It’s not that I don’t want to smile or anything. It was the weird incident in the grocery about a week ago now.

The whole family was out shopping for Thanksgiving when an old neighbor came up to say hello. I don’t know if I’d even seen him since I moved out of my parent’s place and got married. His house was over the fence of my parents’ last place. He hadn’t met my family, so it was nice coincindence to run into each other.

He mentioned, after quick introductions interrupted by the kids asking me if we could buy sausage biscuits, that my Mom had told him we were moving back. So, I’m thinking, she really was happy that we had come home. That made me happy… for a moment.

Then came the realization with its distinctive prickly feeling that he didn’t know my Mom is dead. Well, because usually people know and when people know, their first comment is some form of condolence rather than speaking of her in the present.

My dear husband quickly moved the kids along, so I could talk to him, but as soon as I told him the news, he seemed uncomfortable. I didn’t even get to say how she died. I can never decide whether to do so or not anyway. And the conversation ended quickly.

But before it did, I caught myself smiling and immediately started yelling at myself from the inside. Why am I smiling?! Hello, you are not happy about this. You are actually really really sad. Why am I smiling?!

Oddly enough, last night while studying for an upcoming test, I discovered these very poignant lines in my nursing book…

Dysfunctional grief is abnormal or distorted; it may be either unresolved or inhibited. In unresolved grief, a person may have trouble expressing feelings of loss or may deny them.

The eldest sibling may feel a need to “be strong” and therefore may not grieve openly.

Women may be judged as “cold” if they do not grieve publicly.

It’s really quite odd to read yourself in a *nursing* book. A novel is fine. The Bible is even better. But a nursing book…

And yet its published information. I didn’t know it, but I did live it. Reacted the only way I knew. That’s why I smile. Everything was always OK in my family. It’s just that it’s really really hard knowing that my aunts and uncles took everything my mother owned away from me because of those three lines.

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Look up!

I’ve taken some beautiful screen shots lately simply by looking up at the view above my character’s head. There’s something about the simple majesty of ceilings. So calm, so telling, so not full of demons or elementals after my druidic rear-end. hehe

But seriously, these are pretty. I like them especially to use for desktop wallpapers.

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My second go at university began last year in 2006, eleven years after I started the first time. College has changed.

You notice it immediately – registering for classes online, emails from profs, PowerPoint notes! But it wasn’t until half way through this semester of nursing clinicals that I noticed what I different approach to the whole usual and comfortable cycle of sitting in lecture, taking notes, study, test, win! lol

Because my notes are in the infamous PowerPoint and only in outline form — they don’t give us all the notes, only the outline ahead of time — I started off taking notes the old way but having to come home, type them into the outline and fill in with extra notes from the book. It was like a three way tug of war – notes, outline, book all pulling me in different directions. Yes, if you are wondering, I got tired of that pretty fast. It was muddy messy and gross.

But I kept at it doggedly until the day when one prof talked so fast that not even a robot trained in shorthand could keep up with her. Enter the 21st century, Walmart and my digital voice recorder. What an amazing change.

Lectures can be taped, ported to the PC and transcribed at leisure. No more barely legible scribbles in my latest favorite color. No more comparing with the book. Because even if they say something from the book, it is on tape and I type it. Now I sit almost leisurely in class with my yellow highliter — any nursing student at LSUE has an entire drawer full of yellow highliters — and read along, highlight important text and actually follow along. What a breeze!

It’s different too to have typed rather than handwritten notes. Certainly it takes more time than the notes taken in class, but I think part of my success this semester has been due to taking the time to type those notes because that process has me reading and re-reading a million times and making a mental organization of everything in my mind before I hit print.

Ah me. How thankful am I that I have a geek husband who’s converted me to all this computer stuff so that I can mostly manage on my own?

VERY thankful. /grin

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This Thanksgiving holiday was good. Very quiet. Very good.

We had dinner at home, passionately trying to carve out the beginnings of our own traditions and family, after a year when “family” with very few exception has been the worst people on Earth to us.

The next morning when I woke up, my first thought was of my brother who is far from home. He wrote me an email to say that he was coming home for Christmas.

Then those members of the family that are nearby and did phone.

And then those who are nearby and did not phone.

I am thankful for all of their actions.

Why am I thankful that some did not call? Because it only shows me the extend of the infection among them and reinforces my decision to extricate myself from their midst. I am sorry for this reality and I wish it was not. But you cannot force anyone to face their fears, their truths. I am barely able to see my own, which are quite astonishingly and horrifically exactly like theirs.

To me, this is all worth comment because I anticipated sadness this weekend. A great deal. And there was none. Only peace. I am so thankful.

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So my day of procrastination in the surgery didn’t change the fact that I was about to embark on actual nursing care. My patient was still there for me on Friday and needed a list of things performed that I had never done.

What is it about the first time that is so scary? I can go over and over something in my mind and pump myself up with positive thoughts, but when I get to the moment – particularly the first one – I just melt and go blank. Is that what you’d call performance anxiety?

Regardless, yesterday was the first day I gave someone a shot, the first time I gave any meds to anyone, the first time I had to mess with a NG tube and the time I checked someone’s blood sugar.

By the time it was all done, I had stuck her twice and nearly spilled the crushed and diluted meds all over the floor. Stupid NG tubes. It was all *its* fault. There was something occluding the tube, and my instructor was trying to be helpful by suggesting that I try to wiggle the top of the tube to move the obstruction. Doesn’t help. But while I was doing that, my opposing hand that is holding the syringe tries to give it a little twist hoping that will clear the tube. Nope. Instead the syringe becomes unplugged from the tube and said medicine starting gushing onto me, the patient and the floor. Did I mention that my instructor and two fellow students are all looking over my shoulder?

Thank God for small miracles though. In my panic, I placed the spilling syringe into the container of water I had waiting to flush the tube with, which was the next step. Only instead of getting 40mL flush, she um… got over 300mL. I was immensely mortified. But looking back, very little of the meds were lost and I learned many many valuable lessons.

Back to the books…

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