After six days off I am headed back into the “office”, this picture captures the essence of my excitement…
Category Archives: nursing news
tour guiding on the side
I am officially done with orientation and I am now practicing on my own, well actually I am never really alone because the group of nurses that I work with are so wonderful, everyone works so well together it is truly a team effort. I have worked a couple night shifts now, had a few nights that were not so busy and then had a few nights were I can’t remember sitting down once! When I am not working I am giving guided tours to some of our guests that we have been having! Erin and Aaron’ came through for a night on their road trip, we didn’t have much time but we were able to take them up to Shoreline trail for a better view of the city…
I love our mountains, can’t seem to get enough of them and I am so excited for winter when they will be covered with a nice blanket of snow! Kelsey and Michael also came to stay with us for a few days, unfortunately Jason’s schedule was a bit hectic so he wasn’t able to hang out too much. I was able to accompany them up to Little Cottonwood for a picnic lunch and take a ride on the tram up to Hidden Peak…
After a long day in the canyon what could be better than a giant milkshake from Iceberg?
We each split a milkshake since there is more than enough for one person when you order a Regular sized shake! Jason is not a fan of Iceberg Drive-Inn since they forgot his chicken nugget dinner but since I emailed the company and explained our frustration with the service we received, they sent us a 10 dollar gift certificate to make up for our troubles! I do like their sign even though their service sucks 
Thanks for visiting K & M and E & A! It was nice spending time with you guys. Now I am off for five days and I have another visitor, Katie is here we are going to go exploring together! Today we are thinking of hitting up a hot spring in Midway, I am so excited to have time to explore, my work schedule rocks! I feel bad for Jas because he is back on his crazy schedule of 30 hour shifts every third day, he will be in dire need of our week off in September before the wedding.
Night Shift
I worked my first night shift last night, back again for tonight and tomorrow night. So far so good, I am liking the laid back feel of nights, although it is a little weird eating my “lunch” at midnight. Time for some sleep! Goodnight!
working world
I officially started working two weeks ago (hence the lack of new blog posts) so far I have just been sitting in orientation classes that all new hospital employees must attend, which has been sort of boring except for yesterday when we got to practice IVs on each other, I love starting IVs! They did have me work a few 12 hour shifts on the floor last week so that I could shadow another nurse and just observe the flow of the floor that I will be working on. So far I really like the people that I will be working with and the patient population is interesting, since it is a trauma floor there are all kinds of injuries and interesting stories that accompany them. Backtracking a bit, last weekend I went home to Oregon so that I could pick up my wedding gown (doesn’t that sound so much more elegant than calling it a wedding dress?) from being altered. Steph planned a “family” bridal shower for those that live in Oregon, it turned out really nice and unfortunately I was so enjoying myself that I forgot to take any pictures of the event! Steph made some yummy lasagna and salad and she also got a raspberry almond cake from Piece of Cake in Sellwood which is where we are getting our wedding cake. It was a very nice event and I received some very thoughtful gifts from people, I feel so loved! Jason’s Grandma Boese gave Jason and I a set of embroidered pillow cases that Jason’s Great Grandma Atwood made, they are beautiful with peacocks on them, I love peacocks!
Jason’s sister Kelsey started a scrapbook of me and Jason which is so cute, I have never scrapbooked before but I am going to have to start because Kelsey tells me she expects to see the finished product by Christmas!
I had a really good time thanks to all of you that came and thanks again to Kathy for letting us use your house! While I was there Kathy and I went on a wild goose chase trying to find shirts and ties for the groomsmen to wear, you would not believe how hard it is to find green shirts and black ties. We had to call all over the place to find all the different sizes that we needed for the shirts. It was an educational experience for both me and Steph because we had never had to buy men’s shirts before and the sizing was new to us, I can now say that I know how to buy a men’s dress shirt and I know what Jason’s size is too :) I guess I could contribute my lack of knowledge in the men’s department to growing up with three sisters and no brothers. While I was there I also got to attend Jenna’s Regional Junior Olympic track meet which was very exciting, she had run previously in a meet in Seattle where she qualified in the 100m, long jump and high jump! Steph and I decided that Jenna needed to have a track uniform (since most of the kids in these meets are part of a team and have some snazzy get-ups) we found her a “speed suit” for 9.99 online and decided to get it for her, because for the price of 9.99 how could we resist?! We weren’t sure if she would wear it or not because Jen is usually pretty modest but to our surprise she loved it!
She did an awesome job at the meet we are so proud of her! It was a jam packed weekend of fun and exciting things next time I will be home will be the week before our wedding, exciting! I still have a lot of things that I need to get done, mostly little things but I have been enjoying getting our RSVP cards in the mail! I especially love the little notes that people have been writing on them, so far we have received 28 RSVPs and out of those 26 of them marked “accepts” people are coming woohoo!
Things that are still left on my list to do:
- finalize the play list (anymore song requests out there?!)
- work on place settings/seating cards (don’t worry I am going to sit people with their people)
- plan out the format of the ceremony (still looking for a few more readings and possibly a song)
- order our favors
- purchase/make a veil (I found one that I really liked and it went really well with my dress, vintage style, unfortunately it was so expensive! Then I found it on ebay for a fraction of the price but by the end of the bidding the price was almost the same as if you just bought it in the store! people are ridiculous! originally I wanted to make my veil but I doubt that is going to happen now since I am feeling overwhelmed with all the other stuff that I need to do on top of starting a new job).
- make our guest book
- must be forgetting something!
Good Things
Lots of good things to report on…Kelsey and Michael got married last weekend (Kelsey is Jason’s sister) it was a really nice wedding and they lucked out with some awesome weather! I snapped just a few pictures this one was before the wedding it is sort of out of focus but I thought it was a nice shot and I like how Kelsey’s dress was glowing. Also the night before the wedding I got to meet up with my middle school/high school pals Erin and Lindsay which was really fun to see Lindsay again and see Erin for the first time in a few years.
After the wedding Jason, Steph, Ed and I went to Sauvie Island and hiked out to the lighthouse, it was a great birdwatching hike, very flat with lots of meadow grass, afterward we went back to Jason’s parents’ house for a campfire with Dan had some s’mores and good conversations and then we camped out in the backyard under the stars. The next day we went up to Goldendale with Dan and Kathy, we left sort of late and rolled into the Goldendale Observatory just in time to get in line to see Saturn through the telescope! This was way better than seeing M3 the previous weekend, we were able to see Saturn’s rings and two of Saturn’s moons! I think I might be getting into this star gazing thing, lucky for me Salt Lake also has an observatory too! The next morning we took our time exploring around the cabin, finding creatures and eating bathroom mints for breakfast
Backtracking a bit, one of Kathy’s chickens decided she wanted to sit on eggs and she found her one day off somewhere sitting on a stack of 30 eggs! (none of which were fertilized) So Kathy gave her some legitimate eggs to hatch and she did a great job and lucky for me I got to be around when they hatched! It was fun going out to the barn and checking on the progress sort of like being a chicken mid-wife.
Early on Tuesday morning Jas and I started driving to SLC, we left Beavercreek at 5:30am and got into SLC at 6pm, not a bad drive at all! We moved in some of our stuff and judging by the big grin on Jason’s face he was shocked and excited about how wonderful our little house is. The next morning we went up to the University hospital so that I could meet with the nurse recruiter and then she took us on a tour, it is a very pretty hospital huge windows in all the rooms with mountain views out of all of them seems like if you had to be stuck in the hospital this would be the one! I also got called for an interview for the trauma/acute care position that I applied for so I have that coming up which is exciting because it sounds really great and the University is the only level 1 trauma hospital in the surrounding region so they are sort of a big deal when it comes to traumas, burns etc. which means I would get to see and learn a lot. After our tour of the hospital we explored a bit and scoped out the neighborhood we couldn’t get over the mountain views they make everything beautiful even ordinary intersections!
We left SLC early Thursday morning and flew to Ohio to finish packing up our stuff and so that Jason can graduate next Thursday! Sort of crazy that four years went by so fast, it will be sad leaving Grams and AK; it was nice being close to family. We are looking forward to our new adventure in Utah, we leave a week from tomorrow and will be stopping in Denver to spend some time with Jason’s Great Aunt Jeanne.
Back from Belize…return to the cold!
I got back late Monday night, it was a great trip, I have lots of pictures to share and will post them as soon as I get them organized (which I am working on now). I guess I am a little spoiled even after only a week of sunny skies and temps in the high 80’s, makes coming back to Ohio hard to do! But I have things to do/look forward to that I am excited about: My nursing license came in the mail while I was gone (yea i am official!) and I can start applying for jobs/internships, our save-the-date cards came in the mail, Hollye designed them as well as our invites and they are awesome! You can check out some more of her work here she also designed a rubber stamp of her artwork for us to use on the invites which I am super excited about using! We are working on getting the STD’s in the mail this week so you can check out her fine artwork and mark your calendar, and Jason finds out March 19th where we will be going (exciting and scary). Back to the picture sorting, more to come soon.
Boards
I took the NCLEX on Friday morning, I had not been sleeping well these past two weeks leading up to it and the night before was no different. At 4am I was wide awake and my test was not until 8am so I decided to get up and take my time getting ready to go (I can get ready to go somewhere pretty quickly so I read the news online and tried to do anything but think about possible test questions). You are given 6 hours to complete the test if you need it and there is a minimum of 75 questions with a maximum of 250 some questions, the test is on the computer and uses a system called computerized adaptive testing (CAT). Apparently this system is designed to model your next questions based on how you do on the previous one, for example if you answer an “easy” question correctly it will make your next question just a little bit harder, this works in the opposite way too, if you get a hard question wrong it will drop you down a level on the next question. But it does all this automatically and does not give the test taker any inidication of what kind of level the questions are “rated” at, but usually you can tell. Anyway, the computer shuts off once it has determined if you are either above passing or below passing. My test shut off at 75 questions which either means I rocked it or I failed it, sort of unnerving. Either way I was happy to be done and felt like I knew the answer to a lot of the questions so that was reassuring I just had to wait for the testing center to send the results to Oregon’s Board of Nursing in order to find out officially if I passed (the testing center is an independent company that proctors all kinds of tests). So, given that I took the test on a Friday and they tell you that results are not available until 2 business days later I knew that I would have a long wait before I would find anything official out, but the testing center does post unofficial results on their website and apparently this is done late on Saturdays too because this morning I got up and checked their website as well as Oregon’s Board of Nursing website for the hundreth time, so… unofficially I passed Jason thinks I am ridiculous because I have been stressing about it. Now I just have to wait for my official license to come from Oregon’s Board of Nursing in the mail and by Monday I should be able to search my name on their website and see RN next to it! Now I am going to pack my things for Belize because I leave tomorrow!
Weather
We are having some crazy weather over here, high winds and thunderstorms! I have been enjoying the storm from the comfort of my study station as I have been diligently hitting the books. I received my ATT, Authorization to Test, I thought the acronym was sort of ridiculous everyone kept talking about getting there “ATT” why not just call it a test code or something anyway, yesterday I was able to schedule my exam; I am excited and nervous at the same time. My test is scheduled for Feb. 20th, which is in 9 days!
Easy like Saturday Morning…
A few things to update…So as I was saying earlier, I ordered my own cake for graduation from this famous bakery here (I guess it has been around for a while, Grams tells me she used to get cakes there for Graduations and such when my Dad was little) anyway, the bakery is in the heart of the hood, like there are police officers in there during closing time guarding the doors (I think they must also get compensated for their services). So when ordering my cake I was trying to describe what I wanted on it, convo went like this:
Me: “I need a cake for someone who is graduating from nursing school”
Young Cashier: “What do you want it to say?”
Me: “Congratulations…Megan”
YC: “You want a plastic grad cap for an extra 3.95?”
Me: “Well, no, how about a red cross?”
YC: “You want a cross of roses?”
Me: “Well, no I want a red cross, like a medical cross”
YC: “So you don’t want a cross of roses?”
Me: “It isn’t a religious cross, not like the one Jesus is on, it needs to have equal sides, like more of a plus sign than a cross, you know the one that they use at the American Red Cross?”
YC: Blank stare
Me: “Just write down ‘American Red Cross’ I am sure they will know what you are talking about and put nursing school graduation in parenthesis they will get it”
YC: crosses out ‘Cross of Roses’ “OK, so no Cross of Roses”
I was so afraid when I picked it up that there was going to be a cross of red roses, but thankfully the cross was just what I wanted and they put the roses on the corners of the cake, they sure love their roses there.
Since I am still in limbo over here, waiting to hear from the Board of Nursing to schedule my test I have been trying to be good and do a little studying everyday but…I also found this pattern on Knitty that I had to do, I was sort of like the woman in Napoleon Dynamite that Uncle Rico was trying to sell the indestructible Tupperware to with the bonus free boat , I saw the pattern and said “I want that”. So I have been taking breaks between studying to work on this…
If you can’t tell what it is yet, you will soon because I am almost done and can’t wait to make another, they are going to be my Valentines this year! In other news, I am wearing short sleeves today, it is going to hit 50 degrees woohoo, and it isn’t just any short sleeve shirt, it is my rad new t-shirt that Erin batiked for me…
You can check out her store on Etsy to see some more of her work (click on Etsy to go to her store)
Graduation!!
I have just a few pictures to hold you over, waiting on others, since I was in the ceremony Jason and the rest of my fam took most of the pictures on their cameras, and Jas is taking his time “fixing the edges”. It was a good day, the actual ceremony was very short but we went to an Irish pub afterward and I had an Irish Car Bomb-like drink to celebrate; I believe the last time I had one of those was at Erin’s House Crawl almost four years ago! After that we went to Scali’s for some Italian goodness and some cake (my cake has a good story to it, coming soon with pictures). Below is me with my diploma, nursing pin and honor cords; when I opened my diploma up and Jason and Steph were looking at it they pointed out that it says “summa cum laude” after my degree, I was like “What does that mean” Steph and Jas looked at me like I was retarded, “Dude, that is like the highest you can get” so that was a nice surprise!
I wanted to order a celebratory drink but being that it was an Irish Pub they didn’t have much of anything except whiskey behind the bar and beer of course so, I opted for a Guinness and my aunt ordered this shot that they call “the greatest shot in the world” and it was, had Irish cream and something else but it didn’t taste like alcohol at all, just creamy goodness, it went well with the Guinness and reminded me a lot of a car bomb.
That is all for now, yesterday Jas and I took Steph to Hocking Hills to check out some icicles and go on a few hikes. It was a perfect day the sun was shining and there wasn’t any wind, pictures to come.
