stupidity – Imaginary Sunshine

I need a blanket fort

Michelle — Sun, 29 Dec 2013 08:07:32 +0000

Sometimes it makes me sad that I don’t blog more. Blogging used to be my passion and I’d come up with a new theme nearly every month. Pretty sure that this one has been up for forever by now… And yet, I really cannot bring myself to care that I haven’t changed from the pixel girl with the heart-shaped balloon. It’s a bit fitting, since I had modeled the image after my favicon image that I had made much earlier than this theme. But blogging as a whole? I didn’t realize that I had pretty much dropped off the face of the planet in terms of the internet. Or maybe I had, and just didn’t notice?

I, for one, had an alright Christmas. The thing about Christmas is that it is a very family-oriented holiday. The unfortunate thing about Christmas is that it is a very family-oriented holiday. Some gems that I’ve been asked this holiday season by relatives (immediate and extended) include:

Why aren’t you done school yet?

Why didn’t you go to medical school?

How much weight have you gained? (Which was followed by: How much do you weigh now?)

The answers: because I’m not, because I don’t want to become a doctor (medical or otherwise), none of your business, see previous answer.

Oh family. What would I do without them? (Answer: Probably be a lot more sane, and non-existent.)

I’m already looking forward to going back to school – primarily so I won’t need to spend so much time with the members of my family that are driving me crazy with their repetitive questions. That and I want to learn ALL THE THINGS! I’ve been doing a bit of winter break reading and just finished the Hyperbole and a Half book by Allie Brosh. It has delightfully thick pages and full-colour illustrations. What else would a girl want in a book full of fun stories? I still have a few more books in my pile to read. Now that my familial holiday obligations have been met and there are no more family gatherings in the near future (as far as I know, anyways), I’m happy to really get to enjoy my time off and spend time with the people that I choose to spend time with. (A.k.a. not the crazy relatives, or the select individuals that I live with who are driving me crazy.)

The things that I do when I’m not blogging…

Michelle — Sun, 22 Sep 2013 02:20:30 +0000

Since my last post, school started. I started my third term of nursing school in mid-August and I couldn’t be happier about it. School’s been going really well and I’m liking my clinical group this term. A lot of the people I’ve worked with before in previous clinical groups, so I knew going in that I could work well with them. I just finished week 5 of my 8 week Mental Health rotation. I’m really liking the hospital that I’m at right now. Later this term I have a 4 week rotation in Maternity/Obstetrics and a 4 week rotation in Pediatrics. I change clinical instructors with each rotation, but I stay with the same clinical group, so it should be good!

I’ve already finished one presentation so far this term (only 1-2 more to go for one class, 1 group presentation for another), so I’m feeling pretty good about how the term is going. I hate presentations with a dying passion, but the people in the class I need to do presentations in front of are a good bunch.

I’m trying to be good about staying on top of all my readings, but it can be difficult at times. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the library studying and doing readings – about as fun as it sounds. And I have renewed my love for Chai tea lattes (courtesy of Starbucks) and I discovered that it is possible to reload my Starbucks card on my phone with Paypal. This is a bad thing for me to have the knowledge of. But I’ve actually been fairly good about not spending too much money. I took out a part-student loan for the summer May-August term, as I was only taking 3 courses, and it’s a government loan so it wasn’t supposed to incrue interest until after I was done school. But it started counting interest pretty much straightaway (I didn’t catch it until nearly a month later). Turns out, part-time student loans start counting interest right away, even though payments aren’t required until 6 months later. I kind of said “fuck that noise” and paid it off, in full, the next business day. The problem with doing that is that I’m fairly broke at the moment. Luckily, I still like at home and don’t have that many expenses – but my bank account is still looking a bit tiny at the moment.

In other news though, I got an extra day off from clinical because my instructor was ill. I got a lot of work done that day. I also went to Value Village that day on a tip my classmate gave me because they had scrubs for sale. And the scrubs had original tags on still (some were donated samples from a Vancouver-based company that normally sells them for $65 a piece!) and others were donated from a chain uniform store. I snagged some super comfy scrubs pants that could probably double as yoga pants, if I so choose to wear them as such. I also got a light pink scrub top because it looked cute on. They were being sold at $6/piece, which isn’t bad at all consider the original price and how much I’d paid in the past for scrubs (a lot more than that!) and they’ll be used for ages to come.

I quite recently got myself back into counseling. I used to go to a regular counselor at my old university because it was offered as a student service. It is at my current school as well, but they cannot guarantee that I can see the same person all the time and their hours aren’t as useful to me based on my clinical hours. I’ve been struggling with body image, eating (or lack thereof) and just self-acceptance of my body for years now and the thing is that this time I was able to recognize when I stopped eating as much or eating less and less. And while I’m certainly more comfortable with the way I feel about myself now, there’s always been thoughts that it’s just not good enough for me. So I got myself into counseling to talk to someone about that. The unfortunate (fortunate?) thing is that I’m unable to qualify for an outpatient eating disorder program because it’s not severe enough (and there’s a waiting list). If I hadn’t been so good at covering it up when I was a preteen, I probably would have been able to get in then (there’s a % weight-loss requirement). But right now, because I am aware of the fact that I’m eating less, I’m also forcing myself to eat even when I’m not hungry because I know that I need to. Guess that is an improvement from what I used to be like!

Protected: You called me up again just to break me like a promise

Michelle — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 02:57:55 +0000

All it takes is a little something…

Michelle — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:46:09 +0000

All it takes is a little something to make you question everything about what you thought you understood, knew and trusted.

For me, it was a phone call. And the week that occurred before the phone call.

Questioning everything, hiding away from social media. Because if I turn to social media now, I’m a bit afraid of what I might say, or do.

Say what now?

Michelle — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 06:40:59 +0000

I’ve been getting a lot of mail lately. Some of it was solicited (TEXTBOOKS!!#$%!) and others was not (dear playhouse that I purchased musical tickets from you 2 years ago, you’d think because I haven’t bought tickets in 2 years, that would be a hint to stop wasting paper). Unfortunately, I’m still unable to intercept the mail so my dad always sees it first.

Dad: Why are you getting mail from [insert name of local community college]?
Me: I applied there.
D: long pause. What program?
M: Their 4 year nursing program.
D: longer pause, I can practically see the wheels churning inside of his head. Is it the same program as at [insert name of big university/the one that I attend]?
M: Yes.
D: hands over the envelope, finally. Okay.

Because even nearly 5 years after I graduated from high school and even after he even admitted that trades was an “appropriate” career choice, he still has a problem with smaller schools, or not internationally recognized institutions, even if they’re public, government funded & approved schools.

My sister J started school this week. She graduated from said Big University in either 2006 and is just going back to school now for a trades program. Granted, it’s a medical-relate program, so it’s not like she’s becoming a mechanic. But J is the Golden Child and can never do anything wrong. So because she applied (and was accepted into) a trades program, suddenly trades is the Best Thing Ever.

And my father had the nerve to ask me:

D: Why didn’t you go into trades as well?

Well, dad, maybe it’s because you spent the first 17 years of my life telling me that I need to go to university and get a degree because it’s what I’m fucking supposed to do. That and I get to live rent-free at home provided I stay in school, so it was kind of no brainer. But I have friends who graduated on time (unlike me) and are woefully unemployed. A friend of my sister’s has been out of university since 2006 and just got a full-time job in her field (she has an education degree and spent 5 years being a substitute teacher, filling in when people were sick or on maternity leave and having very uncertain employment). Having a Bachelors, regardless of what it is in doesn’t mean a whole lot these days. Mostly because a lot of people have a Bachelors degree. Which is really depressing to think about, considering I’ll be graduating with one at the end of May. And it’s going to be fantastic. The word “Science” will be mentioned on that piece of paper 4 times in my degree title. Not because I wanted them to emphasize how much I love science, but because of what my program was. (A lot of science.)

But really. Having my dad tell me when I’m 9 credits away from finishing my BSc that I should have gone into some sort of trades instead? Like a knife through the heart. Maybe he should have been pushing that for the first 17 years of my life instead. Or maybe he should just keep his opinions to himself.

Stress happens, and then I sleep.

Michelle — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 05:17:24 +0000

It’s coming down to the last 2 weeks of school (classes end on December 2nd for me) so that it is crunch time! All of my midterms are thankfully done (I have a friend who has a midterm the last week of classes, ew) and I’ve just been working away on research for a few more papers (I have two drafts done and I’m waiting for a professor to review one of them – I have another paper that I have yet to write, but I think I’ve finished all of my research for it). Besides that, I also have a lab final to study for (boo) and 3 finals to start to study for. I’m taking four classes, but one of my classes (Parasitology) has a take home final. I’ve never been able to grasp the brilliance of this concept because generally science courses do not have take home/open book finals. We get two full weeks to work on the final ‘exam’, we’re encouraged to use the textbook and we’re allowed to work in groups, ask the professor questions… Brilliant, absolutely. I just hope he’s making us do incredibly difficult essays as I know it’s supposed to be long-answer type of questions.

So I’m going to be doing a lot of studying… Starting soon. I need to get that last paper written (and then editing the other two) before I feel like I can “really” study (except for my lab final – I need to study for my lab final because that is important as well, even if it’s not worth a whole lot).

I feel like it’s important to note that today was Election Day in British Columbia. All of the municipal elections in the province happen on the same day – we elect for the mayors, city councillors, school trustees and whatnot. I did not head out to the polls today (although my other family members did). I feel bad about this because I almost always go to vote when there’s an election. I had to go out a little bit after lunch to the bank and when I was walking up my driveway to get back into the house, I slipped and fell flat on my back. My driveway is black and there was ice on the driveway that hadn’t melted yet (it was in the shadows casted by the bushes). So I slipped and fell. I’m sure if there were witnesses, they would have told me that my fall was spectacular (it sure felt that way, anyways). But that really isn’t the point. I managed to get back up on my feet and stiffly walked up the steps to get back into the house. I’ve remained indoors for the rest of the day because my lower back is sore. I’ve also been limiting my walking around, because movement is bad (heh). I normally bruise very easily but no (visible) bruising as of yet. There’s also no swelling, I just hurt.

Life happens, I guess. Here’s to the next four weeks! My last final is on December 16th (Friday), meep.

I can’t just filter out the stupid. :'(

Michelle — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 02:10:05 +0000

While I sit here sipping tea and making Excel do my bidding[1. I’m working on an assignment for my class regarding climate change through time.], tweets keep popping up on my screen (thanks, Tweetdeck) and generally it doesn’t bother me (because I ignore it unless I can actually recognize the avatar). Some people tweet the strangest things. Do I need to know about the existence of new Team Jacob shirts at Target?[2. For starters, we do not have Target yet in Canada so I really do not care.] or how someone told someone else that she’s a *ucktard? Then again, I realize I tweet ridiculous things too.

For instance, today I tweeted about a friend’s douchecanoe of a boyfriend. I’ve also complained about the stupid people in one of my classes (and lamented the inability to filter out the stupid from said class’s discussion boards). I tweeted about ball-jointed dolls [3. An online friend, who I’ve met in person before, just got a new one and we discussed the sizes – apparently mine seems larger in photos. :)]

And while I should really go back to my assignment (due online at 9am tomorrow, Pacific time), I’m nearly done anyways (one more question in which I need to write out why there was ice in the tropics at one point in the history of the Earth – the answer is that there was a sharp decrease in methane due to the rise of cyanobacteria, methane was the most important greenhouse gas at one point and carbon dioxide was much lower/less significant. Of course, that has now changed and carbon dioxide is much more abundant – methane is 10x more efficient than carbon dioxide in terms of warming the Earth). Now you know… And I guess now that I’ve written out my answer, I am done my homework! I just need to click submit on the website.

For an update on nursing school applications… I’ve received both my high school and current university transcripts in the mail (yay!). I’ve also gotten 2 sets of reference letters from people at work (more yay!). One of them was highly impressive, filled up an entire page about how much awesome I’m made of (I may have blushed while reading it too). So now all I’m really waiting for is my reference letters from volunteering (as most programs require some form of volunteering work, minimum 30 hours, in a health-care setting – I’d been volunteering there since September 2008 so I have more than the required amount of hours) before I start doing all my applications. I feel as though I should have most of my applications completed as of the beginning of November, aside from supplemental portions of applications (the essays about why I’m a great fit, what kind of leadership skills that I have, etc.).

I’m also working on a new theme for Imaginary Sunshine… It has been brought to my attention that this one has been up since May and apparently that just won’t do.

A lot of shopping, a lot of meds

Michelle — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 04:57:20 +0000

It has been pointed out to me by my sisters that I like thrift stores an awful lot. Mostly because it’s a challenge to find things, and things are inexpensive/cheap (but you do need to know what to look for). My favourite sections are the housewares and the toys. I’ve been collecting soup mugs with recipes on the side for a while and my goal was to end at 6 different mugs. I found my 6th mug last Saturday (July 16th) along with my second oxtail soup mug (because I like oxtail soup!). So while my dad thinks that I’m weird for collecting mugs, I think they’re cute and will one day have a good place on a shelf in my future-kitchen. $1.99 minus 30% for each one.

I also found what I had thought was the perfect work mug. It was light green, large enough for a decent amount of water/hot chocolate/juice/tea/whatever. It was $0.99 (before my 30% card-holder discount). And then I found the perfect work mug. Cupcakes all over it? Cheerful? Large enough to hold a decent amount of liquids? And a little cupcake on the inside? The cupcake cup was also lighter than the fantastic light green mug, and also at $0.99 (before 30% discount) so I was absolutely sold. It sits on my desk at work now. Usually filled with water, hot chocolate, tea or juice.

I’ve been getting awesome mail this week! I got a cute dress and bloomers set (Blythe-sized), two Japanese patterns books (pictured below; Dolly Coordinate Recipe books #5 and #7) and something that’s a surprise for Clay (who does occasionally read this blog so I’m refraining from mentioning it – it’s not much of a surprise if he knows what it is!).

Work’s been… workish. It’s the only thing really going on with my life right now and it’s stressful from 8am-4:30pm because of people. On the brightside, customer that the other people avoid talking to because “he’s really mean” likes talking to me (because I get things done/make sure their stuff gets delivered). Honestly though, I don’t get why they think he’s really mean because he was really nice to me on the phone.

My hand, which I’m not posting a photo of, is swollen. My coworkers have called it my ‘mitt’ and have said things like “Wow, your hand’s like DOUBLE the size of your other hand!”. Yeah, flattering. Last Sunday (July 17th) I went paintballing with some coworkers (that I like). I ended up turning my ankle, winning a laptop-suitable backpack and getting chewed up by mosquitoes. I have 1 bite on my left pinkie, 3 bites on my right shoulder (no biggie, they’re practically gone) and 5 bites on my right hand. 3 are on the back of my right hand, 1 on my thumb and 1 on my ring finger. Which makes life incredibly annoying. On Tuesday it was the most swollen and I had issues with mobility.

Today it has been better with increased mobility, swelling has gone down, reddness has mostly gone away and I’ve been dosing myself up with pain medication, allergy medication (for nighttime only) and ointment to help with the itchiness/pain/swelling. My purse is starting to look like mini-pharmacy (I’ve been keeping bottles of pills in there, the jar of ointment, etc.). Hopefully this will all go away soon and my hand will soon be the normal size!

Being a good girl

Michelle — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 04:17:52 +0000

I haven’t physically harmed anyone this week.

I feel as if this is an accomplishment.

If you follow me on Twitter or have spoken to me since late Wednesday, you know why.

Life. Sucks.

An open letter to (some) Canadians

Michelle — Tue, 03 May 2011 03:32:44 +0000

Dear Canadians,

You disappoint me on so many levels.

The first government to be found in contempt of Parliament. The first prime minister to do so much stupid things. And while they haven’t finished counting up all the ballots, everyone is projecting a majority Conservative government. He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named did so much stupid things to embarrass the country on the world stage. A huge waster of government funds. His campaign promises were only promised for when the country is no longer in the red (and what year will that be?).

Every single time he opens his mouth, he talks about how great it would be with a majority Conservative government and how the Conservatives will not use their majority to push the issue of abortion. Really? You expect the person who has cut millions in funds for women health, women rights and advocacy to not push the issue of abortion? You expect him to listen to Canadians and what Canadians want when he’s busy pushing his party’s concerns through if they have the majority of seats and can do whatever they damn well please?

I trust him about as far as I can throw him.

Sincerely,
Me