My New Favourite Place...

The downtown core in Calgary has been undergoing renovations for the last year or so, trying to compete with the newer, bigger, expanded malls. I end up downtown a LOT as Kelsie takes the bus to get everywhere so it’s the easiest place for her to get to, but also because there are a lot of little boutiques and bigger department stores than in the nearby malls. Lately my desire to go downtown has been quelled by construction though. TD Square is always really dark and it’s very VERY disconcerting to see exposed pipe and ceiling over your head.

However, despite the construction, I have found my new favourite place to visit, and it IS downtown, so I have a feeling I will be there more often. :)

And the day goes by...

I had a wonderful day! Except that it was –20C when I woke up, which is SO NOT COOL and it is way too early in the month to be so cold! I’m glad I unpacked my winter jackets from storage yesterday! Not a lot of snow yet but I’m sure it’s coming… and then all the leaves will get wet and rot which will smell awful.

ANYWAY. Today was mostly focused on food; went for lunch with my mom and (nursing)Kelsey, then did a bit of shopping; and then out for dinner with the family this evening. Dinner was fantastic. In fact, I think I am still digesting, so I’m all sleepy, so this will mostly be food!porn. We went for steak :D. I’m not a HUGE meat-eater, but I love getting steak in restaurants, haha.

The Flames lost their first game of the season :( but we are 4-1 which is a pretty good record, AND it was the second consecutive day of games, so I think they were tired. But what an awesome start! Only 77 more games to go before playoffs :)

Bright, Indestructible

First, a brief history of my quest with eyeshadow bases: when the Bay first started carrying Too Faced, an SA was nice enough to give me a ‘deluxe’ sample of the Shadow insurance, which I eagerly tried as I had noticed that when I just applied my makeup for work, about 9 hours into my shift it was either gone, or really gross looking. Unfortunately, TFSI didn’t really help this at all, and in fact, made me feel greasy. So that was a no-go.

Next I tried Urban Decay’s primer potion. This was a lot BETTER than TFSI was on me, but at the same time… hour 9 I’d see fading, and a bit of creasing. Not as much as with no primer at all, and less than compared to TFSI, but still …. creasing. I began to think that maybe my version of ‘last all day’ was not everyone else’s. I mean most people (or bloggers I’ve met) seem to work office jobs, with 8 hour days on average. I needed/expected my makeup to last through 12 hour night shifts, last through running around, and hauling my patient up and down. So maybe I was being a bit hard on these primers.

I tried MAC paint pots on their own, and same results – exactly – as with UDPP. As I now had full sizes of a couple of paint pots AND UDPP, I decided to try combining them… and this was the solution! My makeup lasts ALL shift now, and I’ve actually fallen asleep (oops) with it on and woken up with it looking fine. So :)

Where does that lead me? Well...

Difficult Things to Say…

Lately when Kelsie and I compare days she talks about programming, and I, as always, talk about my days at work. HAHA neither are really similar but I appreciate that she lets me vent about my day even though she’s professed the desire to never work in medicine, at least a nurse… I feel less helpful to her as all I can do is nod and go ‘hmmm’ when she talks about programming as I have NO IDEA what it is about (and she knows this, and laughs at me about it).

Work has been really good lately! Even if I felt like I lived at the unit for the last week due to the weird non-regularity of my rotation and a few trades; even one of my patient’s family members commented on it, going ‘Justine, it feels like we see you every day…’. But it’s been rewarding :) And busy. In a good way, mind you. Which brings me to this post title… the patient I talked about a few days ago ended up not doing so well after I had him (which was only 4 days ago, yikes) and along with his family, made the difficult decision to withdraw care and become palliative – basically, comfort care until he passed away. These meetings are always difficult, and while a part of me was grateful that they had made the decision based on what was best for the patient, I was sad as the patient and his family were absolutely lovely, sweet, and supportive the entire time he was in hospital!

I didn’t actually have the patient (we’ll call him F for the rest of this) this last run of three shifts, but I ‘covered’ him for 2/3 days, and I actually had the patient next door to him, so I made sure to say good morning to F and his family whenever I saw them, and if his nurse was busy and I was not, I’d run and help with things. I generally do this and nothing comes of it (nothing more unusual than a thank you from my colleague) but this must have made an impact because yesterday, the day F was going to hospice, I was covering him again and thus was darting in and out of the room more often. Which was nice, if bittersweet, as it’s never very happy and uplifting to be caring for a patient you know will die, but you’re just not sure when. F was pretty comfortable, and his family seemed very at peace with everything. One daughter had hugged me the day they’d made the decision and thanked me for everything… and this was the first moment that I realised I didn’t know how to respond to that. So I just hugged her back. Yesterday, after I left the room to chart a bit, I heard F’s daughter (jokingly, I thought) tell her father and her siblings that they were going to take me with them to the hospice so the trip wouldn’t be so scary. I knew that wasn’t meant for my ears, but it was nice to hear.

Later in the afternoon, F’s patient was in another meeting for her other patient, so I was helping get F onto the transport stretcher so that he could be transferred comfortably to hospice. I gave him a bit of pain medication, helped the family check through the room to make sure nothing was left behind, and then… we were done. But even though his ‘discharge’ from ICU was bittersweet, I felt like I needed to say something to F’s daughter, who I’d by far spent the most time with in the 4 days I’d been fortunate to care for him. But what do you say when the discharge is because the patient is going to pass away peacefully? Normally we say ‘good luck’ but that didn’t seem appropriate at all. So I hugged her, wished them a safe trip, and told them ‘God bless.’ I don’t know if that’s exactly what F’s daughter expected to hear, but she hugged me really tight, got a bit teary, which made me teary, and whispered ‘You’re the best. Thank you so much for everything. We couldn’t have done this without you.’

Is it weird that made my day? I’d clearly made an impact on F and his family, and even though I hadn’t had him for his final days on our unit, his family remembered me, and were comfortable asking me for help. I think the entire experience for me was a good one, and I definitely learned a lot…

But I wish sometimes that I had a handbook called “Things to Say to Families Who Thank You When Their Loved One is Dying In or After Your Care’.

Haha, this post is a bit emo and morbid. But I actually feel really happy about the whole thing. I just wanted to write it down so I remembered it. :)

the search for the perfect green…

I’m not sure why, honestly, but lately I’ve been into green eye shadow. It started probably a few weeks ago when I decided to myself that if/when I got my makeup done by someone else (just for fun, or at beauty events) I would try colours I didn’t normally wear. I own a lot of pinks, a few purples, and a few blues, but no greens. So my first try was with MUFE at Sephora, and then at the NARS counter at the Bay… and this time (shocker) on my own.

I confess, the only reason I did a green eye on my own was because the palette was 5$ and I figured even if I loathed the palette or couldn’t figure out how to use it… 5$ is a lot better than paying upwards of 15$ for a single eye shadow, yes?

Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Kat laughed at me the other day when I vehemently denied liking lipstick. I don’t mind it, but I tend not to buy it… I am more in love with glosses and lipstains. Plus I hate having to ‘touch up’ so I rarely remember to bring a lippie along when I DO wear one. In any case, the last six months has basically been my descent into being even girlier than I already was, LOL. Mostly in that I am starting to buy and wear jewellery. Mostly necklaces, since my ears still seem to hate all things not-gold by being loving and giving me ear infections. :P

I’ve bought all my recent necklaces online, and while I whine to Yumeko that blogs are bad for my wallet (they are) I’ve met lovely girls and snagged some lovely pieces while on them. And it will only continue!! I got my lovely necklaces from Worship at the House of Blues just before I went to go watch the Lion King which was fantastic timing :D

I love how she giftwraps everything! And Canada Post didn’t dent the box this time. :P

My two Beaux necklaces and my Little Bit of Black necklace… I am using the box as a temporary jewellery box as I do not have one. XD; I went YEARS only wearing 2 different pairs of earrings.

<3 I’m so happy I bought both Beaux necklaces, the gold and silver goes with all 3 pairs of earrings I own!! Thank you again to Old Cow, these are lovely!

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I know I still have to post about Yokohama but I am waiting on some pictures from Japan before I post… my camera died halfway through the day so I am missing some things. :)

I ♥ NARS

Today was such a beautiful Saturday, and it is a great weekend to not be at work!! My mom’s old unit had a farewell brunch for her this morning which I went to out of obligation (my mom didn’t want to go alone, and my dad was not about to go) and my own self-interest (two of my really good friends work there still)! The food was kind of eh (better brunches are on Sunday, apparently) but it was fun to see everyone again :)

And then because Kelsey (my nursing one, not the one that went to Japan with me, who, for future reference will be Tokyo-Kelsie) is WAY too nice we ended up chilling out at Market Mall for like 3 hours because she promised a co-worker she’d buy her a LUSH massage bar… but call said co-worker at work to see which scent she’d want. Unfortunately, co-worker did not start until 1515h… and we got to the mall at like noon. I am totally a shop-a-holic but I am at Market Mall ALL THE TIME because it is the closest one to my house, and so is Kelsey because she lives near me, and we’d both just been there a few days ago, so we didn’t have as much stuff to look at…

Luckily the Bay was holding an I ♥ NARS event, which was fun! They had salsa dancers performing, a live DJ, and 2 NARS Makeup artists doing free makeovers at the front of the store. We weren’t going to get our makeup done but we’d already rounded the mall several times and they offered… because I was hovering near the beautiful table full of NARS products *__*

I’ve been into greens lately (trying them out, if not buying) so I asked if we could use the Rated R duo and I LOVE how it turned out. I think my MA was super pleased because she kept telling other people to look at my eyes because she loved how they looked!

 

And you can see a bit of my necklace from Old Cow. I LOVE IT and can’t wait for my Beaux necklaces to get here!

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By the way all I have left to post about from my Japan trip is Yokohama and all the KAT-TUN concerts, and those are forthcoming…