Is it nap time yet?

Good morning lovely readers!

Last night my plan was to come home, make some dinner, and read read read. What happened was I came home, made some dinner, and slept slept slept. People don't believe me when I tell them I'm a champ at sleeping but it's true. Last night I effectively went to bed at 7, and got up...no, dragged myself out of bed at 10 this morning. And I'm ready for a nap now, it's 11....is it too early?

Ah, but there's work to be done, and if I want to reduce the aforementioned stress level, I must get down to it. But, of course, the fact that there's work to be done at all motivates me to blog, and so I will update you on the week you've missed.

First...two shout outs in the blog today: one to Aaron, a friend from high school with whom I have recently reconnected. He's put my link as a sidebar on his blog (not sure how he found out I have a blog...I'm still getting around to telling everyone I have one), which to me is a big honor. Aaron's so incredibly intelligent...I love reading his blog because it makes me feel smarter and it inspires me to think. The fact that he at all would admit to being a part of what I put here (really now...pee like a racehorse?) humbles me. Another shout out to my friend Laura, who has been a dear and wonderful twin to me since our middle school days. I say any two girls who can be friends through middle and high school and still like each other at the end of those crazy "Mean Girls" days are bound to be friends for life. Laura started her blog based on reading mine (I think) and in case you weren't counting, that's TWO blogs I've inspired now. Hee hee! I find little ways to feel important. =)

Alright, what happened this week? It's all a blur. Some time spent in Providence at the internship, some time spent at work with the twins, some time spent at school, and some time spent working on various projects. Dull, dull, dull. Things I thought about this week: oh, they are aplenty. Let's see....

I have been thinking a lot about loss and bereavement this week. This is normal, as I'm taking a bereavement course at school. My professor is well known about the country (and possibly the world) as one of the leaders in bereavement/grief/death and dying work. I was really excited to take the course, as my work with children and families in hospitals inevitably leads to some sort of experience with loss or death. In the beginning of the course I was frustrated, as I didn't feel like I was learning ways to help people with their loss, which in the end is all I really want to do. Again, it's the liberal, bleeding-heart, want-to-save-the-world girl in me, but I hate to see people in pain and not be able to help. To not be able to do the right thing. But Paul (my prof) said something this week that was so profound, and has really got me thinking even more, and has lessened my frustration with the class: he was talking about the different ways that people teach bereavement courses, and most of them teach lots of theory, and give lots of steps and answers, and then let you go out into the world and try it. Paul, instead, spends a semester teaching us how much we DON'T know...because it's only when we understand how much we don't know that we are really willing to sit and listen to someone experiencing loss, and that's really the best way to begin to help anyone. This explains why I leave every class with more questions than answers, and I spend a lot of time thinking about it. And it got me to thinking...I wanted to leave this class feeling comfortable with helping people with their grief: I'm a planner, and before I encounter difficult situations I like to have an idea of the things I can offer, the things I can do, how to help. What I've realized is that it will never feel comfortable helping someone with grief - it just shouldn't, grief is not an easy thing - and so the faster I realize that, the faster I realize that maybe in this situation it's better to have more questions than annswers, and the faster I realize that each situation is different and I'll learn how to handle each one as I wade through it with the bereaved...the better a practitioner I'll be. Slowly but surely, I'm getting there.

I have also thought a lot about love and relationships this week. Again, I'm a planner. I like things to proceed in an A, B, C, D order in my life, and when I'm at B I like to have a vague idea of what D is going to look like. I find myself in a relationship now where I *think* we're at B, but I'm not sure and I definitely couldn't tell you if C is next or if it's X. And I can't tell you what anything in the future looks like. This scares me to death. Am I the only one who likes to have an idea of where things are going? Is that just a little too neurotic? In the end, does it matter? It's me, and I can't change that really. I can just learn how to deal with it a little better. Being so stressed hasn't helped the clarity of our situation, and to top it off my Bit of Stuff is also incredibly hosed. So we talk about it a fair amount, we try to plan times to be together that don't add any stress to our lives (e.g., don't cost much because we're both broke or don't go to places that are so loud we leave feeling like we didn't really spend any time together since our time together is sparse these days), and we plow through. But it's something that weighs on my mind a great deal.

It hasn't been an entire week about death and stress, readers. Fear Not. The girls I nanny for, despite being in their terrible 2s full force, are still ridiculously cute and loving. Nothing beats the feeling of sitting down and having two beautiful children run to you and throw themselves on you giggling. I also had an interview for a potential internship placement for the spring on Friday and I think it went well. I'm getting to a place where I feel really good about my skills in the Child Life profession, and so interviews are now fun...as I'm not worried that there will be a question I'm unsure how to answer anymore. I love feelings like that: little signs that you're coming into your own in something. Sometimes it's when you're single and you just have those moments where you think "I rule! I rule, just as I am." (Reference Michelle's blog.) Sometimes it's those interview moments where you just think, "I'm definitely the person for this job, and I know it and I can tell that these people are realizing it too." The funny thing is, when I was younger, I thought that you got past a certain age and didn't have these moments anymore, that you just became an adult and then existed. Does anyone else remember that? When you saw the future as a little kid, you saw a certain age past which you had the job you wanted, the family you wanted, you knew everything...that was what being an adult was, right? Oh, it makes me laugh to think of it. How did I not realize how boring that would be? Even if I had the job I wanted, the family I wanted...there's still so much more I'd have to work for. Some call it never being happy with what you've got, I call it a constant search to improve, to be better. Because if we don't have that, well...what else is there? Stagnant, boring lives. Be it a quest for more knowledge, better skills at something, the best mac and cheese you've ever had...whatever it is, there should always be something to which you reach. If you get to it, reach higher...again...the subject of the blog: ClosER to Fine.

OK, enough of the preaching. That's my week as I remember it. Lots of introspection, lots of hazy memories and not at all enough sleep. However, my books are whimpering as I haven't paid nearly enough attention to them of late, so I'm off to appease the academic gods.

music: an assortment of melodies by Taylor Hayward. check out his music - free to download - here. Ambient classical music. GOOD, good stuff.