where have the past two days gone?
Boxing Day was very quiet and relaxing around here. I watched a couple of movies with the kids and spent most of the morning on my laptop looking at possibilities for short term (and permanent) clinical placements in the US. When my mind got overloaded with choices, decisions, and possibilities, I got ready for work.
Work last night was a bit crazy; I had to 'close' for the first time all by myself and I was working with only one other person (instead of having at least three on shift) and the guy I closed with had never worked a closing shift before. I got home by 11:30 last night and was in bed by midnight since I had to get up very early this morning to work an opening shift. When I woke up this morning at 4:45 a.m. I had slept only about four hours o-O
I worked the first half of my shift and then came home and fell on the couch under a blanket. Jack sat with me and rubbed my feet in his lap while I dozed for an hour, then back to work. When I finally got home this afternoon, I was nauseous and exhausted so I went to bed until suppertime, heated up some leftovers to eat, then went to a movie with a friend. Jack has been off work for a few days and I've hardly seen him - it feels like I've done nothing but work and sleep :-/
The movie I went to tonight? Marley and Me. Seriously, if you're a dog lover, take a box of kleenex. Take two. I don't think it's a spoiler to assume what happens to the dog in the end, but OMG, the *way* it happened is almost exactly how it happened with our firstborn, a black lab named Dozer. I was a boo-hoo'in for the last 20 minutes of the movie, sobbed all the way home, and blubbered in Jack's arms for a few minutes as I told him about the movie. He wouldn't go with me to the movie tonight because he knew it would hit close to home - it was just way too similar to our real life grief.
And speaking of grief....could this town get any smaller? Yesterday and today at work I had several ghosts from my past come in to the store and by the end of my shift today I was ready to huddle in a corner in the back room.
* The doctor that had worked on Abby for hours, told Jack that Abby had died, and then blasted me about considering another home birth when I was pregnant with Charlotte. "Fill with regular?"
The husband of a couple I provided prenatal and birth care for when I was working with a local doctor here. Yeah, I measured her belly and helped suture her perineum and now I am pumping their gas. Jeebus.
The grandmother of the young woman recently killed in our community. This is the their first Christmas without her and her grandmother's grief was so fresh as she talked with me. I told her that the first year had been the roughest for me when I lost my daughter two and a half years ago. Fresh pain as that grandmother's eyes filled with tears.
The male EMT who came to my house the night that Abby was born and saw me naked. I usually avoid eye contact but today I looked him in the eye, just in time to see him glance down towards my chest. At first I thought he was checking me out but then I realized he must have noticed my necklace with Abby's pendant that was dangling over my shirt collar as I reached for a pen.
The husband of my doctor, the same doctor that also worked on Abby for hours and attended her funeral. I don't think of that every time I see her or her husband, but today I did when he very politely asked me, "How are your girls?"
*groan*
Yup, this town is getting too small, or I have to stop working with the public.
Now, to throw a huge load of diapers in the dryer and haul my tired butt to bed. I have to be up in five hours to work another opening shift. This workin' thing is for the birds.