grainy blues

Oh Lordy. I graduated almost two weeks ago and I've already spun into a spiral of depression and anxiety about the uncertain future in front of me. The high of graduation was getting an award for third highest academic achievement, for which I got a check for $150 that I still need to cash. But by the next day I was starting to feel the dark panic nipping at my insides about needing to study for NCLEX. On the night of graduation the president of our class joked 'Who here did their 60 questions today?' and, of course, I was the only one who had. And I continue to do at least 90 questions each day, like I was told. Because I'm very task oriented and good at sticking to rules that way. But every time I score poorly on a test it takes so much out of me. And I'm like, how can I know all this information? I've never even heard of vanillymandelic acid test but am supposed to be able to figure out the foods one should avoid before taking such test. I can't get over how much the test name resembles Milly Vanilly and how many mnemonics can I make and keep straight in my head? Christ. The importance of this test, yes my future, my paycheck, rides on my passing and becoming an RN are not lost on me. Nor is the director of the nursing program having told our class at the graduation luncheon, we've had a 100% pass rate with the last three classes. To my perfectionistic mind, the implicit 'don't fuck things up!' was added and it's all I can do to keep my heart rate below 100 (60-100 being the adult norm). So I've got five different books that I can study from but when I look at the tear out 'cheat sheet' on one that lists common lab values but they don't jive with the lab values I've already committed to memory it just sends my anxiety through the roof (maybe I can blame my profuse hair shedding on that). As does every question I get wrong and can't puzzle the logic out of, like a lot of the psychiatric related questions and yet I've thought of getting involved in that field? Goddamnit. Yes, panic brings sacrilegious profanity to such a high point in me you'd think I suffered from coprolalia. I've got to get down the dirty dozen that will most likely be on my test- anything related to renal issues, diabetes, COPD, cardiac disease, cranial nerves and functions, TURP, hip/knee replacement surgery, sickle cell crisis, Diabetes insipidus vs SIADH, therapeutic levels of digoxin, lithium, aminophylline and theophylline as well as potential interactions with each. And what you want your PT and PPT times to be in relation to the control. That's over a dozen. It seems easy enough when I type it out but with each subject it's real easy to go down the rabbit hole and get lost to the point you can't see the easy answer for what it is. And can I tell you how badly I want to take the baddest, brightest red pen to the study guides and copy edit every extra 'and' or 'an' or 'as well' but I don't because I hope to sell them once I've passed. I have all these free days until I test (I'm still awaiting my 'approval to test' because everything nursing school & NCLEX related seems to be a fucking mind game, I guess this is how they weed out those that will go crazy on difficult patients from those that will handle it -Me, I'll just beat myself up in the privacy of my own home and vent under a pseudonym). But it's not like I can really enjoy this time off because I need a job and health insurance by January and that's all dependent on passing NCLEX. So as much as instructors stress how important this test is yet, in the same breath, say don't lose sight of NCLEX just being a test, well it winds up being a lot more than that for me. I'll be so glad when I've successfully jumped through this hoop and can get a job. Really. I promise to stop my complaining. Okay, truth be told, I'll keep griping about my increasingly painful lower back and hip that are making me feel like my late grandmother, at least until they stop hurting all the time.

october

First off, you've been forewarned, this post is gonna be all over the place. That's where, it seems, my mind is currently. I graduate on Friday about which I'm really excited and sort of disbelieving that it's already here. But that excitement gets tempered with nervousness (I know Quelle surprise for the few who read regularly) about passing NCLEX, which I need to do in order to practice as an RN, and finding a job, which I need to do in order to pay the bills, keep a roof over mine and the kids heads, eat. This need to find a job really weighs on me with every resume that I send off through the UPMC website, which, at times, seems akin to putting my resume in a black hole. I mean I've got previous job experience, I'm mature (at least that's the positive spin adjective for middle aged), I've got a 3.52 GPA in school (which is high honors in St. Margaret's land because they have a weird grading system that I'm still trying to make sense of, but I do know that school was ten times harder than being an English major at Syracuse), I presented at student nursing grand rounds which was hailed as the proverbial feather in my cap and supposedly this great thing to put on my resume. But I've only had one interview and that didn't go well.

It was at WPIC, a place I'd really like to work. I interviewed for two different units, the one woman was older and she went out of her way to introduce me to everyone even though I'd told her I didn't want think my skils were best suited for her unit (John Merck unit for those with mental retardation and autism). She understood why I didn't want to work in there, and as she sized me up and told me her unit is the most violent (staff has the highest number of injuries there) I think she questioned whether I could even physically be capable of being on that unit. But she still showed interest in meeting with me. The second woman, well I knew she wasn't interested in me 30 seconds into the interview, when I was trying to explain what telecommuting was and, no, I hadn't lived in Pebble Beach, California. I don't know if it was a generational difference (the woman was maybe 25) or something else but she introduced me to no one when we toured the unit and she didn't ask me any questions and the whole interview made me feel like I was failing with how little interest she showed in the whole process with me. And that was in a unit I'd like to be in. Oh well.

I finished up my last clinical day Thursday night, into friday morning. I worked on the liver and intestinal transplant unit at Children's and that unit is TOUGH but by the end of my stay there I really enjoyed it there and was finally starting to feel a bit comfortable. Maybe I am just a fucked up parent but I really want to work with transplant children or with the pediatric oncology population. You can build a long term relationship with the patient, and, for me, I think that's when you can be most effective because you truly get to know the patient and family and get a sense for their likes and dislikes, the nursing style that's best to keep them comfortable while they're in the hospital. My preceptor was young, 25, but a very good, very thorough and safe nurse who is absolutely loved by the patients and their families. It's a struggle for me, being the older one but a student learning, I don't have a problem with that but I can have a hard time reading certain people and the fact that I was working with this preceptor for 140 hours, I'm hypersensitive to my possibly driving her batty having someone following her every move, trying to help out but feeling sometimes like I'm just in the way. I learned an enormous amount from her, I just wish I knew whether she thought I was good, awful or somewhere in between. I frequently view myself as awful if a person says nothing, so I have no fucking clue. Getting a position at Children's is my first choice hospital and if I could get on the weekend program, because then I could go manage going on for my master's and not be stretched close to breaking, I'd be overjoyed then.

Being around sick children really makes me appreciate and love my children that much more because it's a very real reminder of how precious a healthy life is. There was one family I was involved with from October 1st through to my last day. Their strength and kindness in the face of such adversity is inspiring. The english major will forever be a part of me and some of the terms they toss out so quickly stuck with me, such as 'a hot mess' usually indicating a patient that's proving to be especially challenging from a medical standpoint. A 'rockstar' is the patient/family you want to have, very easy to work with, taking medications like a champ. And 'dirty' is used for patients with infections that they're trying to find a bed for, who tend not to be put on this unit because so many of the patients are immunocompromised. Like a ruptured appendectomy wouldn't be put on that unit - if it's really busy and you have the space non liver/intestinal transplant kids wind up on the floor but it would most likely be a T&A and yes, when I heard that I thought tits and ass? No it's short for tonsillectomy and adnoidectomy.

During my last week my back, groin pain, which has been a problem since June, reached new levels of pain. I worked overnight Monday with an icy/hot patch slapped on my back, popping 800 mg ibuprofen every 8 hours and still hobbling about like a none too spry octogenarian. When I got home Tuesday morning I called the doctor's office in tears and they called in a scrip for vicodin for me (because the ibuprofen and flexeril aren't touching the pain). I still can't sleep on my left side and haven't been to the gym all week, which is killing me because that's what keeps me on this side of sanity. I saw an orthopedic doctor Friday and need to get an MRI of my pelvis next week and he's scheduling me for a visit to the pain clinic because he said given my week it sounds like I need a shot of cortisone (I'm starting to feel like I need a half dozen shots of cortisone). He mentioned that I might have a labral tear (the labrum is sort of like a liner for the acetabulum, which is the socket the head of your femur goes into which makes up your hip joint). I read up on it and these injuries require rest, physical therapy (which I'd been doing in August and continued to do the exercises until this flare up) and if you still get no response then surgery. I think I rambled about this in an earlier post but this groin injury was from a massage. A masseuse told me I felt tight and manipulated my left leg and arm and both may hip and shoulder (consequently both are ball socket joints and can suffer from labral tears) have bothered me ever since. My arm doesn't bother me quite as much which I'm guess is because I don't walk on my arm but my leg, it gets me close to tears when I think about it. My range of motion is so limited now, I used to do the splits regularly when I cooled down after exercising no I'm lucky if I can touch my toes. And the pain, right now, as I type this, it's only about a 3 or 4 out of 10. But it never goes away. I feel it no matter what I do and I can no longer sleep on my left side. My Mom being my Mom had to tell me that she hasn't been able to sleep on her right side for years and then wanted to recommend another orthopedic doctor for a second opinion should I need surgery 'because he has this innovative technique and he's the best in his field when it comes to hips...' when all I really wanted to hear was 'That fucking sucks, let's go beat up that masseuse.' Why couldn't she commiserate with me without one upping me or trying to give me medical advice? I called the place I got the massage at and spoke to the owner, who hadn't given me the massage. She was very nice and concerned. She said she'd reimburse for what I spent for the massage (A LOT!) and offered to give me a massage to help out, I told her I'd hold off until I knew more from my MRI. I'm thinking of going on antidepressants because being in some degree of pain since June is really starting to affect me mentally.

have i mentioned how much i love stephen colbert?

happy birthday oona bean!

Oona's middle name isn't bean, it's Amelia. But somehow I've been calling her Bean or Beanie ever since she was a baby and would arch her back, scrunching up her legs while sleeping and her shape would resemble an adorable little kidney bean. Apparently Google is having a birthday too, 13 to Oona's 6. She was very excited to see the Google banner today.
Brought pink and purple cupcakes to her classroom
The birthday girls this week. just fyi Oona is not petite (she's 75% percentile for height), I don't know what they're feeding these girls in Pittsburgh, there's fourth graders taller than me (I'm 5'6").

goodbye summer

I have only gotten around to having a summer banner on the last day of the kids summer vacation. Oh well, it will be up until I get around to the fall banner which might take awhile given I'll be in the last 8 week stretch of school. The last day before school was quite lovely, up until Oona's meltdown when we had to leave the park. But she quickly turned it around in the car, thank God. Hope the upcoming school year is healthy, happy and fun for any (and all) readers of my blog!


Oona with Nacho, a chihuahua Owen bought Oona with the $20 he found on the floor of a restaurant (he also got himself a basketball, trick handcuffs and a cap gun with caps and had twelve cents left, thanks to 5 below)


The comedy and tragedy of Panera

Owen's friend Patrick making like part of the creek and trying to trick the fish into his net.





Owen's cave. He spent most of his time at the park building it and I hung out with him and Patrick while Oona was with the other children and Moms. Patrick caught a big frog twice but I didn't have the camera with me at the time to commemorate the event.

thought the color of this mushroom was lovely. made sure to wash my hands thoroughly after handling.

floor update

These two pictures above show the worst area of my floors before and after, honestly I didn't think it would turn out as well as it did because this section of the dining room floor is very chewed up.




These pictures show before during and after the refinishing. I love the original light color of the red oak but the dining room floor had extensive water stains the turned the red oak a greyish brown which no amount of sanding could get rid of. So I had the floors stained a dark walnut and it blends the water stains in much better than had I just left the wood the original color. I was amazed to see all the different grains of the oak and am glad that shows up with the darker stain too. This is the bookcase redone and the sandpiper walls. I still need to polyurethane the bookcase and let it cure a bit. I think the bookcase will look better once books and baskets are on it. Hopefully then it won't read as overly distressed it will just sort of blend in to the background. And I'm going to paint the inside of the fireplace a darker grey because I'm that kind of anal. Meanwhile all my books are hiding out on the stairs to the third floor and in my room, which looks like I could qualify for a hoarding show right now, it's a disaster.

torture

I have been staying at my mom's apartment since Monday while my floors were being refinished. Thank God my mom is away in Florida while I'm camping out there with Owen and Oona and my two cats. I knew that it wouldn't be the easiest thing, all of us in this small space, but I figured it would only be for a few days and that the pay off, beautiful refinished floors, would outweigh the short term stress of being sandwiched in my mom's place. What I neglected to consider is the fact that my mother is very fastidious in terms of cleaning, her house is always perfect. The thing that mystifies me is that with her zeal for cleaning, her home is jam packed with tchotchkes- artificial floral bouquets are everywhere. Any flat surface seems to be covered with a lace doily and then have little figurines or the fake flower bouquets or coasters (you'd think the woman entertained every night) on top of them. There are little faux candlesticks on each window ledge in her living room and stained glass animals suction cupped to her kitchen windows. Needless to say, the kids love visiting Grandma Cat's house because there is so much STUFF to look at and touch, where else can you find a copper lighthouse that plays music to harmonize with you while you tinkle in her toilet. Our home looks downright austere in comparison. But maybe it's a yin yang thing, my mother likes to clean to such an extent that she needs a lot of dust catchers in order to feel she's truly doing a good job. It seems almost masochist, but it's what makes her happy.

I've had to put every fake bouquet in her closet because my very poorly behaved cats were trying to eat them. They've jumped up on every surface they possibly can knocking over picture frames, getting their cat litter everywhere it seems- after having their litterbox in the basement for years it really seems that I cannot avoid stepping on cat litter, which really grosses me out. I am sleeping on a pull out bed with a very wiry mattress that is doing nothing to help my achy back. The only pot of gold is that Owen and Oona have been marvelous when it comes to bedtime. They're great for me at home but I thought it might be challenging with the two of them sharing a bedroom, but they barely make a peep and drift off without a problem in my mother's two twin beds, while I lobotomize myself with Law & Order reruns five feet away in the living room.

Anyhow, regarding the torture post. I think almost everybody, well maybe everybody I know, engages in a sort of self-torture of one thing or another. In a way I think it can be extraordinarily helpful to know what your problem areas are, parts of yourself that you'd like to work on or improve. But I know for myself that there are many areas I feel bad about (parenting, not being assertive enough, lacking confidence, placing waaay too much importance on how others feel about me - to name the tip of the iceberg) where I feel like I don't measure up and it's so easy to beat myself up about these things, it's almost reflexive. I am fully aware of my need to break free from this way that I torture myself. But sometimes you can work so hard and then someone finds your weak spots, picks at that scab, and if it happens often enough a scar forms and the tensile strength of scar tissue is 80% of the original tissue, at least that's what I learned from the wound care lecture in school last year. That being said I truly hope there's credence to the cliche that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger. The past two years have really been a struggle for me in more ways than I care to enumerate. So I just might try to limit my self-torture to eating some heirloom tomatoes soaked in oil and vinegar even though my whole mouth is cut up pretty badly from these invisalign liners I've got on (to correct my crooked bottom teeth and, hopefully, fix the right side of my jaw which pops painfully when I yawn). The joys of getting old. Nothing like being forty-two with a lisp from the plastic in your mouth. Well as long as I don't sound like Truman Capote I figure I'm golden.

They finished my floors yesterday.The man who did them looked a bit like Sam Elliot and drawled out his words in much the same way. Perhaps even slower? But he was a bit inscrutable, rather cryptic with his answers, or lack thereof, to my questions about the floors, until I learned yesterday that I've got to let the floors cure for four to five more days before moving anything back into those rooms (living room, dining room, entry, hallway upstairs and Oona's room). So it looks like we'll be at my mom's until Wednesday. But, on the bright side, I can wash the three loads of laundry that accumulated at my mom's. And I have internet access (my mom took her laptop to Florida so my only access to a computer was two visits to the library this week). And wait until you see how lovely the floors look now. It's the best $1715 I've spent- and that's a flipping bargain for as bad as my floors were. He trimmed out the downstairs with new oak quarter round, he didn't do anything to the upstairs so I've got to call him about that. Well I'm off to vacuum the fine layer of sawdust that seems to be everywhere.

Well the living room walls are sandpiper and it's just the warm griege I was looking for. Unfortunately 3/4 through the painting my back completely seized up on me. It was funny I'd bend over to put paint on my roller and I was like, why is it killing me every time I bend over to do this. Bending at all made me wince so I had to squat with my back straight to finish the last wall. I went to the gym hoping to stretch out the muscles that were seizing up in my back, on the left side from just under my rib cage to my ass, but the gym didn't help. I deliberated between going to medexpress or coming home and drinking enough Guinness that I didn't care that I was in pain. In the end I opted for buying a heating pad and popping some of the 800 mg of ibuprofen the doctor gave me for my back pain when I saw him a few weeks ago and hoping it would be better in the morning. It wasn't so I got a scrip for flexeril called in which is helping calm down the muscle spasms in my back but it also turns me into a complete zombie. I guess this is what people mean when they say don't overdo it. Total suckfest for my break without the kids.

The kids went to Toby's parents (for the week!) on Sunday morning. And since their car left the block I've been tackling my living room; attempting to make the built in book case and mantle look nicer and repaint the walls before the guy comes to refinish my floors. I painted the room what I thought was a warm grey but once up on the the walls there's too much red and not enough yellow in the grey. Yeah, I didn't realize this until I painted the entire room. I'm very picky about my paint colors, so I got yet another gallon of grey paint (sandpiper, how I love the names for paint) that I'm hoping will look better. My current state of mind is a bit altered, which I'm going to blame on huffing miniwax wood stain fumes yesterday afternoon whilst doing my many layered distressed paint look on the bookcase. I should add frustrated on top of the altered mental status because I think I might need to put another layer of pain over the barn owl, grey sky & jacobean stain I've got on the built in so far. I had to sand the bookcases a lot, to the point I had phantom vibrations in my arm an hour or two after I'd stopped sanding, before starting the paint work. Toby built the bookcase and mantle shortly after we moved into this house seven years ago and I couldn't help but draw comparisons between it and our ill-fated marriage. Of course, it was easy to compare when that is sort of forced into my consciousness because of the complaint of divorce I received in the mail. Toby had called to let me know I'd be getting it and I don't blame him for my dark mood. I just blame the whole fucking process, the harsh wording of the complaint 'You are being sued' which caused me to panic momentarily, because when you don't have a lot of money financial stuff, specifically mention of being sued, can feel like a punch to the gut. I guess lawyers aren't emotionally ruffled by this legalease but it makes me bawl. The being sued, the 'you will no longer have health insurance once the decree is filed' the myriad personal stressors that have made the stress of nursing school that much harder to bear and the worry worry worry my mind the eternal problem solver keeping me up throughout the night on Monday trying to troubleshoot how to go about passing the boards, finding a job and getting health insurance in the sixty days between graduating from school and my divorce being finalized. Oh and botox! I must get botox so the abject desperation will not be quite so easy to read on my face. Too many stressors. It would be one thing if it was just one thing, the divorce, the need to find employment, the imminent threat of no health insurance, or if it was all of them, but I had someone super supportive to lose my shit to in private. Someone who could hug away the fears or be a sounding board or just make me laugh and forget all this shit for a heartbeat. But I don't have that, which is why I air my dirty laundry here. Well I'm off to sandpiper the walls.

vacation

I am done with school until September! And, barring any fuck ups when filling in the scantron sheet for my final, I graduated with highest honors. AND I had a great final clinical evaluation with my instructor whom I'll have for PNR (my nursing intership which I'll be doing on the liver and intestinal transplant floor at Children's Hospital come this fall). I just need to get through PNR, pass my boards and find a job, then I'll be golden. But for the next few weeks I'm going to do the work around my house that's hard to do while I'm in school and relax when I can. Maybe find another non nursing related book to devour. Any recommendations?

owen's nine

He officially turned nine at 6:38 pm. We were doing a countdown at Baskin Robbins but the time struck waiting at the light on the way to the grocery store for cat food, Sam and Frodo were hungry after going without this morning. Owen and Oona counted backward from sixty once they saw the car clock turn to 6:37 and I snapped Owen (really just turned the camera to the back seat and shot so I'm glad it actually turned out well) celebrating the passage into a new year.

This is the pose I got when I asked Owen to look sweet, meaning no gangster hands and or thinking he's doing the peace sign but his palms are turned in so he's really telling people to fuck off if they're English. Oh my, how to explain this without it becoming a loaded hand weapon.

Oona attacking her sprinkle waffle ice cream cone with true gusto. She gave up a couple bites after this though. They usually just get a kids scoop but for Owen's birthday I said they could have whatever they wanted, they each ate less than half of what they ordered.

Oona is just going to kill somebody when she's older if her eyes stay that big and brown and beautiful.

unaccustomed earth

I had started reading this book last year and loved all the short stories but couldn't get into the last part, which was a novella centering on two characters, Hema and Naushik. Maybe I was put off because the story starts in the second person and I think that is a very hard narrative point of view to pull off. But I hate not finishing a book. It's just a compulsion of mine that once I start a book I have to finish it, even if it is over a year later (although I might have to break this compulsion with The Dinosaur Man, which I dread finishing). Anyhow I picked up Unaccustomed Earth to revisit the last part and I easily fell into the story and couldn't understand my initial hesitance to finish reading (although I know that how much I enjoy a book us has a lot to do with what is going on in my lives that might make the book resonate all the more powerfully to me). In fact, the last part is now my favorite of that book and I bawled on reading the last page, wept harder than I have with any other book I read, it killed me. I don't even know how to comment with respect to Jhumpa Lahiri's writing aside to say that I'm completely amazed at the command she has for writing where everything is distilled down to it's essence, she does not write one superfluous word in her books. And as good as her writing is stylistically, the level of insight she has into the intricacies of the human heart could put the best therapist to shame. I think she is, hands down, the best person writing fiction in America today.

black swan green

So I finished Black Swan Green a couple weeks ago, read it during my two days home from school nursing pink eye or paint that got in my eye from doing the ceilings, still not sure which it was but it cleared up nicely after a steroid/antibiotic combo. I can't recommend Black Swan Green highly enough, it was such a wonderful book. I love coming of age stories. Even though I'm now middle aged I feel like I can relate to adolescent angst so well, probably because I remain as socially maladroit as a thirteen year old. There don't seem to be any memorable coming of age stories told from a girl's point of view but Catcher in the Rye, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and this book are my three favorites in that genre. Oh I can't forget part two of Michael Chabon's A Model World which is a wonderful novella about this boy Nathan Shapiro, after reading it I just wanted to hug Michael Chabon. I've been listening to Summerland in the car with Owen, Oona is staging a mild protest about the book on tape choosing select times to start reading her Highlights out loud to drown out Summerland. I love listening to Michael Chabon reading Summerland, he does different voices for the various characters. It just might be better than reading his books on my own, because I love how endearingly geeky he is and his writing is so funny and kind and beautiful. There's a comment about Michael Chabon by his wife, Ayelet Waldman in the back of one of his books. She talks about how brilliant, talented and handsome he is, but how he's also arrogant, a bad dancer, and knows far too much about klingon politics and the lyrics to Yes songs. Even that criticism is endearing. I do not know either of them, aside from interviews I've heard where they seem to have a loving repartee when commenting about the other, but I truly envy people that have that, where you truly love the person faults and all, in a sense love them because of those faults.

So back to Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. Maybe I love it because the narrator, Jason Taylor, is thirteen in 1982, the same age as I was that year, but he's in England when all the great British 80s music is going on. Maybe it's that so much change in this boy's life is encapsulated in a year. It could be that I love it because Jason stammers and writes poetry under a pseudonym or that it's written in such a engaging colloquial style where, at times, Mitchell will have triple contractions. He captures the feeling of not fitting and adolescent longing, which can bring up such confusing feelings of ambivalence, like he was just thirteen yesterday. There was one line, so brief, where Jason sees Dawn Madden wet from the rain and wants to go over and suck the water from a lock of her hair, it seemed so erotic and charged with that energy of when your body first hums over someone of the opposite sex. I'd really like to read his other novels too but I'm a wee bit worried because they aren't as linear, they'll shoot back and forth in time, place and can have up to nine narrators, it seems a bit daunting but if they're as well written as Black Swan Green it shouldn't be a problem.

stupid humor

Saw this on someone's car and I laughed out loud.