Finding home

School
Phew.
Week two is over.
My brain feels somewhere between a balloon full of water about to burst and a dendrite on its last leg.

There is no wasting time, and I feel like I am wasting time sometimes, or that I could have been more productive with this or that. I am a perfectionist, but I am definitely having to realize my shortcomings in this!

I'm feeling like my brain isn't smart right now. I hope I am not the only one that feels this way. I have been studying like it's nobodies business, and I am curious what the study habits are of my fellow classmates.
If any of you are reading this, care to enlighten me? :]
There are so many rabbit holes of information that it's hard to keep things straight.
I know that if it weren't for my fellow classmates, and their reminders of deadlines, I would feel like I was drowning slightly more than I am, haha!
All I know is that I am always praying about something.

Life in general
I've had a full week this week!

We got a baby grand piano on craigslist for an amazing deal. It's in amazing shape! I haven't had a piano for a long time, and I used to play everyday. I missed it, and I didn't realize how much until I started playing again.
Playing the piano is free therapy.
The minute my fingers strike the keys, I feel at home.
I'm lost in those keys.
Sometimes you can find home in the simplest of places. When your life is in transition constantly, which I feel like I have been over the last year or so, you long to feel some normalcy.
Normalcy in the sense that you are grounded in a routine. My routine is-- I don't have a routine. School starts on different times every day for the most part, and I'm having to place my life around my studying. I mean really who wants to be normal completely, I guess this is my new life and I have to grow accustomed to it.
You grow to find solace in the simple things in life like playing the piano for five minutes, the laughter of your nieces and nephews, praying, sipping coffee, attending weddings of people you care for, just taking part in life in small ways that you can.


I miss my friends and family I don't have as much time for as I did before
My best friends, you know who you are, I miss you so much.

Here's a glimpse into my life this week:

Love,

Amber

It won't be forever.

My second week of nursing school is underway, and I don't think I will ever be able to fit everything inside my brain that I have to fit.

There are things for days to pack inside there.

I have found myself doing more homework in these last two weeks than I feel like I have ever done in my whole college career before now. I know you might think I am over exaggerating, but I am not.
There are places to check, hidden assignments, nearly missed posts, and I guess I feel like my pre-nursing college days were easy as peach pie compared to this madness.

It's good, and I am not complaining. I enjoy the class time, and I feel like I can't get enough of it. I just feel like we were nurtured more in my prior college experience.

In my pre-nursing school days, If you had a test, you would know that it's over chapter such and such, but in nursing school they give you a list of questions to look up, a list of maybe four books the information for the whole sheet of questions might be in, and that's it! So you have two books that are 2000 pages each, and you maybe even one of those four books are split up into two books, with an index that lasts for days...

I was not prepared for this, but I feel like I am grabbing hold of these concepts at least.
Nursing school is not for the faint of heart.
You work hard.
Your laundry goes unfolded.
You might be found crying  in bedrooms and cars from the sheer overwhelming feelings of the list of things you have to do.
You worry a little about how you're going to have a job.
You write just to keep your sanity.
You pray on the way to school and on the way home from school just to make it.
And you hope that at the end of the two years, you're there carrying a diploma that says you made it to the finish line.

Love,

Amber

Dear coffee,

I'd like to thank you officially and formally for seeing me through awkward meetings, and of course, the less awkward, down-to-earth moments of life as well.

You never judge me if It's 11 am, and I am only barley gracing the world with my presence. You never mind my primal grunts that form before more intelligent language can construct itself inside my brain, because I can never truly wake up unless I've consumed at least one cup of your delicious, smooth, and aromatic brew.

Even if you're of the decaf kind, the effect is the same. The warmth of the cup I'm holding is enough to do the trick.

To others, it might seem like I am awake, but in reality, I really am not. I can't be held accountable for not recalling conversations that have transpired before said coffee has been consumed. Sorry guys.

Thank you also for your flexibility in being served cold in the summer and warm all year round. You really are great in every season.

Thank you for the early church mornings, (awkward) blind dates, where I usually call my sister right before hand to make sure she knows where I am going, and to also have her encourage me a little, and of course the many game nights with friends, family, and strangers that through sips of coffee, became friends. 

You've been a faithful friend, coffee. 

Many thanks,

Yours truly, 

a faithful coffee drinker,

Amber

It's not like the movies.

I remember that day clearly. I remember I was writing poetry in my room while my former boyfriend sat in the living room angry at me. The fight I cannot call to mind, but it caused us to flee from wherever we were and find shelter in opposite spaces of one another.

I got the call. The important call that I would have to drop everything for, because it was about to be one of the most important moments in my life.  I remember staring at the pieces of paper with my words scattered on them, my confused thoughts, when my cell phone rang. Seeing the name flash across the screen, I had already perceived what was about to occur.
"It's time." She said.
My apathy tempered.  I left the space of indifference behind, and quickly walked out the door with the my words trailing.
"It's time. I have to go."
He knew what it meant, and I left him with the residue of whatever we hadn't worked out. It wasn't the time or place for it.

And so, there I found myself minutes later, plopped down in a hospital room, nervous.  I was unsettled and unsure. If I knew one thing about comforting someone it definitely included confidence, and not revealing any uncertainties that you might have.

You have certain expectations of situations from what you've observed. You gather all those pieces, those snippets of perception, and you string them together into puzzle pieces until they fit inside your head. My expectations were completely off. First of all, I had only witnessed the birth room drama via TV sitcoms, or when it was mentioned briefly in movies like Father of the Bride part 2. I had no idea that Heather wasn't going to be biting my head off, yelling, screaming, maybe even breaking my phalanges via tight grip.

Lesson one, the movies always makes everything way more dramatic. (I witnessed one other labor, and it was also very mild compared to the movie experience.)

I knew she was in pain by way she couldn't get comfortable. We were alone in her hospital room for quite awhile. This was before my college days, and the labor and delivery nurse taught me how to read the monitor to tell when contractions were coming on so I could be prepared to help and coach.
But I was not prepared. I had no idea what in the world I was even doing there, but I knew my friend, and someone I had come to know as a sister needed me there, and I was going to give her the best that I could.

Her words grieved of pain, and all I knew to do was to pray (and of course try and get her to breathe like they do the in movies, apparently that's somewhat realistic)
I prayed aloud to her through her contractions.
We were there all night long, and I felt the morning creeping in. Through pain, sleep, slight convincing of an epidural, arrival of a grandmother to add to make our duo a trio, and then finally when the dawn peaked through the shades of the hospital windows, Olivia Anne made her debut.

I watched quietly and encouraged her when pushing. People always make the birth of a child seem like such an amazing miracle, and until I witnessed it myself,  I didn't realize how much of an understatement this was.
I felt the ache of the night, the fights, and the hopelessness all diminish into nothing.
The joy, hope, and love at the miraculousness of her birth overwhelmed me so that I could feel nothing but warmth inside. I knew nothing else mattered in that minute, but what God had done in that hospital room, in the labor and delivery unit of Saint Luke's Hospital.

I held her in my arms, breathing in her newborn baby likeness while she was swaddled in a blanket. She was a matter of minutes old, and she was the newest baby I'd ever held.

Templates, Layouts, and Profiles--Oh my!

I've been entertaining the idea of creating a blog for sometime now. I love writing, and I never shut up about a lot of things, so you can imagine that I would have a plethora of topics to write about.  I've read  headline after headline about how simple it is to create a blog. 

Supposedly it only takes five minutes and bada-bing-bada-boom! You have yourself a blog. Followers, now that's another topic completely

Much to my dismay, this hasn't been the case for me. Insert long dramatic sigh here.

I remember back in the day when blogspot actually owned blogspot. You logged on, entered some information, and there you have it. 

Now google+, and I love google very much don't get me wrong, has made it very complicated to even enter an about me section. 

I've poured hours over tutorials to try and figure this out. I go to "edit profile" in the layouts section, and there is no text box other than the "title" 

If it's simpler than I've made it then I am going to kick myself, apologize to google, and then sadly face the reality that I am getting old and technology isn't a piece of cake anymore.

Ugh!