Valentine's whatever

As you may recall, cupid died. Remember this?! He's dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Yeah, still dead. I'm married and I still tell you, he's dead. Sorry. Ugh. I hate pink and I hate sappy holidays.

Everything I know I should've learned in Kindergarten....

Remember those posters about Everything you should already know?

Yeah well everything I learned in nursing school and in my few short months as a Registered Nurse, I should've already known. These are some examples:

1. Don't drive drunk. Duh. This should be a given, yet people keep doing it and the consequences can be tragic.

2. Wear a helmet. If you're going to ride a bike, scooter, or motorcyle wear the helmet. Believe me saving your life and not having a bolt drilled in your head so they can measure the pressure in your head either before/after they choose to do surgery is worth it. Lucky you. I have personal experience with this. Just wear the dorky helmet.

3. In scooter versus car/ truck/ SUV the scooter (or rather the rider) never wins. The end.

4. Don't ask your physician for antibiotics when you don't need them. If you do not have a bacterial infection you do NOT need antiobiotics. This is the reason that MRSA, VRE, and C-Diff (YUCK) are becoming such a problem. If you have a cold or the flu get some rest, drink fluids, and take some tylenol.

5. Wash your hands. This is a classic Kindergarten lesson, now it just applies more. Hand washing is the number one prevention of infection.

6. If you think "I probably shouldn't be doing this" or "this is probably going to hurt" before you do something, save yourself and the hospital a lot of trouble and money and just don't do it. (I dedicate this to all Terrell boys. Don't tell them I said that, haha).

7. Along with #6 a lot of people suffer from a disease called NCM (No Common Sense). If you have common sense, use it. If you don't have common sense find a way to learn it or have someone teach it to you.

8. Guns and knives are NOT toys. Don't get me wrong, I love guns, but there are rules for using them. If you don't know how to use them and don't respect them, stay the hell away from them.

9. Don't smoke. You'd think this would be self explanatory by now, but since people are still doing it, it's obviously not. Yes, I realize it's addictive, but guess what, heart attacks, COPD, and cancer hurt (and are expensive).

10. Wild animals are NOT pets. (Case in example)

11. Don't play with fire. It burns. Duh.

12. Look both ways before crossing the street. Thank you Moms of the world.

13. Don't talk to strangers. Still applies, adults.

#14 removed because of recent nursing experiences

15. SMART cars are NOT so smart. The amount you will save in insurance and gas money will not make up for the emotional, physical, and psychological pain you will go through when you crash this so called "smart" car. They show videos of SMART cars coming out of crashes faring pretty well, unfortunately, the person inside that car does not usually fare so well. Sure you may live through it, but you will probably wish you hadn't. But hey, if you want to have broken legs, ribs, etc. and have a drill stuck in your head so they can take pressure off of your brain because you have a serious head injury be my guest, buy the stupid car, idiot. (Not so smart, or cute anymore)

16. Honesty is always the best policy. The end. (How about you just follow the 10 Commandments, they're there for a reason).

17. Get out and move. Exercise. Your body will thank you later.

18. Every person on this earth, no matter what they've done and who they are, are worth something and should be treated as such.

19. Balance and moderation are oh so important. While I am not one to banish my patients from eating salt and sweets (as a cardiac nurse), it's all about moderation. Moderation. Moderation.

20. To end on a positive note: Love, laughter, and faith heal.

So there you go, that's just some of what I've learned (or already knew). That was an awfully expensive education to "learn" those. Lame.

The two little piggies (or fingers)...

This little piggy went to the ER. This little piggy stayed on. This little piggy got stitches. This little piggy got none. Apparently I decided I wanted to cut off my fingers the other day. Cut right through the apple and right into two of my fingers. Too bad my husband keeps the knives from our butcher block really sharp. I'm lucky I didn't chop my fingers off. When water didn't stop the bleeding I admit I panicked a bit when I realized how much blood I was losing and I was like "what do I do now?" Then I'm like, "Jennie, chill out, you're a NURSE. Get a grip. Put pressure on them. Call your husband." Ridiculous. haha. I think I nearly gave the poor boy a heart attack with that phone call. (Don't tell my apartment complex I bled on the carpet, oops). After running into 3 techs that I went through orientation with and 2 respiratory therapists I knew and getting made fun of a lot. I ended up with just 4 lousy stitches (luckily my nail acted like my stitches for my other finger although I will probably lose the nail later, lame) and two bulky ugly bandages that don't inspire a lot of confidence in my patients. I tried to get out of the stitches and just go home, but I had to work the same day and open wounds and nursing is a recipe for an infection. But hey, one of the doctors on my floor even said he had done the same thing. So, what did I learn? Stay away from knives. Don't get an infection (I can't even wear gloves at work so they sent me home later, lame). Scars are NOT a fashion statement. Lidocaine hurts like HELL going in, but makes you feel really weird when it works and hurts when it wears off. It's incredibly hard to work (nursing) with one hand (for instance trying to attach an IV line). Cuts HURT (can't be on narcotics at work, you get fired so no prescription for me, just Tylenol). Ok, that's about it. I'm buying an apple slicer. I don't think my husband will object.

Once upon a time, I got married!!!

So 11 days after I got back from Belize and the day after I took my final I got married in the Washington DC Temple. I truly had the PERFECT wedding day!! Not one thing went wrong on my wedding day. It was perfect! It was beautiful outside and not too hot or humid, we were even early to the Temple, the ceremony was beautiful, and we had a blast taking pictures. Here's a few in case you haven't seen any:

Also, our amazing photographer has some of our pictures on her website. They are under her wedding pictures "Chris and Jennie" if you want to see them! She did an INCREDIBLE job!!

Once upon a time, I was engaged...

...And I stopped blogging because every spare second of my time went to my fiancee. Sorry, but not really. So here's a few engagement pics:

Under the tree where we got engaged in DC

Dallas Divide, Colorado (one my favorite places on earth)

You only wish you were cool enough to have engagement pics on a Bulldozer too!

Ewww, ewww Boy!!!

While taking engagement pictures was fun, being engaged sucked, let's be honest. Marriage is SO much better!!

Narcoleptics 'R Us!!

I fell asleep standing up today at clinicals. No, I'm not kidding. I was standing over a table reading a chart and I even did the whole head jerk thing, yeah it was awesome. So you can stop complaining about me not blogging. I don't even have time to sleep enough, much less blog (or see my fiance for that matter). I didn't even know it was possible to fall asleep standing up. I'm going to have so many bruises from pinching myself trying to stay awake for hours. Ugh. I'm so sick of writing papers. I'll stop complaining now. I'm off to edit a paper and study for a test. Peace out until I do have time for this.

P.S. The fact that I don't have time to write blogs also means I don't have time to read them, I haven't even opened Google Reader in probably 3 weeks, I think. Hang on....Yep, 116 unread blogs. Awesome. Sorry. Someday I'll catch up. Maybe.

April Fools...NOT!!

The word is out...I'm engaged! No this is not an April Fool's Day joke, but I thought it would be funny to post this today because it is April Fool's Day and most people didn't even know I was dating someone. :)

For as little as $1.29 you can have stink in a bag!!

Apparently in Arkansas they believe in buying cow manure in a bag. I didn't know that was even possible. I literally saw this and thought it was so funny (and impossible) that I had to take a picture of it. I spent most of my childhood running through fields trying to avoid the stuff and being desensitized to the smell because it was a regular part of my day. We were constantly wiping it OFF our shoes, not picking it up and selling it. Had we known there was a market for that maybe....nah, never mind that's disgusting, I'm just kidding. I can't believe people actually pay real money for that stuff. Gross and dumb if you ask me. But it IS Arkansas. haha I'm going to get in trouble with the Boy for that comment. :) Unbelievable.

Bad traffic? I'll take it.

Last week was my spring break from school, so naturally I wanted to fly somewhere. Bad idea. Apparently, I am not meant to fly anymore. If you don't recall my last experience flying, then read this blog from January. Well, needless to say they lost my luggage AGAIN. That's 3 times in a row. What are the chances?! I was so frustrated I was nearly in tears. The Boy, who was with me, was really good to me though. I learned the valuable lesson to never leave anything in your luggage that you can't part with. Seriously.

Anyways, I just had the weirdest dream. I was in this room of luggage and clothes were strewn everywhere (including my underwear, niiiiccceee). There were people all over the place, my family was all there, and the Boy too. I had my suitcase and then someone moved it and I couldn't find it. I was searching everywhere for it, under all of the clothes, all of the other suitcases, between all of the people (while grabbing my underwear)....yeah, I woke up before I could find it in an utter panic. Stress. Ugh. What a nightmare.

Oh, and on the flight back I was once again sick, like Christmas, our plane was delayed, like Christmas, and something happened to ATC (Air Traffic Control) like someone cut a cable or took out a pole or something weird like that and no flights were going out so we sat on the tarmac for an hour and 45 minutes before we took off, like Christmas. I was having flashbacks. You have no idea. At least this time I had someone with me. It made it bearable and we made our connection fine. I told myself if I didn't get my bags for the 4th time, I wasn't flying again. Luckily they arrived when I did. I'm just not sure I'm meant to fly. Seriously. I'm having nightmares about losing luggage now. I'm stressed about situations that aren't even real. I like cars. Cars are good. I'm going to stick to cars for a while.

Too bad I'm from Colorado.

Everybody's on the Food Chain

Last weekend I FINALLY got to go see OneRepublic in concert in Philly with the Boy, after months of missing their concerts. I've loved this band since May or June, long before anyone had ever heard of them (See OneRepublic "Apologize" from June and 1R from October). Amazingly, they can really sing (and play). It was a good concert. One of their opening bands was a guy call Eric Hutchinson. At first I was kind of skeptical of him when I heard his music on Myspace, but he's actually pretty good. He's kind of funky. I like it. But if the guy doesn't make it as a musician he could definitely make it as a stand up comedian. He was a great entertainer and very funny. He did this same thing about Justin Timberlake (who I hate) at our concert, but it was much better actually.
He also sang a song called "Food Chain." About how we're all on the food chain and no matter how hard we try we can't improve our status. He said there are 4 types of guys in this world and this is a direct quote: "Ugly, Ok, Hot, and Really Hot but total Asshole." haha Yep, that's true.

Don't worry, I already downloaded his CD. I think I like this kid. He's got his facts straight. Look at the lyrics for some of his songs if you don't believe me. Smart, smart man.