New York Times....and Babies.

That's right.

I read the New York Times.

For an explanation on what the flying duck I am talking about, Read This Post .

I swear, I am not an idiot. But this is an accomplishment, for me. Sadly. Very, very, sadly.

Okay, truth is...I had a two hour time span to read the entire paper. I'm just a beginner.

I made it through ~10 pages (with advertisments), and I read about 10 articles.

But I learned a lot! I learned a lot (enough) about Egypt to keep up with the discussions in my classroom, and I learned that Greece is having a terrible time keeping immigrants out of their borders (who knew?) and Afganistan is having a lot of problems with the Taliban (thats nothing new, I guess?), I learned a lot about Mubarak, and a couple more things. I *even* watched Obama's address to our country about the situation in Egypt. But that has nothing to do with the NYT- That's only because he posted it on twitter. Figures. But, I did watch the video while sitting in the library, with the NYT in front of me, open, so I probably looked smart. Anyway, my goal is to finish yesterdays paper. I want to read it all. And then I'll start todays, and then tomorrows, etc.

The teacher I mentioned in yesterday's blog post, whom I respect greatly and think is very smart, was chatting with me and a fellow classmate the other day after class. My friend asked, "How do you find all these articles? (That she talked about in class). You are so smart" (Ok, it wasnt said exactly like that, but that was the general gist of the message). And my teacher responded solely with "Well, I read the New York Times, religiously."

So, is this phase of mine to read the NYT and be smarter completely ridiculous, fake and pathetic? Maybe...probably...but, It can't hurt to try. :-(

ANYWAY, on to a happier topic....BABIES!

Yesterday was my FIRST community health clinical! I was SO NERVOUS, and my partner was amazing (she did her assignment first), and then it was my turn and I was definitely nervous. We both had to do a home visit to a mother and a newborn, to assess how both of them were doing. In addition, both of these visits were either going to be in Trenton/Ewing/Hamilton/Lawrence... so, I wasn't exactly thrilled with the aspect of having to lock my doors and always be on guard when going to visit a newborn. But thats another blog post. BUT, the families we both met were FABULOUS, and so nice! And the babies were adorable. "My baby" aka my assignment, was a doll. I did my assessment of her, played with her a little bit (she was 3 1/2 months) and then I had to re-dress her and that caused her to start crying (apparantly babies don't like to be dressed because this happened on my partner's "baby" too), so I picked her up. I'm not entirely sure if the mom wanted me to pick her up, but I sensed a mutual sense of trust vibes. And, I have baby-withdrawal. I love babies. And I never get to see any. My cousins are all grown up, and I babysit no babies (they are all grown up), so I miss taking care and holding babies. So, I really couldn't help myself from picking this adorable baby up. So I held her for about 15 minutes while talking to the mom, it was so nice. She kept looking at my face and playing with my glasses, ah, I LOVE BABIES. Can you tell? Did I mention that?

Then....oh, then... My stream of consciousness as I held this baby:

This baby is so cute. Wow, this baby is getting heavy. My arm is hurting. Ouch. How do mom's do this ALL day? They must have buff arms. Hmm...Holy crap, this baby is getting heavier by the second. I'm going to sit down, and put the baby on my lap. Oh, crap, the baby doesn't like that. Lets stand back up. Maybe I'll switch arms. Ah, the mom can tell I think she's heavy. She's probably laughing inside of her and probably thinks I am a wimp because its been like 15 minutes and this baby is only about 20 pounds, but it is heavy, really.

Then, we started talking about how much the baby sleeps, and the mom was saying how she was lucky the baby slept until 4 am.

I literally froze in my steps. With the baby in my hand. 4 am? thats lucky?

I clearly will not be ready for motherhood, ever, until I can get over the fact that sleep will be nonexistent and I can throw my incessant need to sleep in or I get cranky every morning notion out the window. I'll work on that after I graduate.

Well I have clearly rambled on long enough. But its okay, because I cannot think of any foreseeable blog posts that I have in mind to write about (usually I have a couple ideas), so...you can have a break of reading my retarded ramblings. I should take a class in "Not-writing-like-I-think" and therefore not-rambling. I'll work on that.

Au revior~

~ A Rambling Writer in a Nurse's Body

P.S.= My hands smell like playdough. What the flying duck....?