"he's hurting."

my five year old.

well, not my five year old. i have not yet been blessed with the madness of my own children. but once they are mine, they are mine.

he was sitting at the door of his room. upset. i came up to say goodnight. i was heading home. he broke down at my approach. he confessed his crime and told me he wasn't allowed to leave his room for the rest of the night. [i had the three year old captivated in pirate stories while his dad did the dirty deed. i didn't know anything about it. i wish i had. we wouldn't have played games after dinner. i don't dick around with poor behavior. ...back to the kid.] he was broken. he had made a poor choice. he had to sit with the consequences [literally].

i came back down to say goodnight to the dad and the three year old. i conveyed the five year old sobbing wish: "tell my dad i love him, okay?"

"he's hurting." his dad said.

"yeah, he is." i replied.

"he needs to." his dad said.

"yeah. he does." i agreed. "i sympathize with him."

moments and a hug and kiss from the three year old later i was in hoodie and leather jacket and headed out the door. i just started orientation for student nurses at a local hospital. mom got a new and valued job, too. i was in wool pants and a sweater. i got to roll around on the floor with two of my favorite kids ever. we walked the dog after she wet the floor. i gave the mom the gift of a night without being a mom.

i was hurting.

the committee decided to dismiss me from my program.

the error i made was not that horrible. neither was the final i bombed from anxiety over the med error. they were convenient reasons to get rid of me. others have made bigger errors. others have done worse academically.

i'm a difficult student. i did things my way.

certain academic programs don't exactly appreciate that.

especially this one.

so: i hurt. and, i guess, maybe i need to. on some level.

post script ~ the wheels are in motion for the next option. it may take time. my friends are rallying about me, like they do, and i am not defeated by this blow. true to my flexibility: i ain't broke.

cookie dough esta el diablo

on any other nite i might feel better, but i just got back from the corner store [i wish i was joking, they took a grocery store and stuck it in a shoebox. makes me feel like i'm back in NYC.] where i caved to buying, then eating half a tube of chocolate chip cookie dough.

HM is in the burbs overseeing family business. i'm waiting for the tylenol PM to kick in under the cookie dough while David Letterman makes me giggle with Dubbyah's latest speech flub. God bless Rupert. he does make me giggle, as well.

so, why am i snogging on cookie dough?

combo. tomorrow is a meeting to decide my fate in nursing school after a medication error [no, noone died. not even remotely life altering.] and B: that girl didn't take me up on my dinner offer. the PM is to ensure i sleep despite the uncertainty.

i should be bigger than swallowing cookie dough.

but i'm still a girl.

and i hate dating.

really.

insecurities, i suppose.

i'd go into it further, but my eyelids are winning the war on my attention span. tomorrow i have someone else's kids to shuffle off to school, appointments to keep and then the same kids to round up from school and usher home to dinner. a new and incredibly entertaining friend is coming over for margaritas and movies. think good thoughts for the meeting.

i guess somewhere in there i'll shoot for a jog. to feel better about the cookie dough.

in the meantime: the top ten is on.

friday night lights

i swear i'm having a harry potter movie marathon with homemade pizza and a good friend. [she isn't that kind of friend, either. i'll tell ya when she's here.]

and we're amuzing ourselves with the internets and i look up alix olson because she makes me tingle a little bit and i think to myself, all nurses should be like this. open. loving. willing to make some noise. willing to tell it like it is. willing to pack themselves in a stinky van with a coupla tatted hotties and hit the road to tell america like it is. ("she's a nurse?" my dear friend asks me. chuckle. "well, no. she just kicks ass." -- "oh, well then.") [well, we can't all be bohemian, can we?] okay okay, so we need the MICU and the PICU and the good ol' american stay put nurses. but imagine the CV/bio of your next inservice instructor looked a little more like this. you might feel more comfortable when your patient turns out to be trans [put it on your netflix list. you'll love this movie. if you didn't have respect for felicity huffman before, you will now.] or intersexed [this organization has an amazing mission, i am very pro this kind of mission.].

well then, harry potter has been paused long enough. Kenneth Branugh has been standing at the top of the staircase through pizza making, cooking, eating, wathcing mentos+diet coke=bad idea and other internet enetertainment. i think i'll let the man speak. you get to your linking and tell me if it's useful.

i'll be there.

a tale to make dad's proud

House Mate [not that kind of housemate, i'd tell ya she was] and I dutifully did everything our dads taught us how to do. we tried pliers, wrenches, asked directions from the guys at the auto place where the new battery was purchased, pulled out both sets of dad-approved tools and even used coco-cola to break down the corrossion on the battery bolt. we couldn't get the damn thing to move. hours later, dinner made, eaten cold, we tried again.

and then we called it quits. we'd done everything we knew how [including putting the car in neutral and pushing it back and forth over the ice ruts into the safety of the garage, where the car died just before entering to park]. i made brownies for the lovely man who helped us pick up the back end to get it over the last ice hump.

HM's dad lives in the burbs. he came out after work and brought a connector to replace the corroded bolt end. "you think this will do it?" [you're asking me? i'm a nurse, not a mechanic.]

there is a mixed emotion of joy, pride and oh-shit at the end of this story.

the battery could not be removed by the dad. the girls did everything correctly, they tried everything the dad tried, they even tried coca-cola. there was no switch they overlooked or button they forgot to press. the car needed a car doctor. we felt good that we did what we were supposed to do.

odd to feel so redeemed when something is so broken.

at any rate. love to you.

so why this blog?

because there is a discrepancy in nursing about lesbians, specifically lesbian nurses. let me assure you: we are out there, and we are fabulous, but noone talks about us. we're not like gay male nurses. people know what to do with gay men. [they are still learning, i'll grant you, but they have ideas.] i'll blanketly attribute this to the media [and i'll get some lovely comments for it i'm sure]. and there is power in that message. come on, folks, if it weren't for queer eye having five fab fags redo your dad's duds wouldn't be hip. there is a part of me that totally enjoys watching Jack bump bellies with a pill-popping Karen.

but what about the lesbians? what do we do with them?

i think we're still getting there. really. the L word was fun for five minutes, but how did it improve life for lesbians? how did it make it easier for me, as a nursing student, to sit in a room full of "straight" women [dear Lordisa, if one more classmate tells me about her girl-on-girl college experience after a night at the bar i'm going to scream, and not in that toe-curling, thigh crunching, thank-your-maker kind of way] before we change into something that is supposed to pass for gym shorts and palpate for femoral pulses. no. that isn't awkward, no. not at all.

and this is why my respect and adoration for these two women grows every day. Really. [there are supposed to be photos here, but i'm not that kind of lesbian (read: the technically/electronically/internet savvy-kind-of-lesbian). i'm more the handy-dyke type. [you figure it out.]

Rosie and Ellen make it easier to just be a lesbian.

but we've got leagues and bounds to go in nursing. we have no role models. we do have organizations and connections, but not role models.

there is a difference. and there in also lies the rub. [i'll see if i can't gank that article off the web from school and post it later this week.]

i have a meeting in the morning and a letter i have to write before i get there.

until then, folks.