I’m no good at secrets. Keeping secrets, oh I’m good at that. There’s no HIPAA compliance issues with me. But my own secrets always seem to fall flat on execution.

The last time I went home (or was it the time before?), I tried to surprise people with my arrival. Liz, of course, had to be told that I was coming so she could pick me up, but then Laura found out so I didn’t get to see her shocked face when I showed up on her doorstep demanding a place to sleep, and since nobody else knew I was coming, everybody had made plans and I barely got to see anybody. Very disappointing. Not this time. I’m announcing it from rooftops.

I’m going to be in SLC on March 6 and flying to Phoenix on the 12th for a few days before I head back home again. And I want to see people and party as only we 30-year-olds-with-kids-and/or-careers can do. Monday afternoon/night looks like the best night for me. It’s the perfect idea for FHE anyway: to spend time with the Plethora family. Laura will have just given birth, so I can’t commandeer her home as usual. Anybody else want to host?

It is nice to have something to look forward to. I’m not looking forward to the $15 a leg checked luggage fee and I have to say, while the price of gasoline has gone down, the price for plane tickets certainly hasn’t.

I am almost, almost ready to go back to real life. I could have done with another day or two (or week) off, but this was enough to recharge my batteries and dust some of the fatigue and bitterness off my shoulders.

I got semi-lost coming home, as I was on my cell-phone pretty much the entire way and thought I had missed a turn in a construction zone (I didn’t, it was just not marked), so I spent an extra hour driving through the moon-lit fields of rural Wisconsin. I was the only car on the road and at times it felt like I was the only human in existence. It was a lovely detour. I forget how much my soul craves the solitude sometimes.

I’m on call tomorrow… I suppose I should be getting some sleep now, eh?

Thousand words right here.

From Visit with Susan

I’ve taken over 210 pictures in the last day. Mostly of the baby, who moves very fast and doesn’t trust me (I rather startled her this morning when she walked into the bedroom and found me instead of her mother), so there are a lot of blurred, blank stares. I promise that she does smile very becomingly at her parents who dote on her. There should be no question in this child’s mind of how loved she is. I’m going to try to experiment with family photos (and maybe repeat “engagement photos” with Suz and I. It’s been 7 years now, we’re due for another set) tomorrow. I can’t wait!

The day’s events included waking up to a breakfast of crepes, playing with the baby, going to eat at a Thai restaurant, where the mild green curry was definitely not mild, visiting every single Asian market in the area (4) looking for masaman curry paste (every store had a different fish odor), napping, eating homemade vindaloo curry and chocolate chip cookies, and going to the model airplane show, where I got even more blurry pictures (see the above masterpiece). Maybe I’ve a future in abstract art? There is a surprising number of middle-aged men who are into model airplanes, I was hoping for a slightly younger crowd. Had fantasies of meeting eyes across the controls and I’d become a airplane junkie, traveling the model airplane circuit in support of my special someone (kidding, just kidding).

Now, Suz and I are sitting next to each other on the couch, each blogging about our day. 🙂 For my part, it’s been just about perfect. Even the weather warmed up into the high 50s (luckily, since I accidentally left my winter coat at home) and has been gorgeous. Can I stay here forever, please?

Plans for this weekend:

• visiting the library
• going grocery shopping
• watching episodes of LOST
• getting Alice (the babe) to warm up to me (it’s been a few months since I last saw her, but maybe she’ll remember me?)
• taking pictures of the babe (first chance to really play with my camera. Could I ask for a better subject than a two-year old’s grin?)
• sewing my regency dress
• cooking and consuming delicious food
• E-fest amateur electric plane festival!! (a pylon race! helicopter crashes! combat! night-flying!)
• staying up way too late talking and opening up my heart
• remembering exactly why Susan has been my bosom friend for so many years (almost 12 years)

This was exactly what the doctor ordered. 🙂

I wonder if there will ever be a time when I feel confident in my abilities to take care of clinic patients. Hospital patients, even though they are sicker and more complex, don’t bother me (too much. Don’t worry, there’s no an ounce of cockiness in me. Except that I know more neurology here at the private hospital. But that’s not hard). I have the labs, the xrays, the ancillary support and the time to figure out what’s going on. When a patient is admitted to me, I can concentrate on that problem and the one or two other medical problems to go along with it and everything else, I can, if not ignore, document and not worry about it. I have pharmacists to consult, time to look up articles, time when I can go back and ask the questions I didn’t get to the first time. I’m very efficient at it; I can see a new patient and have a good idea of what’s going on within 20 minutes.

It seems like an entirely different world in clinic, where I have a limited amount of time to get the patient’s entire history and yet pressure to produce answers right away. Symptoms that have been going on for years, I have to address and I’m expected to have a solution right then. I have no labs, no supporting procedures that I can order and have done by the next day. I feel like a fool because I haven’t done pelvic and breast exams, prostate and rectal exams, except for very specific cases, since I was a medical student. I don’t know the subtlities in how to treat erectile dysfunction or allergic rhinitis, because those patients don’t get admitted to the hospital.

My classmates don’t seem to struggle with this. I’ve never “belonged” in the clinic world and I feel it more and more acutely every week. I’m enjoying the medicine clinics much more than the neurology clinic, but I think that’s just because I’m new. Every week, I’m so drained and discouraged afterwards.

I keep waiting for that someday when it’s supposed to get easier.

I haven’t quite known exactly what my mood has been recently. Having all of the free time has not exactly been conducive to actual productivity. I’m so worn out and tired and somewhat depressed (despondent, I think would be more apt) that I haven’t done much for the past couple of days, but laundry and watching YouTube movies (Groundhog’s Day on Feb 2, course, North & South yesterday, and Jane Eyre today). I did get my antenna and digital converter set up, but that’s hardly an achievement as I have a Christmas tree still up and scattered stuff everywhere and dishes in the sink. I’m frustrated, a deep soul restlessness type of feeling, which is hard to define and harder to shake.

Chris got his fellowship position. The ending to his personal statement must have been better than I thought (or else they overlooked that due to the rest of his impressive resume, which, since I also helped him put together looks pretty good) and he’ll be going to Boston in June. For 2 years. I’ll be done with residency by the time he gets back. So much for having my friend nearby. I’m an emotional schizophrenic, wavering between ecstatic happiness (Boston! I’ve never been to Boston (in the fall)! Atul Gawade! We did it!) and moroseness. Usually the happiness wins out; tonight…

There is sunshine ahead. A weekend with Susan and her babe in two days (really just one long call day). A week of vacation  to Utah and Arizone in a month (I’ll be looking for tickets tomorrow). Presents from India. Glorious rays of sunshine. I just need to shake of the chill and clinging fog.

To the people out there who knew of the existence of North & South and had not insisted on my watching it years and years ago: You are no longer my friends. To hold this from me! Hmph.

Now I’m conflicted. Darcy or Thornton?? I mean, I thought Colin Firth did an amazing job with the smoldering glances and tortured pining. Richard Armitage can give him a run for his money and then some.

Maybe you should decide: The mini-series (with french subtitles)! Only click if you have four hours to spend. You’ll never get away!

(runs off to slip in another viewing of the ending before bed)

***

As a complete aside, my most amusing story of the day: after I had gotten sign out that there were “no overnight events” with a particular patient, I discovered that the patient had had a minor procedure with some major complications, requiring emergent surgery and intubation where patient subsequently coded and required CPR to restore heart rates. He stabilized after that and as everything happened before 7 or so (I had left the hospital sick some hours before) I guess, technically, “no overnight events” was accurate. Boy, was it a shock, though!

This may have been one of the worst post-call days yet. I did get some periodic sleep (so it could have been so much more awful) and then woke up this morning sick. As in, I-think-I-got-food-poisoning-from-my-spinach-salad sick. I was sick enough that had it been any other day, I would have left and have one of the other residents cover, but as it was, we were already short a resident so that wasn’t an option. I finally managed to get away and I’ve spent the day sleeping and only now have been able to tolerate some sprite and bread. Good times.

To make up for the TMI of this post, some YouTube videos that friends have posted that have caused much amusement in my convalescence.

The Weepies – Can’t Go Back Now. The Weepies+puppets=awesomeness

German fashion show. My friend Brooke linked this on her blog, wishing that she understood German. I’m not sure that I do–the images are searing enough!

And now, I’m going back to bed.

When I was a little girl, I was a weird little girl, who scoured calenders and discovered that the magical month of February, so abused and maligned for its cold, frigid days and single-awareness event, had the potential of being a perfect month, filling equally every spot in a 4 week calendar in a beautiful rectangle when the 1st fell on a Sunday. I remember using my computer and plotting out which years this would happen. It was a rather rare occurance, because leap year would happen and mess everything up (stupid leap year) and honestly, I thought I would never see it; I’d be old and withered like when Halley’s comet comes again.

February 1998 was a perfect month. I was 19. Feburary 2009 is a perfect month. I am (appropriately, some would say) 11 years older now. And I still get just a little bit of a thrill seeing the calendar on the side of my blog that is a perfect 7X4 rectangle. I am not determined to fill up every single one of those squares with a perfect link. 🙂 I told you I was a weird child.

***

I’m on call today, which so far hasn’t been bad. I even managed to slip in a nap; since I didn’t get to bed last night until 1 am (serious grousing over the single LDS male population here), it was needed. I’m back at the private hospital this month. I had forgotten its many quirks and frustrations, such as the complete incompetence to deal with neurological problems (it’s a sad state of affairs when I come here and feel like an expert) and the complete unwilliness to do anything without a bloody consult. There’s one episode that I’m still fuming about because it’s utter mismanagement of this patient and I am powerless to do anything. I hear bad-mouthing of academic centers all of the times because part of the care is given by relatively inexperienced interns and residents. True, but we have supervision by attendings who keep up on the research and for whom money is not the driving force. I’d rather receive care, any day, at a academic center.

*deep breath*

On the happy side of things, I get out most days by 1-2 pm and I usually sleep on call. Yay! Oh, cold, deceiving sun, how I have missed you! I have so many goals to achieve this month. Finally getting time to explore my camera a bit. Taking down my Christmas tree. Going to the gym (really don’t like my gym. It makes it difficult to get inspired to go there). Watercolor painting some of my photos. Sew my regency era dress. Clean my kitchen. Do my taxes. Study for the neurology in-training exam (that probably ought to be the number one priority, but somehow it’s not). There’s no way everything getting done, but it is awfully nice to have the extra time that I can dream about filling.

Flaming Gorge

There are times when I get really, really homesick. Usually it’s when I’m tired of dealing with the layers of responsibility and the daily rush, rush, rush. Today is one of those. I’m getting claustrophobic again, when I get need to get out of the city and breath fresh air and not be around anybody for a few hours. Growing up in a town of 250 people was in many ways difficult, but I do miss the slower pace of life and the solitude.

(Not my picture. Stolen from here which has some absolutely lovely pictures of Utah. This is not five miles from where I grew up.)

***

My talk went well, by the way. I didn’t get nearly enough time to prepare and had my usual pages of random quotes that I shuffled around (I’ve gotten quite good at reading out of the corner of my eye since I started teaching Sunday school), but I did have a good opening, I made people laugh and I didn’t lose my place too many times. I even used last week’s horribleness as a object lesson as how one ought not to be the foolish virgin. Hopefully the next time I speak in church (which I doubt, now that I’m back on the radar, will be another 7 years), I’ll remember this lesson.

And I’m done with all of my clinic notes. This week will still be busy as I have to finish the discharge summaries that I neglected last week, but it should definitely be better. I’m on call tomorrow; guess that probably means I should be getting to bed, eh?

I am so glad it’s Friday. I’m on call tonight, which means that I can avoid the freezing cold weather for 30 hours. By the time I’m released, the weather forecasts that it’s going to be a balmy 20 degrees. I may not even need the extra layer of sweats over my pants tomorrow!

I overslept this morning, arrived to the hospital an hour late. I tend to be chronically on the “a little late” side, but it’s been a long time since I actually slept through my alarm clock and awoke in a panic. It didn’t help that it now takes an additional ten minutes in the morning to get ready with having to blow dry my hair and put on the three extra layers of clothing.

It’s been absolutely insane around here. On Tuesday, I received 4 different pages from my program director; I was post call and blissfully slept through them and didn’t get them until the next morning, where I found out that unless my clinic notes were completed ASAP, I was going to be put on suspension. I didn’t think I had that many open (I had had 31 last week, I worked on a bunch, was down to 27 and of those 10 of them I had finished and was just waiting for the attending to finish their part). But it was apparently too many and I was in trouble. So, I spent most of Wednesday night, any free time on Thursday and all morning getting all of the notes done and sent on to the attendings. They’re all done, but it was a massive devotion of time, and now I’m behind in discharge summaries and other stuff. It never ends.

Project number two on top of this was helping Chris out by massively editing/revising a personal statement. He found this absolutely amazing research fellowship to apply to, run by no other than Dr. Atul Gawande, my hero. It’s always a time-consuming project editing his papers. He tends to think and write in fragments, forgetting all of those lovely linking thoughts and words to keep everything running smoothly. I tend to be a much more verbous writer, which he doesn’t like, so edits often go back and forth several times before we’re satisfied. Unfortunately because we now are residents and have no free time, we didn’t have a lot of time to work on it. He sent it off yesterday and I still wasn’t entirely satisfied with the conclusion and felt that there were other areas that could have used polishing, but oh well. He’s promised me a great gift from India (he’s going in two weeks) as payment and if he gets it, I’m definitely using my vacation time to try to stalk meet Dr. Gawande.

Reason number three it’s been insane: I started my medicine clinics this week. It’s going to be a good change. I really like the attending that I’m working with; we’ve worked together on the wards last year and while he’s intense and sometimes difficult to read, he’s also a great teacher. He loves to do procedures and he believes in taking full ownership of the patients–no referrals out unless it’s absolutely important, which I love. He spent 15 years doing medicine in Nepal which probably explains some of his attitudes. Yesterday was a little bit frustrating; new department, new way of doing things, feeling a little bit like a medical student again, but I’m sure it’ll get better.

I’ve still got a lingering sore throat and my fellow has now developed a cold as well and I’m sure, infected me again. Sometimes I hate evidenced based medicine: I know very well that antibiotics are not going to help, but I’m just so tired of the dwindles.

I’m giving a talk in church on Sunday, on self-reliance. When he asked me, Bishop said that I was an “ideal” person to give it, that was before the above trouble, I guess. I’ve lived here two and half years and they finally managed to catch me with a Sunday that I was free and not post-call; actually I haven’t spoken in church since 2001, right after the terriorists attacks, eight years is a pretty good record! The VA blocks access to the LDS website, but I’ve managed to circumvent that; I just can’t print anything off which is great for the environment but not so good for my preparation. I’m more than a little nervous…

So to sum up: I’m hectically busy (I’ve just admitted another two patients so I have to rush away to finish their orders). Mom, I got your email, will look for the package, a few oranges sound nice but would probably freeze before I could eat them. Becks, here’s the update on my life. Barbara: I did get your Christmas card! Thanks! Still haven’t made it to the post office, but hopefully will next week, maybe a Christmas card for Easter. Ellie: I’m so glad you wrote! Please tell me more on how you’re doing. And to everybody else: hi! I’ll hopefully get to talk to you later.

Pissing off the ER doctor means no sleep for you. So even when they are being idiotic and asking you for permission to discharge a patient home, which permission you are not allowed to give on the basis that you are the resident and not the fellow or attending and therefore have no say in anything, please try to be nicer (I know, I know, you were super nice… but there was that note of baffled condension in your voice).

I knew that going into call with no patients was a call for badness. Nature abhors a vacuum, after all.

*heads off to admit yet another patient*

I figured out how to access LJ here at work! Yay!

Wow, has it been a busy two weeks. I’m back over at the VA on the cardiology service and there hasn’t been a quiet day yet. We’re just slammed with patients, the entire hospital is, really, all of these people who decided that they’d just stick it out for the holidays and now are coming in with raging pneumonias and cellulitis, and more pertinent for me with chest pain or florrid congestive heart failure. I admit virtually every day, on call (the 30 hour stretch) every 4th night and for the vast majority of the last two weeks, I’ve carried most of the team as well as most of the ICU patients because none of my patients could be discharged home and just kept adding up.. The call nights have been long so far. I’m not quite to the “neurology call night” busy level, which is the definition of a busy night.

Worse, I’ve still been sick. Had a sore throat every day for over a week. Make that two weeks. This morning, I woke up without a sore throat and was so excited… only to have it return this afternoon. If it’s still here by the time I go home tomorrow, I’ll have one of my coworkers write me a prescription. Nice knowing those in power. 🙂

My fellow just left for the evening. As he was walking out the door, he spouted off last minute reminders of tests that needed to be ordered or checked up on and then, he bolted back to ask me if I was “single, married, children?” Bizarre.

I have the whole weekend off. It’s going to be bliss.

I never made it to the post office to get stamps and mail off Christmas cards. Would you all still want them now? Every year, I swear I’m going to get them off and every year, I forget that I work beyond the hours that the post office is open. *sigh*

I know that there have been several emails, voicemails, telegraphs that I have missed and am behind in responding to and for that I beg your forgiveness and patience. I’m also behind on 8 discharge summaries, 2 dictations, 6 evaluations (from October) and 31 one clinic charts. I’m failing everybody right now and just trying to stay above water.

Anyway, I’m off to order dinner (frozen custard, snickers flavored. And something else), but just wanted to check in and let every one I’m alive. 🙂

33 hours. I was at work for 33 hours straight. I worked 33 hours straight without sleeping and somehow made it home and did not kill myself or others. And then when I tried to sleep this afternoon, my pager kept going off.

I still have 8 daily progress notes to write and 2 procedure notes before I really fall asleep tonight, but it’s not going to happen. I don’t know what the consequences are if I don’t get them done, but seriously, I had 10 patients that I saw this morning and a to-do list of at least 60 items before I could leave and I wasn’t going to stay for another hour to finish the notes, and I’m still to exhausted to do them now.

I performed a subclavian (missed it and the fellow had to get it. I was doing so good!) and an art line on one sickish patient, sipped a cup of black current juice with the nurses (who I don’t really know so it was awkward), admitted a couple more, got called urgently to evaluate another patient who wasn’t quite as sick as promised (thank goodness) and then 2 minutes later got called to admit another patient to the ICU. I then spent something like 2 hours trying to get ahold of the fellow so we could discuss a plan on how I was to take care of this patient. Good times.

**

I’m still sick myself, with an enlarged tonsil and earache on the right side. Pain control is working (I drool otherwise) and I’m afebrile, so I know it’s just this nasty cold, but I keep freaking myself out thinking that it’s an abcsess and OMG! what if it needs to be drained! There are reasons that I make a very poor physician to myself.

**

In better news, one of my best friends rang in her new year by giving birth. Meghan Anne joined the world sometime this evening and by picture, she’s just absolutely gorgeous. We’ve been awaiting her arrival forever. 🙂

**

I hope you all had an awesome New Years and more importantly, I hope you all have a wonderful year. 2009 is going to be a good year. We have a perfect month after all to look forward to. 🙂

And now, I have bed to look forward to. Ah, sleep, how I love thee!!

As of midnight tonight, I will (finally) be half way done with residency. I hope that eventually it’ll start feeling like I’m on the downside slope, but right now, it just feels like an eternity. Two and a half more years.

How am I ringing in the celebration? By taking some Nyquil and going to bed. I woke up this evening (post call) with a sore throat and aching ears. I do miss the days when I could tak a sick day and just sleep myself better. Alas, we round at 7 tomorrow, which means waking up at 5 and little rest for the weary…

Winter and I are not friends this year. Not only did I spend hours on Friday shoveling my car out and snowblowing my paths, it then snows another five inches and has blown for the past 24 hours to the point I can’t see any of the sidewalks anymore. I have to be up at 6 tomorrow to give myself time to shovel again before work.

Susan posted about the ball and all of the fun that she had on her blog. Isn’t she beautiful? I’m still very wistful at the lost opportunity.

My weekend wasn’t that bad. Erica came over yesterday, we did some last minute shopping at Target, got some yummy noodles and then sat down to watch the 5 hour version of Pride and Prejudice (swoon). I wrote out some of my Christmas cards (they’ll probably be mailed on Tuesday, so won’t be arriving until after Christmas) and then tried to piece together the pattern I had bought for the dress. Since it was a last minute decision, I had bought the pattern online as an instant downloaded pdf, which I then printed out to tape together. It was a nightmare getting everything straight and aligned and in the end, not only did I discover that the last row had gotten off alignment, I had only printed off the pattern for skirt– I still had the entire bodice pattern to tape together. At this point, we finished the movie and ran to Walmart to buy the commercialized version. Much easier to deal with.

I’ve since washed the fabric and poured over the instructions. Tomorrow (after work) I hope to start on the bodice toile: cut out the pieces for the bodice lining and fit it to the right size. It’s going to be hard doing it without an assistant to pin but I haven’t found anybody here who had a mother who insisted that they learn to sew as I had (I appreciate it, Mom).

I’m glad that I switched patterns, by the way. The original pattern sized up by 2 sizes from what I normally wear; it was quite distressing. The new pattern is more accurate.

I’ve been really getting into sewing and quilting blogs recently. Two of my favorites are actually surgeons: Suture for a Living and The Stitching Surgeon. Both of theirs tend to showcase their creations rather than providing tips or patterns, but it certainly has hit that little creative bug that has been dormant since high school.

And now I’m off to bed. 6 is going to be coming very very early.

It snowed approximately 12-14 inches here, I think, based on the amount of snow that I had to trudge through when I came home post call. The roads around my house had not been plowed (although my alley had. Bless private businesses!) and I got stuck about three times before someone came behind me in a jeep and pushed me out. I then went and parked on the main street, waded back through the snow and cleared out my garage and sidewalks. By then (2.5 hours later), more cars had been through, packing it tighter, and I was able to slide my car into my garage. I’m not sure that I could get out at this point.

I was supposed to drive to Illinois tonight. Even with all of the set backs from my furnace disaster, I sitll looked forward to the weekend of sewing and dancing; Susan had recruited a seamstress friend to help with making the bodice of the dress, thus guaranteeing that it’d be done in a day and I had visions of lingering touches and smoldering eyes. I kept those dreams alive as I fervently rounded and staffed my patients this morning. And then I arrived home and confronted the wintry mess from which the hospital walls had protected me and read that not only was there still a winter storm warning out, it was extending throughout the weekend, creating blizzard conditions and icy roads. So we canceled our plans; I’m completely bummed.

I’m still going to try making the dress tomorrow. Maybe I’ll have a new dress for church on Sunday. I’ve got plenty to keep me busy: set up my antenna for digital TV, update my blog to 2.7 so I can finally release it to the public, laundry (always laundry), clinic notes and evaluations, five hours of Pride and Prejudice to watch (if I can’t dance, I’m at least going to get into the spirit), etc.

Right now, though, I’m so exhausted and depressed, I think I’m making it an early night.

(posted the next day, because I fell asleep.)

Having one’s furnance stop working is a great way to distract one from Regency dresses.

Waiting for the tech to call me back. It’s 48 degrees inside now. Temp is 11 outside. I’m lucky there’s not a wind tonight.

ETA: Have heat now. Gears of the motor had stopped working and the whole unit had to be replaced.

I have to be to work around 6:30 tomorrow. (It’s 12:13 now). And I’m on call. Working for 30 hours straight on less than 6 hours of sleep: absolute torture.

I’m in such a tizzy. If you’ll remember, in my last entry, I mentioned that I am going to a Christmas ball. With English country dancing like this:

I’ve been very excited since I heard about the possiblity of a ball, but I had mostly reined it in. Until Susan posted on her blog about how excited she was and how she was thinking about trying to shop for a new dress for the occasion, which of course set me off looking for regency gown patterns all afternoon while I waited for ABGs and EKGs for my sort-of-sick-but-not-really patient. And I found a darling pattern that doesn’t seem like too much trouble if we keep things simple. Short sleeves. No overdress or stays or chemise this time.

Susan’s going to try to recruit some of her friends to help her out down there. If they can, then hopefully she’ll work on her dress this week. I’ll buy material tomorrow for mine, cut it out here and we’ll sew it when I arrive on Friday/Saturday (I’m unfortunately on call Thursday night, so won’t be able to work on it. Unless I drag along my sewing machine, which will just taunt the powers that be to send me every crashing patient in the state. No thanks). We’ve had to sacrifice the opera to make it work, but if I have a ball gown to make up for it? Totally worth it.

I’m spending Christmas here in Milwaukee this year. I’ve got Christmas day off, but have to work Christmas Eve and am on call the next day, so travel was out of the question and having family come out here is ridiculous. So I’m having my own celebrations. This weekend, I’m driving down to Illinois to see Susan and her family; Suz and I are not only going to see the Metropolitan Opera, we’re going to a English Country Christmas Ball, where we’re going to learn how to dance like a Jane Austen character. Susan states that there were a few cute, single gentleman at the previous dance, so I am very eagerly awaiting the festivities. *SQUEE* So much fun. I may have to break out the satin gloves.

On Christmas, another friend, who is also geographically family-less, is planning to come over for a mini Christmas celebration with present opening and a yummy breakfast. I haven’t decided what yet, but pumpkin pie is somehow going to be involved. The afternoon will either be spent at one of the nursing homes with people who haven’t family (I see so many of them in the hospital; they break my heart) or serving somewhere; I feel somewhat anxious in the need to be there for someone who is also lonely this Christmas. There is so much need in the world but I’m trying to do the pitifully little that I can. I’m listening to the Christmas devotional and have been so touched by Pres. Monson’s talk:

The message from Jesus has been the same. As we follow in His steps today, as we emulate his example, we will have opportunities to bless the lives of others. Jesus invites us to give of ourselves. “Behold the Lord requireth the heart and an open mind.” Our opportunities are indeed limitless, but they are perishable. There are hearts to gladden, there are kind words to say, there are gifts to be given, there are deeds to be done, there are souls to be saved. Is there someone for whom you should provide service this Christmas? Is there one who awaits your visit? … During this season, hearts that are confined reach out and long for a Christmas visit…

There is yet time this year to extend a helping hand, a loving heart, and a willing spirit. In other words, to follow the example set by our Savior and to serve as he would have us serve.

I think the anticipation of the coming weeks is going to be my saving grace. I’m beyond burnt out. I worked 11 hours today; I went to work early so that I could get done in time for church, because it was the Christmas program and ending up not leaving until after five p.m. I feel like I’m living the subtitle of Doctor Strangelove: “How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.” Hysteria is shortly to follow, I’m certain.

My holiday cards have been delayed until later this week, so if you’d like to get on the bandwagon, there’s still time. Email me with your address. 🙂