Saturday, January 27, 2018

::update on life::

POST GRAD SCHOOL

      The post grad school tension is finally off my shoulders.  It took me months to stop waking up every morning and feeling like I had a baby to try and write during my 12 hour shift or while talking a toddler that never wants to watch shows into giving me a little thinking space.  


The toddler days and the paper days are past me now and I got to say that although I miss the toddler days, I don’t miss the paper days.  I’m so glad to be out of school and living life more connected to the moment.  Which leads me to…

NEW JOB



      I spent the last semester of grad school shadowing at the best OB practice in the universe.  I knew this practice from when I was a nurse and loved them.  At first I was shadowing my sister in-law Rachel, who happens to be an OB/GYN at this practice.  But don’t forget that I knew Rachel from when I was a nurse and liked her so much I set her up with my husband’s brother.  Who she then married!  So – she is my handpicked sister and I might be a little biased because of how much I love her.  She really is an amazing doc and I loved following her around.  Then I spent the second half of the semester shadowing another doc in the practice named Dr. Sanders.  He had started up an addiction treatment program for pregnant mother and I knew I wanted in.
        One day in November of 2016 I was at work and overwhelmed with all the grad school crap I had to do.  I decided to do a job search and see if there where any jobs open that I might love.  I saw an opening for an NP that would work in the OB practice I had only dreamed of working in and it was as for someone also wanted to do addiction medicine.  
my official work portrait
Not bad for a girl that took math 152 three times and Purdue

      And I knew it took advantage of every single thing that my heart wanted to do when I got out of school.  Women’s health and addiction medicine.  I felt like karma had prepared me my entire life to do this very job and I pulled out every connection I had ever made to make sure I got the job.  Human Resources got my application but immediately kicked it out as I didn’t have the minimum requirements.  It took MONTHS of begging and bringing it up to get to the right person to FINALLY in A-P-R-I-L I got my official offer and snapped it right up.
 
Blurry picture of my sister/mentor and I celebrating my name getting added to the door. 

      My job is to be a women health nurse practitioner who specializes in addiction treatment for pregnant women.  I take care of regular OB/GYN needs but then I help run our drug treatment program.  Every day I spend time making sure the moms in the program are getting what they need to be successful and that their program is individualized for their needs.  Every patient presents so new loop hole, or area for growth, that hasn’t occurred yet and my job is to figure out a solution.  I love being able to help these women.  They have been through so much and they are usually SO motivated to get better.  I love being on the front line of stemming the opioid epidemic and I give this ladies my all.  We hug, we laugh, we cry, and we all are better people at the end of the day.  This is my dream job.  Plus, we working 4 ten hour shifts a week with the same days off and no holidays/call/or weekends has led to…

THURSDAY DATE DAY
first day of school

      This is our first year to have all our children in full time school every day.  I really do miss having babies around this house, and at least once a week I wish I had another little person.  But I turned 40 this year and the little people from me are over.  So, we have decided instead to focus our energy on making Thursdays our date day.  We get the crew on the bus and then we make a nice leaisurely breakfast.  I make Josh his favorite breakfast which is called Egg-In-A-Hole.  Toast with the center cut out and toasted in the frying pan with an egg in the center.  There might be a TON of butter involved with this whole (or hole???) concept.  Then we take a nap, or go to a movie, or go on a mini adventure.  We have till 3:30 that afternoon to be just us.  Two kids on a date.  We had Lily 10 months after we got married, and Emma was two when Josh and I met.  We have never been just two kids on a date.  For a couple hours every Thursday we focus on our relationship and enjoying each other’s company.  (Seems like we talk about Disney a lot during that time, which never hurts.)  I have grown to LOVE Thursdays.  Around 3:30pm the crew starts rolling home and we happily get refocused on…       

KIDS

      Oh, this crew of mine.  I have so much joy in having a family.  The boys are like two feral cats, but I just adore their boy brains.  Quinn is gigantic, 95% for height!  HUGE kid that is immune to all physical discomfort except hunger.  He can take cold better than anyone I have ever met.  He wears shorts all the time.  He is my most bull headed child, but that kid LOVES kindergarten.  He loves the learning and the other kids.  He has gotten in zero trouble, and seems to walk the straight and narrow. 
      

Mr. Max is such a calming agent for my heart.  Every since the baby we lost years ago, Max has been such a comfort to me.  He is such a different kid.  His thinking is in 400 directions and most of them are the most unique thoughts humans have ever come up with.  School comes to him easily and he is in advanced classes.  His ADD has not seemed to be much of a hold back to him.  His brain just ping pongs around and his charisma makes the world his oyster.  He just got a huge role in the school play as Mike TeeVee in Willie Wonka, and he was amazing.  (Again – maybe I am biased but I was blown away by him.)

Lily bug has been rocking it out as a teenager.  She is 14 (WHAT!) and she is the most pleasant person.  She has occasion teenager breaks with kindness but they are rare and short and she seems to come apologizing back very quickly.  She has been getting solo’s in choir, and her vocal talent just keeps growing.  She got Wendy in her junior high play of Peter Pan.  They told her they didn’t give her Peter because they needed their best vocalist in the largest vocal role.  It’s really amazing to see her take her natural talent and her constant work at trying to improve it.  She has been singing since she was 10 months old.  She is thriving in her school and has really started growing into an amazing 
adult.  I can’t wait to see what this kid ends up doing with her life. 

 
      Emma is 19 years old.  Seriously, almost a real adult.  She is halfway through her sophomore year at Ball State and seems to be doing very well.  She’s got an apartment set up for next year.  I can’t believe she is going to be 21 soon!  We are planning on taking her to Disney World for her 21th with the female friend of her choice and taking her to all the fun bars we have enjoyed when we do an adults only trip.  Emma is a very funny and interesting person.  She has a seriously kick ass sense of humor and I really love the rare times we get to spend time with just her.  She is brave about food (accept sea food) and fun to travel with.  We will have such a blast with her. 

      With all these kids we are really enjoying our…

NEW FARM

      Moving and renovating this farm was one of the most stressful things I have ever been involved with.  Living in a rental and the crew working on this house and all the uncertainty that involved was more than my little brain could take in my last semester of grad school.  We worked with the best company and they took such good emotional care of me, but it was still very stressful.  At the end of the day it was so worth it.  I’ve talked about almost every room of this house on here, but the biggest thing I have to say is I LOVE THIS HOUSE.  It has so much natural sunlight and the space is all so well used.  We got rid of 60% of our stuff before we moved and I don’t miss one thing.  This house is easy to clean and easy to live in.  My new bedroom and bath are the fanciest thing I have ever lived in and I adore it.  It’s like a dream.  The view from the giant kitchen windows is part of my soul.  I love this house.  It looks like a pretty little cottage on the outside and feels like a dream house on the inside.  Having our first Christmas here was wonderful.  And the best present of all added to our collection of…

ANIMALS:


      I have been begging for years to get an indoor dog.  I really thought I wanted a Wheaten Terrier but at the last minute the breeder had a Shih Zhu Bichon cross that was going to be ready for Christmas and I went for it.  I thought the more lap dog like personality of a Shih Zhu might work better for Josh then the terrier enthusiasm.  We went and picked her up and then hid her at my inlaws till Christmas morning.  I had this extensive plan about how I was going to sneak her under the tree.  She was out in our heated shop and then at 5am I was going to go get her and put her under the tree.  The three little kids all sleep in one room together on Christmas night and they were out.  We had it all ready, but I decided to warm up the puppies bed so she would be more likely to stay asleep.  AND THE LITTLE SPACE HEATER SET OFF ALL THE SMOKE DETECTORS!!!!!!  So we quickly threw her under the tree and told the now awake kids to comes on out.  They were so in love with her from the very start.  She is wonderful!  We named her Princess Popsicle Petunia Jingles Consuela Banana Hammock, but we call her Poppy. 
      The big dogs have had a great winter.  They have access to the green house when they are cold and they get to go on lots of long walks.  They have a large fenced in area and over all I think they are very happy together.  I hope this winter we can move our one sheep and our donkey home so they can play together. 
      We have about six chickens and two roosters.  The two rooster take turns being in the coop with the ladies.  If they are together they fight with each other.  One of our rooster is special needs, he has a birth defect and can’t walk.  He just flops around with his wings and oddly seems very happy with his life.  But if the two rooster get together the healthy rooster beats up the special needs rooster too much and I can’t take it.  The chickens currently lay not one damn egg a day, which is very annoying but they get like that in winter sometimes.  Hopefully they will start back up again soon.
      Meanwhile, I have been having a blast starting up…

MY ETSY SHOP


      I have had a secret bucket list dream to have some kind of art that I make that I sell on Etsy and at art fairs.  I wanted to buy some custom Disney inspired mouse ears for the girls for Christmas.  But they where about $35 each and that seemed like too much.  I decided that I was going to make some instead.  I ended up overall spending WAY more money than it would have taken to buy those two sets of ears – BUT I found a new hobby that is bringing me such joy!  I have had so much fun making all kinds of different ears.  I make sketches about them when I have a little down time.  I dream about them at night.  I make them and send them to my friends little girls for free just cause I love sending them to people.  I love it so much that I set up a little Etsy shop to sell them.  They aren’t exactly flying off the shelf right now.  Honestly, I’ve only sold one so far.  But that isn’t getting me down.  They are joyful and enjoyable and my collection of personal ears has exploded!  We leave for Disney in a few days and we are going to have so much fun wearing our ears around the most magical place on earth.  Working on these ears brings a little Disney magic into my art time and it is helping me maintain my optimistic outlook. 



      I think this is the longest post I have made in years, but I’m so glad to have this back as an outlet to chronicle our little family and my adventure through life.    

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