I Love My Job!!

     I’m at that point in my job where I’m very comfortable.  That probably  means I will get pregnant soon and have to leave my job.  When you get comfortable is usually when the Lord decides to spring something on you to make you grow.  Until then, I’ll enjoy where I’m at.  I’ve been in my job long enough that I know most of my patients and many of them have become friends.  I’d like to share a few examples of some patients who have made me happy. 
     Of course I’m always pleased when someone will acknowledge me in public and say hi.  It’s even been fun seeing friendly faces in the hospital!  When I was in the hospital, it was nice to see Jason, the radiology tech, and Todd, the nurse anesthetist.  It was different being their patient for a change, but like I said, it was nice to know I was in competent, friendly hands.  The last thing I remember before going under anesthesia was chatting it up with Todd about how his daughter’s dental visit went!
     Recently, I’ve had a fun patient who I believe is either in her late 60’s or early 70’s.  She is a piano teacher and we talked about music.  I talked with her about older musicians/artists I knew when she enthusiastically asked, “Do you listen to Coldplay!”  Ha ha!  Yeah, but I was surprised that she did!  As a matter of fact, she knew A LOT about pop culture!  We talked about American Idol and our favorite contestants this season, who we thought would get voted off next, etc.  I was surprised to find an envelope for me at the dental office a few days later from her.  I thought, “Now, what could this be?  Is she thanking me for a job well done?”  Yeah, I know I’m incredibly humble, huh?  What was in the envelope was actually an article about Steven Tyler (lead singer of Aerosmith and American Idol judge) that she thought I would enjoy.  She had cut the article out of Harper’s Bazaar magazine.  Ha ha!  I could care less about Steven Tyler, but she made my day simply because she was thinking about me!  ….I guess it’s a good thing when someone sees Steven Tyler and thinks about you…. ;c) 
     I had another fun old lady come in a few weeks back.  She was interesting.  She has traveled ALL OVER the world and has done fun stuff like paragliding and zip lining in her old age.  She is definitely young at heart.  She told me a lot about her travels.  I hate it when I have a fascinating patient that is really fun to talk to and I only  have an hour with them, and they can’t talk most of the time because my hands are in their mouth!  She also works with blown glass and makes necklaces.  A few days after our visit, one of the assistants came back and handed me some glass charms that my patient had made for me and had brought to the office.  Wow!  SO NICE OF HER!  Now I just need to find a chord to put them on!  The picture doesn’t do them justice.

     Don’t I have the best patients in the world!?
     I did have a patient who wasn’t so nice the other day, though.  Luckily, he’s the exception to the patients that I see every day.  I already posted this story on Facebook, but I wanted to post it here to remember because that was the day I put on my big girl pants and actually confronted somebody…a stranger at that!   Normally, I’m usually very non-confrontational.  It’s usually easier to keep one’s mouth shut than it is to argue.  And when I even think about asking someone for something or confronting someone about something, I get tongue-tied and flustered and I can feel my face turning red as my heart beats wildly.  I’m only confrontational if I feel very strongly about something.
     Anyhow, the other day I had a young man in my chair who was 19 and getting ready to go on a mission.  His younger, autistic sister was in the next room over and was TERRIFIED of getting her teeth cleaned/looked at.  She was screaming and crying and wouldn’t even get in the chair, so her mother brought her into my room to watch me clean her brother's teeth (to show her that it wasn't a big deal). The brother started acting like he was scared and that I was hurting him and then laughed at his sister's reaction.  Both his mother and I asked him to stop.  He wouldn’t, so the mom took his sister and left the room.  I was disgusted and thinking to myself,  “Really?  You’re preparing to go on a mission and you’re acting like THAT?!  Are you going because YOU want to go and because you have a burning testimony, or because your mommy and daddy want you to?”  I was fuming!  It took me the whole rest of the appointment to get up the guts to say something.  After I finished cleaning his teeth and Dr. Hammond did the exam, I thought, “Well, it’s now or never!”  I swallowed the lump in my throat and this is how the conversation went (with me trying to sound as confident and authoritative as possible):
     Me: Let me give you some advice. You're 19 and getting ready to go on a mission, right?
     Patient: Yep!
     Me: What you did to your sister was neither mature nor kind, and from a stranger's point of view (pointing to myself), you just made yourself look really bad. Keep that in mind when you make future choices.
     With a sheepish look on his face, he mumbled that he was sorry, the conversation was over, and I turned around to walk him out with  my heart pounding like CRAZY!  And as I thought about my confrontation, this song popped into my head….

DIY

     As we’ve lived in this house, I noticed that our kitchen faucet started to leak a little from the top.  No prob.  I didn’t care if it leaked into the sink!  However, one day, I went to get something out from beneath the sink and noticed a lake.   Noooooooo!  I pulled everything out and dried everything out.  Until we could get the sink fixed, I turned on the water to see where it was leaking and placed a pie tin and empty hot chocolate container accordingly in order to catch the water that was leaking. 
     Now, I’ve had experience in doing some handyman stuff while working on the maintenance/paint crew at ISU, but neither Corey or I had tackled plumbing before.  It was uncharted territory for both of us.  The last thing I wanted was a flood, so I went to YouTube and pulled up videos on how to fix a Moen faucet.  Hey!  It actually didn’t look so hard!  It looked like the rubber seals on the Moen cartridge in the faucet had just worn out and we needed to replace the cartridge.  Corey went to the store to get the parts and we had the sink torn apart that night.  Corey just dove in and started to do stuff with me going, “Noooo!  You’re not supposed to do it that way!  Watch the video or I will BURY you!  I don’t want our kitchen flooded!”  What is up with guys and not reading directions?  Anyhow, it was at about that point that I needed to leave for a meeting.  Through the meeting, visions of a flooded kitchen and water dripping off of the ceiling played through my head and I just hoped and prayed that things would go okay.
     After my meeting, I went back home and held my breath as I walked in the door.  To my surprise and relief, the faucet was intact, the kitchen was dry, and the faucet actually worked.  I kept the pie tin and hot chocolate container beneath the sink (just in case), but I am happy to say that both are still void of water. Oh, me of little faith.  Sorry I doubted you, Corey.

Anniversary #3

     April 24th was our third anniversary.  Man, time flies!….especially when you’re having fun, I guess!  And life with Corey has been that.  Fun.  I’m glad he can take my harassment with a smile, and is he ever learning to dish it right back!  Good boy!

     We actually did the main celebration of our anniversary early.  We went out to dinner at Olive Garden and afterwards, I was just expecting to drive home, but Corey had other plans.  He gave me a gift to unwrap.  It was a t-shirt with this on the front…

  At first I was like, “Huh?”  The shirt refers to “the arena” from the book series The Hunger Games.  I had set aside four days of my life after work; neglecting food, water, and Corey, in order to read the series.  You can’t put the silly things down!  Anyhow, he knew that I liked the books and happily reported that we were going to see the movie.  Eeeeeee!  Good surprise, hun!

     The anniversary fun didn’t stop there.  We decided we couldn’t just do NOTHING on the actual day of our anniversary, so we got all fancied up and ate out again…

     Classy, huh?  All we needed were some candles!  In all actuality, I was just as pleased with this as I was with Olive Garden.  It doesn’t take much for me.  I’m definitely a carnivore and I’ll take a good ol’ burger any day.  We got our meal with the intention of eating it by the river, but it started to rain, so we parked our car by the park and ate it there. 

     Prior to our five-star dining experience, Corey surprised me by getting off work early, bringing flowers.  The cute part about the flowers is that he bought which ones he wanted and arranged them himself.  Say it with me….. "Awwwwwww!”  Way to be frugal and thoughtful at the same time, hun!

   It’s been a great and fast three years!  I look forward to future adventures with my Coreyface. 

Time Out For Women

     Last weekend, I had the opportunity of going to Time Out For Women (TOFW) with my mom, sister, and aunt.  Members of Corey’s family have gone to TOFW before and they have all raved about how wonderful it was.  My sister and I decided that it would be fun to get my mom and aunt involved and make it an early Mother’s Day present.  TOFW is basically like EFY for adults…not that I mind.  I always loved EFY when I was younger.  For those of you who don’t know what this entails, it basically consists of speakers and music that are uplifting, edifying, and give a good message.  TOFW was a two-day event, starting on Friday night, and it was held at the Civic Center in Idaho Falls.  The line for this thing was HUGE!!!  It snaked down three hallways and when there was nowhere else to go, it doubled back on itself and even went outside, where some people had to wait in the rain.  As you can tell from the picture below, there was  A LOT of estrogen there.  Oye. 

     More pics while waiting in line…

     On Friday night, the first speaker was John Bytheway.  LOVE John Bytheway.  I’ve had the opportunity to hear him speak on other occasions and he never disappoints.  On this particular occasion, he spoke on “The Parable of the Marinade”.  He explained how meat takes on the flavors of what it’s marinated in and he  related this to our lives.  Some thoughts from John Bytheway’s talk that I loved:

*  “Regardless of your original intention, you will become what you surround youreself with.”

*  “Surround yourself with GREAT  things and you will become that.”

*  “You are the average of the five people you hang around with.”

*  “You can change by changing your environment.  Immerse yourself in the best books, music, art, etc.”

*  The Song  Love One Another says, “By this shall men know ye are my disciples, if ye have LOVE one to another.”  You aren’t necessarily a disciple if you are just going through the motions of going to church.  Your discipleship  is exemplified in the way you love and treat your fellow man.  <—Love this one.

     After Friday night’s activities, we stayed the night in Le Ritz hotel.  I realize it’s only 20 minutes from my home, but the hotel was free due to some points dad had racked up from his previous job as a crop loss adjuster, and we thought it’d be fun if it was just us girls.  I was the only one who got a good night’s sleep.  I actually had one of those moments where you wake up in the morning and slightly panic because you don’t know where you are.  All I have to say, is “thaaaaank you, earplugs”!  I’ve become accustomed to going to bed with earplugs every night thanks to Corey “the chainsaw” Walker and I love them.  I’m going to have a rough time when I have a baby someday and have to take them out  in order to hear when it cries. 

     The next day’s events were just as fun and uplifting.  We listened to four more speakers and got to hear Jericho Road.  What?  You don’t know who they are?  The words “Mormon” and “boy band” pretty much sums it up.  They did a great job and the crowd got into their performances.

     I just wanted to include some thoughts from the other speakers that I enjoyed:

*  “Forgiveness is complete when you desire the welfare of the offender.”

*  “No one was foreordained to fail or become wicked.”

*  “When you think of good people, do you think of yourself?”

*  “Goodness is contagious—spread it around!”

*  “Develop a thick skin (some things you just have to let roll off) because you can’t make other people ‘get it’.” 

*  “Do your children the honor of expecting hard things of them.”

*  “Greatness is best measured by how well an individual responds to the happenings in life that appear to be totally unfair, unreasonable, and undeserved.” – M.J. Ashton

*  “Trust God enough to trust also his timing.”  --Neal A. Maxwell

     Following TOFW,  I left for home and expected that Mom, Brittney, and Maxine were headed home as well.  After I got home, Corey and I headed to a furniture store that was going out of business.  While there, we picked up a fake tree.  Since we didn’t have a truck to haul it home in, we stuffed it in the back seat of my car (partially).  A good three feet of it was hanging out and we had to drive slowly down the road with my side door open and emergency flashers on.  Thank goodness we live in Rigby, Idaho!  We probably wouldn’t have been able to get away with that in a bigger town. 

     While this awkward tree hauling was going on, my mom and aunt tried to call me.  I didn’t answer the phone, since we were obviously busy, so I called them back when I got home.  Apparently, Brittney’s tire was flat and all the tire stores were closed, so they just blew it up so it would last long enough to get them to Rigby.  Everyone was stranded at my house.  Woo hoo!  Party at my pad!  Is it bad that I was secretly happy that Brittney’s tire went flat?  We had fun playing games that night and everyone eventually made it home safely. 

     Mom almost didn’t make it.  Check out the snow that Mackay got while Mom was driving home!  It’s hard to believe these pictures were taken less than a week ago and it was 65 degrees today!  Craziness.