Bring on the Fashion Police!

Fashion Police is starting in just a few minutes!! YAY. This is my favorite part about awards season. I'm very excited to recap all the beautiful (and not so beautiful) dresses from last night at the Oscar's. Jennifer Hudson's performance is extremely memorable for me, and was one of my favorite moments from the show. Her voice is incredible and she looked absolutely stunning! I'm also so happy for Jennifer Lawrence for winning Best Supporting Actress. She's so talented and down to earth AND only 22! Good for her! Unfortunately I fell asleep before I got to see Adele. Grr. I need to youtube it! Oh and Catherine Zeta Jones totally lip synced! Hated that! What a blah thing to do at the Oscar's...

Last Friday Connor had his first clinical practicum night with his "preceptor (aka cooperating doc). I heard nothing but wonderful things and am so relieved that C found a wonderful doctor role model who will be helpful to him.The only bad news is I lose my BFF on Friday night until 8ish! :( But that's just the life of the med school soon-to-be wife! It will only become more and MORE hectic than I can even imagine. So for now, I will just enjoy the fact that I still get to spend plenty of time with him. As soon as he got back we watched a movie, so it really was a nice way to end such a long and exhausting week.

On Saturday night, Connor and I went on a double date with one of his friends from school. We got delicious Greek food! I tried a falafel wrap for the first time and I loved it! Glad to have added a new food to my palette.

I've been kind of slacking with making new dinners, so I'm really going to try to make something different this week and post about it! :D That's my goal for the week.

<3Mandy

Is it Friday yet?

Holy cow, I am exhausted! This week has really taken its toll on me. I'm really looking forward to the weekend. I might never take off my pajamas and leave bed. Although, I really shouldn't do that because I've sadly fallen out of my gym routine. I've just been so busy lately with work and wedding planning. And when I come home, I can only find just enough energy to make dinner, clean up, and lay on the couch. :/ Okay, I feel guilty! Hopefully these delicious, peanut butter cup cookies I just baked and indulged in eating will be enough motivation to get on a treadmill. Connor was in love with them. Not only did he profess his love for the cookies aloud, but his persistent lip smacking was a good hint that he was really enjoying them. There is nothing more that I can ask for. I love filling his belly with yummy goodies, and hearing how much he enjoyed it. One of my many pleasures in life!

This has been a crazy teaching week. I was in the high school for 2 days and one day in Kindergarten. It was a huge shift to say the least! Kindergarten left me feeling like I had just been dragged by a semi-truck for ten miles. I probably couldn't even tell you my first name within the first ten minutes of getting home. It was...chaos. Yelling, sneezing, shoe-tying, paper-cutting, coloring chaos. Thankfully I lived to tell the tale.

Connor took a neuro exam on Monday and will be starting clinic this Friday. I know he will be wonderful and his doctor will love him! For the past couple of days, he was studying the GI tract and all that fun stuff, so we were having lots of vibrant conversations about... poop. Hope I didn't offend anyone! I think living with a med student makes one lose sense of what is appropriate content for everyday conversation. I have been completely desensitized (as will you should you continue to read this blog for the next six years!) But anyway, he's moved on but still focusing on the digestive system. He's currently doing his learning issue on the esophagus and stomach. Maybe I'll learn some new and gross to share with you in the upcoming days! ;)

Oh and I went veil shopping last week and it was MAGICAL. I can barely put it into words. When I first found my wedding dress, I had only been engaged for a few weeks. But putting it on again last weekend made me realize how real this all is and how I will be marrying my soulmate in just four months! I can't believe how quickly it's approaching. Last Sunday I went with Connor to pick out his tux for the wedding. It's all surreal, but very exciting. I also finally received my invitations and I can't wait to send them out. They are beautiful and perfect.

Hope everyone has a great end to their week!
<3 Mandy

Working with mannequins!?

I hope everyone has been getting back to normalcy after the crazy snow storm this past weekend. Friday was completely wacky! I live 8 minutes away from my school, but it took me 20 minutes to get home. And all of the students were just not in the mood to be in class, and I couldn't blame them! Having a full school day while a full blown snow storm was going on outside really wasn't easy. But once I got home, Connor and I opened a bottle of wine, ate dinner, baked brownies and watched The Woman in Black. Very spooky movie! It was a perfect Friday to be snowed in! :D All weekend, I curled up on the couch and worked on wedding invitations (which have been officially ordered!). 138 days until wedding day!

Today has been very strange for me! All day long I've had this weird feeling of restlessness mixed with moments of serious fatigue! It was so hard to teach through two periods of science back to back. I felt like a little kid or one of my students who just didn't want to be in class. Maybe it was too much caffeine because by fourth period I was exhausted. Last night I spent almost 2 HOURS planning for the rest of the week and I think it took its toll the next morning.

Connor had ICC today. BUT his patient wasn't a...human... as he/she normally would be. Today he only worked with a mannequin and to learn how to intubate the patient. It was important to get it down the trachea and into the lungs,  and to avoid missing the correct "hole" and filling the tummy with air. SCARY! I'm not sure how these med school students can deal with the pressure! Even working on a mannequin would make me completely frantic. I guess you just have to be born with the right disposition to be able to handle it. I would crumble...sadly. Luckily teaching gives me all the excitement I need!

Soon, he'll be working with a robot patient. Connor has been really looking forward to it. And so am I! I want to know what it will be like! Sounds so futuristic and cool. Oh and Connor completed his 2nd content exam on Monday! There are 6 of those big and annoying exams, so we're almost halfway there!

This weekend, I'm going shopping for my veil and I can't waaaaiiiiiit! I hear it might snow again and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it won't be bad enough to ruin the weekend. I've been really looking forward to this for almost a month now! I'm staying optimistic about it. :)

<3Mandy

Update!

Connor will be doing his clinical practicum at an Internal Medicine clinic that is only 15 minutes away from home! Pheww. We are both very relieved that he will be close by, seeing as some of his classmates were placed an hour away! :O The hours that he will be in the clinic are kind of stinky though (Friday evening!). But I know he will do a wonderful job and will learn so much! He starts next week... I can't wait to see how it goes. :)

<3Mandy

Translation, please?

Hello hello!! So much to catch up on! Getting back to teaching has been so exciting, but equally stressful and time consuming! I forgot how much work went into it. I've been planning like crazy, so I haven't been able to show my blog as much love as I would like to.

So far, being back in the high school has been great. Today was a very good day for the students, and I'm so proud because Friday was a bit chaotic. But I always expect that on Fridays. Who isn't restless on the eve of a weekend? Today I worked on building background for a story we will be reading for the next week and they really enjoyed it. Because the story takes place in Alabama during the early 1900s, I played some traditional southern folk music: "Alabama Jubilee." The kids got a kick out of it, which I was happy to see. It's always great to crack the hard exterior of a teenager... even if for a minute!

Tomorrow, Connor has a Neuro exam, so he's been studying a whole lot. But I'm starting to not be able to differentiate test studying and regular studying. It's all starting to blend and it all takes just as much time... like all day! Connor has been watching lectures using his headphones (as usual), but lately he's getting in the habit of talking to the lecture. So, it's like he's in class here in our quiet living room calling out random words or phrases. For example, I will be sitting in the living room on the computer and just hear: DORSAL! It's pretty startling to say the least. I assume he's trying to answer the professor's question before a student answers. I could ask him about it, but that would require sucking him out of his world. And when I do that, he manages to suck me in to his world by talking to me in medical lingo and it makes my brain hurt depending on how tired I am.

Medical school has a funny way of making these med students completely unaware of the complexity of what they learn and how normal non-medical people can't process all that heavy material at all hours of the day.. especially between the hours of 6am - 8am and 8pm - bedtime. This morning Connor started to talking to me about an email his school sent him about news regarding injections that would get rid of a double chin. Sounds simple right? Well, instead of what I just said, some of the words used in the email were "cell membranes" and "fat deposits." Okay, so at 9am that would be extremely comprehensible... practically elementary. However, at 6:30am he might as well have been speaking to me in German. I can barely make myself coffee at 6:30am, let alone decode medical jargon into everyday speech!

In other news! Connor should be finding out where he will be doing his clinical practicum tomorrow, which is exciting. Let's see where he is placed! He said he's hoping it will be a pediatric clinic. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for him.  I'll fill you guys in as soon as we find out!

Hope you have a great start to the week!
Mandy