Baby Goats, Cleaning Closets, CNA.

Here's to a random blog post about the last month of my life!

First off, these are pictures from our day in Seattle the weekend after Valentines Day.

I fed baby goats in Oregon with Dustin. I know I shared pictures earlier, but I have more. They were seriously the cutest little creatures ever!

As soon as I got home from Oregon, I started my CNA program (Certified Nursing Assistant). Really though. I got home at like 11:15 in the morning and was in class by noon. The first two weeks was all lecture. Every day for 6.5 hours we'd meet at BTC and learn about exciting things like infectious diseases and not-so-exciting things like how to clean dentures. Awesome. The first two weeks were busy, but I did really well with the theory portion so that was exciting.

The second two weeks were spent in the clinical phase of the class. Every day from 2:00 to 10:30 at night, we'd go to Mt. Baker Care Center and work with the residents. We were assigned a partner and 4 patients that we would take care of for the day. This was tiring. Holy smokes. Basically the process was checking to make sure the patients were "clean and dry," changing if necessary, then getting them ready for dinner. We'd help feed them dinner if they needed it, give bed baths or showers, clean them up a few more times, and get them ready for bed. Some of the patients were really great to talk to, and some not so much. But for the most part, it was an encouraging experience. I grabbed an application and I'll, hopefully, be working there soon. It always felt good when a patient would remember me or be thankful for the work I was putting in. Others would just mutter profanities at me, claw at me, try to slap me... You know.

This is a picture of my clinical group at our celebration slash victory dinner. :)

It was probably entertaining for Dustin and my Mom, because I usually called them during my break. My part of the conversation was either "I just hate this place. It's horrible. I just had to do ______ and it was awful, and in the meanwhile I got yelled at by this person. It's terrible and I want to cry." or it was more like this: "I really love being here. I was helping out with this lady and it was super encouraging to talk to her. I love being able to help and take care of these people, I know this is what I was made for!"

Anyways. Crazy month, glad it's over, but it was nice.