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Thankful Thursday | goodbye, clouds!

This week, I am thankful:

that there’s lots of sun in the forecast coming up

It was so gloomy out all day yesterday, I was feeling a little bit blue.

cloudy sky.

This is just a lot of nope for me.

But I looked ahead in the forecast and there are LOTS of sunny days coming up. Woohoo!!

That will be good for my mental state. 🙂

And knowing that there’s sun ahead helps me get through the cloudy days.

that my office has a window

When I moved in here, I purposely put my desk right by the window.

desk by window.

That way, even on cloudy days, I still have some daylight.

For many, many years, I blogged in the basement of my other house, and my goodness, I so much prefer having a desk by a window!

that my friend is coming to visit me!

My dear friend Mia from Ohio is flying in for the weekend, and I am so super happy about that. I have not seen her since the summer of 2021, I think, so we are waaaay overdue for some in-person friend time.

Kristen and her friend.

Mia and me in 2018

We text all the time and also talk on the phone when we can manage to sync our schedules, but still, there’s nothing like in-person time.

We are SO excited!!

that my first exam went well

I only got one wrong, so yay!

Now I just have to do this a bunch more times, and then I’ll be through the semester. 😉

We have five exams in the first six weeks of this semester, so I’m gonna be a pretty busy test-taker for a bit here.

for the advantage of being a woman and a mom

This semester one of our classes is women’s health/OB, and I’ve been saying that for this class, it’s a serious advantage to be a woman with kids.

A lot of the test questions are rather obvious if you’ve been having periods, have experienced pregnancy, have raised babies, and so on.

Baby Zoe in a carseat.

Zoe, in the days before safer car seat straps

I feel a little sorry for the dudes in my class; this has to be so much harder for them!

for my math background

We learned IV math yesterday, and I felt grateful again for the years I spent teaching math to my kids. I think that’s the main reason that med-math is not overwhelming for me.

I was not born a math whiz…I’ve just done a lot of math in my lifetime. 🙂

for the beautiful fog the other day

foggy mroning with sunshine.

While I would not want fog all the time, I do have a deep appreciation for a foggy morning, especially when the sun is peeking through.

foggy sky.

I took so many pictures when I went walking that morning!

silhouettes of trees.

All of my usual sights look way more magical when they’re covered in fog, so I just kept wanting to stop and take more pictures.

foggy scene.

Isn’t it wild how this next one looks like it’s had some sort of filter applied? It really was that foggy out!

foggy trees.

for friends at school

This morning, I’m getting together with one friend so we can practice our competency skills* before we test this morning.

I also am part of several group texts (like one with my lab group from last semester and one with some friends who sit by me in lecture), and it’s so helpful to be able to ask questions and bounce things off of each other.

I don’t know everyone in my 130+ people class, but I do know a lot of them now, and that makes me happy.

*Competency testing happens every semester before clinicals; we go into a lab at school and do a head-to-toe assessment, vital signs, put on and take off personal protective equipment, give an injection, give a G-tube med, and give oxygen, all with a fake patient (called a manikin), while a professor passes or fails us.

If we fail any skill, we get two more chances to come back in and try it again.

for the way that age doesn’t matter in nursing school

I think I’ve mentioned before that I made two really good friends at school, and they sit on either side of me.

One is 20, the other is in her 30s, and I’m in my 40s, so we represent Gen Z, Millenials, and Gen X (that’s me!) and somehow, our age difference just doesn’t matter at all.

I love that.

____________________

Alrighty. I’m off to practice my competency skills for two hours and then do my test. I’m pretty nervous (this test is happening so early in semester two!), but I’ve been practicing, and even if I do fail a skill or two, I am sure I can pass on a second try.

What are you thankful for this week?

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Maria

Tuesday 6th of February 2024

Just thankful my sweet hubby is recovering well from a stroke at the start of the year! God is so good!

Dee in AZ

Thursday 1st of February 2024

I am thankful that I have an โ€œappointmentโ€ to talk to my mom every week for an hour on the phone. I am thankful that my friend found a new place to live just two weeks after she found out she had to move. I am thankful that I mostly seem to be over the stomach bug, although I did throw up a little while ago. I am thankful to live in an area where itโ€™s sunny nearly every day, and even when itโ€™s cloudy the sky is still bright. I am thankful for the rain thatโ€™s expected in the next few days.

Katy in Africa

Thursday 1st of February 2024

I'm thankful for: - People willing to listen -the consistency of Christ in my life and truths to hang on. - beautiful weather (I also much prefer sunny days!)

Kim from Philadelphia

Thursday 1st of February 2024

When I was in PA school, we had a pretty incredible age spread. There were 80 of us. Only two were right out of college. The remainder were a mix of people in their mid/ late 20โ€™s, 30โ€™s, 40โ€™s, and 50โ€™s. We even had one student who was 62; a former nurse of 40 years who was also a grandma โ˜บ๏ธ

Kristen

Thursday 1st of February 2024

There's a big age spread at my school too! I would say a majority of the students are younger than me, but there's quite a few who are my age, and a few that are older as well.

I love that you had a 62 year old in your class!

Lindsey

Thursday 1st of February 2024

Gorgeous photos today! Thankful for: 1. I have to have an MRI. My insurance approved it being done as a hospital admission so I can be given drugs, an anesthesiologist will be there the entire time in case the drugs wear off, and she insured that they will put me in feet first so my head will never be in that death tube. Yesterday I hated my insurance due to a meds issue, today not so much. 2. Having a garage. It has been in the minus 30s and 40s, without wind chill for many days now. If you don't have a garage, you need to plug in your car so that the block heater installed as part of winterization will keep things from freezing up and your battery from dying. 3. a self-cleaning oven. I tried a new way of doing bacon for the husband who loves it so (I do not like it). Epic, messy failure. Oven cleaned itself during the night so all I had to do was brush out the resulting ashes. One time, in my spendthrift youth, I actually got a new oven because I did not want to clean the one I had. 4. the earthquake aftershocks are decreasing. When I have had MRIs in the past, I have spent much of the time obsessing about what I would do if we had an earthquake in the middle of it and all the techs ran out in a panic. How would I pull myself out of that tube? What if the machine collapsed on me. (I would die, of course, but you get my drift...) The aftershocks are not strong enough to knock off paintings or cause bookcases to vomit off their contents, they just remind us who is in control. 5. the husband, always the husband. This week I tried a new hair cutting implement, a razor built into a comb. I made a horrible mess of it, including making a bald spot and so much shorn off that he had no curls left to cover it. All he said was, "I'm not looking for a new wife so my looks don't really matter."

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