Why It Sucks to Have a Mom as a Nurse

Some of you may have seen those Memes that say things like, “I’m sorry mommy’s a nurse and you had to bring yourself in because she thinks you should just suck it up” and yeah, I’m one of those moms/nurses. My oldest a couple years back twisted his ankle and I made him sit out a couple games, and ice it…telling him to suck it up. Well it didn’t get better and my husband, a layman, thought I should take him in. Turns out it was nerve damage and he needed some PT. He kept asking the physical therapist to say to me, ‘you suck as a mom and a nurse’ – yeah, they BOTH had fun with that.

 Jake, icing his foot

A couple weeks ago my younger son rode his bike to swim practice (in flip-flops) and was driven home before practice even started by one of the younger coaches (a teenager). His toe was bleeding but he seemed really nonchalant. The teen-coach looked ill. I sighed and told Isaac to run upstairs, get me some Band-Aids, and wash his foot with soap and water. The teen-coach assured me he rinsed Isaac’s foot off with hydrogen peroxide. I felt the need to give him a lecture that evidence-based-practice has pretty much proven hydrogen peroxide is a horrible idea and that in the future he should just use soap and water. He tells me that’s what they taught him in teen-life-guard-school and I replied, “well maybe they should get some one who isn’t using antiquated information”….. I couldn’t just shut up and the look on this kid’s face was like “geeze lady, I’m a teen-coach who just drove your bloody kid home shouldn’t you be doing something for him since you’re a nurse and all instead of lecturing me”. But in my head, my kid was FINE and could suck it up (which is probably why my kid wasn’t crying and washing his foot like I told him to). Teen coach left and I took a look at Isaac’s foot, after he washed it off….and ‘yikes’. It looked like a flap of skin was coming off, which they can’t stitch, but there was some pretty bad gashes. So I took him into the ER.

"oh my gosh mom, stop taking my pictures and posting on Facebook"

ER nurse and ER doc were like, “Whoa Dude, never ride your bike in flip flops, that looks bad” After X-rays, Lidocaine shots (which he did NOT like), and a tourniquet it was decided stitches weren’t going to help but they did need to cauterize to stop bleeding. Isaac, a true Walking Dead fan says to me “I just need to look at the flowers”. The ER doc, also a Walking Dead fan laughed – which scared me just a bit since he was holding the cauterizer. Then says, ‘you know the thing about that show is that every doctor on there is a total wack job’ (FYI Wack apparently is NOT a word that word check recognizes, so I ask Jason, how do you spell wack as in wack job, and he asks, you aren’t charting are you? – and no, but wouldn’t that be fun to actually say, this family is full of freakin’ wack jobs…oh wait, maybe it’s whack …ah yes, that computes…keeping my original mistake here though to let you into to my scary ADD mind --- squirrel). So I bring up, “yeah, like Grey’s Anatomy never has a nurse in the rooms with the doctors and the doctors are doing everything nurses do”…so we start complaining about how shows just don’t show the medical field appropriately and Isaac is lying in his ER stretcher rolling his eyes at us.

X-rays...doesn't he look thrilled

So no swimming for 10 days. And we got a prescription for 30 vicodin…seriously for a 12 year old who was rating his pain at 1/10 – probably because he’s learned from a very young age what suck it up really means. I briefly thought of filling the prescription and selling it just to pay for the co-pay….but that would be illegal and bad and I don’t know anyone who would buy them (although also briefly thought of asking my high school nurse friend because I’m sure she’d know who was dealing at the local high school…but again, illegal, bad and contributing to a minor doing bad and illegal things). So it went unfilled and I threw some Advil at the kid.

The ER nurse, admitted how much she loves Pinterest and decided to make a Pinterest-craft-ready-dressing -- she did an awesome job.

Jason, had already volunteered to be a timer at the swim meet so he went and when asked by another parent who his kid was, he explained about the ‘injury’ and the parent was like, ‘oh I heard about him, they thought he lost his toe it was so bad’

Really? Bunch of babies.

Day 2 Gratitude Challenge

Thirty days of gratitude....yeah yeah, we should all be grateful daily and I am. I just don't announce it to the world because I really believe the world enjoys my whining so much more.  I'm going to do this thirty day gratitude thing (don't worry, I'm sure I'll still whine). It won't always be on my blog...because let's face it, I've been sucking at blogging. Day one was on my FB page -- I just posted a picture of the Front Range and thanked the Lord I live in one of the more beautiful cities in the US (because I really do, I mean how many people get the beautiful view of the Rocky Mountain Range on a daily basis).  Today (as you can see by the nifty challenge graphic below) is laughter.  And I LOOOOVE ME some laughter.  I really do have one of the funniest husbands ever, he makes me laugh all the time -- he sometimes even does it intentionally. I am also always finding amusement in my children, who are both growing up with wonderful senses of humor -- sometimes even appropriate. I love laughing and I love to make people laugh.

 For this post I am thankful that although my sister was full of pain to the point she lost her life to alcohol, drugs, and depression, she had the most contagious laugh of anyone I have ever met. Her smile and laugh would light up a room and you couldn't help but laugh when she was laughing.  We grew up laughing. I am grateful I was able to hear my sister's laugh for over 40 years of my life. My sister and two of my brothers are pictured here laughing.

 After she died, one brother and I went to Florida to be with my mom, step dad and other brother. We spent the weekend crying, fighting (good-naturedly), and laughing. I am grateful for such two awesome, talented, handsome brothers who can do silly like no one's business.

 Look at my hubby's smile...how could you not laugh all the time with this guy, and the youngest -- he is such a lovely sweet boy who says the wildest things, and the teen, who has that typical teen expression, has a dry sly wit that catches you off guard. I am grateful for all of them. I am the luckiest mom and wife in the whole entire world.

And my coffee lady book club neighborhood peeps -- crying, laughing, gossiping, hugging group of women who give me strength -- All have wonderful senses of humor. How can I not be thankful with these lovelies.

One of the best pranks ever played and it still makes me laugh is when a group of my friends added a bunch of extra wives to my sticker-car-family -- a little making fun of my weird obsession with plural marriage (okay, all of us had a little obsession, we got together to watch Big Love every week and we call each other sister-wives).

 My marriage started out in laughter...the best way to begin a life together. My sister and sister-in-law laughing along with me, one of my best friends from high school and my best friend from college joining in (the three of them also came to my sister's funeral, to say good-bye because they too knew my sister, loved her and laughed with her). We have all had our own journeys to live, one with a mother and husband who had cancer (and are still alive and doing well). She and her husband make me laugh all the time. One whose daughter has Down's syndrome with autism, but posts the cutest and funniest pictures of her son and daughters on Facebook, and the third, my sister-in-law has advanced MS and she still is able to laugh and enjoy life.

So, yes, I am grateful for laughter. Without it life would be unbearable.

Follow Your Dreams, Just Don’t Write About Them

I've been blogging, just not here on Zimmerhouse.  Here's why -- I've been nagging my husband about the lack of social media in his company this past summer and to shut me up he's letting me help them out -- for free -- wait, what? Free? Whatever, it's been fun. Here's one of the posts I wrote there. Because we all know how much fun I have making fun of myself:

One of the first lectures in my first Creative Writing class in college was to never write about your dreams. Well at least if you do write about them, don’t turn them into the class for a critique and certainly don’t send it as a story to the college literary magazine for possible publication.

Why?

Well, the professor said because we don’t always know what our dreams mean, or are aware of the symbolism because we’re so close to the dream.

I heard, blah blah blah. Because I was barely 20 years old and I knew everything (sigh, I wish I was still knew everything).

Here’s how I learned this particular lesson because I was too arrogant to actually listen to my professor.

I had a story due and had no idea what to write. I decided to sleep on it. I had this great dream that seemed to me like some awesome mysterious fable and I knew when I woke up this story was going to rock the world of my class (I know, I know, keep in mind, I was 20 at the time). I was pumped, I was energized and I wrote my heart out. It was a story about secret passages leading to a hidden cavern. The heroin died by drowning and every time someone entered the secret passage by canoe she haunted the cavern with her eerie moans. I’m sure you can see where this is going.

I turn it in. No one says anything. Seriously, the lack of a response was disturbing. The professor did reiterate that it is a bad idea to write out our dreams so literally. I do believe she sighed afterwards.

They just didn't get it, but surely the crew at the literary magazine would, so I sent it to them.

When I didn't hear anything, I just assumed they didn’t get it either.

Because it couldn't have been my story...my brilliant story.

A few months later I was at a writing conference and saw a fellow student who also happened to be on the literary magazine committee. I asked him what was up about my story.

And he asks, “the one with the sexual imagery?”

A flood of images clouded my mind turning my cheeks bright red and I realized I just wrote surreal porn and shared it with my teacher, my fellow students, and the entire committee of the school’s literary magazine – truly a Freudian nightmare. In this case a canoe was -- well -- NOT just a canoe.

Not my proudest moment.

Dream journaling can be inspiring; can help you work things out; and can help you with images as dreams can be amazingly vivid. Dreams can help in writing and I would never discourage anyone from writing about them in.your.own.private.journals. But, like my very experienced and insightful professor from 20 plus years ago, I suggest that’s all you do and don’t write the dream out verbatim as a story.

The link to my post on BookFuel's blog: https://www.bookfuel.com/blog/2014/08/dreams-great-journal-not-good-your-story

Bunco Girl's Night Made Easy

Bunco night is such a fun way to get together, hang out with some fun, talkative, gossipy (in a good way) women. It's girl time. It's get the husband and the boys out of the house time. It's getting to entertain time (this is actually fun for me, I get that not all people think entertaining as fun). I belonged to this Bunco group a few years ago but had to quit when I started nursing school. I since got asked to come back and I got January as my month. Even though I really like entertaining, I don't have a lot of time. So I thought I'd share some of my time saving tips.

Here's the Bunco layout, you need three tables for four. I had to borrow a card table and one table got a hodge podge of chairs.  I have a collection of vintage table cloths and it was fun to add some color and pattern by using them. I'll drop them off at the cleaners and they can deal with cleaning and ironing them (time savings here is worth the expense of the cleaners -- and we're talking 10$ for the three)

Table "1" in the family room

Table "3" in the dining room

Table "2" in the kitchen

So the food and drinks -- a lot of time this is what takes a lot of time. I decided to go really simple and only make a couple of things and buy everything else pre-made.  A total cheat and really if I had a lot of time I would have put more effort in this area because I really do enjoy cooking.

Drink choices -- bottled water, wine (including chocolate wine-yummo), and a variety of coffees and teas (I love my Keurig) I included some creamer and sugar etc for the coffee.

Okay, so I did take some extra time to fun up the water bottles.

  I admit, this is way over the top, but what a fun detail. I found the free pattern here (man I love Pinterest) and Jason (amazing husband) changed the pink to red and the kids were brow-beaten, bribed and guilted into helping me attach them (cut them out and scotch tape them to the bottles).

The starters -- another way I took the easy time saving way out. I bought some frozen Spanikopita and some pre-made some cheese and salami/prosciutto roll ups for the appetizers and filled it out with a relish tray.

The main meal -- nothing's easier than a crock pot and the cooler temperatures of January just scream soup -- so made a simple Italian sausage soup, salad with a store bought citrus vinaigrette, and cut up some yummy bread with a nice crunchy crust.

You won't believe how easy this recipe is. My friend, Shannon, who always makes cooking, baking, decorating seem so easy, gave me this recipe (to which I added peppers the peppers) and it's become a family favorite. I doubled the recipe for Bunco and still had a lot left over:

Italian Soup:
1.5-2 lbs of your favorite Italian sausage
1 sweet yellow onion, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
1 tbs of minced garlic (I use the jar stuff)
1/2 carton beef broth
2 cans, with juice, of diced tomatoes (it's really good with the Hunt's fire roasted tomatoes)
1/2 bottle good red wine (if you won't drink it don't cook with it)
2 tbs of Italian blend spices
1 - 2 cups of pasta

saute peppers and onions together
brown sausage
place in crock pot with all other ingredients (except pasta)
cook on low for 8 or so hours
add pasta last 1/2 hour-45 minutes

serve with parmesan cheese

see -- really really easy.

The salad:

romain lettuce

cucumbers

red onion

red pepper

yellow cherry tomatoes

pepperonis

grated mozzarella cheese

citrus vinaigrette 

Tres Leche Cake  - I made it in a 9x13 baker and added a ton of fruit on top. You can find the recipe here (I posted the recipe awhile ago -- again, pretty easy recipe and a family favorite)

Now for some of the fun details:

It's obvious I'm not a teacher, I can't seem to write on a chalk board in straight lines -- but I thought I'd fancy up the menu. I so wish I had that ability to do the whole chalk art stuff -- but I don't. Even sans talent anyone (if I can, anyone can) can make it a little fun (everyone can draw hearts and squares - right)

Didn't make these, found them on ebay after a google search on Bunco decorations (wasn't even looking for them)

My living room -- nothing to do with Bunco, but it was actually clean, so thought I'd post pictures. Jason did such a great job with my book shelves -- they're an Ikea hack that I should blog about some time.

Another time saving tip -- didn't clean the upstairs because who cares! Just concentrated on the first floor.

Most importantly it's not about the house, about the food, the cute decorations, or really even about the game -- it's about an opportunity to spend time with people, to open your home and be gracious, and to carve out some time to do something you love.

Enjoy!

un-Pinterest Christmas

So -- how does one do Christmas when going to school, working full time and raising a family. Well let me tell you, it doesn't look like a perfect Pinterest scene and there may be a melt down or two )melt down coming from me, not anyone else).

Here's how I do it -- well how I half-ass it.

The thing is, the most important part about Christmas is remembering 1. the birth of our savior, and 2. being with family and friends, enjoying the warmth of their company and the realization of how lucky most of us are.

 To start, I found this super easy, super inexpensive gift idea for the neighbors (um, yeah it was on Pinterest -- but I dumbed it down a little).  So little work but a nice little something to let them know we were thinking about them.  You can see original post here. I didn't bother using fancy paper, just printed out the cute little poem on regular paper and attaching that.

 We spent the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas decorating, we have three trees, one in the family room with all the collected ornaments through the years, one in the living room that we cut down and decorate in red and gold and one in our bedroom (not pictured on this blog because our room is a mess) which has my husband's Star Trek and Star Wars ornaments on it -- he's been collecting these ornaments since Hallmark started selling them years ago.

Our Family Room

 Powder Room

 Living Room

 Dining Room

So Christmas Eve we have a party with family and friends. This year with my schedule I had to be super organized and to keep it simple (and for those of you who don't know me this really is simple -- and I can be organized - once in awhile)

A couple weeks before the party I started baking cookies, I had a variety of five different kinds (mint chocolate chip, lemon cookies, oreo rice kirspie bars, praline bars, & ginger cookies). 

The five days before Christmas Eve I was scheduled to work every (EVERY) night (I work 7pm-7am). So I'd prepare the chilis, salsa and some other things each morning I came home then I'd go to sleep.  I'd also give Jason (the best husband ever) a list of things to do and hired my sister to clean the house. (Oh and I know people hate me but I finished my shopping by the beginning of December and had the presents wrapped)

The menu

 Appetizers -- made easy!

 Bought some pre-made artichoke dip and threw in into a mini crock pot, bought shrimp and veggie tray. I did make the salsa and 'cowboy cavier'.

Appetizer section

 Chili 'bar'

 Ahhh, Hannah, letting us play with her -- she looks thrilled doesn't she

 Fortification 

 Drink area -- wine, drinks, keurig hot drinks and bottled water -- again, keeping it simple

 And.....the most important part of the evening -- friends and family

 Niece Bridget and her boyfriend, Ryan

 Cousin Emily and adorable son, Hudson

 My own adorable son and fabulous husband

 Isaac with our close friends Abi and Caitlin

 Abi and her dad, Kevin

 And what are cousins for, if not to rabbit ear your head during a picture (here's my other so, Jake, with his cousin, Bridget, and her boyfriend)

 Jason's aunt, Laura-Jane and her grandson, Hudson

 Collen, Caitlin, Katrina and Ag

 Us -- and my husband who thinks he's terribly amusing (okay, he is and I really shouldn't be putting this on the internet, but hey, we're keeping in real here at Zimmerhouse)

 Glenn (brother in law) and Mike (cousin in law)

 (Mike and Emily)

 (mother in law, Sher and Mike)

 Aunt Laura Jane and Bob (doesn't everyone have an Uncle Bob? I think so)

 Brother in law's brother, Russel and his bride Carrie

 Jason and his mama, Sher

 yum

Every Christmas we do a White Elephant Gift exchange that's loads of fun

 I suck at selfies -- I look like I'm having a stroke here -- or I look really tired -- worked the night before and only got three hours of sleep earlier that day

 The aftermath

 More fortification before putting out the presents from Santa and stuffing stockings

So -- Christmas day -- everyone super happy with their gifts -- we went to my sister and brother in law's for breakfast and cam home and hung out.

 Isaac putting together his new Minecraft lego set

I got a cute pair of Danskos and some baseball flip flops for next summer

Jason likes his new Darth Vader Potato Head

 Jake wanted clothes and Elite socks -- and he was quite pleased

 I don't get the whole elite socks thing -- but okay/

And my favorite tradition of all -- hubby and I play super scrabble in our pj's all day while the kids play with their new toys.  He always wins -- ugh, I even got to use all my letters one play and he still won.

And what was I most thankful for today? I got called off of work for a low census (yes I was scheduled) so spent the day with the family.

I hope that all of you had a wonderful holiday season, that you didn't work too hard, and that you enjoyed the warmth of your family and friends.

Merry Christmas

The Zimmers