Nurse Sean (dot) com

another day…another glass of eggnog

I’m having one of those days where I look back on my life, and remember the good, rather than the bad.

memories are flowing…I forgot how much I love Beth Orton. I’m playing some obscure cd I made out of songs from Starbucks cd’s. The ones we had to play over and over again at work. The ones I secretly stole…even though there’s no way to play them at home…

pure sentementality…

I’m feeling better than my last post. As though I finally settled into something. I’ve decided that I couldn’t care less what I settled into. That’s not important. I feel calm, and awake. Alert, and ready for life. My slump was over as soon as I admited to it….

I’m skipping work tomorrow. Not to study or sleep or watch tv. I’m going to tag along with my roomate on a road trip to Hannah Alberta. A small town in the middle of nowhere (everywhere in Alberta is the middle of nowhere). A place that might as well be a different universe for me.

Road trips always have a calming affect on me. That sense of being completely, utterly away from everything. Listening to music, laughing with friends, staring out at nowhere…wondering what you’re doing in the middle of it. Switching back and forth between intense focus, and delicious withdrawl of every important thought that circles my mind.

I wish we could just drive forever…caught in a strange time-warp. driving…driving…driving.

Fortunately, reality seems less frightening all the time. Perhaps, this time, after clearing my mind, I’ll even be excited to come back from our adventure to small town Alberta.

What a great day I’m having…euphoric…lived out in the bubble of my bedroom and my mind.

Lately, I just don’t have it in me…

I find myself curled up in bed watching Regis and Kelly, and sipping glassfuls of eggnog. I only get up to check my email, and then promptly go back to bed. Sometimes I take a bowl of lucky charms with me. I’m supposed to be in class.

I go to work. I use every trick in the book to keep myself from actually working…but you can only do that so long before someone catches on.

Someone at work decided I was depressed, which is possible. But let’s be honest, I’m simply exhausted. I keep waiting for my next wave of ambition, but it keeps on failing to arrive.

I just need to get over it…I will…I always do.

So, here’s a look into my personality. There was a man who flirted with me online every day for the past two months. Asking me on dates, telling me how attractive he thought I was. I wasn’t at all interested, so I just kept saying, “I’m too busy” with hopes that he would quickly get the hint. Then one day, he stopped chatting with me. In fact, he stopped showing up online altogether. I thought, perhaps, he got the hint.

What I discovered was that while I was house-sitting for my sister, he began dating my downstairs neighbour. Because I was at my sister’s, I failed to notice. Then, one day, there he was, in my house…

Of course, he was much more attractive than his picture on the internet hinted at. And, he was much more kind, generous, and fun to be with. And…he was dating my downstairs neighbor!

ARG! Instant jealousy!

But let’s be honest…I always want the man I can’t have. It’s a little tradition of mine. I like to hunt. I just don’t know what do do with my prey when I catch them. I simply lose interest, and move on to a new hunt…

The list of men I have fallen for over the years…because I couldn’t have them…would astound a lot of people. It goes on and on and on. At least I can recognize this within myself, which I suppose is the first step in figuring out how to change that withing myself.

But heck…even with Paul…once I had him…I lost interest.

*sigh*

So, I’m sitting here at school, attempting to work on a massive paper that is due soon. Without ambition, desire, or energy. sometimes I just stare at the screen and wait for inspiration to come, but so far it hasn’t.

Once the paper is done, I can write finals, and then rest for a month. Pick up some shifts to make some extra money…and wait for the tidal wave of next semester. I have a feeling that the ebbs and flows get worse, not better….

I love nights like this. It’s way past the time that I should have hopped into bed. But I’m nowhere near tired, so I’m sitting here in my pajamas, sipping tea that I got from Sam, and watching tv. I have one of my sister’s cat’s on each side of me. One is trying to lie on my arm, making it hard to type. It’s like a pajama party for one. Too bad I have to be up at 7:00am, or I just might stay up all night.

so, here’s how my life is going…

It’s amazing how quickly I can go from being caught up at school, to slowly drowning. I’m doing ok, but it feels as though I’m taking one step forward, then two steps back…or is that two steps forward, one step back?

whatever…

I had a horrible test today. It’s almost as though I’m destined to screw up one test per year. I spent hours and hours and hours over the last five days studying for my anatomy test. In fact, that’s pretty much ALL I did from the time I woke up until the time I went to sleep. I was all set to ace the test.

I was about sixty questions in, with thirty remaining. Everything was GREAT! I was kicking ass on this test. All that studying had been worth while. All of a sudden, the questions were about the reproductive system. ACK! I thought the reproductive system was on the next test! Not this one! Because of that assumption, I hadn’t read the chapter, and even worse, I accidentally slept through class last Friday. The class, of course, where we covered the reproductive system.

I flipped through the rest of the booklet. The last thirty questions were all on the reproductive sytem…male and female…from meiosis to hormones…from the stages off the menstrual cycle…to the maturation of sperm…UGH!

So, I dug in and tried to answer as best I could, using left over knowledge from Biology 30, and some strange version of common sense. Oddly enough though, when I got home, I looked up a bunch of the answers. I was quite awed with the amount of stuff I remember, or was able to figure out using common sense. I always bragged that I could do good on a multiple choice exam…even if I had never been to class, or ever studied the topic.

Still

there were a lot of questions in there that I had no way of knowing, and guessed at randomly, so I’m expecting quite an “icky” mark.

In more interesting news, it seems as though men are coming out of the woodwork lately. Everyday it seems as though there’s someone new that’s interested in me. This is most definitely something new for me. I’ve never been “sought after.” Of course, this has been extra difficult for me because I’ve being somewhat “seeing” Paul for quite awhile now.

However, everyday I feel less and less attached to Paul. I think I’m doing it on purpose. I never realized just how hard it would be to be so far away from someone. I thought I would simply be chatting to him on the internet…feeling all “woozy” with love. That just isn’t happening. I think that it hurt so much to be so far away that I just put up a wall and refused to deal with the situation. It’s getting to the point where something has to budge. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that it’s going to have to end. The long distance thing was fun for a few months…when we were excited about meeting. However, now that we’ve met, it’s real…not a game. And reality is never as fun.

So, I’ve been talking to a few guys, and everyday I seem intrigued by how different people can be, and how sexy each be in his own way. I’m really enjoying every minute of it.

Well my life ever just settle down?

There was an episode of ER that haunted me for years after the first time I saw it. It was about a happy lady and her husband who were expecting a baby. The lady became sick and over the coarse of the episode, the lady ended up dying. The storyline isn’t overly exceptional considering the fact that it’s ER; however, there was something about the way the episode was written, acted, filmed, etc. that burned the horrifying emotions into my brain.

Over the years I forgot that episode…but I recently purchased the first season of ER, and there it was. Half way through the episode, I realized that I was up for an emotional roller coaster and I just might end up traumatized again.

But it made me think…what those people saw in that ER during that episode was enough to put even the strongest human being into therapy. However, their life went on and they seemed relatively untouched by the incident. They aren’t given time to regain their balance of emotions…life just went on…

It made me think of the few hours I spent in the ER. What I saw was relatively minor…just the tip of the iceberg, but many of the memories will stay with me forever. The look of fear in the patients’ eyes, the wince of pain…the complete helplessness. I can only barely begin to describe how emotional that place was…

But it felt like I was the only one that noticed….

I suppose you have to turn off those emotions, or as I mentioned earlier, you would end up in extensive therapy.

Anyways…those were my thoughts as I bawled and bawled…with my eyes as large as saucers…horrified by what I was watching. I’m sure it will haunt me for another decade.

Some of the finest television I’ve ever seen.

As for real life, it’s been an interesting couple of days. Far from the excitement of the emergency room…Monday was an odd day. We had to practice giving sponge baths…on each other (not a complete bath. Just arms and legs). It was a very odd feeling. We also had to brush each other’s teeth. That was by far one of the oddest feelings I’ve ever experienced. It felt very uncomfortable, and I was surprised how much it invaded my personal space. More than being washed by someone else…strange…

Other than that I’ve just been studying my ass off. Like I said, I slacked off over the weekend, and now I’m screwed, so I’m desperately trying to catch up. I’m getting there.

Other than that…life is normal! Except my sister’s house is old and creepy. I don’t do well with old and creepy.

I’ll get by though….

I keep telling myself that I deserve a day like this…

And the truth is that I probably do deserve it; however, it just isn’t practical. I had so much to do today, that I should have started from the moment I woke up…and right around now I should have been collapsing in front of the television, proud of all the work I had done.

I had three chapters of anatomy to read, a huge chunk from my fundamentals course, I had to do laundry, go shopping, and write up my spell assignment.

here’s what I actually got done: A little bit from my fundamentals course, and half a chapter from anatomy. I really screwed myself over this time. I am royally behind with no more time left in the day for catching up. Tomorrow will be a rough day, trying to get all this stuff done and behind me.

I did have a good day though. I spent most of it on the couch watching a big chunk of the first season of er. I’m certainly enjoying every minute of it!

I had a busy weekend, which certainly didn’t help my cause today. Friday was extremely busy. I had to go to school, and work, and then move into my sister’s house. At night was the Samhain ritual. It was a GREAT ritual…I really enjoyed it. I was supposed to slap on my hospital scrubs and stethoscope and head to the bar for some halloween partying, but we ended up sitting around and chatting till the wee hours of the morning. So, after all that, I was exhausted and just fell into bed.

Saturday, I woke up and went right to work, then went right to GOM class. Again, I was supposed to go to the bar, but was pretty darn tired by the end of the night. So, I went right home, and right to bed.

So, I think when I woke up and told myself that it was time to work my ass off…a stronger part of my mind told me that I need to to sit on my ass…rather than work it off.

I’ll survive. I always do, but I didn’t know I would be this far behind in everything, so November will be much tougher than I first expected.

Anyways…I have to go gather equipment for tomorrow’s lab. I’m not looking forward to it. We have to bring our bath supplies so we can practice giving each other sponge baths, and brushing each other’s teeth etc. I figure…I do this stuff on myself everyday…I don’t really need to practice because in real life I could probably just “wing it.” Plus, to my knowledge, nurses don’t do much of that kind of stuff.

I could, of course, be wrong…