I'm ok.

Life is okay guys, don't worry about me too much. I am trying to be very busy, and so far I have been. I want to be distracted. I was on call this weekend and had 4 deliveries. That's decently busy, and they were all during the daytime, so that was cool, and I made plans in the evenings to be with people. And then last night for the first time I saw that one who was taking up space in my head, and he was so unambiguously uninterested (and "doing so great!") that it hurt my feelings. I guess I was hoping my absence had caused a little pain. But that actually helps a lot, because it is kind of hard for me to sustain any sort of wistfulness about a relationship when the other party could care less. So yeah. Whatev. On to the next, taw taw. I'm just going to keep buying myself flowers and fancy ice cream.

Today it was so cold that I got to wear my Oxford coat, the long one, which was fun. I still hate cold weather.

Linda's coming to see me tonight so one of the cars driving by is actually going to be for me this time.

January needs to end

I'm watching American Idol. I saw 25, maybe 26 patients today and I feel all used up. I don't actually know if that's a respectable amount to be exhausted by, but I am. Today at lunch I bought some Doritos out of the machine, but they wouldn't come out, so I was throwing myself against the vending machine and then the office manager saw me and laughed and called me a waif and hit it once and it fell out. I think I was just doing it wrong.

Disconnected

I just paid my bills. I have $100 in my bank account now. I think I'm doing something wrong. At least I get paid Thursday.

Every time I hear a car drive by, I get all hopeful that someone is coming to see me. So I either put music on or leave the house.

Yesterday was cold and rainy all day, and I built a fire in my fireplace and read a whole book.

I need a new vacuum cleaner. Mine doesn't suck anymore.

I ate a giant sandwich for dinner. The bread was kind of scratchy. I couldn't finish it all.

You know how I said I wasn't dying? I sort of am today.

It's January, and I want to go to Lake Tahoe with Dawn next month, but tickets to CA are like $400.

I have to be at the hospital so early tomorrow morning!!! So why am I still awake?!

Saturday morning in the carpet capital

This is all the girls at the Bechtel's house after church. That's why April and Rachel are so dressed up. The middle picture is me and Chris at the Anheuser-Busch brewery. (edit--um, I don't know what happened to that picture...I was trying to get rid of the extra spaces and I deleted it and now it won't go back. Maybe I can post it separately.)

So I got cable yesterday, guys. Mostly because I want to see American Idol and the Office. Anyways, I watched an hour of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and was totally sucked in by the commercials for the shows that were coming on in the next few hours...then I turned it off and went to go see Nicky in Chattanooga. She and James and I went out to Panera and then we watched some of this show called Wives and Daughters that she got from Netflix.

Here's something weird. This morning my neighbors got up around nine, went downstairs, and started watching a suspenseful movie. I can hear them now.

I'm still nervous about becoming like that guy in Nashville, the one who said he was lonely when he moved there until he got cable. Because it was really fun to watch tv. I didn't think about anything...I didn't think about my patients, or what to eat for dinner, or where I'm going to live when my lease is up this May, or if I should try to get a different job, or that guy and how he hasn't called, or how I'm getting older and don't actually like my life that much right now. It was like checking out. Maybe I should just try not to freak out so much when I'm awake.

I was reading my archives this morning, and I feel like things are so different from what they were a year ago, when I first graduated. I've been a midwife for a year. I've lived alone in a new city for 8 months now. I've gotten to the place where I don't feel nervous going into a birth anymore. I feel like I'm ready for a new challenge.

And that's the way it is

I've spent the last two evenings reading that Alaska book on my couch, with Stan Getz playing in the background (not too invasive, but prevents me from feeling like I am just...alone with the heater and the refrigerator around for company.) It was a good book, entertaining in spite of its lamentable cover. The woman acts like an idiot occasionally, particularly in regards to her boyfriend, but its mostly a lot of good stories about being on a boat and fishing and running a lodge in Alaska. When I finished I wanted to send it to someone. It's kind of similar to Mrs. Mike.

I bought it and another book on Thursday last week. I also bought myself some non-carnation grocery store flowers to put in my new vase from the Cheneys.
I'm sort of sad right now because someone who was previously taking up a lot of space in my life/head now is not. Because I told him not to anymore. Again. Yeah. So it's okay, our conversation really couldn't have gone any better than it did, I'm just disappointed. It feels kind of like when you are about to get sick, when you feel all right during the day- and then sort of crappy in the mornings and evenings. I'm not dying. I didn't let myself really get my hopes up this time, I was a little more careful, but okay, it still sucks. I know I'm being vague. I don't want to say more about it.

Work's been going okay. It's getting easier. I had my 78th birth today after work. I don't feel as overwhelmed as I did at first, and most of the hard kind of patients I have now I've dealt with a few times before, so I have a better idea of how to take care of them. One thing that's helped a lot is that the medical assistants have started putting people's weird complaints on post-it notes to me on the chart rather than actually writing it in the chart. If a complaint is actually written in the chart I have to address it and put closure on it somehow, which sucks if its something ridiculous like left-sided bellybutton numbness or something that sounds like a big deal at first, like, "heart problems" and then I ask them more questions and it turns out that they've felt their heart beating really fast when they got stressed at work a couple of times. Right.

The truth is, I was tired at 7:30 tonight when I got home from church. I just made myself stay up longer because I'm 25 and not actually a viejita yet.

Tico is 17 today!

Hi guys,
Here's the update: I'm back in Dalton, in my scrubs, on call for the weekend again. I went to St. Louis to see all those favorites last weekend, it was really fun. Every time I go I wonder why I haven't made more of an effort to live near them. I don't even really care if we are doing stuff, I just like to sit around with them. Good times.

When I got home on Sunday night, Linda was just pulling into my driveway (she was coming back to school). She brought Christie with her. She's been here all week with me, so that's been cool. We've been going out to eat and going shopping and watching movies and stuff. We saw Little Miss Sunshine on Tuesday, I think I liked it...still not sure. I would certainly recommend it if you haven't seen it, I just don't know if I would want to watch it again.

I got a book at the used book store called Fox Island Stories, about a woman who breaks up with her boyfriend and moves to Alaska to work at a wilderness lodge. Sounds kind of fun, right? And it has a stupid looking cover so I was feeling all nonshallow and proud of myself for getting past that. Well so far it's been sort of dumb. It's nonfiction, so I can't really complain, but the first thing she does in Alaska is meet some "rugged fisherman" guy and move in with him in his cute A-frame house. Hardly a story of roughing it and doing something interesting with your loneliness, right? But anyways I'm only on page 24 so I am able to maintain some optimism about the book as a whole. (Just in case you were nervous about that)

I hate January. I'm feeling sort of yucky for lots of reasons. I need to make some plan, because right now I have nothing to look forward to, besides being off call so I can get the heck out of town again. Maybe I'll go to Nashville next weekend. Or Atlanta. Or New York. Well, Christie's just sitting here, so I need to take her out now.