Vacation

Round Peg, Square Hole

I admit … I haven’t been doing much since being back from vaca­tion. Which I sup­pose is a good thing. I’ve done a lot of read­ing lately; def­i­nitely more than writing.

Which is a shame, because I do have some fun pic­tures from vaca­tion to share with you. Unless, of course … you’ve seen it on my per­sonal FB page! :-)

Instead, I’ve been on a read­ing kick. I fin­ished “The Cast­aways” while in line at Uni­ver­sal Orlando. And yes­ter­day, I just fin­ished “The Help” … a book I had wanted to read before see­ing the movie. Today, I start “The Soli­tude of Prime Num­bers”.

I’ve not felt inspired to write lately, and I’m going through one of my phases where even FB or read­ing other blogs doesn’t sound appeal­ing to me right now. What I do know is that it likely has to do with those emo­tional peaks and val­leys I’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing lately.

I’d elab­o­rate more but … quite frankly, it feels like I’m beat­ing a dead horse.

So instead … to honor the “retire­ment” of Steve Jobs from Apple, I decided to post one of the company’s older com­mer­cials; one that I have always loved. And see­ing that there are many times (espe­cially lately) that I feel as if I see things so much more dif­fer­ently than oth­ers, I fig­ure that this should be my inspi­ra­tion for the day.

A Song That Reminds Me of Somewhere

Day Six — A Song That Reminds Me of Somewhere:

There’s this high­way that hugs the coast of the Pacific Ocean. And on this par­tic­u­lar stretch of road, the sun reflects off the water in such a way that it reminds me of all things right in the world.

Read more »

Yellow Shutters

Still in Old Que­bec City

Red Door

Some­where in Old Que­bec City

A Lovely Day …

On the streets of Kingston, Ontario

Things I’ve Learned on My Alaskan Adventure

  • Alaska (at least South­east Alaska) is not a giant piece of land com­pletely made of ice, like we were taught in grade school. (You know, Seward’s Icebox?)

  • Not all Native Alaskans are called Eski­mos. In fact, the South­east­ern Alaskan Natives are the Tlingints.

  • Fish & Chips and Clam chow­der at a small lunch kiosk on the dock in Ketchi­can, Alaska is d*mn good!
  • There’s some­thing inher­ently beau­ti­ful about glac­i­ers and the waters sur­round­ing them. Oh, and it is pos­si­ble to sail a huge ship through some nar­row pas­sages and still be maneu­ver around glaciers.

  • And by the way, Tracy Arm Fjord is not, in fact, an arm. A fjord is long, nar­row inlet with steep sides, cre­ated in a val­ley carved by glacial activity.

  • Glac­i­ers have a blue tint to them because that’s the only color that glac­i­ers can’t absorb. And because of that, I think Cray­ola should come up with a “Glac­ier Blue” crayon …

  • I now know the five dif­fer­ent Salmon species just by look­ing at my hand.
    • Thumb = Chum Salmon
    • Index Fin­ger = Sock­eye … as in “Poke your eye out with your finger”
    • Mid­dle Fin­ger (or tallest fin­ger) = King Salmon, the biggest of the salmons
    • Ring Fin­ger = Sil­ver Salmon
    • Pinky = Pink Salmon.
  • And now you know them, too!

  • I can offi­cially say that I’ve seen a Black Bear with her three cubs and that bears can’t read.

  • We’ve also seen Amer­i­can Eagles and I think I finally under­stand the metaphor about the strength and beauty of a “Soar­ing Eagle.”

  • The Filipino-​​American pop­u­la­tion in Juneau, Alaska is so big that they have a whole “square” called “Manila Square” ded­i­cated to them.

  • This is prob­a­bly why the num­ber of Fil­ipinos work­ing on the cruise ships in Alaska greatly out­num­bers that of all other nation­al­i­ties (60% of the staff on our ship alone were Filipino).
  • This includes a Fil­ipino Exec­u­tive Mas­ter Chef and Exec­u­tive Sous Chef … who were kind enough to cre­ate off-​​menu Fil­ipino dishes. Like pancit. And Top­silog. And Adobo. Yummmm!

  • Skag­way is actu­ally spelled Skaguay … but only because the postal office didn’t like the way it was spelled.

  • Skag­way was known as the gate­way to the Klondike because this was the first stop for most peo­ple seek­ing gold in the Klondike. And from some of the sto­ries I heard (“Soapy” Smith, the thou­sands of horses killed in stam­pedes) there were quite a few things peo­ple would do for a Klondike Bar … of gold, that is.

  • Accord­ing to our tour guide, Skag­way is a one-​​horse town. And it appar­ently likes to hang out in front of the Bonanza Bar & Grill.

  • It’s pos­si­ble for the U.S. Coast Guard to air­lift a crit­i­cally ill pas­sen­ger onto their heli­copter (on our “Day at Sea”) with­out offi­cially land­ing on a cruise ship. It may take more than 30-​​minutes of prac­tice (and cir­cling the ship) before actu­ally air­lift­ing the per­son, but it’s doable. (The pas­sen­ger, thank G*D is now sta­ble in a hos­pi­tal in Alaska … at least as of Sat­ur­day afternoon.)

  • Using the Med­ical Clinic on the cruise ship (for a pretty big bug bite that caused major swelling and ery­thema to the sur­round­ing tis­sue) is much cheaper than see­ing your doc­tor at home; espe­cially for those of us that lack health insurance.
  • There’s not much you can do in Vic­to­ria, British Colum­bia when you only have four hour to spend there between 7:30 and 11:30 pm on a Sat­ur­day night.

  • It’s a good thing we didn’t dis­cover the 24-​​hr Buf­fet until the last night. Oth­er­wise I would have gained even more weight than I already did …

  • Some­times all-​​inclusive vaca­tions (like cruises or other spe­cialty resorts) bring out the worst in peo­ple. I think I’ve seen and encoun­tered more rude pas­sen­gers with an odd sense of “enti­tle­ment” on this trip than I’ve had in other vaca­tions past.

    Just because pretty much every­thing is included on the ship doesn’t mean that you need to take all of the cook­ies or sweets. Or that you have to be incred­i­bly rude to the crew mem­bers who are there to serve you. Don’t think that just because you worked hard for this vaca­tion, you should be waited hand and foot … these staff mem­bers are work­ing just as hard for a vaca­tion of their own as well!

  • But over­all, we’ve meet some really nice folk … both crew mem­bers and pas­sen­gers alike. If I could, I’d def­i­nitely do another cruise to Alaska again. Maybe this time we’d head fur­ther north towards Anchor­age … and spend a few more days inland, dis­cov­er­ing more of this beau­ti­ful State instead!

Feelin’ Lucky

The Happy Newlyweds

Hubby & I have spent the past week in Canada. While the main rea­son was to cel­e­brate his cousin’s wed­ding in Toronto last Fri­day, we spent the past week tour­ing East­ern Ontario and Québec. And actu­ally, as I type this … we’re on a three-​​hour tour bus drive from Kingston back to Toronto, where we first started this bus tour.

The main pur­pose of doing these tours is because Hubby’s Uncle and Aunt have flown in from the Philip­pines to attend the wed­ding. Since they’ve flown halfway around the world, Hubby’s par­ents as well as the other fam­ily mem­bers liv­ing in North Amer­ica have decided to have a “mini”-reunion to show Hubby’s Uncle a small chunk of Canada.

And when I say “mini” … I mean that it’s a smaller por­tion of Hubby’s entire fam­ily. Dur­ing the actual wed­ding week­end, the total num­ber of fam­ily mem­bers (includ­ing aunts/​uncles, cousins, chil­dren of cousins, and all sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers) equaled 37. When we went to Nia­gara Falls on Mon­day, about 25 of those fam­ily mem­bers were still around for an overnight stay. And when we started the three-​​day bus tour on Wednes­day, we whit­tled down to 17. Regard­less, it has been an incred­i­ble week with the fam­ily … some­thing that we haven’t done since Jan­u­ary 2008. And unfor­tu­nately, that hap­pened to be in Vir­ginia Beach when Hubby’s grand­mother passed away.

Only a hand­ful of the “young” cousins with Hubby

In that two-​​year time period, four new chil­dren were added to the fam­ily. One was our niece, Kairi and the sub­se­quent three babies were girls born between 2009 and early 2010. In addi­tion, Hubby has much-​​younger cousins between the ages of thir­teen and eight. The other young kids are chil­dren from his sis­ter (Tyler) and his first cousins. This puts the total of “young kids” four­teen years old and younger at twelve.

That’s twelve kids being watched over by par­ents; twelve kids being beck­oned by the var­i­ous par­ents and their “Tita” or “Tito”** or “Até” or “Kuya.”*** Twelve kids all call­ing out “Mom” or “Dad” and approx­i­mately seven sets of par­ents respond­ing to that title.

That’s about eleven of Hubby’s Aunts /​ Uncles /​ First Cousins out of the 37 fam­ily mem­bers that have young kids under the age of eigh­teen.  If my math is right, this also means that about twelve of those 37 fam­ily mem­bers are either par­ents of older kids (eigh­teen or older).

Par­tial Group shot in Old Quebec

Then there’s Hubby & me; the child­less cou­ple. We’re not counted amongst those who have chil­dren at any age. We’re only counted as chil­dren of Hubby’s par­ents. And we only get the title of “Tita/​Tito” or “Até/​Kuya.”

But we’re def­i­nitely not called “Mom” or “Pa” (which is what Hubby’s fam­ily calls their Dads).

Now, I know what you’re think­ing … here goes Emily, once again, com­plain­ing about not being a Mother; of not being able to expe­ri­ence what its’ like to be called “Mom” or “Mommy.” And yes, I do admit that it has been bit­ter­sweet this past week when see­ing all the babies dressed up for the wed­ding; when see­ing all the other Aunts and Uncles and Cousins pass­ing the new addi­tions to the fam­ily around the group, oohing and ahhing and fuss­ing over them. (Although, I do fully admit I took part in such activity … )

But you know what? I actu­ally found the sil­ver lin­ing in all the hul­la­baloo of the “World of Babies/​Children.” And that sil­ver lin­ing is this:

Hubby being silly with our nephew & cousin

I was actu­ally ecsta­tic that I didn’t have to respond to being called “Mom” … espe­cially when it was in regards to the con­stant ques­tions from the kids older than four years old about what was going on next.  Or why we had to leave now to go to our next des­ti­na­tion. And I cer­tainly didn’t mind that I wasn’t respon­si­ble with hav­ing to deal with atti­tudes or behav­iors that the kids doled out once they got grumpy.

While I dealt with each instance that came my way or hap­pened dur­ing our “watch” over them****, I have to say that I finally appre­ci­ate the fact that I’m “just the Aun­tie” or “just Até Emily” to all the kids.

In fact, I can hon­estly say with­out a doubt that Hubby and I are lucky. And I don’t mean “lucky” in the sense that, as a Child-​​Free cou­ple, we don’t have to deal with the day to day issues of being a par­ent … because, I still wouldn’t trade the oppor­tu­nity to raise a child for any­thing else in the world.

Great “can­did” photo of the older kids

No, I mean “lucky” in the sense that we get to be the “Cool Aun­tie and Uncle” to the chil­dren. We get to take the kids around to do fun things (while hope­fully giv­ing the par­ents a bit of a reprieve) when we want to and/​or are able to. And we get to “play” with them and joke around with them as much as we want.

But most impor­tantly, we also get to be the ones who they can talk openly to;  feel com­fort­able around to ask some dif­fi­cult or sen­si­tive ques­tions. And we’re the ones whose words, at this point in their lives, can make some sort of impact on them; put a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive in mind for them … even if they’ve been told the same things twenty times over by their par­ents. And it feels great.

I can hon­estly say that the time we spent with Hubby’s youngest fam­ily mem­bers has been won­der­ful and truly sat­is­fy­ing. And I hope that dur­ing the week we’ve spent with them, we’ve been able to con­tribute to last­ing mem­o­ries and life lessons that they can take back with them to their own homes.

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Related Posts

Fam­ily Fun in Nia­gara Falls

The Mr. Apron Strings Fam­ily Bubble

Wel­com­ing Kairi to the world

Preg­nancy New(s) Edi­tion (PWP)

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** Means Aunt or Uncle in Taga­log (the native lan­guage of the Philippines)

*** In Taga­log, Até (ah-​​teh; fem­i­nine) or Kuya (koo-​​yah; mas­cu­line) is a title given to show respect to your elder sib­lings or cousins.

**** And believe me, this week there were lots of times where we vol­un­tar­ily offered to take respon­si­bil­ity for the kids.

Prob­a­bly my most fave pic from this trip. We’d go back to Que­bec City if we could!

Four Hundred

Wow. Another week has gone by with­out more than a weekly update. What can I say? It’s been a pretty busy summer.

I admit that I hate tak­ing more than a few days break from writ­ing, because I find that my cre­ative juices start to slow down. Not that I don’t have a lot to say — G*d knows I always got the “Talks Too Much” com­ment on my grade school report cards — I just find myself strug­gling to write these thoughts down.

Any­way … what have I been up to?

Well, El Hubs & I were “home” in Detroit early last week. In real­ity, it’s because we knew we had to travel to Toronto on Thurs­day for his cousin’s wed­ding on Fri­day. And yeah … we coulda done the 9 hr trip in one shot. But why do that when we can break the car ride up in two days? Besides, we fig­ured we’d do some house-​​cleaning while we were in town for a cou­ple of days.

Thurs­day after­noon, we pulled into the Greater Toronto Area and swiftly met up with my cousins for some seri­ous catch­ing up. One of these cousins was LJC, whom we haven’t prop­erly spent time with since her wed­ding in 2008. Her youngest sis­ter was also there and we had the plea­sure of finally meet­ing her Sig­nif­i­cant Other.

It was an evening full of incred­i­ble fun of just sit­ting and talk­ing … some­thing I sorely miss from the years of spend­ing end­less sum­mers with them chat­ting until late at night.

Fri­day was obvi­ously Hubby’s cousin’s wed­ding. And it was an amaz­ing time … per­haps Hot as Hades in mid-​​July, but so much fun! The best part of the recep­tion … at least in my mind … was get­ting on the dance floor with all of Hubby’s cousins/​significant oth­ers and their chil­dren (our 14 yo nephew included) to start off the night of danc­ing with the Black Eyed Peas’ “Tonight’s Gonna Be A Good Night.”

While the wed­ding recep­tion was an incred­i­ble party, I must say that get­ting together with Hubby’s entire fam­ily (well, most of them any­way) on Sat­ur­day was also won­der­ful. Because even though we spent time together the day before at the wed­ding, Saturday’s get-​​together was more laid-​​back and relaxed. I know Hubby & I had a won­der­ful time … espe­cially teach­ing them Cana­dian cousins how to play the very Michi­gan card game of Euchre. We think we may have cre­ated mon­sters. LOL!

Hubby overlooking Horseshoe Falls

And today? Well … today Hubby & I found our­selves cel­e­brat­ing HIS birth­day in Nia­gara Falls. I must say, I can’t think of any bet­ter way to cel­e­brate Hubby’s birth­day than with an entire gag­gle of fam­ily. Just imag­ine a group of 25 fam­ily mem­bers (includ­ing an Aunt & Uncle who came from the Philip­pines for the wed­ding) doing an entire bus tour of attrac­tions. It was com­pletely chaotic … but I know Hubby has been enjoy­ing him­self today.

Even if I did for­get to wish him a Happy Birth­day until another Aunt had said it to him this morn­ing. Bad bad bad wife!! **

Now, I’m lay­ing here in bed at the hotel, fin­ish­ing up the last min­utes of Hubby’s birth­day by writ­ing noth­ing more than a jour­nal entry for the past week.

Hubby, how­ever, is spend­ing the rest of his birth­day night out with the “boys.” And by “boys” I mean two of his cousins, two of his uncles, and his Dad. I’m glad Hubby’s get­ting a chance to spend time with them … espe­cially since we haven’t had many oppor­tu­ni­ties to get together with fam­ily (from all over the U.S and Canada) over the past few years.

Hubby & Me on Maid of the Mist

So Hubby … before the day’s over, I just want to send an incred­i­bly huge birth­day hug and kiss to you. You are my world; my sun­shine and rain­bow. You are my best friend … and I’m incred­i­bly blessed to have you in my life. I can’t wait to con­tinue our jour­ney in life together.

Oh … and one more thing. Not that this is incred­i­bly excit­ing news (in the grand scheme of this post any­way). But check out the title of this post.

Yep … that’s the num­ber of blog entries I’ve offi­cially writ­ten as of today. Wow!

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** In my defense, I must add that I did remem­ber it in the shower this morn­ing. But since we were try­ing to pack for an overnight stay in Nia­gara with his fam­ily, it slipped my mind by the time I started pack things away! Bad bad wife!!

6th of July">Born on the 6th of July

I’m com­ing up on the last min­utes of my actual birth­day; I turned 37 years old today. And while I’m not exactly thrilled to be another year older, I must admit that this has been a won­der­ful day. Actu­ally, it’s been a won­der­ful four days.

297It started out on Fri­day with the cor­po­rate Inde­pen­dence Day hol­i­day; which meant I wasn’t chained to my desk or weighted down by twenty zil­lion emails on my work-​​issued crack­berry. It was also the only day Hubby and I both knew we’d have all to our own this entire weekend.

So what did we do? Spent it sleep­ing in until about 9 am, fol­lowed shortly after by the pre­sen­ta­tion of my “early” birth­day gift. Then it was off to Evanston and on to the beach, where we spent the after­noon swim­ming in the cool (but not freez­ing) Lake Michi­gan weather and lying on our large two-​​person beach towel read­ing. That was fol­lowed by a really late lunch (or early din­ner) at the local seafood restau­rant and a movie at the Evanston the­ater. Over­all, a very relax­ing day.

Sat­ur­day morn­ing was spent clean­ing, in antic­i­pa­tion of my par­ents arriv­ing by train later in the after­noon. And really, that was prob­a­bly the most work I did all week­end long. (Except for that rel­a­tively last-​​minute doc­u­ment that work required me to have com­pleted by Fri­day morning … )

298By 1 pm Sat­ur­day after­noon, Hubby and I were on the Chicago River wait­ing for our Chicago Archi­tec­ture Foun­da­tion (CAF) docent to begin our tour of the sig­nif­i­cant build­ings along the river. It was an excel­lent tour and it def­i­nitely gave us a dif­fer­ent view of the Chicago sky­line; one we had never seen before. The only downer was that it was a very cold and wet day. Oh well, this just means we’ll have to go again on a brighter and sun­nier day. :-)

My par­ents “rolled” into town around 5 pm on Sat­ur­day evening. And because it was still rain­ing at the time, we headed over to the Water Tower only to find that the indoor shop­ping cen­ter would close at 6 pm. So instead, we took the Lakeshore scenic drive up to Evanston to have din­ner at the same seafood restau­rant Hubby & I ate at the day before.

299What I didn’t real­ize at the time was that Hubby was already think­ing in “advance.” You see, by the time we made it up to Evanston, the rain and clouds blew over leav­ing a clear evening sky in its place. Which made it per­fect weather for Evanston’s 4th of July fire­works. So after din­ner, we walked down to Patriot’s Park along the water­front and sat front and cen­ter for the show. Per­fect way to end the day.

Yes­ter­day (Sun­day) was spent at the Shedd Aquar­ium down­town in Chicago’s Museum Dis­trict. Hubby & I had been there ear­lier in the year when our nephew Tyler spent his Easter break with us. Unfor­tu­nately, the sea-​​quarium was being remod­eled, so we didn’t get to see the dol­phins or whales at that time. But yes­ter­day … those beau­ties were back. And show­ing off just for my par­ents; who had never been there.

For my par­ents, I think the best part was the whole “Wild Reef” exhibit, which is the shark exhibit. Hubby & I had been to the Shedd about 5 years ago when this exhibit first opened; mainly because our nephew has always had a thing for sharks. What we hadn’t expect was:

  1. The sharks to be so d*mn small at the time, and
  2. The whole exhibit to revolve around pro­tect­ing coral reefs

The whole coral reef aspect was the same thing that both my par­ents and Hubby & me loved. And that’s because the Philip­pine Islands played a ginor­mous role through­out the exhibit. What we had learned is that the Philip­pine waters house the largest, most diverse fish and coral life in the world. And see­ing how promi­nent the role of the Philip­pines played every­where in this dis­play, it was an absolute cool way to learn more about my her­itage and where my par­ents came from!

300And today … “B”-day (as opposed to “D”-day … ;-) ). I wasn’t expect­ing much of any­thing other than a (well-​​deserved) day off from work to spend with my Hubby and par­ents as we traipse through the town. But it was such a fun day!

We started out in Chi­na­town where we walked through and picked up a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent things … like a back scratcher (can never have enough of them) and a hand-​​painted fan (for those hot days). Oh, and some del­ish sweet and sour gum­mies from an Asian candy store … yum! How­ever, the real rea­son to go to Chi­na­town was to have a Dim Sum feast at our favorite Chi­nese restau­rant. And because it was my birth­day, I had to have my tra­di­tional “Long Life” noo­dle dish!

While  in a post-​​food inges­tion haze, Hubby drove all of us over to the Sears — oops, I mean Willis — Tower to do the most touristy thing in Chicago. Yep, went all the way up to the obser­va­tion deck; but not before spend­ing more than an hour in line. But it was def­i­nitely worth it … the views of the city were absolutely spectacular!

And then there were the glass bal­conies. Oh yes; glass. It’s the newest part of the the attrac­tion; four retractable glass bal­conies that allows a view of the city that’s def­i­nitely unique. As in “103-​​stories-​​straight-​​down” unique.

It was a lit­tle daunt­ing at first, but once I was on there it wasn’t so bad … as long as I didn’t con­tinue to look down for extended peri­ods of time. From then, it was just a mat­ter of tak­ing silly pic­tures of us “falling” or “hang­ing on to dear life.” And of course, since I’m such a “rebel,” I had to do some­thing “dan­ger­ous” … well at least what oth­ers would per­ceive as dangerous.

302Oh yeah … I made Hubby take a pic­ture of me jump­ing on the bal­cony. Which, if one didn’t know how absolutely rein­forced these bal­conies were by steel, would really freak any­one else that was on the bal­cony when I jumped. Heh … told you I was a rebel.

My par­ents took us out to din­ner after­wards, at my place of choice. But because my par­ents had yet to to expe­ri­ence authen­tic Chicago deep dish pizza. So that’s how we ended up at Pizze­ria Due and stuffed beyond belief and in des­per­ate need of some­thing to do walk off all the food we ate.

That’s how my Mom, Hubby and I ended up at the beach 3 blocks from our apart­ment, walk­ing along the lakeshore. And it was a beau­ti­ful evening to do so as well, with the full moon shim­mer­ing off the lake.

After­wards, it was back to the apart­ment where, after an unex­pected phone call from Dr. Bro (who actu­ally remem­bered to call on my actual birth­day — a mir­a­cle in itself), Hubby sur­prised me with a birth­day cake.

303And so that was my Birth­day week­end. A lot of activ­ity in a small span of time. I’m so grate­ful my par­ents were there to cel­e­brate it with me. And I’m so incred­i­bly lucky to have a Hubby that loves me so much.

So now I’m off to do a lit­tle more work before head­ing off to bed. I’m not going into work tomor­row, as we’re tak­ing my par­ents to the train sta­tion late-​​morning, but this is some­thing with an unfor­tu­nate deadline.

And what a bless­ing it will be to have tomor­row off. Because after a busy four days, this 37-​​year old body cer­tainly needs the rest.

301

Fake Plastic Trees

So I’ve been in the work­force for … well, what seems like for­ever. Seri­ously. I started babysit­ting at the age of 12 years old and spent many a sum­mers watch­ing over the younger neigh­bor­hood kids. Or the kids of my par­ents’ friends

And then at the age of 16, I got my first “offi­cial” job as a burger-​​slinger at the local fast food estab­lish­ment. (Think of the recent “King-​​On” com­mer­cials on TV. Yeah, it was that restau­raunt …) I had a man­ager who was the spit­tin’ image of Tim Curry and thought that all Asian girls looked like Conn​.ie Chung. He also had a habit of stick­ing any non-​​Caucasian employee in the back either mak­ing the sand­wiches or wash­ing dishes. Amongst other nasty com­ments he made, the naïve per­son in me took a few years to I rec­og­nize what a bigot this man was. So yeah, I lasted about 3 months on that job.

280

Hubby & I try to take “Foot Fotos” every time we go on vaca­tion. This was taken at Can­non Beach, OR

The next sum­mer I man­aged to land a job at the local mall work­ing at a music store. No, it wasn’t an inde­pen­dent record store … although I always wished I could have worked at one. Yes, it was one of those retail chain stores that sold mostly Top 40 crap. But the job had its perks, which included a decent dis­count, first dibs on any “alter­na­tive” stuff that man­aged to come into the store, and a crap load of free­bies that the label reps would hand out any time they came into the store. Oh … and we also got a lot of “heads up” on tour dates and album releases before the gen­eral pub­lic new. Of course pre–inter­net … that was a pretty d*mn cool perk. It was def­i­nitely a fun job to have, and the peo­ple that I worked with and inter­acted with on a daily basis def­i­nitely made the mun­dane more interesting.

I man­aged to keep the music store job for the next three years; last­ing through the sum­mer after my first year in col­lege. And, if you can believe it … I also man­aged to hold a sec­ond job at one of the depart­ment stores within the same mall. That one wasn’t as fun, as I man­aged to get stuck in the men’s cloth­ing depart­ment. How­ever, to this day I know exactly how to fold a man’s dress shirt back into the orig­i­nal pack­ag­ing it may have come in. Ain’t it amaz­ing how we retain the stu­pid­est things?

Dundas Square, Toronto

Dun­das Square, Toronto

I finally quit both retail jobs after my first year in Nurs­ing school. And that’s because I man­aged to get my first job in a hos­pi­tal as a Nurs­ing Assis­tant. Which turned in to a Nurse Tech­ni­cian posi­tion another year later. Which even­tu­ally turned into my first post-​​college job. Of course, I moved over to the big­ger “sis­ter” hos­pi­tal at that time. Which meant more inter­est­ing patients and def­i­nitely more Res­i­dents (“Doctors-​​In-​​Training” … not to be con­fused with Med School stu­dents). Those first cou­ple years post-​​graduation in my first job had to be one of the most excit­ing times of my career. Lots of new things to learn, lots of inter­est­ing co-​​worker dynam­ics, etc.

After about two years, the “glam­our” and excite­ment of work­ing on “the floors” started to wear down on me. Things sud­denly became rou­tine. And since by then I was mar­ried, work­ing the after­noon shift and every other week­end grated on me because, as a new­ly­wed, I just wanted to spend time with my Hubby. It’s about that time when I started to feel the “burn out” of work­ing on the floors. And look­ing back now, I have a feel­ing that the rea­son I was burn­ing out was more because of the way our unit was being man­aged* and not by the peo­ple I worked with or the actual work I was responsible.

In any case, my “break” lit­er­ally came when I injured my back on the job. How, may you ask, did that hap­pen? Well, it’s not that a patient fell on me … rather it was me that fell on a patient. Yep. As a fel­low RN and I were lift­ing a patient who slipped off of her chair onto the floor, this patient began to lose her bal­ance. Now … in Nurs­ing School, you’re taught to “ease” a patient that is falling down onto the floor. In oth­er­words, you don’t let go of the patient; you guide them slowly onto a chair or back down on the floor. Well … while I attempted to “ease” this patient onto the floor, my fel­low RN decided to just let the patient go.

At the Bow of a Caribbean Cruise Ship

At the Bow of a Caribbean Cruise Ship

And down the patient went. With me right on top of her shortly after­wards. And … ouch, what was that sharp pain I felt in my lower back?

I hap­pened to be off that week­end and when I couldn’t sleep com­fort­ably for the next two days, I decided it was time to fill out paper­work. So after a cou­ple of Employee Health appoint­ments and an MRI to my lower back, I found out I had a her­ni­ated disk. And despite the months of phys­i­cal ther­apy and cor­ti­sone shots (which, by the way, I think may have been one of the rea­sons for my IF issues … ), the pain to my back and it’s asso­ci­ated numb­ness and tin­gling down my left leg per­sisted. So that’s when I decided to have surgery to cor­rect the her­ni­ated disk. (What can I say? I was only 25 at the time and I didn’t want to be in pain for the rest of my life!)

And that’s when I met my dis­abil­ity RN Case Man­ager for the first time. She’s the one who showed me that there were other areas of Nurs­ing that I could get in to with my degree. So armed with that infor­ma­tion, when I returned to work I was lucky enough to have a fel­low RN who was doing Case Man­age­ment for the hos­pi­tal I worked for. She’s the one that got me my first posi­tion in Case Man­age­ment and I haven’t turned back to floor nurs­ing since.

On the beach at Labadee, Haiti

On the beach at Labadee, Haiti

So I guess you can say that I lit­er­ally “fell” into Case Man­age­ment. Ha!

Okay, so that long dia­tribe wasn’t what I was get­ting at when I first started this post. What I’m really get­ting at is that since I was a young’in I worked. And once I grad­u­ated from col­lege and joined the career work­force, I’ve worked. Full time, mind you. The only time I ever took a break between jobs (besides when I went for my back surgery) was when I left the hos­pi­tal to work for a health insur­ance com­pany. And even then, it was less than a week. And when I left that job to come here to Chicago, I took absolutely no time off in between.

Oh sure, I’ve had time off dur­ing the year. I mean, we Full-​​Time folk do accrue vaca­tion time that we are enti­tled to. And trust me, Hubby & I make it a point to take a vaca­tion because that’s a pri­or­ity for us in life. I mean really, it’s our time to recharge our bat­ter­ies and refuel our energy so that we can delve head­first into our careers with new pur­pose. We need that time because, unlike oth­ers that have dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ties than us, our child­less (or child-​​free, still decid­ing) life con­sists of lit­tle more than our careers.

At Lake Louise, Banff, Alberta (Canadian Rockies)

At Lake Louise, Banff, Alberta (Cana­dian Rockies)

Okay, so I’m overex­ager­at­ing here (or as Hubby says I’m “V.H.1 Sto­ry­telling”). I mean, I wouldn’t be writ­ing /​ blog­ging and Hubby wouldn’t be sketch­ing if I didn’t do any­thing more than wake up and go to work every day. But I think you read­ers may get the point.

It’s been just over five months since I moved to Chicago and started this new job, with­out tak­ing more than 2 days off (strictly for the NYE hol­i­day) inbe­tween. And before that, it’s been since July last year that Hubby & I have taken any sort of vaca­tion together. Need­less to say, I’m ripe for some time off.

H*ll. I don’t even care if it’s a Stay-​​cation. I don’t care if I don’t do more than read, write or blog for a week. I just want to have the time ded­i­cated to our­selves. To be together. To fully rel­ish in the big move that the two of us made together. To explore our new local sur­round­ings. (Hmm … I guess you could call that a “Play-​​cation” then. Not to be con­fused with “pla­cate” though … ) All with­out the pres­sure to keep work­ing. To make dead­lines. To set new goals. To main­tain the cur­rent goals.

Seri­ously, I’d be happy to just be in bed with Hubby, imag­in­ing we’re back in Hawaii lying in a ham­mock on the beach at sun­set. Per­haps we can bring in some fake plas­tic trees, too.

Cannon Beach, OR again ... Recognize the rock from "Goonies"?

Can­non Beach, OR again … Rec­og­nize the rock from “Goonies”?

As it is, the next long week­end we have planned will be Memo­r­ial Day. (But then, is it a vaca­tion if the rest of your com­pany is off too?!) And the next one would be Inde­pen­dence Day … which is fol­lowed closely by my birth­day that fol­low­ing Mon­day. And d*mn it … you know I’ll be tak­ing that day off. I mean, I’ll at least have accrued one or two vaca­tion days by then …

I mean if I can’t take time off to find a new career path or even take time off to take my imag­i­nary kids to a fun vaca­tion spot dur­ing their imag­i­nary sum­mer vaca­tion … let alone to take a mater­nity leave for that imag­i­nary preg­nancy, too … I should be enti­tiled to have my own birth­day off. Don’t you think?

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

* I know that now, only because being in a lead­er­ship posi­tion … I know that a per­son never leaves a job because of the peo­ple or because of the actual work. Nope. In my expe­ri­ence, most peo­ple that go will­ingly on to “greener pas­tures” (or maybe not so “greener” …) leave because of who they report to.

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