I Promise I'm Alive!

Hi y'all!! What a blur of a week it's been! I'm sorry that I never checked in and let you all know how my first week was going, I had good intentions but, alas, never got around to it. 

First off, thank you all so much for your well wishes for my new job.  I guess no one really likes change, but I appreciate all of your thoughts!  I have to do two whole weeks of 8-5 orientation days (that are a little boring if I must tell).  I'm halfway there!!  My first day on the floor will be a week from Tuesday. I'm nervous and excited all in one.

I have to give credit to all of you folks who work 8-5 jobs.  I don't know how you do it!  I was exhausted and ready for bed by nine o'clock every night and the thought of cooking dinner was enough to send me over the edge.  Baron and I are a good team, so we didn't have to eat out every night :)  The dogs had quite the adjustment period and were surprisingly well behaved.  Thank the Lord!

We did manage to find time to drive by the house every night this week and were amazed at how quickly things are happening!  The next two photos are from last Sunday, and exactly a week later, this afternoon:

I can't wait to see what it looks like in another week!  This stage of the process is happening so fast!

I hope you all have a wonderful week! Back to the grind tomorrow :)

On the Eve of Change

I never really understood the Sunday evening blues...until today.  Ha!  My first real job was working night shift as a nurse and each week I worked on different days so there was never the feeling of having to get ready for a full week of work.

I start hospital orientation tomorrow for my new job and although there won't be any clinical work tomorrow I'm still a little nervous.  Never having been a huge fan of change, I've kind of been dreading this afternoon for a while. 

I've got my lunch packed, paperwork ready, and my clothes laid out for my first day.  Here goes nothing!

Baron and I had a low key weekend that started out by celebrating my new job at the Melting Pot on Friday night.  Imagine my surprise when I saw this on my little menu board:

We had a nice dinner and fun experience cooking all of our own food.  Baron had never been before and I think he liked it :)  While trying to cook some shrimp on a skewer, this guy walks by and I think,  "I know him!" But then I thought, "we just moved here and there are very few people that we know and I'd be able to identify them easily." Hmmmm....

Then it clicked, it was Jared the Subway guy! At the Melting Pot. Certainly not eating a five dollar foot long.  Baron didn't believe me at first and after it was confirmed by our waiter, he too, was in awe of the big celebrity sighting in our city.

Speaking of Subway, there is one pretty close to our new house.  We went and grabbed dinner one night last week.  Our sandwich artist was very enthusiastic and even penned the words "His" and "Hers" on our sandwiches.  Ha!

Saturday was spent doing absolutely nothing.  We did drive around late in the afternoon to check on our house and just see the city.  Spring has definitely sprung here in North Alabama and it is beautiful!

I hope you all have a wonderful week! I'll try to stop in at some point but won't make any promises, this is going to be quite the 180 for a girl who's had a year off of work.  Gulp!  I'm excited to get started but kind of wish I could snap my fingers and have been at my new job for a year.  I remember saying that about my last job when I first started and the three and a half years there went by so fast. 

I hope I can touch peoples' lives.  I hope I can be a caretaker, pain-reliever, answer giver, comedian, baby rocker, comforter, and perfect counter-to-ten (you do a lot of that in Labor and Delivery) for all of the women that I will care for.  The way that all of the doors were closed until this opportunity came about, and then this door was wide open and I was practically shoved through it, helps me to be less anxious about the whole thing.  This is where I'm supposed to be.  This is what I'm supposed to do.  I can't wait to get back into the groove of it all.  I'll just keep repeating that to myself until it feels natural again.

Have a great week, friends!

Big News!

Hi friends!  I've got quite the update for you guys today.  There are so many exciting things happening for us right now that I know will swirl the calm waters of our lives for months to come.

No, we're not having a baby.

Actually, I am having lots of them, but not Baron.  Weird, right??  Not really because, you guys, I am going to be a labor and delivery nurse again!!  When I wrote this post in August, I had no idea that six months later I still wouldn't have a job.  After searching high and low and submitting application after application with no bites, it got me a little down.  I only had one bite and had an interview at a doctor's office that I wasn't terribly excited about, a few months ago.  I was terribly conflicted after I left the interview because I really wasn't feeling it, so I prayed that they wouldn't call and offer me the job.  Well they must have picked up on my vibe, because they never called.

I now see exactly why all these doors have been shut right in front of me.  Why I get e-mail after e-mail about how they chose another candidate, they had already filled the position, I didn't have the experience they were looking for, blah, blah, blah.

On Monday afternoon I got a call from the Nurse Manager at a hospital in my town, she wanted me to come in for an interview the following day at 1.  The interview went well and I met with about six nurses from the unit and really liked their personalities and the feel of the unit.  At six o'clock that night I received a call from the manager and she said that she wanted to offer me the position. Say what?!  I went from having absolutely no prospects to having secured a job in about 26 hours.  Okay God, I hear you! This is where I'm supposed to be! :)

The best part? It's a PRN position, which means as needed.  After working full time for one year I'll go PRN and be able to work basically whenever I want to.  There is a minimum shift amount that I'll have to work and I can work as much as up to full time, whatever works for my schedule.  How great is that?!

I am so, so excited to get back into my old thing.  To do what I do best and get back to where I feel like I'm making a difference in this world.  Of course I'm nervous beyond belief too, but with the way everything worked out I have no doubt that God has placed me here in the position and that it will be okay!

House Update:
In other news, right after getting called about the interview on Monday, Baron and I headed to our lot to see if any action had been done on our house.  Much to our surprise, they had broken ground!!

Our lot has been scraped!

Rebar for our storm shelter!

What an exciting Monday it was! After my interview on Tuesday, I was mentally exhausted and mulling things over in my head when Baron and I headed back down to the lot again.  What did we find?? More progress!!

Concrete footing for our foundation

As we were exploring the outline of our house my phone rang.  I didn't recognize the number at first so I wasn't going to answer it and then it clicked.  It was the hospital!  I answered and when I heard the voice of the Nurse Manager that I had just met with earlier that day, I teared up.  She offered me the position and we spoke briefly about my next steps. When I hung up I jumped up and down and told Baron that I was a labor and delivery nurse again!!  It was surreal to be watching our new home being built while I got the call about my new job.  Lots of things happening for sure!

Last night we didn't have a chance to get to the lot until it was dark, but we still went!  We were impressed that they had already started laying cinder blocks for the foundation.  It's all going so fast!

Our future garage

I hope you all have a wonderful Thursday!  I'm heading to the hospital today to get some paperwork out of the way and then prepping for my parents' visit tomorrow!  This week has become a lot more crazy than I thought it would be.  Such is life, right?!

Be blessed friends!

Where Do You See Yourself in Five Years?

Here's what I'm doing today.  I have an interview this afternoon with a doctor's office in town.  I'm nervous, but maybe that'll help me out a little bit.  I keep telling myself that I don't have to have this position.  It's not like we have 12 kids to feed or anything.  I guess it's just human nature to want to be liked and wanted.  Here's hoping!  Cute outfit? Check.  Rain? Yeah, bummer.  Ready for anything? Check!

We are still waiting to schedule our appointment at the design center so that we can pick out everything for our house.  This is taking forever!  It kind of doesn't even feel like we're building a house, because we've been stuck in the same position for two months with no progress being made.  Our realtor is pushing for us and trying to get us in to the design center before Baron has to go on his next business trip. 

This week feels like it has the potential to get crazy!  Interview today, WW meeting tomorrow, hopefully two house meetings, taking the dogs to a boarding place for daycare to get them used to it, lots of stuff to do!!  Crazy is better than boring I guess!

Happy Monday Y'all!

Crossroads

I'm at a crossroads people.  I could use your thoughts, prayers, ideas, etc.  I decided I wanted to be a nurse right before I received my Associate's Degree at a community college and I kind of had to make a decision about what I wanted to do with my life.  When you're a single gal that doesn't think you'll be settling down soon you have to make a plan for your life, your career becomes of greatest importance to you because you have to figure out how to support yourself.

So I went to nursing school with the goal of becoming a labor and delivery nurse.  It was hard.  Nursing school is one of the hardest things I've ever done, but I made great friends, and even met my husband through someone that I went to nursing school with.  I've realized now that even I never would have worked a day as a nurse that nursing school was not a waste.  I met my very best friends and ultimately met my husband because of my choice to become a nurse.  But work I did...I got my dream job right out of nursing school in one of the best hospitals in Jacksonville as a Labor and Delivery nurse.  I was so excited, so nervous, so thrilled to be there for people and help them through the happiest day of their lives.  I jumped in feet first and learned as much as I could about pregnancy and delivery.  I quickly realized however, that it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows and baby rattles.  Sometimes there was serious illness, there was heartache, there was pain, and sometimes sadly, there was death.  Over the next three and a half years I worked hard and took care of hundreds of patients. I was the primary nurse at over 200 deliveries, not to mention all of the people that I took care of while they labored (but didn't get to meet their little peanuts), the people we worked tirelessly to keep pregnant because they were too early, and women that had significant complications during their delivery.

It took me a good year before I would stop being teary-eyed during the deliveries.  There was absolutely no greater feeling than handing a brand new baby to his Mom and Dad for the first time.  On the other hand, I never would have imagined how much I would enjoy taking care of women who lost their baby or those in terrible situations where we all knew that nothing good was going to come of the situation.  I guess enjoy isn't the right word.  I hated that these families had to go through the lose of a baby but I felt so humbled that I was in a position to make the situation just a little bit more bearable.

I'm not really good at anything.  We all know people who are athletic, or really crafty, or can sing or whatever.  I'm not one of them.  I never had anything I was really talented in.  Once I had been working in L&D for a few years I felt like I was finally good at something.  I feel like I gave it my all and devoted my entire attention and energy to my patients while I was at work.  Unfortunately I also devoted my time when I wasn't working.  I took a lot of my work home with me.  I constantly worried about my patients, I cried for them, I always wondered if there was anything else I could have done to make a situation better.  I kept saying to myself, "Just give it another year and maybe you'll be more confident."

Then I met my future husband and we got married and moved two states away.

I was heartbroken when I left my job in L&D.  Of course I was ecstatic to be getting married but there was a tiny part of me that thought that I may not ever do L&D again, so it was doubly hard to leave my coworkers and patients at the hospital where I worked.

So here I am, trying to decided what to do with my life.  I feel like that scared college sophomore all over again, but now maybe I can do something that I enjoy but am not crazy stressed about.  Maybe I don't have to work on Christmas and Thanksgiving.  Maybe I can be home when my husband gets off work every day. I'm looking into other types of nursing jobs now and hoping that something will come along that I can do and be good at again.  I hope that I can work hard and bless the people that I take care of like I feel like I did in L&D.  At lastly I hope that somewhere out there a scared little graduate will get her dream job in L&D and get to do it for a little while and know the joy that it brought me.

Until then......I wait for my Alabama nursing license to come in......and Max to be potty trained :)