Winds Of Change ...

Sometimes patience is good. Sometimes recognizing small blessings, small miracles, the wonderful little good things in life can make all the difference.

I am having an amazing  week.

It's the little things. Last Thursday my work called and told me I would have no hours this week, I was actually okay with that because I start nursing school next week and it would give me some decompression time, but then low and behold on Sunday I was rescheduled for a forty hour week, which is also awesome because this is my last chance to work a forty hour week until the end of the semester.

Did I mention, I love my job?

I started going through my reading assignments for my nursing classes (the ones that have to be done before class starts), and it's all review information, it just feels like I'm in the right field, I'm doing the right thing, this nursing school thing is going to be okay.

I won a minor victory with my ex over a schedule conflict with my oldest daughter, which was a victory for her not me.

I was pulled over because my license plate tags were expired and the officer let me off with a no proof of insurance ticket, that can be easily taken care of. He said it was

Dancing in the Rain ...

Originally posted on my "old" blog ... September 9, 2009 ... 

So, a while back, someone posted one of those pictures on my wall that says "life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain." In the last few weeks, the very deep meaning of that has come to light for me.

Life will let you down, people will let you down, things will happen that you never dreamed would. You will find out that people you thought you knew aren't the people you thought they were, or maybe even your instincts and bad feelings about people or situations were right, and things you hoped weren't true, will turn out to be true. You will lose your car keys, your kids will do things like color on the couch ... random people will try to make you feel bad, to feel sad, to make you cry ... because apparently nobody ever taught them

Scared ...

This is something I don't talk about a lot ... and it's probably something I should be talking about ... I don't feel comfortable with the subject because, quite frankly, it scares the living shit out of me ... so I don't talk about it with my closest friends ... or my family ... but for some reason ... today ... I'm going to share it with the people that read this blog ... the bulk of which are strangers ...

I think I don't talk about it because I don't think people realize how much it really scares me ... how much I avoid it ... and then I finally do say something ... and nobody responds ... leading to me posting about how it actually hurt my feelings to have no responses on Facebook about it ...

So here it goes ... my kidney is slowly failing ... I say kidney because they already took

Why I Actually Like Working the Night Shift ... And Why it Works For My Family ...

People tell me all the time I'm crazy ...

Maybe that doesn't have anything to do with my shift though ... but we'll pretend it does ...

I've always been a night person ... I've always detested alarm clocks ... and I've always, always had insomnia ... that alone explains part of why I like working nights ... my current shift is midnight-7am Monday thru Thursday nights and then 7pm - 7am Sundays ... although my position is PRN (basically on call so a lot of weeks I don't work all those nights) ...

But ... the main reason I work nights ... the reason I seek out night shifts ... is that it is

Relief ...

I work in a field that some nurses and healthcare workers are afraid to work in ... I work with the people society rejects ... sometimes those that the CDC puts in quarantine ... I work with people who have infectious diseases ... mostly non-tuberculosis mycobacterial infections (in other words bacteria that pretend to be tuberculosis) ... but I also work with people that have tuberculosis ... people that are HIV+ and those that have full blown AIDS ... patients that have Hep C and C Diff and a whole slew of other things the public has never heard of ... I work with people that have MRSA that can't be stopped ...

I hate what society does to these people ... I hate the lack of education that the general public has ... and I don't hate a lot of things ... but still I find this weakness in myself ....

I know ... logically ... I know that I take every precaution, follow every rule (and still do my best to make sure that the patients still feel a human connection) ... I do everything to protect myself ... yet every four months when I come up for testing ... I am always relieved to get the negative results ... despite knowing I was never at risk ... to see the negative TB test ... I can breathe easier for a while ... the silver lining of course is that it always is negative ...

Promote What You Love ...

I could go on and on about how this picture ... the quote "promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate" means in the world of politics and religion ...

I have written paragraphs trying to express what this little ten word phrase says and means ... but today I'm not going to talk about politics and religion ... I am going to talk about the effect this saying has on personal relationships ... balance in romantic relationships and friendships ...

Many people have probably heard the "how full is your bucket" theory ... it started as an adult theme and turned into a popular children's story ...

Basically the point of the theory is that you add drops of water to a bucket with positive things and you take water out of the bucket with negative things ... the people that we love

Flinching & Cringing ...

I kind of expected ... correction ... I always expected it ... but I remember the first time it actually happened ...

I was at a school function with my younger daughter ... it was a field trip ... and the kids were outside doing their thing ... eating lunch ...

Another mom who was chaperoning started making small talk with me ... little questions here and there ... and then there it was "what does your husband do?" ...

"Well, I'm divorced, but he's a drafter" .... "Oh, I'm so sorry" ...

And then she turned and WALKED AWAY ... she walked away ...

Maybe she was embarrassed by the fact that she asked the question ... maybe she didn't know how to respond ... but she, in that moment, symbolized all my fears about telling

Finality ... The Sense of Being Reborn ...

“I think it happens to everyone as they grow up. You find out who you are and what you want, and then you realize that people you've known forever don't see things the way you do. And so you keep the wonderful memories, but find yourself moving on.”   ~ Nicholas Sparks

My ex is now married to someone else ... I've had people come to me with condolences ... worried about how I'm doing ... and really ... I don't care all that much ... and the part of me that does care ... is extremely glad and relieved ...

His marriage gives me a sense of finality and closure that I didn't have before ... when I first found out he was engaged my first thought was "thank God, because now if I do it I won't be the bad guy" ...

Maybe that sounds cold and uncaring to some people ... but they haven't walked in my shoes ... it amuses me because less than a week before his wedding he told me that I needed to "move on and worry about (my)self" ... I moved on long before he did ...

I remember standing in a parking lot after exchanging the kids and he was yelling at me about finding girls that were hotter than me ... telling me that he could have them ... I

The Kindness of Strangers ...

An event occurred the other night that I don't think many people experience ... it was a normal evening ... the lemon man and I waited around for his brother to come home so that we could leave his grandpa in good hands and head off to the store to buy some necessary items ... on the way home debated stopping for food ... we decided we would and then we debated where ... and we decided on the good old golden arches ...

Before we pulled in we saw that there was a girl standing at the drive-thru window ... anyone who has ever been a teenager without a car anywhere near a drive-thru knows that 99% of the time they don't let you do that ... so we found that kind of odd ... we went to give them our order ... and their computers were down so it took forever ... and while we

Cutting the Cord ...

I am still getting used to not having my kids with me ... the breaks can be nice ... but it's hard sometimes because since I've had them I've almost always been the sole person in their lives that was constant ... and in many ways I still am ...

For the first seven years I was a mother I was a stay-at-home mom ... so I was with them constantly ... I basically continued as such after my ex and I separated four years ago ... only I got a few breaks here and there ... some weekends ... some weeks ... and then I moved and the only time they were away from me was every other weekend ... which wasn't enough time to miss them really ... unless

The Power of a Smile ...

"A gentle word, a kind look, a good-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles." ~ William Hazlitt

I ran into the grocery store at 1am ... I work nights ... that's fairly normal for me ... the security guard smiled and asked me how I was doing ... then I went on to the section of the store I needed and there was a man cleaning the floors ... he also smiled and said hi ... finally the clerk at the front

Mommy Snobbery and Birthday Revelry...

I celebrated the anniversary of the day I was born a few weeks ago ... and for the first time in several years this involved days of celebration ... although I usually have a few things going on ... something with my friends ... something with my dad ... something with my mom ... and something with my kids (save the best for last) ... so this year wasn't that odd ... it was just spread out over more days than usual this year ...


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In the world of social networking, as well as other places, I often encounter this thing I refer to as mommy snobbery ... this is where moms judge each other for doing all sorts of things ... their breastfeeding choices, co-sleeping choices, discipline choices, employment choices ... all these things and more make up mommy snobbery ... in this

Anonymity ... An Introduction ...

I decided to start a new blog ... where anonymity makes it possible for me to write anything I want to write ... my lemon man (that's what I'm calling my boyfriend here for now) pointed out that in order for this to be truly anonymous I shouldn't tell anyone it's here ... and I understand his point, but at the same time there are people in my life I trust implicitly ... and I think they need to be part of this as well ...

I will hopefully be blogging enough that any readers I gain will learn through the course of my writing who I am and where I come from ... but I will say a few things to start with ... I married young ... had children young ... two girls ... and a boy ... their father and I separated just shy of our nine year anniversary ... and I feel like I've been handed a lot of lemons since then ... I was a stay at home mom ... I had a