Ok, that's just flat out X

It's been a while since I wrote a blog on my actual classes, sorry. Just for the record, my instructor was wrong, my slides say it's actually > 3-4 cups/day of caffeine that's unsafe for pregnant women, not 5. Still, that's a LOT.

I decided after my class last week that Drama Queen is just plain Anti-Estrogen in addition to the multitude of many other issues she has. But that would explain a lot if she is. She also just can't leave milk alone. She just has to bring it up every class. Basically my friends and I decided that "If you learned anything in this class, just don't drink milk." Ok, wow, I think I'm dumber for being here. My big mouth got me in serious trouble though last week. My friends call it my filter. The filter between my brain and my mouth. Yeah, sometimes it catches things before I say them out loud, often it does not. Hence the blog name. :) Anyways, we were doing a test review and the professor basically just reads the test to us. Awesome. So she's rattling off questions and (p.s. having 4 3rd semester accelerated nursing students sitting together in a 1st semester class is a really bad idea, we are just FULL of smart ass comments. I'm sure she thinks we're obnoxious know-it-alls who don't care...oh yeah, we are :P)....she's like asthma is caused by allergies and allergies are triggered by (here's her pause waiting for the answer and Jennie yells out)....."MILK !!!" Oh my gosh, I actually said that out loud!! Wow. Oops. Everyone just burst out laughing. Brilliant Jennie. It was like a knee jerk reaction, but I just couldn't resist giving the smart ass response. I don't know if she heard me, but people like 7 rows up from me were laughing, so apparently it was really loud. I'm sure she hates me now. Eh, oh well. She pretty much begged for that one. Oh, I'm so mean. Moving on...

Drama Queen also went off last week about Colorado and high altitudes. I'm from Colorado and I miss it horribly, I absolutely love that state. Ok that was a side note. She was talking about pulmonary edema (short explanation- fluid in the air sacs in the lungs) and how you can get it from hiking at high altitudes. Ok, granted that's true, but rare. But she basically sounded like a commercial for this drug Diamox that you can take that helps you breathe better. "I highly recommend that when you go to Colorado you get a prescription." Ha, that's the Florida girl talking. She talked about going hiking in Colorado and how it's SO high. blah blah blah Ok, I hiked a fourteener last year. It really wasn't that hard and it was totally worth it. Of course I was acclimated to Colorado altitude, but still it's not really THAT high. She's like, "they suggest you walk in, not fly." *Snort* City girl! Then of course she had to bring up Wyoming, Tibet and Peru and how the same thing happens in all those places too and you absolutely HAVE to get a prescription for Diamox before you go there because of course it worked for her. Uh huh, cuz she's so cultural. I swear by the time my class is over every week you'd think my eyes would be stuck in a permanent eye roll.

Ok, different class now...Stalker was really on one yesterday. This was great dialog between Stalker and my friend and I (at the back of the class of course, so he didn't hear us) though: [We were talking about epidurals and spinals that are given to women during labor] S: "So this is given after?" Us: "Because post-partum means what?" "When the baby is parted from the mother's body." Wow. I feel like my IQ drops every lecture. Apparently we need to go over basic definitions like "post" again. Unbelievable. People in my class (the same people, over and over and over again) kept asking the same questions too. Write it down people. You could tell my professor was getting ticked, she actually started being short with people. By this time my friend and I were having completely different discussions in the back of the class of course and laughing our heads off. That probably didn't help my professor's mood. Eh, I don't really care. We were annoyed too. Part of that discussion involved the fact that several people were wearing rather unusual hats in class. This is an example of what some sort of looked like. (this last one was on "uh-huh's head, if you remember him from my MySpace blogs, except it was much much smaller, as in it only covered the very top of his head, yeah weird). Ok here's the dialog now: "What's up with the hats today?" "Maybe it blocks the rain [it's been raining for 2 days straight now]." "It doesn't even cover their faces." "Maybe he has a problem losing body heat." "hahaha." "Apparently we're in Paris now." "I love it." :)

Alright I saved the worst for last. Since it's O.B. the pictures in our slides are rather graphic. (See the "Do I have what?! Shhh...." Doctor Porn blog for more explanation). My friend likes to point out that they also happen to be drawn anatomically incorrect. I decided that including one of those pictures was just a really bad idea and this is the commentary that resulted between said friend and I: "You're doing your part to de-sexualize medical conditions." LOL...actually that was from her friend and I just sat there and stared at her for a minute and was like, are you serious?! "That's not even remotely attractive." "Well I just think people need to know this." I still decided that including the pics was too graphic. This was her advice to me, "Well you did make your blog PG-13," and my response, "Ok, that's just flat out X." Uh yeah sorry, no pictures kids.

I am like a "Stah" from "Bah Hahbah"

(So I started this, but never finished it and now I’m going to try before I fall asleep). Like I said before, I flew to New Hampshire 2 weeks ago. My mom was born in Massachusetts (which is a really hard state to spell, by the way) and lived in New Hampshire for most of her life until her 20’s. So her family still lives in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. If you’ve ever seen “What about Bob?” the movie, Lake Winnipesaukee in that movie is where she grew up and where I go to visit. I’ve been going there basically almost every year or every 2 (sometimes 3) years since I was a baby. If you don’t already know, Boston is absolutely my FAVORITE city. I’m so in love with that city. I love everything about it. That’s a long story though and not something that I necessarily want to explain in this blog because it would require real writing (which, believe it or not, I can actually do…but you have to be pretty special to actually get to read something that I’ve written without sarcasm or anger and with actual sincere feeling). That’s pretty heavy writing and a little too deep for a blog though and that’s not what this is about, so moving on…Anyways, I’ve spent my fair share of time in the lake’s region of New Hampshire and in Massachusetts and Maine too, but I never get tired of going there and New England in the Fall is AMAZING!!

One of the reasons I particularly love going to New England is because I absolutely LOVE their accents. I think they’re hilarious! I do everything within my power to get my Uncle to say Porsche just so I can hear him say “Porscha” like we’re in Europe or something. Well he drives like we’re in Europe so we might as well be. He drives like an absolute maniac!! VERY fast and tails someone, whips around them, and then pulls right in front of them. People in New England are NOT nice drivers. They yell, honk, make rather rude gestures, etc. while driving. We told my Uncle that he drives way too fast because he was doing 90 mph driving to Massachusetts one day and he’s like “No I wasn’t.” Well on the way back, he of course was doing it again, so we pointed it out and he was like, “wow, well I thought I was going 60. Well it is 60, just upside down.” LOL, right. That’s SO comforting while we’re flying down the road doing 90 in the pouring rain with a psycho in the driver’s seat. It’s even better because they have these road signs everywhere that say “Drive courteously It’s the New Hampshire Way!” Yeah right. I burst out laughing when I first saw one. I really wanted a picture of one. I could never tour Europe with my Uncle either because it would be like “oh and that was Switzerland that we just passed. If you blinked, you missed it and we’re not going back.” My Uncle knows how to get to and from places, but the concept of being a tourist and wanting to take pictures and get out of the car is completely foreign to him. It’s like, what you wanted a picture of that thing, oh that one, that we just passed. Oops, sorry. Good grief. My smart ass comments from the back seat were pretty bad this trip, I do have to say. But there’s just something about my Uncle and his “My way or the highway” mentality that I just can’t keep my mouth shut. I guess I’m the highway. He’s never had anyone stand up to him before, I don’t think, so having his 25 year old niece (he’s in his early 70’s although he doesn’t really look it and he’s in better shape than most people I know) tell him off probably doesn’t go over very well, but he just asks for it. I am not a soft-spoken girl and I’m NOT a push-over, unlike my Mother and he’s used to that, being able to get his way all the time and push people around. It doesn’t work with me, though. I dish it right back and I think it ticks him off but it’s a challenge at the same time. I actually at one point during the week when he was arguing with my Mom started screaming at him and totally told him off. I called him a 5 year old and basically told him to shut it. It was awesome. He deserved it, though. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family and they definitely love me. I’m probably the favorite since I’m the only niece and the youngest grandchild/ niece and I still come to visit unlike my brothers. They spoil me and I know it, but they also irritate me. But what would a family be like if they weren’t dysfunctional on some level. Mine is just extra specially dysfunctional all the time. :D Not all of them, of course, just some of them, lol.

Anyways, I loved going down to Massachusetts to see more cousins too. One of my (I think we decided he’s a second cousin?, eh, they’re all just cousins to me) cousin’s wedding receptions was a couple of weeks ago while I was there, so we went down for it. I wish I knew those cousins better; I really want to spend more time around them. Especially the second cousins who are around my age. Maybe someday I’ll get to live in Boston. *Sigh* I would LOVE that. The accents when I’m around my family from Massachusetts are even better, too.

We also went to Maine. Maine has a very distinct smell. It’s like a mix of seaweed and saltwater. I love that smell though and I’ve discovered it’s very unique to Maine. I would live there too except that it’s stinkin’ cold, except when it’s really hot in the summer. New England is a summertime kind of place to be, but once it turns cold it’s REALLY cold and I HATE cold weather. I know, I know, the Colorado girl hates cold weather. Blah.

Oh, what I was saying about their cool accents...in Maine, Mass., and New Hampshire the accents are all slightly different. They all add and subtract “r’s,” and they just have slightly unique accents. Like in Maine they say… “A ‘Yuh Been to Maine.” Which comes out sounding like “a-ya ben tah Maine” or “ben they-yah” that’s about the best way I can describe it without saying it. They also add a "h" to the end of words when they take out the "r." Like I saw a t-shirt that said "Green Monstah," so typical to Maine. At the moment though, you’re probably saying here’s a quarter (pronounced kinda like Cor-ta with the Cor like you’re gonna hock a loogie, no I’m not kidding. I’ll even say it for you sometime) call someone in the “nahth” who cares. :P

1R

I have a new favorite band. Actually if you look back at one of my previous blogs. I posted "Apologize" by OneRepublic a long time ago, so it's not really new. But they don't even have a CD out yet, it comes out November 20th and I'm totally buying it on November 20th. :) But guess what?! I just found out they're coming to Annapolis on November 10th. I WANNA GO!!!!!!! Who wants to go with me? Some of their music is on my MySpace profile as well as clips that are on my Facebook profile. They're amazing. I've even tried to find their music illegally on the Internet and can't find it. Boooo...that's how much I like it. Sad. I guess I can wait another month until the CD comes out. But the concert...seriously, who wants to go?!

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.