The Weight

Comically unsteady riding through Chicago with 30lbs of groceries on my back somehow helped me feel lighter.  Funks are a funny thing.

I also got a surprise text from B: I'll be in town late tonight.  Well that's just great.  Good food in my belly and good friends in my presence.  What do I have to funk around about?



Also, I could listen to this song fifty times in a row and not get tired of it.  Have an awesome day.

Once you take away the blood and guts, what have you got?

That's right, a pile of firing synapses and a rickety skeleton.  Now that my brain isn't filled to capacity with memorizing the procedural points on chemo efficacy and theories on death and dying I'm left with a grand chasm.  I'm trying to think of nothing and everything and it's making me feel, well, weird.  Laying awake at night I feel overwhelmed.  I'm trying my best to be the river and my thoughts the debris passing through my sheds, but we all know how that goes.  I'd like to send my brain to the central department for orderly processing, or maybe I just need some sunshine.  Counting down the days till west coast adventures.

A Tale of Two Pockets

I hate when internal struggles manifest themselves physically.  What I'm saying is, I hate when I get all noodly.

Woman of Leisure, Sort Of...

I wish I was always on holiday break.  This is just too good.

Children and Grief - An excerpt

5-9 Years: Children in this age group may hide their feelings to avoid appearing babyish, to protect others from feeling sad, or if they are unable to tolerate the pain of grief.  Death is seen as possible, but the child continues to see themselves as invincible.  These children often seek out very concrete information about the death, although they also have a strong fantasy life that they use to make everything as it was before the death.  Symptoms include regression, crying, anxiety, headaches, stomachaches, denial of death, hostility toward the deceased, inability to concentrate, and bad dreams.

SC said when her and her fiance called it off she just had to pretend he died and deal with it that way.  And what if you run into him?  Would it be like seeing a ghost?

Contemplating grief while in a good mood on a dreary winter afternoon while listening to Tonstartssbandht (happy sad music).

My earliest memory of grief and death was about my cockatiel Buddy dying.  I don't remember much about the process except making myself as small as possible and lodging myself between the wall and my bunk bed.  I must've stayed there crying for hours, finally my Ma found me and told me I was being ridiculous.  It was just a bird honey.  Grief is an out of body experience for me, I always just want to lodge myself between a wall or an armpit for fear of expanding into nothingness.  I don't know.  I certainly couldn't handle being a pediatric nurse, ha ha.  I suppose either way in my line of work I should get used to the grief process.  When L dies I don't want to go to her funeral.  I will, because that's what you do, but funerals are for the living not the dead.  Of course it's the living people that make dealing with grief such a heartbreaking work.  This is your life with a hole in it.  This is your life without me, deal with it, cause you don't have a choice.  And you just carry on and not let your grief become complicated and drawn out, but when that happens you think of the person or thing you loved less and less until you don't really think of it at all and if you are lucky you can fill that hole with something in its stead.

Loop Conducting Ya'll

Cheesy, but interesting video about triggering traffic lights on your bike.  I always thought the triggers were a myth! Myth busted.  Also, Richmond seems like an all right place to live.

Let's Get this Final Finalized

Monday Monday MONDAY

I'm really excited about being a nurse.

Life expectancy of the average American female

It's only fitting I start out the cancer unit in nursing with someone close to me getting diagnosed terminally.  Today of all days.  The same day I had to joke through some tears while I held K's hand as he received his last infusion of intrathecal chemo.

Yo kid that cerebrospinal fluid looks good.
I'd rather be playing video games.
Me too.
Me fucking too.

I woke up thinking my hangover was going to be the hardest part of getting through the day.  I'm just going to stop answering my phone.  I never get bad news in texts.  2012 is definitely the worst year of my life, but it's going to be a lot worse for L.  What would you do if you had 1-3 months to live and further contemplation to follow.

Wild Love

Here is a post about Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein on one of the only blogs I read regularly.  I barely have time to internet anymore, so it was a really nice post to open up to.  Stein's literature holds a special place in my heart and always will.  In addition, she's a fucking rad woman.  I think I should add What is Remembered to my winter break reading list.

This weekend should be very interesting.  I am entering into a balancing act, and we all know how good I am at that.