One Week

Can I just give my prediction of election here? I could be proven to be completely wrong, but the odds are really 50/50 anyway. So can I just say here there that:

Obama is going to be our next president.

He will be our first African-American president (even though he is technically mixed race).

My own grandmother, a little, old white lady who lived in close proximity to Plainfield during the riots is going to vote for Obama. She is, as a devout Catholic, staunchly anti-abortion, but a life-long Democrat mostly due to FDR leading her family along with the rest of the county out of the Great Depression. I think part of her knows that the pro-life stance is mostly a foil for some peoples' desires to combine church and state. In times like these, and times like those, most people know that the best course of action is to recover our economic state and to keep the judges out of the uteri.

God will sort that all out later. 

I think you might be getting an inclination as to how I will vote in SEVEN DAYS.

And what a crazy ride it's been thus far. I love election years. I love watching the inane minutiae of political coverage minute by minute.  I stand in fascination of the evotlution of CNN from being a very dry, but reliable source of news to what it is today-pretty much just a cartoon. Has anyone been watching Anderson Cooper? He's the new pundit-eye candy that Dan Abrams was during the 2000 election and 9/11. But he might be gay, which makes it all the more tantalizing. 

Mostly, I love the fact that we are going to have a fresh face in the White House, after eight years of embarrassment under the Bush administration. 

Enjoy the next 7 days, people. Something good will come out of it. I am quite sure of that.

But remember my prediction. If I am wrong, you can slam me without remittance to your heart's desire. And if I am right? Well, then history will have been made.

My New Reality

It is safe to say that I am never satisfied. There have been brief moments in life when I have felt content, like on my honeymoon, following the births of the girls, or when I graduated from nursing school. It only occurs after I've crawled across the glowing coals that I've felt even a glimmer of satisfaction.

But like everything, it is a fleeting emotion. After crossing any imaginary finish line, I still have this burning desire in me to define what is next and move towards it. The momentum always keeps me going.

Now what? This momentum has been replaced by confusion. We are here, we are back in New Jersey and I can't make any sense of what to do next. This apartment will do, but it has nothing to do with the life I desire. Work is very good, but I just feel like I could do so much more with the agency. However, for the time being I am limited. It would take a hell of a lot more school to be prescribing medications. I hope to get there, but I don't even know where to begin.

I am itching to buy another house in '09. I want to stay in Rutherford and the next year is probably a good time to pursue this as housing prices continue to fall. By my estimation, and given what I would be bringing with me in cash to a deal, I could actually wind up paying less per month on a mortgage AND taxes than I pay per month in rent. This is a tantalizing possibility. 

There is also the aspect of owning my own home again and doing whatever I please with it. Not having to share a roof with another tenant in another unit sounds like heaven. Being able to just let the dogs do their thing in a yard that's not filled with the other tenant's TRASH sounds good too. Not worrying about the baby getting tetanus from the various pieces of jagged metal CRAP sounds really good too. 

It is very hard to find a 3 bedroom apartment that allows dogs. I have briefly toyed with the idea of actually placing the dogs in another home so that I could find a different apartment, but this was just madness talking.  The dogs are getting along like champs and I could never part with them. I love them with all my heart, even though they spend the better part of their evenings getting scolded for carrying out their canine lesbian sex acts in front of me. 

I think a big part of making this decision to buy a house is that it is not something I'm doing with a partner, or even in memory of a partner, or under any sort of spell of grief that is making me think unclearly. It is a very real, very worldly dilemma.  As far as wanting a house, really feeling like I need my own home again-it's a very clear need of mine. 

There were a million and one reasons why I should not have purchased property in Florida 3 months after my husband passed away. The understatement of the century may have been that I wasn't thinking clearly. I get so angry sometimes over having done this. I wish someone would've talked me out of it. I think once Scott may have gently asked if buying property was really the best choice right now, which I waved away like flies off of a pie. The truth is, no one in my inner circle was thinking clearly. All of us-our grief was so very raw at that time. 

At a time like that, all thinking is delusional, magical, and highly flawed as far as the real world is concerned. It's just what happens. The air is filled with special catch phrases:  passed away, happens for a reason, would've wanted, and so on.  

I've come to pick apart some of these phrases once the magical thinking began to abate and reality set in. Here is what I've come up with:

Passed Away-this sounds quite peaceful, and I believe it was for him, which I am grateful for given how much I loved him and how I wouldn't have wanted him to suffer any more. However, the reality of the situation is, here was a man at age 37 who died unexpectedly, 2 days after moving to Florida to start a new life with a wife and 2 children ages 14 and 1 1/2. So while he may have "passed away," in reality he was severed from our lives in a most horrifying way. Sadie was just getting the hang of the idea of being a teenager and Penny, unfortunately, will have absolutely no memory of this man at all. And not to beat a dead horse, but this makes my job as a mother very difficult.

Happens for a Reason-this one I've come to hate the most. I don't think I can ever utter this to another human being in regard to a death for the rest of my life. For anyone who has said it to me, I'm not aiming this at you. Sometimes there is literally nothing else to say.  I've said it to myself over and over again and still come up empty. We were just trying to convince ourselves that the reason is out there some where and will materialize and we'll all be so happy again once we just find that reason. I'm not beyond thinking that the reason might be that I am just not allowed to enjoy my life fully, and that my children don't deserve the deep, rich happiness of having a very good father figure in their lives partnered with a mother who is content with life. 

(I will allow this much-possibly the reason will not become apparent until generations from now, long after we're all gone. This gives me a glimmer of hope but only because I am a sucker for genealogy. It's the only theory that holds any water about the Happens for a Reason line of thinking.)

Would've Wanted-this one has caused me the most trouble. This is where the guilt comes in and I wish the whole idea of Would've Wanted didn't even exist in our vernacular surrounding death. We are told, even in the funeral mass we were told, that the dead are in a place beyond space and time. So why are we encouraged to make them a part of our worldly decisions that are ours and ours alone? The dead do not care what you do with their bodies, what you do with the money, what you do with their clothing, or anything else that is of the physical plane. The living, while they're alive, might tell you what they wish you would do in certain circumstances after their gone. I was left with basically this blue-print:  make sure that Penny understands football. That was as far as the discussion ever went. And I don't know a damn thing about football. So I'm going to need some help on this one.

So regarding my very adult dilemma about what to do next...whether to seek out another rental (because this place is not going to make the cut come next September) or to pursue the option of buying another house, I can no longer ask myself what Rob would've wanted. Sure, we always liked Rutherford but we always felt the housing prices were a little beyond us. This was back in '04 or '05 when the ticket prices on the homes in every town were completely distorted. Now, they seem doable. 

Right now the ball is my court and my court only, and there is no one along side me to make half of this decision, to talk me out of a nonsensical decision or confirm the wisdom of my, or I should say "our" choice. This is really uncharted territory because I have given up on the magical thinking that led me to buy a house in error last time. Reality is what lays before me and we really haven't been the greatest of friends up until now. I recently just met reality when I sold my home in Florida for, um, LESS than I payed for it. It was an awkward beginning, but it was true, and the house IS sold so at least reality is reliable. I guess reliability may be what I need most right now.

Some Things That Inspire Me...

Ugh folks. It's been crappy night. Is it Monday morning yet?

Ok, I know to the rest of the world, Monday morning is like a dreaded disease akin to cancer or Parkinson's, or maybe just irritable bowel syndrome (IBS! You be WHAT? If you don't recognize this bit, it's time to watch Lady Killers) but to me it's like A NEW BEGINNING! A new week of real productivity. The place where you pick up where you left off on Friday. Time to shire!

So it's only Wednesday, or as some people call it "Humpday" and trust me there is certainly no humping in my household tonight...well, it's Wednesday and I'm already dying for the weekend to be over and to feel the rush of Monday morning.  The day I can escape the thought of mothering and laundry and all the other stuff that I seem to belly-crawl through on my own while mortars are exploding all around me. Well, actually, it's mostly dog fur, but still.  

Maybe it's just me...

This fracture in my life-home life vs. career. Tonight career is in the lead. Wish I could pull it all together into one nice little package called My Life. 

Any CBHer that is reading this is probably laughing like hell. "Career?" they are saying to themselves. And the chocolate milk is shooting out of their nose as they laugh and laugh. 

Hey, we work at a pretty damn important place. That's my response. We do a lot of good, a lot of important things. When you see me there, you best be sure that I am doing something I was born to do. I'm not just walking around with that clipboard for nothing. I am being therapeutic every chance I get. Every single word that escapes my mouth is trying to say the same thing:  I feel for you. I am trying to understand you. I am trying to help you continue to survive in this crazy world. Hell, I don't know if I can survive this crazy world, but I think I can, and I think you can too. We are in this together.

Sure, I don't have my masters yet, not even my bachelors if you want to know the truth. But I am one human being determined to help as many as possible. As has been said before in this blog, what more is nursing than therapeutic use of the self? That's what I am doing every minute I am there. 

So like I said when I started this entry, today kind of sucked. I am going to now turn the topic around to some things that inspire me simply because I need to remind myself every now and again why I wake up in the morning. In bulleted format here goes nothing:

• My kids:  the toughest job I'll ever love, even more so than the Army IMHO. When they do something great or make any improvement whatsoever, it feels like the gates of heaven have opened up. They are the greatest example of living for something other than myself. And some how, this fills my very self up with the greatest feeling ever. It is truly a magical experience. (The flip side is when they disappoint-this is when I feel the flames of hell lapping at my toes.)
• My peeps:  Much, much more consistent than the kids, but without the gates of heaven thingy.  Well, sometimes they do this, but I usually don't hear the trumpets blaring like when the kids do something awesome. More constant. More supportive. Willing to listen to me complain about the kids. And when they don't meet my expectations, it's just a low-grade kind of disappointment, not the kind that makes me want to stick my head in the oven. Overall, I give them an A+ for consistency.
• Family-how is it that I look so much like my mother and my father at the same time? And so does my brother but in a different way. I mean, we look alike but not exactly; we both have a good mix of both of our parents. Far OUT, man. And how is that I can look so similar to other relatives who died long before I was born. I mean, WTF? That is some seriously freaky shit.
• Love-it just keeps going and going and going. Where does this come from? What keeps it going?  How is that I can feel love for some seriously monstrous people along side people who have done some incredible good? I firmly do not believe that the answer is anything religious, but just part of being a decent human being. This shit really does make the world go 'round. Can you imagine if there was no love? Heavy...
• No I am not doing any drugs right now; I don't partake any more.  I am truly high on life. And nostalgia. And a little Chardonnay. 
• The Internet! I have said this many, many times before, but I believe that the creation of the Internet was one of the BEST things to have ever, EVER  happened to mankind. How else could ideas be exchanged so readily, so deeply, in such a timely fashion? The Internet is the REASON that my second child exists. The Internet helped me get through nursing school. The Internet is the reason I didn't succumb to a state of complete and total despair after Rob died. Oh Lord, I could go on about the Internet for a long, long time. The friendships I have made, rekindled, breathed life into over the web...there just isn't enough time for all of it.
• Work-I'm not aiming to make the average individual nauseous over my glowing review of how much I love my job. As far as nursing goes, it's not top dollar. I could be making a hell of a lot more in the hospital. That's ok. Been there, done that. And the more time and distance I put between me and the hospital the more I come to believe that I DID THE RIGHT THING. At first, it was quite a blow to the ego to leave. It was my choice, they urged me to stay. Trust me, I was not tossed out on my ear. But something inside me told me to go. And I did. And time has proven this instinct to be right on target with reality. Hurray for instincts.
• Cooking-If there is one thing that I feel very, very sure about, it's my ability to create a meal that will bring you to your knees. Now listen, I am not the greatest baker, but give me a stove-top, some pans, a decent cut of meat, some vegetables, and a starch and I can usually make a very good meal that will all be served at a uniformly pleasant temperature. I had lost some of my ability and culinary instincts in FL, but it's a bit like riding a bicycle. I am close to being back on top of the game and the end is no where in sight.
• And last, being back in New Jersey. The sight of the skyline from the ridge-anywhere from Kearney before the Hackensack and Passaic Rivers empty out into the Bay of Newark to, well, I guess the farthest north I've been lately is Hackensack-well, this view has done a tremendous amount of good for my soul. It makes me feel like I truly live in the center of the Universe. While there is something to be said about the flatness of Florida and I've written before about how wondrous it is to hear the thunder coming from miles and miles away in such a terrain, this is really the landscape that I belong in for...at least the next four or five years.

Lizslist

*Free!2 good home-2 small obnoxious dogs, very barky, shed a lot, will easily justify the carpet shampooer you bought during a session of retail therapy-1 slender JRT with problematic separation anxiety-would be an excellent companion to a single man who prefers TV over human company + 1 JRT/Dal mix-the dogification of Jim Belushi's character in Animal House-doesn't just bark but actually cries like a baby! A must see!

*Will work for money-15 y/o who needs to stop asking me for so much money. 'Nuf said.

*Wanted-3 BR apt in R'ford that has been maintained properly. Tenant has a touch of OCD and will take care of property. With a toothbrush. And comet. Lots of comet.

*Tired of bitching under your breath to yourself? Holla back if you need someone to bitch about things with...bitch...

*35 y/o/F seeking wife-no sex involved-but for all the other things wives are supposed to do. Must be very clean/detail-oriented/financially stable/quiet/love kids/wine/ dishwashing/proficiency in laundry skills and foot massaging a must/preference in using bleach/comet over ammonia a non-negotiable MUST

*For sale-entire contents of storage unit MUST GO-you name it, it's in there.  

*Experienced cleaning person for hire. No task too big or small. Help me exercise my OCD by giving me a different mess to worry about. 

Sunday

So I've been tracking two people running the marathon in Chicago today. I can't imagine running a marathon, but I think it's something I would like to do some day. I ran cross country in high school and while I did enjoy it a lot, I managed to hurt myself pretty badly. I had to go to an orthopedist who diagnosed me with flat feet and scoliosis and wasn't a bit surprised that I got hurt this way.

After a few months recovery, the cold shoulder from my coach, procurement of custom-made shoe inserts, and a lot of boredom and depression, I decided that maybe running wasn't for me. So I took up smoking pot and hanging out with a bad crowd. It was just so much easier than getting back in to running.

Now here I am, almost 20 years later, and still considering the implications of not resuming an activity that I really enjoyed. I'm still wondering if there will be a day that I can run again. The chances are looking slimmer given the fact that I have a bunion now (thanks again, flat feet). 

I'm not going to write too much about this stupid bunion because I think it will become a hot topic in the future. Suffice to say that it hurts just about every day, sometimes pretty damn bad, and I find myself not exactly limping, but babying it in a way that can't be good for the rest of my body.

2009 is going to be the year of medical and dental procedures for all of us. The kids of course need the routine stuff and we're going to get on track entirely as far as that's concerned. The baby is due for another echo-cardiogram before she hits age 5. It's for something that the pediatric cardiologist has labelled as "trivial" but "worth monitoring." The thing is, they can get the best picture of the area of her heart that they want to look at while she's still a toddler, before her internal anatomy starts to change. I say, let's do it while our schedule is open.

Me-yeah, I have a lot on the plate. More tooth extractions.  Podiatry. Maybe a bunion removal. I am not a BIT afraid of that. I am most afraid of this stupid foot getting more and more deformed, more and more painful, and hobbling around for the rest of my life, throwing my entire skeleton out of whack. 

Yeah, I know, titillating talk here...

Back to the marathon:  my co-worker finished a little while ago, but he's always training so that was no big surprise.  His time was awesome, in my humble opinion.  The other runner I am tracking hit the 30K mark a while back and is moving along toward the finish line. 

Maybe running won't be in the cards for me. I would really need to discuss this with a doctor, which irritates me. I feel frustrated with my physical annoyances, which are pretty small in the grand scheme of things. 

Most likely, I just need to get a grip.

Rapid Cycling

I was going to remove the last post, but figured:  Fuck it. It is what is it is. And it's the truth.

Well, I've had me a little Louis Jadot, it's midnight, the house is quiet on this Saturday evening.

It is what is it is.

I am who I am.

Let the games begin.

I miss having someone near me, and I mean really NEAR me, to share in my workday antics and anecdotes, who is not a co-worker. Someone who can still be shocked by my stories of just how clinically insane people can be and how I can still love these people with all of my heart. A co-worker will, and HAS, told me that "loving" them is not really beneficial on a clinical level. This might be true....but I doubt it. What is more therapeutic than LOVING someone despite the fact that they are delusional, crazy, out there, completely incongruous with reality. I don't have to join in their delusion to love them. 

I just love them. 

What better nurse can you have? The one sticking a needle in your ass, hopefully helping you to carry through with the rest of your week when you forget to take your pills, or take them incorrectly. Those pills you eye suspiciously and hide in your cookie jar or toss down into the sewer. My injection will stay with you for a week or so, peak in intensity around day 3 after the shot, and carry you through until the next one so you don't go completely psychotic and wind up in a very bad place if you were relying on pills alone.

What better nurse can you have than the one who draws up the thick serum in a sesame seed oil base, the better to dissipate slowly over time, through the largest muscle in the human body, the gluteus, and ever so slowly release itself into your bloodstream..all the while your nurse is saying a prayer: Please Work. Please help so-and-so maintain a decent level of functioning. Please help him/her to NOT go bananas this week and get evicted from his apartment, start a fight, get arrested, neglect himself, etc.

Until you see just how much these people need this kind of treatment it's hard to understand. This isn't just depression or anxiety or trouble adjusting to life stressor. This is some major biological illness going on. It's hard to explain without getting too clinical, but these people are not headed for "remission."

Remission is a wonderful goal, if sought early on. But we're talking about people in their 40's and up, who have been institutionalized for most of their lives. They need their shots like they need oxygen. For most of them this is their life-long therapy.

Occasionally, I will share with them the fact that I had such bad allergies that I myself needed weekly shots for nearly ten years, and that I understand how it is. Some shots melt into the flesh like a hot knife through butter, and others just hit that particular nerve ending that wakes them up and stays with them throughout the day. In the summer, you have a lot of bleeders due to vaso-dilation and in the winter, when every thing's a bit tighter, you don't see so much blood.  But it's all subject to the mysterious locations under the skin that are either inauspicious or favorable. 

So you never really know what you're going to get.

Some people only need the shot for the short-term and they graduate away from it as they become less psychotic and more able to take oral medication exactly the way they should. Others are going to need it forever and ever. Like most everything, schizophrenia exists on a spectrum. Our treatments are highly individualized. I've seen younger people do the shot for a couple of years until their symptoms pretty much remitted and they could carry on with just oral meds and keep their live together. I've seen younger people with more heavier baggage in life do great with seeing us every two weeks for a shot. I've seen mostly fairly old people come in every week for their Haldol or Prolixin and do pretty darn good until the next time they were due to see us again.

Sorry to get so nursey on ya'll, but I am finding that work is carrying me through so much of what I myself carry. I live for Monday mornings. I do the very best I can during the weekend, and come the beginning of the work week, I am raring to go. 

I have made a lot of weird and tough decisions in my life but if there is one thing I chose to do correctly, it was to be a psychiatric nurse. I am proud of my daughters, I love both dearly, but the only other thing I have left right now, besides myself that is 100% good for me is my career.

The story of how I fell into this job is not something I want to revisit now-but thank God it happened that way. I was able to deal with a somewhat difficult pregnancy while working at CBH. I was able to look after a very sick husband while working here. Because of the flexibility I was able to handle so many issues at home and still complete my work. 

It really made me feel like Superwoman.

Have I mentioned lately how great it has been to be back at the best job I have ever had?  Despite the tragedy, the year in Florida that just plain sucked, despite the continued feeling of loneliness I experience...to be back in my desk is probably the greatest thing I have ever pulled off in my entire life-aside from delivering two healthy baby girls into this world. 

So maybe I have some weird inter-personal shit going on. This will resolve itself. I don't know what the outcome of that will be.

These thing I do know right now:  the girls are OK, we are back in NJ, work is more than good, there will be more money in the bank soon, and life is tolerable. 

LOVE YOUZ GUYZ.....

es

Why I Hate Fridays

There seems to be a pattern with my typical Friday nights. I get home from work, scramble around getting Sadie where she needs to be, making sure people are fed, cleaning up dog crap, looking around at the place and trying to find at least one thing I can do to make it a little bit better. I get the baby to bed, check in with Sadie over the phone because she usually spends the night at a friends, pop open a bottle of wine.

Then silence.

And then a little more silence.

I could turn on the TV but I don't even feel like it so why bother wasting the electricity.

In my past life, a Friday night was normally spent at home anyway, but there was a routine to it that was enjoyable. Usually a pizza would be delivered and devoured. There might be a movie or something worth watching. The lights would always be down low and sleep would hit me on the couch at some point. Peeling myself up from the couch, I would brush my teeth and fall into bed after a hard week at work.

The main difference was-I wasn't doing this alone.

This made all of the difference in the world. This is what made past Friday nights something to look forward to. This is what makes my current Fridays torture.

I try so hard to enjoy every cute little thing that Penny does and says. How lucky I was at one point in time to be able to look over my shoulder at someone else and ask, "did you just see how cute she was?" doing this or that, or be able to marvel together at this precious creature and dream together of her potential.

That is gone. Gone, gone, gone. Where did it go? And more importantly-why? And not "why me?" but "why the girls?"

I can understand why me. Why not me? What the hell have I done with myself that's so fantastic? When I think of all of the time and energy in my life that has been wasted on ridiculous nonsense and selfish endeavors, I can understand fate turning me back into the singleton that I am obviously born to be. Why NOT?

But why these children? I can bear whatever punishments God/fate/whatever wants to dole out to me. Most of my life has been fairly miserable anyway. Is my karma rubbing off on them? That's a pretty horrendous thought.

So if you want to know why I hate Fridays, this is just a taste of what goes on in my life on a day that should really be something to celebrate, even if it's in a very quiet, simple way.

Penny is getting smarter too. When the subject of Daddy comes up, I'm finding that the simple answer that worked before, Daddy has gone Big Night-Night, is just not going to cut it anymore. The other day she asked me if I could wake him up soon.

***

And the heartless wind kept blowing, blowing - LP