Field Day!

So I’ve just completed my fourth semester of nursing school. I’ve got the summer off and then I’ll finish up next fall. However, that’s not what this post is about. Today was Oda Mae’s first “Field Day” at school. Brenda and I had the privilege of going up there this morning and watching some of the goings on. After lunch I went back and stayed for the rest of the day. All I have to say is that I am pretty sure this day was set up to try and wear out every kindergartner at that school. I got tired just watching. Fortunately, I was able to take several pictures to post here on the blog. Oda Mae and her friends had a great time shooting hoops, playing tug-of-war, freeze tag, chicken run, and relay races. At the end of the day she said her favorite thing was playing on the "first grader's playground". I have to admit, it's way cooler than the kindergarten playground. Allison was a great sport in all of the activities and she had a really good time. Without hesitation, however, after watching her all day it is painfully obvious that she inherited her athletic ability from both of her parents who joined the band so we wouldn't have to go to PE. :)

-Oda Daddy

Tug-of-War

The girls win!
Having a good time!
There were many bunny ears today.
Looks like she's going to make it doesn't it? :)

Here's the first grader's playground.

Good friends.

Something fun must have just happened.

Starting to wear out a little.

They forgot to say the Pledge of Allegiance before school, so they said it at the end of the day.

Bah, humbug.

A few months ago I decided not to put up any Christmas lights this year. Not gonna do Thanksgiving at my house this year either. The holiday season is upon me now and I'm up to my gills in work. I knew then that things would be busy and sure enough, I've got a paper due on Tuesday, a cardiovascular exam in a couple of weeks followed by a comprehensive final that will cover all of the body systems, related health problems, medications, nursing processes, etc. I really need to do well on the next two exams. I'm not sure what happened to the 98's I was making in A&P and Chemistry, but no such luck on the nursing exams. On top all of that, my piano instructor asked me yesterday if I would be interested in performing on the student recital in two weeks (yes, the same week as my next exam.) I'm thinking probably not. I have far exceeded my performance requirements in the musical arts.

All that being said, Allison wrote a letter to Santa a few days ago...

"Dere Satua
I HOP ThAT
YOU GIV Me
LOTS UV PReSiSiS
I AM SARee
ThAT I WOT
HAV Mi KRiSMiS
LiTS UP

Love AlliSoN"

(sigh)

and this just in from our neighborhood association....

"Holiday Yard of the Month begins next Month!
The church was filled with residents and members expressing concerns and voting for change in the neighborhood. The submitted logo passed and will appear on all Riverbend publicity materials. After some discussion a vote to change the meeting time from 6:30pm to 7:00pm passed. A kind donation from James Toal will fund a
Holiday Yard of the Month program for two years. The holidays included in the program are Christmas, Easter, 4th of July, and Halloween. Beginning this month
and ending Dec. 13th judges will vote on homes decorated for Christmas. Prizes include: $25 cash, Holiday YOM sign, and a picture in the newsletter."


OKAY, FINE! I'll put up Christmas lights. I'm not promising 30,000+ but I better win that cash AND Father of the Year.

-JT

Gratitude

1. My sister walked her first "Race for the Cure" as a survivor. She is an inspiration!
2. I passed my Neuro/Musculoskeletal exam on Monday.
3. My wife loves me.
4. My daughter is going on a field trip tomorrow to the farm. (It'll be her first ride on a school bus.)
5. Met some great couples from our church for dinner last night. We had a good time.
6. God provided queso for my wife at previously mentioned dinner.
7. People still read my blog.
8. Music is not my life anymore, but a wonderful part of it.
9. Going to see old friends this weekend.
10. Pumpkin Pie & Pumpkin Cupcakes.

:)

1 school day down, 2,339 more to go.

Day one of kindergarten was a success. Oda Mae woke up this morning ready to hit the ground running. We had back-to-school kolaches for breakfast, yum! After breakfast, she got dressed in her purple outfit, packed her lunch, strapped on a backpack and went to school. She was pretty excited about the whole thing until she realized that mom and dad weren’t going to hang out with her all day at kindergarten. She gave us a tight hug and was able to find a place to sit with some other very frightened little 5-year-old girls.

After I got home I was able to get some housework done as well as start working on some reading fornext week. I was pretty busy for about 30 minutes when I had to call Oda Momma and tell her that I was wondering if Oda Mae was having a good time at school. All day those thoughts were going through my head….I wonder what she’s doing now. Did she make any friends? I hope those friends aren’t a bad influence. Does she know what to do if there is a fire alarm? She won’t get lost on the way to the restroom, will she? I have to admit I don’t understand why, with today’s technology, can’t there be an hourly update on what my child is doing in school? I’m going to have to set up a parent-teacher conference to discuss possibilities: IM, Blogging, Twitter….come on lady step into the 21st century. Oda Momma promptly reminded me that if the kindergarten teacher were blogging all day, she wouldn’t be teaching our daughter. Hmmmmmmmm isn’t that why they need teacher assistants or classroom dads or something?

However….I was able to get parts of the story after we picked up Oda Mae from school this afternoon. During recess she was building a castle out of rocks under the play ground when two girls came over to play with her. After a few minutes the other girls ran away because they had to go. Oda Mae told us that she realized a little later that they ran away because it was time to go inside. She said, “My class almost left me outside! I had to run to get in line.” This story was particularly funny when she told us about the next thing they did. Oda Mae really enjoyed the “Who’s Missing” game. They all got in a circle, closed their eyes and one of them would get up and hide. When the other students opened their eyes they had to guess who was missing. Sounds like a good learn your classmate’s name game. Oda Mae said that she was able to go first in this game. I’m just glad she wasn’t really missing and playing all by herself out on the playground. 

She met three friends today. “Two girl friends and one boy friend,” she said. Tonight she said that her “boyfriend” had the same drink bottle that she did. Apparently they met during lunch today when he sat down on the green tape next to the pink tape that she was sitting on. I’m not sure what that was all about. I’m going to have to have a talk with this “boyfriend” and make sure that if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay away from my daughter. It ought to be pretty easy to put the fear of a dad into a five-year-old, shouldn’t it?









All-in-all we had a good day. Hopefully, tomorrow will go smoothly as well.

DV,

Oda Daddy

Hello...hello....hello....echo...echo....echo.....

Good Lord, somebody blow the dust off of this blog. Let's see, four blog posts in seven months? I think that's a record for me. It seems that since I've started back to school, my blogging life has gone down hill a bit. I have finished my second semester of nursing and I've got seven weeks off. That will be the longest break I've had since A&P I. I am really enjoying nursing school, but I still find myself thinking, "What the hell have I done?" on occasion.

I have three more semesters left and I'll be all registered and stuff. For now however I'm on vacation! Tomorrow morning we leave for a few days to visit some family. Yesterday we went out to a place called "Splash Kingdom". We had a great day. Oda Mae was so tired, she actually slept an hour late this morning. Speaking of Oda Mae here's a recent photo...

Yep, she lost a tooth a while back. She's got another one loose now. BTW, she's headed to kindergarten in the fall. We are making the most of our dog day's of summer. We've taken her out of her parent's day out and we are spending time doing lots of cool stuff. We make it over to the library almost everyday. She's reading really well and will be ahead of most of her little pals come this fall. Today we went to see a movie: "Furry Vengeance". It was pretty silly. I can't wait for the rest of the summer. We are looking forward to some quality time before school starts.

I'll try to update on some other happenings later.

-Oda Daddy

Freaking Tired of Snow

Okay, so a couple of days of snowfall here in TX is kind of cool. You know...the novelty of the whole thing, but enough is enough. The weather forecast for next week calls for more snow. There are several reasons I moved back to TX from Ohio and the snow is one of them. I'm tired of being cold in my house, my shoes are always wet, can't take Oda Mae to the park, the city shuts down....I could go on.

Okay, I'm done. (Can you tell I'm ready for the spring and summer?)

Oda Mae went to her allergy/asthma specialist again this week. She has had a chronic cough since last May. After seeing her regular pediatrician and this specialist several times she finally gets an x-ray. Diagnosis..............Chronic Sinus Infection. She was apparently completely blocked up. Treatment..............antibiotics for the next 20 days. I sure hope this works, otherwise I'm going to have to go in there myself and pull some stuff out. I can do it you know, I'm a professional nursing student.

On Thursday I was able to observe a tracheostomy procedure. It was very interesting to watch. (No, I did not pass out.) Also, I helped with some physical therapy and took the glucose levels of a couple of patients. See, I am learning something. Funny thing about learning how to be a nurse...the more I learn and the more information that I am able to put into my brain, the more I realize how completely incompetent I am. There are people who have been in health care their entire lives and are still learning. As a "non-traditional student" I am somewhat saddened by the fact that I didn't make this choice several years ago. C'est la vie.

I am having some issues however. Having a degree in education has made me somewhat of a "teaching snob". I've had many classes and lessons with people who are great teachers but poor performers in their "art". I've also had sessions with people who are great performers, but can't teach their way out of a paper bag. That is my issue right now. What do you do if you your instructor doesn't have a clue what to tell you, but they can do their job just fine? It's not like you can just go up to them and tell them that they are sucking things up for you. I do remember telling a certain teacher of mine that he wasn't cutting it for me. Eventually I trained him pretty good and got an excellent education from him. :) I wonder if that could happen again in a shorter period of time? I'll give it some more thought.

-DV

Yes, I'm THAT guy.

Second week of nursing school behind me as of today. I've been insanely busy as Oda Momma and Oda Mae can tell you. I am averaging around 7 hrs a day studying (outside of class time), and I'm only slightly behind. I've been playing gigs as well these two weeks. I'm out of town now until late Saturday evening. The good thing is that I don't have any rehearsals until 7 tomorrow night. That gives me the entire day to try and get caught up. After two weeks of somewhat intense study I can say now that I am really enjoying what I am doing. The new information that I am learning is incredibly refreshing and is truly fascinating to me. With all that said, I'm 99.9% sure that I have made a good decision with my career change. However, there are some things I'll have to work on....

For example: Foley Catheters.

I show up to clinical at 7am this morning. Today we began the day watching some skills videos. Last week we watched videos on safe patient handling and infection control. Today, we ended the week with "Elimination Needs". Yes, it is exactly what you think it is. Now, if you know me, you know that I really like to watch all of those surgery shows when they show the inside of the skull, autopsy's, guts...you get the idea. I'm generally not too squeamish. You have to imagine though a fairly small computer lab (about 25 stations) filled with 40 nursing students and 2-5 faculty members. It's pretty cozy. Of course the heat is on because it's winter. Things get kind of warm. So I'm setting in the back surrounded by my peers when we get to the video, "Removing Indwelling Catheters". A 3 minute video that lasted about 2 1/2 minutes too long for me. These videos are produced for nursing students using real nurses and "patients" who apparently are REALLY desperate actors. Yep they do it for real, people. I was doing okay until they actually removed the tubing from the male patient. The next thing I remember are 39 student nurses and 5 faculty nurses fanning me and asking me if I hurt my head when I fell out of my chair onto the floor. Fainting. Blackout. Syncope. Unconsciousness. What ever you want to call it. I am pleased to announce to the readers of The Famfare that I will forever be known as "that guy who fainted during the elimination videos".

Yes, I'm fine.

On a more lively note. Oda Mae had the opportunity to go to school today in her PJ's for Pajama/Pancake day. She ate 4 pancakes, 2 slices of ham, lots of grapes and some apple slices. Oh, to be four years old again.

Time to go desensitize myself to various issues concerning "Elimination Needs".

-OD (Student Nurse)

My Last 48 Hours

Alas, the time has finally come. I have about 48 more hours left as a free man. I plan on spending them with my family. Today is my nephew's birthday and we're going to my sister's house for some good food. Last night Oda Momma and I sent Oda Mae to her Aunt Sis' house early so we could go see a movie. We went to the only $1 movie left in town and saw "2012". If you're into disaster movies, this one is worth about what we paid for it. ($4.00 total) Glad we didn't see it at the regular theater.

Today I've got to finish one more chapter for clinicals on Tuesday and read through the student handbook. I originally had big plans for Oda Mae and I tomorrow. We were going to the library and the museum, BUT the library is closed for MLK and there is no free parking for the museum in Cowtown, because of, well....cows. The Ft. Worth Stock Show and Rodeo have taken over the arts district for the next couple of weeks. We're gonna have to find something to do tomorrow. STAT!

Speaking of "stat", I got my stethoscope in the mail on Friday. Yes, I played with it! and No, I don't know what I'm doing. Yet.

Note to family.....I WILL be practicing on all of you when we get together the next time, so just prepare for it!

That is all for now.

DV

-Oda Daddy

2010

Whoa!!!! Only 8 blog posts in 2009. Is there anybody still here? Guess I've been busy. Facebook kind of took over, but there's not much substance there. Here I can complain and it doesn't matter who I offend. :)

Let's see.....since July..........

I got into nursing school and I start in two weeks. Did anyone here know I was going into nursing? Yeah, that happened sometime last year.
Oda Mae starts going to parents day out four days a week. (She starts kindergarten next fall...talk about scary)
We've been combating sickness around here for about two months (or longer).
My sister is an official cancer survivor!!!! Yea Sis!
We are almost debt free!!!
Got the Christmas lights up this year.
Got to take them down now...bummer.
Lost about 40 lbs in 2009
Gained 10 lbs during the holidays.
Gonna lose about 20-25 more starting today.

Well, that's it for now. Promise I'll be back before this summer.

-OD

Eat Mor Chikin!

Today I took my family out for a nice lunch. It was free. Of course we all had to dress up like cows, but hey, FREE LUNCH!

Oda Mae and I worked on our costumes for about 40 minutes this morning. There were a lot of spots to tape on.

If you want a free meal as well...head on over to Chick-fil-a dressed up like a cow and have at it.

We had a very good time.