Internships Teach You Things! (About Babies)

At my internship I am currently working on the Lifetime show One Born Every Minute.

What does this mean? This means that my Mondays and Fridays are all about babies and labor and delivery nurses...

What does this mean for this blog? This means a blog about what I've learned from working on One Born! Lucky you! It's all about the babies today!

The biggest thing I've taken from this show is that watching labor and delivery nurses for hours and hours is not good for my health. You see... our show likes to fill spaces with "nurse moments" these are cute funny little moments of the silly things the nurses of L&D say all the time... Yeah, they don't say funny stuff all the time. In fact, they do not say funny things enough. 

I have spent too many days just watching hours and hours and hours and hours of nurse footage just waiting for something good to happen. And see, they filmed 24 hours a day for weeks at a time sometimes, so there's a lot of footage and it's not even like you can just fast forward until something good happens, cause there might be something in the middle of a conversation, or some nurse might just make an amusing face or be caught on camera picking her nose.

Needless to say, this is a boring, tedious and never-ending task (though it may finally be over, knock on wood) and it has literally haunted my dreams.

I mean it, I couldn't sleep one night because whenever I closed me eyes I saw more nurse footage and kept wondering if the moments would be good for the show. 

There is one good part of the nurse moments though, and that's when you win.

And by win, I mean when I get one of my nurse moments in the show. Even better yet, sometimes, some people (people like me) find a nurse moment so good, it's used twice! WIN FOR MIA!

I have also learned that husband/fathers-to-be go fucking crazy before having a baby.

I'm not joking here, they are so weird in the delivery room. They make noises, eat obsessively, sing, say weird ass things, will not shut up, some even go out and buy strollers while their wives are in labor and bring the stroller back to the hospital... in the box. 

My guess, they are driven crazy by the lack of attention, since everyone is all about the baby mama's, with good cause.

So ladies, if you be having babies and your man be acting all crazy, ask him to get real close, then smack his crazy face!

(that's your Mia advice for the week)

I have also learned that new borns are really weird looking. They look like little alien sea monkeys, all wrinkly and discolored and covered in goop. Gross. (but also cute)

Also, I learned that if you're going into labor and need a laugh, invite your drunk friends!

So maybe I haven't learned the best things, but hey! Babies!

Late Night Thoughts (and a dancing lizard)

Late at night, sometimes, I have the strangest thoughts.

I am happy with my situation in life at the moment, being in school, having stability even if things are teetering sometimes. But then I think about the fast that in a little over a year I actually have to start life. I don't know if I can do it. I really don't. Find a job, find a home, figure out how to live, keep reaching for what I want my job to be, where I want to be, what I want to make, and at the same time trying to live the life I really want. Find someone to love, travel, get married, have kids and show them the world I want them to know. I really don't know how on earth I'm meant to get from here to there and it scares me.

I listen to a song on my iTunes that I've never listened to before, it's from 2007 and all I can think about is what my life was like in 2007. In high school, still doing theatre, infatuated with a boy, broken hearted by a boy, and all the thoughts, all the dreams that came from 2007. I was going to be a star, write the best plays, go to the best school, have my perfect man into 2008. It's all just faded dreams now.
How should I feel about that?

I see, hear, feel things that remind me of Chicago.
It feels like a lifetime ago, it feels like a year completely apart from the rest of my life. The feelings there, the look, the life, it was all something that only happened there, something I will never get again. That's not a good or a bad thing. It's just... a thing. But it's a strong thing, and the idea of going back to Chicago in any way scares me. Returning can ruin images, even if the images weren't the best.

My life in London last year was in a different London from the one I saw back in 2003. Those two places are not the same in any way, shape or form.

I haven't been in a relationship since my senior year of high school, and there was nothing normal about that relationship. I don't know how to be in a relationship. I don't know how to start one, how to find someone, I've almost always been the one found.
And do you ever think about the relationships that almost were?
Every now and then I think about them, they haunt me sometimes.
The best high school couple, the one everyone would want to be friends with.
The music loving theatre school couple.
The totally mis-matched college couple that secretly hate each other.
Where would those have taken me?

I feel weird writing a blog post like this, this isn't really my blog's feel is it?
I'm saying too much, things no one knows, but maybe it's okay.

I think too much, I never know what to do.
You want something, go get it. But we all know it's not that easy, right?
How do you get it? What do you say? What do you do when you want something so bad but just don't know how, or if, or when?

Sometimes I wish I could see things the way I saw them the first time all the time, because the first time you see something is always so different than all the other times. I don't always like that. But I also love it.

All I want to do is write something that changes people's worlds.
But that's probably too much to ask.

None if this is really a problem, nothing haunts me for too long, or scares me for more than a moment, but sometimes, like tonight, it all just runs through my mind like sidewalks after the rain.

(as I have decided to post this)
I am leaving you with a little late night story.

There once was a lanky and energetic lizard.
He liked to dance all over the rivers of the Amazon, splashing water on every creature he passed.
One day this lizard was dancing up a storm and splashed a big, wet splash of water on a giant snake hanging in the tree above the river.
The snake was not pleased with this so he lunged down and snatched the lizard up in his mouth. But before the snake could swallow, this dancing lizard pried open the snake's mouth and did one final dance on top of the snake's tongue.
The lizard then waved the river goodbye and let the snake close his mouth.

The End.
Good night.

A Valentine for My Boo

It's Valentine's Day.
What does that mean?
That means a post about Lyndsi Bosco!!
(my best friend, well, one of the three)

That's Lyndsi there, the girl I am pointing at (and that me with my helmet like haircut).

Now, Lyndsi and I have a very strange relationship that's hard to explain.
We met at when we volunteered for a concert at IC and bonded over being security and then she told me she was going to facebook stalk me and friend me. Then I asked to go to Apple Fest with her and the rest is strange strange history.

Last year we spent almost every day together, and talked to each other every day.
We don't just talk about our days, we talk about everything and it's weird and... man, this doesn't explain it well.
This picture is a perfect example of our friendship.

That is seriously our life.

But still, you need more examples of our deep, deep love.
Because just saying that despite the fact that we haven't seen each other since last May, and the fact that I've been in London and LA the whole time, we still talk all the time and the same, you have to see.

But oh, that's not all we do. Not at all.
We also spam facebook with our love.

And that's not even as extreme as it gets, but it is as recent as it gets.
The point of this all is, Lyndsi and I have a love that can't be described with words.

But it is a true, deep and fantastic best friend love that you may never understand, and maybe you don't want to, but I tried either way.

What this really is though, is a Valentine for on of the three loves of my life.

Happy Valentine's Day Miss Lyndsi Bosco

The King of Limbs

I don't normally blog websites, but I have just been given the best Valentine's Day present ever...

Today Radiohead announced their 8th studio album The King of Limbs
I have been waiting for this for so long and I was lucky enough to have stayed up till right when they announced it on Twitter.

And people saying Twitter is stupid.

You should buy it.

The King of Limbs

Not only is this new Radiohead, it's the 8th Radiohead album.

8 is my favorite number.

I don't know if I'll be able to sleep tonight.

The Name Conversation (Just for the Record)

I want to talk about names. 

Why?

Well, we all have them. If you don't have a name, you're really not a person now are you? I mean seriously, what am I going to call you? What's your mother going to call you? Your grandma? Your teacher? Your boss? Your significant other will just call you Honey Buns, so you don't have a problem there but I mean really, you have to have a name. Otherwise you only exist to yourself, your mother and your Honey Buns. 

But I got a little off track, because the names I want to talk about are mine.

Most people call me Mia (or Mia Hanson if we're doing last names). I even call me Mia! Go figure. I mean, Mia is me, I am Mia. 80% of the people in my life probably only think of me as Mia, sometimes even my mother only thinks of me as Mia, so you know it's really stuck in there.

But the fact of the matter is not only is that not my real name, it's not even my only nickname (cue the WHAAA?(s) and OOOOO!(s)).

Let's start with going over my official (as in government stuff and all that nonsense) names.

My birth certificate has me down as Amelia Boadeccea Lenore Fjerkenstad.

My first passport has the same thing.

Then I got a name change form and my name became Amelia Boadicea Lenor Fjerkenstad Hanson.

That's my current full name. 

Amelia, cause that's the name my parents liked.

Boadicea because my father wanted to name me after the Celtic Queen of the same name.

Lenor because it has been on my mother's side for generations (but wasn't her middle name until after it was mine).

Fjerkenstad cause that's my father's last name

And Hanson is my mother's last name.

BUT THERE'S MORE!!

All my passports, since the 2nd, plus my driver's license, list my name as Amelia B Lenor Fjer Hanson cause they can't fit my freakishly long name.

When it's necessary to use my real name, I go by Amelia B Hanson.

Despite the fact that my name is actually, legally and factually Amelia, all my life I have to remind teachers and classmates that I am Amelia during role or when I hand in papers, and I still have to remind my mother to call me Amelia when making appointments or talking to doctors.

Now the nicknames!!

Mia - my parents had two nicknames in mind when they had me. My father wanted to call me Amy. My mother wanted to call me Leah. But then there was my brother, who was unable to pronounce the name Amelia because of the tricky little L, so he decided to call me Mia, and I have forever since been known as Mia to all.

Mia Pa Pia from Nicosia - My dad likes to make up rhyming nick names for his children. My sister Angie was Angelica Pelica the Teenager from Hellica. Josiah didn't get one cause I guess nothing works well with the name Josiah. Mine lasted longer than Angie's because it's not age reliant, and cause Nicosia is a real place and, let's face it, Hellica... not real.

Hanson - When I was little I played with the girl directly across the street from us all the time, and her father decided that he would call me Hanson. He still does. I don't exactly approve, but what can I do?

Miss Mia - My sister likes to call me this one from time to time, has for awhile and still does. Plus I've heard it plenty of times from various others. 

Mimi - This is a more recent development. I don't know when exactly it started happening, but in the last few years both my best friend Julia and my brother Josiah have started calling me Mimi. And the thing is, they don't see each other or talk, but it started with both around the same time. Hmm...

Mom - Another recent trend as of my sophomore year of college, my younger friends and the people I have lived with in England and LA have decided that I am mother them the most, so I am mom. Yay...

Saint Paul - The most recent development, at my internship I am currently helping the producers of the new Lifetime show, One Born Every Minute, and the executive producer of that show just so happens to be from Minneapolis, so once that guy found out where I was from... I haven't had a name besides this.

These last two I don't feel like explaining for whatever reason, but I will say who gave them.

Pipe-breaker - The girls

English Girl - a boy

So... there you are! I guess you have options as to what you want to call me now, but before you think of it, I'd rather you don't.

I'm good with Mia, thanks!