Wednesday, March 14, 2012

borrowed truth worth sharing...




So so beyond grateful to know that this is true whether I am on the couch watching Ellen (which is everyday at 4, don't call me, I won't answer) or if I am going to work (which is not my favorite). Thanks Kelsie for sharing!

Also, this truth... 
He brought me out into a broad place, 
He rescued me because He delighted in me. -Psalm 18:19

I want to claim these two truths for myself today. I was rescued and brought into a broad place, an open space without shadows and places for scary things to hide behind. And I wasn't left there alone, I am surrounded at all times and constantly being kept in a state of blessing by His hand on my head. May it be so for me today and the next. May it be so for you too.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

things that get me through but first things I miss...

Some things I miss about senior year of college...

Good times in the apartment with Heather, Ace of Cakes, grilled chicken, pasta, and Friends...

Mountain get away weekends with great friends at my favorite place on earth...

Can't get enough...

That trip to Louisiana with a stop in the beer cave... 


Fridge organization...

 Walks in Edgewood basically to stalk my favorite house... 
Picture Secret Garden-the creepiness+A Good Year... Yep, it's perfect...

Future nurses night out at Mafiozas... 

Impromptu stops with my road trip buddy... 

Taking on the Ocoee with friends and laughing to the point of swallowing half the river...

Getting to see this one while working at retreats. Yep, I was on a horse. I don't think there will be a repeat performance of that ride...

Ace and Turnbaby with Fuzzy:


Getting my panini maker. If you could marry appliances this would be in the running. We were meant to be together...

Lunch-Bunch-Butt-Parts...

Celebrating my birthday in the street in Houston during a visit to Rice...

So this is what a boy's dorm room looks like... Wait, is that a pillow pet???

Too cool for a movie-happy sister... love you!!


Another stop on a different road trip that yielded good conversation, homemade jam, and a frying pan...

Leading a community group with these girls (this was the night I saw Becca's engagement ring. I miss that apartment, Brandon being downstairs, and always having people over) 

Farmer's market squash with olive oil...

Core Four. Miss them most...

Ok, maybe I miss these two most... 

Yep, miss her lots...

Jackson's laughs... 

Ok, there's no competition, I miss everyone... 

Did I mention I miss Kate?


Those shoes... oh wait, just kidding... 

The inter-coastal countdown ending with a fabulous day on the boat...

Plus a lot more...


Then, those were some of the things that get me through... Now, God has provided encouragement for me in different forms...

Pictures from sweet friends reminding me of truth we talked about together

Pictures of this munchkin sent to me at all hours of the day and night making work more bearable 

Julie Darling Doughnuts: go try the blueberry cake and the honey wheat. Sorry Krispy and Dunkin...  

The organizing you can do with a rolling cart with drawers for meds... don't worry, the top drawer has dividers. It may be my favorite thing about my job.

Catching up with 2/4ths of the Core Four in Birmingham...

Watching this little man dance at a UTC basketball game


Seeing this on the drive home from work in the morning. 

Getting sent this picture of a movie star and a member of the paparazzi almost makes working the night of the Oscar's bearable.

Stole this off twitter... look at it often... it is still hilarious every time...

GroupMe texts with this group... use mental photoshop to add in JFo as a good looking ski instructor saving the world one black diamond at a time and Foxy being a good friend to too many brides...

Cooking on my off days... chicken penne florentine... so so good! From MyRecipes.com 

Ingredients:
1 tsp olive oil
cooking spray
3 cups thinly sliced mushrooms (I only used maybe 1 cup)
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped red bell pepper
3 cups chopped fresh spinach 
1 tbs chopped fresh oregano (accidentally got dried so I skipped it)
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 16 oz carton 2% low-fat cottage cheese
4 cups hot cooked penne (about 8 oz uncooked)
2 cups shredded roasted skinless, boneless chicken breast
1 cup (4oz) shredded reduced-fat sharp cheddar cheese, divided
1/2 cup (2oz) grated fresh parmesan cheese, divided
1/2 cup 2% reduced fat milk (I used skim)
1 10 3/4oz can condensed reduced-fat, reduced sodium cream of chicken soup, undiluted

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 425
Heat olive oil in a large non-stick skillet coated with cooking spray over medium high heat. Add mushrooms, onion, and bell pepper; saute 4 minutes or until tender. Add spinach, oregano, and black pepper; saute 3 minutes or just until spinach wilts.
Place cottage cheese in a food processor; process until very smooth. Combine spinach mixture, cottage cheese, pasta, chicken, 3/4 cup cheddar cheese, 1/4 cup parmesan cheese, milk, and soup in a large bowl. Spoon mixture into a 2 qt baking dish coated with cooking spray. Sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup cheddar cheese and remaining 1/4 cup parmesan cheese. Bake at 425 for 25 minutes or until lightly browned and bubbly. 

Serves 8. 
345 calories per serving!

Hoping to continue to be even more present and grateful to this season of life and all that I have to learn!


Thursday, February 16, 2012

thoughts...

Responsibility is heavy. It weighs on me while I am trying to move a thousand miles and hour and be in 6 rooms at once. It slows me down as I try to pass meds at lightning speed while thinking through disease processes and medication side effects. It makes me tired after 20 minutes but also keeps me there for 13 or 14 more hours. It makes me want to quit to simply be rid of it. Yet it also makes me keep going back...

Saturday, January 28, 2012

a realization that goes back a while...

After my last post I went on to have one of the hardest nights at work that I may ever experience. In my life. It was a combination of things but I didn't sit down the whole night and I didn't eat... and I cried the whole way home and cried myself to sleep... It was a night that made me not only never want to go to work again but also made me never want to be a nurse again. In 14 hours I went through enough frustration, confusion, anxiety, and panic that I would have traded in the letters RN behind my name for just about anything, especially if it was a mode of transportation far away from 4 West on McCallie Avenue Chattanooga, TN.
Thanks to my support system, I didn't quit and I have worked 5 nights post "the night that will live in infamy." And I have also come to a realization about the way I have been both working and living my life. Get ready...

My emotions have been too closely tied to how on top of my work/life I feel...

This may not seem like earth shattering news and I am sure that many of you who have known me for any amount of time are shaking your head saying, "duh Amy... the sky is also blue if you have noticed..." It is a "new to me" concept that has been shaping my day to day life. It took something like that horrible night at work to make me realize how I have been basing my worth and supposed success on being good at what I am doing. So all through high school, definitely through college, and let's be honest, through middle school and earlier, I have felt confident and good about myself because I have been relatively good at what I have been doing... I hope this doesn't come across as bragging, if anything it should show how ridiculous I have been... So while I was in school I was fine. I am good at school. I can do school. No problem. And then I got out of school and into a job and had a reality check... Nursing was harder than I thought but orientation was fine. I could manage. Then I was out of orientation and on my own. That was even harder, but if I had an easy section of patients I was fine. I could scrape by. But if I had a hard section and was behind the whole night it undid me. I could not function... I would be fighting tears in the clean supply room/med room/halls/nurses station/elevator and forcing myself to hold back my emotions in patients' rooms. And I would still be behind... its ridiculous I know. 

So then somewhere in the midst of processing what was going on I hit on my problem... hence the revelation. Now I go to work and I have a plan, I know myself and I know what I will be facing (for the most part). I still have moments of panic and frustration but I am getting better at talking myself down from near hysteria...

My continued employment is thanks to God and his provision of Erin, my parents, AC, Becca, Kati, Sheena, and more amazing friends and timely encouragement. 

I am grateful for this job, I don't think I want to do it forever but I am learning a lot. 

Sheena pointed out a key piece of surviving work. Be present to work when you are on the job, and when you are not at work, don't think about it. 

So this blog was me sorting out my thoughts and I am now going to not think about work anymore. I am going to probably organize something or paint something with chalkboard paint. Currently any inanimate in my apartment is at risk of being covered in chalkboard paint... I am obsessed...

Monday, January 2, 2012

things hard but mostly happy...

So this blog is about as consistent as the weather in Chattanooga, and for that I apologize... But here we go again!

One thing I have run into is hard things at work. Bizarre kind of not blog appropriate hard things full of weirdness and confusion. But my parents and Erin Rodgers have been there for me as have a lot of you reading. Thank you! I don't mean for this post to be complaining because there is a lot of joy in my days. This is more of like a "this is what is going on in my life right now post."

I have been off orientation for two weeks now. It is different than I thought and much much much harder. I have had my share of tearful moments in the bathroom and times of regaining composure in the medication room. Many nights I find myself thinking, "this chaotic scramble to barely get the essentials done is not what I went through nursing school to do..." I try and wrap my head around the fact that my everyday at work is some of my patient's once in a lifetime... While I was bummed to be at work for Christmas and New Years Eve, my patients will remember those days as that time they were in the hospital over the holidays. But even with positive thinking, breath prayers, and bursting into tears hoping for a rush of endorphins, it still has been a rough transition.

After some good talks with Erin Rodgers, my mom, and my roommate bringing me back to reality I have been able to recenter my expectations and work on a game plan of a lot of rest and intentional formation of community.

In the midst of the holiday craziness and working woes there have been many many bright and happy moments! So I will show you with pictures...

AC and I went to the Hunter Museum with my grandmother!

Still weird seeing this bridge and not being on a night off from camp... Love this city!!

At the Hunter...

My favorite painting!

There was one exhibit room with this view. There was a desk type thing with paper and drawing materials and they (I typed that and then thought, who are they? The ambiguous museum staff? Anyways...) they encouraged you to draw your impression...

 This was my favorite drawing someone had left there...

Saw this and thought of Katherine Whitmore's painting of a pumpkin she sent me (which I like better)

We were there specifically for the Christmas tree exhibit. Throughout the galleries were different Christmas trees decorated by various floral shops and organizations.

On the patio of the museum looking for our apartment across the river...

THE MOST AWESOME TB HAT EVER THAT AC WOULD NOT LET ME BUY AND NOW I CANNOT FIND IT AT ANY TARGET EVER... Who wouldn't want a hat that could turn them into their favorite childhood (adulthood too apparently) toy/lovey?

Lowe's finally to get the Christmas tree!

This is AC (the logically minded biomedical engineer) discussing the plan with Jeremy (the Lowe's cashier). I don't mean to belittle anyone who is employed to deal with "holiday-overwhelmed" customers purchasing trees bigger than they can carry and dealing with children hiding amongst the tree trimmings and accessories... He was, we shall say, less than helpful... He meant well but he abandoned his cash register to help us and left a long line of people double fisting christmas trees and growing less and less enchanted by the Christmas spirit the longer that he was "helping" us. AC would work out a plan and tie a really good knot and then Jeremy would come around the car and untie the knot and tie a pansy slip knot that "will be really easy for your girls to untie..." AC was trying so hard to communicate her superior plan and get across the fact that a knot that was easy to untie for us would probably cause our tree to end up on the pavement in the middle of some intersection... But we got it safely back to the apartment!

While this next picture looks serene and holiday-ish a lot of work went into getting Wenceslas (our tree) into his tree stand. We had to buy a folding camping saw and hack off a knot at the end of the stump... So what we thought would be a simple setting up of the tree ended up being a labor intensive process of taking turns sawing bits of the tree off. Here is the result!

At night...

The Christmas look and find books next to the reindeer spa...

The nativity candle holder

A little Christmas windowsill decor...

 My parents were given an arbor by my grandparents. Years later grandmother comes into contact with the man who made it. He mentions a picture he has of a little girl next to the arbor. Grandmother says that's crazy, she just moved to Chattanooga! Arbor making man is shocked, next time he sees grandmother he says, I made this for that little girl! It is a beautiful woven wreath which we are now using as a table centerpiece. The funny thing about this is that my parents put that arbor in our side yard and made a little garden plot around it and gave it to me as my own. I planted morning glories and irises... Now it occurs to me that the whole thing was possibly a ruse to get me to pull more weeds... 

Our display of animated noise making toys...

Got to go to Nashville for Susan and friend's Christmas cookie making party! This was Jim Shulman's entry... he had a cake stand, lights, and a press release...

Our tree at home... so so tall! Nick's one request was that it be taller than he was... I think by Christmas morning it ended up having 4-5 ornaments on it and one strand of lights... 

Foxy came to visit!!! We enjoyed Tony's, Ice Cream Show, Alias, went on a walk, played guitar hero, Treemont Tavern with Mentone friends, Alias, Las Margaritas, and more Alias...
 This was probably the highlight of Foxy's trip... Baby Betsy came to Treemont Tavern and discovered the LED lights of the TV and beer logo signs...

This was another one of my I-leave-work-at-an-odd-hour-and-this-is-the-bright-side... 

The reality? Sometimes I have to scrape frost off my car after getting off a hard 12 hour shift... The bright side? Ice on your windows sometimes makes pretty patterns and Granee gave me a window cover for Christmas! 

Again... the early morning moon is a treat reserved for night shift...

Since I have started my job I have driven past the destruction of this church... I would love to know the story! It stayed like this for months and now is a pile of rubble. This looks like someone took a bite out of the middle of the church.

Julie Weaver gave me this bed!! So excited! I love it and I am so glad not to sleep on my mattress on the floor anymore! (Nick brought me this bed when he came to visit and I am super sad that I ended his visit without a single picture...) **disclaimer: although there is no photographic evidence, we had an awesome visit full of sibling bonding, Alias (see a trend?), Treemont tavern, cool cameras, Guitar Hero, and Lowe's visits to complete my bed and better support our heavy tv...

AC's college roomies came to visit! Such a treat to get to meet these sweet friends!

I got to go to Knoxville for Nancy's first wedding shower! I got to stay with Becca and it was a much needed time with a sweet nursing friend. We got to vent, share stories, and encourage each other!! It was such a treat to see friends, stay with the newlyweds, catch up with Maggie, celebrate Nancy, and make cookies but more importantly red velvet cake balls...

 Then AC and I ventured to Mentone for the annual McMunn Ugly Christmas Sweater Party! Jared is modeling his mock turtle neck and sheriff's badge while Chuck demonstrates the suave effect of a kilt and makeshift child's pajama + stockings top...

Kerri and the boys!

Come to Chattanooga again soon please!

We have come a long way from our outfits this summer... 

Chrissie... those pants... that necklace... 

Carl came and repped the armadillo sweater... The caption says, "dashing through the dust"

Jam went home with a Bieber backpack...

Carl's gifts were stolen more than any other. He kept having to unwrap and steal more gifts... He missed out on a spa pack with slippers, some movies, and other things...


Next up, Julie Weaver's Christmas party! I went over to help her get ready and burned a batch of potato chip cookies... the amount of butter in these cookies is unbelievable... but they sure are delicious!

Made about 17 successful batches...

Then more butter! This time found in ham and cheese sandwich rolls...

The spread...

The layout...

The second to last step... There are no pictures of the final product because they lasted about 10 minutes. They were a hit!

Caved and ordered more Alias... I love love love Jennifer Garner!

I got to help celebrate Jean Corey's birthday with her family in Mentone!

Wrapped presents in Chattanooga before working Christmas Eve night. This night was the busiest I have ever had. But I was gifted with supernatural joy. It truly was amazing and a gift from God. I had sick patients and confused patients and mean patients and so so much buoyant joy (it was insane, 12 acute patients, 2 nurses, and not leaving work until 9:00am made this my craziest night yet). I felt like I had a smile on my face the whole night. And I can tell you it was not from my circumstances. 

My sweet sweet daddy came to Chattanooga to get me after my night of work! But he was there patiently waiting on me and brought me home to this delicious breakfast and then present time with the family.

Christmas night gathering at Susan's and Julie's poinsettia punch... I still vote for changing its name to Wednesday punch or something that comes around more often... This was such a fun night of reverse charades and laughter!

Found some hipster in Chick-fil-a with a massive pepper grinder...

Landed at the beach for a few days to be with dad's family! This is dad and my cousin's son Hep...

This is our private pool and hot tub... Oh, and that big shiny thing at the top of the photo super close to our house? That's the ocean...

This is the house we stayed in... so so nice! My family stayed in bunk beds in that room at the very tip top.

Went on a walk on the beach... We saw so many jelly fish washed up on the sand!

Cousin's baby and a tall brother...

Sweet parents 

Sunset over the ocean

Nick got Hep to sit with him and watch episodes of Sid the Science Kid on his computer.

Fun family!

Papa's memorial bricks at the light house.

Bear and Hep at lunch in Appilachicola

Stopped in Colquitt, GA to collect my roommate and found this little gem at Granee's house...

Sunset in Colquitt

I appreciate all the prayers and encouragement. Thanks for the love!
Amy