22 years and time for a mental recovery.

We marked our 22nd wedding anniversary on Saturday. (I’m the luckiest. Seriously I have no idea what I did in my life to deserve Jeremy, but here’s to hopefully at least another 22. a lifetime is not enough. I hope we get reincarnated as other animals and we get to meet each other as another species and get to do it all again for a long, long time. ) My parents dropped off a couple dozen roses and the we spent the day, like almost all the days during the pandemic, with mostly just the two of us. Jeremy hung some drywall and I did some work. I’m slowing coming around to understanding how tired really am. I don’t ever feel like complaining because 1) I’m not a complainer and 2) we’ve been fortunate during this pandemic and no one has had a “normal” life for months so complaining seems super annoying coming from me, but I’m tired. The hospital work has flattened me. I’ve (finally) dropped down to 1 day a week at the hospital, so now I’m at 1.3 jobs down from 2 jobs which I had for six weeks in April-May and then 1.8 jobs and then 1.6 jobs and now 1.3 jobs. I tend to look at these things that I do as only a time management puzzle as how can I fit all the things I want to do in a given amount of time and this includes sleep and exercise and time with Jeremy, etc. But I also need to factor in some time to recover mentally from things. I’m finding my patients too irritating – simple requests frustrate me more than they usually do (OMG! I can’t believe you are asking me to take your pills with applesauce, now I gotta go all the way down the hall and get the g*d d*m f*ing applesauce from the g*d d*m f*ing refrigerator) though I’m still quite pleasant and accommodating. I take this as a sign that I’m not quite rested or recovered enough. I love all my patients, even the annoying, demanding, threatening, scared, addicted, or weird ones. We all have our issues. Some more than others. When I’m at work, I think it’s important to throw love to people. I would say that most people can feel it when I make the effort and make the interaction more loving. I can tell the days when I’m better at throwing it than days that I’m worn out and need to keep that energy for myself. If you transcripted both days, I think you’d find nothing different in the words. It’s really an energy. Does this sound to woo woo? Maybe. But I can feel it and I can feel it from my patients. Most people don’t understand what is happening to them or think I’m like this all the time, but I’m not, I make the effort to do it. Every once in a while, I have a patient who has this sensitivity better than I do – they’ll say something like – you’re stressed now. or you’re less stressed than you were yesterday. or I can tell you are relaxed now. even though I’m not really doing anything different. I find that very surprising because most people don’t notice that from me – most people ask how I’m so relaxed in the midst of a shit-storm. But I’m not like that at all…

Vince’s fall tuition is paid for for the fall. Now we are trying to figure out how to get to California from here. Technically, we don’t even know if he has a room yet.