Santa is alive and well in Katie's mind...

Katie: Mom...I been thinkin...

Me: Hmm...about what sis

Katie: Mom, I think Jimmy might be the real Santa

Me: (Turning my head so she can't see me laughing) Really? You think so huh?

Katie: Yeah, I'm almost sure

Me: Well what makes you think that?

Katie: Well...he has a beard and its real, and he has a really big belly and it's real--I know cuz I saw when he took his shirt off--and it shakes when he laughs like in the poem...

Me: Mmmhmmm...(almost choking...)

Katie: ....and he really likes little kids and he always has lots of money...yep, I'm pretty sure.

Me: Well I guess you better be good when he's around huh.

How do you deal with losing friends...actually losing an entire family? I don't understand what I'm supposed to do. I feel like shit. I don't know why I let them make me feel this way, but I can't help it. My entire life feels like its been completely turned inside out, upside down and backwards, and my heart has been completely wrung out. I loved these people like I love my own family and now they hate me. And all I'm trying to do is do whats best for my kids. Why can't they see that? Why do I always have to be the bad guy? What did I do wrong? Why do they hate me? And why the FUCK do I even care? I try not to care, I try to say fuck it, I have enough friends, I have enough family...but I have a big hole in my chest and it feels like I can't get any air. I've cried more this weekend than I have in a long time. I just want them all to go back home and leave us alone.

The Life of Bad Choices...

Will someone please tell me what is wrong with me. Why do I do stupid things...all the time. SOMEONE TEACH ME HOW TO SAY NO!!!

So, this month at work we have a new resident (doctor that's almost grown up but not quite). His name is Sukhdeep Athwal. Go ahead, say it out loud. Enough said.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! There...I just needed to scream for a minute.

So today was Easter Sunday and I didn't go to church. I actually haven't been to church but maybe 3 or 4 times in the last 9 months. Not because I think I don't need it, but because it's gotten really difficult for me to go. My church (can I still call it my church if I haven't been in months?) is actually a very good church, and as far as churches go, we have a good group of pretty non-judgemental people, especially for Baptists. We've been members for about 6 or 7 years, ever since not long after we moved back here from Seattle. The main attraction for us at the time was the fact that there is so much going on for kids. Everyone in the church knows my kids by name, and for the most part my kids love to go. But ever since the events of last summer its just got more and more difficult for me to go sit thru a service. My mother, of course, has been busting my chops cuz I don't go, and Saturday we went back and forth on text messages because she was trying to talk me into going on Sunday. I told her its just really hard for me to go because I feel like everyone is...well, not exactly judging, because I don't really think that's it...but more feeling sorry for me. She even volunteered to go WITH me, even tho she goes to another church, but I said no. She asked me since when did I get to be so sensitive. I said, "Oh I don't know mom, maybe when my entire life turned upside down in ways that no one can ever really understand!" See, the thing about it is, while I do know that the people at church really do care about me superficially, I've never really made any friends there, and if it were friends feeling sorry for me that would be one thing, but just acquaintances? I guess its kinda hard to explain which is why I'm trying to work it out here. See, it's not like I haven't tried to make friends at church. There are a few girls there that I think I could be friends with. I even went on a few of the ladies retreats and even helped out with VBS one year. I used to go faithfully every Sunday morning and every Wednesday night, so you'd think I would have developed a friendship or two that was more than superficial, right? Wrong. And I guess if I have to admit it to myself, I'm a little hurt about that. Boy, does that sound juvenile or what. But really, I feel like a few of these people have known that things have been really rocky for my family for a long time, and only getting worse, and no one besides the pastor has really reached out. I feel like the pastor's wife at the very least should have tried to talk to me or maybe just asked how things were every now and then. While I know pastor really sincerely cares about us, I don't feel its really appropriate for me to call him with all my dramas, really I think his wife, knowing everything thats gone on, should have tried to connect with me. Now I'm feeling like I'm whining, but truly, this really is the issue. I feel like every time I have tried to make more than just a superficial friend at church I have been...well, not shunned, that's too harsh a word...but certainly not met with encouragement either. It's like they're so caught up in their nice little church life that I might burst that little bubble and it would be too much for them. I realize that my life is a lot of drama, and I don't blame anyone for not wanting to get too caught up, but honestly, I have had people from work offer to take me out for lunch or for a drink cuz they thought I needed to talk or just to get away from it all for a minute...shouldn't people from church be even more that way? I guess maybe I've gotten jaded, or disillusioned, either way it's an ugly realization about myself. But the bottom line is this...I won't be attending church again for a while. Maybe after we move to Florida I'll look for a new church...one where no one knows me or Greg or the drama that's gone on, but until then, no thanks...I think I'll pass.

Perspective...

So today was a pretty crappy day. I'm usually a pretty optimistic person and can find the silver lining inside almost any cloud, but every once in a while it all just gets to me and I lose my mind for a minute. That was today. I'm stressed about time, stressed about money, frustrated cuz my house is always a wreck, overwhelmed with thinking about getting everything packed up and consolidated to move into a much smaller house 700 miles away from here, and also trying to be a good (or maybe even just tolerable) mom to my kids, not to mention everything else I have on my plate. It all just hit me today along with some other things which I won't bother to mention, but I spent half the day in tears and the other half about to be. I even screamed at my kids for a minute because I'm tired of them doing a half-assed job on everything and then I have to call them back 15 times to get them to do their jobs right. Then I went upstairs like a stupid sappy lovesick teenager and spent 20 minutes crying into my pillow. I then showered and got dressed for work, came downstairs to fix supper for the kids, and spent another 20 minutes on the phone with my mom, bawling like a baby. On the drive in to work I choked back tears because of some stupid song on the radio and walked into work looking and feeling like hell. Then I take report for my shift and pretty quickly God put everything into perspective for me. My patient right now is a 29 year old woman with leukemia. She's been sick for a couple years, had a bone marrow transplant a year ago, felt better for a while, but after a week up here in the ICU, died tonight. She has a very sad husband, a mother who's been holding her cold little hand for the last 2 hours, and a little 3 year old child at home. What an attitude adjusment for me. It's like God just slapped me upside the head and said, "What do you have to complain about." I mean really. I'm healthy, my kids are healthy, my entire family is healthy...all the way down to my 87 year old gramma. I can piss and moan and feel sorry for myself for all the petty stresses and problems in my life, or I can thank God for all the good things that he has given me and all the ways that he has blessed me and my children and kept us safe and healthy over the last year. And just because I struggle financially right now doesn't give me a right to complain because all of my NEEDS have truly been supplied. I get pissed cuz I don't have enough money to pay all my bills when I want to pay them or take my kids to the movies, but you know what...we have food in the fridge, a roof over our heads, and running water and electricity. I have a job, which is more than many people these days can say...and I even like it. So thank you Lord once again for putting things in perspective for me. I'm giving myself an attitude adjustment right now and I promise...tomorrow will be a better day.

Okay, so last night Katie and I were laying in bed and trying to go to sleep. Well, at least I was trying to go to sleep, Katie as usual would not quit talking. I kept telling her it was time to sleep now, time to stop talking, she would be quiet for 30 seconds or so and then start telling me some new story. I was half dozing, half watching a rerun of the Cosby Show, so I wasn't really listening to Katie's chattering. After all, it was past her bedtime, and to be fair, she really doesn't ever stop talking. Then she tells me that they have an incubator in the classroom so they can hatch chicks. I could tell she was pretty excited about it so I figure maybe if I let her tell me about the chicks then she'd be quiet and go to sleep. So she's telling me all about the incubator and she started talking about last year when they hatched chicks in 1st grade. She said they were so cute and it was so much fun...well except when one of the kids STEPPED ON ONE OF THE BABY CHICKS AND SQUISHED IT! I said, "Oh my god Katie why didn't you tell me about that before?" She just shrugged and continued to tell me the story. Apparently this particular little chick was named Nathan, she said Nathan got squished cuz Logan stepped on him and the teacher had to rip a page out of the phone book to pick up the chick and clean up the mess. I asked her if the kids cried when it happened. She said they were all sad but no one cried except Logan, the one who stepped on the chick. Wow...kinda traumatic for first grade huh?...one more reason I think I need to find her a therapist...

Just a glimpse...

I truly do love my job. To be a critical care nurse you really do have to be a little warped. We laugh at completely inappropriate and NOT funny things, make light of disgusting things, and can eat every bite of our lunch while discussing the most vile purulent drainage from a patient's wound or the consistency, frequency, and horrific smell of the stool from a GI bleeder. In some sick way, we almost look forward to codes, because we are all hooked on the adrenalyn rush. We fight over patient assignments...not for the easiest patients, but for the sickest, because they are the most interesting. Death and dying are part of our daily work. We run our asses off for hours at a time and work so hard to keep someone alive thru the night only to come back the next night to find out they coded an hour after we left. I have spent the last week at work taking care of a 46 year old man that came to our unit last Thursday afternoon (which, by the way, was his 46th birthday) and promptly after I came on shift decided to take a nosedive into the sepsis cesspool. Amazingly and against all odds he was still alive when I came back to work Sunday night, but tonite he died. He was polite enough to wait until all his family got here, including a son who was in North Korea in the armed forces. In the few days that I took care of him I got to know his wife, who is director of nursing in a long term care facility, and his son's girlfriend, who will graduate nursing school in May. I saw his big strapping sons cry like babies alongside their 14 year old sister. I held his wife's hand as he died, and helped her cut off a piece of his hair to take home with her. It was emotionally draining and heartbreaking to see their last tiny bit of hope fade away into the knowledge that despite every last possible effort, he was not going to make it. And at the end, when they had said their last goodbyes, the wife and son's girlfriend hugged me and thanked me and told me that I would never know just how much I had touched all of their lives. And this, my friends, is why I do what I do.