Milky Way

I spent the entire day yesterday and a lot of Saturday writing in my journal. It's how I process life and when I can't do that, I don't cope so well.

I wrote and wrote and wrote just stuff in my head. Stuff I'm thinking about and haven't had the time to assimilate. And I brainstormed on scratch paper various scenerios; jobs, budgets, lifestyles, plans, cabins, gardens. I got it all out. All the stuff that's been building up. I'm like Hazel's rooster.

When I first moved to Arkansas and met my friend, Hazel, and once I got a telephone, Hazel and I use to talk on the phone for hours at a time while we crocheted or embroidered or lapquilted together in our respective homes. We'd often talk 4 hours at a time covering all the bases in the process. One such night she told me this story.

She had a rooster who stood, she said, by the door to the henhouse at night and as the hens were going in to roost and he'd "screw every one of them" as they passed through the door. She confided, "If I thought I had that shit to look forward to every night I'd kill myself". Clearly not a student of anatomy and physiology, she claimed that before she got the hens, the rooster was so full of "come" that it backed up and turned his eyes all milky-looking. Hazel's from Texas, if that helps at all.

Anyhow, my eyes get all metaphorically milky when I can't journal and I cleared that up, to a degree, this weekend. Wrote it all out, cleared the air, wiped the slate clean, purged myself. A mental colon cleanse, if you will. Today, driving to a meeting 80 miles away, I realized what I do, a lot.

I know what I want to do. I know the life I want. I don't need to brainstorm or journal or undergo hypnosis to find out what it is. I've known since I was 10. I want to write. It's what I do. It's what I'll do for the rest of my life, whether I ever earn any money at it, or not. I write. But I don't believe down deep that it's possible to make a living doing what I want to do so I figure out other things that seem more possible and I agree to "settle" for those things. Massage school was one of those things. And, like all the other things, massage is a noble pursuit. But it's not my passion. It's something I like a whole lot and enjoyed doing when I did it and still do, sometimes. But it's a job. Like the job I have now. And like organic farming or goat milking or soapmaking would all turn into, eventually.

My job pays really well. I get to wear nice clothes and don't have to deal with drug addicts or drunk people or really very many assholes at all. But it's not my passion and I know it and I know what is. And I know I'm not living up to my potential until I follow my heart. I know I'm not gonna be satisfied no matter what until I follow my heart and do what I'm suppose to be doing.

There's a back road on the way to the town where the meeting was held today and I frequently take it in favor of the main highway. Today as I drove that road with the bright blue wild flowers in the ditches that I don't remember ever seeing before and all the swallow-tails and blue birds and old barns and cows in the pastures, I thought about what a fucking shame it is that so many people feel like they're in prison because of their jobs. I had the sensation of looking at it all from a place of confinement. Through bars. I was right there but not really. Not able to experience it because I was going from meaningless task to meaningless task in my job today. And my job's not bad, I keep saying that and it's true. It's a damn good job, the best job I ever had, but it's not me. It's not the real me and the older a woman gets, the less willing she is to spend her time in pursuits that are meaningless to her. We don't have the hormones for it.

It occurrd to me that I have to let go of all the other bullshit. I have to let go of all the other ideas and cling only to my passion if I'm ever going to do it. If I continue to vacillate between 5 or 6 different directions, directions that are merely substitutions for what I really want, I'll never go anywhere but this same spot. And as I said, it's not a bad spot. It's just not where I belong.

Zzzzzzzzzz

I couldn't sleep last night, to save my ass. I tried everything. Hot bath, Valerian, Melatonin, milk. Nothing worked. All that crap at work was swarming around in my head. You know when something gets just stuck in your brain, like right behind your forehead in your frontal lobes and you can't pry it out of there for anything? The only thing that stops it is either sleep, like that's gonna happen, or a shock of some kind or resolution. So, that's pretty much what got rid of it for me today. Resolution. So I'm still in the home health game for another day, at least, and I didn't call in sick, which is a miracle considering I had about 4 1/2 hours of sleep. I'm going to take a bath and go my ass to bed.

Same Circus, Different Clowns

Ya know, I've put off posting because even I get tired of listening to my bullshit. But the blog muse continued to torment me until I'm back here, signed in, and once more bearing my flawed soul before all of humanity.

I think I'll just assign this as my signature: I hate my job at _______ and I wish I could quit and be a writer or an artist or an organic farmer. If it weren't for my nursing job, I'd be so much happier. If I had balls I'd quit this fucking job, etc.

So, here's the condensed version. I quit my job in the ER in February, took another job at a home health agency. Desk job. Almost no patient contact, which is best for everybody involved. Big problems in the office but I'm trying to wade through it and most days I don't hate it.

Then yesterday, the new secretary we hired a month ago came in and quit. Just when we got her trained and she had started to do some stuff, now she's quit. And I should mention that she is a nurse who took a secretarial position with us precisely for the same reasons I hate nursing. So she took this job in the office and stayed approximately 4 weeks and quit. To go back to nursing. Fucking nurses, I swear to God.

Somehow, that made me start thinking (pretending here that I don't think about it every, single day) about following my bliss and how if I had the balls... (see above). And I don't hate this job, most days. This week, yeah, but usually I sorta like it. But it still feels like a fucking cop out. Like I'm taking the coward's way out, and I am. Good money. Damn good money. Way more than I was making before. And it takes about 5 minutes of making more money to have to have that much from now on. And I knew that would happen. I had the big talk with myself when they told me how much they were gonna pay me, about how I wasn't gonna let myself think I had any extra money and how I was gonna pay stuff off with it and get ahead so when I started hating the job I'd be in a better position to quit. Only, you can't pay much off in 3 months, it turns out. Especially when you go to Best Buy and buy a new, digital video camera.

And there's another story. Late one brain-dead night, I happened upon this hysterical video on You Tube and it changed my life, ya'll. I mean it. I got all empowered over it because it's like watching a movie of me and my ex-husband and somehow it made me feel all validated, or something and it just lived on in my head. And somehow I got that all mixed up with the idea that if I bought a video camera, me and my BFF Bobbi could make some kinda movies and put them on You Tube or somewhere online and express my creativity and maybe be able to quit my job and live on adsense, or something. No, really. You know, it's just something I do in my head. So anyhow, I charged the camera. Put it on my credit card so now I get to pay that off instead of making an extra house payment.

I quit my massage business in October. I've been doing a few, tenacious souls in the meantime but mostly not doing massage, to speak of. Last month, I canceled my website. And today I called the 800 number to try to get my web address back.

I had this same thing happen when I was married, once. I thought he was the One. And so did everybody else. They all thought I'd finally found a nice guy. Well, he wasn't. I now refer to him as, "The Nazi". Terrible person, really, but at first he seemed so great and we got married after a short time that I'd prefer not to put a number to in an attempt to preserve a shred of my dignity. But we shouldn't have. Gotten married, I mean. I told myself I wasn't going to get another divorce, no matter what, and that I'd need to figure out a way to make it work and so I tried. That was the year I had my first migraine. There was never a better year to start having migraines than that year, I promise. But I wouldn't let myself admit it wasn't working. The thing is, my mind couldn't be completely repressed and one day I found myself packing my stuff in my car without ever having made a decision to leave. I packed the whole car full and I could pack a car, let me tell you. I could pack a horse trailer full of stuff in a car back then, I'd had so much experience. I packed the car and then I unpacked it because I didn't think I was really leaving. Until I did.

It's the same thing, here. I'm trying to tell myself I'm okay. It's not my choice, exactly, but it's a good paying job and it's not in the ER and I can do it and the next thing I know, I'm calling Homestead and asking for my domain name back.

Anyway, my husband is going to blow a rag if I tell him, "Oh, you know all that money I made for three months that I was gonna be helping you pay stuff with? Well, that's not working out so well, after all." So I'm not gonna admit it to myself right now. Right now, I'm gonna go take a nice, hot bath and go to bed and hope tomorrow is better. And actually, it probably will be. But if I just had those balls...how much better it could be.

Pinball Wizard

Remember pinball machines? Glass-lidded wooden boxes in which a silver ball bounces maniacally from side to side before eventually making its way to the hole in the front, dropping forever out of sight? I am that ball. And nursing is my glass-lidded box. And the hole, I suppose then, is death or retirement. Or as I'd like to think, being finally able to quit nursing to pursue a career in writing.

I don't relish my role as the silver ball and wouldn't outwardly admit it to people who know me, personally, not wanting anyone to recognize it for what it is, "it" being my behavior. But I know it's the truth.

I'm what I refer to as "rapid cycling" right now. There are nurses who stay in the same job for 35 years and then there are those of us who feel the need to move from job to job, "cycling" if you will, in an attempt to avoid inevitable and rapidly-approaching burnout. Fortunately, this particular profession accommodates this method of self-preservation, by virtue of the ever-present nursing shortage, ensuring there will always be another nursing position to which to run. As burnout increases in a nurse not unlike myself, she tends to make the rounds of available nursing positions in ever increasingly rapid succession. Hence the term "rapid cycling". The fact that the term is also used in the categorization of bipolar disorder is not lost on me, I might add.

I applied for a job today. It's kind of a biggie. Probably the biggest I ever had, making the most money and with the most responsibility. But it's management, not field nursing or acute care. It's home health. There are no emergencies in home health. None. If there is an emergency, it gets diverted to the Emergency room at the hospital. Where I will no longer be working. That is, if they hire me.

A job interview is decidedly different when you're applying for a management position, I noticed.

Can you tell us about a time when you had a bad run in with a supervisor and how you resolved it?

There was this one time, in that exact office (I worked there in the past, a long time ago) when I was pretty angry and tossed around a lot of the "F"-word when addressing my supervisor on particularly hot summer day when I was getting a divorce and some major appliances went out and then I had a flat tire on the way back to the office that I wasn't sure wasn't somehow done intentionally by my soon-to-be-ex-husband. When I got to the office I got some bad news about not being able to do some work I'd been counting on for extra money (now to use to buy tires) and I lost my shit. So today I told the interviewer...

I've never really had a bad run in with a supervisor.

And all of this being said, I really would do a hell of a job in that position, I think. I think I could retire from that job. As I said, I worked there before and it was the best job I ever had in my whole career. I quit after 5 1/2 years to go back to the ER because I was dating an emotionally unavailable predator I met on the internet and it took 10 hours driving time to see him in Texas and I thought that would be easier to do if I worked 3 days a week and not 5. In six months, the bloom now off the rose, I tried to come back and by that time, they were downsizing and, eventually, everybody there got fired or quit. The office is a fraction of the size it was then. And the benefits are not nearly as good, as in most places right now. But it's still good money and it's a desk job and, damn me, I think I'm ready.

I don't have to tell you that I came out the hero in every one of those scenarios the interviewer asked me to place myself in and then tell him and the other supervisor about. I can be very creative when when the need arises. And I do have some really good points that are gonna make me a damn good supervisor if they offer me the job but I didn't get the opportunity to tell them about them because I was too busy making up stories to go with the questions they asked me. They were all based in non-fiction but had to be embellished upon in order to make me look competent and effective.

I may not get the offer but I think I've made my mind up that I'm going to make a change. Again. I'll probably wait for an opening in the other home health (the one that's putting my old one out of business). I just have such a need to root for the underdog. Give me a good old bleeding lost cause, any old day. I'll go down with the ship. By then I'm sure I'll be ready for another job change, anyway, and that'll keep me from looking so much like that silver ball.

I really can't wait to fall through that hole in the front.

Shades of Garbo

Freddy says he's going to the store in a little while. I've been waiting with bated breath since then for the few minutes he's gone.

When I get off my three 12-hour weekend shifts, I got nothing left for the world. I need to be quiet and self-absorbed for at least the next day, or so. I already prostituted myself out by agreeing to do two massages tonight, which I knew was a bad idea when I did it. I knew I'd regret it, wishing instead to just be able to veg out on the bed with my laptop. But okay, just two hours and I get paid for it, they're not gift certificates, so I'll make a little extra money. And not till late in the afternoon. So then my daughter calls this morning and her babysitter is MIA and she needs us to watch the kids tonight. I love my grandsons but those little boys kick my ass. But I said, okay. That's not till 3.

So he finally comes and kisses me good-bye, Freddy does, and leaves. I swear to God, it's not 5 minutes later and even though I know it's impossible, I distinctly hear footsteps in the livingroom headed toward the bedroom where I sit, blogging, on the bed with my laptop.

Who could that be? I ask myself, incredulously. He just left and I didn't hear the door reopen. When in walks my 25-year-old daughter.

"In a week I'm gonna be ghetto rich!" she says.

"What? Where did you come from?"

"I've been here, you psycho. I'm getting $3400 back on my income tax,"

"What?"

"I'm getting....."

"No. How'd you get in here? I didn't hear the door."

"I've been here. I've been in the computer room doing my tax return. I got here about an hour and a half ago."

Jesus H. Christ.

Is it just me? Out of an entire day, I have maybe 20 minutes of time to be alone without anybody asking me questions or turning on a television or walking through the bedroom to take a pee in the toilet directly in front of me when there's a perfectly good one down the hall, out of my earshot, and my adult daughter shows up, seemingly out of the frigging air doing her tax return. Fuck.

And while we're on the subject, does anybody else pretend to be asleep when their spouse is in the room in an attempt to discourage interaction? I mean, just keep their eyes shut, like I do, for just a little longer after they wake up, just until he goes out of the room and shuts the door and then breathe a sigh of relief because they don't have to answer any questions or express any affection?

I just want to be alone, sometimes. I don't wanna talk for a few hours after I get up. Is that too much to ask? And maybe 20 minutes alone while my husband goes to the store? I mean, I love the guy, I'm nuts about him and he's older than me and I know he's gonna die before I do and I'm gonna wish to hell he was here up my ass as usual but right now I just wish I could have about 48 hours alone.

short-timer?

Who here has ever rushed to the Emergency Room after throwing up one time? If I live to be 100 I will never get this. And I swear on my mother's grave (wherever that ends up being cause she's alive and well, so far) a woman came in today who had pelvic cramps and low back pain. Her period had started. Today. And she came to the ER without even having taken a Motrin. And, not unlike this video I happened across today, she had the same problem in the past. About a month ago.

How can this be happening? And yet, it's every single day I work. Every single one. I keep thinking I missed something, like something happened since I was a kid and people had common sense. And every, single day I have more and more trouble not responding in a manner that would lead to my termination.

Like today. A young couple brought their 6-month-old baby in. He'd apparently fallen off the couch and hit his head on the floor. It was carpeted and the baby wasn't hurt. But judging by the degree of marijuana smoke on the parent's clothing, I wasn't surprised he rolled off. And when I came to the part of the nurse's note asking about 2nd hand smoke, I almost said, "It's obvious the baby is exposed to 2nd hand smoke because you two smell like a flash fire at an Amsterdam cannabis cafe " And would that have been so bad? Really? I mean, what kind of retaliation could I have possibly expected? Are they going to go to the CEO's office on Monday and tell him the nurse was rude by commenting on the pot smell on their clothing?

I'm thinking a lot about taking an ER position in a large teaching hospital ER 130 miles from here. In a big town. You know, where everybody isn't related to everybody else and not so many people wear camoflauge. I put in an online application tonight. It's funny because when I updated my application I discovered I'd applied at that facility at exactly the same time of year in 2008.

My boss got fired, that time. I was heartbroken. And really, really mad. But in the end I didn't feel good about bailing out because I was angry. Not a good ending. So I stayed. Another 9 months.

The trouble is, I no longer want to be a nurse most of the time.

And all of that being said, there I've gone again and focused on precisely what I don't want to attract in my life, thereby ensuring I'll get more of the very same. I so suck at the Law of Attraction for which I hold such high hope.

Tomorrow we go away. Back to the cabin in the state park. And first, to a larger town to go shopping for groceries at a particularly gourmet grocery store in that vicinity that one of the ER docs told me about. We'll check into the cabin and unpack and then we'll go on north to the big city and the gourmet food and then, afterward, we'll come back and start a fire and spend the next 4 days reading and hiking and sleeping and soaking in the tub and doing some art, I hope.

Oh, and the jigsaw puzzle.

play day

I almost bought a new camera, today. I mean very nearly, as in ordered one and applied for the interest-free credit and got approved and clicked on SUBMIT ORDER. And then I chickened out and canceled it. I hope. Instead of charging $1300 on a new credit card, I downloaded the owner's manual for the camera I got for my birthday 2 1/2 years ago and printed it out. Then I went home and played.

This is Calpurnia.
Although the next two photos are very poor quality, I like them because it makes Maggi appear ghostly.

















Sometimes I really love my life.