domesticity

the red fabric was the most expensive of the bunch, but you know you have a good eye, when i literally bought all they had left...and it was only 3/4 of a yard.

the blue bird yard speaks karen to me every time i look at it. hmm. maybe she'll get a gift.

i also discovered when grouping my yarn by colors... i have a LOT of pink yarn. i also have a lot of alpaca, which i love, cause it doesn't make me itch when I knit it. I also like how intricate and strong alpaca is. I made a few alpaca hats for Jason a few years ago, he still wears them and they still keep his big ol' brain warm.


i am such a sucker for all things domestic. i see a bin of yarn and i want to dive in and create. i see fabric and i just want to make pretty things with it. there is a bit of a miser in me, that is like, you are not good enough at any of these things yet, do not waste that fabric on a project that may not work out!... . but i'm trying to get over that.

i went to this awesome fabric store in downtown LA, Michael Levine the other day, pre-illneess and spent way too much money on fabric I'm not so sure if I'm going to sew. However, the picks were awesome and I had a hard time not buying everything, especially the adorable and very expensive designs from the japanese designers.

i had already been prompted to change the storage under my bed to long boxes rather than deep bins, so I got started, I was rather excited to see all my other fabrics and my yarn. (ha... not like I'll use them anytime soon!) the photos above tell the tale...

i'm actually headed to joann today to buy some extra zippers and such. i have a bunch of birthdays coming up and i'm wondering if i can fit in a few little purses here and there. def want to practice piecing those things together.

this is the bag i eventually want to make. amy butler nappy bag

two semesters down, four more to go

my favorite girls


our clinical group

i've learned a lot in the past two semesters of nursing school. so much.

i've learned that i'm rather freaked out about my own body. it's something they call intern's syndrome... as soon as you start learning and diagnosing everything that can go wrong with you, you feel like you have it. i've absolutely been feeling this and it's not so much fun. it's manifested in my by feeling my pulse. so kinda every time i feel my pulse, i freak out. and since pulses are let's say, vital to living... it's become quite interesting at times. it mostly happens when i get still. when i lay in bed at night or when i'm really concentrating. i'm working on moving through it. i've talked to other nurses who feel the same way and one that has the same pulse issue as i do. it hasn't gone away and i've learned to just go with the anxious feeling it gives, to stop and be grateful that i have a heart that is pumping correctly and it's pumping well enough that i can feel it where i should be feeling it. and i'm learning to breathe into it. i've by no means mastered it, but i'm working on it, day by day.

today as i was taking care of two of my patients on the oncology wing, i realized a few things. 1. life is not promised. 2. you just never know what is going to happen and so you just have to be happy and do things for now.

a few things that bring it to light.

- my patient who had end stage renal failure. they went into do dialysis and her blood pressure kept dropping dangerously low. we had to call in a team of people to help her bp go back up, mind you this was a woman, i just gave a foot massage to a 1/2 hour earlier. you never know.
- my other patient is dying of luekemia that has metastasized all over her body. She had comfort measures only, meaning we help her to be comfortable as her body moves towards death. She is 71, comes from a family of nurses and loved ones. I was talking to her best friend who was at her bedside today. They've been best friends since they were 11, 60 years.... She is fine and healthy, though they have basically lived the same lives... you just never know.
-another patient on the floor is 26. she has cancer and isn't doing so well either, she had to come back from a country in asia where she had just moved to get treatment.... you just never know...

i'm not trying to be depressing. i actually find it optimistic. we are given this life, we have to make the most of it at every step. we can do everything to insure our lives are healthy and get hit by a bus or we can do nothing and live to watch our friends pass away in old age. we don't get to choose. we can make the most out of our time. we can love each other. love our families. take care of our bodies. but we just have to take it one step at a time. (ha.. i wish i remembered this when i am freaking about everything we have to do in school.)

all of that said, nursing school has also brought up how important friends are. i have so many amazing friends. i am always so thankful for them. and the cool thing is, i've made more! this summer, way more so than the spring has brought an amazing group of friends i don't know what i'd so without! the keep me sane, in this insane world, especially our summer program. i am thankful we can study, go to the beach, play rock band, and help each other with our work.

so i guess i'm just thankful. i'm thankful that summer school is over and that i have 10 days off. i am excited to relax and just be and i'm glad i'm here on this little patch of earth. i hope that i can give back as much as i've been given.

i should be studying...

this is my new favorite breakfast, inspired by heidi at 101 Cookbooks..


Pretty simple, make a batch of quinoa.
Stir fry some frozen broccoli (i just cook it plain)
And three egg whites, scramble it up!

Sometimes I add a little bit of cheese as seen above and I ALWAYS add tapatio...

ask and you shall receive

well, with the cost of gas being a million dollars a gallon. my need to get a bit more exercise in with this crazy summer school schedule, i broke my bike out of storage and decided to ride it to school.

however, school is 5.5 miles away and the "good" roads have fairly high speed limits. speed limits that scare me with my limited knowledge of commuter biking and i need to avoid them.

so i started looking around on the internet today and found a website, Long Beach Cyclists they seemed fairly "in the know" about LB, so I emailed and asked if they would find me a route. If you click on the link above you'll see he found me three! I then confessed my utter and undying love to him.

So I've decided on this option. I will ride the 1/3 mile to the bus stop, pay 90 cents and take the bus directly to school. I then will take the leisurely route home on the bike path along the bay and LA river. It makes it a 10-mile trip home, but it is much safer and prettier than going on all those grungy streets, plus 10 miles is a good workout when I haul all my stuff with me. I don't have to worry about being sweaty or smelling when I get to school (well anymore than usual.) So horray for LB cyclists.

I also found a really cool thing in LB for cyclists called bike station. It's a non-profit bike shop, storage facility, cycling & commuting class place. I haven't been there yet, but I can't wait to go. Apparently if they know a part is cheaper somewhere else, they'll tell you. They also teach you how to fix your own bike, how cool!

I am really hoping that I get into this biking thing. It's sooo good for the environment and it's just healthy for me to be outside and exercising. It will help with my newfound crazy anxiety...sigh.. well, you win some, you lose some.

diy - heat blocking curtain

so. i moved to a new apartment in long beach and it's awesome. well, the space is awesome, i'm quite happy with it... however.. it's had some downfalls. namely, the cockroaches, damn those bugs, but they are few and far between now that i did all that patch work. I think i need to do more, but that will come gradually.

anyway, the other big issue is the HUGE window my my front room. It is 9x6 and faces the morning sun. It's poorly insulated, it's an aluminum frame, thin windows, not so great on those sweltering 95 degree days. So I needed a something to help me keep it cool. I did not want to spend well over $100 to put up a curtain rod and the type of material it would take to keep it cool, nor did I want to deal with installing the hardware in a place that I'm not sure how long i'll be here.

it was so hot one day, i thought, i'll just put aluminum foil on the windows, i don't care how ghetto it looks... that's when i came up with my brilliant plan.... emergency blankets.



I thought, well they are reflective, they can keep heat out or in, and they are cheap. They were also much bigger, way easier than trying to figure out how to put up a whole bunch of aluminum foil. However, I really didn't want to have a huge sheet of aluminum looking stuff hanging from my window, so i did a bit of research and found one other person who did this. She suggested putting a white sheet in front of the blankets, i thought, perfect.




i was originally going to sew the thing together, but then some common sense kicked in, and i decided to use packing tape and staples, as you can see above. it worked like a charm and took about 20 minutes.




i hung it up by using clear adhesive hooks from 3m, they are about $3 per package and I used 6 of the heavy duty kind. I then put medium size binder clips on the "curtain" and hung the clips on the hooks. This is what it looks like inside when my blinds are all the way open, on the inside. When they're closed, well, they look like blinds.




And this is what the whole thing looks like from the outside. We haven't had a super hot day to test my theory yet, but it is noticeably cooler in here every day and for that, i'm thankful.

so let's see, if i were to have bought a curtain rod ($25 at Ikea), curtains ($100 for them to be thick enough and fit the whole window), then spent the time to hang it, it would have been really time consuming and expensive.

Instead, I paid $3 for a twin size sheet at Ikea, $9 for three emergency blankets at Target, and it took me about 20 minutes to assemble the whole deal.

I'm a happy camper. No only if the blanket would search for cockroaches and kill them in my house, i'd be elated.

new bookmarks

i saw this on someone else's blog...

i loved it. way to recycle and be original. i think they'll make cool gifts if done correctly.

Yoshida Brothers

Karen, may, and I went to see the Yoshida Brothers a few weeks ago. They are two brothers in their late 20's from Japan. They play the Shamisen, a traditional japanese guitar. I had never heard of them before, but apparently they were on a wii commercial a few years ago.

Anyway, they were amazing. Very glad I went to their show. It so nice to see people play who have such command of their instruments. Check out this video of the pair.

"Kodo" by the Yoshida Brothers