Readers Beware

I've started my maternity nursing class, as I've mentioned, last week. My warning is this: I went to nursing school so that I could be a midwife. That means that I am already obsessed with my class. So - expect a lot of posts about pregnancy, labor and delivery, post partum, and the newborn.

Today was our first active day of clinical, and it was SO awesome. I was in postpartum, and was lucky enough to spend the whole day with my clinical instructor, who is the clinical nurse specialist and lactation consultant on our floor. We walked around and I felt a couple uteruses, at different stages, which was awesome.

I'm really impressed with the hospital. In most cases, people want to go to the city to go to a great hospital. But the maternity unit at SIUH is unbelievably impressive. One of my patients told me that even if she were to move to the west coast she'd come back to Staten Island to deliver her next child. The doctors are great, the nurses know a TON and are SO sweet.

The only bad part of the day was at the end. And warning - a little gross. Another student did a postpartal assessment of a mother who JUST came up from the delivery room, and she was very swollen - she couldn't close her legs because of the swelling. The student, who is 40-ish said to me, "I'm glad I never had children." Ummm... hello? Swelling goes away. This woman has a child. Get some perspective. I hope she doesn't become a maternity nurse.

Orthodox Jewish Culture

Nursing has gotten really into cultural awareness. However - the textbooks aren't written by people of these different cultures, and so usually the things they write are bastardized form of the truth. At least when it's about Judaism, I can't speak for the other cultures, but I imagine it's true.
I just started my maternity class (which, by the way, is the last one, and the reason I've gone through the others) and, while reading the chapter on cultural awareness, was shocked with the truth, clarity, and conciseness of the Jewish part.

"In Orthodox Judaism, for example, it is a man's responsibility to procreate, but it is a woman's right, not her obligation, to do so. This is because, according to Orthodox Jewish law, the health of the mother, both physically and mentally, is of primary concern, and she should never be obliged to do something that threatens her life."

Impressive, no?

So, I'm sick. And I have no doubt it's because I stressed myself out so much about my psych paper and nursing final that I lowered my immune defenses.

I'm bored. And movement makes my head hurt.

Any fun websites for me to look at?

MIA Partner

Well, it seems her computer crashed. Thursday. And she told me Sunday.

It's hard for me to believe that she couldn't get to any other computer to email me in the meantime. None of her friends have computers? She couldn't get to school? Give me a break.

Either she's a moron, or she thinks I am.

I told her that I'm sorry, and had she emailed from another computer to let me know I would have happily worked it out with her, but since she didn't, I finished me paper. Would she like a copy of the article?

Apparently she doesn't. Or maybe her computer crashed.

FREAKING STRESSED

So my completely annoying psych teacher gave us a paper to do comparing media coverage of a psych report to the original journal article. Fine, right? Right. Except that she's making us do it with partners, who she paired us up with. So the paper's due Monday, and my partner wont FREAKING get back to me. So I've written 4 pages (out of 5) on my own, and if I dont get anything from her I'm going to finish the report on my own and not put her name on, and I'm gonna feel really bad about it, but I shouldn't because she wont help me! We had agreed to have it done by last monday. When it wasn't done then she was all, "well, i want to have it done by wed." Fine, Wed came and went and she didn't send me anything (since I said I'd put our work together because - frankly - I don't trust her to do it well). I told her I abolutely HAVE to have it done thursday night, because I have a final in my nursing class on monday that's worth 40% of my grade, and Thursday night came and went, and nothing. It's now Friday, and I've TOTALLY lost any semblence of patience.

And I'm really a patient person.

Stupid psych!

I'm sorry it's been so long, but things have been kinda busy.
I have a new nephew, Zevi, or "Z-Funk" as my wonderful husband insists on calling him.
He's really cute:



and I made him really cute booties:

Photo Credits: Wonderful Husband

and I'm in the middle of an awesome sweater, for my favorite nephew.

Anyways, they've been living with the in-laws, so I've been busy spending time there, bonding with the beautiful boy.

Alas, they are leaving soon, and back to school work it will be for me.

Well, it was a busy week, but I still managed to do the switch - I am currently blogging from the beta version. They main difference for me is the homepage - it's nicer looking. Also, when you go to "Edit Posts" it also shows how many comments, which I don't think regular blogger does.
You can do a lot of fun stuff with your template, which I tried - the coolest thing is the color shuffling tool - it randomizes the color of different aspects of your blog with the colors that you have already chosen - the only issue is that if you changed your template (like I did), you lose those changes. They keep a copy of your old template so you can go back, which I did, because I couldn't figure out how to keep the things I changed (like the comments opening on the page, or showing only new comments) in the new blogger.

So, my busy week... I had my first pediatric nursing test, and got an A (yay!!) which was really exciting. Today I went to an information session at SUNY Downstate for their RN-BSN program. I was really nervous, but I spoke to the credit/gpa evaluator person, and she said that I was "competitive" - which is really Really exciting.

And, of course, all of my classes decided to give papers due over the chaggim, so that's been fun trying to get done, especially since there are NO MORE SUNDAYS.

So, thats what's been happening. I haven't seen my husband for a week because of classes and studying, and tonight is long slichot, so he's gonna be out for a while... maybe we'll get so spend some time together over Rosh Hashana. That would be nice.

I'm doing it

Okay, After this post, I'm going to take the plunge to try better blogging. So, if I dissappear, you'll know that I'm lost in the world of Betas.

Better Blogging?

So, there's this Blogger in Beta thing, has anyone tried that? I'm always in to trying things in beta, but they said that if you try it you can't go back.
So, please - let me know if you've tried it, and what you think.

School is Cool

So, I'm back at school.

Yay.

No, really -- so far so good. My nursing teacher's great, and my clinical instructor is really sweet. Last year's pediatric nursing class had a terrible teacher, and apparently they weren't so happy with her, so she suddenly took a sabatical, leaving us with a GREAT teacher. I'm also taking History of the Soviet Union, which is actually really interesting. My teacher doesn't seem sweet or anything, but she's really interested in the subject, which makes for great teaching. I'm taking Abnormal Psych, which SHOULD be a good class, but the teacher's REALLY boring. Really, really boring. 3 people got up and left in the middle of the first class, because she's so boring, and it's a night class - once a week, which means that it's from 6:30 to 9:50, which is like FOREVER. And it's forever of my longest day... I start at 8 AM and have only one hour - 5:30-6:30 break. So by the time I get there I'm exhausted, and I have to sit through her monotone, it's not the greatest situation.

Anyways, at least pediatrics is good - that's the most important thing.

More About Israel

Family Time:




Town, on Motzei Shabbos:


Angels for Lunch:


Old City Day:






So, that was our trip in picture form.

I know, it's been a really long time, but I was in Israel, and didn't have any time to post, and then I got back on Tuesday, and was so tired... and school started. Okay, no excuses, I'm back.

So, we spent 8 days in Israel. Which is really short, but enough to remind us why we want to move there. We stayed in Yerushalayim the whole time, and were completely busy, it was the perfect vacation.

Here are some pictures:

Me'ah Shearim:


KFC:


Fair on Emek Refaim:


Falafels in town:


Guy davening:


Meeting my friend who made Aliyah in 2nd grade:


Israel Museum:


Yosef & his breakfast:


More later...

Shosh has a fun meme up on her blog. So I copied it. Here goes:

1.Grab the nearest book.
2.Open the book to page 123.
3.Find the fifth sentence.
4.Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.

The book closest to me was "The Other Boleyn Girl" by Philippa Gregory. A great book for historical fiction lovers. I couldn't put it down. Carried it everywhere.

So, here's goes, page 123:
"'Hear this, Mary. I am playing my own game and I don't want you interrupting. Nobody will know anything until I am ready to tell them, and then they will know everything too late.'"

And you'll have to read it yourself to find out about her game.

It's been awhile

since I last posted. There hasn't been much going on. I've been working, sometimes, at the local day camp... making their newsletter, working in the office, teaching a crocheting elective... not doing much, but thanks so the extra money we're going to be able to go to Israel this year. I'm so excited. Especially after reading this.

I had a wedding last night - it was great and all, but I think I got food poisoning, which is less than fun.

I've been working out a lot this summer, which is good, because I haven't done that in a loooong time, and it's really not healthy to not have exercise. I started at the college, but the gym there stinks. There are 3 working treadmills and 2 working bikes and 1 working stair master, and you constantly have to wait for other people to get off. In the weight room there's only one set of 10 lb weights, because they don't expect girls to come in (and--i should add, laugh at us when we do). Also, in the cardio room, there are mirrors on all the walls, so that you have to stair at yourself while you're red and sweaty and gross.
So, we started going to a real gym, and I LOVE it there. There's a complete lack of mirrors by the cardio stuff, which makes me feel completely anonymous. There are TVs, which makes everything feel easier. AND there's a 30 minute express workout, which is like Curves - exercises every muscle in your body with step between each station. It's great. Oh, and they discourage body builders from going there, so that you're not working out near these scary huge people, and they're not using all the equipment. And it's HUGE, so there's never any wait for anything.

Wow, I just wrote a really lot about going to the gym. I'm gonna stop now.

Gay Pride Parade

I promise, I'm not a liberal. I'm a republican... but...
I just saw a sign in my shul yesterday to contact XY&Z organizations to do whatever they can to stop the gay pride parade in yerushalayim. It gave me this terrible fear of what's going to be. There's a terrible feeling against gays in our community-- and I understand, they're an abomination according to the Torah, but what does that mean for us? Does it mean that we should scare them away from the community? Make them hate our religion because of what we did to them as teenagers? Or should we embrace them, just tell them that they are not allowed to act on their gay inclinations.
I can only imagine the feelings of the gay teenage boy - of course, no one knows he's gay - and how must he feel, seeing that sign in his shul. And oy, what's going to happen at the parade--which, let's face it, is going to happen. What kind of massive Chillul Hashem is going to be? How much can we NOT afford to make a chillul Hashem at a time like this?
I dont know, maybe Hashem wants us to make a Chillul Hashem about some thing like this. Does this count as today's avodah zarah? How do we decide something so huge?

Vacation is a beautiful thing

Seriously, gorgeous.
I had two friends over for shabbos, which was really nice. They stayed 'till Sunday morning... it was really nice - I got a chance to hangout, like - fun hanging, and I got to talk, seriously, about life, religion and other important things.
Sunday was spent with Tzvi, which is always a pleasure. Monday the plan was to see Superman in IMAX 3D, that didn't really work out for us - it was sold out. Of course, by the time we got there I was so totally dehydrated, after the gym and the 800 degree weather, that I just couldn't walk outside again. So, we saw the Da Vinci Code. We agreed to disagree with the critics, we liked it better than the book.
Tuesday's kinda a blur. After coming home and barely being able to move I overslept. Then I went out to lunch, and when I came home I dont think I moved much. Oh, except to clean the bathroom. I got all this energy around 5ish and scrubbed the bathroom from top to bottom, changed the shower curtain liner and everything.
Wednesday was a great day, except for my failure in sneaker shopping. I went to the gym, came home and showered, and then 3 of my friends came over and we hung out for a while, it was so nice.
Today was kinda boringish... spent the whole day making the Young Israel Day Camp's Newsletter... not done yet.
Tomorrow should be a pretty chilled day. I'll probably wake up late and excersize in the house, since the gym's closed on Fridays.
That's it.

Summer

Parenting

I'm not a parent, so if you're gonna read this and criticize me because I don't know what I'm talking about, agreed, so save your breath.
However - here are my thoughts. Parents today are spoiling their kids. I filled in for my friend today at the day camp office. A parent called to find out if their kid got Youth Corp (meaning they'll get paid more because the government is paying them). I learned that this parent calls every day to find out. Another parent called for her daughter, a counselor, because she doesn't like her group. The parent told the camp that if they didn't change her group the counselor would quit. The camp said, "So quit," and she did. Someone else told me that some of their 7-year-old campers wont sit on the floor.
If I was a counselor, and didn't like my group - my parents would say "deal with it." It would be up to me if I wanted to see if they would change my group. It would be up to me if I wanted to quit. My mom would NEVER call for me.
If I was a 7 year old, my mom would say, "get over it, sit. You're in camp, you listen to your counselor."
What happened to that mentality?
Now, when a kid does something wrong, it's the counselor/teacher/principals fault. How did this happen? My parents generation didn't do it, and my generation seems to agree that this style of parenting is totally ridiculous. So what happened to that generation in the middle?

Happiness is...

I took this photo on July 4th. Behind the American Museum of National History is this really cute sprinkler type place for kids - they were all over running around. So, while our friends waited for us to meet them at the museum, my husband and I stopped to take some pictures of the kids.

Photos

So, my husband found this great website Photojojo, and they sent me to another fun site, Photo Friday. Photojojo is a biweekly newsletter of fun stuff to do with your photos. Photo Friday is a weekly challenge for photographers, from children to professional, of something to capture. So - I'm gonna try it. I'm totally a novice, but it's fun.