This is what I look like 23 years young. This was last week on my birthday, me enjoying my strawberry daquiri at Olive Garden. And let me tell you, it was delicious!! Allison, Hannah, and Lauren joined me. It was a little group of us, but still special and fun. Afterward we went back to my parents' for some cake, which was pretty fun! Then later that night, Allison and I played Twilight Scene-It (a birthday present from Allison) and dueled Harry Potter spells on our phones. All in all, a good birthday I would say. I've never been one much for people making a huge deal out of me.

Watched the movie Dear John last night. I'm still not sure what I thought of it. I'm not the biggest Nicholas Sparks fan, thanks to The Notebook. Just not the hugest fan.

Life...... I have learned life is very boring. It's boring, very much the same, and that's ok. Even tonight, I'm facing a 0430 wake-up call for work, and wondering where the last few days off went. It seems as if I barely recover from work and it's already time to go back again. I think I am learning to leave work at work on my days off. Seriously, full time work is harder than I ever thought it would be. And knowing that it will last for an indefinite period of time, possibly the rest of my life, really kind of sucks. But when I'm at work, I will be at work. I'm going to work on having a more cheerful spirit, because I have allowed the stress to get to me too often. I'm still learning how not to carry it all so close to my heart, but that will come with time. Or maybe it won't. I just need to accept the stress for what it is, and learn to love it. One of my patients said to me this week, find a job you love and you will never have to work again.

So, though my life is in no way difficult, living day-to-day can be really hard. Loneliness, depression, discontentment-- all those things fight to get the best of me. Sometimes I let them win. It's a daily struggle for me to not sink into their depths, feel sorry for myself, and just exist rather than live. But, tomorrow I will be intentional. I will take it one day at a time. And if I lose the battle, aren't His mercies new every morning? Yes!!!

VBS week is over, and now it is VBS detox week. I will miss it, but am definitely tired. I've been up early every day the last nine days (except today of course) and am ready for a little break. I don't go into work until Monday either, which is excellent!!

Saw my first full-out code on Thursday at work. Walked in, 0640, patient starts coding, and they weren't able to save them. I didn't get to watch all of it, because I did have to start getting my report (life goes on in the hospital, even after emergencies) but it was weird. I walked in at the very beginning to see if they needed help, and you could just see that the patient was basically dead. I'm not sure though how it would have been for me if it was a patient that I had taken care of, spoken with, fed, bathed, etc.

They always taught us in nursing school to be sympathetic, not empathetic. You start getting into dangerous territory when you begin to put yourself in your patients' or their families' shoes, sharing their emotions, etc. And I realized Thursday how odd it must seem to others that an emergency happens, a life ends, or whatever may be, and yet hospital staff must go on with their day. We will still talk and laugh with our co-workers, and we still must provide the same care to our other patients, even after experiencing or witnessing something horrible. It isn't that you don't care, it's that you can't emotionally put yourself into that situation.

Sometimes it is hard. I have come home and cried for my patients a couple times, and once I had to step into the bathroom at work so no one would see me cry.

Speaking of crying, I saw Toy Story 3 this week. Definitely a tear-jerker. If you want a good cry, or just to feel a little sentimental, go see it.

VBS week at church!!!

Who cares if I'm 23 now, or I can barely be involved at church because of work. I will always come back for VBS! My church puts on the best VBS out there (well, in my opinion at least). We go all out, pull out all the stops for it. It's a big deal. Some of my favorite memories as a kid are from VBS.

I worked Sat/Sun/Mon this week. Wow, what a rough three days! I had a tech team with six patients all three days, which was pretty rough. Thankfully not an awful time of it, but it was definitely rough and I had to take a good three hour nap today to recover. I work Thursday, then will be off for another three days. Still don't think I'm ready to return to the 3-in-a-row schedule though. I thought it might not be so bad, but yep it is.

Also, it looks like I'm pre-hypertensive. In other words, if I don't shape up (literally) I'm gonna have high blood pressure at way too young of an age-- I'm on my way there (and I'm not sure if it's related to the stress at work, or to my eating/non-exercise habits or both). I feel very stuck in a rut right now with my exercise and eating habits. I have come to a defiant acceptance of my body the way it is, and honestly I really am ok with myself right now. Last week someone even told me that they've never met someone my size (and they honestly meant this as a compliment) who is so secure in it. When I say my size, I'll just go ahead and say it's a size 10. Not fat, not skinny. But, definitely not healthy for me. So, how to find a happy medium of accepting myself the way I am while still making efforts to be healthier and not go the route of obsession with diet and exercise? I've been there before, and it's the most miserable place to be! I think people wonder why I go ahead and eat whatever I want to, (they probably think I'm disgusting) but it's because I've been in a worse place before with food. I'd rather have this kind of relationship with food than the kind that will have me starved with electrolyte imbalances and no boobs. But then, skinny is much hotter than being chubs. Ugh, why does it all matter anyway? Why is it an issue at all???

Well, off to bed and back to VBS in the morning! It should be fun!

My Birthday

I'm 23 today.

My mom wrote at the end of my birthday card:

"Remember- the best is yet to come!"

I think she's right.

23

Twenty three... it is coming. It's been awhile since I have had anything close to excitement about another birthday, except for maybe my 21st for obvious reasons.

Twenty three. What did I think it would be? Well, for starters, my parents got married when they were 23. So, as a little girl I think I had always thought I would be 23 as well. I always saw myself in the dream job and career by this point. And, I especially always thought I would "have it all together" at this point. I thought I would be beautiful, skinny, with a great personality all rolled into one. I grew up playing Barbies, and my sisters and I would role play through them what I'm sure we imagined our lives would be.

Of course, when you are eight years old, your perception of reality is pretty unrealistic. So why would I expect my life to become any of those things? First of all, 23 is not nearly as old as I thought it was, so of course I'm not as put together and grown up as I'd thought I would be. I can recognize now that I still have plenty of time for these things to happen. But I guess it's still hard to let go of some of those little girl dreams. The perfect life. Perfect husband (Barbie got Ken--though didn't they end up breaking up?--, Ariel got Eric, Belle got the Beast--what was his name anyway?-- and so on and so forth: it's ingrained in us from childhood), perfect friends, perfect career.

So, what is 23 for me now? I mean, I'm generally content with where my life is right now, or at least in the acceptance stage of it. I have graduated from college, and I do have the beginnings of a career. I have good friends, if only a few, and even though perhaps all the pieces don't always fall the way I thought they would, I do have a pretty good life. So, what will 23, or we could say, my 24th year bring me? A lot can happen in a year.

Anyway, work is going well. I've had a few rough days in the last few weeks, but overall it's not terrible. I do enjoy it for the most part, I'm learning a lot, and know that I am doing my job when patients thank me at the end of the day or compliment me as a nurse. So, though it certainly is one of the least glamorous jobs out there, I think it probably is one of the best jobs in the world, at least to me. I can hardly believe that in October I will hit my year mark as a nurse. It's gone really fast!

Allison

Happy birthday, Allison!!! Twenty-five years old today!

I have three sisters, and though I love them all equally, Allison and I have always been a pair. Ever since I can remember. I think a lot of it has to do with being in the middle, birthdays close together, and having very similar personalities and likes (people thought we were twins for years-- you would never guess that now!). We didn't mature very quickly, so even as kids when we were 2 years apart, we were still very much on the same level for awhile.

We have shared many things together- almost birthdays, LOTR and Harry Potter obsessions, BMW, YGM, Three's Company, Disney Channel, Michael Buble and Josh Groban, and throughout the years had many names for each other. She is my Prego, Kid Blink, Frodo, Harry, Fred, Billy, Pippin, and I could go on, and on. We played many childhood games together in the backyard. We even campaigned through our neighborhood for Bob Dole in '96. We grew apart for a little bit when Allison went to college, but our trip to Michigan in June '04 really brought us closer together again. That was a very shared experience for us.

So, Allison, today is your day. Don't worry-- in five days I will steal all the attention back just like always!!! Thank you for being not just a sister, but a friend all these years.

Same

A great contradiction in my life... I absolutely hate change. Good change, bad change, I just don't like when something new comes along to interrupt the way things are going. I almost always get upset when this happens.

Yet I have lately begun to grow tired of life. The sameness, the monotony of it. Day in and day out, my life is very much the same. I wake up at 4:30 for work, get home around 8:00 pm. Get up and do it again, then a few days off. Rest and recuperation, maybe a night with friends. Then work again, and so on and so forth. I complain about it all the time, but really, it's a great life.

So, the next time change comes knocking on my door, I'm sure I'll probably fight it like always. Unless that change involves a tall, dark, and handsome bachelor, of course. ;)

And so, life goes ever on. Right now, I'm ok with where it's at. Ok, though not necessarily happy or content. But I think I have come to an acceptance of life's monotony. Mrs. Sutton, a mother figure of mine, once told me that life is very ordinary--- and you learn to enjoy its regularity. It has probably been since my freshman year of college that she has told me that, but I have always carried it with me. Up until that point, I had expected great adventures to come my way. And they still may, but I think you have to just look at life as an adventure: and one that changes from one stage of life to the next. Nothing is forever the same except for God, of course.

Drinks at Chili's tonight with Lauren and possibly Sara. That, as well as a Kercher/Bear Starbucks morning, and beach day yesterday, will have made for a pretty good couple of days off.