Memphis

So Q & I went to Memphis yesterday & had Fancy Times. Mostly we just went to Sephora, visited a friend of Q's, went out to eat, & hit Whole Foods on the way home. It was fun. Let's see: one tidbit about each thing.

Friend of Q's: We said something at the same time and went on as if this was nothing (because it's been happening every time we're together for the last 14 years). This completely weirded him out. "You guys--you just---at the same time...O_O!" This amused us.

Sephora: I got this COOL lipliner. It's an extremely cool nude ivory, which is almost precisely the color of my skin. This is for doing a super neutral lip, which is a lot of fun with a crazypsycho eyeshadow. I'm considering getting a Pocket Rocket lip gloss from Urban Decay, but I decided to forego that yesterday. If I draw either Courtney or Ashley for Christmas gifts, I shall be getting them the Sephora Blockbuster color kit. <3

Eat: We ate at TGI Friday's...or is it just called Fridays now? Whatever. I had a pumpkin pie martini, which was okay. The flavor was great but it was watered down. Q had a black russian, which I tasted & found delightful. I think I'll try a white russian next time I'm somewhere that sells drinks. Q drank it on an empty stomach and then found everything like 3 times as amusing as she did before, and also she started talking without thinking. This is not typical of Q. We discovered our "tipsy types" are polar opposites. I usually say what comes into my head without a lot of vetting, and Q chooses her words carefully. When we are tipsy, I think about everything I say and am very intentional, and words just fall outta Q's mouth.

Whole Foods: Q stayed in the car while I just ran in quickly to grab a few things. We ate these gingerbread cookies on the way home and HOLY COW, I RECOMMEND. They're called Gianna's Handmade Baked Goods and they looked like they'd be crispy, but they WEREN'T. OMG. They're soft & incredible & full of real ginger and nutmeg. They're sweet & spicy and due to the real ginger, there's a lot of "mouth heat" in them, giving them the "sweet/hot" combination I ADORE so much. I didn't find the Lindt cherry-chili bar I wanted, but this took care of that particular craving. Far as chocolate goes, I found a dark chocolate bar with mango & cashew by "Seeds of Change". Have not yet tried it.

Then we headed home because Bryan was sending us texts that just said "foooooooooooooooooooood". I brought him something home from Whole Foods (London broil sliced beef & naan bread). On the way home we stopped at Starbucks because I wanted a coffee to go with the spectacular gingerbread cookies, and we had to go inside because we'd made each other laugh so hard that we had to use the bathroom. My darling BFF tweeted a photo of the bathroom door behind which I was..."communing with my bladder" as she puts it. Nice. Thanks for that, love. Then she made me burst into flames on the way home. It only took one sentence. New record.

Today I will be listening to music & catching up around my house. I didn't feel 100% awesome last week, but today I find myself feeling awesome, having free time, and motivated. AWESOME. How many more "awesomes" can I fit in this entry?

Where I am going

Yesterday Q & I had conversations about everything on the way home. One conversation led to wondering how old Rashawn Ross (cuddly, adorable trumpet player for DMB) is, and that led to a Wikipedia lookup, which led to the discovery that Rashawn Ross was born in 1979: only 2 months older than me, 7 months older than Q. It's always weird to discover that someone you consider to be MASSIVELY, incredibly, mind-blowingly talented is your own age.

This led to a convo about mind-blowing talent; I am not starstruck by people who are just "famous", but I think that if I met someone like Rashawn Ross or Jeff Coffin or someone else who's sheer incredible talent I admire, I'd be a jibbering, stuttering, blushing wreck. It isn't because they're famous; after all, if you had never seen my Jeff Coffin icons, would you know him if you ran into him at the grocery store? He's not famous that way. But for me, running into someone like that at the grocery store, knowing what they do, listening to their music, feeling completely humbled by their talent, and there they are buying milk or mac & cheese or apples or cheetos...I'd probably go to pieces.

This led to another point in the conversation: I want, with all my heart and all the way into my bones, to be That Good at something. And offhandedly I remarked to Q that I'd just never found the thing I felt I could be that good at (or had the specific motivation to), and she pointed out that yes, I have. It's nursing, and specifically trauma nursing. She's right; I want to be known for being that person who stands in the treatment room, waiting for the stretchers to pour in after the multi-vehicle pileup, a rock of calm & not a trace of panic. I want to be that person who wades into dangerous situations and snatches other people out. I want people to remember their close calls and say "If it hadn't been for that redheaded nurse..."

Of course that's never going to make someone go into a pile of jibbering, blushing stutters at me in the grocery store, but I don't really care about that part. No, this is for ME. If I'm that good at trauma nursing, if I'm That Nurse, then maybe I wouldn't feel like I'd go to pieces if I met someone with that kind of talent. I want to be able to say "Yes, he's one of the greatest sax players in the world, and I am one of the best trauma nurses in the world."

If only I could learn faster! Get more experience quicker! This is the part where Q said "There you go again, eating the world with your eyes." Ha. Yes, well, I suppose Ganon got it somewhere, right? I've been at it for 3 months and I know I've learned a thousand things in that time--things that will make me a better nurse. Oh, but how I long for it to go faster! How I want to learn enough to feel relatively confident, and then go into the ER and then get into a trauma center and LIVE this thing that I have in my head! All the little things like work-related lacerations and broken bones all the way up to multiple trauma from a MVA or burns from a house fire. I want that NOW and I know I'm not ready for it yet. I just don't have the background. Why can't I get the background FASTER?!

But at least I'm progressing. I can see it. I'm in arrhythmia recognition now, and then I can take advanced cardiac life support. That's as far as they'll pay for me to go where I am currently, but then someday when I'm in ER, they will send me to advanced trauma life support and sexual assault nursing.

But I still need to get my tattoo, my compass that reminds me that this is a journey & not a destination. This is not someplace I'm going, this is something I'm doing. I need to stop being so impatient, so frantic to get on with it.

This has been another stream-of-consciousness life realization brought to you by the letter Q. Certainly one of my favorite letters. ^_~