What the What?

If you're reading this, that means I have officially finished this semester of nursing school and God-willing, only have ONE MORE SEMESTER LEFT!

Y'all, I cannot express how excited I am to be done. 

The semester has been the most stressful of them all, but thankfully it has flown by so much faster than expected. 

All of the late nights studying, early mornings spent driving to clinical and weekends dedicated to my boyfriend (Hey MedSurg Book, love you) are paying off and I am ecstatic.

Next semester, aka the semester in which I graduate, I have practicum and just a few classes and then your girl will be walking dancing across that stage for her BSN.

Anywho.

Have a great weekend, I'll be sure when celebrating the end of finals tonight to take a shot for y'all

;)

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Help Me, I'm Dying.

No, not really. But I thought I was.

This week has honestly been one for the books.

And I don't mean that in a good way.

Tuesday after leaving clinical, I came home and jumped out of my scrubs and threw on my coziest of sweatpants (as usual). I noticed that my right knee looked a little bit swollen and ungodly so itchy, but I ignored it and crept into bed to take a much needed nap since I had only slept 5 hours the night before and 2 hours the night before that.

1.5 hours later I woke up to three distinct lumps on my left knee that were also excruciatingly itchy and growing by the minute. I decided to ignore it & maybe it'd go away.

3 more hours passed and the three lumps became one and were continuing to grow. I got a spot on my foot, my finger and two spots on each forearm. Thinking I was dying, I decided to call my wonderful momma. At her insistence, I waited another hour to watch my symptoms, monitor my breathing and heart rate before deciding if I needed to go to the ER or not. After that hour passed, we both decided Benadryl was the way to go and since I had to be back at the hospital for clinical at 6 am anyway, if things got worse, I'd just go to the ER then.

Bumpy mermaid arm.

2 Benadryl later, I KO'd.

Wednesday morning, it had gotten worse. My arms were covered in large, itchy spots, my left knee looked like it housed a softball inside of it and my palms and hands were so sore, it hurt to walk and push myself up out of bed. Not wanting to miss my last day of clinical, I went to the hospital, told my clinical instructor what was up and went on to labor and delivery. 

It wasn't 2 hours later that I was told to leave clinical and either go down to the ER or go to urgent care. 

Why?

My hands hand developed hard, swollen lumps while I was in the hospital.

My thoughts were everywhere as I simply could not figure out what was going on with me... No, I didn't buy or use new detergent, I was wearing clothes I'd worn before, I hadn't eaten anything different than I usually do, I don't live with pets or roommates. 

What, dear God, was happening?!

Well I found out not too long afterwards that I am allergic to penicillin. 

Yes, the medicine I was prescribed when I woke up with a sore throat from hell 2 weeks ago (which naturally, turned out to be strep throat).

And what's better than breaking out into hives and having "textbook" angioedema (which is swelling under the skin whereas hives is swelling on top of the skin)?

Thinking you're dying from a mysterious illness and instilling fear and panic into all of those around you.

Oops. 

Sorry y'all.

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It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Week

Am I late with my post? 

Yes.

Do I care?

 No.

Why?

Because I'm actually posting and I'm just proud of that at this moment.

This week has been a CRAZY one, so without further ado I'm linking up April, Darci, Christina, and Natasha to bring you my Five on Friday.

{ONE}

Monday I went to the doctor and was told I have a subconjunctival hemorrhage that looked a lot like this:

No. This is not me or my eye... In case you were wondering.

How was I blessed with such an unattractive eye all of a sudden? No clue. 

But it still looks like this, though it's getting better, and I've successfully freaked people out all week because of it.

{TWO}

On Tuesday I woke up with a sore throat hand delivered from the pits of Hell itself and was miserable. Fortunately I wasn't running a fever but unfortunately I couldn't rest all day because I still had to go in for clinical, so I just kept my mouth shut all day while I took care of my patients and made sure I stood about 35 feet back from everyone when I did have to speak. At this point I decided I wanted a tonsillectomy, so after my shift ended, I called the doctor to see if I could get a throat culture done that day just so I could have proof that I NEED MY TONSILS OUT. But of course, what doctor's office is open at 5 PM? None...

{THREE}

Meaning that Wednesday morning I had to go and get my throat swabbed & cultured before I went into clinical. Still without a fever and feeling much better (of course I would feel better the day the doctor sees me...), I went to help deliver some babies! 

Y'all. 

I think I'm meant to work on L&D because it was such a cool, birthday-filled, miraculous place. 

I saw one c-section, two epidural and one natural birth. 

THE. COOLEST. EVER.

(And yes, I know not every birth goes as planned/intended/etc., and that things can go wrong, I'm not oblivious to that. I just didn't witness those things while I was there... so shhhh.)

{FOUR}

My birthday is in three days!!! I'm so excited to go home and see my family for my birthday, and maybe go out with some friends who are in town for some drinks. I'm thinking something real low-key this year as opposed to last year. 

{FIVE}

This weekend I plan to watch the UGA game, relax and get myself feeling better, that way I can celebrate my birthday however I so choose and hopefully do something picture worthy so I have something cool to share with y'all. 

Have a great weekend & happy Friday!

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Five on Friday

Say what?!

Yes, I'm making a brief appearance and of course, it had to be when my favorite ladies - April, Christina, Darci and Natasha - linked up. 

{ONE}

ALL of my favorite bloggers have just become mamas or are about to become mamas, and I just can't handle it. (IRL friends people I went to school with are all preggo too) The cuteness of all the baby bumps, baby shopping... ugh, I die. Looks like all of y'all drank the water, so I'm just gonna sit back and drink some juice and live vicariously through y'all for now. However, go take a look over at some of the ladies and tell me they are not completely adorable and try not to catch baby fever too - Elise, Leslie, Marquis, Katie, Jessi, and Andrea. Of course this list doesn't include all the recent mamas, but if it did this list would be endless.

{two}

My birthday is in 18 days and I have absolutely no idea what I want to do, what I want, how old I'm tur.. well, I know that one. This past year has absolutely FLOWN by and it has been a crazy, yet exciting one. I feel so blessed to be alive and I'm super excited to see what this next year of life holds!

{three}

These boots.

             

I so greatly desire some over the knee boots.

But which ones to choose??

{four}

As this semester of school is finishing up, I have to do a very brief recap of some of my clinical rotations. Due to HIPAA, I can't disclose much anything about the people I've met, their specific stories, where I saw them or why they were there... But I can tell you that I've met some pretty amazing children, heard stories about living during the Depression and traveling overseas to backpack through Europe, had quite a few heart to hearts, and spent time with some patients I will never forget. This semester I've been to a psychiatric hospital, a children's hospital, spent some time on a labor and delivery unit, a family care unit, endoscopy, oncology and in the ICU. 

While I learned a lot from each unit, I really enjoyed the substance abuse unit at the psychiatric hospital, the children's hospital, labor and delivery and oncology. I've gained a ton of experience and I'm so excited that next semester I will be on one particular unit the entire time. Where will I end up next semester? I'll keep you posted...

Sans coffee, this is spot on.

{five}

I'm on a mission to lose weight. Yes, again (am I really ever not on this mission?). So I started working out yesterday, because hey, why not start just a few weeks before my birthday and when it's absolutely frigid outside which just means my bed is oh-so-much-better?

Gotta start somewhere right? This past spring, I lost a pretty good amount of weight, and I kept it off! That is, until school started. The ripping & running and studying in places through lunch and dinner meant that I have been eating ALL of the wrong things this semester and I'm on a mission to fix that. Despite where I'm studying, what I'm doing, whatever, I'm making it a point to come home and grab food that I have prepared (or a salad) before I go lock myself in the library for hours on end. This way, I'll eat healthier food than the pizza my study group likes to order.

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Rant & Rave

Oh hey.

It's only been a little over a month *jaw drops*

Y'all may or may not remember that I'm in nursing school, so of course between class, studying and clinical, blogging has had to take a backseat. 

I've missed it SO MUCH and while I still hop on blogger to see what's going on with all my bloggy friends, I haven't really been able to sit down and write a post. That and I haven't had anything really worthy of talking about. 

Well I finally have something to talk complain about.

As a nursing student, I really only need three things to work at all times: my car, my computer and my shower.

Guess which one of those three decided to stop working properly a few weeks back?

Right, my computer (so that also kinda explains my absence).

Now when I say my computer wasn't working, I mean it didn't want to act right. Every time I opened Microsoft Word, I would get the Rainbow Wheel of Death for about 5 minutes before the app would close itself. PowerPoint would take 15 minutes to open, only to freeze the computer once it did open. Safari took 6 minutes to load a new webpage IF I was so lucky. Sometimes while typing notes in the middle of class, let me re-say that IN.THE.MIDDLE.OF.CLASS, Word would maybe let me type 2 sentences, freeze and shut down without recovery saving my work.

I cannot tell you how many times I threatened to throw this thing off my balcony, into a pool or over a cliff.

Last Friday, I endured this lovely screen before I finally decided to call Apple and whine about my life computer.

Do you see that I have nothing open? Do you see that I have no application memory? Do you see me banging my head against the wall? No? Oh... 

Given help from a man named Nick, I was informed that my computer's memory was over half way full and that until I brought it back down, I would continue to get this message even if no application was open and running.

He suggested I buy an external hard drive, move all of my pictures & my iPhoto library over to the drive and go from there. 

So I did. 

And it didn't clear up that much space. So I sought out Google's help for clearing even more memory space. 

Top 3 things suggested to me: 

Empty the trash/cache of every application that has a trashcan (iPhoto, Mail, the computer's trash, and Safari history and cache)

Move pictures and music to an external hard drive

Delete your mail downloads.

Yes, that is my mail downloads folder above. 51.1 MB of what may you ask?

Well, did you know that every time you open an attachment by double clicking, quick look at an attachment, or edit & save a mail attachment without renaming the document, a BRAND NEW file is created within mail downloads. Thus the 51.1 MB of nothingness I had on my computer.

Delete.

Now that my baby is back to (semi)normal, I hope to be posting a little bit more.

Oh how I've missed y'all!

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The Bare Necessities

*This is not a sponsored post, I was not compensated for it, all opinions are mine & mine alone*

When going into survival mode, I'm not your typical batteries, matches and oil for your lantern kind of girl. I grab THE essentials.

You know,  the cell phone and super comfy blanket.

Is that the smartest? Maybe, maybe not... Jury's still out on that one.

But those are both things I'd rather have in my personal survival stash.

That's why when Man Crates reached out and asked "what in the world would you consider do or die essentials to put in your survival kit" I responded with "we-he-ellll let me teellllll you..."

1// iPhone. In this day and age, it's almost freakin impossible to live without a phone (much to my dismay). I truly have a love/hate relationship with this thing. Half the time I'm on it is school related - checking emails or crying at group texts that start pinging at 4am reminding me to get up for clinical, while the other half of the time is all personal - catching up with friends and family, instagramming, tweeting, or getting angry at some of the stuff people say and wishing I could chuck the thing into the wall without it breaking.

2// Trolli Sour Gummi Worms. Do I even really have to explain this?! What is life without some kind of candy to cheer you up or mindlessly gnaw on while doing absolutely anything?

3// J.Crew Lounge pants. Here's a summary of my life: wake up, take off lounge pants and put clothes on for day, proceed with day, come home, strip clothes and put lounge pants back on. I cry when it's time to wash them just because they're so comfy, I don't want to take them off. Maybe I'm pathetic, or maybe you don't own a pair yet so you don't understand...

4// eos lip balm. In every color, in every flavor. Well except that honeydew one, I cringe at the smell every time I put it on (these things last forever and I'm not a wasteful person when it comes to chapstick). Smooth, unchapped, kissable lips? Yes, please!

5// American Horror Story, every season ever made and to be made. Obsessed is a nice way to state how I feel about this show. I'm late to the parade on this, but when it first came out (and when the other 2 seasons came out), I had no interest. One of my best friends forced me to sit and watch one episode of season 2 and I proceeded to watch the rest of the entire season in that one sitting. The next day, I watched the entire first season. The day after, half of the third season. Your girl was HOOKED. So keep em coming baby and Netflix? Put season 3 up!

Now, if you're sitting here wondering "wow Allie, those are amazing things to put in a survival kit," thank you, I think so too. 

If you aren't, what would you put in your survival kit??

Man Crates has some AMAZING "survival kits" for the men in your life since they're often so hard to buy for! Just check them out:

A crate for when Zombies take over the world

A crate for when your man can't get enough brew or baseball

Or brew and football (hello family...)

A crate for the grill master of the house

Whatever the occasion, men need manly things. Man Crates provides just that: manly men stuff (though I would gladly take any of the crates, especially the one full of snacks... go ahead and send that my way). No bows, no tissue paper, no "wow, this is so neatly wrapped." 

Just a crowbar (included) and the crate of life are all you need for whatever man [or woman] in your life to be shocked and awed.

I told one of my friends about this gift idea (is "gift" too girly a word now?) and he just thought it was way awesome. Wonder what Dad will think if/when he gets one.

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In Recent News

I'VE MOVED!

That's right. 

Half of the reason I've been so MIA is that I've been in the process of moving into my new apartment and starting my last year of nursing school. So between sweating my heart out to get all my stuff up 3 flights of stairs and sleeping like a cat, I haven't visited ye olde blog lately.

Let me give you a little tour of my new abode

Before

After

Meal numero uno in new apartment 

Hopefully I'll be back to the more regular blogging schedule soon!

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This is Actually My Life.

I came across a Thought Catalog post the other day and it described me to a T. 

The title?

18 Struggles of Having an Outgoing Personality but Actually Being Shy and Introverted

Here are the ones that I burst out laughing to and whole heartedly agreed sounded like me:

1. You’re not anti-social, you’re selectively social.

7. Dating is weird, because you’re smiling and laughing and talkative at dinner, and then you don’t want to answer their texts for four days, because like, you just want to be left alone…

8. You’re accused of being flirty with everybody, which is hilarious, because in reality, you can only tolerate like four people. 

9. You retain an air of mysteriousness about you, completely unintentionally. (There’s no mystery. You just feel no need to update the social sphere on what’s going on in your life every two hours.)

10. Not to mention the fact that you either have days in which you’re tweeting and [instagramming] every five minutes… or you [go ghost for weeks at a time].

12. You’ve never really understood the whole “introvert vs. extrovert” dichotomy (can we call it that?) Because you’re… both…

15. The entirety of your being is a conundrum, so needless to say, indecisiveness is your Achilles’ Heel.

Head on over to this post to read the rest and see if it sounds anything like you!

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DIY Makeup Palette

If I can DIY, you can DIY.

After obsessing over makeup organization and Z palettes, I decided to make my own. It was super simple, and quite honestly the hardest part was finding a tin. 

I searched Target for a makeup tin (which the website says they sell... false) and Walmart for magnetic sheets and a makeup tin (yes magnetic sheets, no makeup tin).

After calling my mom about three times, she found a tin at home so I was set.

What you need

A tin

Magnetic sheets or magnetic strips

Exacto knife

Want to know what I realized WAY after the fact?

If you use a tin, you don't need to put the magnetic sheet in the tin because TIN IS MAGNETIC.

*Sigh* anyway, let's begin (please ignore the terrible picture quality - iPhone pictures at 9/10PM are not the move):

1. Grab your supplies

Yes, that is a Peppermint Bark tin. Yes, it is deeper than I originally wanted. Yes, it was free.

2. Remove Peppermint Bark from tin. Eat if your heart desires.

3. If you have a lapse of memory that tin is magnetic LIKE I DID, or if your container isn't magnetic, attach magnetic sheet by peeling off adhesive backing.

4. Using an exacto knife, remove pots from their original container. Peel adhesive backing off of the pots before attaching magnets.

5. Attach a small magnet to the back of each pot. I just cut small squaretangles.

6. Stick your makeup into your tin and voila, enjoy!

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On The Run to BEYONCE part deux

Earlier this week I gave y'all part one of my fabulous trip to New Orleans, but what I didn't talk about was the FABULOUS Beyonce and Jay Z concert I attended on Sunday.

I was terrible at taking pictures of my outfits this whole trip, but for the concert I wore a black crop top , these pants, and basic black t-strap sandals.

The concert was scheduled to start at 8, but Brittany and I went downtown and parked around 5:30 so we could eat and grab a drink before the concert. We grabbed THE most delicious drinks and some basic pizza at this hole-in-the-wall restaurant before heading to the Superdome around 7:30.

This man had one job... Get "Mercedes-Benz Superdome" in the picture... fail.

I'm omitting A TON from the concert in case some of you are going and because, let's be honest, it's taking forever for these videos to load and ya girl ain't got time. 

But y'all... It was amazing. 

AH-MAY-ZING.

It was a show, with fantastic choreography, excellent transition between songs and stunning visual effects. 

Well worth it.

Walking down that ramp after the concert and leaving the parking deck however, are another story. Not my cup of tea.

Brittany and I got home around 2AM and passed out since we had to hop on the road to head back to Atlanta by 8AM. 

It was such a great trip, I hope y'all enjoyed reading along!

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