Have I told you lately...

How much I HATE grocery shopping? Yeah I'm not saying a little bit of hatred here, utter contempt. It's hard to portray just how much I abhor it. I've told several people that I'd write a blog on this though, so I'll try to explain my reasoning here. When I lived in Provo, Utah and went to school there for five and a half years, I obviously had to go grocery shopping (except my first year that I lived in the dorms, yucky food). The problem with Utah is that there are so many couples. Maybe that's just my warped point of view, but I hate seeing the couples there. It makes me sick. They're disgusting. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for affection and dating, but it just felt like people were sickly affectionate and it makes me gag.

Alright, moving on to grocery shopping. I quickly discovered that people rarely go grocery shopping alone in Utah, or so it seemed to my single brain, at the time. I swear you can see more couples at the grocery store than anywhere else, including the movie theaters, or restaurants, etc. So every time you go you have to be reminded just how single you really are. Of course you could try to drag a roommate with you, but then you're on their schedule and feel rushed and forget things. So around every corner is another couple and the gagging just kind of takes away the appetite. So after years of dealing with the stupid couples everywhere you go, I developed a loathing for grocery shopping. Therefore, I started avoiding it as long as I possibly could. Basically I'd rather starve to death for weeks than have to go to the grocery store. No, I'm not kidding. I like food, don't get me wrong, it's just not really worth it if I have to go to the grocery store all that often to buy it. Even now that I live in Virginia where I rarely (as in never) see couples shopping together (welcome to career family central) I still absolutely dread having to go. Besides, you have to spend money and decide what you're going to buy and that means you have to cook and you should be eating healthy, but I don't have time to really make food that's healthy nor do I particularly enjoy cooking most of the time (and...who has time to cook?), so that means that it's just plainly a chore to shop for food. (deep breath) OK, so sometimes I don't hate cooking, but I think I'll always hate grocery shopping. Some people hate doing laundry (haha, Lex), dishes (these aren't my favorite...scraping other people's food off of dishes kinda freaks me out), washing windows, etc....and I hate grocery shopping. I also hate hair, it freaks me out too, but that's an entirely different story. So there you have it. When I get married, maybe I'll make my husband go, or at least I'll drag him along with me...then we can be like those disgusting couples in Utah....YUCK!! haha

It's a bird, it's a plane, oh wait...it really is a plane

I flew from Baltimore to Manchester, New Hampshire last Thursday and the following are some of the safety instructions that the flight attendant gave at the beginning of our flight. “It’s a $2000 fine for smoking in the lavatory and if you had that kind of money, let’s be honest, you would’t be flying Southwest. If the pressure in the cabin changes during the flight, first of all stop screaming and strangling the guy in the seat next to you, unless of course he is incredibly attractive :D…If there happens to be an emergency, well if we already knew about it we would have called in sick today of course…blah blah blah.” She said more, but I missed it. Apparently no one else was listening and thought the flight attendant was funny, but I was cracking up and I wasn’t even really listening.

Instead of listening, I was reading a textbook smashed between two full-sized men. What is it about being in the middle seat that you just HAVE to be between 2 huge guys? Good thing my flight was only about an hour and 15 minutes. Luckily I was just reading the Pediatric part of my textbook. People don’t tend to appreciate when I read the OB part of it in public. The pictures (refer to my “Do I have what?! Shhhh….” Blog for the Doctor Porn story) don’t tend to go over very well with non-medical personnel. Still it was pretty uncomfortable to try to read/ highlight a humongous textbook smashed between two guys who were taking up more than their fair share of room. It’s one thing to read a flat piece of paper or book, but when you have to open the cover to read a textbook, its pretty inconvenient b/c then you’re taking up twice as much room on your lap space with it. So you have to hold up one cover and try to read sideways which is really hard, by the way, while trying to highlight too. At least I finished reading the rest of the chapter and could move on to the novel, much more convenient for plane reading.

Just like medical TV shows, I love medical novels. They’re fascinating and educational. Oh...I am SUCH a dork. Oh well, I really do learn things by reading them. That’s how I justify taking time to do reading for pleasure, not from my textbooks, every once in a while.

P.S. On the way home the flight attendant during the safety instructions again added funny stuff such as, "the attendant will be by to shut all the overhead compartments and to make sure your belt matches your shoes." He also said something about your kids "or if you're like the guy up here who's just acting like a kid." Again, no one laughed. Why am I the only one who hears these things? I wasn't even paying attention. Good grief, I guess if there is ever a crash we'll all be screwed or we can hope we've heard the instructions enough times that we'll remember them. Hmmm...

Avoid caffeine = 5 cups of coffee a day??

I don't really have time to put a full story of last week's classes together so this is just the highlights. Drama Queen has it in for milk, seriously. For some reason my slides aren't opening so I'll just quote what she typed on the slides, my comments are in brackets. "Do not put a baby or child to bed with a bottle of milk!!! [Um, this is Pathophysiology, NOT Pediatrics, I happen to be in OB and Peds right now too, so I don't really think you're the expert on kids, sorry.] If the child must have a bottle in bed, fill it only with water. When they lie flat, children will aspirate the milk down the right main stem bronchus and develop pneumonia- very common [I'm pretty sure if you lie anyone flat with fluids while sleeping, they'll aspirate and could develop pneumonia, it's not just the milk]. No pacifiers- They cause vacuum pressure in eustachian tubes with resultant otitis media (ear infection). No smoking around infants and children- results in lung and ear infections." She then felt the need to add her comment that this was not her bias and that studies have been done that have shown these results [that just made me roll my eyes, not your bias, B.S.]. She also mentioned several times that her children didn't ever take pacifiers [of course not, because your children were perfect, of course]. This woman drives me crazy! I wish I could put some of our slides on here for last week, you can't even read them, the print is so small and they're just paragraphs of information that we can't even read. Oh, and how do you know that your professors need a hobby? When they're so bored they're putting the pictures of famous authors who had diseases from the 1800's on your slides because they have nothing better to do. What a waste of ink and paper, since we have to print them out. This particular author that she put a picture of on our slides had TB (tuberculosis). She told his story of how he moved to a better climate for treating his TB, then his wife hated it, so they moved to a different climate and the "TB loved it. [like it had a personality] It did him in. [Of course it did, otherwise the story would SO not be worth DQ telling it]." It's like inanimate objects talking, except now diseases have personalities too, lovely. Oh, and we're CONSTANTLY told NOT to diagnose in nursing school, including this class. But somehow several times each week DQ will find a way to slip into her lectures "nurses do a big job in diagnosing." Or "the doctor told me that basically I diagnosed the guy." Of course you did, and you're the hero and you lived happily ever after....oh wait, wrong story. Oh, by the way, apparently DQ has gone off on milk in other classes. My friend said that she also told them not to shave their arm-pits [excuse me while I gag here] and that deoderant is bad and gives you infections, or something like that [remind me never to get too close to her]. The woman might actually be insane, I don't know though, I'm not supposed to diagnose.

OB is always interesting as well. Monotone nearly kills me each week of boredom. Everytime I look around the room everyone looks like a bunch of zombies that are completely zoned out. We may be looking at the professor, but that doesn't mean we're paying attention. Like I said, it takes all of 10 minutes or less to zone out in that class. The glazed over eyes aren't from drugs, they're from boredom and lack of sleep. This is about how I feel about that class: Actually this picture was on the slide about the effects of alcohol and drugs and tobacco on pregnant women. As my professor put it, "cigarrettes have that stuff in them, what is it called, nicotine, in addition to upteine other things, and it's best avoided." Um, no kidding. Street drugs will cause your "baby to be born as a junkie." Oh yes, this is the enlightenment I get in my classes each week. That doesn't even count the comments we get from the idiots in our classes. OB is probably the worst b/c some of the students have kids in there, so obviously they think this makes them THE experts on the subject (more so than the professor, at least). They also think whatever stupid things they hear from their friends who have kids are automatically facts. One said idiot tried to argue with my professor for like 10 minutes about whether you can have too much Vitamin C or not. My professor kindly tried to explain time and time again that Vitamin C is water-soluble and therefore goes right through you. It can't build up in your body. But this girl was having none of that. She's still convinced that you can have too much. Apparently we need to go over the definitions of water and fat-soluble again. Good grief.

Pre-natal classes are common and there's several different ones besides just "Lamaze" which is the one most people have heard of. Unfortunately, one of them is named after it's creator "Dick-Read." Why the hell would you name a childbirth education class this? I also love (NOT) that all of them are created by men. As one of my friends raised her hand and asked in class, "are any of these actually created by a woman who's been through birth?" Seriously! One of them is all about the woman being able to feel the pain and he thinks that "fear of birth = tension/ pain." Um, I'm pretty sure that's because he's a guy and he's never been through it. The jerk. I'd love to see him try to go through just an hour of labor. I'm pretty sure he'd change his entire philosophy then. Apparently when you no longer fear the birth you won't feel tension or pain. Yeah right.

Peds was actually pretty good this week. I actually learned stuff. That might have more to do with the fact that I had a really cute 14 month old as a patient this week, so lecture related to what I actually saw with my patient. I totally wanted to keep him, he was adorable. But the one highlight from that class was when my professor (Scatterbrained) was talking about allergies [not milk] and stated "If the dog/ cat dies, it's a good opportunity not to get a new one." Brutal! My classmate chimed in and was like "In other words kill it," (sarcastically of course). I think that just came out really wrong for Scatterbrained. It did not go over well for my class.

Oh, the title line: "Avoid caffeine = 5 cups of coffee a day" is from OB. Apparently avoiding caffeine during pregnancy is equal to having no more than 5 cups of coffee a day, a couple of bars of chocolate, some coke, etc. Ok, even thinking about that much caffeine is making me sick and I'm not pregnant. Yuck! It sounds a lot like the diets of a lot of my classmates though. Not like mine is all that much better, minus the coffee. :)

Dove Chocolates are GOOD

These were the messages on the inside of the wrappers of my Dove Chocolates today.
Smile. People will wonder what you've been up to.
Be mischievous. It feels good.
Do what feels right.

Huh?! Aren't those a little contradictory? It's ok, I guess cuz sometimes I ask the Magic 8 ball questions about my life. Of course if I get an answer I don't like I can always shake it until it gets the answer right. That's also effective with some men. haha :)

P.S. I promise I'll post my latest stories from classes as soon as I get some sleep in my life. I don't remember the last time (minus last night when I went to bed a little after 1am, I think) I went to bed before 2 am. Right now I'm pretty sure my blogs would not make much sense. I'm not exactly coherent, sorry. I feel a little bit like death warmed over and I definitely look it. But don't worry, instead of sleeping right now I'm watching Discovery Health. LOVE love love Discovery Health!! Besides, I learn stuff watching their shows. So, that counts as homework right? Ok, maybe not, but it's still educational.

"But [you] can't fight with an eclipse...."

I think Edward Cullen has ruined men for me. I will probably never be able to settle for a normal man again. Stupid perfect gorgeous vampire. Dammit. Can I have him? Seriously, now why don't men like him exist in the real world? Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Being in love with fictional characters is obviously a lot more exciting than my real life. I need to stop reading novels. But, I still want to keep him. Besides, he loves blood as much as I do. He's definitely perfect. Hahaha, I'm morbid. I'm totally kidding. But I'm not kidding about the perfect man. Damn you, Edward Cullen.

The best Knuts come from Germany :)

Another video that makes me smile, everytime. He's possibly the cutest thing I've EVER seen. I WANT him. ADORABLE!!! This video makes me happy. He's better than a puppy. :)

I. Am. So. Bored.

Makes me laugh, everytime. I love German. I love this video. :)