Back to Blogging!!!

SO it's been quite some time since my last entry. I'm sad to admit that I was detered from something I really enjoy by people who don't even know me. First there was a stalker who started writing to me after I posted the blog in a very distasteful manor and then I found out there was a girl who was ill-intentioned and snooping through my blog looking for information that was none of her business....both scenarios creeped me out and that combined with my busy schedule put a halt to the blogging.

So I'm back to working about 4 night shifts a month which is the perfect time for reflection on the stories of my adventures in pediatric nursing land and my passions as a dancer/performer and the antics that go along with that side of my life. I also love the inspiration that comes along with reading my friends blogs-Alison, Luke, Kate, Abby and then clicking on the links to their favorites, then their favorites, it goes on and on and I'm suddenly introduced to so many fun and interesting things about life and the lives of others!

SOOOO much has happened in the past year and a half, life has moved so fast at times, I've failed too many times to stop for a few minutes to tune into my own station that the static has been building and building around it. It's almost hard to find sometimes which is just not acceptable. I like me, and I've been losing touch with me. :(

So I've started making time for those little things that feed my soul and lighten my heart....like blogging, working the overnight shift at the hospital, calling my family more often, talking to God more often and getting quiet enough to listen, taking dance classes just because I love the style or the teacher regardless of if its going to enhance my audition skills, leaving notes on my boyfriend's pillow just because, picked up my mental sketch pad to work on new dancewear designs, getting in touch with old friends.....etc. etc.

So here are the highlights of the past year and a half:
~I've had a boyfriend named Michael for about a year and a half
~I've been working at Cornell-NY Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan for a year now as a per diem RN on the Pediatric Ambulatory Surgery Unit, Pediatric Floor and Neonatal ICU-It's the best hospital I've ever worked, I love the staff, the kids, and really enjoy going to work which most of you know has not always been the case in my nursing career!
~I performed in 2 musicals-Kiss Me Kate and 42nd Street
~I'm still working as a fit model for Capezio Dancewear
~I attending my first Broadway Opening and Tony Awards last year in support of Michael and his hit Bway show Rock of Ages. So fun! I was "dressed" for my first event ever by Niiamar-it was fun to feel like a princess :)
~Some great visits with great friends.
~Two of my best girls Jenny and Alison are back home and off the road! It's such a delight to be able to say "hey,you want to meet up down the street and have coffee at 2 today?"...ahhh the simple pleasure of life.
~I twirled at my first UCONN Alumni Game which was an awesome stroll down memory lane.
~I did my first infomercial for a product called Rev Abs by Beach Body.
~I did my first cover for a cookbook by Runner's World Magazine called the Athlete's Palate.
~ Amanda, one of my closest friends had a beautiful baby girl named Laura Mckenzie, my NYC girls threw our first baby shower-which was so fun and ridiculously girlie!
~My family is doing well!
~Mike moved to my neighborhood which has been so nice!
~Mike took me on an awesome sunset sailing boat ride around the island of Manhattan for my birthday!
~The girls gave me an wonderfully thoughtful bday gift and painted my new bedroom!
~I'm currently tackling the fear of the vocal audition-even taking an audition class-meaning I'm paying someone to let me sing in front of people which makes me want to cry-sounds insane because it is :#
~I spent last week in Italy-Rome, Orvietto, Pompeii, and Sorrentto! It was my first time to Europe and it was amazing. It was my first real adult vacation. We had a blast, I loved the history, the food, the culture, the food, the food, the shopping, it was a such a romantic city! (I will write a post on that later)
~and I'm sure there are other note worthy events but that's all my tired brain can come up with at this hour of the night!

It was an incredible year in so many ways!

Lone Ranger

When I was getting ready to come out to Phoenix, I was a little concerned because I knew no one here! NOT A SOUL!!!! I was expressing this concern to my long time pilates instructor in NYC during one of our workouts......I said "Dan, what am I going to do, I have no friends or resources out there, how will I find the right chiropractor or pilates instructor or massage therapist to deal with the science project that is my body, or dance classes, or place to do my hair(sounds silly but these things are important to us girls), who will I go hiking with or have girl talk over Margaritas with......if I spend too much time alone I get a little weird! He said in the calmest tone "Marisa, it will find you, it always does".

AND it did!!! Within 2 days of my arrival, I had a wonderfully competent and very thorough chiropractor in the brother of a friend from NYC, a great pilates studio runned by a professional dancer who recommended an awesome instructor who likes to be productive but laugh as much as I do while working out. The best massage therapist I've every had who has been doing massage as part of his martial arts training since he was 6 years old. Serious stretching and massage all in one! 3 great groceries stores all within 2 about a mile of my apt. Healthfood, convenient food, regular food.

For those of you who don't already know this about me, I have a little obsession with grocery shopping. It's like therapy, walking up and down the isles, perusing new items, dreaming up recipes I could conjure up with an item from each isle. I like to go late at night or early in the morning when the isles are mine alone and sometime I get my groove on in the cereal isle or the frozen food section(granola and ice cream just make me want to dance)! It's like my own mini wonderland! I digress....

Finding dance classes at Ballet Arizona was like finding a home away from home. Everyone there was so nice and welcoming, no divas in site! And I met 3 girls on my first day of orientation were new to Phoenix, were easy and fun to chat with and we looked like we could all be sisters-weird but awesome!

So all that to say....my life in Arizona has been pretty amazing except for fact that I've sparked a fun interest with a great guy back home. Fun new friends, great resources and an apartment to myself.....Dan was right, if you stay open to the possibilities "it" will find YOU!!!

My Little Sanctuary

Adjusting to life in the desert was not as easy as I'd expected. I thought, "I love the heat it will be way better than those stinky sweaty 90 degree summer scorchers in NYC". Well.... no matter how you slice it, 120 degrees is 120 degrees, whether it's "dry heat" or not, it's just unbearable. Rolling down your car window on the highway is a little like having a blow dryer on high pointed right at your face. I'm pretty confident that the devil has a summer home in Phoenix :) The second day I was here I got into the driver's seat of my car only to realize that my black leather seats had turned into what felt like a frying pan. In my desperate plight not to burn my bottom any more than I already had I scurried to find a seat cover. The only things big enough that could create an adequate shield was my road atlas.....minor problem when you don't know where your going!!! It was an urban adventure to say the least!

I tend to think that I'm a tough girl, at least tougher than I look but this city had it's way with me. For the entire first week, I was layed out, other than forcing myself to go to work, I hardly got off the couch or left my apt. Even my car staged a protest, the battery died after 3 days of this hot mess! In that forced time at home I began nesting, which I enjoyed thoroughly.

OK....before I go any further...if you live in NYC and tend to covet the domestic amenities that rarely come with a NYC apt. or you get jealous and stage an "I hate NYC" day when you think about your college friends living out in middle America with a white picket fence.....then you may want to stop reading!! YOU'VE OFFICIALLY BEEN WARNED!!!

Anyway, in my sickly state I began to make my temporary living space a "home". Rarely have I had a significant amount of space to myself, I grew up in a modest house with 5 other family members and have lived with multiple roommates since. To have 800 square feet all to myself, is like a little slice of heaven! Then to add a big kitchen with a dishwasher, walk-in closet, a patio, washer/dryer(in my apt....I mean seriously?), more storage space than I know what to do with, 2 pools, a hot tub, 24 hour fitness center and a covered parking spot(my very own parking spot!!!!)......the good Lord just backed up the blessing truck!!!!

It has been so wonderful to wake up in the morning, cook a nice breakfast, sit on the patio with my journal and a book while the dishwasher is running and a load of clothes is in the wash with another in the dryer. Sometimes I get all the appliances going at once just because I can :) The washer doesn't even leave any marks on my clothes and the dryer never goes unbalanced like one washer/dryer unit shared by my entire building in my NYC apt. :)

No comparison to a tiny crew cabin I thought I'd be living in on the cruiseship for 6 months.

So here are the photos of my home away from home that I've been promising my Mom, Aunt Gail and Alison I would post for the past 3 months.

Welcome to my little slice of heaven at the Bellavista!

My apt. is the one on the 2nd Floor

The pathway to the pool and outdoor grills

Pool #1

Pool #2(the grown-up pool)

Covered Parking-my very own space, no circling the block for a spot!!!

The Kitchen-check out the counter space Mom-hallelujah...AMEN!!!

Livingroom/Office(Thanks Mom for the pretty homemade blanket that just so happened to match the furniture perfectly!)

My Dance Dance Room!!! I've only hit my head on the chandelier once or twice :)
Patio (with my apt. mascot AKA the foam roller)

My "make pretty" bathroom towels (thanks Aunt Gail, it used to be more of display with the big towel but Mike took if down to dry off when he came to visit-silly boys) Oh....by the way, I have a wonderful new boyfriend named Michael...more on that in a later post!
The other side of the bathroom
Washer and Dryer-YAY!!!

Where I lay my head

MY WALK-IN CLOSET!!!!!

Travel Nursing

You might be wondering, what exactly am I doing out in the desert in the dead of summer?

Here is a brief description of what travel nursing is and specifically what I signed up for:

With the nationwide nursing shortage many hospitals across the U.S. hire travel nurses to fill in the gaps for seasonal or long term staffing needs. Usually nurses are required to have at least 2 years experience in their specialty area since they are given approximately 2 days orientation and then expected to jump right into the mix. A typical travel nursing assignment involves a 13 week full time commitment to work at a particular hospital, clocking three 12 hours shifts/week in exchange for free housing in an apt. with generous amenities, heath insurance, travel compensation and a nice salary. When the 13 weeks are up, the nurse has the option to sign on for an addition 13 weeks or go on to the next city of choice to work a new assignment.


I am working three 12 hour night shifts(7pm-7:30am) a week as a Float Nurse at Phoenix Children's Hospital. A Float Nurse works on whatever floor has need that night excluding the ICUs and Emergency Room. I work on 5 different floors, orthopedics/rehab/neurology(lots of child abuse :( so sad), oncology/hematology, gastrointestinal/diabetes, respiratory/cardiac, and then the 5th floor is any other random illness that a child could contract(I call this floor the funny farm-mainly because of the staff-not the patients).

For my musical theatre friends, being a float travel nurse is comparable to being a swing on tour with 2 days rehearsal! A little tricksy and challenging to say the least. Not something I'd sign up for again, but hey, live and learn!!!

Healing the Hurt

So, I finally let go......and the 2 days I spent in Nashville were some of the most restful and relaxing days I've had in a long time. My lovely and incredibly generous friend Alex, extended her home and sacrificed her bedroom so I could get some uninterrupted quality rest before embarking on the rest of my journey! Alex and I just so happen to share an affinity for white fluffy bedding which I thoroughly enjoyed on the top floor of her 3 story townhouse. I slept in til 11am and rose to beams of sunlight shining through every window and felt like a princess waking up in the top of a castle! (Stark contrast to mornings in NYC where I have to press my face against my bedroom window to see if the sky is blue or grey!) The bedroom even had a little alcove which was just the right size for my pilates and stretching routine. The rest of the days in Nashyville were spent doing some of my favorite things, listening to live music, sushi, a trip to Target, bochi ball in the park, great conversation over Maggie Moos and late night silly girl time at the Waffle House!

I find when I allow myself to breath deeply enough, fully enough and consistently enough...there is room....room to feel deeply, listen to what God is saying and to see Him more clearly in my surroundings and circumstances! After 2 days of deep breathing in Nashville the light finally went on, the last time I drove cross country I was with my best friend Shannon, we had just graduated from UCONN and were on a trip of a lifetime-6 weeks, covering as much of this great country as possible in my grandfather's van-with pb&j, rice crispy treats, an am/fm radio(which didn't get reception in many places which left us to our own musical abilities-yikes), the go-girls guide to the open road and just enough money to get by. It was the most eclectic and incredible trip! Little did I know just how precious that concentrated time with Shannon would be. Just 6 short years later she passed away after a long courageous battle with cancer.


Losing my best friend at such a young age in the midst of many other personal traumas was more than I could absorb at the time. Even though I've told so many of my patients families that grief is a process, now I'm really getting what that means. Sometimes it's gut wrenching and painful, sometimes it's sweet nostalgic strolls down memory lane, and some times it's just pure enlightenment and this trip across the country turned out to be all of the above.


Shannon was so many things to me, a sister, a best friend, someone who reminded me of who I was when I forgot, someone who kicked me in the pants when I needed it, my favorite partner in crime-somehow we managed to get ourselves out of trouble just as easily as we got into it(thank goodness), and a wellspring of genius, inspiration and fun!

From Nashville onward I decided to retrace the steps our post-college roadtrip. Stopping at Graceland, judging the quality of a rest stop by the flavors of Laffy Taffy they had to choose from(sadly I'm not as good at knowing the punchline to the corny jokes on the wrappers as elementary school teacher Shannon was), a pit stop in Hope, Arkansas the birth place of former president Bill Clinton to see if the families there still kept their washer/dryers on their front porches(a very new and foreign concept to 21 year old Shannon and I), I sang at the top of my lungs to the Backstreet Boys and Garth Brooks across the plains of Texas, visited the best snow cone shack in the country, Bahama Bucks in Lubbock, TX(which is no longer a shack but a big pink building with free Wi-Fi and about 50 additional flavors), and made up faux identities and stories when approached by nosey strangers at restaurants along the way(a favorite past time of ours-tehe!!).

Through all of this, I felt Shannon's presence more strongly than I had in years, wondering what she thought about all of this, and I felt her smiling down on me.

Suddenly God made it very apparent to me that not only was Shannon with me in spirit but it was no coincidence that I could see things I miss so much about Shannon in my friends along the way. The camaraderie and sisterhood with Alex; the light, lovely and enlightened spirit of Jennifer Worrall in Dallas; the easy unconditionally caring bond of someone who knows you almost as well as you know yourself, with Luke in Fort Worth; and the old familiar friend who you can pick up with right were you left off -Lorissa Moffett-who was a long time twirling competitor of mine and dear friend. Shannon became quite the twirling connoisseurs during our days at UCONN, we used to pretend she was my coach so she could come down on the court at the UCONN b-ball halftime shows :)

1 week later I arrived in Phoenix feeling more free and alive than I've felt in years. I realized that sometimes you just need to let yourself go to the bottom of the pool no matter how deep or scary it may seem so you can push off and get back up above the surface, take a deep breath and get out of the pool. Hangin' out 4 feet below the surface, stuck treading water, is no way to live.

No one will ever replace Shannon but I feel so blessed that God has placed so many Angelic friends in my path to remind me that I'm never alone on this journey of life!

On The Road Again...

The day after my friend Kate's wedding, I packed up as many of my earthly possessions as I could fit in the back of my car and set out on a journey across the country! It was a perfect send off with a lovely Father's Day brunch with my parents, gramps, and brother and the warm fuzzies of having just spent the last 3 days with close friends at the wedding.

It was such a relief to have made it through the 5 weeks of turbulence and so exhilarating to be on my way into this new chapter of life. But there was so much more in store for this journey than I ever could have imagined.

About a month prior I had started to have difficulty breathing, my heart would race spontaneously, and I just couldn't get a full breath. I had never suffered from anxiety before but I think that's what was happening. No matter how hard I tried to relax or prayed for God to teach me or just take it away it wouldn't relent. All I got was that God wanted me to be patient and trust Him. I like to deal with things as they come up but there was more going on than I could absorb and it just built up and manifest itself physically. It didn't feel so good :(

The first leg of the journey from my parents house in Meriden, CT to NYC was like one huge deep breath. I could feel the old anxious skin shedding off and the hope of what was ahead filled my lungs and relaxed my senses. My friend Duff offered to help me drive the first leg of the trip to Nashville. We had a blast, hitting up the Crackerbarrel, watching movies, experiencing Sheets(the best rest stop in the great US of A),
stopping for gas by JMU :) , and landing in Nashville just in time for breakfast at the Pancake Pantry. Having someone there to help lighten the load brought about a huge revelation. It was like God yelled in my ear "Marisa....just let go....I've got you....I'm here to guide you....to take care of you....to lighten the load....just let go and surrender it all to Me"!

27 Dresses.....

Weddings...weddings...and more weddings! Since my early to mid-20s it seems a season does not pass without several friends getting engaged or married. I've been to more showers, engagement parties and nuptuals than I can count. I was actually the muse for the movie 27 dresses-you see....since I was soooo busy with my career in NYC they had to get Katherine Heigel to play the part(tehe!)


There's a lot that goes along with being a bridesmaid, The Time-to travel, searching for just the right gift, shopping for dresses, weekends devoted to showers, parties, wedding weekends; The Dresses-the puckering and squeezing in the weirdest places that give you fat in places you never knew you had it; The Money-oh dear...I wish some bank would create a high interest savings account devoted to bridesmaid-dome. One year I took a stroll down the isle 5 times in 6 months! It brought me to my knees and I prayed "God, if You wanted me in all these weddings, would you please just show me the $$$". What do ya know, the next month I booked a job modeling bridesmaid dresses that covered all 5 dresses-seriously-you gotta love a God with a sense of humor!!!
But seriously, I love it....I love every single minute of it!!! Having an excuse to spend all this extra time with my nearest and dearest girls and their families! Getting a front row seat to 2 lives integrating into one, there are few things in life more beautiful! There is a stunning vulnerability about a bride who knows she is in the center of God will. In addition, one of my favorite things about being a bridesmaid is the opportunity to serve these lovely ladies who usually wouldn't ask for help otherwise. I could care less what I have to wear, stick me in a burlap sack-but I will say I've got some wonderfully kind and confident brides to call friends who have been very gracious with their selections! Good thinkin'...because just like in 27 dresses you might be wearing those same dresses on my special day! :)

This whole stream of thought(or blog rather) was prompted by my dear friends Kate and Geoff's Wedding on June 14th. It was a wonderful 2 day event in Connecticut, with friends and family, old and new, from near and far! Alison Walla went above and beyond as our resident Martha Stuart Jr. But beyond everything else what mattered most to this gracious couple was that at the end of the day they would be husband and wife and that made everything else just icing on the cake!