I can't believe how long it has been since I blogged! We've been pretty busy, which is good. During Christmas, we were watching a cat in Cambridge. His name is Loki (left) and he is very sweet. He needed medication in his ear twice a day, so we basically just stayed at their nice apartment or in the area until heading back home. The day after Christmas was the first big snow (blizzard) that we experienced - but nothing stopped us! We were out
walking 2 miles through the blizzard and having a blast in the fresh snow. Of course a snow angel was totally necessary!! When Loki's parents came home, they referred us to a family in Belmont who was leaving for New Years weekend. So, we stayed at their beautiful 4 story house in Belmont watching Casper - he was
probably one of the best dogs I have ever taken care of!! He was a lot of fun and pretty easy. We walked him to a nearby pond that was frozen over and saw a beautiful sunset! Of course it was better the day before, but we didn't have our camera, so we went back
the next day, but it was a little cloudier - still made for a great picture though!
As we left housesitting in Belmont, we walked over to Cambridge (about 25 min walk) and met another lady for dog sitting. She lives in a brand new super nice apartment complex - she said only like 10 people live there right
now. She just moved here from Chicago and has two 12 yr old dogs that needed medications with every meal. One of them, Cassi, has seizures so we also had to keep the house no warmer than 67 degrees since any higher can trigger a seizure. Cassi was a little stressful at times for us - we would just be sitting on the couch and she would bark at us for 15 min straight. We still aren't quite sure what it was (she didn't want to go outside, she didn't want to play, she may have been trying to get food), but we just tried to ignore her. Also, one morning while I
was emailing their owner (who was in Switzerland for work) I heard Cassi rummaging through our suitcases, and in about 3 minutes, she chewed the strap off of one of my bras! I was a little upset, but just threw it in the trash and let it go. Then, another morning I heard her in there again and I knew what she was capable of doing, so I ran in there within less than a minute and she had been digging through the trash. I noticed that the bra
was missing (no longer in the trash) and I never found it after searching the whole house. So, I am not sure if she hid it or ate it, but whatever she did with it, she did it VERY fast! Callie, the other dog (in the picture with me), was just sooo sweet and loveable! While we were housesitting here there was another blizzard! Luckily we didn't have anything to do that day and could just stay home all day. These are a couple pictures of the snow from the back door/porch. It was absolutely so beautiful out! I wish I could have taken more pictures, but I didn't feel like putting on all the layers to go out in it. The day after the blizzard was the day we headed home, which was quite an adventure in the snow! We had 2 suitcases, 2 backpacks, and another large bag (with a space heater we bought for our apt). We were definitely exhausted and excited to be home.
We have still be dog walking a couple times a week (when the
weather cooperates). Here is a picture of me with Baxter and Millie on our first day of walking, which was in December. There have been a few days where I have been babysitting, so Brian has had to walk them by himself, and now with all the ice on the ground Brian walks them anyway and I follow behind (I'm the pooper scooper). The dogs are definitely crazy and difficult to walk, but we are going to continue doing it as long as we can.
Other things we've been up to:
Since Angel and Dan hosted game night last month, we decided to host it for January with a taco bar (pic on left). I bought a new game that we tried out: Anomia. I definitely was the worst at it, but it was still fun. We also played Bang again and Cranium twice - this time the girls won!!
Daryn and Nichole bought us tickets to a BC basketball game, so they picked us up and we grabbed dinner beforehand at an awesome Thai place near campus. BC played Virginia and won - it was a very close game, which made it even more fun.
Back in December I saw an ad in the Massachusetts Nursing newsletter for a new program they are starting called Career Connections. I signed up to get a nurse mentor and I was paired with the Nurse Executive at the VA. Brian and I went to meet her - her name is Ceci and she is incredibly nice!! She gave me lots of great ideas and knows a lot of people in the nursing field, which is just what I need. Her soon-to-be daughter-in-law, Luz, is a psychiatric Nurse Practitioner and she also started getting my name out there. Well, not long after did I get 2 phone calls for interviews from referrals by Luz. One was at a hospital a little over an hour away for the inpatient psych unit and the other was for a clinic downtown, both per diem (as needed) jobs. I also had another interview the following week for another hospital psych inpatient per diem position about 45 min away. Of course it snowed on each of these days (but not any of the other days during that week), so it was quite interesting getting around without my boots on and my hair was hardly curled by the time I got to the interview, but it makes for fun memories.
