Madison Memorial

In which the author learns to love the hospital

So most of you who know me or my family probably already know this, but I'll be going in for surgery next week, on the 22nd. I know, classes barely started a month ago, and yes, I'm roughly 900 miles from home, but I've been sick for years now, and this should help, finally.

Half of the reason we (my family, my roommates, and I) decided the surgery should be done here is because I'm getting sick enough that it's interfering with school, and a really good portion of the other half of reasons is because of the hospital, Madison Memorial. I've been there about three times already for tests and other appointments, and I'm in love with the staff, the doctors, and even the building itself. Everyone is kind, and almost everyone is LDS. By almost everyone, I mean when I met my doctor, he introduced himself as, "Hi, I'm Dr. so-and-so. I've lived in Rexburg my whole life, went to the college when it was still Ricks, have six kids, and served my mission in the Netherlands". LOVE it!

I'm so grateful to everyone who's been there for me through this; every prayer, every card in the mail, every call, and every facebook message has been felt more than I can describe. My roommates have all been angels, and will be helping with transportation and my post-op nursing. I'll be moving my mattress to the floor for a while, since climbing into the 5+ foot high bed with staples in my tummy might be a smidge difficult, but that just means I'll need to actually make the bed on Mondays when the family comes over for FHE. :P Kidding, I always make my bed! ... cough cough. The one other blessing that makes this all possible: My momma gets to stay the weekend with me. She'll miss the surgery itself, but that's okay. It's the thought that really counts. Bonus, I get home-cooked meals for four days!



I wanted to share this picture with the blogosphere, too. Years ago, one of my Young Woman leaders shared this with me, as something that helped her when her infant needed surgery. It was on the wall of the Presbyterian hospital they were at, and she had to search high and low for a copy. Luckily, she spared me the search, and gave me a little 3" computer printout. I now keep this picture on my bulletin board, right in front of me, where I can see it all the time. It serves as a great comfort and reminder that I'm never alone.




I'll spare you all another food entry...sorta. I did make some rockin' pancakes from scratch, and snapped a picture...for posterity, of course...but that's ok. I'm pretty sure I mentioned my exponentially increasing klutziness in one of my previous posts. Well, I had one particularly bad day this past week. Luckily, none of the damage done was permanent, I didn't trip up or down the stairs, and I have yet to break any of my glass dishware, so it's not too bad. The entire day, though, was filled with events like: stabbing myself in the eye with the mascara brush, managing to crack an egg so that shell fell into the bowl (the only part of the egg to actually crack was a perfect circle the size of a nickel, right on top); I tripped over someone else in Chemistry, accidentally poured half the noodles down the drain when trying to drain my macaroni, knocked over every bottle that sat on my dresser, stubbed my toes, jammed my fingers, and whole myriad of other things, all in a single day. The day after, however, was the complete opposite. Everything I tried went right, from the elusive Cream Tuna, which I had never made correctly until that night, down to the cookies I made and the tests I took. I was feeling so rebellious, thanks to my good-luck high, that I even ventured to play with the six raw eggs in my fridge.



Love the little cuties! The one with whiskers was especially tasty!
In hindsight, I probably should have eaten the menacing looking one first. He's terrifying the egg in front of him, and the egg to his left looks mildly concerned...
...he shall be eaten next.

Week 3. Or is it 4? Dang, can't remember.

Or, Life Continues Onward Quickly

For the sake of consistency, I figured I can start off with more food. Monday, I played with my crock-pot for the first time, and made stew! Also a first-time event, it turned out exactly as I wanted it to!
SEE!! YAY!!! My other meals are made up of a lot of Macaroni and Cheese, Ground Beef and Beans that made special appearances as Frito Mix, a taco, and two chimichangas, more bowls of Ramen, some rice, some pasta, and repeat. Oh well, At least I'm remembering to eat most of the time.

Now, I miss my family, of course, but other than the standard things I miss from home, I miss my books the most. My books were always my pretend worlds that I escaped to whenever mine lost it's spark, and they always made me happy. Unfortunately, I left home in the middle of at least four different series, and the handful I brought can't cut it! So, I miss my family, and I miss my dog, and I miss my friends, but I also miss Shane, Michael, Eve, Claire, Jace, Clary, Simon, the crazy killer Unicorn group, including Astrid, the boys, and Astrid's cousin Phil, I miss all my Dessen boys, like Owen, Dexter, Wes, and, Eli, and I miss every resident of Tortall that lived within a good 600 year span, including but not limited to, George, Rosto the Piper, Allana, Aly, Crow-man, Kel and Bekka, and I miss Fire and Brigan. I think I got everyone...my apologies if I forgot someone. There's so many!

Let's see, what else is going on...well, I had a slew of doctors appointments in the past two weeks, and the most recent one left me sick for two full days. As such, I was relegated to one of my least favorite diet plans.

Yeah, that's Mountain Dew. Proof I'm my father's daughter, right? Sprite just makes me feel more gross. Dew settles my stomach. Oh well, I know I'm weird. We can move on now.

So most of you know that here at Brigham Young University - Idaho, we have a set of guidelines called the Honor Code. It is basically our rules, but some of the things are more for our personal growth than for our safety or for the maintenance of common sense. As many Latter-Day Saints have decided to eliminate caffeine from their diets, the school campus does not sell caffeinated sodas at all. Sadly, this includes Dew. This led to my roommate and I running down to the corner store to buy some of the awesomeness. And what did I see as soon as I picked up the bottle?



You read that right. RIGHT there on the bottle of Mountain Dew, it says "Honor the Code". I'm pretty sure this has something to do with the video game it was advertising, but I was still hit by the irony, and almost put the bottle back down. Then when I went to buy it, the cashier noticed the SAME phrase, and also commented on the irony. Sigh.

College otherwise is going pretty well. I've been having some fun, and made some new friends. Last Saturday I went to a bonfire with my FHE group, and it went something like:

30 seconds later:

And for the rest of the night:


I also made a new friend today. Our meeting went something like:

'Running slightly late for class, Katie quickly opens her locker and slides out her violin, almost hitting a young man passing by.
"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry!" Katie says, realizing in hindsight that she should have made sure no one was there before turning her instrument into a weapon.
"No, it's fine really. I didn't want to run into your instrument, I know they get expensive. Are you alright?" The young man says with a smile.
"Ha, yeah, thanks. I really need to be more careful."
"My name's Brad, by the way." Brad said, sticking out his hand for Katie to shake. Katie awkwardly shifts her violin to her other hand so she can shake his hand and introduce herself, meanwhile dropping her music folder, which Brad hastily reaches down to pick up.
"Sorry, I should have offered my other hand." Brad says with a laugh
"Yeah, we're really good at this game."
"Well, have a good class." Brad finished, then walked off smiling.'

Ok, so maybe we're not new best friends, but I still love meeting people here. My favorite people I've met completely by accident, like by accidentally running into them, or tripping over their chair in Chemistry. Now that I think about it, my klutziness has multiplied at least three-fold since I got to this campus. Oh well.

Thanks for taking time to enjoy the pretty pictures and odd stories of my week.
I wish you all well!

Katie Helen

Dorm Life

Wherein this author learns to compromise and improvise.
Also known as: The Adventures of Cooking in College - Adventure 2

My list of meals is small and repetitive, but happily, edible. (For the most part.)
My last post on the soup was my first experience cooking in a new dorm. Since then, I've made Mac n' Cheese, a Grilled Cheese Sandwich, lots of fried eggs, a bowl of ramen, and Pigs in a Blanket (hot dogs in a crescent roll). Most of these continued on to take the place of many other meals, as this author is a happy left-over addict. Unfortunately, as the author is still in a new-to-her kitchen, things don't always work like she would expect them to. For example, there is no 'middle rack' in the oven. When making my piggies, they started on the upper-middle rack, but started browning on top while still raw on bottom. So I switched them to the lower-middle rack. I thought they were so perfect when I pulled them out of the oven...only to discover the bottoms of the rolls burned to a lovely charcoal color.
This is where improvise comes in. During their first meal-time appearance, I ate them with left-over ketchup packets from a recent trip to KFC. It was ok, but I could still taste the burnt roll. On their first reappearance as left overs, I mixed a little Cream of Chicken soup with a tiny bit of water and pepper, and poured it over the hotdog rolls like gravy. Sounds weird? Well, yeah, but it tasted so good, so I really didn't care.

My first Sunday dinner at College. Yum!

Dorms, while inexpensive, are also inexpensively made; you get what you pay for. I payed for single-layer cinderblock walls. I did not anticipate being able to hear the girl-next-door's phone vibrate on her desk while I sat at mine studying. I've heard quite a few interesting conversations through these walls. On the plus side, one dorm was playing church music today, and the entire block was able to enjoy it. Now I, who have always been a self-considered night owl, have been trying to go to sleep at a decent hour. The same cannot be said for some of the other girls in my building. My compromise? Ask them to keep the noise down after quiet time. Still hear them? Yep. So I've learned to sleep with my iPod headphones in. Uncomfortable at times, but I'd rather fall asleep to my music, as opposed to phone calls about how much one of my neighbors misses [insert boys' name here]. My roommates and I are also learning to compromise with our time. Mostly it involves dancing around each other in the kitchen, and checking before hogging the bathroom for half an hour, but it's all good.

Obviously, by the fact that I am sitting here typing this, it can be understood that I survived my first week of college :)

I've learned to fight with the kitchen, not against it. I've learned that my next shopping trip includes fun items like ketchup, a yellow highlighter, some form of fresh edible plants, and a raid of DI's kitchen supplies. Sounds fun to me!
Love you all!
Katie Helen

The Adventures of Cooking at College: Day 1

Wherein this author learns that 3000 feet makes a difference.

I made my first meal in my dorm today. I was planning on Ramen, but when my roommate requested Mom's Potato Cheese Soup, I figured I might as well make the week's grocery trip today. Turns out, my total for making a humongous stock pot of soup came out to only $5.26, and I can get at least three more meals out of it! So, soup I made. Unfortunately, even with a warning, I didn't believe the altitude would make that much of a difference...until it took over half an hour to boil the potatoes. Of course, in my haste, the chunks were cut too big and I should have let them boil more. The result? A thin, VERY chunky, but tasty, Potato Cheese Soup.

It could have been worse. At least I didn't scorch it this time.

I'd love to take pictures of my dorm and show you all my lovely new living arrangements, but alas, my phone cannot take a good enough picture, and I have neither cable nor memory card port to transfer photos from my camera. I'll simply say that I love my roommates, getting in and out of bed is treacherous, and I don't really have enough room to sit up in bed...but that's all :)

I miss my family already, but I'm happy. I start classes on Friday.