceremony. The rest of the weekend we got to kick back and relax a little -- and had a great time! Saturday we headed to the east side of Tucson to check out "Colassal Caves Mountain Park". This is something we've known about all 2.5 years we've lived in tucson - but Ryan & I have never checked out it. So history lesson time: Colassal Cave is considered a dormant/dry/"dead" cave. There are visible stalagtites and stalagmites, but they're just not dripping and live - they look more petrified. However, if the ice age were to return, and the area was underwater - this cave would come out of it's dormant stage. It was "discovered" in 1879. However, during the discovery - they found artifacts to prove it had been used for many years prior. They found tribal Indian artifacts such as mortars/bowls and symbols throughout the caves. They also fo...