then it's trash

I just saw a television commercial for those Special K protein water mix-in powders. A woman is leaving her office for the evening, walks into the break/lunchroom, and sitting on the top of the trash is one untouched slice of birthday cake. On top of the trash. Not on the lid, but on a pile of used food-crusted paper plates, utensils, etc.

I'm sorry, maybe the germ-o-phobe in me is flaring up, but if it's in the trash, then isn't that piece of cake... TRASH?

And does it make anyone else think of this?



PS - I think I might still buy the protein water mix-in packets.

confessions

I've been inspired by this post over at Love is Blonde. Read them at your own risk...

I am terrible about returning phone calls. Seriously terrible.

I will often delete a voice mail before I finish listening to it.

I get totally creeped out at the "technical difficulties" voice guy on TV. This morning, I was trying to watch Regis and Kelly, and there was no sound, and THAT VOICE came on and said, "The station is experiencing technical difficulties, please do not adjust your set," and my whole body broke out in goosebumps.

Yesterday, I did not vote.

I had a goldfish jump out of its bowl once, and I found it one morning, still and lifeless on the carpet. I saw it, turned around and took a shower, and made my roommate pick it up and put it in the water 20 minutes after I'd first discovered it. I pretended I hadn't seen it before.

It was still alive.

One of my best friends from college had adorable twin girls over a month ago (joining their equally adorable bigger sister, Sarah, aka The Boo), and I still haven't been to see her. Love you Rach! I'm coming by...



I want to win the lottery, just enough so that I can be a SAHM for my kids. (This, of course, would require me to actually purchase a ticket.)

I detest the color orange.

I haven't done any serious exercise since November.

At my last doctor's appt, in the column that asks how often I exercise, I marked "3-4 times per week".

apolitical

I've never been really big into politics. This statement will likely horrify my brother, the politics major and die-hard Republican. But it's true. And he probably already knows it anyway. He still thinks I'm awesome.

There are several reasons why, when confronted with all the primary coverage on the nightly news, my eyes glaze over and I turn the channel to Friends reruns instead. One is that on a most fundamental level, I do not trust any politician. I mean, I'm sure they're nice people and would probably make interesting dinner guests, if the possibility presented itself, but it all seems like a huge popularity contest anyway, and then all those promises? Watered down and lost in the bureaucracy of Washington. I'm not saying I want a dictatorship with one voice only - noooooo - but even the candidate with the best ideals inevitably has to contend with the five bajillion committees and subcommittees to get anything to happen. So, not much happens. Except war and taxes, both of which I don't like.

Second, I hate confrontation. I hate argument. This is why I never even considered law as a career. So, televised debates where candidates rip each other up and argue endlessly? Horrid. Why do they have to resort to tearing each other down? It makes me dislike and distrust them even more.

Third, even when I do know where each candidate stands, I never know how to vote, anyway. My family has been mainly Republican. I voted Republican for many years because I respect my family and their opinions, and I figured they were on to something pretty good. But to be honest, I didn't know what being Republican meant. I thought it was a family thing. So I looked it up. And it turns out that with many issues, I am quite the elephant - views on abortion, war, education - but on others, I'm very, er, donkey - human rights, the environment, healthcare. So, I take this poll the other day - can't remember where I found it, but you can probably Google it - where you bubble in where you stand on different topics (abortion, war funding, affirmative action, etc) and it finds the candidate most similar to your views. I thought, great, this will simplify it. I do the quiz as best as I can, fill in all the little bubbles, and it spits out my results:

Coming in at first place with only a 35% match: John McCain.

Okay, well, he's Republican... so I guess I was good sticking with the Republican party, right? Who's number two?

TYING for first place with a 35% match: Barack Obama.

Um. Okay, but he's a Democrat. Well, I'm open-minded to anything. Who's third?

Coming in a very close third at (no joke) 34%: Hillary Clinton.

Hmmmmmm... and my fourth?

Coming in fourth at (still not joking) 33%: Mike Huckabee.


I give up.


I think that each one of the candidates will have to take me out to dinner and convince me personally. Otherwise, I'm moving to Canada.

PS - I did find these really rockin' Valentine's Day cards. I'm not saying to vote or not to vote for this guy, but these cards are still pretty cool.

first person to send me a jar of fleur de sel gets to eat these...

Fleur de sel caramels

no country for old meat

I've had some stomach issues lately. I promise to spare you all the details of the how and the why, because you really don't want to hear that, I know. But, needless to say, my list of eatable foods has decreased dramatically, limited mostly to apple-based products (sauce, juice, whole fruit), saltines, bread, and turkey. Everything else is a gamble.

Saturday night at work, I get hungry. It was time for my meal break, and I was feeling adventurous, partly because I was sick of eating applesauce and turkey sandwiches, and also partly because the hospital cafeteria was out of both turkey and apples. I happen to also like roast beef a lot, and I figured it couldn't be that much worse than turkey...and it's all the cafeteria had. So I got it. Made me a roast beef sandwich with a little lettuce, and I even threw on some cheese, because I like to live on the edge like that.

It tasted good enough, really it did. Only about three or four small bites into the sandwich, I notice it has The Sheen. (No relation to Charlie or Martin.) You know, that curious mother-of-pearl sheen deli meat gets. I don't think you're supposed to eat anything that looks like your favorite brooch, you know?

I stopped eating The Sheen. But I still paid well for those three or four bites.

Watch out for The Sheen. (No, not Charlie or Martin.)

things I don't understand, supermarket edition

Why my favorite ice cream flavor ever (vanilla ice cream/orange sherbet swirl) appears magically one week, then disappears the next. No love from Edy's.

The ever-popular baggy pants-half-off-the-ass look. I think I understand where it came from - tough ex-cons, lost weight in jail, now the clothes are baggy - but seriously, people: walking around with your pants hanging off your butt in decidedly un-ghetto suburban Winter Park? Yeah. HAWWWWTTTT. Totally makes me want to jump into bed with you if you're already half undressed.

Why is Prego never on sale? Why? Why?

Going into the ten-items-or-less line with more than ten items. Then, right under the sign that says, "No checks, please", writing out a check (slowly) and then balancing the checkbook, all the while flirting with the checkout girl who is exactly 1/3 your age.

Parking your grocery cart squarely in the middle of the very narrow aisle.

If you can't maneuver your shopping cart while talking on your cell phone, you sure as hell can't navigate your massive SUV out of the tiny parking lot while talking on the cell phone. Why try?

the pursuit of clean

It's amazing how fast my kitchen - my whole apartment, really - can go from sparkling clean to craptastic. I swear that I just scoured the place only a day or two ago, and now, I would bet there are several new colonies of life springing forth from my kitchen sink right now.

I had really grand ambitions for today before I had to go to work, mostly involving the cleaning of my home. Instead, I woke up absurdly late, parked my butt on the couch, ate veggie corn dogs (soooo good!) and watched reruns. Cleaning? Didn't enter the picture.

Jason and I want to be parents. I'm hoping that whenever motherhood appears, so will surface the obsessive-compulsive streak I know lurks deep inside me, and I will become the Antibacterial Wipe Queen, replete with sparkling countertops and squeaky-clean floors and Febreezed everything.

Stop laughing.

I want to eat these NOW.

Oreo Truffles

guilty as charged

My husband tells me, "You haven't blogged in, like, forever."


Ohhhhh.


Where do I start?


Well, I can tell you that I am an RN on my own. I started back on the night shift Thursday night, and though the following three shifts were supposed to be my last with my preceptor, I got a call Friday afternoon from the charge nurse:

"We had two RNs call out sick tonight. You think you can handle a full patient load on your own?"

me: "Well, I..."

"Fantastic! I'll give you your own assignment. Thanks SO much! See you tonight!"

(click)

Hmmmm. Well, it turned out just fine. Interesting, but fine.

One of my patients was an elderly lady from Jamaica, a feisty thing who spat out incomprehensible phrases in patois any time I had to come into the room. I guess I can't disagree with her: the poor lady was on neuro checks every hour, which meant that every hour, I was in her room, asking her what the date was, did she know where she was, etc. This might have been annoying, at best, during the day... but in the middle of the night, the last thing you want to do is be woken out of sleep and repeat for the umpteenth time, "yes, it's 2008" to anyone. At around 3am, I asked her if she knew where she was, and she just glared at me, hissed, and muttered something in a language unknown. I think a pretty safe translation would have been "Get. Bent."

Another patient was a young lady who had a pretty serious spinal injury and a very protective mother. My patient was in and out of sleep, and the mother only spoke Spanish. I ask my patient if she is having any pain, and no sooner does she start to mumble "mmpfff" than her mother starts rattling away in Spanish, wildly gesturing and making pathetic faces at me. I don't know what to make of it, so I find myself just sort of nodding at her and saying "okay, okay" without a single clue. Later, one of my coworkers (a Spanish-speaker) tells me that mom is not happy with me: apparently I am refusing to speak in Spanish to her. I think she was under the impression that my dark hair and the poor lighting in the room qualified me as Hispanic. How do you say, "white as a Florida cracker" in Spanish?

Overall, it was still a successful if not entertaining three nights. Normally, I can sleep just about any time of day, but for whatever reason - nerves, anticipation, or whatever - I hardly slept in the days in between my shifts. Sunday morning, I get off my last shift, change clothes, put on makeup like spackle to hide the dark circles under my eyes, and go to church. (Side note: for those of you who were there, getting to play Aerosmith at the end of the service made my whole weekend!) I made it through two services, even sang a solo without falling asleep, and then drove home at 1pm and collapsed. I woke up just long enough to eat a South Beach microwave pizza around 8pm, then fell back asleep and woke up at 10am this morning. I think I was tired.

I'm enjoying my day off, and I finally got the motivation to blog instead of lurking on everyone else's. I won't stay away so long this time...