I watched Downton Abbey this week. ALL of it. What can I say? I got sucked in. Real quick: when we first moved to Boise, Russell and I used to watch Masterpiece Theater every Sunday night. I especially loved Masterpiece Mystery! Oh, Miss Marple - crazy old lady! Now, we both work Sunday nights and so the tradition has fallen by the wayside. Sad.

Anyway, back to Downton Abbey. It makes me wonder if I was born at the wrong time. Why don't we write letters on fancy thick paper anymore? Because we send a dumb email instead. If there were any possible way, I would abandon email and send letters exclusively. All kinds - not just thank you notes and birthday cards. I've been thinking about this and I've assembled a list. Perfectly awesome reasons to send a note:

new job

expecting a baby

the electricity went out

the season changed

the dog celebrated his birthday

you got a new electronic device

you re-arranged the furniture and it's awesome

Really? You can write a note for no reason at all, can't you? Now if I could just get my hands on some of that really thick paper...

I've never loved getting up early but alas I am a shift worker and I am relegated to nights. Let me be clear - I am NOT complaining. I work 3 days a week and I realize that this affords for what feels like (after both working and going to school full time for forever) a very leisurely lifestyle. If you've never worked nights, you might not know that it messes with your sleepy-time schedule a little bit. I work 3 12-hour shifts in a row and when I get home after that last day, I want to go right to bed but guess what, it's 8 in the morning. I've tried going to bed fully intending to get up mid-afternoon or so. Never happens. Impossible I say. So usually, I sleep too late and then I'm up all night long and let me have you guess what again, I don't live in "open 24 hours" Vegas anymore. So, I try to get straight the next day and then what happens is I'm really sleepy at about 9 at night but I don't think I can sleep through the night if I go to bed that early, so I stay up. 1 am rolls around and I'm wide awake. Make sense? Not even a little. I know, I know, I'm taking a long time to get to the point here. I recently adopted a new way to handle all of this. When I'm tired, I'm going to go to sleep. Who cares what time it is?! Just lying there in bed, staring at the ceiling (or worse, the clock), can't fall asleep? Forget it! I'm getting up. Took a "nap" yesterday from 11-6. Got in bed at 1:30 last night, wide awake at 5 am. SO, I got up. In the morning. Early in the morning. I did chores. And I'm sitting here and my house is clean, and the laundry is going and I feel like nothing "to do" is hanging over my head and it feels so good. Maybe getting up early really isn't that bad after all. Really though, early, late - those words are pretty much meaningless to me at this point.

My best impression of Tom Haverford. (Russell says I'm not even close)

Russell is cramming in a little last minute homework and all I was doing was sitting there and he said I was distracting him. He waited until the last minute and now he's freaking out a little and I'm so jerky that I just can't stop laughing about it. Anyway, here's some random stuff:

- I've never taken pictures in one of those photo booth thingys in the mall. Sad, huh? Will someone please do that with me?

- My last post? In retrospect I should have probably told you that it was a handwritten note and that woman couldn't have hurt anyone if she tried. Sorry about that.

- I had a patient who had a tattoo of a man's name on the inside of her thigh. She was 76 years old. Gross.

- It made it to 66˚ yesterday and I sat outside in the sun. No lie, I was tempted to put on my bathing suit.

- In a matter of hours I'll be in Vegas with ALL of my brothers and sisters. I wonder what the temperature is there...

From a patient:

Nurse, give me the key. No matter what Larry says. I will hurt you bad. Feel lucky try me. I'm not crazy yet. Thank you.

This is real life.

Every time I go to the movies I can't help but wonder: what if the person that sat in this chair before me had lice? And then I get itchy.