Beware! The Flesh-Eating Zombies Are Coming To Get You

I was up entirely too early for a Sunday morning, but I had to come relieve Mom from her graveyard shift at Mimi's, where we're all taking turns sitting with her while she continues to recovery; hopefully, the company keeps her spirits higher than if she were here all alone. I really feel as if she can spend the coming days in the week alone. Even though she's using a walker, she really doesn't seem to need it, only utilizing it because she's been told that she has to do so.

I spent most of the first hour that I was here reviewing Blackboard for everything that I have to do in the coming week: there's the sociology paper on the history of pornography and an analysis of the arguments that repeated exposure leads to desensitized empathy towards sex and possible intimate partner violence in relationships. It's due a week from Tuesday, and I feel that it's actually coming along very well. I also have the bonus assignment to compile the information related to attending the Sigma Theta Tau meeting last week to submit to Dr. Shelton for a few additional percentage points, the paper that I have to write on my definition of nursing (more to be revealed on this soon), a paper on the family dynamics of addiction a.k.a. "The Lost Child and the Chief Enabler: Addiction as a Family Disease," and a paper for my Technical Composition class, which I'm pretty sure I'll be writing on health promotion in nursing students. Because there are so many preventative and promotional applications that I'm attempting to make in my life: quit smoking, eat breakfast, floss, 30 minutes of exercise every day, etc., I'm doing some research to substantiate the benefits of doing so.

The idea goes along with my belief that no one is going to pay any attention to a nurse whose patient-collaborative treatment plan cites a long list of lifestyle alterations that an individual should make when the nurse is clearly well within the BMI chart's rating of "overweight" or "obese," smoking a pack or more a day, and not incorporating the American Heart Association's suggested guidelines for proper nutritional options. Furthermore, after Friday's Pathophysiology lecture on Pulmonary Disorders and the actual physiological changes that come along with daily tobacco use, I don't want to be a statistic. I've tried to quit one hundred times in the past, but now is the time to really do what I can to make it work. There has been some talk amongst my fellow SNA-ers that we also consider options for a yearlong health promotion as our umbrella community service activity and perform basic alterations in our own lives to map out as inspiration for anyone looking to us as role models. All of this, of course, goes along with my slowly developing (likely ever-evolving) definition of nursing, further inspiration for my research.

Do one in five relationships really begin online these days? Match.com seems to think that's the case. At least, their commercials suggest that much. I don't know if that's really true, but if it is, then maybe it's a statistic I wouldn't necessarily mind adding onto. More on this later as well.

It doesn't really look like Halloween outside. There are no kids in costumes running all over way too early. I hear no haunted music echoing from the interiors of any spot around here. Well, it is not yet eleven in the morning, so maybe there's much more to come later today. We'll see.