I'm tired.
On Monday I drove to my externship, 30 miles there, NO TRAFFIC cuz, you know, it was a holiday. Got there and I was sent home. Cuz it was a holiday. Which I knew, but I never heard back from my contact and I didn't want to NOT show up. So I drove 30 miles home. I was home by 8:30.
So, on my birthday, which happened to be a holiday too, I had to get up at 6 am. Yuck! I laid on the couch watching tv the rest of the day. Nice birthday, huh? lol
That night we went to the inlaws for dinner. While it was fine, I was a bit irritated by the whole thing. Without coming off sounding like a bitch let me give a brief synopsis of what happened. I should also mention that my brother-in-law and I share a birthday. Also, I normally don't have an issue with my mother-in-law.
So my MIL is trying to figure out when a good day / time would be to get together for dinner for Tyler's and my birthday. We eventually settled on our actually birthDAY. She was texting with Kyle trying to find out what time would work since Kyle was the only one working. He said something to the effect of "6pm. We're not going to Olive Garden, are we?"
A while later I got a text saying "I guess we're having dinner here, what can you eat?"
Mind you, I had no idea at this point that Kyle had said anything about going to Olive Garden {it's not our favorite restaurant and most of the time when we go out with them it's there or this other Mexican restaurant that they like...and Tyler ALWAYS chooses Olive Garden. Doesn't help that I've gone gluten-free so that restaurant wouldn't be the easiest to find something to eat at}.
So I told her basically that I couldn't eat anything with gluten {wheat, rye, barley}. I could eat meat, potatoes, cheese {things she specifically asked about}.
Then she texts me saying that I was making mealtime difficult {exact words}{Jab #1}. Well, make me feel an inch tall now, will you. I sent a text back that I knew that and I was sorry.
Kyle gets home and I started crying while we were talking about this because I just felt like crap and like I was being a total pain in the ass. I wanted to just yell at her "We're trying to give you some damn grandkids without spending thousands of dollars so deal with it!" Kyle says we don't have to go over there yadda yadda yadda. I told him that we would just go.
We get there and she had made a turkey, without stuffing because she would've contaminated it since she makes the stuffing IN the turkey. She also made mac and cheese since Tyler wanted that if we couldn't go to Olive Garden. She also made roasted potatoes, broccoli and had cut up watermelon. During dinner she commented that it was a sad dinner. And that it was MY fault. {Jab #2} Well, shit. I'm SOOOOO sorry. Jeez!! Then Tyler wanted to know why we couldn't go to Olive Garden. Kyle and I kept our mouths shut about not wanting to go there and there were some excuses thrown around, but I don't even really know what was said. I was just trying not to cry.
That was dinner. Blah.
I also emailed her a gluten-free cake recipe, since she asked. I also sent her a frosting recipe, which apparently she didn't look at because she made the cake {which was nice, don't get me wrong}, but it was rather dry. I whispered to Kyle that I had sent her a frosting recipe too that she obviously didn't see and he asked her if there was any frosting and she said that she did what the {cake} recipe told her to. There were three links in the emails, she apparently only looked at the first. Just added to the frustrating night.
My SIL and her hub gave me two gluten-free cookbooks {Yay!!} and my inlaws gave me a VISA GC saying that they hoped it'd help me get some of the gluten-free things that I'd need. Which was nice and appreciated since it IS so damn expensive.
On the way home I told Kyle again how his mom just made me feel like crap about going gluten-free and he said that she wasn't trying to be mean, etc. Which, I'm sure she WASN'T, but she WAS!! As if going gluten-free isn't already frustrating enough, she just had to make it worse. And on my birthday.
My issue with the whole restaurant thing is that they seem to think that Olive Garden is the ONLY DAMN RESTAURANT AROUND. There are a MILLION other restaurants we could've gone to but it was eat at their house and make her cook somewhat gluten-free or going to Olive Garden {in her eyes}. Just doesn't make sense to me and it's beyond frustrating.
Anyway. That explanation was A LOT longer than I wanted it to be, but whatever. That's that.
Moving on...
Yesterday I started my externship and I spent the day observing. I drew blood from, someone that I guess, is my supervisor. She said I did a good job. It was the first time I'd drawn blood in over two months so I was feeling a bit anxious. Also, it was SLOW in the clinic yesterday. Only 60 blood draws. Which over a whole day period, is not very many. It was a lot of sit around and wait. I was so close to falling asleep it wasn't even funny.
Today, it took me a frickin hour and a half to get there. I walked in the door at 8am on the dot and I didn't think I was going to make it! I observed the first few draws but then I did A LOT. It was SO BUSY so it was good that I just jumped right in and did what I could. I drew blood from 24 patients and actually GOT blood from 22. The other two had veins that I'd found and then when I went and put the needle in they just seemed to vanish. Even my supervisor couldn't then find them. It was really weird. But I was really excited and a lot of the patients told me that I did a great job and even got blood from some of them when they said that others had had trouble in the past. That felt good! =)
Last night I needed toothpicks to keep my eyes open. Today I'm really tired but more energized. I REALLY hope that it doesn't take me so long to get there tomorrow, but other than that I think I'm really going to enjoy this! Oh, there were two babies that came in today and needed to get their blood drawn. One of them was a year or less and the other one was THREE DAYS OLD!!! Oh.my.gosh. I wanted to CRY listening to THEM cry. Broke my heart. I'm not allowed to draw from kids, and I'm SO thankful for that! Ugh. Can't even imagine doing that!
Alrighty. This is long enough. Just know that if I'm a bit absent the next few weeks it's because I'm actually WORKING for the first time in almost two years and I'm EXHAUSTED! LOL
