merry christmas eve's eve!!!

fingertips.

There is no such thing as a person that nothing has happened to, and each person's story is as different as his fingertips.

I wish that there was an extremely swirly reason why I have not blogged in the past two+ months. I would like to post pictures of some fantastic 8-week Eurotrip I've just returned from but unfortunately, the only border I've crossed is 45 minutes South of here on a road that leads directly into the Target parking lot in North Dakota, in which my monthly trip for Folger's hazelnut coffee has put me on a first-name basis (well, not quite. More like a career-name basis in which I assume he is a border patrol man based on the shiny, toy gun strapped to his ridiculously hideous polyester outfit and he remembers that I am nurse because when he threatened to not let me in to my country back in October when I had a leased car full of my belongings and no address to take it to, I threatened lives would die without me and apparently, it made a lasting impression...) with the men that work at the border. I would love to be able to write a life-altering, intellectual piece reflective of the soul searching I've been doing during this hiatus but frankly, the only strength I've discovered inside me is the ability to fend off hypothermia when handing the barista my looney and two tooneys (translation: $5.00) in exchange for a Venti Cinnamon Dolce Chai Latte (full pumps of each) at the drive thru window of Starbucks; I don't dare get out and go inside in this -40 degree weather (not even joking.)
I love my blog. to blog. blogging. It is here that I find fabulousness in (and overuse the word "fabulous" describing...) the many elements that make my world go round (eff earth, wind and fire. I'm talking PEOPLE magazine, Coffee Bean hazelnut Ice blended(s) and Virgin America.) It is here where I document how lucky my life is (and give credit to those who are in my life that make it that incredible in the form of a picnik-edited photog shout-out!) It is here where I am able to apply meaning (and share it with everyone ... even creepy stalkers who write me anonymous letters! Please reveal yourself, it drives me bonkers to not know if you're still alive and not hanging from a ceiling fan somewhere.... eeeek... too far?) to all the significant moments in my life. It is here where I am reminded of all the fabulous things I manage to do in a day, a month and a year (or at least this is how the lay-out I have selected chooses to organize my blog for me) and I hope that this mini leave of absence hasn't forced people to nix checking suburbs from the morning routines (so far, I only know my two grandmothers did this on a regular basis but I would like to think that the number of blog hits in a day was people actually checking in and not just me hitting the refresh button to see a cool new place to visit.)
Really, all I can chalk this negligent writer's block up to (that has led some people to inquire whether or not I'm still alive, you know who you are.) is simply the fact that the real world has finally caught up to me... and inadvertently interfered with my ability to dream, which in my vernacular is synonymous with blogging.

Well like some important person who came up when I put the keywords "fingertips, quotes" into Google search said, There is no such thing as a person that nothing has happened to, and each person's story is as different as his fingertips and with the vastly approaching new year, I plan embrace this (somewhat scary, mostly just inconvenient) real world with two arm-warmer clad hands and while my fingertips are currently frostbitten and bleeding, I am not going to let that stop me from blogging about all the things that happen to me in my unique story! Expect pictures, insights, even a vlog or two.... So get excited because 2010 is going to be a spectacular blear (blog year, its kind of like dog year but instead of multiplying by seven divide by the number of days in a month and that's how many posts next year's blog archive will generate!)

life passes you by.

Similar feelings to standing on a platform in the metro station, I feel like my life is passing by too fast ... I obvi cannot keep up with the blogging... it's been another two weeks and I have not a post of photog to show for all the insanity that has taken place. Brief life update and a promise to post pictures to add vivid detail to my new (chapter of my) life soon...

Spent a fabulous ten days (one of those days (yup, only one!) in Naples, FL for Megalina's bridal shower/bachelorette party that I do intend to post photos of before the wedding... which is only a month away! MALYTAB) with Jenn, Auntie L, Grams and Kara in LA before packing up my stuff and hopping in the car for an incredibly scenic 4 day drive (imagine the pix that could be accompanying this post if I could just find my camera cord) through the Grand Canyon, up through the Rockies then into my old/new country... Canada!

Handwrote my boards (with a HB pencil... whatever that is) for an entire seven hours without a calculator only 2 days after I got here ... not sure if I passed but at least with the out-of-date system I won't have to worry about it til December to get my results... which I'm assuming are hand graded.

Spent the next day touring my new unit at the Childrens Hospital in the Health Sciences Centre and trying to unpack... my new unit looks very exciting!! About half the size of my last one and not nearly as critical .... aka unethical ... so looking forward to the change but a little nervous to draw up all my own meds! I love our apartment (and any time I can make use of the words ours/us/we) but could hardly get settled before heading home (to Dauphin) for the weekend for the Canadian Thanksgiving ....

We (and by we, I mean I drove for approximately 20 minutes before having a quasi-anxiety attack and Mitchell being able to read my nonverbal ques of get-me-out-of-drivers-seat! drove the rest of the way) in the snow!! Yes, it snowed on October 9th... a meer 3 days after I arrived! We had a great weekend (in which you will never see pictures because I didn't take any!) with the families (eeek... there's 2 now! =) ... before heading back Monday.

Due to complications with importing a Japanese car from America into Canada (violating some laws of NAFTA, some laws of Mazda American Credit and some laws of Canadian Safety!) I had to give Maggie back to Mazda on Wednesday ... I did take pictures of our traumatic goodbye that I can post but the sadness was lessened when I was able to stop at TARGET!!!! on our way home!! I will be making monthly trips to the Super Target in Grand Forks, ND as so far, besides my favorite people, Target is the only thing Winnipeg is lacking! The bright side is I get to pick out an SUV so I feel a little safer driving in the winter weather ... =)

While incredibly thankful for my (almost) month off, I am beginning to feel somewhat like a desperate apartmentgirlf this past week (I don't even know how to organize and I have organized every inch (or should I say centimeter as they do up here!) of this apartment!) and I am extremely looking forward to starting work on Monday. Orientation for the first 2 weeks and then I'll start day/night shifts...

nothing to dream.

It'll cost nothing to dream and everything not to.

Tonight is the last night I'll lie awake in LA dreaming of being in a place that bears any semblance of home. Dream of being surrounded by people I love. Dream of hibernating up North for the winter because come Monday, all my dreams will come true. After a grueling 2 month application process, I was deemed eligible to write my Canadian boards yesterday (which was unexpected!) and tomorrow morning I will set out on a four day road trip with Grams and Auntie L studying the entire way up to Winnipeg to write them on Wednesday. Tonight I'll be dreaming of settling in to my new place to call home, writing/passing the boards, starting my new job and celebrating the Canadian Thanksgiving! It's an exciting new track I'm looking down...

laughter & noise.

There are lives I can imagine without children but none of them have the same laughter & noise.

amidst it all, i turned twenty-three...

Nothing peeves me more than an inability to update my blog ... especially in the two weeks that I fail to find time to update my blog ... my life changes dramatically (again!)!! I can't find my camera cord amongst the chaos I currently call life (its probably vacuum sealed in a bag somewhere like the rest of my belongings...) and I hate blogging without pictures to add effect. Although, I have a to-do list a mile long and the three devout readers (Grams, Auntie Linda and Kara) are currently in LA with me, I decided the top thing on my list would be to update my blog on the entire month of September where amidst it all, I turned twenty-three...

thank you roomies-for-life for an extra-special bday celebration!

harriette potter.

For the past month, I have been living under the staircase rather Harry Potteresque like
in this fabulous home with three fabulous roommates - Sydney, Rachel and Nicole! They are all nurses at CHLA and I went through the residency program with Syd (which is how I got to know her)! While I have flown back East three of the four weekends this month, I have had so much fun living with them in the few weeks I have been home! They remind me of being in college when I lived with my 3 best friends for 4 smashing years! My days under the stairs has been the perfect in-between phase transitioning from living with my besties to moving in with a boy! I'm getting an extra strength dose of girlieness before I am stripped of 3 extra closets to chose from (Mitch and I don't really share the same size or style.), deprived of wine-sipping, theatre-going girls nights (Mitch is more into a beer-guzzling, sports-filled kind of Saturday night!) and I am soon to be removed from all quasi-decent shopping (Winnipeg isn't quite the most fashion forward place in the world.) All the inside jokes and reminiscing of college life made me want to go back .... so I did just that the weekend before last.

swagger of a college kid.

I was on the phone with Kara a couple of weeks ago and she was saying how she was going to Gainesville for the weekend for the UF vs. TN game... our biggest rivalry! I have been trying to figure out a way to get to a game this year anyways before I move North so when she reminded me that the weekend before last would be the perfect time to go, I booked a flight and hopped on a plane 3 days later! I had a free flight from when I willingly gave up my seat on a plane in an effort to prolong returning to LA on one of my vacations recently (in which I ended up getting my seat back and keeping the voucher so the effort was lost but the free flight made my return to LA a little more tolerable! I digress...) It had been an entire month since I had seen Carly (keep in mind I have seen her almost everyday for the past 5 years, including when I was Italy.. she was there too and when she lived in NYC for the summer ... I went and visited her!) so you can imagine my excitement when she picked me from the airport and I got to spend the entire weekend with her and Meg! I got to see her new job and then we headed to Gvegas for the weekend! In true collegiate fashion, we stayed in her sister's "luxury dorm" for the weekend and had a blast being back on our stomping grounds! While gameday was even more exciting than I remembered it to be, the club scene was not. We attempted to go out (with a slight touch of sun poisoning from tailgating all day in the Florida humidity!) but after an hour of being "in da club" we all looked at each other and unanimously agreed that it was not nearly as exciting as it used to be so we headed back to our blow-up mattress and had way more fun in our 2-night slumber party! Reliving life in Gainesville would not be complete without a playdate with Kate... so I spent all morning Sunday doing just that!

playdate with Miss Kate

The highlight of my weekend was getting to spend Sunday with Kate! I went over to her house early in the morning where she showed me her new cat, Abigail, that she picked out all by herself from the animal shelter. Then we went on a treasure hunt in our dresses and found acorns and fungus. It was super exciting to hear just how smart she is pointing out the smallest details along the road while informing me that she often stays up late watching the news with Mum and Dad! She is more beautiful than ever, still has that little button nose and even still twirls her hair when she's tired. She talked a lot about her friends at school and at ballet class. Rhonda and Kevin are doing wonderful as well busy planning the remodeling they are doing to their home and looking up answers on the internet, per Kate's suggestion, to questions they don't know the exact answer to. She still has that witty silliness about her that being so intelligent allows her to have. I miss having them in my daily life but my morning with her brought me right back to that little place inside me that will always be a kid.

trash the dress.

One of Carly's last days in LA we spent "trashing the dress". We had a lot of fun galavanting around the metro station, in a fountain, down train tracks, etc. with our friend/photographer Mindy.

nation's capitol.

For Labor Day Weekend, Mitch(ell) met me in DC to spend the weekend with Megan and Danny. We had a fabulous time! Friday, we metroed into the district and saw all the monuments and memorials. The one thing I learned about US history is that I know nothing about it... and I would be completely content if I never do. We met Danny for lunch and then spent the evening drinking flights of beer in Georgetown. It was perfect.

wino.

I saw a wino eating grapes and I was like, Dude! You have to wait!

- Mitch Hedberg

After spending Friday in DC and the weekend in Virginia Beach, we spent Monday tasting delectable wines at a nearby winery in Maryland.

run like a rockstar.

Rock n' Roll Virginia Beach Half Marathon 2009

sequence of tiny miracles.

I've gotten a lot of random e-mails, fb messages, texts, bbms and pulls aside at work (but surprisingly not a single phone call!) asking me what I am doing with my life at this very moment.. and if you asked me two weeks ago (right around the time I stopped blogging) I would have said I have not an effing clue (just like that too because I was quite perterbed my unknown future) and then a sequence of tiny miracles took place in a seven day time span that led me to current day. Let me take you back to the beginning.
6:01 am, Friday 8/20: Carly is returning to grad school in Atlanta this fall and her and Tammy depart for Florida after a farewell so-LA evening at Spamalot. Let the hysterics begin. Approximately twenty minutes later (fate?): the manager of the NICU at the Health Science Centre in Winnipeg called to ask me a few questions regarding the application I had submitted 4 days prior and then offered me a job in a level 3 NICU!!! Let the waterworks stop and the bouncing off the walls begin. Literally. That afternoon I began searching for a place to live online ... realizing I'm not that tech savvy when all that came up on my search engine were basements ... Mitchell (I don't think blogging about this counts as a public display of affection?) sent me the link to mosaicrentals.ca... by Tuesday afternoon, I {or should I say we!!! okay, that might be considered PDA! =) } signed a lease on a condo in the city for this fall!!! That's like 6 weeks away!! My last day is yet to be announced but in my one year evaluation at my current job that also took place this week I mentioned to my manager that I would be leaving and because she is fabulous, she was completely understanding and really cured any apprehensions I had about leaving! I love my job and will be sad to leave the people but I am sooooo excited to move home!! In addition to completely rearranging my future I have also completely rearranged the present. I switched from night shift to day shift this week and have worked seven straight days in a row! I have moved entirely out of Carly and I's apartment in Studio City and partially into my new temp home in Glendale with my 3 new fabulous roommates and partially into my car for lack of time/energy to unpack! California is currently burning which is horribly contributing to the heat wave that has taken over the Valley... You better believe I am using the heat/smoke filled, already smoggy air quality as an excuse not to train! ... and now I am unpacking so that I can repack to fly to DC on Thursday where Megan, Danny, Mitchell and I will be spending Labour Day weekend together!! If I didn't have insomnia before, do you know how hard it is to sleep when reality is better than your dreams?! =)

right back where you started from.

Sometimes right back where you started from is right where you belong.

My days in LA have really come full circle. As each day passes (and one more piece of furniture in our apartment is sold on craig's list and one more article of clothing reminiscent of college is traded for cash) my life is slowly starting to fit back into my car and I'm beginning to find humor in how much I am essentially right back where I started from arriving on the West Coast last year ... just a little bit older and little more cultured perhaps.

I was reading a post I wrote around graduation when I was having to make huge life-altering decisions last year wondering what life would be like outside of college. Not having to study? Not getting a spring break? Not living with your best friends? ... and if I can tell you one thing, moving to LA was the perfect bridge to transitioning from college grad to quasi adult because all the little idiosyncrasies that make college life wonderful that I feared would not be conducive to the real world is... when you move to the surreal world of LA that is!

There's a reason why the city of angels bears the nickname LALA Land because it's exactly that: a state of mind characterized by unrealistic expectations; a place renowned for it's frivolous activity. Feeling like my life in LA could easily be the screenplay to a coming-of-age indie film defined by discovery, there's so much to tell but I can't seem to find the words to describe it; in which case I usually just make them up but even then I am at a total loss for lexicons. The amount of frivolous adventures I have embarked on the past few months have made the time fly by incredibly fast. I've boarded a plane at least once a month, seen a play or attended a concert almost weekly and amongst all the adventure I allotted just enough time to fall in love with the art of neonatal nursing!

The things that made my world turn in the little bubble I called college slowly faded from my everyday life and was replaced by an equally exciting chapter of my twenty-somethings era marked by endless possibilities -the possibility to arrange my schedule so every other week is a 'spring break'. The possibility to make road trips (not to attend football games but bet on them in Vegas). The possibility to have mountains and ocean side by side. The possibility to find a culture that still deems it socially acceptable to have a roommate. The possibility of being amongst a sea of people feeling like none of it matters unless you have someone to share it with.

As this fantastic residency into adulthood draws to a close, I've officially ended my complicated relationship with Carly on the facebook and I am ready to enter the real world, for real this time. I've finally figured it out. Who I need in my (daily) life to feel whole again. What matters more than the glitz and glam, I realized what means the most. When now is just the perfect time to let go of one thing to cling tighter to the next. Where life and love and laughter perfectly align. Why sometimes right back where you started from is right where you belong.

keeping up with the hofers.

When I did my practicum my senior year of nursing school, my very first day I went back for a delivery. We brought the baby to the NICU and stabilized him with Dad right by his side. This was my very first moment shared with the Hofers. Over the next eight weeks, I shared many more milestones with Charlie and Kelli and their tiny baby, Weston. Their graduation from the NICU took place not long after my grad from UF last spring. Kelli has been wonderful about keeping us updated on Weston's progress! When in Nashville last week, they graciously met me downtown so I could see just how wonderful he really is doing. He is just perfect. Bonding with fabulous families like the Hofers confirmed for me that the NICU was my niche in nursing! =)

beautiful new additions.

In addition to one husband (Anna's Chris, who we got to meet briefly saying our goodbyes!) there are also two new babies in the family - Courtney's son Zane who is turning a year old this month. He is such a happy baby!

He took some of his first steps while we were there!

all smiles!!

And our newest first cousin - Dresden Thomas Kirk - who was born on July 14, 2009.

It was so wonderful getting to meet Stormie and Phaedra too!

cousins in carolina.

In the Carolinas for a Coldplay concert, Kara and I miraculously got to see all our cousins in 2 days!! It was the highlight of my trip! =)

We had lunch with Meghan and Kirby and stopped by Monika's office to make plans for our next reunion in December.

We stayed the night with Uncle Kevin and got to meet the tiniest member of the Kirk family - baby boy Dresden, who was born 2 and half weeks before our arrival! He is beautiful!

And we couldn't plan if we had tried ... all the Overbys in one place in a matter of an hour!! It was absolutely amazing to see everyone!! I miss ya'll! It had been four years since we had seen each other (at Courtney's wedding) and it doesn't look like any of us will be getting married any time soon so we will have to make a point to not let it go this long again! =)

do one thing a day that scares you.

chimney tops.

I have been enjoying southern comfort this week visiting Kara in Knoxville. I've had sweet tea everyday! Yesterday, we went hiking 2 miles straight up along the Tennessee/North Carolina border on a trail called Chimney Tops. It was incredibly strenuous but an awesome work-out with amazing views at the top of the Smokey Mountains!!

they could not remember a time -

Until now, that Forever didn't seem long enough.

One year ago today, I was trolling in the middle of Dauphin Lake when Megan called to tell me she was engaged!! Only 25 days until I get to see them again and only 3 months and 13 days until the wedding!! So excited!! =)

blonde bombshell.

Meet Carly. She is Megan's little sister and because growing up Megan and I were inseparable, her parents adopted me and I've spent my summers laughing with her, Carly has always been a little sister to me! Carly attends architecture school in Miami and in her free time puts that stunningly gorgeous face to work! She started modeling when she did a runway show for charity last fall. I can hardly believe the little ten-year-old that always ran around naked (refusing to put on clothes!) has grown up to be such a beautiful, blonde bombshell. Love you, Carlita!!