The Traveling Kind

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

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

Usually in this lovely travel world, I get my new assignment a few weeks before I start. However, with the last couple of assignments I've really lucked out and have snagged TWO assignments at one time. Actually, I accepted a position for July before I even had a clue about where we might go in April. Well, I am super excited to announce that Ryan, Pearl, and I will be spending the rest of spring and early summer in KNOXVILLE  (not to be confused with Nashville),  TENNESSEE ! Ryan and I drove through eastern Tennessee when we were headed to NYC and we absolutely loved the scenery. I will be working in a small-ish PICU at East Tennessee Children's Hospital. I can only imagine how beautiful it will be in the springtime! We're also excited about having another mild summer. Eighty degree summer weather suits me just fine. We're looking forward to take in all Knoxville has to offer, as well as a few places we'll be relatively close to like Nashville and Ashville,

I've basically been singing the entire soundtrack to Hairspray since we got here, and I have to admit, I don't hate it. Ha! Ryan and I are really liking Baltimore. It's definitely not NYC, it's a little more boring and normal, but let me tell ya, I love it. I love everything about being in a normal city, like a 780 square foot apartment, a kitchen, a couch, driving, seeing normal people wearing normal clothes, and not having to worry about someone yelling at me if I'm walking to slow. I do miss my Mike's Bagels though. Ha! We've actually done a lot since we've been here. I think we've hit all the major touristy things. Next week Ryan's mom comes into town and we'll hit up DC and Philadelphia to finish off our "bucket list". Yesterday we went hiking and saw the beautiful countryside of Maryland. It's so amazing how big our country is and how much it has to offer. Each coast is completely different from the other and they're

Where on Earth did the last three months EVEN GO!? I'll tell ya I have no clue. This has been a whirlwind of an assignment. There has not been a single day spent in the apartment the entire time. Living in these close quarters has definitely tested my sanity. I mean, the thing I look forward to most at the end of this assignment is a couch. Really, that's what I want most in life right now. I want to be able to recline on the couch and spend the entire day watching movies and playing on the internet. Or just have an spot at all to rest in our living space. Right now all we have is a chair (with no arms) and three very wobbly bar stools. Not much relaxing happens in those. Rant over. Honestly, it was best we didn't have a comfortable sized apartment, being forced to stay outside allowed us to get the most we possibly could out of our time here. Anyway. Instead of rambling on and on about every detail of the last three months I'll just post a few photos of our many ad