From the Sunshine/Wind/Rain State

1.  So…I’m very embarrassed to say that I kinda want to see the movie “The Last Song.”  Yes, I know it has Miley Cyrus in it, and Yes, I know that it was written by Nicholas Sparks.  Get ready for the rationalization!  There’s hot guy volleyball action in it.  And it doesn’t appear to be the homo-erotic Top Gun volleyball playing…not that I didn’t like that scene in Top Gun…anything with any sort of libido can appreciate that scene.  Yes, I said anything…that sentiment is not just aimed at people.  Everyone knows volleyball players are sexy, that’s just how it goes.  Greg Kinnear, who I secretly have a crush on, is also in it.  He pretty much always puts on a good show.  Perhaps this movie will cause me to recant a little bit of my Nicholas Sparks hatred.  I’ve never read one of his books, and I’ve only caught bits and pieces of the movie “The Notebook.”  It was enough to make me vomit into my mouth.  What a sap!  Seriously, the two people at the end of the Notebook die at the same time while holding hands?  Give me a break!  Makes me wonder if Nicholas Sparks does, in fact, have a penis.  However…given that he’s sold millions of books to millions of adoring fans, and then those books go on to become movies that are cherished by millions of fans and non-fans alike, I guess maybe I shouldn’t cut him off without at least giving him a chance.  Of course, given all my disdain for him, should I actually enjoy one of his books or movies, I will never admit it.  This is a stance I’ve held for years, and if I suddenly start liking Nicholas Sparks, it’s going throw everything I’ve ever said into question, and I can’t have that.

2.  I am totally, completely, and 100% in love with manatees.  Every day when I’m not at work, I think about going to see the manatees.  When I’m at work and my patients aren’t falling out of bed or soiling themselves, I read about manatees on the internet.  Forget the beaches and the palm trees and seafood…I think one of Florida’s most redeeming qualities thus far has got to be the manatee.  I recently had the opportunity to kayak in a river that has manatees…we almost shat ourselves the first time that a group of them surfaced close to us.  I thought I was going to tip out.  Towards the end of the paddle while Simon and I were sitting very quietly in our boats, a curious little guy came up to us and started pushing our kayaks around.  It was crazy to see this light patch of water just materialize into a giant animal.  He would poke his little head out of the water so we could touch him, and he would roll onto his back so we could rub his belly.  He was the cutest!!  I wanted to take him home with me, but I think he would have been a bit too big to fit in the bathtub.  They seriously are the pugs of the water; I have no doubt in my mind that that’s why I like them so much.  I also found out that the word manatee comes from a native word meaning “breast.”  Maybe because they resemble giant boobs?  I guess there’s been talk about trying to get the manatee off the endangered species list, since their numbers appear to be coming up.  It’s good that their numbers are coming up, but it’s bad because once they’re off the list, the conservationist effort stands to lose a lot of funding in preserving their habitats.  It also means that a lot of the enforcement for boats in manatee zones will go away.  Boat collisions are one of the main causes of death for manatees, since they hang out so close to the surface of the water and don’t seem to have an instinctual fear of boats.  I hope they stay protected…interacting with that one manatee was hands down one of the greatest experiences of my life.

3.  I recently finished doing my income taxes.  What a pain in the ass that was.  I had to file in four states, and unfortunately, Turbo Tax only allows a person to do three states through their online program.  So I had to print out the return for Arkansas and fill it out by hand.  “Multiply the number in box 8 by the number in box 10, then divide that by the number in box 2, then subtract from that the number in box 14, then go to the tax table and find out which bracket you’re in, get that number and subtract that from the number in box 5…”  It was horrible!  All together it probably took me about four hours to complete the entire process.  If I was more organized and actually kept track of receipts, it would probably do my brain better to just take my stuff to a tax person and let them have at it.  But I’m not organized.  That and when I’m buying something in June, I don’t think to myself, “I should probably save this receipt so I can write it off on my taxes…next April.”  When all was said and done, I’m getting myself a pretty good tax return.  Of course, the first return to be accepted was from the state where I ended up paying in…imagine that.  Minnesota is charging me almost $200 a year just to say that it’s my permanent residence.  I think income tax should be terminated…what’s the point of it?  All it does is stress me out and makes me think the government is doing something sneaky behind our backs.  Oh wait, they probably are…and it probably has nothing to do with income taxes.  Income taxes are probably just a diversion to keep us occupied so they can do all kinds of messed up crap.  They’re probably reading this right now and putting my name down to be audited.

4.  While the Olympics were going on, I found myself envious of the professional snowboarders and skiers.  Those people have it made.  Granted, they engage in a profession where it’s very possible they could die with each run down the mountain, and they always have to do their profession in the cold, but still.  That’s a talent you either have or you don’t.  Unfortunately for me, skiing and snowboarding seems to be an area of which I have little to no talent.  It made me think about my own job, how anyone could technically be a nurse.  All you have to do is go to college and someone will teach you how to do it.  I was telling Simon this, and he said that while anyone can go to school to be a nurse, it definitely takes a certain talent to be good at it.  I think he’s right, and I see it everyday at work.  Being a nurse makes me want to avoid being a patient at all costs.  There’s a saying around the hospital that nurses make the worst patients, and I tend to agree with that.  I’m sure I would be a bit of a nightmare, mostly because I’d be scared of surrendering the nursing aspect of things to someone that I don’t know or trust.  And really, I’ve seen both nurses and doctors make mistakes, and I don’t even want to be on the receiving end of a medical mistake.

5.  So one morning after work, Simon and I had a lengthy discussion about poop.  Well, it wasn’t really much of a discussion, it was more like I was talking, and he was either agreeing or disagreeing by making sounds.  Here’s how it started…Stef: I took a monster dump at work last night.  Simon:  Uh…that’s nice.  Stef:  Did you poop at work last night?  Simon:  Why do you want to know that?  It was at this point that he left the couch we had been cohabiting to sit across the room at the computer.  Apparently to Simon, talking about either of our bowel habits is not funny in the least.  And here all this time I thought he shared my humor for all things poop (including our own)…imagine my disappointment when I found out that I’ve been disillusioned this entire time.  He actually doesn’t like hearing about bowel habits, mine in particular.  When asked if he wanted to talk about bowel habits, his response was, “I’d rather you didn’t” and “why would you even want to know about that?”  Which made me wonder…why do I want to know about that?  It’s not like I wanted the down and dirty details, I was just curious as to whether or not he had pooped at work.  Yes or no, end of story.  Well, it probably wouldn’t have been the end of the story, but had he just admitted that he had pooped at work, I probably would have quit pestering him about it.  Probably.  I may not have.  It was after work and early in the morning and I had been awake for well over 16 hours…after having worked 36 hours in three days.  With that amount of sleep deprivation, one never knows what direction I’ll take a conversation.  This particular morning the conversation led me to a startling conclusion…Simon hates hearing about me pooping about as much as I hate hearing about the Simpsons.  For those of you that didn’t already know, I can’t stand the Simpsons.  I don’t think they’re funny, and I probably never will think they’re funny.  So, in short, Simpsons=Poop when it comes to conversation material that Simon and I would rather not talk about.  I get it now.  Once I had made the Simpsons/poop connection, of course I couldn’t stop talking about it.  On and on I went, giggling maniacally.  I started firing questions at him like we were at a firing range.  “What if I thought I had to have the assistance of a butter knife to get the turd to go down, would you want to hear about that?”  Simon: “No, I wouldn’t.  I actually think poop is gross, not funny…especially your poop.”  See, I would want to hear about that, because I think any sort of manual assistance required in getting a turd down the toilet is insanely funny.  But now I know that if Simon ever had a turd that needed some assistance getting down the toilet, he would never tell me.  He would deprive me of that story.  Everyone poops, and it’s funny, and I wouldn’t think less of him for answering a few poop questions.  He could even say it was the poop of a friend and I wouldn’t care.  I just love a good poop story, is all.  I do think it’s funny that it took him three years of dating me to get the point across that he doesn’t like talking about our poop.  That’s a long time, and believe me, there was a lot of poop talking in those three years.  I believe the conversation this morning ended with him saying, “There is something wrong with you, and I don’t mean that in a funny way.”

6.  After almost two months of complaining, multiple air fresheners, and three carpet treatments, Simon and I have finally been moved to a new apartment.  Apparently the complex would rather move us than replace our carpet, which means they’re going to subject some other poor sap to the awful smell of cat pee.  And this time, it’ll probably be someone who signs a year-long lease that they can’t get out of.  The management initially wasn’t even going to allow us to switch apartments, but there was another travel nurse down here that left last week and we just moved into her apartment.  And it’s gorgeous!  Vaulted ceilings, large kitchen, big bathrooms, toilets that actually flush without the assistance of a plunger, big windows that let in lots of sunshine, and no pee smell!  Had they decided not to move us at all, I was honestly ready to go postal on these people.  I left a wonderful review of the place on Google…twice.  One for pre-move, another for post-move.  It’s not that they didn’t try, because they did…kind of.  I know they don’t want to replace the carpet because that’s expensive, but honestly…people are paying good money to live here.  It’s irresponsible and unacceptable.  What peeved me the most is that over and over again, they tried to blame the smell on my dogs.  They told me to my face that my dogs were peeing all over the apartment, and that’s why it smelled so bad.  The carpet guy stood there and challenged me about pulling up the carpet to see if the carpet pad was wet, which would mean that my dogs had, in fact, been the culprit behind the smell.  I basically told him to knock himself out…pull up all the freaking carpet and check the pad.  I guaranteed him that it would be dry, and of course it was.  What a douche.  He acted like we were personally insulting him and holding him responsible for the smell, which we weren’t.  We just wanted to live in an apartment that doesn’t smell like pee…that’s not too much to ask, right?  Ugh…between the hospital and the apartment, this has been one crappy assignment.  Fortunately there’s enough wildlife, beaches, friends, and sunshine here to keep us satisfied.  I don’t think we’ll be returning to Fort Myers in the future though.

7.  One thing we’ve found interesting about Fort Myers is that it’s a veritable radio time warp.  I think we’re in the early-to-mid 90’s.  I’ve heard Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Sweet Dreams I don’t know how many times.  Not that I would listen to it, but I haven’t found a top 40 station yet.  Nor have I found an alternative radio station, or a station similar to The Current in Minneapolis.  It’s all early 90’s or classic rock.  Weird, right?  If we don’t hear either Prince, Tom Petty, or the Stones (or all three, in some cases) on the way to work, it’s a rarity.  I’ve been enjoying the classic rock station.  The 90’s stations are hit or miss.  I don’t mind a little Gin Blossoms every now and then, but I could definitely do without the Creed.  We did find a station that plays a lot of hip/hop and the occasional Lady GaGa, but that music is kinda hit or miss for me.  So far it’s been a welcome reprieve from the 90’s.

8.  Simon, our friend Ellen, and I recently made a trip to Naples to check out an art exhibit by one of our favorite glass artists, Dale Chihuly.  We saw an outdoor exhibit by him a couple years ago in Phoenix at the botanical gardens.  This exhibit was on a much smaller scale and was indoors, but it was still very cool.  The things that guy and his team do with glass are amazing.  I wanted to bring a little Chihuly home with me, but unfortunately I didn’t have my $40,000 credit card with me.  Dang.  Sharing the exhibit space with Chihuly was this other guy from France that specialized in the depiction of women cast in bronze.  There were also some men, but most of the sculptures were women.  I’m not quite sure what sort of women he was using as models, but the sculptures were not only disturbing, but as a women they were really offensive.  I found it interesting that the exhibit was called something along the lines of “the celebration of women.”  I tell you what, if I saw any of those women in real life walking down the street, I would run the other way…after staring for a beat, of course.  I’m pretty sure this dude had some sort of Mommy complex going on.  Or maybe he had been scorned by a woman and retaliated by making completely disgusting female statues.  All the sculptures had giant pendulous boobs, most of them with the nipples falling well below the belly button.  And they all had extremely large butts.  One of his drawings depicted a woman tossing her breast over her shoulder…ugh…I can’t imagine THAT is anything to be celebrated.  On some of the sculptures the boobs were so low lying that they actually looked like men, until closer inspection revealed boobs hanging around the hip area.  There were even a few where the vagina fell right between the boobs…hmmm…can’t think of a single man that would enjoy that.  Or would they?  Really…a celebration of women.  More like, “look at these fatties.”  Terrible.  I know it’s art and it’s something that I could never create, but I definitely had a hard time appreciating it for what it was.  There were two sections to the museum…one was showcasing the artifacts that the museum owned, and the other was showcasing the pieces that were for sale.  We happened to be following this little old couple around for a bit, and the woman kept making comments (rather loudly, I might add), “all the ones I want to buy are already sold.”  Really?  You’d pay $15,000 for a sculpture that looks like a couple tied off burlap bags?  Get out the wallet Grandma, there’s plenty of ugly, overpriced art to go around.  Good thing they’re already sold so you don’t have to waste your money, if in fact you actually have the money to waste on something as ugly as that.  I’m not sure for whose benefit she was making those comments, but she came across as a total cad.  

8.  I have some heartbreaking news.  The other day while Simon and I were in the car, he started reading off the ingredients in a bag of Doritos.  Come to find out that my most favorite snack in the whole world has BOTH partially hydrogenated soybean oil and MSG.  My heart is seriously breaking.  I’m aware that probably unknowingly consume both of those evil foodstuffs on a regular basis, but to knowingly eat them is something I try very hard to avoid.  Does this mean no more Doritos for me?  It might.  The thought of eating them right now kind of sickens me a little bit.  What is this damn world coming to??  If anyone has any suggestions for a nacho cheesy snack that might mimic Doritos, please let me know ASAP.  

9.  Last night I took a shot at making homemade mac and cheese.  It was part disaster, part success, and part disappointment.  For the longest time I’ve been trying to find a mac and cheese recipe that mimics the Wisconsin mac and cheese that they have at Noodles and Company.  So I found this recipe that claimed to be “almost exactly like” the recipe at Noodles.  So I gave it a shot.  Or I attempted to give it a shot.  The recipe begins by making a roux, which I have heard about, but have never done.  So there I am, melting my butter and adding my flour, the burner chugging away on high, when I realize that the flour is beginning to burn.  So I start to panic and start dumping the half and half into the pan, which causes my burning to roux to turn into big globular clumps in the pan.  As I’m freaking out, Simon comes over and helpfully says, “I don’t think you’re supposed to have the burner on that hot.”  He was lucky that one of my hands was occupied with a measuring cup full of half and half, and the other was vigorously trying to stir and de-clump the roux.  Oh, and I thought that using a spatula in place of a whisk would be all right…it was not.  So that’s how the mac and cheese began…with burning, chaos, and inappropriate cooking utensils.  I’m glad to report that the rest of the cooking process went off without a hitch.  However, I would like to sit down and have a chat with the woman that claimed that the recipe is “almost exactly like” the Noodles recipe, because clearly, it is not.  Despite three cups of half and half and three cups of shredded cheese, I could still taste the flour.  It almost had the taste of cafeteria mac and cheese, which you know is diluted with water and then thickened with flour, and doesn’t taste unlike the homemade playdoh that we had made in preschool.  Come on, you all know you made the playdoh, and that you all tasted it…I’m not the only one.  Perhaps it had a floury taste because of the disastrous roux.  I know that next time I’m going to skip the roux all together, and maybe add a titch of velveeta, and just enough cornstarch to thicken it up a bit.  That ought to do it.  I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

10.  In light of my recent kitchen failures, I would like to highlight a success.  I had this random recipe for peanut brittle that I had gotten out of a magazine a few months ago and had never taken the time to make it.  I love peanut brittle.  Back when Grandma had her own place and was still making Christmas goodies every year, she always made peanut brittle, and it was the best.  Currently I am living with a man that hates peanut brittle, and will only eat it when he is dire need of a sweet and there is absolutely nothing else available.  So we never have peanut brittle in the house.  Given that this recipe called for cinnamon, which all you peanut brittle people know is NOT a normal ingredient for peanut brittle, I decided to give it a shot and try it out on the hater.  He loved it!  And I have to admit, it was really good.  And for some reason it didn’t stick to our teeth at all.  Maybe because there’s no butter in it?  I haven’t the slightest idea, but I do know that one batch of the stuff didn’t last longer than 24 hours.  I think it made it just past the 15 hour mark.  Granted, the batch was little…only one cup of peanuts, but still.  Just to be clear, this is definitely not a substitute for old-fashioned peanut brittle like Grandma used to make, but it’s definitely quite a tasty little treat, if I do say so myself.

11.  The other day the pugs received a much needed bath.  For animals that don’t do a whole lot, they sure seem to get stinky in a hurry…Brie in particular.  They’re surprisingly good about the whole bathing process, which is nice because I really don’t like beating them if I don’t have to.  Anyway, after the bath we took them out on our lanai and started brushing them since they shed like the dickens right after a bath.  Each of us was going to town brushing a dog when we heard a little old lady voice from below us, “Hello?  Hello!”  So I piped up and said hello right back to her, thinking that she was being friendly.  Unfortunately the old bat was trying to get our attention to tell us that we were getting dog hair all over her patio.  Upon hearing her voice the dogs went crazy, barking and making a scene, so we couldn’t hear the rest of what she was saying.  What I kept catching was, “I’m trying to talk to you…I’d like to talk to you.”  Over and over again.  So we threw the dogs in the apartment and picked up our tufts of dog hair that were lying around.  We apologized, of course, and she kept on repeating that there was hair on her patio…which we understood the first time she had said it.  Apparently she felt the need to repeat herself.  Then we both peered through the cracks in the deck to see how much hair had fallen…and we couldn’t see any.  Not that there wasn’t any, but we had huge clumps of it on our patio, and judging from her reaction, we expected to see the same on her patio.  But there appeared to very little, if any.  We also noticed that this woman had absolutely nothing on her patio.  Not that I’m saying it’s all right for our dog hair to drift down to her patio…but she sure was making a stink about it falling on a patio that she obviously never uses.

12.  Today Simon and I found a new water sport that we’re absolutely in love with.  Paddle boarding!  It’s so much fun, and it’s a great workout.  The best part of it is, you don’t even feel like you’re getting a workout because you’re moving so slowly, which is great for me since I’m so anti-workout.  We paddle boarded for about 4 hours today, and while I was tired by the end of hour four, I didn’t feel as tired as I would have if I had paddled four hours in the kayak, or god forbid, gone running for four hours.  I don’t even know why I threw that in there…I could never run for four hours, nor would I.  But I digress…for those of you looking for a low-impact workout, but still a workout nonetheless, I definitely recommend paddle boarding.  And, you get to toodle around a body of water relatively easily, and you can see a lot more of what’s in the water than you could from a boat or a kayak.  This could be a good or a bad thing, depending on what body of water you happen to find yourself on.  We saw dolphins today while we were out on the paddle boards, which was awesome.  They didn’t come right up to us like the manatees had, but it was still cool to see them swimming and splashing around.  They didn’t seem in the least bit surprised to see people standing upright in the water either.  So, now that we’re both obsessed with paddle boarding, I think we have a few new toys to add to the ever expanding wish list.  Ha!

13.  It’s weird to think that we only have 12 more shifts to work before we head back to Minnesota for a while.  It was definitely nice to be out of the snow for the winter, and we’ve had more visitors on this assignment than any of our previous assignments.  But, now that things are warming up back home and we’ve done most of what we wanted to do down here in Florida, we’re ready to be around friends and family again for a while.  I have no idea where we’re going next.  We’d like to go back to Vermont for another job, then maybe take August off and then head to Arizona for the fall and winter.  That would be ideal, but so far since Simon and I have been traveling together, our plans never quite work out the way we thought they would, and we end up in really random places, usually with unexpectedly good results.  Arkansas, North Carolina, Vermont and even Florida were all states where I never thought I would ever work.  When I first started traveling, I had it in my head that I would only travel to cities where friends of mine were already living.  Kind of like an extended visit, if you will.  It worked out great for Colorado (Denice and David), Arizona (Dana, Chris, and Darna), and Minneapolis (all my college buddies).  The economic slump in 2009 kinda forced us to take whatever jobs were available, whether we wanted them or not.  Our last few assignments have taken us to places where we arrived not knowing anyone but each other.  And each place was a new experience filled with new friends and new adventures.  I sometimes wonder what I would be doing if I hadn’t started travel nursing.  I honestly don’t even know.  I’ve become such a different person in these last few years that it’s hard to remember what I was like before.  It seems so long ago that I had my cute little house on 2^nd St. in Rochester, living by myself in that sketchy little neighborhood.  And life was good then.  It’s even better now.  I’m excited for what happens next.  I have all kinds of ideas about where I’d like to go and what I’d like to happen to next.  Only time will tell!  In the meantime, I hope to see lots of you Minnesota people when I’m home in a few weeks.  As for you out-of-staters, perhaps I’ll have the pleasure of working at a hospital by you in the near future.  Stay tuned!