Quasi-home

My last day at Franciscan was on Friday. It was the day from hell. Anything that could have gone wrong did (with the exception of death). Happily, the day finally ended and I met Andrew, my Mom (who came to Boston to bring my back to NY), my aunt and uncle, and my cousin and his wife for dinner at the best Sangria place EVER! Two of my friends from work joined us as well. That meant a lot for them to come for one last hurrah!
Saturday we packed a bunch of stuff into the car and were NY bound. I think the trip was most stressful on Daisy (the fish). However, the repercussions of the move are stressful on me (in NY) and Andrew (still in Boston). I've been here for less than 24 hours and have called him 6 times (that's an average of less than every 4 hours).
Now that I'm at my parents, things are starting to normalize. Quincy is happy to have his Mama with him (he's been staying with my parents for about a month so that he wouldn't have to truck back and forth every week like we have been). Daisy is settled in, her tank is in a warm sunny spot in "my room" (aka the computer room- luckily my parents have recently bought a laptop so that they can use the computer without invading my little space). My plants are enjoying the fresh air and sunshine in their temporary home on the back deck.
Tomorrow, Quincy and I are going to be in the Memorial Day parade in our little town. My dad has a float in it (A Carousel of Festivals for all the different festivals that the town hosts), and Quince and I will be in the back of the truck waiving to everyone! However, I expect everyone to be like twelve people, but it will be fun regardless.
My nerves are running high when I think about starting my new job on Tuesday. Right now, my biggest concerns are silly things like:
1. Can I find the correct building?
2. Where should I park
3. What should I wear? I'd rather be overdressed than under dressed, but ideally I'd like to be dressed just right.
4. What will Tuesday consist of? They say it's orientation for moving patients and such, but I've worked in a hospital for a year and a half... I think I know how to move a patient. I have done it once or twice.
5. What should I plan to do for lunch?
6. Once I start my position, the people who will show me how to do my job are the people who I'm supposed to be supervising. How will that work?
7. Will they like me?
It's hard to start a new job. Especially when my biggest supporter is living 3 and a half hours away.
I hope everyone enjoys the beautiful holiday weekend!!!

I can't take it anymore!

We have been to cheap and/or lazy to get She-Ra fixed. We kept thinking, "Oh, we'll get to it sooner or later." She's an indoor cat so we were not worried about her getting pregnant or anything.
Well, the past few nights, sleeping has not been very easy. She-Ra's in heat...AGAIN! She spends her time wandering around our apartment yowling and howling. Non Stop.
Then she spends her days asleep. I want to go around and poke her all day when she's sleeping so that she'll stay up tonight.
It's one thing when I have the day off, but I'm working tomorrow and Friday (my last 2 days at the Fran), and if I don't get enough sleep, I'll be really grumpy (and perhaps unsafe). I'm hoping that she's finishing up, but I think that's just happy thoughts.

Getting Ready

I'm going to start my new job on May 27. I seriously doubt that we're going to close by then (especially because the sellers have not signed the contract yet). In fact, I'm going to get fingerprinted on Friday and switch my drivers license to NY.
So where am I going to live, you might be asking yourself. Good question. I'm going to move in with my parents Memorial Day weekend.
Yup. Moving in with Mom and Dad. But it's ok. I'm not a loser. Really. Do losers buy a house when they're 23? No. I am convinced that it will be for like 2 weeks. CONVINCED!
So as my time in Beantown is winding down, I have a few things that I still want to do. We're going to have dinner with my cousin and his wife tonight in Hull. It will be nice to be down by the ocean. And I want to have a night out with friends. And go out for breakfast to that AWESOME place that we go after working an overnight.
Not a lot. Hopefully I can get that short list done.

It's the little things

There was a patient at the hospital who went home this week. She had been there a few months and I really fell in love with her. Her family is great. Very involved. Over her hospital stay, I became very close to both the patient and her mom. Her mom moved in to the hospital and was almost always there. She would go home for one day every week or two to spend time with her husband and other kids, but she always made sure that someone else from her family was there to stay with her daughter. She very quickly learned all aspects of her daughter's care. Her strength amazed me. I was sad that I wasn't working the day she was leaving, so I wasn't able to say good-bye.
When I got to work the other night, there was a blue envelope in my mailbox. Curiously, I opened it immediately.

It was a thank you note from the family. They wanted to thank me for the care that I provided and say that they were going to miss me. There is a picture of the little girl in the card.
I don't know if they understand how much that meant- being thanked. Some people say that my job must be so rewarding. Other people say that they don't know how I can work with sick kids. Really, it's hard. Hard to bust your ass every day and have doctors, administration and families act like if you weren't doing it, someone else would be.
This little thank you note really made my day. It means more than the tote bag the hospital gave us last year for nurses week. It means more than the 3% raise that I got after a year. It's probably the most important thing that I will get from my time at the hospital.

Clean What?

Friday afternoon, Andrew and I found out that our apartment was going to be shown to prospective renters. Now, keep in mind that with all the stress, we had fallen behind on out housekeeping. You know that show "How Clean Is Your House"? Well, I had nightmares about them coming here. So Saturday morning, we woke up on a mission. We worked from 8am until about noon (with a breakfast break/catch up on tv break that lasted a little over an hour). And I'd say that we had a positive result.

I know that some people might not be satisfied with this, but we are. Now I'm just enjoying every second in our clean home. And we're going to try to keep it like this until we move.
I guess I'll go wash the dishes now. Think we can keep this up for 3 or 4 weeks?