Writer's strike resolved

Thanks to Lianna joining the blogger world, I can now end my writer's strike. Five days! Has it really been five days? Five days, and I still don't have anything to say. I'll come up with something. This is probably the part where you click off this page now. I should've confessed that later in the entry.

Well, here are some things that have been happening in the last five days:

I listen to Christmas music now, unabashedly unashamed. My favorite site is on Itunes Radio, under the Holiday category, "Christmas Melody"... self-proclaimed, "The most beautiful Christmas music in the world". It's free people, and sometimes it sings songs in other languages. What are you waiting for? Thanksgiving to be over? That's unfounded.

I have gone through the entire bottle of holiday edition coffee creamer, peppermint mocha. It's really...really....good.

I love my job again. See how fickle I am? Look, this blog isn't always to sing my praises, how great I am, how perfect I am, how super my kids are, how hot my husband is...oops. Because we are none of those things, except for Steve of course. I for one, am a major whiner, self-labeled, fighting this battle...trying desperately to kick my own title. Thank you for accompanying me on that journey. Thank you for loving me, and others, along their journeys. None of us are perfect. I'm am lovingly reminded of this fact, by none other than God Himself, each time that I venture into the disillusioned mindset territory of perfect. I think that we all should make a list of our shortfalls sometimes. Not to put ourselves down, but to teach ourselves a lesson. I know up until lately, I've been living the life of a victim, wondering when these things would stop happening to me. Poor me. I'm so good! I try so hard! Why? Why must I suffer? Ahem...hello...I'm really NOT that good, and bad things don't magically stop happening to you, even if you are "good". Things apparently continue to happen to you your entire life. How do you handle these things? I don't recommend you handle them like me...see my self-dialogue above. The point is, for me anyhow, that things always happen to you. I'm beginning to realize that some of these "negative" things happen for you. The negative things that I encounter in my life somehow always bring me back to God, lovingly of course, and make me realize that I should lean on Him more. My mom and I talked about this briefly this morning on our quick "I miss you a lot today" phone call amongst our busy mornings, she said, "I'm just trying to remind myself to lean on God more during my day. I can't fix everyone, but He can." And I said, "OMG, (G=gosh of course), me too! I decided that is what I was doing wrong at work!" None of us are super hero saints. None of us are martyrs. We cannot do everything we put our minds to....that is, without God's helping hands. End huge paragraph here.

I took this new mindset to work yesterday. Yes, it was a very busy day for me. Yes, I got a patient that I had no idea what to do with. I had never started a nitroglycerin drip before. Yes, I had to do math (may it still burn in hell). Yes, I had a poor situation with his astronomical blood pressure. I had to get every single one of my daily total of 7 patients ready for cath lab AND get them back to recover them later. But this time, humbly, I did my best, leaned on God for the rest, used humor and friendliness to get us all through, and somehow, I left with 7 new friends, not enemies, not bad memories of another failure of a day. Surprisingly, the staff rallied around me to help me get all these things done, never annoyed, but understanding. Thank God for yesterday, literally.

And in light of myself not being perfect AT ALL, here is my downer list:

Sometimes, I yell at my kids just because I'm tired and don't want to be bothered. They don't deserve that.

Sometimes, I take my frustrations out on Steve when I get home. I tell him to stay away from me, definitely not touch me, and I go to bed alone, just as lonely as my day was.

Sometimes, I forget to appreciate my husband, so let me take a break from my downer list and say, I am now convinced that Steve the Great CAN actually do anything. This past couple weeks, Steve has successfully torn apart our tiny bathroom and begun a fantastic transformation into a bigger one, for me.....and he somehow was born with plumber/carpenter/electrician/decorator instinct. Where does this come from? Also, I awoke a week ago with the temperature on our thermostat reading 56 degrees. I could barely move. I whined that I was finally going to call the heater guy and Steve agreed that he didn't know much about furnaces, so I made the call that morning and they were going to come over the next day. But when I got home that night, our house was a toasty 71 degrees and Steve was sitting there lounging in his socks on our chair. I said, "What did you do!!!?" He nonchalantly told me, "I just turned on a different valve. Let me show you." We ventured down to our furnace where he pointed to a web of wires/valves/pipes on the ceiling. "See, this one runs to the main part of the house and it has two settings"...blah blah blah. I stopped him in his words and said, WHATEVER. THANK YOU!!!! YOU ROCK! And that is my conclusion, that Steve rocks.

On to other things, I don't ever make my bed unless someone is coming over, which is weird, because they won't be using my bed anyway.

Sometimes, I judge people unfairly, seeing them through how they treat me, and not what they might be going through.

Sometimes, I park in "patient only" parking.

I buy $3.90 starbucks twice a week with my badge at work and then tell Steve we can't spend money.

Olivia asked me if she could tell me her story the other night at bed. This is a ritual we have where I climb the steps to her top bunk and she tells me a story that she makes up on the spot, and we laugh and then we hug and love each other up and she goes to bed. I told her no, I was too tired, not in a nice way either, just go to bed!....I'd give anything for that moment back now.

I think about our future house in the country and my nice fantasy car in my head sometimes and don't appreciate the ones we have. This is the home we'll remember anyway! This is where the best memories we have are made. This fantasy doesn't exist because we need more space or that this one isn't good. It's because I'm greedy. I bet the people that live on the acreage that I want, want the one down the road with the pond, and the people with the pond want the huge castle house on Beaver Rd, that's insanely huge and actually is built as a CASTLE. Really? In Iowa? Whatever, this isn't for me to judge, but I just did, shoot. The point is, we all do this, but I want to stop and enjoy this one we have. This one is the one Steve and I have worked together to redo. This is the one I really love. Sometimes I forget that.

Well, that's just a short list of the things I'd like to get rid of from me. I don't like those parts of me. There are worse parts too. The point being, that I temporarily got prideful. I temporarily lived the victim mentality. I realize now that I hate that. I realized I'm stronger than that. God makes me stronger than that. I realize that's not what I want to teach my children. I want them to be strong, Godly women, able to conquer any situation with grace and finesse because they know they are backed by God. They lean not on their own strength, or understanding for that matter.

Other things we've been doing in the past five days include:

Olivia is reading!!! It's so fun! She tries so hard! I can tell they are doing fabulous things in school. She showed me yesterday how to karate chop words! She did this whole tae kwon do acting out of how to chop words down into their sounds, so you can sound out any word. She said, "See, C (hands up the in air and one foot out ready to kick), Aaaaa (moving her hands into position for the chop), "TT" (karate chop to the floor)! All sounds in the word complete. We laughed and laughed. That was the best thing I've seen in a long time.

Sophie got her "school" pictures taken. They are HILARIOUS. I ordered some and will post them when they arrive.

Well, that concludes what has turned out to be the longest blog entry ever. That's what writing is for me. I spew everything out that comes into my brain onto this page, and hope someone reads it and cares. It's ok if no one does, it's just nice if they do. So, here's to Lianna, for starting her own blog. Now I can end my writer's strike. This is helpful for me, because doing this it turns out, is the most therapeutic thing I do. Plus, now I can read the fabulous words of my ever-wise and creative sister, who still teaches me things to this day.....more responsible, more thoughtful, creative and fun, I have so much to learn!

Enjoy your day.....