hitting the books

as spring is finally making its presence felt, my certification exam is also slowly creeping up to my list of things that i really should give attention to. so to jump start things up, i camped at a little corner of a borders nearest my place and started hitting the books.

it was going pretty well the first hour i was there. i have breezed through the growth and development of the infants, toddlers and pre-schoolers and have completed three sets of practice questions (yay me!). however on my second cup of coffee and on to the school age stage, all i could hear was this woman behind me, bawling (ever so loudly) on her cellphone because she's been duped by macy's. what the F?! i mean, do you go to a bookstore cafe to have a major breakdown over a bill gone wrong and have half the bookstore listen to you? no, right?

"according to freud, the latency period, which extends from about age 5 to 12 years, represents a stage of relative sexual indifference before puberty and adolescence." i think i may have read this sentence 37 times while the woman was whining on the background. that was how distracted i was.

anyways, she left a couple of minutes later still on the phone with her friend and it became a really productive afternoon for me since then.

so now, everyone on my floor at the hospital knows that i'm going to take the certification exam. i wish i could be all janina san miguel on them and say "no, i don't feel any pressure....right now!"

weder weder

“Whether the weather be fine, Whether the weather be not, Whether the weather be cold, Whether the weather be hot, We'll weather the weather, Whatever the whether, Whether we like it or not."

we're going to the city tomorrow to watch an NBA game. the weather channel says, it's going to be nasty. freezing rain and snow with the temperature going down to the low 20's which would feel like it would be on the 10's for us. tanginangsyet! what a time to have fever and cough.

it started the night before while i was at work. i was freezing at the nurses station even if i cranked up the heat to 80. it got worse last night with the sore throat and cough making me miserable. i was thinking of calling in sick but felt guilty because i know how hard it is to find somebody willing to drive through icy road conditions. so i came to work feeling like crap and for the entire 12 hours i kept saying to myself that i will never ever feel fucking guilty about calling in sick again (especially if i'm honest to goodness sick), ever!

so tomorrow, i'll be bringing my dayquills, motrins and cough drops to the game. i'd be like a walking walgreens store the whole time. i just hope i'd get better tonight.

on being thirty

i come home from work tired and sleepy ready to jump into my bed after 12 hours. yesterday, i was 29 years old. today i turn 30... and what a sad day to turn 30, because just a few hours ago i admitted a 2 year old boy who just lost a mother, a brother, a sister and their home in a fire. i heard from the ER nurse that his dad is still waiting for a telemetry bed down in the ER.

it was the most difficult admission i've done not because the doctor's orders were complicated (that was actually the easiest part) but because it was hard to act like i wasn't affected while i was asking the grandmother and the aunt questions for the admission history. i mean how do i ask them about allergies, about their family health history and about that 2 year old's usual bowel movement pattern without eliciting tears from them and not looking like an insensitive jerk. that was so not the way i thought i would start my birthday. i felt sorry for the family's loss. i felt sorry for the boy who all of a sudden has no mommy to come home to. all throughout the time i was starting an IV line on the boy, i kept thinking about what's in store for him in the future and with all the support i've seen from the family, i know that he's gonna be okay.

anyways, i forego sleep and pondered on what i would do today now that i'm 30. i don't wanna do anything special or anything different. i just wanna be with myself.

when i was in grade school, i used to think that i would feel differently when i get to the big 3-0. that i'd be this really matured person who would scoff at people being silly in their carefree ways. i thought that i'd turn into this strict-librarian-type of person who wouldn't know how to have fun. i honestly thought that being 30 would totally suck. but it surely doesn't.

i realized that at 30, i could still watch spongebob squarepants and enjoy it's (sometimes) sick humor. that i could run around the hallways of the apartment building with nicolas (adriana's dog) running after me without feeling silly. i could still play games and ride bikes with my friends kids in the park during our once a year picnic. that i could sit in the playroom with my toddler patient and color books or finish a jigsaw puzzle or just watch the fishies in the tank as they gobble up the fish food and still call it work. i guess i could put it in this perspective. i could still be a kid at heart and get away with it being 30 and all.

a friend asked me the other night over the phone what would be the worst part about seeing my 20's go away? i guess the fact that i cannot go back to it all. that there were a lot of things that i haven't done or tried to do because i was too busy, too lazy or too scared to do it. excuses... excuses... this time there shouldn't be any at all.