What’s new with Michelle these days?

Well, apparently I managed to avoid posting for most of June.

I’ve been working since mid-June. Which means that I get to see Clay on a mostly regular/weekday-daily basis. Which is fantastic. He works a lot… He’s always worked a lot. But now I’m working too. And hey, once I’m in nursing school, we’ll both be incredibly busy (and that makes me quite sad). Work was going pretty well – there was a bit of a thing and… yeah. More on that later – probably in a private/password protected post. I’m a temporary full-time employee (as per usual) and I’m working in customer service again, but I do go from department to department as the need pops up. I’m not the biggest fan of answering calls, but I’m always cheerful when chatting with people on the phone.

My volunteering supervisors (the always lovely L, J and M!) sent me a thank you card (!) for my nearly 4 years of volunteering with them. It was a super cute card that I ended up putting on my bulletin board – it also included a gift certificate for a date night at the movies (!) which I thought was super generous. 2 regular adult admissions, 2 regular soft drinks and 1 regular popcorn. Nom nom. Now I just need a certain someone to not work long enough for us to take in a movie!

In my continuous preparation for nursing school, I’ve renewed my CPR certificate. It’s a clinical/school requirement, but it’s also something that I’ve kept up since 2009 and it’s a great skill to have. The HCP [1. Health Care Provider] version of CPR is the one for nurses, care aides, firefighters, doctors and other health care providers. Learning CPR is a fantastic skill. Everyone should know how to do it, along with standard first aid (or emergent first aid) training. There’s a whole host of different kinds of CPR classes – for care givers (of infants, children), for pet owners (not joking!) and for people who just want to learn. Even if you never use the skills that you learn, at least you’ll have it in case of emergencies. And that ends that PSA!

Last night I ordered my stethoscope! I’m getting the Littmann Classic II S.E. in orange (ORANGE!) with my name laser engraved onto the bell. I also ordered 3 more books for school (including the 2013 Delmar Nurse’s Drug Handbook that is on backorder). For fun things, I ordered seasons 3 and 4 of The Big Bang Theory ($20/ea!) to add to the first two seasons that I already own. The only things I have left to buy for nursing school is a penlight and a watch with a second hand. Oh, and $5 to go to my school to get 2 official name tags. They somehow couldn’t find $5 out of our tuition and assorted fees to go towards the name tags (seriously?). I did manage to off-set the costs a bit with gift cards for Amazon that I had redeemed for from Swag Bucks (search engine where you randomly get points for using it, you redeem points for gift cards and tangible goods). Dear Nursing School, why are you so expensive?

Today I went out, it was a nice summery day but omfg – I hate being in the car because my dad’s a horrible driver and anti-air conditioning for some stupid reason. My mom is at least more reasonable and will turn on the AC when the situation calls or it, or at least doesn’t yell at you for opening the windows. I went thrift store shopping with my sister! I found a lion bookend for her (it was a yellow Zuny bookend – matches one that she already had!) for $5. I also found a first edition copy of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, a whole bunch of buttons/badges/pins from the 2008 Olympic games and two fantastic pieces of vintage Pyrex for my collection: