Signed, Sealed, {Almost} Delivered!

Actually got a Christmas card done this year!

~Ashley

Peppermint Sugar Cookies

I decided to try a new recipe in the kitchen. I got my inspiration from the peanut butter Hershey kiss cookie. Instead of peanut butter, I used sugar cookie dough and instead of chocolate kisses I used peppermint kisses. I unwrapped a whole bag of peppermint kisses, saved some to put on top of the cookies and chopped the rest of them up to put in the dough.

 I rolled the dough in sugar and then popped them in the oven to bake. When they came out, I added a little peppermint kiss to the top. Easy-peasy. A good holiday cookie that I'll likely make again :) I left the kisses off some of the larger cookies so there is a mixture.  The peppermint sugar cookies turned out great!

I must admit, I use store bought sugar cookie dough mix. I find that I don't have a lot of time to fuss over stuff these days and it was a lot easier to out a bag of mix, add an egg and some butter and mix :)

~Ashley

A place to hang our coats.

One of my Black Friday purchases was coat rack for our front entry way. It's been sitting in our living room since I brought it home. This past weekend I was able to take Ryan away from the Vikings game for 5 minutes or so to finally hang it.

Before

After

A close up.

It fits the space nicely :) It's starting to feel homier and homier as time goes by at our new place here in Omaha.

~Ashley

Good for some laughs.

I was looking through the pictures on Ryan's cellphone this past weekend and I came across one that I just had to share.

When I saw this, it immediately made me smile and laugh. This is a picture of our sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows from this Thanksgiving at Ryan's parents house. Ryan and his mom don't like sweet potatoes but Ryan's dad and I do. Renee is nice enough to make them for us on Thanksgiving. This year, our sweet potatoes were topped with an entire bag of marshmallows which runith over :)

~Ashley

Busy Busy

Last week was a rough week for me on L&D. I guess everyone is bound to have a week like that here and there. But all I can say is I'm glad last week is in the past and that's all I'll say about that.

I got to work Friday morning and things were pretty calm {famous last words}. At around 11am, the flood gates opened and the place was crazy busy. We had 8 outpatient triages show up within a matter of 15 minutes. I had a moment just shortly after 12 noon to take a picture of our fetal monitors.

This shows only 11 people getting monitored but we actually hit 14 people at once. That is the busiest I've ever seen it on L&D at one time. I was running around like a crazy woman, delivering babies and triaging  patients. Days like those sure keep us on our toes.

~Ashley

Rub-A-Dub-Dub

Zoey was in the tub...

She needed a little tub time.

She doesn't look the happiest but trust me, she actually likes taking bathes.

...she's squeaky clean now!

~Ashley

Cuddle time!

One thing that I love about Zoey and Cooper is that they love to cuddle. Zoey will cuddle if you pick her up and hold her. Copper, on the other hand, has to cuddle on his own terms.

This is where she realized that there were sweatshirt strings she could play with.

She goes crazy over sweatshirt strings.

Here's Cooper checking out facebook with me :)

~Ashley

Theater Room Progress

Ryan and I have been working on our basement since we move in. We put up a screen a while back and have just had two recliners, a coffee table and an end table down there since. This past week, we went and got couches so more than two people can watch the big screen without sitting on the floor. I let Ryan pick them out since it's "his room." We ended up going with a couch that reclines and then a love seat which has a center counsel with drink holders and the seats recline and rock. They are pretty nice, if I say so myself.

In order to accommodate the new couches, and to ensure optimal viewing, we built a riser for the back sofa in true movie theater fashion. Here are some pictures from our work.

Getting a frame established.

Ryan hard at work.

Making progress.

An almost finished platform.

Still not finished, but getting close. Zoey approved!

Now we just need a black-out curtain on the back window and we'll be set!

We did a little bit a rearranging this weekend but I've yet to take any new pictures. They will come eventually.

~Ashley

Let it Snow!!

We got our third snow fall of the season but it is the first snowfall that is sticking around. We got four inches of nice heavy, wet, perfect snowball snow on Saturday.

Needless to say, Ryan and I have sore back muscles after shoveling. Ryan shoveled the first one to two inches. I shoveled the second couple of inches and then also shoveled the end of the driveway after the plow dumped a bunch of heavy snow there. I hate when the plow comes through and dumps all the snow at the end of the driveway. When that snow freezes, it gets rock hard and is really hard to shovel. I was on the look out for the snow plow on Saturday and went out and shoveled after it came through at 9pm.  It was a slow process as the snow was super heavy, there was no way to push a bunch off to the side. I had to clear to snow shovelfull by shovelfull. But it's done, and as I look out to the end of the driveway today, I'm glad that I got that mess cleaned up. Happy Winter! I think it is here to stay.

~Ashley

Thanksgiving Time

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! It was just what the doctor ordered. *wink* We left Omaha Wednesday afternoon and drove straight through to Austin. Cooper wasn't too excited about us leaving and I think he was trying to tell me that he wanted to come with.

Even after I kept moving him off my bag so I could pack it with all my stuff, he was fairly persistent about wanting to come with us...

We got to Ryan's parent's house around 7:00ish. I was so tired. His parents got home around 8 and I had a heck of a time staying awake until then. After we said our hellos, I promptly fell asleep on the couch only to have Ryan wake me up and make me go sleep in the guest room {with the heated blanket on the bed!}. Ryan and his parents stayed up until 2 or 3 in the morning! They are such night owls!

I got up bright and early Thanksgiving day. Everyone was still sleeping so I was able to veg out and watch tv. We didn't do much besides eat a big 'ol turkey and watch lots of football. It was nice to not have anything on the agenda. After we ate our big turkey dinner, Renee and I made sugar cookies while Ryan caught some post-dinner Zzz's.

I don't know what we were thinking but we made a ton of sugar cookies. {I guess I should take the blame because I was the one mixing up all the dough.} Renee and I actually bake pretty well together. I was rolling the dough and cutting out the cookies, she was in charge of putting them in the oven, setting the timer and putting them on the cooling rake. Since the cookies only took 7 or so minutes to bake, we put out a lot of cookies in a relatively short amount of time. We came to the conclusion that it is better to back sugar cookies with someone else than by yourself. We had a pretty good system down and baked all of the cookies in less than two hours.

Renee manning the oven.

See those little stars that are a little crispy? Those were the only slightly overdone cookies of the whole night. We told Steve we made those specially for him as he likes crispy cookies :)

Our almost-finished product. {I guess I didn't do the best job hiding the over-baked ones.}

Black Friday is up next. Renee and I decided to join the craziness on Friday morning and do some shopping. Main Street in Austin is a pharmacy but they have the best little gift shop. There Black Friday deal consists of giving you a big holiday gift bag and everything you fit inside is 50% off. They opened at 8 am so Renee and I headed into town around 8:30. Main Street was busy but it wasn't too terrible {not like the craziness of department stores like Target}. I picked up a Christmas tree topper, a couple of puzzles for my family's Christmas get together, a Christmas ornament and a big coat rack for the house here in Omaha. Everything, 50% off!! After Main Street, Renee and I went to Yonkers. Their door buster sale went until 1pm. The nice thing about shopping in Austin as compared to Mankato or even Rochester is that it isn't super crazy so the parking wasn't bad at all. At Yonkers, I got new pillows for our bed and a few other miscellaneous items and I didn't pay over 50% for any of it! After Yonkers, it was time for some pampering. We went for pedicures and manicures. I love getting pedicures although I've only probably done them three times in my entire life. I love soaking my feet in the nice warm water and the leg massage. After the pampering, we stopped at Target so a few things and then were on our way home. All in all, it was a successful Black Friday shopping experience.

Once we got back to the house, Renee and I had all of those sugar cookies waiting for us to decorate them. So we got to it. Agh! Why did we make so many cookies?! Towards the end of decorating all the cookies, I was ready to not decorate another single cookie for a LONG time. Again, Renee and I agreed that we made a pretty good sugar-cookie team as if we were decorating by ourselves, we would have been miserable by the end. Decorating with someone else makes that process a lot less painful especially when you are decorating what seemed like thousands of cookies.

Our finished product!

Look at all these cookies!

Good thing cookies freeze and last for a while. I took a bunch of cookies for Ryan and I in Omaha and then also for my parents. We packed up some for Ryan's grandma and the rest will be frozen for a while. I don't think we will make so many next year :)

Saturday was another busy day for Ryan and I. First we stopped by the house in Owatonna to pick up a few things and then we drove to the cities. Kelsey and I had a shopping date planned and Ryan was going to spend the day hanging out with AJ. Kelsey is in Family Medicine residency in the cities so we stopped by to see her new apartment and also her cat Amelia who is so incredibly patient and let us dress her up in all of her new holiday outfits.

Oh Amelia, you are so cute.

Amelia is ready for the holidays!

Kelsey and I had a great day hanging out. I miss being in Minnesota and hanging out with people :( Residency is a whole new ballgame. *sigh* It's only four years I guess. I will eventually be back in Minnesota. Kelsey and I did a lot of shopping. It was so much fun and reminded me a lot of our 4th year of medical school when we lived together and went shopping. We went all over and I bought a lot of things. I don't like shopping in Omaha - they have sales tax on everything including clothes, so I was making my shopping experience in Minnesota count.

After we finished shopping, Ryan picked me up and we started our journey south to Ryan's grandma's house in Luverne. We made a pit stop to see my parents. We weren't at my parent's place for too long but it was so nice to stop in and see them. I miss being in Minnesota :( We got into Luverne late Saturday night around 11:30pm. We checked into our hotel room and I fell asleep within 15 minutes :) Sunday morning we woke up, ate a little breakfast and then went to Ryan's grandma's house for a visit. It was nice to see Ryan's grandma - we don't make it over there often enough!

By late morning, Ryan and I were back on the road driving to Omaha. Ryan got tickets to the UNO Mavericks hockey game Sunday afternoon. So we drove straight from Luverne to the arena. UNO was playing St. Cloud. It was a good game and ended up a tie after going to overtime. After to game, I drove straight to work and worked the Sunday night shift during which I delivered three babies! {Back to reality}

All in all, Thanksgiving break so just what I needed. Some time off to hang out with friends and family and regain some of my sanity. It was also nice to have more than a day and a half off from work! It was nice to come home from work and have the cats excited to see me. They were quite the little snugglers - they missed us.

~Ashley

No wonder I'm tired!

....76.....83....70....70.5.......77......82.5.....

I've worked 459 hours in the last 6 weeks.

I am looking forward to Thanksgiving break more than anyone can imagine!

~Ashley

Smashing Pumpkins

I forgot to blog about this back when it happened, but Ryan crossed something off his bucket list. He's always loved the Smashing Pumpkins since he was in high school. The group broke up for a long time and then got back together. About a month ago, they came to preform in Omaha and Ryan was able to go. Tickets sold out in a matter of minutes. They were playing at a smaller venue so Ryan was able to get a close look.

Pretty good seats I would say. Ryan said the performance was just okay. He was slightly disappointed by the song selection but he was happy to see them live in concert.

~Ashley

Oh Coop-da-loop

He'll always hold a special place in his heart for....

...boxes.
~Ashley

It's all about perspective

We love Zoey so much!

~Ashley

I'm one Step closer....

....to being a full licensed physician!!

I got a little notification in my email inbox a week ago.

I passed my USMLE Step 3 exam!!!

Let's get a closer view...

I'm now officially done with my general board exams! Woo hoo!!

~Ashley

What we've been upto lately.

It's been a while since I last posted. I've found myself treading to keep my head above water. Now that I have a moment to breath, I thought I'd update.

The weekend before Halloween, my parents, Kristin and Sophie came down to visit. It was so nice to have them come down here.  I was more than ready for a weekend off as I had worked 21 days straight without a day off prior to them coming. We had a weekend of nice weather and a lot of relaxing. Us girls went and got massages....I was in heaven. My poor back needed it. I had been in the OR all week prior retracting in odd positions for varies procedures. Ryan tried his best to rub my back but it literally hurt too much because of all the knots. If I could, I would get a massage every week. After the massages, Ryan and I drove around showing them the medical center and a few other things in Omaha. We ate dinner at Upstream were Kristin and I managed to get odd looks from a fellow sitting at a nearby table by talking maybe a little too loudly about all things medical - hehehe. We taught my parents how to say and spell a slang word ;) and had a good time. After we got home, we all settled into the theater room for a movie while Ryan went to one of his late night hockey games.

Sophie missed us while we were out getting massages. {She's kind of a momma's girls!}

On Sunday of their visit, we cooked up some ribs for lunch prior to them leaving. Sophie got upset with me that I was trying to make her sit still for a picture and refused to look at me regardless of how hard I tired...

I was sad to see everyone leave, but Zoey on the other hand, she was all relaxed and didn't get too excited when they left...

Our house was a busy place the evening of Halloween and I almost missed out. I got an ER consult not long before my shift was going to end, so I ended up getting out of work late. Ryan was holding down the fort taking care of all the trick-or-treaters until I got home. We got a lot of little trick-or-treaters. We didn't keep an official count but we estimate about 150 kids or more. Ryan and I took turns answering the door as I was multi-tasking - reading a journal article for work and handing out candy. We turned our light off around 8:30pm and I was probably in bed by 9:00pm. I'm not a late night party animal anymore. {Who am I kidding, I never really was.}

I can't believe that Halloween was only a couple weeks ago. It feels like ages ago. Ugh, I think I work too much! In the last two weeks alone, I've worked 150 hours, but who's counting {Me! Me! I'm counting!!!} Work and sleep. Work and sleep. Work and sleep. That's all I pretty much do. {Sorry, I just needed to throw myself a little pity party. I'm done now.}

This past week my chief resident was on vacation so I was running the Gyn service and it just so happened that this past week was the busiest of all the past six weeks for us. We had a ton of cases in the OR that it kept me on my toes all week. One of the pleasures of having my chief be gone was that I got to experience case conference. A word on case conference; it is oral board preparation. We keep a list of all the cases from each service and every week the chief from the service has to get up in front of all the residents and all the attending physicians and defend the last weeks' cases.  There are normally four different services which have to be defended (OB, Gyn, Gyn Onc and REI) so 15 minutes of question asking and defending per service.  But this last week, the person on REI was gone so that meant 20 minutes for each service. Twenty minutes of me standing at the podium in front of everyone answering multiple questions about anything on my case list. Ugh, I get heart palpitations just writing about it on here.

Case conference is on Wednesday from 9-10am. I had an awful week leading up to case conference. No chief resident, me trying to keep on top of all the OR cases, me trying to make sure the med students were busy and me trying to study when all I wanted to do was sleep.  All I wanted to do was sleep! The intern on the gyn service {this is me} also has to present at pre-op conference, which is Wednesday morning from 7-8am. Pre-op conference is going through all of the next week's cases, making sure they had appropriate work-up and were scheduled for appropriate procedures, etc. It's not super high stress {certainly nothing compared to case conference} but it requires a fair amount of prep time. Luckily, my attending was okay with moving pre-op conference back to the afternoon.

Anyways, I was a nervous wreck prior to case conference. I'm usually fairly cold, but not Wednesday morning, my hands were so sweaty - I was one sweaty mess! I honestly had never been more nervous in my life! I wasn't even this nervous prior to residency interviews. My anxiety was through the roof. I was absolutely terrified of case conference {and still am!}. I was scared for what I call a "public pimping session" but most of all I was scared of looking like an idiot. I didn't want to be "that resident" that they let into the program who doesn't know anything. Residency is not a confidence boosting experience by any stretch of the imagination.

Anyways, enough prelude. Wednesday morning, 9:00am rolled around. All of the med students were leaving the room after ground rounds. Everyone was settling back into their spots and the department chair called out "OB" as the OB chief made her way to the front. I'm was glad I wasn't first but that meant I have another 20 minutes of heart palpitations before it could possibly be my turn. As time pressed on, the OB chief answered her last question and the department chair call out "Ok, Gyn." I got that sinking feeling in my stomach. The residents sitting around me were wishing me good luck as I made my way up front. I kept telling myself "Deep breath. I can do this. Just take your time and think before answering any question." There is always a delay after someone gets to the podium while the attending physicians look over the list and come up with questions to ask. I stood there, with my hands firmly planted in my white coat pockets. I knew if I took my hands out, they'd be shaking like crazy and I'd be fidgeting with things. So they stayed in my pocket. The first question, "Case 428, can you tell me how you would manage a patient presenting to the emergency room with..." and my twenty minutes of my first case conference was under way. It continued, "This patient's pathology showed no chorionic villi, now what are you concerned about...." And continued "How are you going to manage a patient with a possible ectopic pregnancy versus a ruptured corpus luteum...." And continued "You said you are going to use progesterone, why.... and how long are you going to use it in this situation...." And continued "So you used the term discriminatory zone, define discriminatory zone"  "Case #430....." "Case #434, tell me the contraindications to..."  "What are the overall success rates of...." "How do you know your endometrial cavity is intact and that you didn't perforate the uterus..." "What is your first step in evaluating..." "What is your first imaging modality..." "And if that doesn't show you anything, then what..." Case conference was going well. I was answering questions confidently, feeling pretty good about things, the questions ceased and I felt I was about to hear "Let's go to Gyn Onc." but instead the department chair said "One last question.." {OMG, my stomach sank} "On case ###, what is the final weight of the uterus." silence.... Me: "um, I don't know that answer." {Since interns normally do NOT do case conference, my chief that was on vacation put the list together for me the Friday before she left, so I had no idea.} "Just for your information, you need the uterine weights on your case list because....X.....Y....Z." Then I heard the words I'd been waiting for "Let's go to Gyn Onc."

I survived! I survived my first case conference! My first public pimping session! And I didn't feel like an idiot! I felt really good about my performance! While the Gyn Onc chief was at the podium, I got a couple texts from fellow residents congratulating me and telling me I did an awesome job. I felt pretty good about things. I was so relieved it was over and that I won't have to do this again for at least another 8 months. *HUGE* sigh of relief! I got home Wednesday evening and crashed. I was sleeping by 7:30pm. Oh man was I tired or what?!

I'm glad this week is over. I'm done with gyn for a while now. I'm onto L&D from the next three months. Friday night I was able to just relax. I didn't do anything. I didn't want to do anything.  I sat on the couch and watched TV and felt like a normal person so the first time in nearly two weeks. Yesterday, I slept and took a couple naps. Then Ryan and I went to the movies {I love popcorn!}. After the movie, we met up with some undergrad friends from Mankato who were in town. We went out for drinks at the Crescent Moon and had a good time. Ryan had an old man's league hockey game at 11:00pm last night. Yes, 11:00 PM - who plays hockey at 11:00 at night?! I went to his game and then we hung out with a couple of his teammates until 1:00am-ish before I insisted on going home and going to bed. I'm not used to late nights, I'm more used to early mornings these days.  At least I slept in this morning until 10:30 which it was later than my normal 5:00 am wake up call. I work the night shift tonight and tomorrow so sleeping in was likely good for me. 

Here's to no more case conferences for a while!

~Ashley

First Snow of the Season!

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!!!

Laura and I hanging out in clinic, enjoying the snow!

The snow didn't last long, but the flakes were big and beautiful. It was the perfect 'Christmas Snow.' Too bad Christmas is nearly two months away.

Jackpot!

I definitely hit this jackpot this weekend and it made me feel like maybe my luck was going to be changing. Ryan was out getting groceries and I asked him to pick up some candy for trick-or-treaters {ps I'm super excited for trick-or-treaters by the way!}. He brought home this big bag of candy from Sam's Club full of tootsie rolls {the short fat ones, the long skinny ones and the big thick ones}, tootsie pops and dots. Well, I couldn't resist having a couple pieces of Halloween candy {afterall, it was Ryan who opened the bag}. So I grabbed a box of Dots, opened it and ALL six dots inside were RED! My favorite! I should have taken photographic proof but I ate the evidence. All I had left was the little box. I don't think I'll ever get a box of all red Dots again. I hit the Red Dot Jackpot!

~Ashley

I'm still alive!

I know that it has been forever since I've posted an update. These past two weeks have been kind of brutal. I can't believe that it was only two weeks ago that I took my boards....it seems like months ago.  Lets back up to the week before I took my boards. I had the week off from work, a vacation week of sorts. Not really a fun vacation but a necessary one. I spent part of my time cleaning and organizing the house {although if you would see it right now you would have never guessed I did clean *sigh*}. One of the big organization tasks I tackled was the office. The office was the one room that still really wasn't unpacked from the move down here. Everything sort of just got thrown into the room. There was no organization, just chaos. Here is proof... The before pictures...

I don't have any after pictures. But it looks a lot better now. I moved things around. Took the winter coats out of the closest and put them in the coat closest. I bought rubbermaids and organized the closest. Now I can actually find things and I feel way more organized. I'll eventually try to get some after pictures posted. Not only did I tackle the office, I also cleaned and organized the basement, the garage, the downstairs and the kitchen. It was a lot of work but I was having a hard time focusing on studying so I used cleaning as my way to focus. I'd study for two hours, clean for an hour, study for an hour, clean for an hour, etc.

The Friday before boards, Ryan got home and told me he was taking me on a date. I was so excited to get out of the house for a bit - away from studying, away from cleaning, a breath of fresh air. It was nice.

Ryan got tickets to the UNO hockey game. UNO just joined the WCHA hockey conference so they will be playing the Gophers, Duluth and Mankato this year. We are looking forward to those games. This game was against some team I had never heard of but it was a good date night none-the-less.

On our way downtown for the game.

The tickets were "Club Lounge" tickets which met that we had servers that would bring us food in our seats and Ryan could get larger beers so the same price as the smaller sized beers offered to those not in the club. We were living the life - lol.

The leaves started to change, fall is certainly here...

Ryan got his diploma in the mail!! Woo hoo! It's official! He's got his PhD and he's got the proof!

LSU sent him his diploma and his hood. He had to try it on for size. Nice graduation picture I would say :-)

There it is in black and white, he's a Doctor of Philosophy!

 During my week of vacation I spent a lot of time snuggling with the kiddos...

Zoey had just gotten a bath before this picture was taken. Here I am trying to love her up with a little kiss.

Ryan got some computers delivered to the house to work on for his parents. Cooper claimed them ASAP.

The majority of these picture were taken on my cellphone. This one is extra blurry since I had to zoom in to get the picture.

All of the above was prior to taking my boards. Monday morning of my boards, I woke up early to ensure I had enough time to wake up prior to the test and eat a good breakfast. I got to the testing site early and began the check in process. Taking these exams has gotten more strict over the years. When I took Step 1, all I had to do was show my ID and sign in/out when I was going into the computer room and leaving to take breaks. When I went to take Step 2, I had to show my ID and scan my fingerprint in addition to pulling out the front pockets on my jeans. Well for Step 3, it was really strict. In addition to showing my ID, scanning my finger print and signing my name every time I  went in and out of the computer room, I had to take off my sweatshirt, pull my pant's front pockets out, I had to put my hands in my back pocket and move them around AND I had to be wanded down {front and back} with a metal detector. Man, what some people will do to steal exam questions. All I could think was, I've come way too far and have spent way too much money on school and these exams to throw it all away by sneaking in a camera to the testing site to take pictures of questions. And not to mention each testing cubicle is monitored via video recording. They really mean business.

After I got home after the first 8 hours of testing, Zoey was hanging out in a new spot that I have never seen before...

I'm not sure why she chose the shower to lay down and take a nap in but this is where I found her. 

The second day of Step 3 was long as well. By the end of the 7th hour, I was more than ready to be done. Clicking the final "submit" button was kind of bittersweet - exciting because I'm finally done but so nerve racking at the same time. Only time will tell but hopefully within the next month I'll have my test scores back.

After I finished day 2 of Step 3 I wasn't able to go home and relax :( I had to go into the hospital and prepare for my gyn pre-op case which was the next day at 7am. I spent a couple hours going over the surgical cases for the following week and getting ready to present. Not exactly what I wanted to be doing after finishing 16 hours of testing but I guess that's the name of the game. 

Today is the first day that I've had any time off since finishing Step 3. Ugh, these last two weeks have been borderline awful. I hit the ground running 6am on Wednesday and things didn't slow down until yesterday. *sigh* Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of my test week were so busy, especially Thursday and Friday. Both days started at 6am and didn't end until 8-830pm. And then I was on call Saturday and Sunday and these two call shifts were call shifts from you know where. L&D was a cluster on Saturday - tons of delivers, tons of triage patients and tons of pages. Oh man what I would have given to have had to OB pager break during my shift. Oh well, no such luck.

On the up side, Saturday night I got to do my first c-section as the primary surgeon - skin to skin as some put it. It was awesome! I didn't leave L&D until 830pm that night but getting to primary my first section was totally worth it. My intern classmates and our class advisor were getting together for drinks and dinner Saturday night, so I left L&D and went and met up with them for a while. It was nice to hang out with them outside of work but honestly all I could think about was sleep as my shift started at 6 bells the next morning.

As I was driving into work Sunday morning, I prayed for a less chaotic day. It's not that I don't like to work, but when you work 14+ hours and don't even have time to go to the bathroom or eat any food, it is not fun. Well, unfortunately Sunday continued what I left behind on Saturday :( It was another call shift from you know where. I was tired. I was hungry. I wanted to drop the pager in the toilet {but that would be assuming that I actually had time to go into the bathroom where I could even have a toilet to drop it in, which I didn't}.  The pages were driving me nuts! Most of the time pages don't bother me. But the pages were relentless and half the time I felt like I was having to defend our treatment management to the nursing staff. I don't know what it was but some people wanted to argue about everything that day and I think that's what made it so difficult. I did have a 5 minute episode where I escaped to the resident lounge where I proceeded to bawl my eyes out and then I felt much better.  Not only that but my chief stuck up for me against one of the nurses which made me feel better too. On the up side...I survived and I'm a better/stronger resident from making it through these two shifts. 

Proof that I attempted to eat lunch on Sunday. Unfortunately this is what my lunch looked like over 3 hours after I purchased it :(

This brings us up to this past week. I started Monday morning off not feeling refreshed at all {not the best way to start off a week to say the least}. This week was busy. There were several nights that I came home and fell asleep by 730 or 800pm just to wake up at 430am and do it all over again. *sigh* I just keep telling myself that this is only a phase and that it will get better. I had to work again this weekend. The Saturday night to Sunday morning shift. I got to sleep for a few hours which was so nice. I can not lie, I prayed and prayed and prayed the entire drive in Saturday evening to not let me have a repeat of the weekend prior. I'm thankful to report that it was NOTHING like last weekend. Ahh, the trials and tribulations one goes through on their road to becoming a doctor. I'll get there, eventually, and then all of this will be worth it. 

These past two weeks have felt like two months. I'm glad they are over. I'm looking forward to this next weekend when my parents and Kristin are coming down to visit. I'm so excited. This next weekend will be my first day off in almost 20 days. Wow - what a nutty life I live. I have to say that I wouldn't be able to survive weeks like these past couple weeks without Ryan. If it wasn't for him, I'd not have any clean clothes and I'd be living on unhealthy fast food most likely. Thanks Ryan for all the support - these crazy shifts should get better in the coming years when I don't have to carry the pagers anymore :) I tallied all of my hours from these past two weeks. The week of my board exam I worked 76 hours, this past week I worked 83 hours and I already have 8 1/2 hours in from this week! Here's to being an intern!!!

I got home this morning around 900am and then slept until 100pm. I was able to wake up and hang out with Ryan a little bit before he went to his hockey game. Actually having some energy was a nice change for me this afternoon. The weather was beautiful today - a wonderful fall day.  I took advantage of the day light {didn't realize I took daylight for advantage until after I went over 5 days straight without seeing it during my crazy past two weeks} and got outside to clean up the back yard. We got a frost sometime this past week {I'm not exactly sure when it happened - ha!} and the tomato plants bit the dust. So I pulled them up and pulled some weeds too.  Our tree in the back yard is over it's peak color and starting to turn brown, but it is still pretty...

The tree in our front yard is really pretty right now too!

  Fresh air and sunshine has never felt so good!

And I think Zoey would agree!

~Ashley