Jen Russum

Winter Cleaning

Winter Cleaning

A while back, I did some "winter cleaning" around the apartment. It really was only about a month ago. I could not wait for my lovely month-long Christmas break to finally clean out some spaces in our home that never really got fully moved into - if you know what I mean. Micah was a gem and sorted out our guest room (aka room with a bed in it that houses every single item that doesn't fit anywhere else in our apartment) in the months after we moved in. He did a great job making the room sleep-able for guests, but it never fully got organized the way I would like it. So I spent my weeks after Christmas organizing the guest room and some of our closets and trying to get rid of stuff (Did you know I hate "stuff"? I am such a minimalist. Micah is not. We are working through it...) The guest room is nowhere near where I want it to be. It is still so crammed full of.... "stuff." But at least now it's somewhat organized, and I tried to make it as cute and homey as possible. Here are some pics. Feel free to come visit. The guest room is all yours! And I've heard Arizona springs are lovely!  This is how it began... talk about stress central... but Micah actually sorted through most of this. Thanks Hubs!  Micah actually agreed to get rid of all these old dress shirts. What a feat!  Closet in progress.... (I forgot to get a really good "before" pic, but I assure you, it was awful!) Closet almost finished...  Bookshelf in progress... stuff, stuff, everywhere! Ah!  Bookshelf all finished, which means alphabetized! English nerd for life...  Our little desk...  Another closet... if you think this looks cluttered, you should have seen it before. But I also forgot to take a good "before pic" of this one. Again, it was awful. The bed...waiting for visitors! ... Read more

You get a lot of homework done in an ER waiting room….

You get a lot of homework done in an ER waiting room….

So I didn't exactly have the typical Wednesday evening last week. Usually on Wednesdays I get out of class at 3:15, go home for a quick run and a shower, scrounge up a quickie dinner and head to Missional Community with Micah at 6:30pm. This Wednesday, I got out of class and spent the next eight hours reading The Faerie Queene in medical waiting rooms (by the way...FQ is NOT a book you will find on my Good Read page or my Amazon recommendations....just FYI). So after class, I headed to the ASU walk-in clinic to try to get some answers about my breathing inadequacies. After checking in and waiting for a good hour or so, I finally got a room. Twenty minutes later, I even got a doctor! He was super nice and gave me a breathing treatment - the type an asthma nerd would take (sorry if you have asthma, we all know inhalers are a little nerdy - but I also know they save lives - and I now OWN a $42.00 inhaler - so I'm making fun of you AND ME in a nice way!). The breathing treatment lasted 15 minutes and seemed kinda like smoking a hookah (which I have never done before but have seen pictures of). I then got a chest x-ray and took another breathing test, but the breathing treatment didn't seem to be helping much. I left the doctor's office with an inhaler and an appointment to meet with a internal medicine doctor next week. This whole process took a little over 2.5 hours, no biggie. Here are some pics of the adventure. I'm not too concerned about HIPPA for myself clearly... I took all these pics without a flash in flourescent lighting, so I apologize for their horrible qualtiy. I didn't want the nurses to see me taking pics, because I was pretty sure they would find me strange. "Oh, you can't breathe...and you are worried about your blog right now???" Since it was already after 6pm when I got out of the clinic I decided to head straight to Missional Community. However, my doctor called me back as I was walking to my car and changed up plans on me. He looked at my x-rays again with another doc after I left and decided I should go the ER for catscan just in case my breathing probs were being caused by blood clots in my lungs. Since my mom has a blood clotting disease, you bet your bottom dollar that Micah and I were sitting in the ER by 7pm....and we were still sitting there at 10pm. Micah got to leave and get Wendy's, but they told me I couldn't eat in case I had to have surgery... it was so fun watching Micah eat my chicken nuggets with the thought of surgery dancing in my head. I went into triage and they took another x-ray (I'm sure radiation twice in one day is super good for you...) and took a blood test (yuck), but they sent me back out to the waiting room to wait and wait and wait some more... Let's just say I got more homework done on a weeknight than ever before. I know Micah was tired and bored...but he stayed with me the whole time and only complained like twice... ***Sidenote: I don't really support lying, but if you ever go the ER don't say your pain level is zero... they push you to the bottom of the list and let everybody else get admitted before you. Say something like "I don't have any accute pain, but the general discomfort from not being able to expand my lungs all the way would probably put me at a two at least" (Clearly, I learned this the hard way...) Finally, I got a room and a doc who told me I didn't need a catscan because my blood test showed no sign of blood clots. Instead they did an EKG on my heart, told me I was safe to wait for my internal med appointment next week and sent me home with a rec for a cardiologist as well. It was a looong night with little results, but at least I know I don't have blood clots and I got a ton of reading done...hooorah! Hospital bed photo shoot... Now I am going to go take a puff from my inhaler and try to go for a four mile run... ... Read more

Researchin’

First of all, I love mommy bloggers. They are so fascinating, entertaining, and inspiring. The first obstacle of my reserach has been to narrow down how many mommy blogs I am going to follow consistently, because there are soooo many out there and only so many hours in day (many of which must be devoted to other things like finding nourishment, working off too much nourishment, writing papers for OTHER classes, doing the laundry, and things of that nature). So I have officially narrowed down my list of blogs to follow. Okay, I shouldn't say officially, because chances are I will stumble across some new webpage that I just LOVE in the next few days. However, I just finished writing a questionare that I plan to send to the moms I am following most closely. I hope I get lots of helpful responses, even though I know they are all busy and have a ton of other things to do. But here is the other thing...part of my research involves being involved in the mommy blog community as much as I can, even though I'm not officially a mom (yet...hope to be someday). So my own blog is part of my research. The great thing is that my blog readership has at least TRIPLED since I started this research project, but the bad thing is that most of my readers don't officially "follow" my blog (there is a button to "follow" me on the righhand column of the blog) or subscribe (which I just added). Although I am blessed, and honestly a little surprised, that so many people have been reading my blog, it would help me immensely if you would connect by officially following me (and you don't even need to have your own blog to do it, you just need an e-mail address and I know you have one of those!). This will help me with my research by letting me know who is reading my own blog and by giving me more connections and resources in the mommy blogging community. And you don't have to be a mom. I have stumbled across many good mom blogs from friends who are not moms. I am also interested in women who are just involved in the blogging community in general or who use their blog as an online business (do you sew? craft? make jewelry? cook? do photography? simply advertise on your site?)... basically I want to hear from any woman who uses blogging as a narrative space to write about life, support a business, build community, etc. Studying mommy bloggers may lead to lots of other online research. So please follow me so I can connect with you and contact you if necessary. *And if you have any ideas or comments on blogging, why you do it, or what the blogging community means to you, please share your thoughts here, as well as a link to your own blog. I would love to check it out! ... Read more