Georgia, Georgia, Christmas, ...Georgia, and Clinicals!

Oh my goodness, it's been quite a long time. So much has happened since then, so here's a very quick recap:

After Adam's actual birthday, we drove home for a surprise 30th birthday party for him that Tammy and I had planned. Although I don't think he was 100% surprised, I know he thoroughly enjoyed seeing and visiting with everyone.

This is the only decent photo that I got. :(

After Adam's birthday, we came back to Birmingham for another two weeks before we trekked back to Georgia for Christmas. During this time I finished the didactic phase of PA school. Holy mother, there is no better feeling. I really think this deserves it's own line, so I'll say it again.

I finished the didactic phase of PA school.

 For a while it didn't even seem real. Like it hadn't clicked yet or something. I was excited ... kinda, but I guess I was also distracted by Christmas crafting and things of the such. But after the new year, it really started settling in. And it feels real, real good. I'm pretty sure I've said that PA school for me feels analogous to climbing a mountain. Well, I really think I've made it to the top. I know that most may see graduation as reaching the top, but in my opinion, coming back down is half the battle. Clinicals = traveling down the mountain. Real life will continue once I've accomplished and attained this monumental mountain known as PA school. Real life starts on the other side. Adam and I are so ready for it! Less than a year!!

 (This is our "holy $&!%, we're about to treat real life patients??" face.)

So after school let out, I had LOTS of crafting to get done. What better way than to do it with friends?? So I had Katie and Casey over. Unfortunately I didn't get any pics of Casey, but she helped me with my wreaths again. I was pretty happy with how they (and everything else) turned out!

These are Katie's craft projects. I think they turned out great!

I made these a few days after our crafting party:

I guess it's hard to tell what's going on with the wine bottles. I sprayed them with adhesive and put Epsom salt on them to give them a snowy effect. 

So I was pretty busy during my break before Christmas. On Christmas Eve, we made our way to Georgia for what felt like the billionth weekend in a row. Christmas morning we started at my parents' house and then went over to Adam's parents'. Adam sent me on a super cute, super fun, and super creative treasure hunt for my Christmas present from him. I loved reading his little rhythms and solving the puzzles which ultimately lead to my new pearl stud earrings! I love them. :) He's been watching a lot of White Collar, the TV show, lately so he might have been prompted to do this because of that show. Either way, I loved it!

We came back to Alabama the weekend after Christmas, and then (surprise, surprise) drove back to Georgia the next weekend. We had not one, not two, but three parties to attend. We made it to all of them! And we had a great time. We drove straight to Bryan and Whitney's Friday night for Bryan's 30th birthday party and spent the night. Then on Saturday we drove home to my parents' and that evening we went to a wedding reception and ended the night at Lindsay and Jon's engagement party. We had a great time at both events!

On Sunday we came back to Birmingham and that next day, I started my clinicals! I'm already a week in! It's been terrifying, exhausting, empowering, amazing, exciting ... tons of emotions. This next year is going to be so different than what my classmates and I are used to, and we're all looking forward to that. Can't wait to continue and try out all the different specialties. It'll be a new job every five weeks! Very exciting. 

One of the gifts my mom gave me for Christmas is a daily devotional book called Jesus Calling by Sarah Young. I'm only on day 12 (because it's only Jan. 12th...) but I'm absolutely loving it so far. Every day I find that it definitely applies to me, and I'm excited to see how it continues to line up with my life right now and in the future over this next year. I know it'll make clinical year even easier and more enjoyable. Less than a year left! It's exciting to think "this time next year..." because this time next year I'll be finished with school and will either already be in, or will be shortly moving to Charleston. Woo!! Exciting things to come!

I'll leave you all with this photo of my sweet niece, Emma-Grace. She had a wilms tumor, but has been cancer free for two years! :)

Have a good evening, friends.

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OR, bird cages, wreaths, and paintings...a conglomeration of my month!

This is possibly the longest I've gone without blogging since I started The Tale of Two Heads.  I haven't necessarily been busier than normal per say, but I've been pretty damn tired. Being in the OR this month has really taken it out of me. Not so much the early mornings but more so having to go to class in the afternoons and study at night. That's the hard part. But being in the OR is so two-sided. It's very easy as a student to be pumped about assisting in surgeries, but it almost feels a little wrong to be so excited when you stop to think about the nervous and worried patients behind the charts and drapes, well, except for the elective procedures...I don't feel quite so bad getting excited about those. But with that being said, it's all part of the learning process, right? Anyway, I've seen some pretty awesome stuff in the OR...a facelift, mastectomy, craniotomies, rhinoplasties, total knee arthroplasties, vasectomy, tonsillectomies/adnoidectomies, diskectomies, cervical fusions, pancreatectomies, spleenectomy, inguinal hernia repairs, cholecyctectomies, sigmoidectomy, uterine prolapse repair...hmm, that might be all. :) And I've loved all of it. With that being said, I'm very curious about exploring the medical side of medicine. Surgery is incredibly interesting, but I can't wait to see what else is out there.

We have one week left of the semester and then summer break commences ... just in time for everyone else's to end. OMG I'm so ready for a break in school. Gonna be honest. I'm so over everything right now. I'm over living in an apartment, I'm over living in Birmingham, I'm over going to class every. single. day. To make myself feel better I daydream about living in Charleston and visiting the ocean every single day instead. Mmmm. Can't wait.

So, not much has been going on here in Bham. A few weeks back we went home for a retirement party for our band directors. They've played a significant role in both mine and Adam's lives, and they're very close friends of both our families so we most definitely wanted to support them. It was wild seeing so many alum there! And it's always fun to catch up and hear what everyone's doing now. As much of a whirlwind weekend as it was, we're both glad we went.

These past two weekends we've gotten the dogs out of the house and visited a farmer's market and a sidewalk sale in downtown Homewood. There definitely are fun and cute little areas of Birmingham. This weekend we also went to an antique store. I'm on the lookout for an old bird cage...I wanna make something kinda like this...

See, I've kinda neglected my plants outside and some of them croaked on me. :/ So I figured if I got a bunch of succulents it'd be pretty hard for me to kill them! And why not display them in a cute little bird cage?? Anyway, we found several little bird cages, but I didn't feel like spending $40 on them so we walked away. Can you negotiate in an antique store? I don't even know...

Over the past month or so I also made a few wreaths! I made one for myself and one for Bryan and Whitney for their new home. This one is B&W's:

And this one's mine:

I like mine, I'm just not sure I love it. It's growing on me still. I'm much happier with the one I made for B&W's new home, which is a good thing because I don't think you should keep your best work for yourself. Anyway, I actually gave it to them a few days after July 4th (their housewarming party was on the 6th), but I see nothing wrong with showing a little patriotism at anytime/all the time. If I wanna hang a little red, white, and blue after Independence Day then dammit I will! Merica! People have American flags hanging year round, right? No difference.

I'm about to make this wreath for my sister-in-law. I'll report back on how it turns out later.

Last thing. So, you may remember me talking about a painting I saw in Charleston back around Christmas. It was at a friend of a friend's house, Adam and I were staying there to visit the city. The painting was very inspirational and really helped me get past the big bumps in my first two semesters of PA school. It's my computer backdrop and the lock screen photo on my phone. To refresh your memory here's a pic of the painting:

Well as it turns out, this painting now belongs to me. :) The friend of a friend got married recently, and in the midst of combining homes with her new husband it was decided that she didn't really need it anymore so our mutual friend, Katie Stone, passed it on to me. It meant a whole lot to me. As silly as it may sound it's very special that I get to keep this. Thank you Jordan and KPS. :)

So anyway, that's about it. That's all the updates I've got! Adam and I have a busy break planned so there'll be a bunch to come, but until then!

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Christmas Break

Just like that, I find myself two days away from starting my second semester of PA school. I'm so ready to OWN this semester. Things are going to be very different. I won't be the little weak newbie that I was last time. Nope. I'm ready. Plenty have gone before me and survived, there will be more after me, the important thing to keep in mind is that I need to keep on going.

So, I have TONS of recapping to do so without further ado ...

The first week of break, I cleaned our apartment like a crazy person. I had seriously neglected our home during finals. I literally don't think there was a single exciting thing that I did. No wait! I did have lunch with Mallory and Grayson. :) It was fun hanging out with them before they took off for Christmas break.

When Friday finally got here, Adam and I packed up the dogs and drove to GA. It was so nice being home, but we were only there for a quick second. Saturday morning we went to Columbia, SC for Chris and Katie's wedding. It was so much fun! Here's a picture of Casey, Katie and me in our signature pose. :)

After we left the wedding, Adam and I drove to Charleston for a few nights. Thankfully, some of Katie's amazing friends let us stay in their house in Charleston while they went home for Christmas. More on that in a minute. So, Adam and I have tossed around the idea of moving there after I graduate, but neither of us have ever been so we wanted to go exploring. After having been, it's safe to say we LOVED it. It wasn't really what I was expecting. I thought Charleston would be more like Savannah, GA ... after all they are sister cities. But in my opinion Savannah is more sophisticated, southern money, aristocratic. Charleston seemed a little more fun loving, laid back ... kinda like Key West meets marsh land. 

While we were there, we drove around a whole bunch just to visit the different islands of Charleston and to sight-see. We really liked Mt. Pleasant, but apparently according to Chris (Katie's new husband -- they both lived there. In fact, that's where they met!) James Island and Johns Island are cooler. I guess this means Adam and I have to go back sometime to explore some more. Dang. We ate at some fantastic restaurants, and I would especially like to give a shout out to Fleet Landing. It's a neat little hole in the wall kind of place right on the water. It's in downtown Charleston. I've never had shrimp and grits that delicious in my life - and I LOVE shrimp and grits. And the view was beautiful. We sat outside with heat lamps and blaring Christmas music and actually saw a dolphin swimming right outside the restaurant (which is apparently normal there). It was absolutely perfect. 

So this house we stayed in - it was on James Island in a super cute neighborhood. Two of Katie's friends live there, Jordan and Molly. Jordan just recently graduated from MUSC and is now working as a PA! Unfortunately I didn't catch what Molly does. :/ Anyway, if you will remember in my previous post I mentioned that I saw a sign, and that's where the "She" poem/book came from. Well here's the explanation for that ... so, hanging in one of the bathrooms of their house is this painting.

I hope Jordan's sister doesn't mind that I just posted her art on the internet. :) Anyway, when I saw this hanging in their bathroom, I realized that all of my hardships from this past semester were in my head. I can do this and I will make this happen. It's as simple as that. So I went to look up this quote and I found that it was from the book/poem that I blogged about before. I thought the whole thing was inspirational, so I hope you enjoyed it. :)

After we left Charleston, we went home for Christmas and I got to meet up with some friends back home. It was great seeing Carly and Jenn and Kelsey and Ashley! I've missed all of those girls. And then Friday night and Saturday we hung out with our big group of friends. I know everyone had a great time that night ... let's just say memories were definitely made ... for some of us. ;)

Unfortunately Sunday we had to drive back to Birmingham because Adam had to work on Monday, but he had Tuesday off! And lo and behold, Rob and Jenny happened to be in town! So we celebrated New Year's with them here at our apartment. And on Thursday I hung out with Katie all day and we took back some wedding gifts and bought some other stuff. It was fun helping her spend hundreds of dollars. :)

So this pretty much brings me up to here. My brother is coming to stay with us for the next few days (his army reserve unit is stationed near here), which will be fun! And I guess that's pretty much it. I know there's a lot of boringness in here, but I didn't want to make anyone feel left out! :)

Ugh, I just realized the next time I blog, I will have completed the first week of this semester. But that's ok. Bring it on.

Later friends!

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Inspiration

I have so much to update about with Christmas and visiting with friends and things of the sort. However, this is more important right now. When I was in Charleston, I saw a sign. It opened up my eyes! I'll explain more later, but anyway, after doing some research I saw that the sign was a line from a book called "She" by Kobi Yamada. I found a list of quotes below that I believe are more lines from the same book and I really loved it. I'm not sure why this book was originally written (it almost sounds like it's written for someone who has passed) but it's super inspirational and I wanted to share it with all of you! So here goes.

She 

She must be something special. She is. Celebrate her.
She loved life and it loved her back. Celebrate her passion.
She listened to her heart above all other voices. Celebrate her wisdom.
She pursued big dreams instead of small realities. Celebrate her priorities.
She saw every ending as a new beginning. Celebrate her resiliency.
She discovered her real measurements had nothing to do with numbers or statistics. Celebrate her self-esteem.
She was kind, loving and patient…with herself. Celebrate her tenderness.
She woke up one day and threw away all her excuses. Celebrate her accountability.
She realized that she was missing a great deal by being sensible. Celebrate her spirit.
She turned her can’ts into cans, and her dreams into plans. Celebrate her goals.
She ignored people who said it couldn’t be done. Celebrate her independence.
She had a way of turning obstacles into opportunities. Celebrate her magic.
She went out on a limb, had it break off behind her, and discovered she could fly. Celebrate her faith.
She discovered she was the one she’d been waiting for. Celebrate her self-reliance.
She added so much beauty to being human. Celebrate her presence.
She walked in when everyone else walked out. Celebrate her friendship.
She just has this way of brightening the day. Celebrate her radiance.
She made the whole world feel like home. Celebrate her warmth.
She decided to enjoy more and endure less. Celebrate her choices.
She decided to start living the life she’d imagined. Celebrate her freedom.
She colored her thoughts with only the brightest hues. Celebrate her optimism.
She was an artist and her life was her canvas. Celebrate her brilliance.
She ran ahead where there were no paths. Celebrate her bravery.
She crossed borders recklessly, refusing to recognize limits, saying bonjour and buon giorno as though she owned both France and Italy and the day itself. Celebrate her joie de vivre.
She held her head high and looked the world straight in the eye. Celebrate her strength.
She not only saw a light at the end of the tunnel she became that light for others. Celebrate her compassion.
She designed a life she loved. Celebrate her joy.
She took the leap and built her wings on the way down. Celebrate her daring.
She said bye-bye to unhealthy relationships. Celebrate her happiness.
She remained true to herself. Celebrate her authenticity.
She made the world a better place. Celebrate her.

By Kobi Yamada

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