kapachino

Category: personal

  • Good Things

    You may or may not be wondering how my week is going. The answer is very well, thanks. Work has been surprisingly manageable lately and I am enjoying taking care of all the patients I have. Usually at any given time I have at least one “difficult” patient, but God has granted me a reprieve for the moment. I don’t know how long it will last, so I am savoring it.

    Yesterday I got to spend an entire day with one of my best friends who I hardly ever see. That was good. I just finished watching the very first episode of Mad Men. It was good. I am nearing the end of The Time Traveler’s Wife, and it is good. My husband is sitting next to me reading, and our dogs are laid out on the floor at our feet. Life is good.

    It is 9:41 p.m. as I type, and that may be early for some but it is quite late for me. Maybe tomorrow I can summon the inspiration to bring you something of more substance. This will do for now.

  • On Being A Wife

    My husband and I have been married almost a year. Although I’m not planning on trading in my scrubs and stethoscope anytime soon, I have this crazy idea that I can be both a full-time, successful nurse and a fantastic, domestic wife. In my mind that means everything from keeping the house clean, doing chores, cooking frequent meals, budgeting and saving money, decorating the house, entertaining, and gardening to birthing babies and keeping my husband happy.

    In some of those areas I am quite deficient, which bothers me if I’m honest with myself. So yesterday, my day off, I resolved to be the perfect housewife.

    First there were the four piles of dog vomit that needed to be cleaned. Step One: pick up the bulk and throw it away. Step Two: vacuum the dry pieces left behind. Step Three: spray with pet stain remover and forget about it for hours on end. Step Four: drizzle with water and scrub. Step Five: blot dry. I’m sure you have all been dying to know that information your whole life.

    Then there was dinner to prepare for. I found this recipe for spicy meatballs in creamy beef broth and was bound and determined to make it happen. I spent an hour or so on the prep and then they were in the Crockpot cooking away. Later on I cleaned the house, paid some bills, and was just settling down to read when David came home. After some last minute preparations we ate dinner together (success) and I asked him how his day at work was. Then he took a nap and I read.

    But the crucial part of the day came when I went to see Julie & Julia with my mom. It was a great movie that we both loved, and it affected me on several levels. Most obviously, it encouraged me to cook more. It also made me want to continue to be devoted to my blog while adhering to personal boundaries. I could write an entire post about either of those subjects.

    But one thing that especially stood out to me in the movie was how these two women had amazing husbands. I kept expecting something to go very wrong with their relationships like it usually does in movies, but it never did. This movie made me want to be a great wife, and I don’t mean by cooking elaborate meals.

    I’ve been married for almost eleven months, and I am trying to learn how to cook, decorate my house, live on a budget, and hopefully even birth some babies along the way while balancing my vocation as a nurse. This blog is in large part a record of those things. But most importantly, I just want to love my husband. I want to love him better all the time. Lucky for me, he’s quite lovable.

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  • Power Outage

    We had a storm roll through tonight, and our power has been going on and off all evening, with the majority of it off. Our nervous dog Eddie has been beside herself. This is how I spent most of my time tonight:

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    It wasn’t enough for her to be near me, she had to be ON TOP of me. The pictures, taken with my computer which was on my lap, are blurry because she was shaking.

    I think things have finally calmed down, and I’ll be back with you tomorrow with my thoughts on being a wife after seeing Julie & Julia. But right now I must get myself to sleep, since I have to work in the morning. Happy weekend to everyone else!

  • I’m Attending SchipulCon09

    My brother is a web designer and head of a creative team at a Houston web marketing/design company called Schipul. One of their clients is the Houston Zoo (check out the awesome website!), and this year Schipul is putting on a two day conference there. I follow Schipul’s updates on Twitter, so I knew this was going on but I didn’t think it applied to me.

    Then I saw my brother at church and he handed me a bunch of fliers for the conference. He said, “You should come!” I said, “But I’m not a web marketer.” He said, “It doesn’t matter, come hang out and learn about the Internet!” And after I noticed that I could actually get the two days off without taking PTO, and thinking about how I’d like to hang out with him and my good friend Margaret who also works at Schipul, and I saw the topics to be presented and that I was actually interested in some of them, I decided why not?

    So I’m going to a web marketing conference, and if you are interested in this kind of thing and live in or near Houston, you should come too!

  • weekend review

    I’m propped up in bed ready to read for an hour or so before drifting off to sleep and then starting another week. Before I do that, though, I wanted to share a few things with you from the weekend.

    We babysat our nephew Lucas for the first time.

    He was adorable, calm, smiley, perfect for the first half. Then he got hungry, so he started to cry. We fed him every last drop of milk that we had. We burped him and got four really good ones. We changed his diaper. We held him and walked around with him, and sang to him. He continued to cry…for about an hour and a half. It was actually quite cute to see David’s reaction to this. He was so worried that something was wrong with Lucas. We eventually had to call his parents to come home, because he was still hungry and his food supply was nowhere to be seen. Before they got home I managed to calm him down by doing deep knee bends and walking up and down the stairs a million times. It was a serious workout.

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    You can see the slightly frazzled look around my eyes.

    I signed up for the Tour de Pink.

    The glitch was finally worked out on the website, and I signed up for the 12-mile bicycle race in Houston that will take place September 13! I’m really excited because it will be my first bike race. Here is where I ask for your help, though, because in order to participate I am required to raise at least $100 in addition to my entry fee. Please donate; even just $1 gets me closer to that goal, and I would love to surpass it if possible! Here is a handy dandy link for you:

    Some other stuff happened too.

    Including, but not limited to: David’s second cousin’s baby shower, cooking and grilling, a long bike ride, leading worship in church, and starting The Time Traveler’s Wife. It was a good weekend, and it’s going to be a good week.