Well, time for a new post. This blog is 22 years old.
Life changes have happened, yet again. Still a nurse, parent, musician, but no longer a partnered person. I don’t think anyone who knows me really reads this, and if you are so devoted as to still read this I guess I’m ok with you being updated at this juncture.
So mixed up inside.
Watching Wallace and Gromit and Creature Comforts and hanging out with kids and friends as much as possible.
I'm not able to load my blog right now, it just says error.
"My blog." Back in the day, when everyone just had "a blog." Haha. Now I feel like most people have specific reasons to have a blog - cooking, crafts, etc. Otherwise, I think people share mundane personal news with social media.
I am intrigued by way in which I want time to flow, and I have tried to be more mindful about it. I used to spend a lot of time at home worrying about going to work. I would start to think about it as soon as I was off from work. Omg, the weekend is going to go really fast. It's gonna be over before I know it and I'll be back at work. Then at work, I would just wish to be home and count down the days/hours till I was home again. But then I realized I was just bouncing between two states of discontent, and wishing for time to go faster, or making it go faster by worry. So I try to enjoy all of the time, even at work. When people at work say "I hope your shift goes by quickly," I smile to myself and think "I hope I get to live a lot of life. I hope it doesn't go too fast!"
I have tried to do this by noticing how it feels to know it is my last night of work. I feel joyous and happy that I'm about to go home, but I'm still working. On any given shift, though, being home is not far away. I can feel joyous and happy about being in a state of working and about to be home even on my first day of work.
Another illustration of this respect of time is that I have a party planned for Saturday. I am really looking forward to it. I realized with dismay that after the party comes Sunday, which is a workday for me. But then I remembered I have the weekend off, and it was OK to just look forward to Saturday because there is not work immediately following it. But how can I just be so focused on Saturday that I miss the rest of my days off preceding it? How can I appreciate them less, just because I have more of them after Saturday? How much more would I enjoy life if I just appreciated all of it?
I wrote this song on my way home from work. I frequently bike and I was riding through the cemetery and then a lot of this came out all at once. I am part of the code team at work, and there are a lot of old men who die. Every time I sing the verse "What makes you so different than that old man lying in his final dying bed? He breathes his last, he slips away, it's like he never was" I think of the last person I saw die. Their visage just pops into my mind. It replaces the last one I saw die.
Sometimes family is there, sometimes not. Sometimes it's expected, sometimes not. The similarities are the grey color of their skin and empty eyes. It's creepy, yes, but not any more creepy than living with the knowledge this is coming up for you and me. One day, your eyes will not be able to see that you are just a skeleton. What is the answer? I don't know.
One time, when I had only been a nurse for a few months, I had a patient who put on his call button while I was washing my hands at the sink outside his door at the nurses station. As I was drying my hands, I looked up and saw the remote monitor alarming.
I quickly entered his room and he was already dead.
When I started nursing school, I had no car. When I finished nursing school I was on my second car and it broke shortly after I started working as a nurse, so I biked every day, rain or shine, for about a year. Then when I got together with my boyfriend Ethan, he fixed up an '95 Toyota Corolla that he had as a second car and gave it to me, and I started driving to work. It was light blue, covered with hippie bumper stickers that had all been peeled or fallen halfway off. There was a design flaw in the car that made all of the keys for '95 Corollas nearly interchangeable, especially when worn, so Ethan also gave it to me with a club, which I faithfully used.
After a particularly stressful night in the ICU as a new nurse, driving home around 8am, I decided to stop at the mini-Walmart on the way home. I was in the habit of wearing lipstick at the time, and buying the $8 lipstick instead of the $1 lipstick felt like a real indulgence after having been a poor student.
I decided to pull in and indulge myself. It was right on the way home, only a mile or two from the hospital. I heard a voice in my head say "No, just go home. You have to work tomorrow. You have plenty of lipstick." After pulling into a parking space, I stepped out of the car. Now, there was another flaw in the car. Whether it was a design flaw or just a result of being old, I don't know. The door tended to swing shut on its own. The next thought I had was "Shit!", as the door had closed, the door was locked, and my keys were inside. Additionally, the lights were on, and my phone was in the car.
Thankfully my wallet was in my pocket. I was inexperienced enough with cars that I'd never locked myself out, but familiar enough with pop culture portrayals of peril to have visions of easily unlocking the car with a wire. Target was next door, which had a better chance of having a metal clothing hanger. I ended up buying some sort of kitchen utensil which I was able unwind, and I spent at least a half-hour trying to unlock the door, knowing the battery was getting deader by the minute. Ethan was already sleeping and probably had the ringer off, so I decided against hunting down a cell phone.
Even though Eugene has a lot of buses, most only ran every 30 minutes, and to get home I needed to make multiple connections, so I spent several hours walking and riding buses to get home. When I woke up in the afternoon, I let Ethan know what had happened. He'd had a stressful day himself, but was understanding and we decided to just leave a little early in his car to unlock the car and do a jump start.
When we arrived, the car was intact. Ethan unlocked the car with difficulty, as the lock was uncooperative with lock picking efforts. As expected, the battery was dead, but with a jump it started right up. I was so excited I got out of the car and hugged him. "What a relief! Thank you so much!" I heard the door shut behind me. Ethan had gotten back into his car and was ready to say goodbye, but when I tried the door, I found it had locked itself. I assume this was from our combined lock picking attempts. The engine was also running, and the lights were on. When I told Ethan, he said a quiet "Fuck," and held his head in his hands as he leaned on his steering wheel. I was just kind of stunned, and on the verge of tears of tiredness and frustration. I turned away and leaned my back on his car and tried to think of what we were going to do next.
Fifteen seconds later, before either of us formulated a plan, a car pulled into the space next to my car. A young hispanic woman got out, and started leading her 4 children into Walmart. I realized she had just parked an older Corolla. "Excuse me!" I said, "I know this is going to sound crazy, but could I just borrow your key for a minute?" and yammered something about a design flaw in the locking system of Corollas. She looked at me for a moment, appearing confused, but she held out her keys to me.
I slipped the key in my door, and turned it. The door unlocked, and I made it to work on time.
Ever since I have had a sort of healthy paranoia about the possibility of locking myself out of my car, and even though the car I have now doesn't lock itself, I always check my pocket for my keys twice before I shut the door behind me.
Sometimes it's just hard to get past titling a post.
On my rainy bike commute home this morning I thought of a story that always amuses me. And then I thought of another story, and another, and I thought I would like to write them down. I don't want to ask anyone to read them, but if anyone is still reading this, then perhaps you would like to read them anyway. I have had a long night of work, and my hands are about shot from charting, so they will have to continue to brew in my mind. But perhaps soon one will present itself here.
No more Facebook for me for a while. Too bad, because there is good on Facebook I believe, but there's too much going on in my life right now.
I'm just trying to get out of the habit of checking Facebook first thing when I wake up and last thing before I go to bed :/
On the plus side, I looked at my calendar to confirm an appointment for next week and I realized I have a different appointment tomorrow!
A smartphone is useful for so many things, but also a time waster in so many ways. Same with Facebook. I have friends from afar who I definitely would not have the time to keep up with at all in person, but I keep up with them on Facebook and enjoy seeing them in person when I am able.
I think the best solution is just to be mindful.
I can't wait to wake up and have good times with my children tomorrow. I am sooo lucky! As frustrated as parenting can be, we have such great times together. This evening we put together a gingerbread house which was a kit from Trader Joe's. Pictures are on Ethan's phone because my phone camera is broken :/
I've biked 32 miles in the last two work days, which is 32 miles more than I've biked in over six months! It's about 3 miles longer round trip to get to work from my new house. And there's a huge hill on the way home. I already feel better, though. I really have noticed the effects from going from 60 miles a week to buying a car and biking zero miles a week. Unfortunately 7 of my gears (the lowest ones! ) are broken, so I am getting an unecessarily killer workout. Soon to be fixed...
I love commuting to work. It takes about 17 minutes longer to bike and there's no possible way that I'd get a decent workout in that time otherwise! And it's free, and I'm less flabby when I bike! The pounds haven't really crept up but everything is becoming fat instead of muscle.
I also like starting things when they're least likely to work out. I used to start new workout plans and weight loss goals in November, because I figured if I could lose weight during the holidays and not wait till New Year rolled around, I'd be more likely to succeed. In the same way, it feels kind of good to be starting biking while it's pouring rain.
"Do you agree to all of these terms?" "I do."
It's official, I'm divorced. So anticlimactic, since in any real sense of the word we divorced long ago.
My kids are amazing hikers. Just want to boast that they climbed a butte around here (just over a mile one-way) in 2 hours, including all the time we spent at the top. No complaining, no having to prod them up. Millie did say a few times on the way down that she was tired. I haven't really hiked with them because neither Porter nor myself could really carry Millie without musculoskeletal pain of various sorts, and she couldn't go very far. It was very nice :)
I went shopping for clothes the other day and made some fantastic finds. Tights of all kinds were on clearance at Forever21 and to my surprise when I got them home they seemed very good quality and thick. I'll have to post pictures of some winter outfits.
I am not happy about the way things wear out. It just happens. My favorite pair of black heels lost the bottom of the heel, and the leather itself is very worn. And I noticed some of my favourite clothes having sweat discoloration, holes, etc, when I went through some clothes today.
But at least there's more! Thrift store shopping makes replacing items in my wardrobe (save a few special things that would be very difficult to replace) fairly inexpensive, and I do like the fact that I have actually worn out clothes, and not just gotten rid of them because they're out of style or something. And my shoes are very easily found, and I know exactly which model/size fits me well.
I went out for my birthday and asked E to take pictures of my dress. I'm not getting blogger to put the pictures where I want then. That is the off-the-shoulder dress. I keep thinking I turned 30! It was $7 at the thrift store with one my normal black pumps. I went out without any makeup purposely. It's not that I never go out bare faced, I just didn't want to have anyone see "red lipstick" in their mind when they saw me. I just wanted them to see me.
Also I wore jeans out at night the other day, which I never do! I tried to make it interesting. I think it worked? Didn't really like it but it was better than a tee. The buckle is a real scorpion in acrylic. The jacket is a free pile find from long ago, which I rarely wear, but can't make myself get rid of. Jeans $6 LL Bean from a thrift store. Hat belongs to E :) Belt was from my sister probably 15 years ago. Oops. You can see we haven't unpacked everything yet.
So much to say.
The short of it is that I Porter and I separated, are in the process of divorcing, and I have moved in with my boyfriend E. This has taken the course of about a year.
I guess I don't have to divulge any more details than I wish. It's been a good life change for me. I feel more like myself than I have in years. I've had flashbacks to old feelings I haven't felt for years. I feel positive feelings often.
I'm trying to get rid of the guilt that plagues me. I've felt guilty single, guilt married and partnered. Guilty mostly for any happiness. I often feel like every moment of happiness, no matter how "innocent" or "good" is something I'm going to pay for with suffering. As a result it's been difficult for me to feel happy - certainly difficult to actually search it out for myself.
It's nice to just sit back and enjoy it when I feel happy. It's nice to try to figure out what makes me happy.
Maybe I'll blog more often. Though I do enjoy real life so much more than I used to, and sometimes public writing about it just doesn't do it. Call me. Let's talk and hang out :)
