Crockpot Salsa Chicken
Here is a super easy and tasty recipe I got from a friend at work. She also blogs and has a cute cooking blog here. I cooked this up while I was out of the “house” for our usual Sunday business (church, small group) and it was ready when we got home! Super easy and pretty darn tasty too! Maybe not the most healthy, but not bad either! You’ll have to try it.
Here goes:
4 Frozen Chicken Breasts (I actually had mine already thawed and it worked just fine)
1/2 a packet of Taco Seasoning
1 can of Cream of Chicken soup
1/2 a jar of salsa
Spray crock pot with some non-stick spray and then put all ingredients in the crock pot. Cook on low for 7-8 hours.
Top with grated cheddar cheese and/or sour cream. Eat with flour tortilla or tortilla chips (we ate it with some blue corn tortilla chips). I served it with plain old cooked brown rice with the sauce and grated cheese on top.
Love these one-pot recipes! Enjoy!
Nocturnal for Good
This past Monday night was my first official 12 hour night shift at Regions. It went well! Of course the nurses I work with are all super nice and helpful, so that helps a ton. I worked another shift the next night, and both of those shifts were pretty slow, I’ll admit. Normally they aren’t that slow, they all said, but man, I was struggling. Plus, I did not bring enough food! Twelve hours is a long time to be working and you don’t realize how much you normally eat when you’re awake for 12 hours. Usually you would have had 2 or 3 meals if it was during the day.
I’m definitely adjusting to living a nocturnal lifestyle now. Since I don’t want to totally mess up my internal clock, I’m trying to keep it consistent even on nights when I don’t work. This poses a problem though, since our apartment is so open and since John sleeps at night. I can’t do a whole lot then because most things are somewhat noisy (like cleaning, for example). Last night I did manage to do the dishes at 3am though! Does anyone have any ideas of things I could do at night that would be productive or enjoyable that aren’t noisy but also don’t make me want to go to sleep right away? I love reading, but for now that still makes me sleepy at night… dang it.
So anyway, John also started school this past week and so there’s another change thrown at us. He’s doing so well already and keeping up with all his reading and homework. It’s so great to see! I’m excited for when he is finally able to become a special education teacher and enjoy it! Hopefully then I won’t have to work quite as much as a nurse, but we’ll see!
Please be praying for us as we are ajusting to all these big changes… it definitely is taking some adjusting!
Future Cheese Heads
Over the past couple weeks, the hubby and I have decided that we will, in fact, be moving to the western border of Wisconsin come May, Lord willing. This has always been my hope and plan, but not so much John’s, who absolutely loves the city and historic nature of our current dwelling place.
Though I’m not sure if he’ll admit to it, I think the main reason for John’s change of heart is seeing just how stressed and frustrated I am and have been with where we live now. I do love the cuteness of our apartment, but let’s just say I struggle with just about every facet of daily living when I don’t have any way of keeping our place organized or clean. Our apartment has one relatively large living room/dining room (to be more accurate, our kitchen table is in our living room), a tiny kitchen, and then downstairs is our medium sized bedroom, our small bathroom, and two decently sized closets. There honestly is just not enough space here for us, even after moving many boxes into a storage unit. And since I know we won’t be here much more than a year at the most, it seems unwise to spend gobs of money on furniture items to help organize.
So, the plan now is to move into a place (an apartment) in Hudson come May. We have already found some possible winners online that have two bedrooms (each with a closet!), two bathrooms, AND allow dogs, and still are cheaper than our place is now.
I should also mention another change in plans… regarding the mention of dogs. Since this apartment we found only allows dogs under 30lbs., we’re leaning towards getting an Italian greyhound, hopefully from a local animal shelter. And I’ll shamefully admit, we like to frequent the humane societies and pet stores (with puppies) roughly once every 1-2 weeks… and we happened to run across THE cutest greyish-blue colored italian greyhound. You should have seen both our hearts melt at the sight of this little bugger. We are definitely excited to have a fury friend join our family! Hopefully it would live longer than our fish… we are now down to 3 fish out of what used to be 8. Good thing I’m not attached!
Invitation
So my running blog has been flourishing much more than this blog, but my visitor frequency definitely has not followed suit. Want to stop over and help support me as I get my behind into gear? Please? Thanks! :)
Loving It
The new job began a couple weeks ago and up until now I have only had boring orientation sessions, BUT, I’ve met some amazing people! I truly feel so blessed by the Lord and count it all to come from Him that I got this job, especially with how crazy our economy is now. Not to say that those who aren’t doing so well career wise are not in some way being blessed by the Lord.
Already I’ve met three girls that I hope to stay connected to while working at Regions. I believe they are all believers too, so that is awesome. They are all so friendly and genuine and actually care about what they do, which is a nice change from where I worked last (not that all co-workers at United were like that!).
Tomorrow is my first 12 hour shift with a preceptor on the unit. I’m a little nervous, but also really excited. I already met the preceptor and she is super nice and sounds like her life is pretty similar to mine. Young, married, no kids. I’ll be working 7am-7:30pm… yikes, that’s quite a day. Then the next day I just work 8hrs, observing a couple places in the cardiology department, and then the weekend off! Phew.
Another reason I love this new job: My unit lets the nurses make their own schedules! We do have mandatory weekends (mine is every third wknd), but otherwise it’s pretty much your choice which days (or eventually nights 7pm-7:30am, in my case) you can work. How awesome is that? Otherwise I would definitely miss many monthly or bi-weekly commitments that I have. Awesome.
So, one of the main reasons why I’m nervous (barely, if at all) is because I don’t have any formal telemetry training until the end of February. I won’t be on my own (without another nurse with me) until after that training, but still, I’m going to have a lot of feeling-like-an-idiot moments up until then! Good thing one of my friends outside of work is an exercise specialist at the St. Paul Heart Clinic and she lent me her EKG books! Now who knows how much I’ll actually look at them…
Speaking of exercise, that’s really what I should be doing right now. Off I go!
New Year, New Job!
Last night was my last shift at United Hospital… it was a long night actually, since they called me in early to cover a couple hours for a sick nurse. I’m pretty pumped about working at Regions though, especially since I just found out that United will be laying off another 30-40 nurses permanently in the next couple weeks. Yikes. The talk amongst the nurses last night was filled with worry. I kinda felt bad telling people that it was my last night and that I had another (better) job lined up.
I feel blessed that I was offered the job and am getting really excited to start on Friday! Mind you, it will be the boring orientation curriculum for a week or two, but still, at least it’s at a hospital that isn’t going downhill so fast as United is. Today when I turned in my security card (for night access to the hospital), the security guy said “Why are you leaving? You got another job? Can I come with! Congratulations!” It was rather funny, actually.
So anyway, I worked almost 11 hours last night and haven’t slept since yesterday afternoon, so I do apologize for yet another dry and pretty boring post… but I’m just too excited about the new job and wanted to update you all.
Have a Happy New Year!
Job Change
Interview last week went well, and yesterday they offered me the job! It would be starting on the regular telemetry (heart-monitoring) unit and then once the unit moves into the newly built expansion, which sounds like it’ll be amazing, it will join with the post-coronary care unit. I have the weekend to decide on if I want the job, but after talking more with John and with family, and praying about it, I think I’m going to go for it.
Main reasons are: the hours will be consistently night shift (I know, not the best, but at least it’s not switching back and forth), and also it will be on one unit instead of going to a new unit every day. As much as it’s been great to go to different units at United, I don’t think right now it is the best option for me. Everything is already so new and a little scary, so to constantly be changing what type of patients and the unit I’m on (all so different!) is a little overwhelming for being a new nurse. Definitely has made me grow a lot in my profession, which is good, but I’m looking forward to having one unit to really excel in.
Another reason, it will pay a little more, which will help with John going back to school full time. We have enough debt and loans to pay off already, so with this job we’ll probably not have to take on any more loans while John’s in school.
So, I have to let my manager know on Monday, which I’m dreading doing because she’s such a great manager. And then I’ll start working at Regions come the beginning of January!
Trip South
We had a good but busy Thanksgiving weekend. I worked Thanksgiving day, which wasn’t all that bad, and afterwards I got to see John’s mom and brother and learn how to make homemade pies! We made pumpkin and apple pies from scratch. Boy is it a lot of work, but definitely worth it! John’s mom is quite the pro at pie crusts, I must say.
On Friday we left for a 4 hour drive down to the middle of Iowa to see my sister and new brother-in-law, along with my parents, brother, and his two kids. I loved seeing where Jen and Jerod (sis and BIL) live and stay for a day and a half. A really cute town and beautiful campus that they both work at! It snowed yesterday afternoon and looked very Christmas like… and did I mention that the food was really good too? Good job Jen on hosting your first big family gathering! You did a marvelous job, despite all the stress in the kitchen hours before!
Now we’re back to the cold buzzling city of St. Paul and back to work. Switching back to nights tomorrow night and it looks like it’s going to be a tough week. I don’t mind the working at night part but it’s the trying to plan my days/evenings in a way that doesn’t cause me to neglect sleep part that is so frustrating. Since I technically have all day and evening free, I sometimes have to schedule things throughout the day which can really mess with your sleep schedule, or lack thereof. After this week it should get a little better, I hope.
Speaking of my job, as I said in my last post, I’ve been looking elsewhere incase I lose my job at United. Within 30 minutes of writing the last blog post, I got a call for an interview at Regions Hospital in St. Paul. Crazy huh? It’ll be on one of their ICU units, which would definitely be a challenging position, in addition to getting used to a new hospital and all new coworkers. One of my coworkers at United actually told me that she was working with a nursing student who works at Regions on that unit and she said it was a great place to work and that the manager is super nice and will hire me right away… which I found funny since this girl doesn’t even know me!
The interview is on Tuesday at 11am… so please say a prayer for me if you can! I’m not sure if this is where God would want me to be, but I know that we do need a steady income and this is all that’s come my way so far. The tricky part would be if I get a job offer and still don’t know about the status of my current job… but we’ll “cross that bridge when we get there” (in the words of my mom). God never said things would be predicatable and easy, but that he would guide my path in a way that grows me and challenges me to depend more on him and find my ultimate joy and satisfaction in HIM ALONE. And since he is the only stable thing in the universe, I suppose it’s good that he’s forcing me to depend on him! :)
Scared but Trusting
Yesterday, I got a voice message from my manager saying that I’ll be getting something in the mail regarding layoffs and voluntary hour cutbacks. Oh dear.
She basically said that I still do have my job, but as of next week there will be another round of rebidding for nursing jobs, meaning that the higher seniority nurses who are laid off will be able to take a whole or part of a lower seniority nurse’s job. Since I’m 0.8 (almost full time), my shift is day/night (not desirable), and I’m in the float pool (requires extra training and more flexibility), I’m hoping that those more experienced nurses will not want my job or will perhaps only take part of my FTE (full-time equivalent, which is 0.8).
I won’t find out until next Tuesday though. Please be praying for me. If I lose my job, it will be really difficult to find another nursing job right now because pretty much every hospital around here is on hiring freezes due to the bad economy and needing to save money. I’ve been applying to any positions I can find, but most of them require 1yr experience or more specialized training/experience (like ICU or ER experience).
This could really affect John being able to go back to school in the Spring, but we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. John did get a temporary job that will start on November 30th, so at least we’ll have something! This is only a month long job though.
I am a little scared of what would happen if I lose my job, but I have to remember that last year we were living off of John’s job working as a lifegaurd and swimming instructor. We were just fine and God provided for us. And if we have to put off John’s schooling, it won’t hurt anyone, it will just thwart OUR plans a little more.
God has His plans and we should trust in His sovereignty and that whatever comes our way was by His loving hands. And it’s for our good, whether we realize it or not. Isn’t that amazing?
