Cleaning Day!

I don't quite remember when I wrote last so I will tell you all about my week.

Monday:
We had just got home from our trip to San Jose, the weekend kind of took all our energy out of us so we watched a lot of TV after work.

Tuesday:
Nothing (besides work-- which was still pretty much nothing)

Wednesday:
We had the RD come in to work, and I did nothing. I do believe I went to the gym after work though and that was quite refreshing.

Thursday:
Nothing-- I read Harry Potter at work. That was fun.
Oh I also chose a resident for my case study. She is blind and had been living independently for many years before she fell and had to be admitted to the nursing home. She was telling me about the FULL meals that she would make on her own at home, using all of the appliances that normal people do in her kitchen. She is seriously a rockstar.
After work we went to a Tribal Health Fair where one of the dietitians in the area asked if we could come check it out. It was small but nice, there was a lot of helpful information about nutrition and healthcare for the people in need. Also there was a free dinner, cooking demos, and prizes! Since I'm the luckiest person on the planet-- with my 3 raffle tickets that we had WE WON the raffle and got a $50 gift card to Walmart. I know what you're thinking "Ew, I don't want that prize" but in Lakeport, it's a pretty nice prize. We were happy, we had Indian Tacos for dinner-- unfortunately I was the only one brave enough to get ground turkey on my taco and I was the only one who ended up having food poisoning (or unagreement) from our meal. At least it tasted good.

Friday:
Literally nothing at work- I finished Harry Potter OOTF (pretty fantastic, reading these books never gets old.) We went out to dinner to a place called Jimmy's which is a Taquaria/Greek restaurant. The man who helped us (obviously a family business) was quite gorgeous, and is starting up a career in realestate. Why do these people live in Lakeport?!?  I had a gyro though and it was quite delicious.

Saturday:
Olivia and I had a meeting with our program director for breakfast in Windsor. We went to a place called the Omlette Express which was quite good. It was also a very good meeting, Olivia and I were concerned about getting the experience we needed in acute care here since our hospital is only 25 beds and doesn't offer the variety typical placements do-- our program director gave us the green light to start looking for preceptors in San Jose so we can do our acute care there! Olivia's dad has already offered to let us live at their house-- we'll see if Jackie will let me sleep on her couch for 6 weeks though ;)
After the meeting we went to Walmart to cash in our winning $50. Then I remembered that I had a gift card to Pier 1 Imports also, so we went 15 minutes south to Santa Rosa and popped into Pier 1. I got a painting for our living room and a mug that has cow udders for the base and is spotted black and white like a cow for the cup part of the mug. I LOVE it. Next door to Pier 1 a linnens store was going out of business so we stopped in to see what kind of deals we could get. I wanted to get a fitted sheet but couldn't find one I liked- however I did find REALLY cute place mats that were only 90 cents each, so of course I bought them.
Once we got home from Santa Rosa we took a quick nap then went grocery shopping. We stocked up on some really good fresh fruits and veggies-- I love living with food people! Not that my parents didn't buy great produce, but we have different food every night (mexican, chinese, italian, etc.) and it never gets old! Then after grocery shopping we went to check out the Taste of Lakeport. Instead of being all about food like the Taste of Edmonds, it's all about wine here. It was $35 to participate and we're quite poor so we did not join in, but it was good to see normal looking people out in town having a good time. Then to top of the great day we watched The Lucky One right before bed.

Sunday:
And now to today. Cleaning day! I started off my day folding my rather large pile of laundry that had come out of the washing machine a few days ago. Since I am an early riser (benefits!) I decided that washing my car before breakfast was the best idea so that I didn't have to be out there in the heat of the day. I washed it really thoroughly, came in for Sunday Funday breakfast (banana pancakes with turkey bacon) then went back out and vacuumed and washed the inside windows of my car. I LOVE HAVING A CLEAN CAR. And somehow here it gets dirty FAST.
After cleaning my car I borrowed our neighbor's (she's really cool, I'll talk about her later) pressure nozzle for the hose and sprayed all the webs and bugs off of the outside of the house. Then when I thought I was done I remembered I needed to do my balcony so I had Jacque swing the hose up to my balcony so I could spray from up there. Then I took my broom that I bought from my new favorite store (the Kelseyville Lumber store) and some soap and scrubbed off all the bird poop from my balcony. It's so clean now! I scrubbed our back deck also and fed the pathetic palm trees in the back. It felt good to be outside and not bad being wet out there either-- our water doesn't exactly get cold but it was still refreshing.
Jacque and I connected the propane tank to my brand new grill. Jacque and Olivia cleaned most of the inside of the house: kitchen counters, dishes, cleaning the stove, bathrooms, windows, mirrors, etc. I vacuumed and swiffered and MAN does it feel GREAT to have a spic spac clean house. I'm sure my back will hate me for it later but it sure does look nice in here.
I threw in Pitch Perfect to motivate me to iron my work clothes. I just love that movie, it will never get old. We put up the painting that I got at Pier 1 yesterday and finally put up our "Lake House" sign. It's been a VERY productive day and it's only 4pm!

I have a conference this week along with another team meeting in Santa Rosa. Jackie, Eric and Mike are heading up on Friday for Labor Day weekend and I'm really looking forward to that. All is good!

Love you all,
Lindsey

Really ready to come home.

The last few weeks have been very frustrating. I finished up at WIC and absolutely loved it, then I went to extended care after. It's a 90 bed facility in Clearlake and a lot of the residents have been there for quite some time and already have their diet plans figured out. We figured out that both of our "acute care" facilities aren't actually acute care so we plan to talk to our directors about all of it.

We went to San Jose over the weekend and had a BLAST. Normal civilization is such a wonderful thing. It was in the 90's, we relaxed, shopped and Eric was an AMAZING brother-in-dating and changed my headlight which proved to be a very difficult task. I owe him a bottle of tequilla-- and not the cheap kind. We also went out to a place called Campbell and met Olivia and her friends there. It was a cute little area, felt a lot safer than Jackie's neighborhood, and had a really great time.

Unfortunately we had to come back to Lakeport, but Jacque finally came with us and moved in!! We are adjusting to being back in Lakeport.. temps are in the 90s-100s and there is a wildfire in Chico that is sending over a plentiful amount of smoke our way.

Really missing home right now, wishing that I had my kitties with me or I was just home with my kitties. I could really go for some Agua Verde or Taster's Wok right now.

You all know my address, little mail would be wonderful.

Love you,
Lindsey

1st rotation down

So I have officially completed my first rotation as a dietetic intern. WIC was so fun. On Wednesday I taught a class to moms about transitioning their baby from the bottle to a sippy cup and protecting their teeth with fluoride varnish and frequent brushing. In California they don't fortify their water with fluoride so the kids get tooth decay even worse than at home.

Yesterday I got to hold so many tiny babies! We started with a mom with 1 month old twins, the mom was still very weak from her c-section so I got to hold them during their appointment. Then another mom came in with a 1 week old, THEN another mom came in for a lactation consult with a 1 week old who I got to hold for a long time. All of the babies smelled like sweet little baby smell and I was a happy girl. For lunch one of my co-workers invited me over to her house and her mom made us lengue and frijoles y chiles. The chiles were fresh out of the garden and EXTRA spicy. I loved every single bite. I also brought cupcakes with rainbow chip frosting as a going away treat for everyone.

Today was my last day and we had a travel clinic in Lucerne. Pretty boring day at work but today my other co-worker had us over for lunch. She's the mama of us younger ladies and HER mama made us fresh tortillas and soup of pork and beans. It was delicious. I don't think my dad would believe how much pork I'm eating! But it has been really good. The other thing we had that was really really good was arroz con leche. Take horchata, warm it up, put rice in it and add a whole lot of love and we now have my new favorite thing on this planet. This co-worker also invited us over tomorrow for her granddaughter's 5th birthday party. I'm sad to be leaving but it is nice to have new friends I can hang out with during my time here!

Jackie and Warren are on their way here right now and we are going to have a fun-filled weekend!

Love you all!

Ouchie Monday

Oh man. Yesterday was filled with so much activity that I had no energy left for today. Somehow I woke up around 4 and couldn't fall back asleep. So naturally once I got to work I immediately became extremely sleepy and could barely keep my eyes open. We had clinic this morning, it wasn't very busy though. Then after lunch was office hours. During lunch, though, I went to the post office and mailed off my ballot (I'm such a good citizen) and a package to my mama. I also got some flat rate envelopes and a book of stamps! Safeway is right across the street from the post office so I went in and got a few things I needed for the house along with two packs of cards so I can finally write to people without sending a "thank you" card. When I finally got to eat my lunch I poured my salad dressing over my salad, put the top back on the container and started shaking-- not too much longer the top popped off the container and half of my salad flew all over the lunch room. Not fun.

My office work was completed in a matter of an hour so I had a good 4 hours to sit there and do nothing. Luckily one of my co-workers asked if I would go with her to the storage unit so I jumped at the chance. It was also good because she is pregnant and I would rather blow out my back than have her lift something heavy. My legs are VERY sore from the gym yesterday, I was having trouble getting up and down all day, but lifting a few boxes of breast pumps wasn't so bad.

When we got back from the storage unit I decided that there was no good reason why I couldn't sit quietly and read (since most of the employees were on their computers playing solitaire) so I opened up my Kindle app and dove deep in to the magical world of Harry Potter. It helped time pass, but it was still a very long time before the clock finally said 5:00.

On my way home I stopped by the one recommended nail salon to get my eyebrows waxed. The ONLY Asian population in Lakeport was found in this salon. It made me feel more at home because there really are no Asians here. The woman who waxed my eyebrows was Vietnamese, just like my eyebrow lady at home, and she said she originally moved from Vietnam to San Jose but then came up to Lakeport because her sister was here. She did a pretty good job on my eyebrows though so I feel much better knowing there is one place I can trust.

For dinner Olivia and I made a Thai quinoa salad with red peppers and mango. Olivia made the dressing with oyster sauce, brown sugar, and a lot of spices. We also made butternut squash fries that went really well with honey mustard. At the same time, I made the next few days lunch with my signature southwestern quinoa salad. We used a lot of dishes but we cleaned up quick and had delicious food!

Tomorrow we go to the courthouse for WIC to encourage the Lakeport "supreme court" to support mothers who breastfeed more. They don't want us looking like WIC employees so they said be as casual and "normal" looking as possible. Yay no ironing for tomorrow!

Love you guys,
Lindsey

Saturday Exploring

The wind has turned. Olivia and I started out the day with a GREAT workout at the gym. We're still getting oriented there but its still so good. After that we came home and showered, I invented a delicious breakfast-- a Costco blueberry muffin with cream cheese in the middle, all warmed up. It made me happy. Then we went downtown Lakeport and walked around to all the shops.  It made us like Lakeport just a little, and we got Renee's milkshakes to tour us around town.
Jackie kept telling me to go to one antique shop where they have a Siamese kitten running around. We didn't find him until we were almost leaving the store but man did that little fluff ball make me feel good. I really wish we could have pets here because I miss Tessy times a million.
When we got back from perusing around town I finally got to break open my vacuum and give the whole house a good cleaning. I feel so much better now that it is clean. Or now that I know its clean the way I want it.
Before I knew it I looked up at the clock and it was 5 pm. Who knew? Looking forward to Sunday Funday.
Linds

Friday!

Well, today we went to a town called Middletown and had a "travel clinic" in a local church. Wow, I thought that Clearlake was bad-- this place was not white trash or thug low-income people-- they were LOWWWWW income. And on top of being low income they are out in the middle of no where and most of them didn't have cars. Did I mention that there is no YellowCab/ taxis here? Needless to say, we had a lot of frustrated moms and a lot of children that I just wanted to give them all a nice house. There was one baby who was two weeks old--- reminded me a lot of Jesse because he was + for heroin at birth, taken away from the birth mom and in the NICU for a week. He was such a cute little bug and very well behaved/ not bothered compared to how I remember Jesse being. The foster mom was very nice and let me hold him, this is not her first foster child and seems to know what she was doing. I was just happy to see one baby getting the help he really needed. Hopefully he gets adopted to a nice family and doesn't show any signs of physical and/or mental delays.

Tonight Olivia and I went to the Concert in the Park at Library Park in Lakeport. It wasn't the best band, but it was still really fun-- we got to see most of the population of Lakeport, and one lady brought her donkey! When we asked her to take a picture of us with the donkey she got a picture of the donkey with Olivia's chin and my belly. It was quite entertaining. Also, we went to the Konocti Casino booth and we BOTH won a free night stay at the Konocti Casino Resort. Hello fun free weekend. The guy running the booth couldn't believe that we both rolled a 6 & a 5 to win the free room. We were pretty happy.

Another exciting thing is that Olivia and I signed up for our gym last night! It has more machines than my last gym so I have a little learning and orienting to do but so far I really like it. There is spin class and cardio kickboxing after work each day so they will keep us active. There's a lot of bros there, but there is also the head of the police department and an undercover cop who are both regulars so it makes us feel more safe.

This weekend I FINALLY get to vacuum because my vacuum finally came in the mail! My phone case came also, but apparently it was fit for the Samsung Galaxy S4 not the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active. So I need to return that case and I already ordered a new one to come! Even though this phone is supposed to be Lindsey-proof I am still so scared to damage it when there's no case on it!

This weekend we'll be washing cars, vacuuming, cleaning windows and the pool and grocery shopping. We're also hoping to walk around Lakeport while some of the businesses are actually open, and make sure we get plenty of gym time!

Missing you all lots,
Lindsey