I have something that I love long-long...

I was randomly contemplating re-organizing my makeup again when I heard the doorbell ring today. I do order a LOT of stuff online, so this kind of event is not out of the ordinary, but the only place I have recently ordered from is Imomoko, and since that package did not have tracking, I didn't think that'd be the reason for the mailman ringing the bell (besides, since all I ordered was eyeliner, I am 90% it would have just been left in the mailbox). Assuming it was for my sister, I opened the door (the mailman had already left) and was surprised to find a huge white box from UPS addressed to ME.

And no, I am not that bad a shopper that I forget how much I buy online. You get paranoid when it takes 3-6 weeks for Canada Post to deliver international packages when you're like me, and therefore track things so you know exactly where packages are. ANYWAY, confused but excited, I ran up to my room to open the box with my keys (for some reason, even though I end up taking like at least one pair of hospital scissors home a week, I can never find them when I need to open things), and to my delight, it was my Dior Diva gift!

Shiny Pretty Things

Very very VERY belated post about ... well make-up. First a mail-swap, and then my somewhat-belated haul from Shoppers Drug Mart (in which I paid 66$ for... well you'll see).

This blog probably wouldn't exist without Yumeko. After I came back from Tokyo, she poked and prodded me about posting not just on LJ, but also on Blogger so she could comment. I thought it would work out well, as many of my LJ friends were not into makeup, and many of the lovely girls I'd met on various makeup blogs were all on Blogger. In any case, I still stalk Yumeko (frequently) and we would often moan together about brands that weren't available in our respective countries, so we decided to do a swap.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Mail makes me nervous so after my first successful swap on MUA, I decided I was only swapping with people I talked to.

This girl sent me WAY TOO MUCH STUFF:

Living In A Winter Wonderland...

So while I have grown up in Calgary, and I love it here, I am still surprised at how early it snows EVERY YEAR. Kelsie and I joked to Tomo in Japan that on average, it usually snows at least once a month in Canada. Luckily we missed out on the August/September snow (we just had hail… which is flying chunks of ice).

I was not prepared for this two days in a row:

Seriously Calgary. I actually did go out the first day which was terrifying as none of the streets had been plowed yet, and as we got about double the amount of snow today, I vetoed myself out of leaving my house, other than to shovel the driveway. Because winter driving is scary whether I’m on the road or not. I think the news said there was at least 200 collisions yesterday morning due to the slipperiness.

It’s supposed to Chinook on Friday though, so just watch, all this snow will melt and it will be super slushy. Ah well.

At least it’s pretty.

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. :)