The End is just the beginning

So I have been working hard "editing" my blogs so I can "publish" them all in a book! For publication? I only wish! For personal satisfaction-yep that's it right there. Close enough for now, anyway. And I need to wrap it up, this "Volume I" if you will, because there will be more, count on it!

All kinds of thoughts enter my swirling mind, There is so much to do, so much to say, so much to find...looking for just the right pictures to attach to each story. I have added and deleted and just now after review, see that I have added some pictures twice, so I will need replacements. Geez Louweez! This editing stuff is a full time job! God, I would have loved "that" job. Just poring over other people's writing, their books, their articles, their thoughts...I know, as a writer that I make typo errors all the time and I have a keen eye for them, my own included of course! I just want to get out that RED pen and scratch through those errors and finally feel like a Creative Writing or English teacher! THAT is what I really wanted to be when I "grew up" With a minor in ART of course.

How many of us actually do that? Become what they wanted? I dunno ( slang word for "I don't know" and I am not a tight ass, I do accept slang- no RED pens for that ) How LONG does it take to figure this out? I cannot relate to anyone saying " Oh, I always wanted to be a nurse, since I was a little girl" Not me! Never and I mean NEVER entered this mind. I never even met a nurse, UNTIL I met my neighbor Fran, who wanted to BE a nurse. So I drove her to the school and she enrolled and then started working and told me her adventures and the next thing you knew! I was a nurse too! I was in my 20s though and then Lo and Behold! Fran and I went BACK to nursing school again! But together this time, in our 40s! Whew! I feel "blessed" to have "found" such a career. My life was changed forever, just by meeting one person...Wow.




Nursing became my life...24/7. You can't just "turn it off" EVER, and the ones that can scare me and they should scare you too. But I ain't ( so?) talking about them! Nope! They don't even count, UNLESS they are doing some kinda invasive procedure on you, like starting an IV or something. Then Be Afraid, be very afraid! And don't be shy, ask questions! You know that feeling you get when something or someone just isn't "quite right" It is your "gut" feeling and it is there for a reason. LISTEN to it. If you ask a nurse, "Have you ever started an IV before? and she says, (after it is done ) No, I sure haven't! Pretty good for my first one, huh?" Then you can bet that she HAS done it at least a million times. If she dodges your question and misses the stick more than 2 times, then be wary BUT a "seasoned" nurse will tell the truth, shake her head and say "Well I am off today and I will get my friend to come in" And you know what? She will, get her friend that is...

Every single nurse has a friend that she works with. WHY? Because you become friends with people you trust and who care about others and you. It may be the best "perk" I have ever received in my nursing career-lifelong friends. From the very first, Fran, who inspired me to become a nurse and became my "first" BNFF,  you know, Best Nurse Friend Forever... If I had to list them all, it would be hard, but I will try...

I met Sue and Vickie, the most constant and sweet, in nursing school. And then Marie and Jackie, the most "faithful"  and Betty, another inspiration and Dawn, the most loving and caring, and Susan, dedicated and loyal, all in the Newborn Nursery. And of course Kathy, a high school chum and a brilliant nurse. And then Binnie, who I lost recently and who's passing really led me to THINK of The End...end of life, end of a book or chapter, end of a career, end of whatever... I worked with Binnie in Medical Records and I survived there "because" of her. And then, back to Sue, who NEVER gave up on me and what I had in me, perhaps the truest friend of all, she always, always had/has my back. And then Chris, who became the "younger sister" of my choosing and is my sidekick today as we speak! And then Georgia, who is "always" on my mind, and then Michelle, my Belle, All I can say is No wonder there are songs written about her. And Barb, who was wrapping up her career in nursing and gave hope of another kind. And Carolyn, who has the  greatest sense of humor and fun , who showed me I "could" be a teacher. And then Lynn, the finest, clinical nurse I have ever known and Lisa, who later became what she always wanted to be- a police officer-she is/was a bright and beautiful inspiration to me, to this day. And then back to Marie, my "evil twin" the other half to "my" M and M, perhaps the most versatile and talented nurse I have ever known.

There is a blog ahead for every one of them. They are my friends for a reason and there are also many who were friends for a season, who I will mention along the way, as well. I will not forget any of you, rest assured. And so "The End" to my first Blogger Book is a tribute to all my friends and family who will "become" Volume II...and become a "new" beginning...

Cuz in the end, or the long and short of it, it is all about love and family and friends and forgiveness and tolerance and...

The love you take is equal to the love you make...


                           
                                                                            
                                             
                                                                            
                                                         

Grief

I wrote this poem after Donna's sister Belinda died.

It may not be "usual" blog material, but it is important to acknowledge nonetheless...Donna and I shared a love for "All Things Shakespeare" at one time, and so it should be read in that light...

Grief’s Door

Where would thou lead me, Through Her door?

To find my heart pierced By Her swift arrows?

Arrows wrought by loss, Not Cupid’s love…

When will She leave me? With Summer’s end?

Or will She stay within me Until I am in my twilight?

How could She steal from me One so precious and adored,

And leave behind Her dreary presence?

Stay not with me! For I am spent and worn from these bitter tears…

Depart from me, you Thief! You! Who have robbed me

You have taken a very part of my soul…
You have taken one so dear and ingrained in my heart
That I fear it may skip a beat

And forget to beat again…

My mind swims in your confusion

It leads me not to a safe shore, But weary from ever paddling…

Run from me, Robber! Leave me my rest

For my heart and my mind and my very soul are torn by you

How long will you stay? A day? A week? A year? A lifetime?

Have mercy, I pray. Do not blanket me with this affliction forever!

Who can save me? My Lord, my God, has thou taken my loved one to be with Thee?

Can You love this one so dear to me as much as I did?

The one whose very absence crushes me with pain?

The one whose voice I will hear no more?

Whose lips will not kiss or arms will not hold me?

Do those eyes twinkle now for You and those who came before?

Will you now hold this one securely in Your arms and kiss now that dear face?

Oh, promise me ...Oh, promise me

Can this hole in my heart ever heal?

What can fill it, my Lord?

Will You now comfort me in my night of Grief and also in the mourning?

Would He who loved the world so much That He gave His only son

Save my heart and soul and mind

And send His peace while She is still tormenting me?

I pray He will ...I pray He will



I sometimes read this poem and wonder...just "who" wrote it... I dedicate it to 3 women I lost in my life that I loved dearly; My niece Michelle, her mother Pam and my beloved mother in law Helen.The grief I felt with the loss of each of them is faint now after many years, but not gone...

Ruth 1:16-17- And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.

And today 08/07/2012, my dear, sweet friend Binnie died, and so this is for you, too. My heart is broken once again in the loss of my wonderful friend.
Sadly Donna passed away as well in 2013 and then Denise passed away the next year. I found out through Facebook which is a blessing and a curse... My sorrow and my grief cannot be released into words as of yet...

Life just sucks sometimes...

Well, I haven't written in weeks...Why? Cuz Life sucks, That's why...I am not quite sure when this Cluster Suck started-thought I was gonna say something else,huh? Hey my blog is at the very least PG rated. But back to the "suck fest" I guess it all started in March, when  I became sick and because it was St Paddy's day, some kinda Banshee must have attached herself to me...My blog, My explanation, OK?



So I "missed" O'Candelmo's Big Pre-St.Patrick's Day Party...and then I missed The Irish Day Parade in my hometown-the only "hometown" event worth going to, I might add. So I became deeply depressed and the Banshee wanted me to "find a bridge" that I could jump off of. Luckily, I am scared of heights so I just told her "HELL NO!" and pulled the covers up over my head and just disappeared for awhile, The saddest part is nobody noticed, except my "trusty True Irish Girl Sidekick"  Chris and my "Scorpio SIL Linda"



Life just went on for everyone else as lovely as you please and I realized that LIFE SUCKS! I threw myself a truly deserved "pity party" Oh yeah, you betcha I did and I am still celebrating a little here and there as we speak! now I realize that family and friends do NOT have ESPN as I like to call it and maybe some just didn't know what a HUGE hole I had fallen into. And I have decided to forgive all 270 of my facebook 'friends' for this. After all, people "suck" too...

March turned into April and then May and June and July and nothing good seemed to happen, just a whole lotta boring and loneliness and I wasn't scared of heights anymore... I was wondering if I could "mapquest" a bridge...Luckily Dee called me in the midst of all this strife from Alabama and she DOES have ESP, so she talked me off of the bridge until we could "jump" together...and that wasn't gonna happen anytime soon- we were both stuck where we were stuck. I realized after talking many hours with my BFF, that other people actually thought that Life sucked too! And she was one of them. So why look for a bridge to "jump" from? What I really needed was to "build my own bridge" and get over it and get over me too...

In the meantime, I just couldn't get over the fact that People Suck! Yep, I said it and I mean it, they suck...We are lucky to know a handful of people who really care about us, faulted as we are and  we are blessed to have these people who accept us as we are. You may think you have a lot of  friends, but when the rubber meets the road, there will most likely be just a few left standing beside you. So! I decided to be thankful for those still standing and just let the others jump or build their own bridges because they could be in a deeper hole than I ever was in! And if I "noticed" and wanted to lay some asphalt down for them on their bridges, I would, but if they just wanted to throw bricks at me, because maybe they thought that "I" sucked...then I would just lay those bricks down on the bridge, too... No sense wasting them.

So here's the upside: I have to forgive Life, which sucks and forgive the faulted people, like me ,who suck.  And then I have to pick a new word: like "believe" Nah, I used that word for like 2-3 years straight until something that I actually wanted to believe would happen, happened! Yep that was a good word, alright. So, I picked "thankful" and then I actually became thankful for some of the people who sucked. How about that? Even words can turn on you, in a good way. So I will be thankful that even though I became sick and broken again, that I now could choose to "believe" that I could be "thankful" for people who were just in different places on their "bridges" Maybe they don't even know they need to build one, maybe they are half way over or lucky enough to be all the way over. And if they are thinking of jumping, then I can be thankful that I don't want to jump anymore too. And I "guess" I could try and talk them down or at the very least, throw a few bricks at them, so they could start building their very own bridge, right there and then, right?

So the moral of the story is this: Life does suck, People suck and you SUCK! ( myself included) And it's really a crappy word, so pick another one, like "believe" or "thankful" or "forgive" or even "bridge" And realize that some of us are walking "Seven Mile Bridges" and some only have a hop, skip and a jump and maybe all any of us really need is a little "kindness" along the way...hmm that's a nice word, now isn't it?

And if you try a little kindness then you'll overlook the blindness

17 again

I can write about anything…I just look at a thing or think of someone and I write…and then I have writers block when it comes down to it. And what or who shall I write about? Did I ever write about the truth or the time I seem to be stuck in? There’s something about my age, my generation that makes us all think we are 17 again. A co-worker looked at me at lunch and said “That’s where I really am…” and she meant... or what I think she meant is; our faces and bodies are growing older, but we see that 17 year old in the 60s and early 70s who really just wanted a few simpler things like:

The Vietnam War to end…

The Beatles ( or The Monkees ) to come to town...

To wear the latest fashions...

To have a boyfriend...

To wear the latest clothes, whether we bought them or sewed them or were given “hand-me-downs” from a friend; I think they call them “vintage” now. There was no doubt that you could wear them, they just fit, it was a 17 year old body! everything fit! If only I had taken pictures of my favorite outfits! We had a closet full, thanks to my brother’s girlfriend, mostly. She brought us her “gently worn” hand me downs every few weeks when we were in the last years of high school. She kept us from taking "that" hit... We were dressed for high school success! From Carnaby Street, where my idol Twiggy was from (Austin Powers, to the youngers) to preppy Gant shirts and Villager skirts and LaTisse purses to Bass Weejuns...no,I never had those, but Donna had Weejuns and we just dreamed about them. We wore saddle-shoes and Mary Jane or “baby doll” shoes mostly. We had “shifts" and mini-skirts with wide belts and micro-mini dresses that we all wore to the Monkees concert ( as close as we were ever gonna get to the Beatles) Jimi Hendrix actually “opened" for the Monkees; it was awesome long before awesome! We borrowed clothes from each other and sewed clothes.

We made shifts, mostly and I made the dress I wore to homecoming. It was a pink satin empire waisted dress with long sleeves and a silver trim around the waist...No pictures though, nobody cared enough to be there or take one for me...

There I was in that short dress and I had another boyfriend at the time, but I went with Chris, instead, 

who I was thinking would make a really nice, new boyfriend, but it didn’t work out. I was too quiet and painfully shy and I spent too many "moments" watching my old boyfriend dancing with that blonde chic instead of making my own moments with Chris on the dance floor, myself. He was handsome and sexy and all I really wanted from him was to dance with him and hear him say
 “you are so pretty tonight” Years later, I found out he carried my picture with him when he was in the Navy and told his buddies I was "gorgeous” Wow.

And as vain as it seems, most  17 year old girls will finally admit that what they really wanted was:

To be called pretty

To have someone tell you that “My Girl” by The Temptations reminded them of you,

 instead of feeling like you were being directly sung to when
"Hey There Lonely Girl" came on the radio.

To be a stewardess or model; anything that might take you NYC. 

There were no long term dreams, we loved and lived in that 17 year old moment.

I lived a lot age 15 to 17 and I did not do drugs or sleep around…sometimes I wonder  why I didn’t…

 I guess it was The Baptist church that kept me wholesome, and Dee and I went every week...

To hear the gospel preached? Hell, no! ( but it sure rubbed off) There were some really cute boys at
 that church and we wanted to date all of them. Bobby was one of them, so was Jim and Kenny and
Steve and even Paul...but he was always in the "friend" zone and he knew it and paid me back in
other ways. He told Steve's mother that I was pregnant, which was not true, I told you I was wholesome, didn't I ? What a jerk!

 To this day he denies it and Stevie's mom was so pissed that she  beat the crap out of him with

 a fly swatter for that little lie. She thought I wasn't good enough for her baby boy and that I lived on the wrong side of The Boulevard.
 Just because she saw us kissing at the beach one day. Big deal, lady!
We were "just" kissing. Years later he said it was one of his "most memorable moments" in a 25 year class reunion booklet.
What the hell? He needs to find the nearest bridge and "get over it"
Thought I was gonna say "Jump off of it" huh? Nah, he was cute and sweet,
but he was a Mama's Boy, that's all...

17 again...a simpler, more complicated time? You bet...Would I change anything? Sure, why not?
People that say they wouldn't seem delusional to me. Why wouldn't you change to make things better for you and others?
 What? Worried about messing up the space-time continuum? What a crock!
That just happens in movies, or does it?

And the way she looked was way beyond compare...

Tick Tock

SO many topics, so little time... I am thinking that I don't like the way time is passing! The older I get the quicker, it goes. Now I don't mind it when Monday through Friday goes by like a flash, but can the weekends slow down a little? Geez! 2012 has already "lost" January! Now it's Valentine's Day and then St Patrick's Day and then Easter and then summer with July 4 and then the fall is here with Halloween and Thanksgiving and then Christmas again!  Bam! 2013! Already here!

Let's back up a little, shall we? or "can" we? Some parts of the day go by sooo slow,  like the 9-5 part although I do love my job and sometimes think "where has the time gone? I was just getting into a groove and now it's time to go home...Oh well, seeya tomorrow!"

And then I get home and it's time to get dinner and chill out and watch a TV show or  two. Seems like no time to exercise. I'm "too tired" to exercise and that is why I am hanging out on the couch....By the time, I think I might want to get up and move, then it is time to get up and move upstairs and take a shower and  go to bed. Phew, where did that evening go?
I try to spend some time writing but my mind is already catching some ZZZs and I am misspelling every other word! Thank God for spellcheck! I hope it works and my mind wanders again to thinking that I really do NEED to finish that crosstitch I started 3 years ago...It is a birth announcement for my second granddaughter, that is a "mimic" of the one I made for her cousin, my first granddaughter. That one only took me 2 -3 yrs to complete...

Time, you are no friend of mine
Always running away from me!
Stand still and just be...with me!
Time, are you an enemy? 

Ticking, tocking. Always "clocking"
Clocking my minutes, clocking my hours,
 clocking my days and clocking my nights...
Time, stop running! Taking with you my very life!
Running with the moments that I desire, running with the special times...
times with family, times with friends.
Times that I should have spent more wisely...
Will I ever see that the time that flashes by so swiftly
 is really all I have for "this" moment in time? 

Can time just stop and stand still ?
And let me finish my stitching, finish my writings, finish my readings?
Time, come sit beside me on  my comfy couch and "be" my friend!
 Let me just breathe and "not" count  to ten, because ten comes too quickly.
 Let me count to a thousand or ten thousand and slowly, slow time down...
Time, time, time...



And so I've run out of time and must finish my editing tomorrow and post my blog after that. I am not on a deadline to finish,but sometimes wish I were. I would write more that way. If I just had the time to really spend doing what I want to do, I would probably just waste the time and "veg" out on the couch anyway.                          

If I could save time in a bottle...

Don't argue...

Went to a "support group" with my sister last night for Caregivers...Hmmm, so who are we caring for? Well,  my sister's mother ( as we like to call her ) comes to mind...BUT we find out that we care for more than her , or we should care for more than her, like maybe OURSELVES! There's a thought.
So there was another set of siblings and we are told that we are all lucky to have sibling support and we also find out that "their" mother is the same kind of mother as "our" mother. We went to Leeza's Place which is a place where there is support for people who "care" for their parents as they age and face the challenges of memory loss, confusion, lack of concentration, wait a minute! Are we still talking about our parents, or us???

Some have Alzheimer's or Oldtimers, whatever you want to call it, or Dementia or what we medical people used to call OBS or Organic Brain Syndrome-What? Who the heck knew what that meant anyway? Hello! It means they are OLD, OK?

I personally think that as we get older, we lose brain cells, like maybe every time we brush our hair, brain cells are attached to the fly away hair that we lose....I'm just saying...one Woman's theory. And tonight's word or theme is "positivity" Well, I would say that we are positively looking at the same thing happening to us! Yes, because Bonnie Sunshine told us that 55% of our makeup is genetic! Ah crap! The "odds" are not looking so good, folks! Hey Bonnie, hope you got some ideas for the other 45% we are tying a rope and hanging on here!

Am I gonna start to hallucinate, too? Well, we now learn that we are not supposed to argue with her, just let her be delusional...hmmm, we've been trying to redirect her to the truth or as we say "reality" and she gets all fired up when we don't agree with "her" reality! At first, her delusions were strange, but more pleasant and less terrifying. She told us that "someone" came into her room and took her address book and changed names and crossed out other names and just screwed the whole thing up! Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the "new" handwriting is hers...Then! "someone" drew black circles around the faces in all her photos...Sounded a lot like "The Great Teddy Bear Incident of 2009"  the one where "someone" came into her room and drew black magic marker circles around her little stuffed teddy bears' eyes. Well, come to find out, "Old" people start having a little trouble with their vision, which could be the answer to some of this delusion.

But then, "someone" came in and get this! They REDECORATED her room! Wish "someone" would come to my house, Mom! So turns out, we should just agree, and say "Wonderful job, I like what they've done with the place" instead of "Are you nuts, Mom?" Someone also brought her a brand new sewing box, too, and when she showed it to me, all I could think was "that's the same piece of crap you've had for 12 years" but this time I just nodded and said "Very nice"

And now the kicker... it seem's that certain medications ( Gee, like the one I told them to discontinue, Oh, 5-6 weeks ago!) will cause these poor old souls to actually have hallucinations in the first place! Are ya kidding me? I knew that Serroquell was some bad stuff--Some people call it Silly-quell...So these people that we trust in the ALF to take care of all these old people don't know Jack or Jill about the side effects of the pills that they are giving to them! As a nurse, I try to trust until you earn my distrust and son of a bitch if they didn't earn it...I don't trust any of them...I want to yell at them and make them take Silly-quell for punishment! "The idiots are running the asylum" comes to mind and that about sums them up!
But, not to worry, I only have a 55% chance of having the very same thing happen to me when I get to be an old woman Well, if that's the way it's gonna be, then I positively refuse to grow old gracefully!

So if you should survive 'til a hundred and five...

Happy New Year

2012-Here we go! Hmmm, Shall I look back and reflect or look ahead and ponder? If I look back, I can see how fast a year can fly! Seems I was just at my brother and sis-in-law's new lake house celebrating 2011 with them and it was the first New Years Eve party we had been to in years! We usually just stay home like we did tonite.

Looking back to 2011, I was in a job that for 2 years had pretty much taken the wind out of my sails. I worked part time doing things that no nurse should ever do~ sit at a desk for hours and hours and answer phones and read charts and direct traffic and transfers and work with some of the best and worst nurses I have ever met in my 30+ career! The "most miserable" of men and women, for sure.

So how does one get to this point?
Well let's see...I thought it was because I was "broken". I had taken too many hits to my body, the last one sent me flying into a wall because I tripped over a wheelchair that wasn't there 2 seconds before. I remember being on the ground and not caring if there were any broken bones or bruises...I just wanted up and out and after some visitor helped me up, I refused to go to the ER...I have this thing-I will walk away on broken bones if I have to but I will NOT become the injured. Funny thing about it is, that my body felt the impact a few short days later. And as I had said several times before...I'm gettin too old for this shit-I gotta get outta this place, the frontlines are killing me. I had been at the bedside battlefield for many years and had injured my back and various other bones and muscles in my body and it was time to retire them to the dreaded desk job. I had done this before and hated it, but this time I felt I had no choice so I willingly took a transition job.


What were those nurses so damn serious and miserable about? No crash carts, nobody's life hanging in the balance. I can truly say that I hated that job and it was no secret. I was constantly looking for a new job and I had my eyes set on one in the promised land. I had applied for the job I wanted three times and the charm finally worked in February 2012. I left Purgatory and arrived at Heaven's Gate. I no longer felt like a step-child or orphan. I had a home of my own: my computer, my chair, my desk, my phone, my everything and I hate to admit it but the job I hated actually prepared me for the job I love. Who knew?

Can you imagine working in a place that you feel welcome? Or you are treated like a professional? A place where the perks are many and the pains are few.I have arrived and I will stay here and be happy here and retire from here in the next several years.
So job-wise 2012 was a great year to say the least.

It was also a year that I lost my home in Georgia. I am renting it now, but the dream of living there is finally gone...And after much agitation, I refinanced and let strangers move into my home. I will never go back there and I hope to sell it and break all ties this year. We bought this home in 2006 hoping to move there someday, but the economy tanked and it just never worked out. I loved it there though...I "lived" there...and I worked here. My heart aches for NE Georgia and it will always "be on my mind". I cannot tell you how many flashbacks I have in a day...to a place, a scene, to one of the many roads I travelled. I felt such peace there.I have to let her go though.I brought my things back here and maybe it will help to surround myself with my furniture, my dishes, my blankets and my quilts, but I will always miss her and so "you can't always get what you want, but you can try sometimes and you get what you need"

Why should one person be so lucky as to have a great job and wonderful home all in the same place anyway?? That would actually mean that I could be happy 24 hrs a day! your job? 8hrs a day, your home? another 8hrs a day and the other 8? sleep, wonderful sleep, for the most part anyway. I can look back and say I gained a great job and lost a beautiful home but what I have not talked about is the fact that I have kept closest to my heart, the love of family and friends and that is the greatest gift of all.

For 2012 I want to remain happy at my job and learn to be happy in my home here and maintain the love of family and friends. I would like to take better care of myself but I have broken that promise to myself too many times so we'll see. Last year, I actually made a resolution that I knew I could keep: I would gain weight! and by Golly, I did it! I did not disappoint myself that way. It was really easy! So I resolve to do something that I know I can do again this year and that is to be thankful, first for my family and friends and then for my job and then for my home and then I will hope that I will love myself enough to take care of me for a change, but I can't make any promises about that one...

We drank a toast to innocence, we drank a toast to time...