It's been real

A couple of years ago at work, I was not not laboring over dressing changes or IVs, I will leave that to the medical people, but crafting necklaces with a young female patient with large fake breasts who when not hospitalized was a hooker. As I sat there happily stringing beads and chatting I realized - Mother would not want me to play with this type of girl. In fact, Mother, knowing some of the disgusting duties that would be mine, was not proud or pleased when I told her I was going to be a nurse. Even more she was not too keen on my working at all - ever! In her Southern fantasies her only daughter was eternally thin and fashionable and perhaps more than a little shallow. I can't say I didn't try, but in my thirties when poverty struck, life sent me down a different path, one that led straight to the outstretched arms of the nursing profession. Her worst fears realized. I understand now, but I wonder what kind of insensitive clod I may have become without this career. After the first shocking year, my naive self took right to being a psych nurse, and I have never viewed life the same since. I appreciate all the patients and co-workers who have taught me, who have stretched the limits of my life experiences, and sharpened my character.

The Sum of the 365

At the end of recent years, I have made a list of personal superlatives, such things as best decision, best purchase, most hilarious moment, etc. When I sat down to do it this year I realized that 2008 was not a year of biggest, best and most. After my long awaited and marvelous Best Trip Ever, the rest fell into the category of maintaining the status quo. That in itself - I have now decided - is quite an accomplishment, especially in this year of upheaval on a larger scale. There were no huge decisions, just millions of tiny ones that all together seem to have worked out OK. As each day comes along, to face what must be done and to do it is a good thing. Soon I will be heading out the door to work, my first workday of the new year, part of the status quo. Since I am over my meltdown of last month, I will celebrate the stability it helps bring to my life. The most maintenance and stability. Not a bad superlative for the old year.

Chilling out

Lively December, dressed in its splashy reds and greens and scented with evergreen and Eastern spices, has thankfully passed. The quiet month of January has begun. I welcome the misty gray of the cold mornings and the quietude it brings to my brain. Like the squirrels nesting in the trees, I enjoy being in, listening to the hum of silence or the mewling of my cats or the music of my choosing from my tinny old CD player as I regroup, renew. Mugs of steamy tea, coffee and cocoa, finding more favor in this month than any, keep my hands and heart warm. And by this third day into the year, I find I have some new stuff to play with. The well chosen Christmas gifts that I only gave a perfunctory thank you for on the family days have been carefully pored over and are being enjoyed. January. The coolest month.

Me. For better or worse.

Ahh...a new year has started and many of us are making our plans and resolutions for 2009. Not a bad thing to do. They give us direction, maybe purpose and more control over our lives. But is a new year a new beginning? More than time marching forward? I suppose it can be, but I think we mostly just drag our same old selves with us whenever and wherever we go. I take my personality, my character, and reliable old body with me from home to work or wherever I happen to be. Basically I am me, the same me I have always been, the me I was created to be. Isn't that the way it is for all of us? Maybe I have become a little better in some areas but a little more lacking in others. Maybe I have gained a little here but lost a little there. I can still expand on what little I know, maintain relationships with those I love, welcome new people in my path, and pass along some of what I have experienced to the next generation, but I cannot turn back the clock. And it is too late for wishing I had done many things differently. That's OK. I am glad to have made it intact this far and still be me. My failures and my shortcomings won't hinder me from striving, from pressing on, from loving, from still growing in many ways, and trying to be a better version of me.
Let's see...first there is losing weight and then...

A Verse for the New Year

"...one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."
Philippians 3:13-14