miss usa

In the midst of all of the Perez Hilton and Miss California USA controversy, many of you may not have heard that Miss North Carolina won the Miss USA pageant!



I actually heard about this amazing young lady last year at Freddie's family beach trip. The Dalton family regularly pops in on the Figure 8 trip to visit with his aunt and cousins (they all used to attend church together before the Daltons moved to Wilmington).

They popped by last year and I was initially impressed with the family's amazing looks. I mean these people are show stoppers, seriously. Mom and Dad are like Ken and Barbie and even the awkward little brother could have been a model. Only two of their knock out daughters could make it that weekend. Kristen was too busy being a star student at ECU and preparing for the Miss USA pageant.

Fortunately, we were able to meet the middle children. Their equally impressive daughter Julia is also a pageant girl. In fact, she was Miss Teen USA North Carolina-twice!. Unfortunately, she only made 3rd runner up in 2007 and then 2nd runner up in 2008.


You may be wondering about their other daughter, Kenzie. It must be hard growing up in that type of family. She seems to be holding her own though. She's kind of artsy and eclectic. Not too eclectic though, more like New York chic. Lest you feel sorry for her for missing out on all of the pageant fun, she was the Azalea queen at a local Wilmington Festival. Fortunately, for the misfit of this family, she did catch someone's eye. She's engaged...




To Chad Michael Murray

What a family.

sorry, mate

I've been a little overwhelmed this week, so last night I declared that we were definitely going out to eat tonight.

However, it seems a maelstrom is brewing outside and I am pretty comfy in my jammie pants, so I reminded my husband that he'll be away from the house a lot next week for furniture market. I sweetly suggested we let Outback do the cooking.

We were excited to find that we didn't even have to actually talk to a person, we could just order online. So, click, click, click, and in twenty minutes we'll be eating steak!

Except, we just got the confirmation e-mail and realized we'd actually placed an order at the Outback in Blowing Rock, NC.

It's two hours away and while I'll be there this weekend, I'm too hungry to wait.

Oops.

gone fishin'

Actually I'm planning on going bummin', but hubs will be doing some fishing.

We know this couple through our other friends and through some other random connections. We actually like them more than the couple we know better and had a blast with them at our other friends' wedding. We've hung out with them a time or two and on Wednesday, they called and asked if we were interested in last minute trip to the beach.

They even invited Jack!

I don't have a lot, read any, girlfriends in town. I went to college somewhere else and moved here when we got married. I have friends close by, but no one that I can just call to grab a drink or go to a movie. Most of my local friends are pretty well established.

So, while the boys are fishing, I will be busy making D my best friend. Wish me luck and while you're at it, say a prayer that Jack doesn't eat their pup, Otter.

dooce

Yesterday, I taped Oprah because I wanted to see Dooce. Freddie was doing his online application in the same room and overheard her intro that said she makes $40,000 a MONTH in advertising. A. MONTH.

Freddie rewound the tape to be sure that was correct. It was.

He looked at me and said, "Holy Shit, Babe. You better get to typing."

calgon, take me away!

Perhaps I should have titled this post, "the one where i share too much information"

I'm not supposed to get off work for another hour, but I had to bail early today. My snarky side was coming out with a vengeance. I was starting to take it out on my patients and that's not good for any of us, so I called in relief and hightailed it to my bathtub. I proceeded to marinate for an hour while I finished a book and was able to emerge a much better person. Until my husband came home and started talking.

Don't get me wrong. I actually enjoy talking to him, but I had just worked so hard to decompress and he was quickly putting me right back in the pressure cooker. Fortunately, I think he picked up my "shut up, shut up, shut up" vibes and high tailed it to Barnes and Noble-after he put away the laundry-thankyouverymuch.

I was exhausted this morning and barely made it out of bed. When I arrived at work I learned that I had a total care patient. This man could not do ANYTHING for himself. This would be fine if I were a n*rse tech, but I'm actually ment*l he*lth tech and cleaning up after a man who pees himself really just ain't my thang. After I smelled what I was in for and another woman came to me and started bitching away, I knew I was in for a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

I'm sure none of this was helped by the fact that I'm pretty afraid that on April 20th I'm going to lose my new perfect job where I have fun co-workers, learn a lot, see cool/crazy things every day, get great benefits, and have an AMAZING schedule (4 day weekends, anyone?). The downside of my job is that I took a HUGE pay cut to do it. It was totally worth it because of the other perks, but if I have to switch shifts and lose my other perks, it won't be and it's a bad time to switch it up.

It also probably wasn't helped by the fact that yesterday hubs' boss suggested that they might really want him to transfer to Baltimore in 12-18 months. Although I would enjoy singing, "Good Morning, Baltimore!" every day, I'm not so much excited about living on the set of Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire (although I did love He's Just Not That Into You). He got online and began job searching pronto, but that meant....

He was a little distracted when he oversalted the casserole I made and ruined it, then was too distracted to actually throw it away and left a huge mess for me this morning, and finally forgot that he'd offered to make me lunch and left me with nothing to eat.

To top it all off...and here is where I'm-disclosing too much information, maybe wishing I had more readers so this would actually be an opportunity to reach out and get some moral support, feeling kind of embarrassed for already feeling consumed by this, and admitting that we're trying to have a baby.

The great job search of 2008 resulted in a position that was great for that next step in our life, but also required us to wait a little longer than we thought to start trying. I thought we'd begin quite casually in the fall, but when we had to wait until February it was difficult to keep it casual. i couldn't help but look up my "fertile window" online and then bite the big one and pee on a few sticks to double check. We kicked it all off with a trip to the Magic Kingdom and then really focused our energy the next month. My husband's original certainty that he could just look at me right and get me pregnant turned out to be false, so this month we stepped up our game even more. And now, we wait. I can't help but think about it all of the time. How do you not? How do you sit and wait for your life to change completely? How do you not wish you'd tried when it wasn't quite time so that now you might see some results? How do you not misjudge every bit of post nasal drip nausea?

I feel guilty because I have several friends who've tried for so much longer, but I can't help fear that I'm going to be in their shoes.

So, today, when the man peed himself and then smiled at my while someone asked me to clean it up. I offered to cover another girl's responsibilities so that she could do it (she's trained for that stuff and I'm not) and ran to the phone to find someone else to work the last section of my shift. I truly believe that sometimes it really is more important to be in a hot bath with a book than it is to be at work helping other people.

you're not fooling me

Have you seen the new Mott's applejuice commercial? Marcia Cross is in it along with two little kids with red hair. Maybe they chose red heads because of how nicely the hair compliments the other colors in the commercial (I was impressed with how they accentuated her hair), but I'm pretty sure they were trying to give the impression that they were her kids. Mott's, who do you think you're fooling? Do you think I've been living under a rock? Do you think I've never read People magazine? Do you think I didn't know that she has twin girls who are still little. Do you think I don't know their names? Because I do. (I may not know the names of the supreme court justices, but I do know about Eden and Savannah.)

Electrolux and Kelly Ripa are trying to pull the same tricks while selling vibrantly colored appliances.

Next thing you know Brad and Angelina will be trying to sell a mini van with just one little red headed kid.

What's that all about?

I guess they don't want to exploit their own kids, but hey, everyone else's are fair game.

kids a plenty

Have you seen the new gigantic family show on TLC? It's called Table for 12. At first, I wasn't planning to watch it, since I watch 2,000 other shows, but I cleared a few things of the DVR and now we're all set.

The children are a little older so you don't have quite as much mini mischief, but the parents are so real and so nice that I really like it.

Check it out.

aww

I'm watching the series finale of ER. It's been a while since I've visited the ED in Chicago as I've relocated to the OR in Seattle on Thursday nights. I used to be a pretty faithful viewer though, so I had to come back for the farewell to say good-bye to all of my friends.

I don't know many of the new staff members in Chicago. I've seen an episode or two with Uncle Jesse, but I was just surprised to see that one of my favorite teens has really grown up. I didn't know that little Rory Gilmore had given up journalism for medicine. Way to go Rory! I guess Yale served you well.