the lone barista

Kids and Coachroaches?!?!

2007-01-18T00:01:00.000-05:00

Back so soon you say? I must be on a post final exam week high :-)
I actually had planned on posting this Wednesday night but my final gasp of procrastination on my paper kept me from the blog.

Anyway, I came home from work Tuesday evening and T was just getting A ready for bed. When I went back to her room to get an update on her day, I was informed by daddy T that her preschool class purchased some new class pets. Now her class already has a guinea pig (which I find a bit controversial considering the high tendency of children with rodent/fur allergies) and some fish that continually cycle through because they starve over breaks. So T asks me to guess what kind of pet they have. I'm thinking hamster, bird...not thinking out of the box. Nope, I'm not even close. That's right my friends, they have purchased COCKROACHES as the new class pet! Cockroaches?!?! My first thought was..."Why did you buy them? We can rustle up some nice ones in hanging around our apartment complex" And then my second thought was "gross"! Now I've been assured that these are not regular cockroaches but I just can't get past the fact that they look just like the ones that we desperately try to keep out of our apartment. Thankfully, A has expressed that she knows the difference and that we still "squish" the little ones :-)

Exams done!

2007-01-17T23:53:00.000-05:00

Alrighty. Before I post anything else, I have to pause to rejoice. I just completed my last paper/final about five minutes ago! I have had this goal (more like a commitment) during this seminary adventure that I would not do schoolwork after midnight. This is especially hard since despite no longer being a true night owl, my brain still functions best from about 8pm to 2 am. But I also have learned over the years the price I have to pay if I stay up and work past midnight. So the promise to myself was that if I couldn't get it done by midnight, then it wasn't going to get down...that seemed to do the trick. The only time I broke my rule was during the 2004 presidential election. I figured if I was going to stay up to watch nothing happen in Ohio, I might as well get some reading done :-) But I didn't make the same mistake as 2000 (when I stayed up until 5am only to go to work at 8, ugh!

So all that to say. I am done, done, done! Phew!

2007 Changes anticipated and otherwise

2007-01-02T10:13:00.000-05:00

2007 has begun. As you may notice, I didn't keep too well to my blog updates since September. Much has occurred since that time. Continued challenges with balance and both joys and struggles along the way. Yesterday and this morning, I spent some time reflecting on all of that.

Since September, I'm almost finished being a full time student. Give me two weeks and I will only have one more class to complete my degree program. I am very thankful for this since many changes are headed my way in the next six months. Some of these include a move this week across the street due to flooding in our apartment, the upcoming birth of our second child (hopefully in late April), graduation, and figuring out where the heck to live post June/July 07. Needless to say, the plate is full.

Some happy changes include developing leadership skills with a student organization on campus and carving out time social time with other women in my community. That has been something that has been severely lacking in my time in seminary. Sure, I work with other women in the classroom. I socialize at student activities or community parties. However, I have sorely missed intentional friendship building time with other women who are my peers, students or neighbors. This past semester, I have really made strides in this area and have some deeper friendships as a result.

An anxious change that has developed in the past few days is with my pregnancy. I hadn't mentioned it in September because I was still in the first trimester, but now I am at 24 weeks and up until now, things have been going well. The little guy (so the tech. claims) is strong and lets me know of his presence all the time. However, Saturday evening, I began to notice that I wasn't feeling my best. I sat down to rest and noticed I was having contractions about 2-3 minutes apart. They weren't very painful but they were different than Braxton-Hicks. After 45 minutes, I called my midwife and to my surprise, she told me to come to the hospital. T and I went and after about 2 hours and one IV bag of fluid, the contractions stopped and they sent me home, with a good chastisement for not drinking enough fluids. We went home thinking all was well. Well, on Sunday night, I again was sitting and around the same time of the evening, I began to notice contractions again at 3 minutes apart. This time, T and I decided to let it ride but after 4 hours and a conversation with my mom's friend who is a delivery nurse, it was back to the hospital. T and I technically brought in the new year in the hallway of our apartment but by 12:45, I was being wheeled up alone to the maternity floor for overnight observation. By 4 am, they were able to make the contractions stop and thankfully my cervix is "closed, thick, and high" as they kept sharing with each other, but it was a long night.

I have been contraction free for over 24 hours, but this has definitely put a new spin on the pregnancy. I was just beginning to think about ways to relish this time and now I want to press the fast forward button for at least 6 weeks into the future.

So, I can't make any promises about this blog, but it is among my new year's resolutions, including copious amounts of water and sitting on my butt more than I would like. As always, thanks for reading, despite having to wait many weeks.

God-talk

2006-09-29T17:32:00.000-04:00

A fellow seminarian of mine has ruffled some feathers over on his site pomomusings. While I am not too worried about his salvation :-), apparantly some are concerned about his wife's because of her choice of wording in her statement of faith. I made a comment that her statement seemed pretty trinitarian to me, so what was the deal.

The deal is that a bunch of people have their panties in a bunch about her referring to God with a feminine pronoun. I actually found her statement to be balanced and referring to God in a comprehensive way and not limiting the Triune God to our conception of humanity/gender/etc...

So what do you all think? Should our panties be in a bunch? Or can we allow ourselves the freedom to conceive of the Triune God as one we can know in both masculine and feminine ways?

Restructuring, revisiting, revisioning

2006-09-24T09:39:00.000-04:00

Hello blog world,

After over a 1/2 year long break, I'm cautiously reentering the blogosphere. I guess I've been away for several reason, but probably the greatest one was lack of direction for this blog. So I think I'm going to try to something a little different. Instead of ranting or doing silly blog things, I'm going to focus my posts on the multitude of "hats" that wear at this point in my life.

For example, one day I might reflect on my life as a mom. Another day I might chat about being a social worker. Or I might talk about how my baptist roots and my presbyterian present like to spar with each other from time to time.

Quite honestly I don't know if ANYONE is even checking this blog anymore but if you happen to stop by, I hope you find a more focused and fun experience!

It's good to be back.

2006-01-23T19:41:00.000-05:00

This description of my birth date is rather uncanny...

Your Birthdate: September 7

You are an island. You don't need anyone else to make you happy.
And though you see yourself as a loner, people are drawn to you.
Deep and sensitive, you tend to impress others with your insights.
You also tend to be psychic - so listen to that inner voice!
Your strength: Your self sufficiency

Your weakness: You despise authority

Your power color: Maroon

Your power symbol: Hammer

Your power month: July

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

Hey Pat, maybe I need to revisit my call.

2006-01-22T22:00:00.000-05:00

As I was lurking on other blogs, I decided to take the "What is your theological worldview?" quiz again. Last time I ended up Holiness/Wesleyan...this time, well, I think it shows my worldview is in flux right now...but I'm thinking that's a good thing :-)

You scored as Roman Catholic. You are Roman Catholic. Church tradition and ecclesial authority are hugely important, and the most important part of worship for you is mass. As the Mother of God, Mary is important in your theology, and as the communion of saints includes the living and the dead, you can also ask the saints to intercede for you.

Emergent/Postmodern

75%

Roman Catholic

75%

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

68%

Neo orthodox

54%

Charismatic/Pentecostal

43%

Modern Liberal

32%

Reformed Evangelical

29%

Classical Liberal

29%

Fundamentalist

What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

Thank You Whole Foods

2006-01-21T14:23:00.000-05:00

For those of you without a Whole Foods in your area, please don't hate on 'em but encourage the store to come to your town.

Whole Foods has saved my day yet again. T and I have discovered that not only does WF offer cheaper coffee options than "the man" but they also have decided to operate all of their stores completely on solar power AND offer free wireless internet.

So guess where I'll be studying from now on....like right now.

You know you're a parent when...

2006-01-19T21:51:00.000-05:00

So you know you're a parent when a fun afternoon/evening includes:

-A five hour play date where a 2 1/2 and 3 year old run themselves toward an early bedtime (yes!)

-a yummy dinner of "trees" (toddler code for broccoli) and grapefruit juice

-a trip to BabieRus with two pregnant friends to help them register

-coming home to snack on red wine and Terra chips while trying to decide on watching CSI or Grease II on the tele.

Good times :-)

Temporary Freedom

2006-01-11T09:14:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm officially back into the blogworld. The reason for my extended absence is that I really didn't have any brain power left to blog anything coherent in the last month. All of that was sucked into the numerous writing projects, sermons, and papers I had to plow through. This past week alone, I had to birth 39 pages of papers/exams of which I wrapped up at 10 am yesterday. I am proud in the sense that I don't think I had any major meltdowns over the course of the week, which means I must be getting used to the mental torture of seminary a bit :-)

I do have to give a shout out to my partner in crime because he made a lot of my writing time possible and was the primary parent for at least 5 of the 7 days (Before you feel too bad, he only had 15 pages of work to my 39). But seriously, for the most part we worked as a team and he's on campus right now handing in his last assignment so WE ARE FREE! (For a week and a half).

To recap my week:

On Sunday, January 1, I sort of finished taking notes on my Doctrine of Election paper (You know you've descended into seimary geekdom when you're reading titles like Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909-1936. I really thought this paper was going to get the best of me. The length was supposed to be 15-20 pages, which I guess in the grand scheme of things isn't too long but just long enough that you have put in some serious study time to pull it off. The biggest pressure-cooker for this paper is that it was worth 90% of our grade. Yikes! My two options for who will grade this paper is my professor (the author of the above book) or my preceptor who is notorious for not giving students As on anything. So yeah, I'll let you know how that one turns out.

Mon-Thurs morning: writing said Election paper.
Thur-Sat: Writing 9 more pages of Theology exams covering Pneumatology, the Church, and the Sacraments of the Lord's Supper and Baptism (you know EASY stuff ha ha)
Sat night-Monday night): Writing 15-20 page paper on Women's Religious Involvement in Islam. Not too worried about this hastily written paper since it is a P/F class.
Tuesday 10 am: printed off 2nd set of Theology papers and Islam paper.
11:50 am: All papers are in their proper bins outside of professors locked and darkened offices :-)

I'd like to say that I've felt euphoric joy after finishing these assignments. But instead I've had a nagging headache and strong attachment to lounging on our living room couch (where I'm at right now). I think that is the challenge of finals. You push so hard to the finish line and sadly, there are no cameras or medals or or silvery blankets or gatorade bottles waiting for you at the end of the marathon. Just the knowledge that a new set of challenges are ahead in under two weeks. Sigh, can you tell I'm ready for this seminary gig to finish? :-)

Well, I plan on my next blog to be more thoughtful and less about my schedule and more about what I'm thinking about (as soon as my brain is able to do that again)

Thanks all for being patient.

No, the world is still a big place!

2005-12-03T00:44:00.000-05:00

create your own visited countries map

I am equally humbled to think of all the places I have seen and yet how much more of the world I have never seen. The world may be "shrinking" but not as quickly as we think.

Re-entering the Blog World...Kind of...

2005-11-26T21:07:00.000-05:00

So I've stopped stalking other blogs and thought I would at least get one entry into my blog before the month of November is over. I'm smelling a new year's resolution concerning my blog.

But in the meantime, my blog will be on the inactive side because of end of semester craziness.

Hope anyone who is still occasionally checking enjoys this. I've seen it on other blogs. Type into Google "Your name" and "needs" and see what happens.

Apparantly I need...

1. an adoptive family that is very structured. (Hmmmm)
2. a bit of time off by herself to process things. (Yes!)
3. to be left alone. (Definitely!)
4. some coaching. (Also true)
5. to keep my mouth shut sometimes. (Oh so true)
6. to get on with my life. (This is a weekly thought)
7. cash. (Getting very realistic)
8. a better man. (I wonder what T thinks about this).
9. you!
10. an extra minute to finish her chicken.
(well, that's almost right. I need an extra minute to finish my beer). So until then...as my CPE supervisor once said,

Peace, Love, and Chocolately Kisses!

You Are Accepted or Facing Apathy

2005-10-18T13:39:00.000-04:00

It has been some time since I've posted something coming from within me but the last few days have finally led me to it. Crazily enough, it was a sermon by 20th century theologian Paul Tillich read out loud by my professor and theologian George Hunsinger. Now if you had been in that lecture, you may marvel as to why I would have been led to post...the sermon was dry and its presentation of it equally dry, but by God's grace I was listening and this is what I heard.

Tillich's sermon was meant to be an evocative presentation on the importance of understanding the terms of sin and grace, both terms that are frequently misunderstood and misused in both Christian and extra-Christian circles.

Tillich's understanding of sin is that sin is not merely immoral actions or inactions,rather sin is estrangement; estrangement from others, from ourselves, and from the Ground of our Being (God). What struck me most in his sermon was his references to his context. He writes:

"The walls of distance,in time and space, have been removed by technical progress; but the walls of estrangement between heart and heart have been incredibly strengthened...But let us just consider ourselves and what we feel, when we read, this morning and tonight, that in some sections of Europe all children under the age of three are sick and dying [this is Africa in 2005],or that in some sections of Asia millions without homes are freezing and starving to death [this is the case right now in Pakistan!]The strangeness of life to life is evident in the strange fact that we can know all this, and yet can live today, this morning,tonight, as though we were completely ignorant."

These words cut me to the quick. I have to be honest with you, Tillich's words are true for me. I was driving in the car a few mornings ago, listening to NPR and WHYY was interviewing Penn students about the recent Word catastrophies, most specifically on the earthquake in Pakistan. One student boldly claimed that he was not desensitized to reports of tragedies just because they were overseas. He said, "How could I ever be apathetic to these people suffering just because they are far away?" How, he asks? Well, it's quite easy. Let's take a moment to consider what we who have access to world media have learned in the past few months...A Tsunami in December 04, a raging and neverending war in Iraq, religious cleansing in Sudan, drought in Niger, Hurricane Katrina, an earthquake killing what some reports indicate as much as 100,000 and even now in the last week, widespread flooding in my current state of New Jersey. And these are just the biggies folks. This doesn't touch the daily quiet insidious sin of estrangement in our own communities. Just yesterday, a man was arrested on my campus for traveling from Texas to come, stalk, and potentially harm a fellow student. How long, O Lord!

What is the natural, instinctual response of humans, of any creature, when faced whether directly or indirectly with these horrific events? You flee, you check out, you shut down, you become desensitized or worse, apathetic.

And I admit it, this is where I'm at. I can rage against it in conversations with friends or co-workers but at the end of the day, I'm still sipping my Starbucks Easy Almond Extra-Foamy Latte, typing away at my Mac, watching the world from a distance.

So what do I do, what do we do when we become apathetic, when we check out? Well first, I think we need to name it, call a spade a spade. Next, we must return to

grace. The grace that Tillich says "allows us to accept [ourselves] and to be reconciled to others." This is not the grace of easy answers. This is not the grace that gets us off the hook of our apathy. Rather, it's the grace that meets us in the depths of our apathy, our estrangement and strikes us into action, into giving a damn and reconnecting us to our community and our Ground of Being.

What is grace? Well I'm still trying to figure that out. But I do know that grace is what allows me to get up into the morning and even makes shaking off part of that cushy coffee induced haze possible.

More to come...

Congrats Melissa!

2005-10-18T13:34:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone!

Check out my sister-in-law's blog. She just ran her first marathon on October 9 in Chicago and qualified for the Boston! T and I are in awe!

runmelissarun

By the grace of God!!

2005-10-06T14:45:00.000-04:00

Phew!

Somehow by the grace of God I survived this week. I need to share with you how this is really rather amazing so bear with me...

Somehow, someway, all of these things I completed in the span of less than a week:

1. A 35 minute presentation with a fellow student on Mark 4:1-9 (due Tuesday)
2. A five page research paper on the same passage (same class due Tuesday)
3. A 20 minute sermon on the same passage (same class!! due Today)
4. A two paragraph critique on a twenty minute sermon listened to on my computer (same class due Today)
5. A six page exegetical report on Matthew 3:1-12 (due Today)

And now, here's the clincher, the proverbial icing on the cake...in the midst of all that I had Presbytery required Psychological Evaluations and Career counseling from 9:30AM to 5PM on Wednesday with take home homework and then a second part from 9 to 11:15 AM going straight into delivering my sermon at 11:40!

Can we say recipe for meltdown.

Thankfully with the help of a very supportive spouse and mostly understanding daughter (hey she's only 2 after all) and a gracious God who provided me energy and sanity throughout most of it, I have now crossed the finish line. And boy does it feel good!

Please my friends, hit me over the head if I get myself into something like this again :-) Ok, so don't resort to violence but a very stern talking to!

-J

We're back!

2005-09-12T10:02:00.000-04:00

We've been here about a week already but I thought I would announce that we are officially back in "New" for the school year. I think all of us are glad to be back though it was a bit of culture shock all over again...No left turns, people stopping in the merge lane, not pumping our own gas, not remembering the security code to our front door, paying for laundry :-(, barbeques galor, multitudes of women in various stages in pregnancy, no one acknowledging your existence on the sidewalk...you know all the things we think affectionately and sometimes not so affectionately of when thinking of "New."

Classes begin in less than 48 hours and A has already missed her first day of "school" (day care) because of a 104 degree fever. Thankfully after every 4 hour dosages of baby Tylenol (yes, even in the middle of the night) her fever is slowly coming down. Yay for smooth starts right? :-)

The Larger Shame

2005-09-06T19:53:00.000-04:00

T pointed me to this article by Nicholas Kristof. He is an Op-ed writer for the New York Times. I have loved everything I've read of his to date and this article is no exception. Check it out!

The Larger Shame

Fun with Fundamentalists

2005-08-30T22:42:00.000-04:00

It's early evening and I'm sitting on my in-laws' couch attempting to relax while listening to the beginning of the effects of Hurricane Katrina going on outside. I thought I would get into the routine of sharing the "growing edges" that I've been working on since CPE ended. I remember in my final eval. presentation that TV challenged me to face my fundamentalist roots and work through them. I think perhaps TV thought this would help my issue of claiming pastoral authority and I tend to agree with him on this one.

So God must have been speaking truth through TV, because I've had the wonderful privilege of getting up close and personal with my "fundie" roots for the past two Sundays. Two Sundays ago, I went to church with my parents and listened to a 45 minute sermon that was from John 1:1-15 and the title was Spiritual Alignment: Abiding in Christ. Sadly, the only thing I can remember from it was a ton of prooftexting and a story of how the Pastor was car shopping with his daughter and when the salesperson told him he was an athiest, the pastor told him how he shouldn't be an athiest and through a weak-assed argument based loosely on Intelligent Design, convinced this athiest to check out the local fundie church. T (my spouse) and I came away from it all convinced that the pastor whipped this 45 minute puppy up in the 23rd hour. How someone can talk about pretty much nothing for 45 minutes, I still don't quite know :-)

Which leads me to this past Sunday that somehow we woke up at 6:30 Eastern time (5:30 Central) and went to the 8am service at T's parent's American Baptist church. Their senior pastor has recently left so we hoped that interim pastor would be a bit different. Sadly, another 45 minute sermon later I learned that the message of Acts 2:14-41 is basically that Jesus brings both grace and wrath and we are God's enemies with God's wrath dangling over our heads unless we embrace the Truth and Facts about Jesus. I'm not joking, at one point I looked above my head wondering if I could see this wrath the pastor was talking about. Towards the end of the sermon, the pastor took a moment to tell us that this sermon wasn't just his opinion or just based on his experience but these are the facts and it's our decision to accept the facts or be God's enemies. Yikes!

So after being a part of these services, I sit here and think hmmmmmm..... why has God given me the opportunity to witness these sermons? What can I learn about these communities and myself through these experiences? Right now what I can glean are a few things. First, I've realized I need to treat these communities with respect even if they do not respect me. Yes, I can be frustrated, even angry with the messages they convey but I don't think I was raised in this type of community for no reason. I still understand these people in part. They are a part of my history which will always remain with me. I need to learn from them and realize that many people feel and believe the way they do. Their reality is the reality of many and it's my job to learn how to continue to connect with them even if I disagree. I see this most clearly with my parents and T's parents and extended family. I need to claim my pastoral authority so I am able to clearly communicate my vocation to those who would reject but doing so with grace and respect.

I don't know if I have much more to say about this for now but I'm sure it will be revisited. Thank you for reading and journeying with me on this topic. :-)

A God Moment

2005-07-07T20:50:00.000-04:00

Hello again,

I want to share with all of you a verse one of my group members shared with us this morning. When she read this verse aloud, God's power reverbed off the walls of the room. It has been a long time since I have felt the presence of God so strongly and completely.

Her reading was from Luke 10:23-24.

Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."

Remember, as I am also continually called to remember in my darkest and dryest moments of CPE, that God is working through us and we are privileged to do this work with God.

As always, thank you for journeying with me...

another chicago area on-call

2005-07-03T12:41:00.000-04:00

I thought I'd jump in since it's been about a month. I have about 6 on-calls under my belt as of today. Let me give you a sample of a recent one. My evening from 5pm to 8:30am included...

Arriving to the hospital at 5pm to start a shift and finding the following going on simultaneously in the ER:

1. A Full Arrest in room#$
2. An infant death in room @#
3. A severe subdural hematoma (brain bleed) in room$%

Thank the Maker, from 5 to 10 pm I had an ER staff chaplain working with me so we could cover all these happenings. She had already started working with the family of the infant death so she kept the lead on that. With the exception of the infant death, the other two situations had run their course by 7:30 pm. I then shoveled some salad down my throat and then helped begin the process to have a staff debriefing for the infant death. This is our third death of a child since I began 4 weeks ago...My fellow chaplain said it hasn't been like this in years...

Around 8pm I decide to try to make the rounds of the hospital. In the ICU I run into a family I've been working with for sometime who are worried their love one won't make it through the night. I let them know I am available at any time through the night.

8:30pm I deliver the evening prayer over the PA system. A relative calm. I jokingly tell the communications people "no more pages tonight please." They tell me they'll do their best :-) I then continue to make rounds, help with advanced directives, chat with security (ah the normal things).

10pm I check in with the other chaplain who's wrapping up her evening. Several hugs and sharing how we're feeling about the evening we both head home.

11pm-2:30 am Fitful sleep. Please don't page me. Please don't page me. Stop thinking about it, just sleep.

2:30am Level I Trauma Stab wound to the chest...I call in, the charge nurse will call me if I'm needed.

Ok, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep.

4am Level I Trauma Car accident/Attempted suicide: You guessed it, I'm going in.

I arrive to the ER about 4:25am and I spend the next 2 hours realizing that they actually probably didn't need to call me in for this one. But I learned a lot about myself through this experience. Hopefully, I'll have more time to write about it later. For now, I'll say that the person in this situation is alive and recovering, a definite praise.

6:30am I head back home and stop by Dunkin Donuts to grab some Munchkins for the fam.

7-8am: Two pages with inquiries about Catholic mass and communion. Very happy to be Protestant at the moment and let them know Eucharistic ministers will be by to see them.

8:30am: I'm off. I put in a quick call to the Sunday chaplain and by 9:30 am, I've crashed on the bed (still in my dress clothes).

4 weeks ago, I was very fearful of the ER. My body would go through feelings of mild shock each time I had to respond to a trauma or a full arrest. Last night I turned a corner. While I believe that the ER will still be my largest "growing edge" this summer, like others of you I'm starting to get to know the staff a little, to understand their patterns, to understand the ebb and flow of life and death in the ER. It doesn't make it any easier but I am thankful that I am able to perservere and maybe that's all I can hope for right now.

You're at the Right Place...

2005-06-06T01:30:00.000-04:00

"You're at the right place." "You're at the right place??" These two sentences have been warring with each other in my mind from the first week I arrived on the steps of Princeton Theological Seminary. This is why I found it extremely ironic and amusing that this past Friday, I spent almost 2 hours staring at a poster that said, "You're at the right place." (I'll explain in a minute).

You see, while my official start date at Advocate-Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, IL isn't until 8:30 AM June 6th, I have already clocked in about 5 hours just attempting to pass the hospital's series of procedures to approve all employees "fit to work at Advocate." In order to be able to be Chaplain Intern at Good Samaritan, I was required to sign a waiver for a criminal background check and submit myself to a drug screening, a physical, and a TB test. I arrived in the Chicago area on May 22, so I thought to myself I have plenty of time to get this accomplished, right? Expectations and reality usually tend to be quite different things.

To make a long story hopefully shorter, when I went to Good Samaritan on May 26th to have my series of tests, I "failed" my drug test because I had taken a mild sedative the day before for a minor surgical outpatient procedure and since the sedative hadn't left my system, my urine was "inconclusive." I was told my sample had to be tested further and I couldn't complete my physical until June 3rd. But hey, they could still give me a TB test that I could come back and have read at the ER on Saturday!

So after several days of wondering if I was going to be labeled a "druggie" and one experience of getting lost in the hospital trying to find the nurse that would read my TB negative arm, June 3rd arrived. Being a good little intern, I arrived 5 minutes early to my physical and despite having all of my medical records with me, was told that I would have to have my blood drawn to be tested for varicella (chicken pox) because my word that I had a miserable spring break when I was eight because I was too busy creating scratch scars on my skin wasn't good enough. But I had only been there fifteen minutes so I thought, this isn't so bad, the doctor will come next, check me over, and done. I changed into a fabulous cloth gown and preceded to flip through an old issue of "O" magazine that was left by a previous patient...

Two magazines and an hour go by and I'm wondering if I've been forgotten. I peek my head out of the room and try to catch the receptionist's attention. She assures me it will be soon. A few minutes later, a nurse pops her head in the room and says "only 10 more minutes...she's finishing stitching someone up." I think to myself, what DO these physicals entail?? 20 more minutes pass and this time is spent trying to nap (in the gown) and staring at the little purple poster that calls out to me "You're in the right place." Really? I'm beginning to wonder.

But just as I was about to give up hope, a nurse practitioner swoops in with apologies and five minutes later deems me "fit."
Thankfully, I think to myself, I have been in touch with my supervisor and she has assured me that I can come in for orientation even though all my tests haven't come through. After all she informed me, your criminal background check hasn't come back yet either. :-)

You're at the right place. I'll get back to you on that one again in a few days.

Thanks everyone for reading and listening!

purpose

2005-06-05T22:08:00.000-04:00

I have started this blog because of a promise to myself and to my friend Mel that I would begin to process the many things I think about on a regular basis. I am a bit skeptical of blogging in part because it seems to have no boundaries or limits to where it could go. While that could be an exciting prospect, I am not sure how much of my mind I want others to see. However, I don't want to use that as an excuse not to do the work I have promised myself I would do. So...this will be a learning process for me. We'll see where it goes.