Marie is a School Nurse

I have been working as a school nurse for almost 2 months now and am quite comfortable with the role and with the paycheck.  I still get confused and overwhelmed occasionally, but I think i am doing a better good job.  My main job is to provide care for 6 diabetic children who all attend one Elementary School.  I am also the nurse for one of the preschools.  I spend my day checking each child's blood sugar levels 2-3 times and administering insulin, either through a pump or a syringe.  The children are adorable and really fun to work with.  I have been enjoying them greatly thus far, but it stresses me immensely when the kids have either high bg or low bg and it won't normalize.  Working in the nurses office has been pretty enjoyable for me.  I deal with a lot of bloody noses, scrapes and scratches.  Kids come in all the time with sore throats and stomach aches, most of whom I have seen several times.  There have been many bumps on the head and even a broken arm.  I checked a kindergarten class for lice this week and sent out letters warning of fifth's disease.  I have done several assessments for IEPs.  I am taking an audiometry course so I will be qualified for hearing screenings.  My main project this week was Immunization Reports.  Since I only cover one school, my boss decided that I should do all of the Immunization  Reports for the 8 elementary schools and 8 preschools in the district.  The reports were originally due today, but the deadline has been extended until next Wednesday.  WooHoo!!!  I did complete 14 of the 16 this week and only have 2 more to go.

I really enjoy cooking and gardening lately.  Four of us girls in Relief Society share a garden in the on campus housing.  At the beginning of the summer, we planted over 20 tomato plants and they are currently coming out my ears.  I dehydrated over 15 pounds of tomatoes in the last couple weeks (into some awesome sun dried tomatoes) and there are still plenty left.  Kathy also canned a bunch and split the bounty with us.  We'll see what happens to the rest.  We plan to turn it into a winter garden in the very near future.  I made pizzas a couple times this month...once with some awesome pesto sauce I whipped up.  I also made burritos, lemon pepper chicken, apple stuffed pork chops, mini apple pies, rosemary/sun dried tomato bread and a couple kinds of cookies.  I love good food: )

We love being in California!!!  The weather has been amazing.  We enjoy cruising around town on our bicycles and walking to the farmer's market.  I have been on the job hunt for over a month now.  Not many people are interested in hiring new grads sadly enough.  Things are looking up however.  I had a pretty good interview at a care center today and will have an interview for a school nurse position on Thursday.  I am so glad I worked at Mesa Vista because it gives me an edge over other new graduates.  We have enjoyed spending lots of time with the Martineaus and enjoying many delicious meals.  This week, my mom and I received a box of free bell peppers, so we made lots of pepper jelly.  It was really fun and half the jars actually set up.  I will try to remake the others when it is not so hot outside...perhaps tonight.  Life is great.  We enjoyed a trip to Tillamook the last week of June.  We stayed in a converted church for a week with Landes' family.

Here I am with Faith and Tasi

 The adorable nieces and nephews I have obtained through Landes.

Landes with his siblings and Father

I am officially a Registered Nurse.  My authorization to test finally came last Friday and there were NCLEX openings on Monday or after July 1st.  I chose to get it over with.  Among celebrating our first anniversary with a fancy riverboat dinner and eating the cake on Sunday, I managed to do about 600 more practice questions.  Landes drove me to San Francisco and after finally finding a place to park, I went to take the NCLEX.  I was in the testing center for approximately 40 minutes and had answered 75 questions when the computer turned off.  I spent 5 years of my life studying for this exam and it was over in 30 minutes.  After the test, we walked around town for awhile and went to dinner with Landes' childhood friend. We went to Tadich Grill and ordered elegant seafood...delicious.  On the way home, we visited the family in Fairfield for some card games.  I spent the rest of the week applying for jobs in Woodland, Davis, Sacramento, and Vacaville.  People are rather reluctant to hire new graduates so wish me luck getting past that.  This morning I awoke to my name on the licensed registered nurse registry.  We spent the day celebrating with walks, a picnic, and going out to dinner.

New apartment in Davis