#14- Hardly Ideal

It's nearly been a year since my last post. Let me sum up everything in one word: disillusioned.

The nursing school that I have been attending has failed to live up to all of its promises. No school will ever be perfect, I know, but if you promise something you should be able to live up to that promise. Case in point: the clinical experience thus far. So far, the only time I have ever acted as a nurse was when I gave a Lovenox shot. That's it. Throughout my clinical experience the class has been coddled and cautioned because no one will let the class be nurses. I have not inserted an IV, I have not inserted a catheter, I have not even been allowed to do a wound dressing. We were promised the opportunity to practice our skills for our future careers and instead we have been used as cheap labor making beds. THAT'S IT. I swear to everything holy when I get a job and live on my own I will never make another bed, not even my own. I am supposed to graduate in November. I don't feel like a nurse, I feel like a nurse's assistant that knows how to give medication.

That is pretty much the gist of it, without going into too much detail. However now new problems are cropping up.

For the last three months, on top of nursing school and clinicals and work, I have also been taking classes at a local community college to finish up prerequisites for a RN program, one step up from an LPN (where I'm at now). Fortunately I passed all three classes with good grades.

Unfortunately, I also have a speeding ticket. And not just a speeding ticket-- I'm being charged with reckless driving, which, in Virginia, is equivalent to such crimes as DUI and petty larceny. If convicted, I can pretty much kiss that spot in the RN program goodbye, I won't even be able to take the exam for my LPN license, and pretty much everything I have worked for in this last year will be for nothing and I might as well be dead.

Court date is September 7. God help me.

Regards,

Liz

#12- Road Trips, Part 2: The Move

I have mentioned that I like driving long distances, right? This road trip has not made my love of driving any less, but it has made me completely exhausted.

Let me explain.

Three weeks ago a friend of the family, Doc, offered me what I consider to be an absolute godsend. He knew about my unsuccessful attempts to get a job within an ambulance company and my unsuccessful attempts to get into a CNA or RN program around San Diego, so when he came to visit, he offered me a job at his dental office, a room at his house, and offered to pay for my nursing school tuition. Naturally I jumped at the opportunity, but, because the world hates me, there is a big setback.

Doc lives in Virginia. I lived in California. All of my worldly possessions were in California.

Thus began the epic quest of packing and driving across the entire country.

Day 1 I spent driving to Lake Havasu to pick up my travel buddy, Sibling #5, while the family was out there on vacation. Day 2 was spent hanging out with all my younger siblings for the last time until Christmas. We went to the movies to watch Cars 2 and had a good time. Also had to take an extra look at the radiator just to make sure that the damn thing wasn't still leaking.

Day 3 was spent driving a stretch of Route 66 along the 40 in northern Arizona. When you think Arizona, what do you think about? Desert, right? Wrong. There are forests there. Forests! I never knew about them! And before we got back on the 40, we stopped at a Roadkill Cafe. Those actually exist! I always thought that it was just a joke on a t-shirt, but sure enough, they do exist. And the food is grand. Once we reached Flagstaff we headed south to Florence to visit my friends K and Sergeant, and we stayed the night there.

Day 4 was mostly spent driving out of Arizona, because we decided to be adventurous and take the scenic route up the 60. Driving through New Mexico sucked, because there were storms everywhere. I haven't quite recovered from my last journey through storms that bad, so Sibling #5 drove while I remained stiff and tried not to scream. Finally we reached our hotel in Amarillo around midnight and we passed out.

Day 5 we were late getting on the road due to a mortal injury. As I was putting my things in the car, my suitcase, which maybe weighs about 60-75 pounds, swung with enough force to rip my left big toenail up without ripping it off. The sucker was sticking straight up while my toe was bleeding like crazy and I was howling in pain. Sibling #5 actually helped me push it back into place, which hurt even more. And it didn't help that he put it back crooked. (Not like he meant it, it just happened that way.) Luckily I'm a medic and remembered I had a first aid kit in my car and was able to clean it with hydrogen peroxide before wrapping it. Unluckily hydrogen peroxide stings like a bitch. After that we drove through Oklahoma to Missouri, which cost us $8 because of the tolls, and stayed with family.

Days 6 and 7 were spent in Illinois with more family, an aunt and uncle in one town and a set of cousins in another. It was fun, for the most part, and rather relaxing, except for the fact that I still had a hurt toe. It's funny how the smaller parts of us hurt the most, especially the toes.

Day 8 is today, and we made it to West Virginia, where I'm sitting in a Best Western taking a break. Technically we could have gone the 14 hours from Illinois to Virginia in one go, but Sibling #5 and I have been in close quarters for a week now and we're getting on each other's nerves. Just today I've been snapping at him and he's been growling at me, so this is better for the both of us.

Tomorrow, Day 9, the road trip ends and I get to unpack my car. Hooray for me.

All in all the whole experience has been quite an adventure, because I cannot go anywhere without something exciting happening.. My radiator hasn't been giving me too much trouble, thankfully, and the only real trouble I've been having is my toe, which is making me hobble horrendously.

As summer draws to a close, I hope everyone out there makes it home from vacation safe. As for me, this is a new and exciting leaf I'm turning. LPN school starts next month.


Warm Regards,


Liz

#8- Road trips: Then, Now, and Later On

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I grew up in Virginia, where the summers are muggy, suffocatingly humid, and full of mosquitos and thunderstorms. I had accepted it for the most part. My parents, on the other hand, both grew up in California, which gets just as hot but is at least dry enough to breathe in, and even living in South Carolina for a while didn't acclimate them to the southeast coast summer weather. Every other summer we'd drive to California to visit family, and when we didn't go to CA we'd drive to North Carolina where we'd rent a beach house for a week or so.

Yes, yes, you did read that last sentence right-- all of us piled up in the van would drive either to California or North Carolina.

For some reason the trips to and from NC never really stood out in my mind. Sure, I remember actually being there, but I can't ever remember the drives, since they were relatively short. It was always the drives to CA that I remember the most. Three days of driving across country was... well... I never thought it was so bad. We'd at least have each other to mess around with, tapes to listen to, a sibling's shoulder to sleep on, games to play, snacks to much on, and a couple hours to get out and stretch our legs. I do remember how we'd all get excited whenever we came to a state border; we'd watch for the signs that said "You are leaving this state" and count down to when we'd pass the signs that said "Now entering this state". That was always fun, and it was a good way to remember which states were where. But I can only imagine the dread my parents felt every trip we made. Squalling babies and squealing kids can get pretty grating on people's nerves after a few hours, let alone three whole days. It's times like this I like to look back on my childhood and wonder at how my parents never left us at some rest stop in the middle of God-knows-where while they went off to some party scene in Mexico.

But that was then.

Now, I cannot stand driving through cities. They take far too long to get through, with the stop signs and lights and pedestrians and other cars et cetera et cetera. Get me on the open road with a couple of good CD's and I am in Heaven.

 Usually I drive out with my folks to Arizona for summer fun, which is a five-hour drive. I can't speak for everyone, but it really is so much fun getting there. However, there was one drive that has forever haunted me. The weather was crap that day, with several storms all around us but not quite reaching us, and I was preparing to drive back home because I had college classes that started the next day. As I'm heading out with my friend B, out of nowhere this storm forms all around us. If I hadn't been driving Sibling #2's truck (which I should point out is unbalanced due to the lack of any real weight in the back) and if I had been more exposed to driving in rainy conditions, I would've been excited. As it stood, however, I had to be trained in perfect California sunny weather and borrowing a very front-heavy truck. On top of that, it rained heavily. In Arizona. Which is a desert. So there were plenty of flash floods for me to drive through.  I'd never driven through floods before. How was I supposed to know that you're not supposed to speed through them? Turns out, that actually makes things worse. After about the fifth time fishtailing through a flooded part of the road, I called my dad and he advised me to take things slow (which really helped when I came to a section where, I'm being completely honest, literally half a mile of road was covered in water). A five hour drive turned into a seven hour panic attack with me spouting prayers at every saint I could think of and calling my poor sleep-deprived father every ten minutes bawling my eyes out because, honest to God, I was going to die.

Another memorable road trip, actually my first one made by myself, was when I drove from San Diego county to Merced for my friend's wedding. What made it so memorable was, not only was I on my own, but I was on my own going up Interstate 5 through a treacherous stretch of road known as the Grapevine, which goes up and over the mountains. It's not exactly the safest route. For one thing, it's incredibly steep, so your engine is put under more stress and is more likely to overheat on you. If you ever go up that route, you will see signs that tell you to turn off your air conditioning and other signs that direct you to stations where you can get extra water for your radiator. If you keep your car in good condition, go slow up the mountainside, and turn off your AC, you should be fine. (DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for your car if your engine fails while you go up the Grapevine in California. I'm an EMT, not a mechanic.) But, because I am prone to *~exciting~* experiences in every fucking road trip I go on, I had problems. I had no idea that the Grapevine was so LONG. I mean my God. I must have spent an hour just going up the damn mountain. Also, my dear friend decided to get married the first week of April, while California's weather is still being bipolar. As a result, there was a windstorm pushing me and my Jeep around. Hooray for me. Also, I think I hit a really big rock, because I know I heard a *ka-THUNK* as I was coming around a bend. Thankfully nothing was affected (I'm sure I would have crashed otherwise), and I successfully made it up and over the damn mountains. I must admit, I've never had a problem with that route again, and honestly it is a beautiful drive.

Later on, I would love to drive everywhere. The US is a pretty big country with long roads. I mapped out a trip with Sibling #6 around Arizona, since it turns out he's never been to the Grand Canyon; we'd go there, and then up around Black Mesa, since he's a big Half Life fan. Another big trip I want to take would be along Route 66, since all the cool kids do it. Also, just for fun, I went on Google Maps and mapped out a route to Alaska. Now that trip would be awesome.

Warm Regards,

Liz.

#7- This Image

While following several artists on DeviantArt, I've been in the midst of drama surrounding art thieves. It infuriates me when artists pour their heart and soul into a piece of art, just to have some piece of shit bastard thief come and publish it on their websites (Facebook, mostly) as their own work with no due credit to the original artist. If there's one thing I cannot stand, it's thievery in any form.

Which is why I am coming clean now.

I want to talk about this image:

My computer identifies it as "psl-neon". I found it on the internet, I can't even remember how exactly I found it (I know it was a Google Image search, but I have no idea what I searched for). I have no idea who the original artist is. I took it because, well, it's a beautiful picture, and I'm using it now because I love it so much. But let me please make this clear-- IT DOES NOT BELONG TO ME.

Whoever owns this image, please please PLEASE let me know!! I'll be more than happy to either take it down or post your name/website somewhere on this blog giving you credit. I just need to know who you are.


Warm Regards,


Liz

#6- Sleep and why I suck at it.

I, like many people in their early twenties, have a hard time sleeping. Not just getting to sleep, but staying asleep is a chore for a myriad of reasons.

For starters, I have tinnitus, which is a constant ringing/buzzing/whooshing/humming in the ears usually associated with hearing loss, and have had tinnitus for as long as I can remember. I can hear just fine, but unfortunately the constant ringing interferes with sleep. It's impossible for me to sleep now without some kind of external white noise in the background, like a fan or something, because the ringing in my ears drives me bonkers. Also, I think I'm OCD, because the noise has to be constant. If there's any kind of tapping, clicking, or rustling noises, I have to find out what exactly is making that noise and find a way to stop it. Hunting around the room in the dark wastes an enormous amount of time I could be sleeping.

Noise problems aside, it's hard for me to turn my brain off. It literally will not shut off no matter what I try to do. I can try meditating, I can try focusing on my breathing, I can try counting sheep, to no avail. SOMETHING in my memory banks is always much more interesting than trying to sleep. Then the adrenaline starts pumping because I'm so pissed off at my brain, and we all know adrenaline keeps us awake, so that's another hour or so lost just because I can't turn my brain off.

It's at this point, when I can finally get my evil conscious mind quieted down, that my bladder decides to say, "Hey, I'm full, get up and empty me."

So then I get up, incredibly angry, and by the time I get back I'm right where I started.

Laying there, as the adrenaline starts to wear off, I sometimes look at the clock. This is always a mistake. It always starts a chain reaction in my brain: I look at the clock. Then I calculate how much time I've wasted trying to sleep. Then I calculate how much time I have left to get to sleep. Then the countdown begins. I constantly have to look at the clock every half-hour or so just to see how much time is left. Why? I don't know. It might be the OCD.

Now, some of these problems aren't psycho- or neurological. Sometimes they're external. Such as the two roosters that my neighbors have--those little bastards crow constantly, starting at midnight and going off every two to three hours. That's not when the aforementioned neighbors have their oompa-loompa-Mexican-polka music playing at some ungodly hour of the night.

Or when the cat gets locked out of the main house and comes into my room (out in the guest house) at one in the morning. My door doesn't properly latch every time you close it; you have to fiddle with the doorknob and lift it a bit before it clicks into place, so it's easy for the cat to get in and start meowing.

Or perhaps when my roommate talks/moans in her sleep. This is a recent development, and it greatly concerns me, because it sounds like she's having nightmares. She never remembers them the day after, but she does moan, and it does keep me up at night. The solution to that one is simple, all I have to do is reach across with my leg and lightly kick her mattress so she rolls over and stops moaning. Sixty percent of the time, it works every time.

There's also my mom's little Dachshund who is let out every morning around six-thirty and simply must bark at everything, just in case anyone forgot that we had a dog.


So, because of all of this, I in my sleep-deprived mind at two-thirty one morning decided to go into the spare room to sleep. I turned on a fan, snuggled into bed, and was asleep almost instantly. It was wonderful.


Until the bird started chirping.

Actually, I'm not sure if you could quite call it chirping. I have no idea what kind of bird it was, but the sound it made resembled the sound of two marbles clacking together loudly. (Mockingbird, maybe? Who knows what those critters will imitate.) Anyhow, that one little clacky-bird was almost the cause of a mental breakdown. That day, I remember, was awful.

So that night I took more sedatives than was recommended on the bottle and slept like a baby.

I wouldn't recommend doing that, though-- the next day I was incredibly groggy for my drive into San Diego, and it also really scared the piss out of my mother.

Warm Regards,

Liz.


P.S.-- To all four of you that watch/visit this blog, I've been figuring out how to fiddle around with how it looks. Thank you for putting up with the changes and expect more shenanigans in the future, but for right now I think I like how it looks. Much better than the black background with the neon green font-- what was I even thinking?...

#4- Blogging is hard...

I have had other blogs in the past that I eventually deleted because I no longer cared about posting in them. However, I decided last night that this time I was going to dutifully catalog interesting/funny things in this new blog once or twice a week and not let it die.

So I've been sitting here for two damn days now wondering just what was so vitally important that everyone in the world had to know about it.

So far I've tired to write a post about family (I got paranoid and deleted it), how crappy my previous jobs were (I again got paranoid and deleted it since I didn't want future prospective employers to read it and think I was a whiner), the fact that it was now March (March evidently is not interesting enough to post about).

And this ramble is the result.

Hooray for me.


Warm Regards,

Liz.


EDIT: So apparently the Oscars happened. Whoop-dee-doo. I honestly could care less about spectacles like that.

#1- Troy Jones

Dear Insurance Company in Los Angeles: (for privacy's sake, I won't mention who you are.)


I admire your persistence in sending your offers to a Mr. Troy Jones. Whatever they may be, they sound rather important, and maybe Mr. Jones could take you up on offers.

There's only one problem:

TROY JONES DOES NOT LIVE AT MY HOUSE.

You have sent several letters over the last few months desperately trying to get his attention, and I have sent every one back to you with notes written all over the envelopes: No Such Person At This Address, Return to Sender, ect, apparently to no avail, as you have sent yet another one to me. I received it just this Sunday.

Company in LA, I am disappoint.

I understand, you're big and important and don't have time to look at every letter sent back to you, but one would think after the TENTH GODDAMN LETTER sent back that maybe SOMEONE would say, "Gee golly jeepers, lookit here! Mr. Jones doesn't live there after all! Guess we ought to remove that address, hurr durr!" Or maybe, just maybe, after months of not being able to contact him, SOMEONE would maybe start to think, "Gee golly jeepers, lookit this! He's not responding to our mail, maybe we're sending it to the wrong address?" I guess the people that work for your company don't think, seeing as how you have yet again plagued my mailbox with yet another letter.

Troy Jones does not live here. I don't know if a Troy Jones has ever lived here, and it would be incredibly ironic if a Troy Jones moved in after my family left, but for right now, there is no such Troy Jones living at my address. For the sake of Mr. Jones, you really ought to find out what his real address is.

As destroying another person's mail is a federal offense, I will have to send every letter back to you. I won't be happy about it, but until you pull your heads out of your asses, I guess I have no other choice.

Warm regards,

Lizzie.