New Job

I am working again.

Still in assisted living.

Downtown Seattle.

Day shift so I've been wiped out by waking up at 4:30 AM.

I am in my third week.

It's a very nice facility with nice residents.

The learning curve has been steep but I am hanging in there.

I am back on the floor which is good except for the stiffness at the end of the day.  I know my body will adapt.

I am in slight withdrawel from my daily three hours of Grey's Anatomy on Lifetime but that's a small price to pay...

The facility has 6 floor of AL so it's a bit confusing when I work 3 floors for 2 days and then the other three floor for the next two days.  Yesterday I kept forgetting what floor I was on.  Yes, I am getting old!  I was laughing at myself often.

That's my latest news.

My Life

The thing with the consulting RN did not work out.

Why?

I am not exactly sure.  I believe the people from my previous job may have said something.

I am not sure what, as they never gave me a reason for being fired.

Whatever.

I have accepted an on call position as an assisted living facility in downtown Seattle.

Hopefully, it will morph into a full time position.

If not, at least I'll keep my skills up to date.

This facility is much larger than any of the other places I have worked.

Should be an awesome learning experience.

Should be exhausting and exciting.

It will get me out of the house.

I am excited.

In other news, my son who's in the army may have cardiomyopathy.

This causes him to pass out during exertion because his brain is not getting enough oxygen.

He is waiting to get an echocardiogram.

He is also waiting for a neuro consult as he has had several concussions, 4, since he joined the army.

There is no telling what damage his deployment caused.

I am worried.

I am scared.

Please pray for him.

Thanks.

Choices

Me circa 1974

I was "talking"with (Facebook Messengering) an old friend the other day.  She knew me when this picture was taken in the fall of 6th grade.

This friend and I were best friends.

We hung out together most of our free time.  We would sit in her parents' cars and imagine ourselves all grown up and gorgeous solving mysteries and dating all the hot guys. (Of course we changed our names because, duh, ours were BORING!!)   We would go to the Surf Club (tennis and swim club) and complain when it was Adult Swim and they made us leave the pool. We ate frozen Snickers bar and dreamt out loud about the future.  We would sneak around during our parents' parties and grab the "good" snacks.  We had sleepovers.  We must have had a gazillion sleepovers.  We tortured her sisters or my brothers depending on our location.  We'd giggle on the phone even though we only lived a block apart.  We played on the old swing set in her backyard even though we were much too grown up for that sort of thing.

Then, tragedy! (Scary music in the background)

We were torn away from one another when her father got a job in Germany.  My friend spent her high school years in Europe. I missed her greatly when I wasn't being all envious about the living in Europe thing. (Sue me.  I'm human.  I wanted to live in Europe too.)

My friend came back to the United States after 4 years, attended and  graduated from University of Michigan, met a guy and got married in my dream wedding church (Ha! Like I owned it.  I did not think often of getting married in junior/senior high but if I was to get married it was going to be in that church!), settled down near the area where we used to live, and is now happily living there.

She lived my life.

Now wait a darn minute before you get all judgmental on me!! 

She lived my life the way I felt my life should have gone when I was 16.  The life I had planned out when I was 13 years old.

One of the terrible and wonderful things about getting old is looking back and second guessing life choices.

I am old.  

No really, I am Jurassic Period OLD.

Just ask my son, McArmy (who's all of 23).  He'll be delighted to explain how decrepit and wizened his mother is.  

He'll tell you what a miracle it is that I am capable of rational thought since I should be ravaged by Alzheimer's.

Yeah, he's a brat.  No doubt about that.

He gets that from his father's side of the family.

It is not the choices I have made that show up in my dreams.  

I own those choices.  They are made, it's the past, and for the most part I am good with them.

It's the choices that were taken away that haunt me.

I did not get the choice to live in Michigan after 16.  My parents made the decision to move us to Southern California.  It was the 1970's.  Parents did not consult their children when making these life changing choices.  

I am pretty sure they did not choose to move to squash my dreams and crush my future.

That's what happened. ;)  

But that probably was not their intention.

Because of money and location issues I never got to choose University of Michigan for my education.

I may have hated UM.  I might have flunked out there the same way I flunked out of UCSD.....

Nope.  I don't think so.

I would loved UM.  I adore that campus.

UM is what a university is supposed to be.  Brick buildings.  Sororities.   Football games.  Liberal arts majors.  It is gorgeous and everything I could have asked for in a college at 16 years old.

I'll never know for sure because I never got to make that choice.

I had to choose a university in California.  We moved when I was a junior in high school.   I knew nothing about schools in California except that is where UCLA and Berkeley were located.  Pfffftttttt to them.

When I took my SATs in 1979, I had to pick 3 schools where my scores would be sent.  I played ernie, meenie, miney, moe because I did not want to go to college in California.  I disliked California.

It was too sunny.  

There weren't enough trees.  

The people were too pretty and tan.  

Mostly I hated California because it wasn't Michigan.

Looking back, I can clearly see my attitude sucked.

I freely admit my attitude sucked.

I even admit that I spent years making my parents watch me be miserable.  I'd go cry in my closet because my dad would get furious at me for being so devastated (aka whiny, spoiled brat).

While I did not get to choose the university I wanted to attend more than anything, I did get to choose how I reacted.  I just wasn't wise enough to realize I was making that choice.

I threw a 2 year long temper tantrum without knowing I did not have to be so angry or so sad.

My parents tried to tell me that but I was determined not to listen to them after they imprisoned me is a state where Three's Company was situated. (Stupid show=stupid place.  Oh come on! I was 16!)

I ended up choosing a university based on distance from my parents (had to be far enough away so they could not just drop by.) and how close it was to the beach.

That is how I ended up at a university without a football team, without a Greek system, knowing no one so without a support system, that was constructed entirely of grey concrete, but damn, it was super close to the beach! (If you leaned out my dorm window just right you had an awesome view of the Pacific!)

On second though, maybe it is the choices I made that haunt me once in awhile.

How do you feel about the choices you have made and/or the choices you did not get to make??

What's The Point?

Today.

Today, it all seems pointless.

Being a nurse is not even close to what I expected.

Apparently I am not the nurse employers expect me to be.

So, seriously, doesn't that mean it's pointless?

Emotions

I have a bipolar relationship with fall.

It has always been my favorite time of year.

Fall is the beginning of the new year because it is when school starts.  Even though I am not in school right now, the school year schedule is the one I follow.

September through February 2 is also the time my youngest became ill, was in and out of Children's, came home to die, and then died.

While I adore fall for the weather, the trees, the concept of a new beginning, since 1995 this season also reminds me of that time.

Some years I am good.  Usually years I am gainfully employed and have less time for my brain to meander back to the awfulness that was Brennan's illness.

The hardest lesson I learned was I truly had no control.  As a mom, I was a natural control freak.

Brennan taught me the my first lesson is helplessness.

He did not intend to teach me that but having a child with a terminal illness is a major lesson in helplessness, futility, and the fact that I do cannot control what happens to my children.

I adore the changing colors.

I love the cooler temperatures.

I revel in the briskness in fall evenings.

I even welcome the return of the rain.

My memory/dreams this time of year can bring back the fear I felt 19 years ago.

I just spent 30 minutes crying after watching a documentary about a busy ER in Vancouver Canada where a boy died after a ski accident.  The social worker was tasked with finding the boy's identity and then notifying his mother.  WHAM!  Cue the sobs.

Cue the sadness.

I am a medi-geek.  I like to watch medical stuff on You Tube.  Mostly that does not not make me sad.

I love to watch surgical procedures and things like incision and drainage of abscesses.  I know GEEK!

I don't think there will ever be a time where the pain will be non-existent.  That's ok, mostly.

I have learned to live with that and it doesn't usually slow me down for long.

I think I will not skip the ER documentaries for awhile.

The sadness will be transitory.

But for now, I am sad.

I miss him.

.

Awareness Week

I spent last Friday at the Mitochondrial Biology Conference in Seattle.

Say what?

I can practically see you wondering what the hell is mitochondrial biology?

I know because back in 1995 I had never heard of mitochondrial disease.

Then after 6 weeks of seizures and reversal of developmental milestones, my youngest son Brennan was diagnosed with a presumed mitochondrial disease called Alpers Syndrome.

Back in 1995 I was told the incidence of Alpers was 1 in 5 million births.

I figured I could have won the lottery with those odds.

I had won the crappy genes lottery and boy, was I ever pissed!

Last Friday I learned the incidence of mitochondrial diseases in more like 1 in 1000 births.

This statistic is likely even more common than that estimate as many of the children with a mito disease are misdiagnosed.

Many mito diseases are virulent and uniformly fatal. (That is exactly how the child neurologist said it to me, uniformly fatal.)

In other words, these kids die.

Mito diseases originate in errors in mitochondrial or nuclear DNA.

My son died in 1996 at the age of 10 months and 11 days.

The first test that discovered the gene that causes Alpers happened later that year from another child.

I understood about 70% of what was discussed at the Mito Conference.  Pretty good for a girl who does not have a medical degree nor a PhD in biochemistry.

The average IQ in this room was about 180, not including me.  I lowered the curve so to speak.

At the mito conference were some of the most brilliant minds in the mito disease community.

There were researchers and MDs from England, Australia, and the United States.

My son Brennan Reed was born March 22, 1995.  He was pretty normal.  Except I had this niggling feeling something was off.  Nothing I could put my finger on, nothing definitive.

Until he began having intractable seizures.

Imagine watching your five and half month old baby having massive seizures out of nowhere.  It was terrifying.  It was also confirmation something was very very wrong.

If you would like to know more about my experiences with Brennan go here.

There is progress in diagnosing mito disease.  There is even progress in treating some forms of mito disease.  There is hope.  There are clinical trials going on around the world.

Please be aware that there is mito disease out there.

Be aware that mito diseases are devastating.

Be aware many mito diseases are inherited and you will not likely know you are a carrier until you have a child/relative diagnosed with mito disease.

The federal government is finally funding mito disease research.

Mito disease kills more children than cancer.

Not all mito disease are fatal.  Some cause blindness or developmental delays or even cardiomyopathy.

The entire course of my life changed due to mito disease.

Be aware.

Go to the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation to learn more.

Where Do You Go

Where do you go with your broken heart in tow?
What do you do with the left over you?
And how do you know, when to let go?
Where does the good go? Where does the good go?

Read more: Tegan And Sara - Where Does The Good Go? Lyrics | MetroLyrics 

My fellow Greys fan will recognize this song as the one form the first season of Greys and the song Christina and Meredith danced their final "dance party" good bye from this year's season finale.

These lyrics describe how I feel recently.

Today McHub and I cleaned out the formal living room and I came across lots of old pictures and school projects (both mine from nursing school and the boys from elementary-high school).

Of course I started crying.

McHub looked at me with his eyes saying "You are so fucking crazy lately!"

I know.  I am fucking crazy lately.

Damn you menopause!

(Also damn you blogger formatting tool which will not allow me to align left!  Sorry if this is bizarre with the center format.)

I was crying over what had been, what is, and what could have never been.  Losing a child, even 18 years ago, can still come up and gut punch you when you least expect it.

Where do you go with these emotions?

How do you let go?

How do you come to terms with adult children who do not want you in their lives?

How many times before my heart stops breaking?

I am so bad at this.

I am so tired of my own tears.

I just cannot detach myself enough.  I cannot pretend I don't have children.

I also cannot adequately explain how I feel without sounding pathetic.

I wish I didn't feel so much.

I wish I didn't think so much.

Overthinking is a quality I would love to divest myself of, but it just doesn't work that way.  After all, I've been overthinking since 1962.

The progress or the positive part of today is my living room looks amazing and we dumped a truck full of junk, old clothes, the majority of my nursing school notes that I haven't looked at in 5 years, old algebra tests (mine), and other miscelaneous paperwork that had been piled up on the desk or buried in boxes.

I am slowly climbing out of my pack rat phase, weekend by weekend.

The New Job

Every time I think I have a handle on this job a new responsibility comes to light.

I was feeling as if I could start doing more than the basics of the job because I had the basics down.

NOPE.

New basics keep popping up.

I have a pretty detailed job description but I was not trained so it a trial and error process.

I took the initiative to call the company that created the computer program we utilize for our electronic medical records, for tracking all changes in condition, changes in medication, and communicating with my care staff in a written form.  Our pharmacy is interfaced with this system and is supposedly keeping up to date with medication changes.

Not so much with the pharmacy.

I then had to train my staff and my ED(who's even newer to his job than me) how to send messages, where to look for the flags that new messages are in place that need to be read and signed off, and where to place information on a daily log to inform all care staff of changes.

My care staff is not completely fluent in English or EMRs so I've retrained several times.

My ED is not even signing in let alone checking for messages.  I will be retraining him on Monday though he doesn't know that yet.

In nursing it is wise to expect the unexpected.

But dang, it messes up my schedule ad my attempts to expand my role in direct contact with my residents.

I've learned immense amounts of information in the past 2 months.

I learn more every day.

I have faith I will feel in charge at some point.

Sigh.

Just not today.

Onward.

The good news:  I now know each resident by name and sight.  They know me.  We're getting there.

DYJHIW Menopause Version

Don't you just hate it when...?

DYJHIW... your spouse watching Mecum Auto Auctions sends you into a rage and tears at the same time?

DYJHIW...the very idea of working today also sends you into a rage and tears at the same time?

DYJHIW...the hormones make you irritated at the very dog you adore?  The unconditionally loving dog who wiggles in joy every time you walk in the door?

DYJHIW...you cannot sleep which potentiates the irrational rage?

DYJHIW...you resent every male on earth because you realize they will never have to suffer through menopause?

DYJHIW...commercials, tv shows, people on the street have babies, are pregnant, or can still get pregnant send you into a rage and tears at the same time?

DYJHIW...your ability to tolerate stupidity vanishes and you wish every stupid person would beam up to MARS so you could avoid dealing with them daily?

DYJHIW...you know you sound crazy, insanely stupid and you just cannot stop yourself?

DYJHIW...you are a cliche and know it?

DYJHIW...you cannot find your sense of humor?

DYJHIW...you totally know you're acting all douchey, know it, and still cannot stop?

DYJHIW...you need an intervention that includes aerosoled ativan with a chaser of progesterone, and maybe a series of smacks up the side the head?

DYJHIW...they don't make lasers for your dashboard to vaporize the drivers who cut you off, merge onto the freeway at 25 miles per hour when traffic is going 55 miles per hour, and the people who aggressively tailgate you when you're going the speed limit because there is literally a Bellevue cop behind every tree, in every hidden driveway, and in plain sight?

DYJH...being so irrational you fear being committed to Western State in a rubber room? (Hmmmm, now that I typed that out being committed sounds kinda good, I mean the thorazine and haldol may actually do me some good?)

For The Three People Who Read My Blog

You may have noticed I changed the name of my blog.

Why, you ask?

Because when I googled the last name 14 other blogs came up and they were all very bizarre, unlike my blog which so completely normal and dull.

The other title was created when I was applying to nursing school and fit my life.

I have now been a nurse for 5 years and honestly I am not chasing myself any longer.

I am still trying to figure out who I am and where my life is heading but in a different way.

Plus I just wanted a change.

I am struggling with several issues right now but I can only talk about one or two of them.  The other issues aren't appropriate to blare all over the internet as they include family members or others who strongly wish to remain anonymous.

I will still ponder the stupidity that exists in my world and the bigger world at large.

I will most likely continue to vent because if I don't vent my head will pop off, spin around seven times, and then messily explode on someone who doesn't deserve that misery.

I have accepted that I am firmly into midlife and sliding towards old age rapidly.  I don't like accepting that fact but hey, I will not be reverse aging anytime soon.  Unless I have a terrific scientific breakthrough and then you will be seeing me winning the Nobel Prize in the future.

Don't hold your breath for that discovery.

Thank you my three readers for sticking around.  I heart you.

Dust

I am not known for my housekeeping skills.

Now that I have no small children and own a grown dog, I just think dusting and scrubbing is pointless.

Yeah, I am piggy that way.

Today I decided it was time to dust and clean because frankly, even I was grossed out.

I live near Seattle.  It rains here more than 2/3 of the time.  One would think there was less dust in Western Washington.  One would be WRONG.

Oh my goodness.

It took me hours to dust all that lovely dark furniture you see above.

Note to self:  A) Never buy dark furniture again or B) Buy self cleaning furniture.

I went through 5 Swiffer duster pads.

Then I vacuumed.

Next I used a dust cleaner spray.

I cleaned the furniture.

I swabbed the bookshelves and the books, which are notorious dust collectors.

I got down on my hands and knees and cleaned under the furniture.

I stayed on my hands and knees to clean the wood floor in the corners.

I cleaned the chair rail and the edges of the furniture which are also notorious dust collectors.

I got rid of pounds of dog hair which was intermingled with the dust.

This little munch above now weighs 65 lbs and sheds every freaking minute of every freaking day.  How is it that he is not bald?

My spouse replaced the filter in the furnace.

Oh my Lord that was DISGUSTINGLY filthy.

At this very minute, my family room is as clean as it will ever be until we move out.

Damn, it looks good.  I know it will only last minutes but I still feel as if I accomplished something today.

Also I do not need to feel guilty about the dust for another 6 years.  Bwahahahaha.

Lessons I have Learned

Lessons I have learned since I graduated nursing school.....(aka the past 5 years)

1.  The much hyped cataclysmic nursing shortage applies to nurses with more than 3 years experience, it does not apply to new grads.  If a nurse gets CNA experience before she becomes a nurse she is much more employable right out of school.  I am speaking as a LPN.  The RN, BSN experience is likely very different.

2.  When sons leave home, they leave it body, mind, and heart.  They really don't look back much.  This was very hard for me to come to terms with.  Which leads into number 3...

3.  There is life after the kids grow up.

4.  There is also the adult son who still lives at home.  We could not keep the kid in the house at 16, we cannot get him out at 25.

5.  Life is unpredictable.  Just when I was feeling defeated in my latest job search the best job with the best pay came through in the same week I had two other very promising interviews.  Weeks of no interest to being the homecoming queen.  There are still lots of surprises and discoveries left in the world.

6.  Nursing in real life is extremely different than nursing in school.  HA!  I should have figured that one out before I graduated.

7.  Being a nurse will not completely fulfill me.  I need to find fulfillment within myself more than outside myself.

8.  I can still have dreams and goals just as I did at 20 years old.

9.  I really want to join the peace corps.  I want to be one of the 5% of Peace Corps Volunteers that are older than 50.  I will get my RN so I can achieve this goal.

10.  I have a whole lot of life left!

Cancer Sucks Wide

A friend of mine who really helped me feel welcome in the state of Washington was just diagnosed with breast cancer.

Cancer sucks.

It really sucks.

My friend is younger than me.

She's a good person.

I have some great memories from my time in Bellingham with her, her children and mine.

Cancer doesn't care about that and that's why it sucks.

I was in the labor room with her when she gave birth to her third child.  Such a joy for me.

We shared the ups and downs of newborns and toddlers.  We kept one another company when our respective spouses traveled.  She aided in my keeping my sanity some days.  We gave one another breaks when needed.  We supported one another as mothers and women.  We also had fun!

Fun in mother/baby classes.

Fun in visiting area parks.

Fun in watching our oldest children begin preschool.

Fun in just having someone who understood how crazy having very small children could be.

Then my spouse's job took us 90 miles south.

We sort of lost touch until very recently on Facebook.  I hope I can support her in a meaningful and useful way.

Please pray for her.

She has very young grandchildren and much of life ahead of her.

Please pray.

Random Faces of Happy

Define Happy

I had someone I knew in high school who hoped I was happy.

My first thought:  Define happy.

I am glad to be employed.  I am still getting a handle on my new job so I am dealing with some minor daily frustrations with some staff that could use some reeducation.  My commute is a mild nightmare.  I have lots of  reorganizing and trashing old useless stuff to complete.

I think this is a good job to save money for my RN program.  I plan on taking online statistics in the fall.  That is my last pre-req.  if all goes as planned I will be enrolled in a local LPN2RN online program come September 2015.  Online classes until June 2016, then ten straight weeks of clinicals.  NCLEX-RN would be the final hurdle.

My goal is still the Peace Corps for 29 months.  In French Polynesia as I have taken six years of French, a gazillion years ago, but it is still in my memory banks somewhere.

I like that the facility I work at is for affordable senior housing is a very expensive area.  Go non profits.  Yup, I am still a prolaterian at heart.

Is my life a Nora Roberts soul mate love and have the perfect career?

Um, no.

That is ok.

I do not seek perfection.

I do seek a fulfilling relationship with myself.  I have always been unhappy with myself for one reason or another most of my life.  I have defined myself through my skills as a mother, as a wife, as a community member.

Now I want to define myself through myself.  Through making a part of the world a better place for others, my way.

My marriage will be redefined as I redefine myself, my goals, my achievements.

Am I happy?

I am working towards happy.

I am on a journey towards happiness and fulfillment.

How do you define happy?

Legit Once Again

I am employed again.

Yeah.

It's still in assisted living, only about .5 of a mile from my last job in distance.  It is 100 miles away in workplace atmosphere.

I am management and making more money with full benefits.

It's a good thing.

In fact, this job pays more than any other job I have had.

Yeah.

Mo' money.  Mo' money.  Mo' money.

The rest of the staff seems low key and appear to enjoy working with one another.  Another yeah!

I get one free meal a shift.  Yeah.  Saves us tons of money.

I worked on Friday and things are still confusing but I think it will be a good job.

Charting and the MARs are all computerized.  Yeah!

No more interviews.  Yeah.

No more checking craigslist and Indeed several times a day.  Yeah.

In fact, yeahs for everyone!

Strange Day

glitter-graphics.com

I was on my way to interview at a county jail when my cell phone rang.

Normally I would not answer while driving but I'd been trying to get ahold of this guy since Friday about a completely different job.

The guy owns several Adult Family Homes and is looking for a nurse to educate his caregivers, be support for said caregivers, and to do various other nurse jobs like charting, on site assessments, and report any changes to his part time RN.  I have a meeting on Friday.

The jail job would be popping bingo cards for 400 inmates every med pass.  In a prison with 1200 inmates.  No guarantee of full time.

I received another call about being the nurse/caregiver supervisor for an assisted living close to my previous job but with better benefits, fewer residents, and this job pays a small amount more than I made last year.

What the heck?

Months of nothing, then BAM!

You just never know what each day will bring.

Bring it on tomorrow, bring it on!!

Throwback Thursday

Since I just celebrated my 102nd birthday (Facebook joke~I put down 1912 down as my year of birth because I felt like it.) a few days ago, I thought I'd share this picture.

Dang, I was cute!

Here's my younger son at the same age as me in my picture.  About 3 months of age.

My older son around 12 months old.

My Brennie at 4 months.  He'd have been 19 this month.

We made adorable children way back when.

Too Much Time

My brain is whirring, zoomclankzoomclank, too much.

I have too much time on my hands, or brains if you will, to think.  

To obsess.

To worry.

To drive myself crazy-hence this specific graphic.

To imagine us living out of my car.

OK so that's a little over dramatic. Maybe.

I've had to cancel appointments with my shrink.  I've gone off one of my depression medications and plan on weaning off another.

I cannot afford a $130 dollar Rx.

I had the pleasure of requesting my spouse's credit card so I could buy that medication yesterday.

Yes, it is only in his name.

My credit sucks because I got dinged for an overpayment of unemployment from 2012 and while I was trying to fight that decision I did not pay that money back.  So it's his credit card.

In his defense he does not really understand the depression battle or why I need medication.  He was under the impression I was "over it".  Denial is alive and well in Washington state.

Obamacare is 500 bucks a month.  Seriously? Mandated insurance that no one can afford.  Thank you Congress for being useless once again.

I apply to jobs every single day.  It's not working for me.

I thought I had a job, but the corporation that runs that facility decided on a total staff makeover right before the ED was going to have me fill out the hire docs.  She was also a RN so this place needed a LPN.

From checking out their web site and job listings they decided to hire a new ED and a RN who would delegate to the NA-Cs.  

Great timing.  

I have been cleaning out closets, packing up clothes for goodwill.  That's how desperate I am.

Oh well.  Off to scope out craigslist again.

Amazing Attitude

No, I am not the person with an amazing attitude.

I tend to brood and have the occasional pity party about the left turns in my life.

Then something or someone gives me perspective.

Trish, author of My Little Drummer Boys has survived infertility, a still born child, IVF, having few financial assets, having a chronic disease, breast cancer, and now an entirely new cancer.

Trish has managed to run races, handle chemo, raise her children (her twins are only 7 years old), her marriage, floods, droughts, and other events I don't quite remember because we now keep in touch on Facebook which is less personal than a blog.

This makes my lack of employment look easy.

I want to give her a shout out for being who she is.

She is positive and optimistic in the midst of chaos.

Trish understands all the ins and outs of her health issues yet he chooses to enjoy every single day.

Trish does not whine.

Unlike me.

Ya'll know I whine way too often.  One of the reasons I do not write blog posts daily or weekly or even monthly is to spare my readers from my whiny navel gazing.

Trish, you are who I want to be when I grow up.

Prayers and positive vibes going out for you and your family.

I Had Bought The Myth

I began my journey as a parent in 1988 for the first time.  The next child was in 1991.  My last child was in 1995.

I had spent five years of my life at UCSD before children.

I believed everything could be learned from research.  Everything.

I had studied some child development at UCSD and some educational theories.

When I was pregnant with my first, I read the bible of pregnancy, What to Expect When Expecting.

That should have been my first clue that books cannot teach everything.

I collected child development books Your One Year Old, Your Two Old, and so on from world famous Ivy League child development experts.

I read the The Magic Years.

I stayed at home with my children full time until they were in high school assuming parental involvement could prevent any behavior I and/or society deemed as unacceptable.

My third child died before his first birthday, who could have seen that coming?

That changed me forever.

I now began reading books on to help your children through grief.

I read any and all "experts" that assured me I could raise my boys so they would carry no baggage or issues into adulthood.

Children defy any set formula because the variants are endless.

Now that I am in the midlife phase and my boys are in their twenties I see I had been delusional.

There is no perfect parent.  There are no perfect children.  No one has a perfect life.

I see glimpses in my boys that they will grow into good men, that they are good men in many ways.  

I have a difficult time seeing them as men but I'm working on that.

Words, Words, Words

Motivated:  ambitious, committed, dedicated, industrious, inspired, and keen.

Hard working:  diligent, indefatigable, energetic, industrious, and conscientious.

Dependable:  consistant, reliable, responsible, trustworthy, stable, steadfast, and unfailing.

Compassionate:  considerate, kind, kind-hearted, tender, and understanding.

Creative problem solver:  this phrase speaks for itself.

Dedicated:  determined, focused, purposeful, and unwavering.

These are a small sample of the descriptive words I discovered in my research.

Positive Resume Words

I need to rewrite my resume and I'm calling on my blog buddies for positive terminology and best skill sets.

Use all your writing talent talent to help me write a new resume that gets me a job and there may be a lovely treat involved.

I need you.

I need your words!

I need your experience!

Please help me out!

Pretty please.

Pretty please ice cream and whipped cream and a cherry on top!!

NOMNOM!!