I’ve been living in LA for 5 years, but I went to LACMA for the first time today (lol that’s embarrassing) and oh my goodness WHAT A GREAT MUSEUM. Metropolis II was there and it was glorious and beautifully detailed.

A lot of contemporary art can go suck it, tbh, but they have some Pollock and Rothko and Mondrian and I really like those for some reason. Magritte is one of the few surrealists that I can actually appreciate and LACMA has the original Ceci n’est pas une pipe (omg!) and The Liberator. 

They also had some Monet and Sisley and Renoir and Degas and that was one of our favorite rooms because, lbr, impressionism > everything else.

THE RENAISSANCE SCULPTURES THOUGH. They were my favorites. I just don’t understand how someone can take a slab of rock and make something so beautiful and intricate and delicate out of it. It doesn’t make sense in my brain. It makes me excited and angry. The worst are the ones with the floating fingers and veils and curly fucking hair. JUST. HOW. And OMG there was a Pieta from Spain that was so beautiful, it was physically painful to look at it. I just really really like religious art and I can’t look at Pietas and not feel like my body is being torn in half. One of my life goals is to go to St. Peter’s Basilica and see Michelangelo’s Pieta without having a breakdown. Just thinking about it gives me chills, man.

We also found the Ancient Egyptian gallery and that was amazing too because ancient civilizations are just crazy awesome. There was a sarcophagus with the actual human remains still inside yeeeeeaaaahhh.

THE RENAISSANCE SCULPTURES THOUGH. JUST LOOK AT DIS BEEZ.

SHE IS MARBLE. MARBLE!

I just love hanging out with my Tiverton hoes so much. SO MUCH. We went to Gaucho Grill again for the tradition of Nice Food Times and it was so delicious, and we tried the sweetbread, and we all had the now legendary dulce de leche crepes. And the topics of conversation are just of the highest quality. Disney fanfiction, horsey whales, platypi, veal thyroids, Argentinian long division, porn for mouths. I just love them so muhuhuhuhuch and I want to be with them always, watch Battlestar with them, make apple cider caramel with them, sleep next to them, caress their faces. 

• I got to the ICU and was told that my nurse was being floated. So I floated with her to the cardiac unit.
• One of our patients was a 101-year-old lady. She was our healthiest.
• She was in for pancytopenia. Other than that, she was completely alert and oriented, walking and talking. 
• I helped her walk to the bathroom. When I asked her if she needed help in there, she was like, “No! I’ve been doing this for a hundred years!”
• When I was putting lip balm on her lips she puckered up and made kissy noises. OMG such a fantastic old lady.
• Also her 60-year-old son came to visit and he is also the nicest.
• I felt like an idiot many times, especially during the first half of the day. Especially when I spilled 2ml of dilaudid all over the med room. Uuugghhhh vials are slippery little assholes.
• I got three slaps on the back from the Australian nurse who reminded me of Steve Irwin. He was thanking me for doing all of his q2hr blood glucose checks. SLAPS ON THE BACK. Like I was one of the boys or something. I was trying to be cool and said, “Of course, no problem!” but inside I was screaming. 
• Everyone kept talking about how great UCLA’s hospital must be and I replied with tales of the spacious rooms, each with it’s own monitor. We decided that UCLA is the Waldorf Astoria of hospitals.
• I was putting on a condom catheter for the first time and my nurse asked if I’d ever put a condom on anyone. I answered no after a pause and we both smiled because my virginity was discovered on my first day of immersion.
• One of the care partners was talking to me about how she just finished nursing school and is taking a Kaplan review course for the NCLEX. She said, “For one of our review sessions, the instructor couldn’t come so she had an emergency substitute. Do you know Barbara…”
• And I said, “Barbara Demman?! OMG YES!”
• And she started freaking out about Barbie the way anyone who has ever met Barbie freaks out about her. “She’s AMAZING. She is just unbelievable. She is SO GREAT.”
• Major Barbara Demman fangirling.
• And last but not least, I drove and I didn’t die.

I was taught how to use the light microscope, and I spent two hours looking at zebrafish embryo and figuring out if they were positive or negative for the relevant phenotype. It was so exciting and an incredible upgrade to washing tanks! 

I took a picture of the petri dish. Those are the embryo! And I could see the little fishies moving inside their sacs! I kept thinking I’m getting paid to use this offensively expensive, awesome machine! I would totally do this for free.

(Of course I did spend my first two hours at work washing tanks, which is a solitary, repetitive activity that forces you to reflect on your life and think of books that crush your soul, like TFiOS.)

• All the shelves were cleared out, especially at Trader Joe’s.
• This angry old lady at Ralph’s was like, “Why is this store so empty?!”
• Chill, lady. It’s the first day of the quarter. Everyone’s back and everyone’s hungry.
• I just love college phenomena. You know… midnight yells, drunken Thursdays, first-day empty grocery shelves. 
• Don’t worry though, I got my eggs and the last bag of mushrooms.
• We also ran into people we knew.
• And—this is the best part—I saw my old Public Health professor!
• Let me tell you guys about the amazing Roger Detels.
• 
• As you can see, he has the best, most luxurious eyebrows in the world.
• He’s also one of the first AIDS researchers, and his discoveries about HIV transmission have contributed so much to prevention.
• He travels all over the world for his research. He goes to many Asian countries, including the Philippines!
• One time, during an STD lecture, he tore open his dress shirt to reveal a Captain Condom shirt.
• Another time, he came into class with a pretty big wound dressing on his forehead and casually waved it off as “just a surfing accident from the weekend.” He’s 75! 75!
• Tonight I saw him chatting up the cashier like they were old friends, and he definitely bought a bottle of wine and a bottle of tequila. 
• THIS MAN!

I went to simbang gabi at 5:30 this morning and it was a fantastic start to the day. Also there was free Filipino food and Tagalog Christmas carols. 

Then we cleaned the house and prettied it up for my sister’s Christmas party with her old college friends. Now the party is going on downstairs and their kids are all screaming. 

And now I’m P4Aing here in bed, and my mom is beside me, and we are eating chocolate and watching Pretty Woman at the same time. 

• Woke up after 10 AM! (That is amazing sleeping in for me.)
• Had breakfast in bed.
• Finally decided to brush my teeth and get dressed.
• Put on my apron and proceeded to spend entire afternoon making cookies.
• Oh my goodness there are so many cookies.
• Then I made our wreath. Lulz it’s kind of pathetic.
• And all day I watched a total of five movies with my roomies.
• How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days
• The Notebook (weeping into the cookie dough)
• Definitely Maybe
• The Social Network (it was my roomies’ first time watching it and I was trying to downplay my obsession but I was crying inside every time they reacted correctly to a scene)
• The Holiday (I can’t with this movie. Jack Black is too good in it.)
• I also painted my finger nails sky blue and gold glitter. Aaaaaaaah love it.
• And my toe nails gray and this silvery glitter coat called Hallucinate. 
• Then I went over the Geo’s and we talked about all the nurses. 
• BEING DONE IS THE BEST.
• Tomorrow I go home and I am excited to see my family but I am going to miss my school family SO MUCH it is basically unbearable.
• Sometimes I can’t believe my luck. 
• I am surrounded by the best people. 

petit-tournesol:

no seriously. When I think of our grad party and NOT going through nursing WITH this people when I get hired, it’s like unfathomable omg its the worst.

We went to a friend’s b-day party and we just ate cupcakes and sang Santeria and Fuck You and joined in a circle and sang “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by Sinatra and I wanted to dieeeeeeeee. Except we put our own lyrics to it, “suck it” mainly. 

So I went to the premiere of Sherlock Holmes tonight. It was my first time going to a premiere and apparently there’s free popcorn and soda for everyone, and the ushers try to be super nice. 

I went after being at work all day, and it was the first time I got to sit down for more than 15 minutes, so lulz I fell asleep pretty early on and when I woke up shit was going down and I was like what. the. fuck. is. happening. 

I saw Rachel McAdams as she was leaving though. She was so incredibly beautiful. And there was this tall asian guy that people kept asking to take pictures with. I have no idea who he was but he looked nice. He’s no Daniel Henney though. 

Lunch at Johnny’s New York Pizza after the poster board quest. 

Waiter drops off basket of bread. We gasp. Waiter walks away.

Comes back one minute later to see empty bread basket.

“WHAT HAPPENED?!”

We are hungry okay calm down and get us another basket.

• Working on our quality improvement projects. 
• Break to make food. We had chicken, beef, and pork (tocino!). 
• No vegetables. 
• After eating, conversations always turn to diarrhea and vomiting. Naturally.
• Then pedophilia and how disgusting it is.
• N: “They should get their dicks cut off.”
• L: “How will they pee? OMG! Through their butts!”
• And so here is our old friend, CONTINENT DIVERSION. 

It’s chilly and raining and there is apple crisp baking in the oven.