All encompassing

Some days I feel completely disconnected to my environment.  It's like there's so much stimuli I can't process anything.  M83's song "Midnight City" came on, on Pandora, and I couldn't focus on anything but the sounds and tones and the way it made me feel like I was in another time.  I had to filter it out and come back to what I was doing.  Which I couldn't think too hard about either...  And then I imagined being able to write and draw all the things in my head, and I was floored by how much there IS that I won't be able to know, because life is so finite.  I felt like nothing was perfect, but that everything was, at the same time.  It's a very confusing day. 

Courtesy

Doesn't anyone understand any social graces anymore?  After my birthday years ago, when a friend tried to invite someone I didn't know, and I said "no thanks," I feel like I get to be the bad guy.  In my defense, the last time the invitee was a guy I'd met at a new year's eve party once.  He was drinking excessively, loudly talking like a jerk, trying to hit on underage girls, and then he puked on the host's rug.  She wasn't even the homeowner, which made it pretty crap.  (Yay. College.)  My friend who invited him was the guy cleaning up vomit on the floor, while the party went on around us.  So I felt pretty justified in saying no.  In this case, it was a special occasion and I had planned the party for weeks and weeks.  And it was my birthday.  The person was super offended and barely even said a word to me afterward.  I feel like maybe it wasn't a loss.

This time, it's a good friend who has been having long-term issues with her boyfriend.  He's got untreated depression and ADHD, he failed a lot of classes due to mental health issues...  which happens.  In fact, I understand it pretty well.  But instead of doing anything or seeking help, he decides to smoke pot and ignore his graduation requirements.  Only one semester left.  Idiotic.  He also makes social situations awkward, has an 8 year old's sense of humor, and I wouldn't trust him with pets or children.  Not even a person worth speaking to, sometimes.  When I try, he gives oblique, childish answers.  Yes, I can try to know him.  Yes, I'm being a jerk.  But when he's visiting from out of town and his really amazing girlfriend wants to bring him, as a "date," when she's an extra person JUST because someone couldn't bring her date, what is really appropriate?  Telling her "no thanks, we want it just to be people from school / people we want to catch up with"?  I told her yes, because I don't feel up to disappointing her when he's in from out of town.  But I also don't want him lingering on a night where I have an exam tomorrow.  I just...  UGH.  I hate people today. 

What happens when you have good friends who your spouse doesn't like?  Well, or they marry someone you don't like, or you marry someone who isn't interested in a friend's spouse as "man company"?  What happens when you are totally disappointed in the person your friend is spending time with?  Do you ever get time to recuperate, or do you lose the friend?  Do you just try to isolate things so you see only your friends? 

I'm stubborn and opinionated and really really loyal to people.  But sometimes people aren't doing that in return, and make my life more stressful.  Sometimes they, even through the small things, make me think, "What on earth would anyone want a friendship with this person for?!"  And sometimes people return that loyalty and trust, and make friendships that last for ages.  I don't know which is which at times, and I don't know who I should trust either.

Maybe this is a continuum of having poor parenting, of having friends who betrayed me, and of having trust issues with every person.  I'm just tired of it. 

Dreaming a little dream...

I'm realizing more and more that my life is taken up by things I don't invest myself 100% in.  After reading hundreds of blog entries and crafters' sentiments, and all these amazing complimentary things about craft retreats, art seminars, etc. I realized I want to start something.  I want to own my own house in a space where I can have either a bed & breakfast, or a bunch of small guest houses, and I want to start something kind of like Squam Art Workshops, but less expensive, less time-intensive, and maybe just... more frequent?  I always want to have people around that I like and I enjoy having people stay at my house.  I am that person who suggest resources to people who don't know exactly how to get such-and-such craft project done, or where to go when they want to learn a skill.  And I have met and discovered hundreds of crafters just because I want to talk to them all.  I'm interested in EVERY kind of design and craft, not just one.  My husband got me a class in letterpress printing, and a class in glassblowing.  (Because he's a rock star.)  I've taken probably 15 knitting classes and that is usually my craft of choice.  I have piles of design books all over my house, a pile of pieces to make a baby quilt on the dining room table, handmade jewelry from Baltimore artists in my dresser, and I could tell you any place to go for books or craft supplies in a hundred-mile radius. 

I think I just love learning more than I even love creating.  Teachers for my classes are often my target for intense questioning.  I get lost in craft and art shows because I end up talking to vendors for a half-hour instead of actually poking around and window shopping.  I need to put these skills to use.  I need to make something lasting in my life.  Yes, I know, some people choose having children or painting portraits or making metal sculptures in public spots.  But I want my legacy to be, "She got me interested in a new thing.  She wanted to help me.  She understood that I wanted a place to relax, but also a place to learn and explore."  I'm not looking to be a muse, just a resource.

So, how does one go about doing the whole "Create an art workshop space" thing?  *sigh*

Time to do research.  Another thing I love passionately. 

If Marriage Is a Duel at 10 Paces

by Traci Brimhall

Let’s count our steps with endearments. Honey. My love.
Let’s mix our gunpowder with rouge and foxglove seeds.

If marriage is a war for independence, I’ll find a feather
for my cap and shoot you from your horse. Darling.

If it’s a hunt, salt and cure me. If it’s a plague for two,
my dear, let’s quarantine ourselves in the cemetery wearing

aprons and snakeskin belts. Let’s disfigure each other
with praise. My beautiful. My fugitive. If monogamy

is a stakeout, Sweetheart, let’s spy on the beekeeper
who lactates honey. I’ll pull stingers from your chest

if you’ll clean the blood from under my nails. If romance
is a ballad, we are its authors and its victims and finished

in four minutes. Beloved, if your desire is the passage
you underlined in Song of Songs after our first kiss

and erased on our honeymoon, then dark am I, yet lovely.
Then you, my shepherd, my charioteer, turn and shoot.


http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/poem/2013/02/_if_marriage_is_a_duel_at_10_paces_by_traci_brimhall.html  

Confusion

I'm watching season two of Doctor Who...  Killer Christmas tree, Santas with flamethrowers in their horns?!  Craziness.  After watching the first season of it (the newer seasons, that is), I was underwhelmed by mannequins chasing Rose.  Then I tried a second episode, and a third... and I was hooked.  I kind of love it now.  My friends all liked it and I was irked when I watched a half-episode, and didn't get anything that was going on.  So, I tried it later on with Netflix.  It was more manageable then.

Right now I can't confront the fact that there's a pile of studying to do for school.  I really don't like thinking about it.  There's an exam on Monday and I'm feeling so overwhelmed.  Hopefully tomorrow's study session with a classmate will help.  I'm stomach-buggy and weird feeling and nauseated right now.  Stress?  Maybe it's that my husband is away in Vegas for a conference for a week...  First time this has happened.  Dogs are anxious and so am I. 

Sigh.  I'm not great at this blogging thing.  It's been years away and I feel unpracticed. 

This past weekend was spent at work on Saturday.  Sunday I got to my favorite yarn store, and had brunch with my two best friends.  It was really relaxing and pleasant.  I enjoyed my blueberry french toast immensely, and despite the service, it was a good time.  I bought a book on a woman who did burlesque at Atomic Books, which was on clearance.  We'll see how that goes.  It's a field I find very fascinating and amusing. 

Dogs are sleeping.  Space heater is on.  Maybe a nap will cure me? 

Oh, and I also have to say, after beginning nursing school, being a pharmacy tech seems like the easiest undertaking in the world, and I feel almost relaxed going in to work.  Definitely thankful, even on the craziest days.  The responsibility seems next to nothing, and I get to work with lovely people. 

Maybe I'll bake them a pie.

On Tuesday, I failed my injection skills criteria and passed my skills criteria on giving NG tube medications...  I feel like an abject failure, because I can't even stab someone correctly with a needle.  Though I feel like I did a great job otherwise.  I would have had more time to reconsider my needle length had the examiner not been questioning everything I did, and making me supremely nervous.  When I said I'd be charting, she said, "Well, what do you chart?" and when I replied correctly, she said, "Well, what WAS the pH of the residual?!" and then it became me saying, "It was below 5, which is normal," and her going, "Well, what number was it!?"  Okay lady, it's a dummy with a tube in it, and some pulse and stomach sounds.  If it was a real patient and I didn't have to invent a number to satisfy you, I'd be okay.  But winging it when I did answer with the grading criteria, is going too far.  Ugh.  Talk about nurses eating their young--teachers do it, too.

When I left, I had to go outside and get fresh air, because I was sweating nervous-flop-sweat and my back was warm and I felt like I was going to cry.  I get to return on Thursday and retry it, after some practicing.  It was a bit harder than just drawing up regular medication, since it was Fentanyl in a glass ampule and I had to deal with a filter needle.  Then I got my ventrogluteal and vastus lateralis muscle landmarks wrong, because I was palpating for the greater trochanter and instead, out of sheer worry, was putting my palm on the stupid iliac crest.  Fail.  Though I do say, I did verbalize everything right.  She couldn't harass me for that.

Instead of going home and punching a wall, I drove home the long way and ended up rescuing a dog from traffic.  Accidentally.  Someone else had stopped and he was willing to take the dog from me, to get him to a vet and check him for a microchip.  I picked the little scared pup up, after he came over and licked my hand when I made kissy noises.  He was shaking and terrified, a little chihuahua mix, and very sweet.  He clearly trusted me and he licked my face several times, and when I handed him off I knew the guy was clearly interested in his safety too.  He had two rescued dogs and lived across the road, and I knew it would be fine.  Second stray dog found in the past 6 months.  The feral / stray cats don't bother me as much, because it seems like everyone around here either feeds a cat, lets one live under their porch, or has an indoor-outdoor cat of their own.  The neighbors across the street have a few outdoor hangers-on, and their next-door neighbor has two cats.  One of them I call "The Darkness" because it's large, has long black fur, and glares at me when I park my car and walk inside the house.  You can see its yellow eyes across the road.  Our cats are thankfully indoor kitties, and relatively safe and sheltered. 

So, nursing school is a ball of stress and panic, and makes me want to curl into a ball some days, and sleep or cry it off.  Other days I feel like I did something amazing, or at least acceptable and proactive.  I finish my first semester in a month, if I do okay, and then I'm 25% finished.  It feels like the past few months has rushed by in a blur of exams, skills tests, clinicals, patients, nursing process assignments, and long, tedious lectures.  I love clinicals so much, and I want to be at the point where my instructor doesn't assume I'm dense or oblivious.  I know I can do a lot of things, but I always look for complicated answers when it could be a simple one.  Maybe I should have gone to medical school and over-thought my entire career.  Hm.

To stay sane, I'm knitting a cabled cowl out of bamboo yarn from Stitch Nation.  It's a pretty sea green and may even look pleasant with my ugly white scrubs.  The knitting thing is keeping me from going completely unbalanced, or kicking the dogs, or yelling at someone.  That's always good.  Next week is Thanksgiving and I'm feeling so thankful, mostly that the semester is close to finished.  Maybe I'll be able to make a few items for dinner this year, because normally my husband takes over the kitchen and refuses to let me near it.  I'd like to at least make a cake for after dinner...  Not pie, not a pie fan.  At least, the crust irks me.  So, despite having a crazy schedule, having failed my injection skills, and having a lot of crap on my plate... I'm still thankful for this year. 

I just keep having to remind myself of it.