Alarm clocks. Dreadful things.

I signed in that blank space below the job description to signify yes, I want this job.  I was sort of annoyed that there wasn't an actual line to sign on.  It deflated me a bit.  This is big and exciting and there should be a LINE to sign on!!  Or..multiple lines for multiple signatures! 

X_____________________

So that's exciting.  I woke up at 4 am today and I said to myself inside my head, I feel more awake now than I will if I allow myself to fall back to sleep for an hour.  I mulled that over while actively trying to fall back to sleep and see whether that was going to be an immediate thing or would require some work and so..here I am!  I'm about to head off to shower.  Sometimes when I'm up earlier than I need to be for work (this doesn't happen often but has happened more than once in the last week) I shower first thing so I feel like the rest is truly stolen time.  Today it still felt stolen, especially since I lit a candle in the dark and turned on some music.  At some point while reading others blogs this morning I got sort of lost and had this thought, "I should go to bed soon, I have to get up early for work."  Oh but you ARE up.  This is morning.  This...is morning. 

Rainy crap day.

I'm totally my own devil.
On this gray day, this morning I started scheming to go to Target and proceed to purchase a few springy things for around the house -- maybe a new pillow for the couch, new tablecloth to brighten things up?  a lamp?  I guess probably I was just feeling discouraged and fretting about work tomorrow and feeling guilty because I've had 2 calls to return this week and I've yet to do it.  Both calls are from last Friday and I have sat with the phone in my hand thinking about calling but..never made the calls.

I bought a few things at Target and mostly just feel guilty about that and what an awful consumer I am now.  $4 rug, new tablecloth, a yellow tumbler to drink iced tea from, a little cup for Beebs with birds and butterflies on it, a couple of Liberty media boxes to stash some of my CD's in, etc.  Whatevs. 

So this afternoon I feed her lunch, light my new candle and run her a bubble bath.  She plays in there with her new pink watering can and we're chill.  There were lots of bubbles and she's stomping around and drinking water from the watering can shower she's pouring and I realize oh..there's stuff...floating..in here?  OH.  There's stuff floating in here!  It's poop!  There's poop everywhere!  I get her out of the bath and am actually totally whatevs about the poop - just grossed out that she was in it.  Not sure how to clean it up but..will get to that.  At this point she's giggly I dry her off and lotion her up and put her in some soft, snuggly clothes and get her settled in for a nap.  She's almost asleep when she finishes her milk and she nestles into me and I swear a few minutes later a switch went off somewhere inside her and she went all AWAKE on me.  We wrestled with this for awhile and I was getting so annoyed and as I type this I realize it was only because I had made this huge mental list of crap I wanted to get done during her nap time and here she was totally not napping and loving it and I felt like a failure for not knowing how to get her to go to sleep.

Look at this long, drawn out, blah paragraph.
Anyway.  I ended up leaving the room.  I was frustrated and felt very not-fun so I just left and shut the door most of the way.  I kept peeking in on her and a couple of times she caught me and giggled and I'd go off to pick up some clutter or something.  Roommate got home and I shed a few tears and made some stupid jokes that annoyed me more and I peeked in on her again and she's just talking and having a great time and so I go do more random stuff and peek in again and she's out cold.  Oh my sweet baby.  I'm sorry for being frustrated at your for my own stupid ridiculousness. 

Time to dump that muck out or the rest of my evening off will be wasted.  gah. 

I made peach iced tea today -- with Tazo Iced Black Tea (My present fave) and peach nectar.  It's delicious.
bye.
oh, also, I think I'll accept that job offer tomorrow for Labor & Delivery.  Look out, mamas!! 

Beans for Breakfast.

I made garlicky cannelini beans with red chard for breakfast.  Recipe from 101 Cookbooks.  I was searching her site for the recipe but it's in the book (Super Natural Cooking! so wonderful!!).  Here's a recipe a little like it on her site.  These would've been great with a hit of lemon.  I mean, also great..they were already great.  I'm so proud of myself because these were dry beans and I soaked 'em and cooked 'em and then made this with 'em this morning.  We love beans n' greens in this house..even for breakfast.

| this moment |

       
My Version of :  {this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 
 -- from Soulemama.

good morning!!!

well hello there!
good thursday to you!!

It's 6 am and I'm headed off to work here in just a bit.  I've been up since 3:30 this morning.  I popped up and looked at the clock (first mistake) assuming my alarm was about to go off as that is usually the case but no..it wasn't...glorious!  I could go back to sleep.  I turned over and nestled into warm little Beebs and began to obsessively fret about work and the possibility of a new job and would I be able to talk myself out of feeling like a failure if I discover Labor & Delivery is not for me?  What if, like Kelly said, it'd be so clinical that maybe my dreamy ideas of birth would get tossed out the window for what my job requires?  Would birth lose its magic? 

One of the great aspects of this job is..after 6 months of straight L&D I can then crosstrain in Mother Baby and choose to float there if I'd like to pick up shifts.  I think that'd be an excellent opportunity to sample from both and then decide.  I have to do this.  I have to try L&D and then make my decision.  I'll regret it if I don't try it.  I'm no adrenaline junkie (as much as I might admire those that are).  I'm just not.  I felt a pang of guilt when the director pretty much said that was required of the job but I disagree.  I might be wrong but I think there are a whole bunch of types of women and pregnancies and labors and births and different types of people are needed. 

Work feels exhausting right now and I feel cheated if I'm there and the weather is nice.  ha.  I know that once there are more nice days that won't feel the case.  They just seem like such a rarity right now that I'm all MUST ENJOY!  Yesterday was hard.  I only started with 5, discharged 3, admitted 3 more and just felt worn out at the end.  Multiple feeding tubes and trachs and severe dementia and mentally handicapped and comatose and wow, split this load up a little.  I'll have the same people today as we generally keep our patients day to day.  I feel a little bit of dread but also obligated to like..pull for these people and take good care of them.  You might not guess that if you saw me during the times when I'm gristling about at work but I think that's what makes it SO hard sometimes -- the sense of..  not obligation but..kind of?  Like it's not an option to just flat out suck and not take that home with me and it's so busy ..  so BUSY that it makes it hard.  When I have 6 patients that need a lot, it's hard to take care of all those needs in a timely fashion and keep everyone feeling taken care of.  Generally they start to feel like I'm taking a little longer than they would like and they get grumpy and complain and I feel like a failure and the cycle of ugly continues.  Nursing is a cool job.  It really is.  I've seen some really cool stuff, sad stuff, awesome recoveries, tragedies, miracles, mundane, drug seeking, whiney, joyful, blessed, grateful, thankful. 

It's going to be a good day. 

I wanted to just post that pretty tree pic and nothing else but I've decided I need to talk myself through some of these potential new job anxieties.

First off, I have nothing to wear to a job interview and went wearing something that may or may not have looked somewhat awkward and I tried to offset that by this super happy little green cardigan I have that makes me feel happy and maybe instead just made the whole thing kind of too super casual?  Whatevs.  So I got all pumped up.  I was wearing mascara and I'd washed (and blow dried!) my hair.  I'm so excited about the potential this job has that I had genuinely talked myself into a "show 'em what you're made of" frenzy but when I got there, I forgot that in the car and instead came in armed with my green cardigan and dry mouth.

The director was awkward and distracted during the interview and I felt like I didn't really get an opportunity to even attempt to show that I might possibly be qualified.  Also, her computer was broken so shortly after I got myself settled into a chair and contemplated whether or not my body language seemed open an IT guy came into fix it so she had me move and sit on the other side of the room.  We attempted to pick back up and then the IT guy needed on her side of the desk so she moved to another chair and re-settled and I smiled a lot and when she sort of glanced around the room and said this long drawn out "Weeellll..." I piped up, "I'm really excited!"

Anyway, for some reason I felt protective of this job and what it is and so I've been kind of vague but it's in Labor & Delivery and when I think about L&D I get all excited and I feel interested and passionate and eager but when I was up there and the director called herself an adrenaline junkie (why do I hate that term?) and said that was required to survive in the job I started questioning whether that's me.  I don't think I'm an adrenaline junkie but the adrenaline on my job is usually when someone is crashing and on this job it would be more adrenaline in the way of intensity/labor/critical situation/timing..you know?  Instead of always a bad situation.   

I'm telling you/myself all of this because I'm trying to figure out just what the hell it is that always gets me so intimidated?  And don't you think they needs different TYPES of people in L&D?  I'm taking my little walking tour while we're talking and I'm going oh, look how slim and cute and young those nurses are and they seem so confident talking to the docs like they're old pals and wow those scrub pants are tight but they look cute.  Am I a snail?  Do I move like a snail?  Should I tell this director I'm probably horribly slow?  She asked what my co-workers would say I need to work on..what a weakness is and all I could think was, oh my god I'm slow aren't I?  I'm slow!  Tell her how slow you are, you pathetic SLOW SNAIL SLOW HEAD PIECE OF FROZEN MOLASSES NOT EVEN MOVING AT ALL.  I'm often the last person there from day shift finishing charting.  I like to think this is because I focus more on my patient care than documenting crap in the stupid computer but maybe it's just because I'm slowwww.

I'm a good nurse and right now I'm so burnt out on my floor that I'm not a great nurse and that's unfortunate.  I'd like to move on and try something new.  The director said, you know if you like routine and more calm then you should probably check into working Mother Baby.  When I told our nurse educator she said, um..maybe you should think about Mother Baby?  WHY??

K, could you chime in on this?  I feel like I can't know without trying it.

This is how the day went.

I was going to post here last night.  It was going to go something like this.
This is how the day went.
We had buckwheat pancakes for breakfast.  We cleaned up the kitchen, got dressed and went outside to play.  We roamed all around and found a big orange ball floating in the creek.  We squelched through the mud and saw the neighbors' dogs.  In the afternoon I had planned to go to yoga and was actually dreading it.  I've just felt so worn out - like abnormally worn out - that drained feeling you have no explanation for - where it's hard to talk myself into standing up to go do something.  It feels absurd.

So anyway, while putting Beebs down for a nap I tried deciding whether to go to yoga and when I woke up at 4:45 the decision had been made.  I had napped for an hour and missed the start of yoga.  I got up and went to the store for dinner supplies.  Made dinner, we ate, cleaned up (stating the obvious here) and then I took a bath while reading "Out Stealing Horses".  It's so good and I look forward to any moments stolen to read it.  Roommate is reading "East of Eden" and it's next on my list.  The library has been so good to us lately.  I have "Buddhism for Mothers" on hold and need to go pick it up.  What's the proper way to write a book title in a blog post?  Do I underline it?  Put it in quotation marks? 

In the bath I crumbled the remnants of a bath bomb and it had a little sprig of lavender perched on top and at the end of the bath I crushed it in my fingers and rubbed it on my wrists.  We read books in bed.  We crashed at a decent time but holy bad dreams all night!  Nobody wants to hear about your dreams, I get that, but look at the mundane qualities of the rest of this post..  I dreamt I was headed on some sort of "mission" type trip to Pakistan and we were on a bus and I was smashed between two others and we were all huddled under our coats when them over us backwards and I realized I had forgotten all my luggage.  I started texting my mom, "I forgot all my stuff" over and over but it wouldn't send and then we were going down this hill, the craziest steepest hill and the driver said we had to go down going at least 75 mph and I was terrified and then we had to go up and I was sure the bus would just flip over backwards and fall back down the hill. Other dreams included me watching my director at work check dilation on my pregnant patient only to find out he was male and he was so hurt I didn't know.  It was a really stressful night.  I'd wake up and mull over what I'd just dreamt, wonder what time it was and then fall back asleep.

Right now I should be at work but I was pushed back and then asked again if I could be the one pushed back some more because I'm a jerk and also because my toddler barfed this morning and I felt bad for her.  I think she's ok though.  

This bluebird house is at my mom's house.  It's been there as long as I can remember.  She still had a lot more snow at her house.  We played with her 2 baby calves she's bottle feeding and saw the chickens and took a little brown egg and Beebs splashed through the mud. 

ready ready ready ready ready for spring.
it's always when i see that it's getting light earlier - oh gosh am i late to work? my clocks were wrong, i'm late!!  then it's just about time for daaayyylight savings time.  daylight spending time. 

we looked at a really great house that has the tiniest yard.  ugh.  want. bigger. yard.
frustrating.

i called this real estate lady because i got some good vibes from her (hhahaha.  heh) and her voicemail said left a message...TRUST ME...I'll call you back..  with this long, drawn out, creepy weird TRUUUUUUUUST ME!  Take the candy!!  Get in the van!!  Yeah no.

ready for spring.
talking nonsense after a long work week.
pretty sad i only have 2 days off until i head back....but 2 days off is wonderful!!! 

a family friend died so i'm heading home tomorrow for his visitation.  brain mass.  he died pretty fast after learning he had the mass. 

i think Roommate fell asleep putting Beebs to bed.