Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

Once again, I get to celebrate the birth of the Savior with family. Sometimes, that just means Mark and me. But this year, it means my immediate family: parents-in-law, siblings-in-law, and nephews; soon I will be able to celebrate with my parents and most of my siblings. Because Christmas means God extended so many blessings to our most treasured relationships—peace, love, forgiveness, and an assurance of the permanency of those relationships—it carries an additional depth of meaning to be able to be near loved ones. But this Christmas morning, as I listen to music joyously proclaiming Christ’s divinity, power, and love, I am grateful for the quiet before others wake. I get to have, in a sense, one-on-one time with Heaven. I get to feel His love for me personally, and I get to feel the thrill of God’s triumph over sadness, pain, and death. That doesn’t mean I don’t have any sadness or pain. At the moment, I am acutely aware of my smashed-in-the-door finger, of a now-chroni

Last weekend my youngest brother and his wife came to DC, making them our first official visitors. I wanted Jaron and Liz to experience the best we had to offer--which was an air mattress, couch, and cold cereal for breakfast. We don't own red carpet. Anyway, while I was still at work, Mark took them to see the National Gallery of Art, the Air and Space Museum, and probably other things but I wasn't there so I can't say. I joined them for a late lunch, and suggested that if they really wanted to get in the DC mood, they should join a protest group. Turns out they had passed a protest, but since it was anti-vaxers, they weren't inclined to join, and if they--all 3 of them--had protested the protest, they probably would have been insulted and injured. I think that's close enough to the true DC atmosphere that we agreed to cross that off the list. Because we are all adults, we decided it was naptime, which we heartily did for a couple of hours, making us late f

* note: for some reason I can't add pictures. I will work on that. eventually.* If I ever move to Seattle, I'm renaming my blog " The Seattle Sun. " Because it's quirky and unforeseen and would make me laugh. Although honestly, the past 3 times I've visited Seattle, I've seen a good amount of sunshine. And also honestly, I could be overestimating the sun's sky presence because I was mostly in windowless rooms during the day, because that's the most appropriate place to have an oncology conference. [I don't actually think that; a cancer diagnosis now has a fair bit of hope in it because of the amount of research and money devoted to its relief.] The JADPRO  conference was recommended to me by coworkers, and when I saw that it was a) aimed at advanced practitioners, b) all about oncology, and c) in a city where friends of mine live, I signed right up. I stayed in a very-small temporary apartment place down by Pike's Market, and got awak

This past week, I attended a medical conference on treatments for gastrointestinal cancers (which include livers and pancreases, by the way). I learned a lot, but the most important thing I learned that day was not to implicitly trust Google Maps. The conference was held at a hotel in Crystal City (geography lesson: the Virginia border near DC), and my husband and I had checked Google Maps the night before and figured out that since it was just as long for me to drive there as to take the Metro, I should take the Metro and thus save on parking. So the morning of the GI oncology meeting, I put in the directions on my phone and rode to the directed stop, The Pentagon (which is also in Virginia across from DC). On exiting the station, I carefully chose to take the stairs that were for non-Pentagon-employees, then held out my phone in front of me like a water-divining-rod and started walking where my phone told me to go. It was tricky, because there aren't a whole lot of sidewa

I am happy to announce that, although I still don't know exactly what I'm doing in medical oncology, I no longer feel like I'm drowning. Is that positive, or what? Some of my favorite stories: One of my patients reported that when she was first starting chemotherapy infusions, she mentioned to her doctor (Dr W, one of the two that I work with) that she was worried no one was keeping an eye on her mediport site [a mediport is an indwelling IV that can be accessed with a poke of a needle but otherwise is hidden under skin] . He responded, "What do you think the infusion nurses do, throw darts at it?" I was seeing a follow-up patient for a discussion of chemo treatment after surgery when I learned he was still on meds his surgeon had given him 3 weeks ago. I also simultaneously learned he was having bowel movements every 10 minutes. Guess what pills he was still taking? Stool softeners. When I was first orienting to the Georgetown hospital, I met with the r

Several weeks ago, Mark and I went to the Maryland State Fair. Because I am lazy, I am blogging about it now. Well, I also have a second fair-type event that we went to much more recently (aka yesterday), so I'm just combining the two events into One blog post. I mean, the similarities: both about 1 hour away, both with educational and fun activities, both had food, both had lots of people we didn't know....Clearly, they're basically identical. It is quite possible we enjoyed the second fair more (it was a Pioneer Day celebration, which in Mormon culture refers to the people who traveled from the eastern United States to Salt Lake City in the 1840s-ish ), because it wasn't as hot, and it was free. I also get to brag that I got a "nothing-but-air" bean bag toss in the hole, and I have witnesses. Unfortunately, I couldn't repeat it (I'm inconsistent with my sport skills), but still, it was cool. On top of that, I challenged Mark to a hoop roll race-

Have you ever had a feeling that a certain moment in your life will define your family for generations? That your grand++-children will say, wow, that girl (or dude) was tough? Maybe. Maybe not. It's certainly reminiscent of Sam's thoughts at the end of the second The Lord of the Rings , when he considers that what he and Frodo are doing is going to become legend for future people, relatives and friends and acquaintances and strangers alike. I am not carrying the One Ring. In case you were wondering. Also, I don't think strangers will ever hear about my life. But I have the distinct impression that how I survive these next few years will drastically influence my [currently nonexistent] descendants. We--my husband and I, as a team--are working through depression and anxiety, new employment and unemployment, loneliness and isolation. We're figuring out a lifestyle that will accommodate the increased cost of rent and groceries and transportation. We're refining a

I've noticed that being a new nurse practitioner is significantly different than being a new nurse. In fact, the whole process is different. The best way I can describe it is comparing it to plants: nursing school was a lot of prep work to just vaguely understand the medical field--all of the harrowing [actually, yes, both meanings of the word. this is a great analogy, I can tell] and manuring and watering and planting--and then the New Nurse is gonna grow and experience life-outside-of-dirt and learn from all of the other Nurses, in various stages of growth, around her (or him. but it's usually her). I don't really feel like, as a new nurse practitioner, I was "emerging" from one world into another. It's more like I was already a flowering plant, but then I decided to become a flowering tree [Which, I realize, doesn't much happen in bona fide botany]. I already know what the medical field is, how the terrain lies in general, but now I'm supposed to f

Mark and I are more settled now. We finally have a couch, we have a decent handle on groceries, and I've figured out the routine of getting to and from work. But we're still new enough to realize that living here is weird. Example: DC roads are strange--intersections at tight angles, streets that drop off the map then pick back up later, and cars that use any available section of street as a makeshift parking lot just by turning on their hazard lights and jumping out of the car. Also, the cars that park in the right hand lane, making it necessary to merge left about every 4th block. And then this sign. I don't know what it's saying Because parking at the hospital isn't an option (price- and availability-wise), and because Georgetown declined to have a metro rail line extend their direction, I take the metro for 20 minutes, then get on a 20 minute shuttle bus provided by Georgetown University, then walk 10 minutes from the university campus to the hospital. The

On our Baltic trip, we saw loads of museums, but the ones that were most memorable were the ones we couldn't go in. Museum of the Occupation --We passed this building when we first arrived in Vilnius on our way to our hotel. We walked back to it that evening, because Mark loves military history stuff, but it was The outside of the Occupation Museum closed because it was Father's Day in Lithuania. So we tried going to it the next day, but apparently many museums in the area stay closed on Monday. Each time we tried, we walked a significant length to reach it, which made it all the more frustrating. Kiek in de Kök --Located in Tallinn, Estonia. From what our guide told us, this means "Peek in the kitchen," but it is not, in fact, a kitchen, but an artillery tower from the 15th century that is now a museum of the town's fortifications. We tried going there after first arriving in Tallinn, but since it was only an hour before it closed, the museum

One of the first things I cared about on our trip was a bed. Thanks to jet lag, and flying overnight, when we got into Vilnius, I was ready for a nap. [Actually, I slept fairly well on the flight over, thanks to Mark's conveniently close shoulder. Thanks, babe.] Mark convinced me to go exploring instead, but every day naturally ended with a bed. Having spent half of my trip in one, this is what I can tell you about European hotel rooms: Most of the rooms had 2 twin beds that were separated by 2 inches. It's almost like sleeping in the same bed, but not. Mark liked that I couldn't steal his covers. Space is tight. Sometimes, space is super tight. Like that time we stayed in an inn where the toilet was literally in the shower [you had to close the toilet lid and remove the toilet paper before showering], and the bunk-beds took up 7/8 of the room [okay, I didn't actually measure, but you get the idea]. A couple of the hotels had a moving shower door, so that

~ In which Sadie and Mark discover a local barber shop~ During our trip in eastern Europe, Mark had been hinting that I needed a hair cut. My hair had now reached my butt, but I didn't have much motivation to chop it off until I tried to do yoga binds and got more tangled than I had intended. I looked up nearby hair salons, but none of them were ones I recognized; and, afraid of getting scalped [monetary-wise, not hair-wise] , I chose the one that had a review that it was decently priced. So I go to the establishment and take a seat, and then I start noticing that every single person is African-American and male. I start to worry that I've made the wrong choice, but then I see a white guy come in, so that's one of my worries resolved. The other one (my gender) seemed to be disappear when one of the barber dudes asks what I need and doesn't tell me to go elsewhere. Now, this is an old-looking establishment. The 3-4 barber chairs all seem to be from the 50s; ther

Mark and I both have ancestors from Sweden, so even though we wouldn't be going to specific ancestral places, I was excited. Oh, the fatherland! or motherland! I don't know! Funny story: when we went to check into our hotel in Stockholm, the receptionist saw the names on our reservation and started speaking Swedish to us. We had to inform her that while we look Swedish and are named Swedish, we don't speak Swedish. It felt like such a personal failing. black (?!) flowers Not-funny story: I think I'm allergic to Sweden. I had some allergic symptoms when we were in Riga [capital of Latvia], but they went away once I took a benadryl. Sweden was definitely different. The first two days we were in Sweden, the weather was cloudy and drizzly. And a little bit chill. [Or at least this Texas ex-pat thought so]. Which meant that when, on the 3rd day, the sun came out, I decided I loved Sweden even more. Everything was beautiful: flowers were blooming, trees were flowerin

Theme-wise, this post is about transportation, but I wasn't sure many people would find that interesting enough to click on a post labeled "transportation." Unless they really like logistics. Week 1 of our Baltic trip was with a tour group (mainly because we don't speak Lithuanian/Latvian/Estonian/Swedish/Russian), but we still had some time to wander off by ourselves. Personal wanderings, plus wanderings with the group, ended up logging an average of 5.5 miles every day, for a grand total of over 70 miles. And that's not counting the stairs or hills we hiked. I ended up needing new shoes, because the sole of my shoe started separating from the rest of it. [This is how we managed to eat ice cream nearly every day without gaining weight.] Vilnius [Lithuania's capital] had bike rental kiosks around town, so Mark and I also used those to try to see all of the museums on the "must-see" list. It took a while to figure out the bike rental, though, beca

One of the first things I noticed about the Baltic states is that there seemed to be a disproportionately-high representation of accordions among street musicians. Just walking around the city made it likely that I'd trip on a couple accordion players [not literally tripping, but close...]. If we went out in the country to look at some out-of-the-way historic sites, there would be another accordion to serenade us. Every Single Day in the Baltics I'd run into accordions. an old accordion in a museum Another common instrument: organs. Come to think of it, the mechanism for playing an organ versus an accordion is fairly similar: air-powered, keyboard-played, random buttons. [okay, I'm not actually that educated on organs or accordions.] fancy-shmancy, right? Despite being impressed at the ability to play such instruments, I never gave them money. I prefer to support musicians that are hands-down absolutely positively talented. Like the guy in Tallinn playing [