The real final exam

For those who don’t know, last Thursday I took the most difficult exam of my life, the NCLEX. The National Council Licensure Examination is set up to assess one’s knowledge of nursing and, when passed, earns the right to practice in your state.

Most of my classmates had already taken the test. I straggled behind due to my decision to postpone payment, but because I was President of my class, I began telling everyone that I was fulfilling my role as a true politician by sending the troops into the battlefield ahead of me while I safely brought up the rear.

It wouldn’t matter when I took the NCLEX because none of us had the same test; not that I’d know because the first rule of NCLEX is that you don’t talk about what is on the NCLEX. That is no joke. They make you sign a form and everything.

The test can range anywhere from 75 to 265 questions and it automatically cuts off when it knows you have passed or failed.

The night before, I reviewed a few systems that I knew were my areas of weakness. For instance, I took a quick peek at maternity and pediatrics. Don’t get me wrong, I love pregnant women and kids, but I really don’t want to specialize in these areas

I’ll neither confirm nor deny whether or not I had questions about pregnancy and children on the NCLEX, but I will say that I am extremely happy I took the time to look over these subjects.

I drove myself which may or may not have been a good idea. I had the radar detector hooked up so I could speed on my way to St. Petersburg.

Having the radar only lets you know you’re about to get a ticket. By the time you get zapped, the police officer has already tagged you as a speeder. I’m not sure why I find it comforting to have in the car.

I got to the Professional Plaza early and signed in. They fingerprinted me, scanned both hands several times, and took my photo. I was also monitored by video while taking the test in case I looked like I was cheating in any way.

The NCLEX is serious business.

While I clicked my way through each question, I could feel both my blood pressure and pulse increasing. My palms began to sweat and I felt like I was going to be sick.

At one point, I was certain that I was answering every question wrong. When the computer stopped at question number 75, I was positive I failed.

I cried to my sister and my friend, Tonya, then I called my mom, my husband and, finally, my friend, Candy; talk about emotional support therapy! They all assured me I passed, but I couldn’t believe it until I saw it the next morning on the Department of Health website.

I feel blessed and fortunate to have succeeded.

After talking with some seasoned nurses, I’m also lucky to have done this in the computer age when we have rapid results. Years ago, these exams went on for days and outcomes were mailed months later!

I know I’ve worked hard for this, but I truly could not have done it on my own. My husband, Chris, has been my rock through it all and my family and friends are the absolute greatest. To all of them: I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Busy making things happen

Life has been a little nutty around the Hutchins household lately. We’ve been caught up in a whirlwind of activity that has been pinned in a vice grip of stress with moments of pure elation scattered throughout.

To begin with, my new job has produced its first paycheck which catapulted me to cloud nine. For someone who has been out of work for two years and focused on school, the opportunity to punch in and out on a time clock feels like a special privilege.

As soon as my pay hit the bank account, I called my husband, Chris, to tell him the news that I was now officially contributing to our household income. He said, “That’s awesome, honey. I’m going to pay the mortgage.”

It was nice to see those funds in the account for the brief amount of time they were there.

The pressures associated with my job stem from the fact that I have only very recently taken the exam that will either grant or deny me a license to become a board-certified Registered Nurse. As I sit here typing, I do not have the official results so I’ll save any further elaboration on this topic for another day.

I will say that trying to study for this exam has been a steady drain on my mental health and well-being, as well as the contentment of my family. I mean, how could a person realistically study for something that could have anything included in it that you learned over the course of two years from the content of nine hefty text books? It is mind-numbing.

Next, we had a primary election.

I get excited about these things and I try to get the kids involved, but that is a challenge to say the least. I dragged them both down to the Masonic Lodge anyway and showed them the difference in the ballots. The lack of interest from my son was almost palpable.

Not letting those two dampen my spirits, I happily bubbled in my choices and fed my ballot to the machine. When the assistant asked if we wanted stickers, the children were suddenly interested again and we all left feeling like we did something important.

Chris and our son both had birthdays this week too. Chris is now 40 and our boy just turned 12 years old, his last year before he becomes an official teenager. Both of these milestones were obviously emotional, but for different reasons.

Finally, school begins next week and I was able to escort the children on tours of their new schools.

Middle school will be a change for my son because he gets to have several different teachers. I can only hope they are ready for him. Unfortunately, he can’t play basketball on the school’s team until next year. He’ll be over 6 foot tall by then. We need to get this kid on track to support us one day.

My daughter is out of kindergarten and on to elementary school. She is incredibly excited about the transition and wanted to hang out in her new classroom as long as I’d let her.

She walked over to the magnet tablet and spelled “mom” for me which melted my heart. This was so much better than her last adventure in spelling.  

That’s what a former coworker, Jim, would call the “scuttlebutt” of my life lately. Now that everyone’s caught up, I think I’ll try to catch up on some sleep.

Love to be social without the drama

I love Facebook. It is social media’s answer to the telephone, letter writing, and photography in a modern, instantly updated, drama-filled, interactive-screened shell.

I currently have 401 friends, but don’t jump to any conclusions because I don’t actually have this many friends in real life.

Sure, I’m personable, fairly easy to get along with, and extremely huggable when I allow people to touch me, but 401 is a big number and I am only one person with two kids, a husband, and not a lot of spare time these days.

In reality, most of these 401 “friends” are people who are alumni of either Avon Park or Palm Bay High School. It is pretty cool to keep track of how they have done over the years. I’ve never had any mortal enemies, so it isn’t like I am spying on anyone to see if they turned out bad.

Several of these school friends are people I actually run into fairly often. Thankfully, Facebook has taken away that awkward moment when you see someone at the grocery store and panic because your mind has failed in its search through dusty memory files to dig up that person’s name who knows yours, but for some reason, you can’t seem to recall theirs! I now know that person and where their daughter goes to dance class.

There are also family members on my friend list and Facebook makes it easy to hear how their lives are going and see their families growing daily instead of just on the holidays or sad occasions that draw us together.

There are also my friends who are former coworkers. Some of these are people I lost contact with and Facebook helped me find them again, years later, in different careers and on new, exciting paths in their lives.

Then there is another group I am friends with on Facebook with their own category: people I’ve never met. These are folks I’m pretty sure are safe to know in the virtual world and I suppose I wouldn’t mind meeting in person, but I’ve just never had the opportunity.

They are friends of friends who like the same things I like and think I said something funny to another friend or I thought they were funny. In short, we’re all pretty sarcastic and were drawn to each other based on this common trait.

On the down side, as I previously stated, Facebook can be full of drama. I love to debate and have discussion, but I don’t put people down and I don’t cuss on my page. Civilized disagreements should not be some kind of elusive dream.

Still, I was recently defriended twice because of my beliefs. Once was because I told someone I agreed with on a political viewpoint to stop calling another friend names who had the opposite belief. Yes, you read that correctly.

Another time, a friend defriended me because I was supporting a candidate from the other party instead of my own. Seriously.

For future reference, I love Facebook and I love debate for what they are, but I don’t love a political party enough to cuddle up with it at night and call it my partner forever and always. I married that person. His name is Chris. If anyone wants to see those papers, I keep them in a file for quick access.

If Facebook disappeared tomorrow, believe me, I’d be okay. I’ve really got all I need right here.

Precious memories come with a price

This past week, a very important milestone was reached in the life of our 6-year old daughter: She lost her first tooth. I was beginning to worry that she’d never let this one go because it had been wiggling for about 5 weeks.

I remember when I was growing up and all the adults would offer their assistance when you told them about an unstable incisor. For some reason, they thought the best course of action was to shove a washcloth in your mouth and grab ahold of the slippery surface so they could pull it free.

What was the purpose of this expedited detachment? I’m still not sure.

I think it was my dad who told me that, when he was a kid, his dad did the “doorknob tied to a length of string that was tied to the tooth” setup which quickly yanked the offending unstable object out of the dental lineup forever. I’m pretty certain this was done solely to give children nightmares.

If you ask any credible dentist, I’m sure they’ll tell you to never do this. I’m just glad it was never done to me.

My best lost tooth happened thanks to a big wad of grape bubble gum. I had about 5 pieces in my mouth that I was happily chomping on when, all of a sudden, I crunched down on my tooth. The gum had pulled it free in a very painless manner, but the feeling of chewing my own tooth was a little unsettling.

With my children, I never felt the need to force their teeth free, but opted instead to let them fall out in their own time.

This brings me to the topic of the Tooth Fairy.

Even though I’m philosophically opposed to the whole idea of the Tooth Fairy, I’d be the biggest jerk in the world if I took that away from my daughter after letting my son have some fun with it.

The big question is, how much does this dental sprite think a tooth is worth, you know, with inflation and all?

I asked my daughter, “What do you think the Tooth Fairy is going to leave you tonight?”

Let me just fill in a little gap here and say that her tooth fell out at children’s church. The previous week during children’s church, she wrote “Boob” on the dry erase board. It’s debatable whether or not she’s been exceptionally good overall.

She thought for a moment and said, “Hmmm, I don’t know. Ninety dollars?”

“WHAT?” I was astounded. That is an expensive lower central incisor (number 25 for all you dental folks).  Assuming it weighs about one gram, her tooth was worth roughly twice its weight in gold, which is, at this moment, selling at $51.08 per gram.

I explained to her that a first tooth was special, but that was a lot of money. She reduced her estimate to forty followed by thirty dollars, but I was still not encouraging about her prospects.

I told her to think a lot less and she said, “How about eleven dollars?”

I asked how she arrived at that number and she responded, “Well, it’s more than ten!”

After all that manipulation, we slipped five bucks under her pillow. I know that is still way too much for a tooth, but her excitement over finding that money was worth every dollar.

One thing is for certain, we are discovering that daughters are way more expensive than sons.

Do as I say, not as I do

“Ah ha! You don’t have your blinker on!” This accusation was hurled at me from the lips of my son. After looking both ways, I pulled my vehicle directly through the intersection without turning.

“I didn’t need a blinker seeing as how I was going forward,” I stated very matter-of-factly.

“Oh. Then I guess you weren’t being a hypocrite like I thought,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Well, you always get onto other drivers for not using their blinkers and I thought I caught you not using yours.”

I was taken aback for two reasons. The first was because he correctly used the word “hypocrite” in a sentence when I figured his 11-year old brain was too consumed with girls and video games to care much for words longer than five letters.

The second reason was that, while I was growing up, I often thought my own parents acted hypocritically. I never actually told them this for fear of retribution, but now that I know one of my own offspring is conscious of this behavior in me, it certainly stings my pride quite a bit.

“I tell you what, any time you catch me being a hypocrite and correctly call me out on it, I’ll give you five bucks. How about that?”

I thought this was a mighty bold proposal from someone who not only just began her first week at a brand new job, but also has yet to receive her first paycheck or pass the boards that will validate this career so she can continue working.

He was more excited about this than I wanted him to be and I quickly began trying to think of all the things I complain about that I am also guilty of doing.

Probably my worst violation with him is when I lecture about homework and studying. I was a horrible student growing up and I’m not a whole lot better now. If I wanted to, I could review something at the last minute and ace a test which turned me into the worst procrastinator.

My son scored very well on the 5^th grade FCAT and received a level 5 in mathematics which is the best he could have done in that category. He revealed to me the other day that it really wasn’t too difficult; he didn’t try as hard as he should have; and he doesn’t normally put much effort into schoolwork overall.

I cringed. The child is me made over. If he starts drawing horses down the side of his classwork, I’m going to send him to military school for his own good.

Another thing I do is neglect my own health. I freely offer advice to others about getting out and walking or hitting the gym to lose some extra pounds while I’ve had a gym membership for several months and I have not even smelled the inside of the place since February.

In addition to bad exercise habits, my diet leaves a lot to be desired. This is all stuff I know in my mind, but my actions do not reflect my thinking.

These few items are merely the tip of the iceberg of my paradoxical life.

Hopefully, my son doesn’t start seriously playing the detective into my two-faced existence. I honestly don’t believe I can afford it. At least with that admission, I’m not being at all hypocritical. In fact, I think he should pay me five bucks.

Florida is more than a theme park

With my upcoming fulltime employment rapidly approaching, my husband, Chris, and I decided to take our children on a fun-filled trip to “Islands of Adventure.”

Our intention was to have a little excitement. What we received was a constant supply of complaining from the kids along with a dose of harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun before the afternoon thunderstorms unleashed bolts of lightning and torrential rain upon us.

Like most moms, I had a plan of action the night before we left: wake up at 5 in the morning and leave the house by 6 to arrive at 8 when the gates open. We would then make our way straight to “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter” and ride the “Forbidden Journey.” Our daughter was exactly tall enough to ride it.

Next, we’d split up to ride a couple of coasters and then meet at the “Butter Beer” stand to enjoy a refreshing treat before tackling the rest of the day which was less tightly managed.

Things didn’t go exactly as planned, mostly due to the fact that we did not leave until 6:30 which offset our day accordingly.

In addition to this, apparently everyone else had the exact same plan as I did which means we spent a good deal of time in line for the first ride, but it was worth it to see my daughter scared out of her mind.

I’m not sure why, as a parent, I want to see my children frightened. I remember when our son was four and we were at Universal Studios where they had the “Jaws” ride. He was oblivious about the shark element, perhaps because we misleadingly asked, “Want to go on a boat ride?”

We couldn’t stop laughing when he tried to climb out of the boat the first time “Jaws” attacked.

When we took our sweetheart on “Jurassic Park,” she was happy to see the dinosaurs. She knew they were fake, but when the ride seemed to veer off course, Chris and I acted worried and she took the bait. From that point until the T-rex made its appearance, she was completely horrified. It was priceless.

During the rain, while huddled under some shelter, I was chatting with a family from Japan who are visiting for a couple of weeks.

“Are you going to check out any beaches?” I asked.

“No,” said the mom, “Just the theme parks.”

I was a little shocked. I’ve lived most all of my life here in Florida and my parents took me to all the major theme parks. I’ve never lacked for that type of entertainment, but when I think about the trips to Siesta Key, Anna Maria Island, and Cocoa Beach, I bet I would have traded a few of those park days for beach days.

Two solid weeks at theme parks would be enough to drive anyone insane. You can only take so much of the outdated animatronics, over-the-top adventure rides, and heart-stopping thrill rides.

Even if you can’t get enough of that, the constant queue lines and whining should put an early end to any extended park stay.

The rain stopped and, though I wanted to lecture her about St. Augustine and the Everglades and the beautiful crystal clear springs, I decided to let her be.

Maybe I need to come up with a new slogan for our state. “Florida: Find Lots Of Real, Interesting, Dynamic Activities!” Well, something like that.

Improper use of a household appliance

Many parents will understand when I say that one of my only times of peace at home is when I’m in the bathroom, even if I am often disturbed while I am “incapacitated.”

I’m not sure what the children expect me to be able to do or what level of intervention they imagine I can perform while I am locked in our facilities. Before I go, I even make an announcement to the entire household that I will be engaged in this activity so that I might not be bothered for a while.

The other morning was no different. My son was still asleep, but my daughter was awake and engaged in watching "Strawberry Shortcake." I told her where I was going and she asked if she could have the bacon on the counter. I said that was fine.

I assumed our business was done and I could begin my own. I was wrong.

While I was relishing the quite time and reading my book, I suddenly caught an incredibly strong bacon odor as if the house had been dipped into some strange, new porcine cologne.

Knowing something was very wrong, I rushed into the living room to find my angel innocently sitting in the living room.

“What’s that smell?” I asked. “Nothing,” she said as if there wasn’t a smoky cloud of rancid bacon between us.

I ran into the kitchen and saw the microwave with a cook time of 1 minute 39 seconds remaining. I opened the door to find it empty, but the odor of overcooked bacon almost knocked me to the floor.

“Where is the bacon?” I shouted, knowing that whatever came out of this microwave was on fire. “I don’t know,” she responded meekly.

“Listen, you need to tell Mommy what you did with it, honey. I need to know, okay?”

I grabbed the lid off the garbage and saw the evidence. The blob of burnt pork product had melted a hole through the plastic of the garbage bag and was still smoldering. Of course she threw it in the garbage. What else was she going to do with it?

After an education session on what little girls are not supposed to do in the kitchen without help and thanking God that she wasn’t hurt, I aired out the kitchen and checked out the poor microwave.

This compact unit has seen its fair share of overdone food. We’ve had it about 10 years and, the funny thing is, it’s on loan from my husband’s Aunt Ann Marie. I wonder if she’ll ever want it back.

Before this one, we had an Amana Radarange that was given to us by my mother. That sucker was huge! It must have weighed about 50 pounds and, for a while, we believed it had a brick inside of it.

Come to think of it, we’ve spent most of our adult lives living on the microwave generosity of others.

When I told my mom about the bacon burning, she reminded me about the time I tried to microwave food in a metal pan and the “fireworks” that incident caused, but I was a teenager, not six years old!

I told her that my sister and I exploded a palmetto bug in that same microwave. That was a stink I’ll never forget.

In all fairness, I really do have some bad microwave karma coming to me. I guess I should consider myself to have been quite fortunate so far.