pump it

I made it to the gym two days in a row. I am proud of myself, darnit! Doing the work at the gym is somewhat an issue (I last about an hour before I get bored, yawn), but the bigger issue is getting myself there. I somehow rationalize why I do not need to go at the moment and find better things to do with my time... watch Mad Men... make a fruit smoothie... write love notes to my lover... organize my closet... pack for Ireland... AHhhhbviously these things are more important! ... or at least I somehow manage to convince myself so. When I have someone to hold me accountable and who I can also hold accountable (Thank you Franke) it makes it harder to make up excuses.  So, this is our new plan, to force each other to be more active.

What I need to realize is that my heart and body need to get this exercise, so I can live a long and healthy life. Remember this, Rachelle Mae!  (My mother calls me Rachelle Mae when I am in trouble, so I figured it should carry through when I yelled at myself in third person). Maybe if I had better workout music? (please entertain my excuses)  My ipod needs an update. My favorite work out song ever: Pump It by The Black Eyed Peas. I. Love. That. Song. Try working out to that song, I guarantee it will get you going.  Maybe I just need to be inspired.  I'll just keep working on it.

On a fun note... Thursday is here! I love Thursdays. I get paid every other Thursday at 2am (yay monies!), but more importantly, a bunch of my friends get together and drink a couple down while we moan and groan about how much we loathe working. For the record, I do not loathe working, but if I had to choose between not working and working, without having to worry about money, I would probably not work. I do, however, like to play the "I hate being an adult" game with my friends and partake in the moaning and groaning about work. If I won $300 million, however, I would not work... or maybe work one day a week to keep my sanity; I enjoy human interaction and the thrill of the job. Dream a little dream with me.

I will be sad when Thursday is over, because that means Friday will be here. Friday starts my epic saga of working. I will be working five 12hr shifts in a row. I have never worked more than three. I will be utterly exhausted, but the reward is worth the pain. I have to work five 12hr shifts in a row in order to go to Ireland. Bring it on.

This was a boring post.

I apologize, it is all what is on my mind at the moment.

my film debut.

So I was chosen to be in a video at work. The purpose of the video is to highlight the gifts I, as a nurse, possess and share with patients, families, physicians and colleagues every day... and to bring to light what it means to be patient and family oriented for the organization that I work for.

I am terrified.

I know I should be flattered, and I am, for being the one person chosen to represent my unit (one nurse is chosen from every unit), but I am pretty scared. I do not want others to see me as the golden nurse and question why I was chosen or why they weren't chosen.  I almost wish no one would find out about this, but it is kind of difficult for them not to when there is a unit meeting being held at the same time this videotaping is being done and the taping is being done on the floor that I work so people will see me and wonder why I am there.  I also have no clue who chose me to be in the video.  Ah.  I wish I wasn't chosen.

The questions they are going to ask me are super loaded as well... I guess I will just use this post to practice my answers... and you can tell me if they are awful...

• 
  
  
  Describe what it means to you to be a [insert my organization's name here] nurse.
  • To me being a nurse means that I get to take my passion for helping others and make it my everyday profession. I get to selfishly fulfill my need for helping others, but at the same time filling a need within the community, because we all know nurses are very much needed.  It feels great to give my time and energy to something good, true, and real.
• 
  
  
  Describe what personal legacy you want to leave as a nurse.
  •  I want people to remember what I did for them and how I made them feel. I know most of my patients and their families most likely do not remember my name or even my face, but I want them to leave this hospital remembering that I made them more comfortable, more at home, more at peace.  Whatever the situation calls for, I hope that I made them feel better. I want them to remember how kind and caring I was towards them and their loved ones.  I hope that every person I run across feels that same exact way about their experience with me as their nurse and hopefully with all the nurses that care for them.
• 
  
  
  Briefly describe a time when you felt most inspired as a nurse? What made that moment in time inspirational for you?
  • I had a patient who was having a really rough night. She was admitted for a bowel obstruction, but was refusing the placement of a nasogastric tube.  All night long she was nauseous and vomiting. I sat down with her, face to face, and educated her on the benefits of the tube placement... "what can't go down, must come up".  By the time that I had left at the end of the shift she changed her mind from "absolutely no tube" to "I will think about it".  All I could do was provide her with education and hope she would make the best decision.  The next time I came back, she was my patient again and she told me, "I have been waiting for you."  She told me thank you for taking the time to sit with her and talk to her.  She said she eventually changed her mind, because of me.  She said she knew I cared about her and wanted what was best for her.  Apparently after I left that first day, she let the next nurse put the tube in.  This really inspired me, because I am a nurse... a source of comfort and education to all my patients.
• 
  
  
  What is your personal philosophy about the importance of building meaningful relationships with your peers, patients/families, and physicians? How do you ingrain your personal philosophy in your day to day work?
  • My philosophy is to treat every person as if they are someone's friend, family, loved one... because they are. It is really as simple as that.  People have bad days and we encounter a lot of people having bad days in the hospital, whether it be another nurse having a bad day, a patient having a bad day, a doctor having a bad day... we all have bad days, bad weeks, bad years.  We all need people to be compassionate, friendly, and empathetic towards us at some point in our lives.  So, I take that idea and try to keep it close, because I hope that when I am having a bad day, people will treat me the way I treat them.
• 
  
  
  What might our patients/families see & hear if everything we did as an organization was focused around their needs (not our needs but their needs)?
  • Our patients and their families would see and hear what they would want to hear.  They want to hear that people are caring for them, fighting for them, empathizing for them.  They want to hear that we are behind them and want the best for them.  They want to hear that we are making all our decisions on their behalf.
• 
  
  
  What three-four things can be do on your unit or within our organization to create WOW experiences for our employees, patients/families and physicians?
  • Increase communication between the staff
  • Use more positive reinforcement
  • Everyone just needs to smile a little bit more
  
  .... some of my answers are just so darn cheesy! Oh well. I hope to WOW the crowd.
  
  haha.
  

Volcanos? Volcanoes? Apprently both are correct.

Standing between me and Dublin...

• washing my car
• getting an oil change for my car
• painting a bathroom butter yellow
• updating my ipod
• packing for 60 degree weather
• booking a hotel in sturgeon bay, wisconsin for 4 girls for my birthday
• updating the ipass credit card information
• finding a dress to wear for the closing banquet at the conference 
• working five 12-hr night shifts... in a row... shoot me.
• THEN AER LINGUS takes me to DUBLIN

... Jay scared me today. He told me that they were discussing in lab what they would do if the volcano in Iceland starts going crazy again and stops us from flying home.  I vote cruise ship home! A volcano wouldn't also interrupt the sea from taking us home, now would it?

This is the volcano that looms over the village my mama is from in the Philippines. It's called the Mayon Volcano.  It erupted 4 days after we left the last time I was there.  Apparently it's a beautiful site and it rains ash everywhere.  

beautiful ladies

     I went out to dinner and a movie with one of my dear friends, Madeline. We ate at Uno's (I had the "Spinoccoli" pizza... spinach and broccoli deep dish... oh yes, yes I did) and then saw Ironman2.  Scarlett Johansson starred in the movie and I have always thought she was beautiful.  I almost have a girl crush on her... okay, okay I do have a girl crush on her. 

     On my drive home from my girl date with Madeline, I was thinking about how I find some women to be beautiful.  I am not sexually attracted to them, but I just find a lot of women to just be gorgeous human beings.  Women, in general, are more beautiful than men, in my opinion, which obviously is very very valid.  Ha.  Some of the most beautiful women I know are my gal pals.  I may be biased, because they are my loves, but I think all my girlfriends are just so darn beautiful....

Lisa

Laura

Ashley

Franke

Madeline

Jessica

Manda

Katie

Lauren

Lauren

... I know you agree :)
 

Stroke

Apparently I am all about blogging today...

I was reading my work email and May is National Stroke Awareness Month.  Since I am a nurse who happens to work on a Neurological unit... I thought I should use this time to educate those who are willing to learn about stroke symptoms.  To make it fun and easy, you can watch this video!

ACT FAST

F- Face ... is their face drooping on one side?

A- Arm... are one of their arm's limp or weak?

S- Speech... is their speech slurred or garbled?

T- Time to act FAST!

It is really REALLY important to act fast, because a stroke is time sensitive.  A stroke happens when the blood flow to the brain is interrupted, causing brain cells to die.  The longer you wait to get the person help, the more damage could be happening to their brain.  It is also important to look at the time you notice the symptoms, because there is a medication they can give the patient to help them, but it can only be given within a certain amount of time, otherwise it could actually be harmful.  

Your role... 

• call 911
• look at the clock and remember the time.

Thanks for learning!

diva voice

If I could change one thing about myself, it would be to have an amazing singing voice. Everyone wants to be thinner, have a cuter nose, bigger boobs... but in reality, my voice is what I would change. I love singing (by myself) and its one thing that I know no matter how hard I worked at it, it will never become amazing.  Like most people, I blast the music in my car to my favorite divas and belt out tunes.  

Like this one...

Okay maybe I would want to be a bit thinner... but I like my nose and boobs!

rain

 [photo from here]

Sitting around a fold out table.

Drinking wine.

Having a chat with the bestest of friends.

Sitting in wicker chairs.

The conversation buzzing loudly.

Drinking margaritas

The rain patters against the asphalt driveway.

The dog runs in between the legs of chairs.

Old paintings stacked against the wall.

Some of the men in work clothes.

Tired, happy, sleepy, excited, frustrated, complacent.

Just our typical Thursday.

Dear spider on my ceiling...

Dear spider on my ceiling...

     You stare at me like you want to be my friend, but your hairy legs and plethora of eye balls say otherwise.  You have been watching me from above and you have not made any attacks on me so far.  I am almost inclined to be your friend, but your frown is very unfriendly and you fangs are quite frightening.  So how, may I ask, can we be friends?  I hate to say that I am scared of you, not because of who you are, but because of what you are. You may be a nice guy: friendly and kind, but I judge you from the outside. You are a spider. I do not like spiders. Spiders scare me. So, you scare me and I do not like you.  This may hurt your feelings and this may make you angry, because you want to be accepted for who you are, I totally understand.  Now, unfortunately I have to kill you, because I took a picture of you for my blog - all close up - and now I get the eeby jeebies thinking about you watching me as I sleep, waiting to suck my blood... if only you were Edward.  I will don rubber gloves and use 5 squares of paper towel to ensure that no spider juices get on me.  This may be a non-eco friendly way of murdering you, spider on my ceiling, but it just has to be done.  Goodbye and sorry, dude.

Frightened beyond belief,
          
                                   Rachelle.

Wine. Food. Friends.

Ever since I was in third grade I have never enjoyed eating pork.  My best friend at that time was Muslim and since she didn't eat pork, so it made sense to my 8 year old brain to not want to eat pork either.  Then, when I got older and tried the meat again, it just was never all that appealing to me... until this past Thursday, when I went to visit Jay and our friends had us over for dinner.

Tom and his lady Toni cooked us a delicious dinner.  I took pictures so you could drool over the feast...

Here is Tom our wonderful Chef :)

 

... and Toni the sous chef... look at her working hard!

Jay and I brought over wine.  

Ashley M introduced this yum stuff to me. 

I am forever thankful that she did.

Jay and I also brought over brie and camambert. I love love love cheese.

 Jay bought this beer which I learned is brewed in the Chicagoland county of DuPage

Tom is working away

I caught Tom stealing from Toni's stash of cucumbers. So irresistibly crunchy.

A cool snapshot of Tom's stove.

 Tom has a great apartment full of character.

 This is Toni

Jay drinking his Dupage beer and me and my shiraz. :)

We bought this torrontes wine as well, but never drank it. 

I hope it tastes like a summer day.

 This pork was seriously delicious.

 I have never eaten pork that tasted so wonderfully or that I enjoyed so much. 

Tom may have turned over a new leaf for me in my world of pork-eating.

   After dining on brie, camabert, water crackers, shiraz, pork, cucumber salad, and rice... we watched Land of the Lost.  

The movie was awful. 

Do not go see it.

A cool shot I snapped on our walk home.

Stop the fast forwarding!

Looking through my blog, I realize that I just use it to post pictures. That is not what I meant this blog to be for. I wanted to use pictures to make it more interesting, but it was supposed to be a place for me to write about stuff... what kind of stuff? I still don't know. I just let my fingers do the typing and they usually come up with something that is somewhat, mildly, kinda of entertaining.

So in recent Rachelle news, I just finished applying to a Women's Health Nurse Practitioner program at the University of Cincinnati. It is a "distance learning" program... aka online. This was glorious news to me, because from the moment that I decided I wanted to go into Women's Health I did not think this was an available option.  Now, I can continue working, move wherever I want to in the next 1.5 years, and still be able to get my master's degree.  Life is just coming and going so fast!

Jay, the boyfriend, is potentially graduating this December and if not, it will be next May.  Once he graduates our lives are going to move with someone pushing the fast forward button.  Jay graduating leads to Jay getting a job... Jay buying a ring.. Jay proposing... us moving in together... all the while I will be going to school... then I graduate... then a house... then marriage.. .then kids... then AHHH.  Hold it. Stop it. Slow down. Finger off the fast forward button.... aaaannnd rewind. Phew! Fast forwarding leads to me freaking out.

So... let's stay in the present...

Right now I just got called from my work saying they do not need me to come in until 11pm (I usually work 7pm - 7am), which kind of sucks because I need to be working to make money to save money for Ireland (we leave in 2 weeks YAY).  On the other hand, I am going to be celebrating my friend Franke's birthday tomorrow. We are going to the horse races all day. I am very excited and could use 4 hours of extra sleep. Hopefully the next time I blog I will have lovely pictures of horses for you... and a picture of me with my $1,000 winnings! :)


Also... with my application sent... I will be finding out within 4 weeks if I got into the Women's Health Nurse Practitioner program. Yikes! I am super nervous. Hopefully I find out before I got to Ireland and I can either celebrate because I got in... or drown myself in Jameson and Guinness while I am there.  Win win situation!


For now I am going to nap. I love my bed. I love sleep.


ta ta

Mother's Dday Recap

Last Sunday was a successful Mother's Day. My mom rocks.

 

  

Gifts Galore

 

Roses

Oh, Dante.

 

Yum. Red Wine. I have finally learned to like it.

Dad's Card

He always goes for the funny ones.

 

My dad totally picked it out himself! Good job!

My brother, Ryan, trying to look debonair.

 

My card... I tried to hint the purse theme.

She loves Coach

 

Painted it myself! (its a napkin holder)

 

Ryan's card: "Happy Mother's Day to a Mom who still looks great..."

... "You'd think any woman who raised me should look like hell by now"

 

Mom is always trying to eat healthy... a "guilt free" cookbook from Ryan

 

A cute cardigan from Ryan... I may have to borrow it.

 

The last surprise... another Coach purse from me. Just look at her expression :)

 

She digs it.

 

 

My mother and Auntie Mercie... two fantastic mothers. :)

mama

Mothers Day is Sunday.

My mom.

Giggles a lot.

Likes to travel.

Fussy because she worries.

Moved to the United States when she was my age.

Conservative.

Nurse since she was my age.

She's short.

Her go-to dish if available at restaurants... Mahi Mahi.

We are nothing alike, yet so alike.

She loves coach purses.

I've trained her to love cardigans as much as I do.
Recently asked me to take her to the Baton Lounge... a drag show.

 

My dad, me, mom and brother

  

My mom making fun of my brothers smile

Eating at Joyee's near UIC. My parents love this place.