The Traveling Kind

Welp, another three months have come and gone. Ryan and I have approximately 15 days left here, 6 of them I will spend at work, 5 will be spent with my mom when she visits for Christmas, and the rest will be filled with purging, packing, and cleaning. I can't wait!! This is seriously the best and worst part of traveling so often. I'm just getting used to the unit I'm in and getting comfortable. Friendships I've made are easier and more natural feeling instead of new and awkward. I know I always say this but after three and a half years of traveling, leaving new friends never gets any easier. On the flip side, I'm getting so excited for our next adventure! I actually secured this next assignment way back in September before I even had a job in Chicago. After a week long trip in Central Texas for Christmas with the Sladek's, we will be making our way back out west, in the land of mountains, skiing, craft brew, and legal pot! Not that the last part really applies

Ryan and I are officially settled in our new city. We've really lucked out in the weather department so far, I'm hoping it stays that way till January 2nd. Fingers crossed. Everyone here seems to think it's going to get really cold. Haven't they heard about El Nino!? :) Oh. My. Goodness. The move in to Chicago was probably the easiest in my 3 year travel experience. I've started going through a new travel agency and our housing comes fully furnished down to the silverware-without any extra cost to me! If we really wanted to make it easy on ourselves we could've just traveled with our dogs and our suitcases and been just fine. Going with this new company has definitely been a learning curve. I'll cover the pros and cons of large/small travel agencies in another post. I'm definitely likin' the way things are going so far,  but my momma didn't raise no dummy so I'm cautiously optimistic. We spent our first two days here getting to know our a

Holy Moses. The last 18 days have been fun, anxiety-inducing, and exhausting! I started off working 6 out of 7 days in a row. Then, we hosted Ryan's parents for a week. Now, yesterday I finished up my last three shifts on 9South at Johns Hopkins. And I only just got my new assignment last Friday, 6 days before my last shift. Talk about cutting it close! Having to leave a unit for a second time stinks pretty bad, to say the least. I LOVE my 9South coworkers. Coming back and getting to know them even better just makes it harder. It's very comforting to know, however, that I can go back. That's the beauty of travel nursing. Options are ALWAYS open. I sure am gonna miss this skyline!!  See ya later Hopkins!! Well, I guess I'll get to the exciting part of the post and let y'all in on where we're going next! After 27 years of successfully avoiding any type of "real winter", Ryan and I will be going to CHICAGO next!! We'll be there through Ja

Well, we've got four weeks left in Baltimore and the ants in my pants are going crazy! I still don't have an official next destination. My recruiter and I are still working on it but I hope to be announcing our new home away from home soon. Ryan and I have been keeping busy. I can't remember if I've told y'all this already but Ryan has a job this time around. He's working for a liquor store/craft brew place doing home deliveries and working in the store. He really likes getting to socialize and he's loving getting to try new craft beers at work! Ha! It's been an adjustment not having a buddy to play with on my days off, but binge-watching Grey's Anatomy from Season 1 has been fun! They really should've stopped after like Season 4 or 5. Oh well, I still love it. In the last few weeks I've been going to see some fun spots with friends like Annapolis, MD, LaDew Topiary Gardens, and Ft. McHenry-where the Star Spangled Banner was written! I

It's been awhile since I've posted anything travel nurse related. I get asked about orientation a lot so I figured I could probably squeeze out a couple of paragraphs about it for the curious. HOSPITAL ORIENTATIONS This assignment is my ninth one. I've worked in 9 different hospitals including Scott and White and I've had to do orientation at each one. They've ranged from a half a day to an entire work week long and that's just for general orientation and computer charting classes.  After general hospital orientation, at most, we get three days of on-unit orientation with a preceptor. Most experienced nurses who sign on staff in a PICU get EIGHT WEEKS. That is a lot of info in a very short amount of time.  So. much. info...so. little. time. There are not huge differences in patient care throughout the different hospitals. Learning the new policies is generally pretty easy, like how to draw blood from a central line or central line dressing c

SO MUCH has happened in the last three weeks! I finished up at East Tennessee Children's, we packed up and moved to Baltimore, taking a few days to stop and see friends and family, and I started back on 9South at Hopkins. As much as I love bouncing around and going to new places every few months it's still so hard to leave friends. At ETCH I feel like I connected with my coworkers really quickly and really got to enjoy working with them versus being anxious about what I say or do or what they think of me. We also got to reconnect with an old high school friend and it was such a great surprise since we had no idea she had just moved to the area. Wonderworks Ryan and Wesley playing at Wonderworks! All that being said it was SO weird coming back to a city, apartment, and unit that we'd been to before. I LOVED walking into the unit the first day and be greeted by so many familiar faces and big hugs! We already know where our grocery store is and how to get around o

First and foremost, let me introduce y'all to June Carter Cash Sladek! She's our precious little chewy new angel puppy and we LOVE HER! Pearl's getting to like her too. Pearl is super excited to play with her in the mornings but when it's time to go to bed and June's still biting her ear she gets a little snippy. Ha! *** Our first family outing was to Ijams (pronounced Iams) Nature Center. It's a park on the Tennessee River with lots of beautiful hiking and biking trails. It was June's first hike and long walk on the leash. I have to say she did pretty good but both her and Pearl get pretty darn distracted, they probably added like 30 minutes to the walk. We need to do some leash training with both of them. Tennessee River First full family photo! Boardwalk on the trail along the river *** Turns out one of our high school friends lives 45 minutes away! Wesley came  up for the day and we did a little sightseeing. This photo was taken

Well y'all we made it to Knoxville! And they were so kind to welcome us with some severe weather. I haven't had to worry about that since we left Texas the first time and it was pretty scary to say the least. Pearl especially hates bad weather. She shakes so hard it's visible from across the apartment. We really like our new apartment, it feels smaller than our San Antonio place but it comes with other perks like a "resort style" indoor pool and jacuzzi AND a washer/dryer. You never realize how great it is to be able to do your laundry in your apartment until you have to live without.  I would say on average this is about the size unit we're usually placed in. Ryan and I are actually the first people to live in this unit after it was remodeled, so that means new kitchen appliances, new flooring, new granite counters, and a new washer/dryer. It's a little mini one that is the washer AND dryer in the same small machine. It's pretty neat, I haven't se