thorvalson.net : babble ether

So long that I've been out in the rain and snow/But winter's come and gone/A little bird told me so - Gillian Welch

Just a quickie today - running out of time, as you can see from the lack of posts recently.

Nursing nerdity: All systems go. Last weekend was awful - thought I was going to have another panic attack, but successfully remained just this side of crazy. Spent half a day in bed and the other half alternately studying and crying on the phone to my mommy. Stress, overload, Maddie's going to sell her body for drugs in two years if I don't spend more time with her... that kind of stuff. Passed the head-to-toe exam on my second go-around, thank god. Brain farted the first one, but "came back swinging", as my clinical instructor put it. Feeling better now that that's over - getting ready for the next cycle of just barely avoiding my untimely demise. What doesn't kill me - and it's tryin', believe me - is making me stronger. I've come to the conclusion that this is the hardest part of my adult life thus far. Hoping it'll all be downhill from nursing school on. Going to the hospital for the first time today. Excited, a little nervous. I won't even have the opportunity to test my liability insurance (oh yeah - another thing to add to the to-do list) until a week or so from now (which seems both like tomorrow and two years away somehow), so that takes a bit of pressure off today's events. Feeling positive today; knowing the other shoe will drop soon enough and milking every second before that happens. Maddie is well; no sex/drugs/rock'nroll, although she admitted to having crushes on two boys - one of whom is in 2nd grade. Already going for the older men. Trying not to analyze everything and just let her be. Doing okay with that, thanks to the insane schedule.

Collages due for Lifespan class tomorrow - I had to do one, then choose someone else to do one of me for comparison. Apparently my best friend doesn't think I'm as big of a narcisstic asshole as I think I am (what a loaded sentence, eh? Dice that one up for your salad). I am relieved, and more grateful for her friendship these 18 years than I have time to convey. Trace, I love you. Thanks for being there, always.

My collage:

Tracey's (that would be Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the upper right corner - hell yeah):

Nursing Nerdity: Beginning Week 6

I'm feeling at this point - well, at this precise moment, I feel like I reeeeally need some sleep. My motor functions are rapidly declining due to a 13-hour day in school. Lessons learned?

1. I will be switching back to the original Monday sequence of events re: Maddie. Instead of scooting her from school to one caregiver to the next, I'm just going to go back to the ol' drive-back-and-forth-from-the-suburbs routine. It wastes precious gas and time, but at this point I feel that one hour with Maddie is more important, even if we spend the majority of it arguing over whether she needs to complete her homework or clean her room while I cram dinner down her throat with the efficiency and speed of a fucking pit crew. WE WILL HAVE QUALITY TIME TOGETHER, GOD DAMMIT. NOW EAT YOUR DINNER.

2. Doing not as bad as I thought I was. Got a B on a major exam today, and notification from the school that I'm on the honors list for last semester's performance. On the flipside, I have a Microbiology exam in 11 hours that I have not read all the material for. This is not due to poor time management. Trust me. I am hoping the test will look something like this:

Secretion of this endotoxin upon destruction of Gram-negative bacteria may trigger fever, vasodilation, inflammation, shock, and blood clotting in humans.
a. Mars
b. your mother-in-law
c. stopwritingandgotosleep
d. lipid A

I will most likely be disappointed.

And I'm gonna be THIRTY!! And what comes after THIRTY? FORTY!!! AAAAHHHHH! Followed by Nursing Nerdity.

I would show you a picture of the white hell I just shoveled myself out of, but the camera is in the car. Which is parked a block away. Because I dug it out of my front yard (yes, the snow from the front yard was continuous with the snow on the top of my car) and tried to move it to the other side of the road. And got stuck in the process. A block down the street. And some nice guys pushed me out. Because Maddie was home alone sleeping and I was standing in the middle of the road outside of my stuck vehicle, beginning to cry and whispering "fuck" like some lost little indie girl in those stupid comic books because my back hurt so bad from shoveling all the snow and I was stuck and isn't this just the perfect metaphor for my life in general right now.

NURSING NERDITY:
Everything is fucked. Not really. I'll be okay. Like Dory in Finding Nemo: "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming..."
There is definitely not enough time to do all the work I need to do in a week. That whole, "Read once, then re-read, then do the study guide, then visit related websites" strategy? OUT THE FUCKING WINDOW. If I'm lucky, I read through everything once. Which, by the way, makes me feel super confident. And competent. WHAT? YOU WANT ME TO INSERT A CATHETER? SURE! I THINK I REMEMBER READING ABOUT THAT SOMEWHERE! HERE, LET ME JUST GRAB MY TEXTBOOK AND WE'LL LOOK AT THE PICTURES TOGETHER.
FUCK.
And yes, I realize the all-caps are annoying and I apologize for that, but CAPS IS HOW I FEEL.
Patsy, who just got her NCLEX date from the state (ha!), is assuring me that it's all worth it.
I am still not enjoying getting used to being alone. Reason #642: I've got studying to do, and the sink is full of dishes. Well, now it's not. Because I spent the last two hours shoveling and washing dishes. TWO HOURS THAT I COULD HAVE BEEN STUDYING.

At this point, I'm trying to focus on happy thoughts related to a few things that could make me feel better if I had the chance:

1. Hot tub
2. Time to sit in the hot tub
3. Time to even set foot inside the gym I give $53 to every month to not sit in their hot tub.
4. Cold alcoholic beverage to accentuate the hotrelaxyness of said hot tub. Something with booze in it. Entirely naughty. Something that will make me question my ability to walk once I'm out of said hot tub.
4. Bob Saget coming out with a new stand-up video, then personally picking me up from the gym ("It's okay! Here, I'll carry you. No worries - I'll drive!") and bringing me home to watch the new DVD with me. And he brings popcorn. And he rubs my feet while we watch it and says... well, he says things that are so unexpectedly foul and WRONG and dirty, and this makes me laugh. And he doesn't call me Stephanie, because if he did I'd think I was his daughter on Full House which would completely ruin the moment. So he doesn't call me Stephanie. He calls me...

Okay. Better now.

Lesson for Today: GO-nadz

In anatomy last week, one of my classmates accidentally printed an entire chapter's worth of power point slides on individual sheets of paper (forgetting the tree-saving, six slides per sheet printing option). Rather than throw it all in the garbage, I brought the stack of paper home (some 50+ sheets) for Maddie to use as scratch paper. Did I mention that it was the chapter on the endocrine system, which includes our reproductive glands?
Juliana is here for a sleepover tonight, and the girls decided to use the scratch paper to write songs. A few minutes into a heated discussion over whether "writing songs" meant creating lyrics of your own or simply transposing someone else's lyrics, I hear a shuffling of paper, and then this discussion:

Maddie: "It's 'GAHN-adds'."
Juliana: "No, I think it's 'guh-NADS'."

Sarah Silverman, Will You Marry Me?

We can invite Matt Damon. And hell, Jimmy can be there. After all, I'm friends with all of my ex-boyfriends, too...

Win or lose, just that we choose this/ little war is what kills us/ And either-or it's that this war is/ maybe also what thrills us - Ani Difranco

Good days and bad days. This week apparently is falling toward the latter category. Thinking about picking up some of the books I read after my dad died - maybe revisiting the grief process will help me get through whatever stage I'm in. I don't know half the time if I'm moving forward or just sideways; all I know is that the treadmill is moving and if I don't keep putting one foot in front of the other, I'm going to land on my face.

I think that's the most Dr. Phil thing I've ever said on this blog. Moving along now.