The boys had a cross country meet this morning, once again at Lincoln Park. Hopefully this’ll be the last race where they’re contending with heat. It’s really something how when they start the season it’s hot and by the end it can be pretty cold. We have another trip to Nebraska planned for the end of next month where we can see another meet there. Grandma wants to plan to go next fall sometime she hasn’t seen one yet.

This is my weekend to work. For whatever reason it’s getting more and more psychologically difficult in the time leading up to the days I have to go and also when I am actually there. It’s been a good way to pay for school and and have extra money to give to the kids for theirs. I just do not like the feeling that something can go wrong at the drop of a hat. I am contemplating asking if I can drop it down to four hour shifts.

This past evening it was nice because the supervisor, the CNA, and I all sat down and ate our salad bar together. Usually you eat alone in shifts but with being down two residents at the current moment it opened up more time to have that spontaneous opportunity. You wouldn’t think 14 to 12 would make that much of a difference but it does. At some point I realized too that the calendar changed and we’re in autumn now.

I’ve still be rather obsessed with watching Charlie Kirk videos. I don’t binge watch Netflix or follow regular TV shows, so I guess I feel somewhat justified in my time spent on this. I didn’t even know this person and that’s a big reason I’m watching them. Like, to find out who this person was whose death I felt so much from such a far place away. I mean, I would see his name pop up here and there but I wouldn’t have recognized his face.

A client brought me a cinnamon roll today for our appointment. I had three appointment today and enjoyed every one of them. The therapy relationship is kind of a strange combination of part friend, part reflector, part listening ear, and somewhere in there being at least somewhat familiar with our common human patterns both internally and relationally. After the therapy I met up with Laura’s mom for lunch.

She was picking up her dress to take it to the dry cleaners. We’re still absorbing the remaining moments from the wedding, like the potpourri jars she made with some of the flowers and table decorations. Laura sent me the highlight video that her uncle had made. I walk past the dining hall and the flower pots are still there. Elianna popped in to say hello so that was nice. She’d been at camp the past two mornings but I missed her.

It finally rained. Every night when I tuck in the boys I tell them to empty the two dehumidifiers. Even when it doesn’t rain there still is the moisture in the air. Sometimes I will empty one before I go upstairs. There is a sink in the laundry room where I alternate between using that and the tub. I keep thinking maybe when school is over then things will be better, I can give more time here. Better is always for a future time.

I showed a second video in class this evening. Thank the Lord we only have to do four videos now instead of six. I had actually thought of saving this one for my grid but I wanted to go ahead not hold it back. The part that I thought was the best part of the showing was the part the instructor had the most (constructive) critical feedback on. He sensed an incongruence, if ever so slight, between the counselor’s words and the client’s experience. He heard struggle in the client’s voice, but I was reflecting back positivity and hope. One of things I said to her was, “The denial is starting to fade”.

Because after months of longing and wishing there was finally this tiny moment of acknowledgment that the “joy” she feels from her (adult) life-long drinking is not actually worth the long term pain. I told him that before I leave here I want at least an 8 or 9 out of ten on these videos. They aren’t graded or ranked. So when I asked what it is I needed to have more of he said it basically comes down to emotional processing.

This sex class I am taking on Monday nights is kind of a joke. The teacher still hasn’t put up a syllabus or posted anything in the modules past week one. I’m not complaining. I’m more just fascinated that this can somehow be a class and we will probably somehow pass and even get a decent grade. I actually even like the teacher. Kids can be mean and talk about her but she seems like a okay person and is also nice to me.

So the first night we had to go around and answer, “How do you like your sex?” Before that she had asked us about how we like our burgers. It was supposed to be a lead in which I found was actually helpful. The second night we had to break up in groups and make lists of all the official anatomical sex names. After that we had to make a list of every slang term we could think of for both male and female parts and actions.

Last week we didn’t have class because it was cancelled. This week we talked about sex education and where we learned our information. We did a 20 minute meditation where we were supposed to still our thoughts and pay more attention to our bodies. There is a girl from an African culture who talked about gender roles and coming of age rituals. At some point we have to stand in front of a mirror and talk about our bodies.

On Friday night we went to a Cardinals game in St. Louis. They were playing the Milwaukee Brewers which is the favored team of my brother-in-law and my nieces. The Brewers’ record is better than the Cardinals’ record this year so the Brewers were favored to win. It’s been hard watching the Cardinals lose so much over the past 12 years or so. Those two World Series wins within that 5-year period of time really spoiled me as to what it’s supposed to be like when you like and follow a baseball team.

But the Cardinals won so that was nice. After the game Josh and the boys drove back home and Elianna, my mother-in-law and I stayed over night at my sister-in-law’s house. My niece had a cross country meet in the morning so I wanted to make sure we made it to that. They have been to several meets and camp events and such and none of us had been down there since last August when they moved. You have to make those efforts.

The boys had a shooting retreat which thankfully went well. After the meet we went out to lunch and had a nice sit-down meal. After that we went to a small petting zoo where they had ducks, chickens, pigs, cows, goats, and a bull. My brother-in-law gave us a tour of the Lutheran high school where he works. Ethan had a meet in Lincoln during the morning so I was watching that and congratulating him for his time. Laura sent a picture to me and her mom of her and Ethan plus three other friends from back home.

Well my supervisor reached a breaking point and finally expressed his frustration with me. The ledgers from the Monday assessments had not been posted. The one from the black man did not have a diagnosis. Neither one has been fully completed and one had several missing sections. I had not collected a debit or credit card, why? I was handling all of it with a steady voice until the words “I’ve gone over this with you 4 or 5 times.”

I mean, I can’t fault the guy. I would be frustrated too, and I was, that I was looking stupid, that I had tried to ask for help and he had tried to give it and I still wasn’t getting it. I’d tried to tell him on the day he ditched me for the secretary that I was forming bad habits that I knew I needed to correct, specifically with the assessment charting. I’d tried to tell him also before that I need to physically do it for the tech instructions to stick.

So that kind of sucked but I mean I partly deserved it. I mean it really did suck but you also cannot expect these bosses to not have their own frustrations that they deal with. On Wednesday I accidentally busted a hole in the wall when I was opening the closet door to replace the soap in the bathroom. It is what it is and all I can do is try to do better and do what I can still. Today I did at least meet my direct client hours requirement.

Every evening feels like a slow creep toward the empty nest. I don’t remember when I first started feeling it, but when my first one entered double digits there arose an awareness that our time together was hypothetically more than halfway over. In the previous house the evenings brought with them the urgent countdown to bedtime.

Since we’ve moved here bedtime comes with an ache. It’s a subtle knowing that another day has passed that we will not have a chance to relive. It is the motivator for going downstairs and giving the boys their goodnight hugs. At the very least, if a goodnight hug was all I was able to do for them that day, it was enough. Last night they didn’t want me to leave, as we had started a mini conversation. They are intelligent and humorous.

And fun to be around. Tonight we skipped the games and had a talk about assassinations and history. Dad is more of the history person, though I too like the figures and stories. Last night they wanted to sleep outside again but I told them no. When they asked me why, I hesitated to tell them, but they did not push me too hard.

That last part wasn’t right because I was trying to hurry up and finish. It’s not that I’ve got this and will do a good job. It’s more akin to what Dallas Jenkins says when he talks about bringing his five loaves and fishes. It’s more like saying, “This is what I have…so…here” and then offering what I have. I wouldn’t even use the word give. Giving to me gives me a vision of pushing something forward to someone in front of me.

Offering to me is more of a lifting up. It’s a vertical motion. I think the point that I was trying to make with the two previous stories was that “It might not always be comfortable but I don’t want to hold back”. That was the thing about Charlie K as I have watched and listened to his videos. I actually thought he was kind of a butthead sometimes. But he was courageous, and unafraid to be who he was without fear.

So I guess I’m hoping to be a little bit more like that. All the doubt and second-guessing can be crippling at times. Like I truly do not even care about “excellence” or “mastery” anymore in these days. Or changing the dressing on the PICC line or working on REACH. I resist change so much sometimes because the projected outcome in my head does not match up with what I want. But the burning inside is not livable either.

“Free me from a divided life that I might be the same person on the inside that I am on the outside.”
~Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Relationships (devotional prayer)~

I resonate with this but I would change around the words. Instead I would say, “Free me from a divided life that I might be the same person on the outside that I am on the inside.” That is my struggle and where I feel the oppression. For as much as I think I am an open and vulnerable person, there are a lot of things I refrain from saying. There are a lot of ways I hide myself and refuse to come forward as my truest, most genuine self.

Two recent experiences come to mind. Over the weekend at work there was an incident on another wing where a resident needed an antibiotic. It needed to be administered through the PICC line in his arm which is something that in this facility, only RN’s are qualified and authorized to do. The evening staffing includes one nurse per wing. The two most difficult wings were being covered by LPN’s who could not hang antibiotics.

There is some sense in all of this. The 30+ year LPN has more experience in skills and assessment than the less than 5-years of experience RN who has been more comfortably working in long term care for coming up on two years. Long story short, I had to spend an hour sorting out a situation where a resident didn’t get his antibiotic because part of his PICC line was broken off and his daughter had tried to fix it herself.

And in my head there was this part of me that was like, “This is an easy fix. All we need to do is replace the injection port with our own port taken from the in-house supplies.” But stuffed on top of all of that was 1) the initial lack of enthusiasm over having to mess with another person’s problem, 2) The fear of not wanting to screw something up, and 3) the lack of comfort, confidence, and knowledge in how to use the facility’s IV pumps.

The second incident occurred at Thrive. I thought I was a doing a new patient assessment for a person wanting to begin individual therapy services. He walked in–a black man. Immediately my heart sunk thinking this could be the day I died. But somewhere in me also is a person who does not see color, not as a reason to fear or favor a person. He wasn’t coming for therapy. He needed a mental health assessment.

Which he had willingly submitted to do for some authorities. I’m thinking, gulping, “This is not what I am here for, I don’t even know if I am qualified to do this.” And I again I faced the same thing, 1) the initial lack of enthusiasm over having to do this task, 2) the fear of being killed by the man, and 3) the lack of comfort, confidence, and knowledge of how to officially do a mental health assessment that someone else is going to read.

Namely, whatever authorities need to read it, and also my supervisor because he is the one who has to sign it. And I was mad at him for putting me in this un- asked for situation. And I still have not, on my own, ever uploaded the new patient info from the computer system and had it go smoothly without any issues. And thankfully he was free in his office to be able to show me what else I needed to do or it would’ve been left out.

One time in group he said to a patient, “Show me a woman who does not expect a man to be the hero, and I’ll show you a woman who’s done an awful lot of work.” That sounded pretty cliche to me. But then I thought about more, wondering, “How do I expect the man to be my hero”? The main thing I came up with is that we (I) can expect for men to have an unlimited, superhuman capacity to deal with our (my) bull@*&^.

Because if they (he) can deal with my weakness then that means they (he) love(s) me. And people have shown up for me, and people have tolerated me. And somewhere inside of me is this person who wants to show up more truly to my genuine abilities. To say, “You know what, I’ve got this, and I will do a good job.” And then in turn whatever it is I do will help a person, and they will be able to rest easier because the load is halved.

The CNA held the phone while I Facetimed with the nursing supervisor on call and she talked me through how to program the pump. She would come in the morning to replace the dressing and re-enter the orders to make adjustments for the time. Maybe I will be able to do that another time without it being a bigger deal but for now I was relieved that she would handle it herself and that I still could be there in the meantime.

I generally try to not write when I feel like this but I did not follow that particular rule this time. I just have not been myself and have felt horrendously depressed and more emotional for days. The waterfall of tears keeps coming and it’s like sometimes they’re holy and sometimes they’re not, like it’s this combination of just ruthlessly saying whatever I want and then later regretting it, and trying to find my way back to sanity.

People with cancer will endure the chemotherapy because they have the willingness to trade temporary discomfort and hardship for the chance that the hell they will go through will give them a second chance at life. Yes we are wired to avoid pain and discomfort, but given a higher cause and a noble reason, we will choose to endure pain and even knowingly walk into it if it means somehow, somewhere, God can make it clear again.

That analogy falls apart when the chemotherapy ends up killing people. In one case chemo was a healing agent, and in another it was the opposite. So I don’t know sometimes when the human will is submitting to something it doesn’t need to submit to, or when I’m just foolishly believing that the killing agent is going to heal me. Like I don’t even know what this is, or why I keep believing that God is sealing up my heart.