The *gulp* Budget

So A and I started a budget this month. So far so good. We didn't fight when we set it up and have only had a couple minor disagreements so far in the implementation stage. :) We are trying to use more cash and save more.

I can see why the book we are reading recommends all cash, no credit. Even our debit card tends to be very easy to use for impulse buys. If I have the cash in my hand it is much harder to buy that *whatever it is*. With a card, I think "Oh, I need this. I forgot to put this on the list," and into the cart or basket it goes.

We are working on it, and this is definitely an eye-opener in how much we spend and where we spend it. Has our savings grown? I'm not sure yet. We will see. I have a busy day ahead of me so I need to get going. As Snoopy would say, "It's a new day. Dive right in!" :) Actually Snoopy wouldn't say that. He doesn't talk. But he would think it.

Next week, memories of my great-grandma. :) TTFN. :)

The Most Relaxing Place on Earth

Do you have that one place? That place that makes you feel better no matter what? That place that you can go to or even think about when times seem worst, or are most stressful? Mine is the cottage.

My husband's family (first his grandparents and now his parents and aunt and uncle) has owned the cottage for more than 40 years. It is on a lake in Northern Wisconsin and is everything a cottage should be.

The cottage is just that--a cottage. It has running water, electricity, two bedrooms and a fireplace; to be a true Up-North cottage a fireplace is mandatory. It is not a house. It is very small. When all of us (10 total) go up for Independence Day, at least 5 of us usually sleep in tents outside. That is not very easy that weekend; many people go north for the 4th of July and the lake is busy and many people sit up late drinking and listening to music, LOUD music. Sleep does not come easily. Even at midnight people are outside.

The time that is best to go to the cottage is basically any non-holiday weekends. I would love to be able to go during the week when it is even quieter, on the lake and in towns nearby, but that would mean taking time off work. So we go weekends--its still basically free for us.

We drive for an hour and experience a getaway that would be worth a much longer drive. We bring up our food, pick the bedroom nearest the water and sit on the dock and fish. Maybe later we will take out the boat and fish on the other side of the lake. Or we could go for a bike ride to the ice cream shop that is one of our must's whenever we go up. Tomorrow we might go mini-golfing.

Yes, it relaxing. Yes, most weekends it is quiet. There are many fun options for things to do. But why do I love the cottage? Why is it my favorite place in the whole world? There are several parts to that answer.

3. Sometimes getting away, even just a short distance, is the best medicine. I don't know about your family, but I come from a family of chronic hard-workers (I also married one). You can't just take a weekend off at home. Sitting at home all you can think of are all the projects that you should be working on. Getting away, there aren't the stresses of the house and the projects.

2. We have a history there. :) When me and A started dating, I was a chicken. He told me after a month that he loved me. I kinda freaked out and didn't say it back. The next weekend, (my first ever at the cottage) after I met his sister, her husband and their kids, I told A "I love you" while sitting on the deck overlooking the water.

1. There are not many places in the world that are truly quiet. Where you can hear the sound of the water moving in the lake. You can at the cottage. It makes me feel closer to God just being there. It is truly the most relaxing place on earth. Just sitting on the deck listening to the water and the loons. *Sigh* I wish it was summer now.

Well, I'm moving on to the rest of my day. Next week the plan is to talk some about the new budget plan that A and I are starting. So far so good. :) No big fights yet. Hope you have a great week.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

Oscars
I watched part of the Oscars last night. I like knowing what is going on in entertainment, but I honestly wasn't super interested in what was actually going on--who was getting Academy Award and who was getting snubbed... I was actually really interested in the dresses. 


I find it funny going through pictures online the day after. I go through all the report cards and see what "the experts" grade each dress and tux. 


Most of the time I don't agree. Although I do agree with Yahoo!'s assessment of Kelly Osbourne's purple gray hair. Not a fan. I like seeing all the sparkle, glitz and high fashion glamour. 


I went to bed before they were done. Like I said, I'm not a "super fan," I watch but I'm not attached at the hip to the TV. In reality, they really don't matter. I'm sure to someone the little golden statue would be worth more than all the money in the world. 


But have those people really made a difference? Have they developed a cure to AIDS? Cancer? Have they brought clean drinking water to those who have none? Some do their part--Ben Affleck, Angelina Jolie, and others do try to help. Overwhelmingly, the rich and famous don't care much about their own staff, let alone the less fortunate in other parts of the world.


Economy
So is the economy actually getting better? I know that experts say it is, but I also have seen local families struggle as husbands, wives, fathers, mothers lost their jobs. These have been recent developments--not jobs lost three years ago and families on welfare since then. 


According to the news, Detroit is having trouble keeping up with demand right now. The automakers are hiring and people are starting to buy big ticket items again. For me the real test of the economy will actually be the housing market. When there are fewer foreclosures and more home sales, or at least the numbers are moving lower and higher, respectively, then I will think that the American economy is healing. 


Moving on
:) So, this week's post was a little different than what I've been doing. I'm not sure I like it. I promised a post, so this is it. I will definitely put more thought into next week's post. We shall see what I come up with. Ttfn.

Of Des Moines and Cake Decorating. Also Responsibility and Friends

Cupcakes are results of weekend fun
:) Good headline, right? My cousin and I are both into cake decorating. (I made a 3-layer 50th anniversary cake for my grandparents over the holidays this past year). So every time we get together we either make cupcakes or (a newer tradition) noodles. Don't know where the noodles came from but these are the cupcakes we made last weekend.

They were originally penguins from the book Hello, Cupcake! but they ended up only loosely based on them. For starters we had blue and pink penguins so you could tell the boys and girls apart (we learned this trick from the Feature Films for Families movie Scamper the Penguin--one of the greatest movies ever by the way). Then we used fondant instead of dipping the penguins in melted icing. We used heart marshmallows instead of regular round ones. So instead of perfect little penguins, we ended up with things that no one could recognize as them. The only way you could remotely tell that they were penguins was if like the one on the left we didn't put the flippers on. However, as my cousin informed me: She cut the cookies (they were hard and shattered easily) so we WERE using them. :)

Other fun in the Land of the Iowans: We went to a Buccaneer game--the local hockey team. I was good luck! They won. Plus I learned how to ice skate afterwards. They let anyone who wants to borrow skates for free after games and skate for half an hour or 45 minutes. It was fun, but I'm not used to the ground being the slippery part. I'm used to the skates moving (roller skating) not the ground--it really felt like it was moving! It was weird. Saturday we went real skating with wheels and everything! That was fun. We heard the birthday song three times for all the birthday parties that day. :)

More eventually on cake decorating--I really should post pictures. :)

So that was last week's post. I went home to my parents' last Monday and didn't have time to blog. 

 Blog Today:
My boss is gone from work this week and I am somewhat in charge. Kind of nerve wracking honestly. I am a lifeguard at a local pool and what I really don't want is a chlorine pump to stop working or something. Also we have a new school group in this week so the patrons are adjusting to a new schedule for the next few weeks, too. We are super busy, but that is good. The days go fast. I am actually opening the pool (5:30AM)  every day this week. I don't normally open on Mondays but I was needed today so I did.

So yesterday at a good friend's daughter's birthday party, I talked to a dear friend. Her family has a membership at the pool I work at and she was telling me that her daughters (who are very dear to my heart) had off school today. She mentioned they might come see me at work today, then remembered that they had lessons at 4. They probably wouldn't come to the pool twice in a day.

After I got off work at around 10, I was thinking to myself how good it would be to see them. So I called and they weren't busy. I went over and we all had a lovely time. I colored and played Barbies with the girls and me and my friend were able to sit and sip coffee and catch up. It was lovely.

So often we get so caught up in the hustle and bustle of everyday that we forget to take a timeout for life. Yes, there was laundry and housework waiting for me at home--including tile demolition in our first floor bathroom. But you want to know something? It was still there when I got home this afternoon. And I am going into the rest of the week with the recharge that I took today spurring me on.

Life is so busy and too many times we let ourselves burn out or just run the pace that we think we should. Honestly, the times I look back on with the most fondness and the ones that gave me the energy I needed to make it through are the times that I stopped and took some time to hang out and catch up and bounce ideas and thoughts off of a dear friend. Just a thought, but you could try it too.

My Time Volunteering: What I've learned and Where it's taking me

So I have been volunteering at a local hospital for two years. I worked up until last Friday in the ICU waiting room on Saturday mornings. The surgery waiting room is actually not staffed on the weekends. This means that families of patients having emergency surgery (they don't schedule non-emergency surgeries on the weekend) were sent to my waiting room. There weren't always many people in the ICU waiting room. Often, I had time to study and there was a TV at my station--I watched reruns of America's Next Top Model when it was on. 

I always hoped there wouldn't be many people in the waiting room. Walking in to find consult rooms with notes taped on the doors saying "Please don't disturb" and family members asleep on the couches and in the chairs scattered in clumps throughout the main waiting room, meant long nights and even longer days. It meant tears that I couldn't help. Hearts breaking as loved ones live their final hours. 

The end was not always near. Many families would enter a consult room with a doctor halfway through the morning, come out several minutes later, and you could tell, even though the day was almost half gone, the sun had just come up for that family. 

But the ICU is a place of contradictions. Hope and Fear. Death and Healing. Exhaustion and Rest. And many families who enter that waiting room do leave hurting. 

In my time in the ICU waiting room, I tried to not intrude in the lives of the people who were worried and tired--which meant I tried not to intrude on anyone. Everyone was there for a reason. I did try to offer conversation if they initiated. I felt like talking about mundane normal things could offer them almost a vacation from the situation they were in. 

I was often doing something unique--crocheting dish clothes, studying biology or looking over MCAT stuff. Doing something unexpected intrigued people walking by. They would ask what I was making, studying and we could talk for a while. Often it was just about me to start. Eventually, talk would come around to the loved one they were waiting for. What happened? Why? I wasn't allowed to ask the questions, but many times after we talked for a while it would just come out. I was able to ask people if they minded if I prayed for them and their patient. I was never told not to.

Many days I went home feeling like I had not helped anyone, like I hadn't made a difference. I would go home and cry for the families that were hurt and broken. For the mother and the husband who came out of the ICU crying, carrying the giant stuffed bear and tennis shoes of the daughter and wife who had just passed away. For the 20 people who were there for their mother, grandmother, aunt, wife, and came out of the meeting room (there were too many to fit in a consult room) with the doctor, crushed because there was no hope left. 

Life in the ICU is hard. It is draining. I have more respect for the nurses and doctors who help give dignity to the families and patients than I ever could have had I not had this experience. But I am worn out. I went to see my coordinator last week and we talked about where I can go. Since I got married Saturdays don't work very well. The newlywed in me wants to be home when my husband is. :) Plus we are gone many weekends. Also, I wanted somewhere less hard. Somewhere I can talk to more people. Somewhere that I won't go home from and cry. I need a recharge. I am getting my recharge.

BUT. When I have recharged, when I am happy again, I am going to the PCU (Palliative Care Unit). The PCU is where people who are dying go. To Palliate is (according to dictionary.com) to relieve or lessen without curing, to alleviate. We can make them comfortable, but not make them better. The cool thing about the PCU though is that it is one of the only places in the hospital where I (a volunteer) can get direct patient contact hours. I can basically do the work of a CNA and actually HELP. I can see the patients and do what is needed. I will need additional training but I am excited.

I am not scared of death. I know I need to have experience with it. All life ends in death in this world and being a doctor I will see it more often then most. However, how I look at my job as a doctor in relation to death will make a difference in if death is a drain on my life or not. If I am crushed every time I lose a patient,  my heart would not be able to continue on. A good friend of my parents and me is a doctor. He told us that he looks at it as a privilege to help escort each person from this life to the next. I want to look at it like that as well. 

This is long. I will be done for this week. Looking forward to next week, I will be blogging about a recent trip to Des Moines to see my cousin. You might even get a pic of us decorating cupcakes. (We both love cake decorating). TTFN.

Phase I: The House-Garage-Barn

First, after promising my husband this blog would not become my new facebook--aka I would not be blogging all day every day--I decided that Monday is my blog day. That way it is not taking up time during the weekend or time at night during the week when neither of us work. I don't work on Mondays for now so this is perfect. So Monday = Blog day. :) Anyway on to business...

Right now my husband and I live in the city. Not a big city but a city. We both grew up in the country. My husband, A, hates the city (I'm not a huge fan myself). His parents own a bunch of land near the land their house is on, which also happens to be where he grew up. The land is in different places. It isn't all in adjacent parcels so there are a few options. A certain chunk has always been A's favorite. His parents gave us five acres from that parcel and we are going to build "Phase I" or "The House-Garage-Barn".  The land is many more acres than that and we hope to buy the whole lot eventually.

Phase I:

This is my idea for what we call what we are building. It hasn't stuck even though it is much shorter than the alternative. We are building this structure in the same general area as we will (someday) build our house. However, when we build a house we want it to be "right." We don't want to build and then add on and then remodel. We want to build it and be done. We definitely could not afford that right now. So we build something small that will get us out of town that will still be usable when we have a house. Enter......

The House-Garage-Barn:

The original plan was to build a garage/carriage house type structure with an apartment above it. This way when we build our "real house" we can still use the garage area as a workshop and the apartment as a guest house. When we started looking at plans, the original idea actually looked kind of boxy. So we spent a lot of time looking at plans and finding something that suited our needs without looking weird. 

We found the House-Garage-Barn. It looks like an old-style barn on the outside, has a two-car garage and *perk for A* a workshop area (He does woodworking on the side--his current project is refacing the cabinets in our current house). The upstairs is a 900-ish sq. ft. apartment. 

One great reason that we love this plan is that there is a lot of storage space in the first floor. We have a house that is double the size of the the apartment we are moving to. Although we don't have enough furniture to fill it by a long shot, we have enough junk from the years of living on our own (including 3 copies of the Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl on DVD) to fill up any and all storage space. 

One other thing we are excited about is that we don't have to have a house style picked out before building Phase I. We don't have to worry about the house matching the building.  Most places that have a detached garage build the house and garage together and build them to match. Many properties have a barn and the barn doesn't match the house. So we have a cool looking building that won't match our house and won't look weird because it doesn't match. 

Not sure what next week's topic is yet. We shall see what I come up with over the week. For now I have to get going with the rest of my day. :) As Tigger says, "TTFN-Ta Ta for Now!" :) Have a good week.

Blog the First

So this is my first time blogging. I feel like I might have something different and unique to say. Maybe I do or maybe my family will be the only ones to subscribe. I guess we will find out. So here we go!

I quit facebook last week because I realized that all it did was waste my time. I never really talked to anyone on it. I didn't use it to stay in contact. I played games and looked at profiles and pictures--mostly of people I didn't know. So I started a blog because this way I can talk(type) and maybe along the way I can make some new friends, encourage someone, make someone laugh.

Now that you know why I started a blog, here is a little about me. I am 24, married to my best friend, and a college graduate(almost twice). I finished the coursework I needed to apply for medical school in December. I need to take the MCAT(Medical College Admission Test) this spring. Yes, I am going to be a doctor. Hopefully. My actual bachelor degree is in Marketing. A stretch from marketing to medical? Maybe. Here's how it worked: ever since I was a little kid I went back and forth between marketing and the medical field.

Age 8: When I grow up, I want to be a pediatrician.
Why: In the movie Joe versus the Volcano with Tom Hanks, there is a scene where Joe is waiting to see his psychiatrist and the waiting room is awful. Like bland-city! I thought, "If I were a doctor, I could make my waiting room so much cooler than that!" I wanted to have those mini-recliners in my office for little kids. And cool paint on the walls--bright, happy colors and my nurses would wear the coolest scrubs.

Age 11-ish: Marketing is so cool! I think I could do it.
Why: Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster in What Women Want are advertising executives and got to come up with the coolest campaigns for everything from Tylenol to Nike. This would give me an outlet for my creativity.

Age 16: Midwife. I definitely want to be a midwife.
Why: I love babies and taking care of women while they are pregnant and helping bring new life into the world would be awesome.

Age 20: Declare Marketing as my major at the beginning of my third year of college.
Why: I was living in a town far away from my family and my boyfriend. I had been oscillating between medicine and business for years. I wanted to be done with school.

Age 21(three months and a birthday after declaring marketing major): Doctor, I need to be a doctor. However, I keep the marketing major.
Why: I realized that just wanting to be done with school is not enough of a reason to decide anything about the rest of my life. I knew after three months in the business school that it wasn't a good fit for me. I needed to find something that would let me help people. Being a doctor is the most tangible way possible to help people. As a marketer, I would have woke up every morning for the rest of my working life and hated going to work. I had changed my mind so many times. I didn't want to be a quitter. So I didn't change my major.

Age 22: Graduated from college after 3 1/2 years. Degree in Marketing with emphasis in Marketing Analytics. Moved closer to where I wanted to be. Started classes to get prereq's for medical school done (who knew that a degree in marketing wouldn't get you too far towards medical school?). Thinking about Primary Care. (Primary Care Physicians are pediatricians, family practitioners and doctors specializing in internal medicine. They are the front lines of medical care and are those who develop the most long term relationships with their patients).

Age 23:  Do a two week medical preceptorship at a local clinic. I got to see so many procedures, meet so many people and get a glimpse into so many different specialists and primary care physicians lives and practices. It was the best experience, career-wise, that I have ever had. I came out of it knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that I want to be a doctor. I also knew that I want to practice primary care. I want the relationships.

Age 24(now): Looming primary care physician shortage. I have just finished my prerequisites for medical school. Studying hard for the MCAT. I am so glad I didn't take it last spring while working 25 hours a week, going to school full time and planning my wedding. Now I am married, working full time and studying. I took Biochemistry in the fall and am feeling much more prepared than I would have been last year. It pushed back med school for a year, but I firmly believe that everything happens for a purpose.

More to come.....