Thoughts From a Frazzled Mind

Most of the week has been mundane, working, driving, and sleeping.  I did get a couple of visits in to Robin and to Dad.  Dad tripped an electrical breaker in his house and was trying to get around in the dark.  Luckily I stopped by and and was able to help him get the power back on.  Unfortunately he can't remember what he was doing to trip the breaker.  Dealing with his memory problems is very frustrating - for him as well as the rest of the family.  Sometimes his memory is awful and I worry so much about his safety but then other times he seems just fine.  I worry about it constantly, I continually pray that I will know when it is time to remove him from his house.  I hope that time never comes because I think it would be extremely hard on him to live somewhere else where he can't have all of his tools, bikes, and lawn mowers. I have mentioned my "un-papered adopted" sister, Julie, several times, but I feel that it is time to tell about her a...

This post will be quite short I'm afraid because most of the week was very mundane with a lot of the same old stuff, work, more work, watching the grandkids, and visiting with my sisters and dad.  Please note that I didn't say the week was Boring , for it was a good week, but there was not a lot of "Aha!  I should blog about this" moments - nor do I have many pictures. Kim got to celebrate Labor Day by having Sunday night off of work, which was very nice.  The Parrishes dropped by for a very nice visit.  Since Kim had to work Monday night I spent most of the day working on the computer and visiting my sister, Robin. We were able to finish my bedroom door, and it looks GREAT!  I'm so excited!  Mont was a great help as he came over to supervise. I taught a class for Lisa in Murray on Tuesday because her mother passed away.  Luckily it was a class that I had taught before so it didn't require a ton of preparation. I got home from work earl...

This week marks the end of the semester for most of the classes at Eagle Gate - I do have one class that will finish up next week.  It is always bittersweet to have the semester end.  At the beginning it seems like the semester stretches out forever with endless lessons to prepare, assignments to grade, and tests to write (not to mention students to get to know).  But it really doesn't last that long when looking back.  As I look back I worry that I taught the students everything that they need to know and in a way that they can progress on in their education.  I am sad because the class has become comfortable and now face starting over again.  However, I am excited to start over and get to know a new set of students. This next semester I will be taking on a new class and along with that a new set of challenges.  I am going to be team-teaching the Med-Surg class along with all of their labs.  Fortunately I will be teaching with a fantastic, expe...

URRRGGGG!  Can I just say that work is consuming me right now? I truly love my job!  I feel like I worked so hard to achieve this position and I feel very blessed to have it.  However, with the addition of the three labs each week in addition to my regular classes I am buried!  Thank goodness there are only a couple more labs this semester and by then they should have someone hired to help.  I think that the labs are kind of fun - a more relaxed way of teaching - but there is a lot of prep work involved.  This week the advanced class learned how to insert naso-gastric (NG tubes) and the fundamental class learned how to administer different kinds of medications such as IM and SQ injections.  They even got to practice giving TB tests (of sterile saline) on each other.  It was fun.  But there was still lesson plans to create on heart medications and the different roles of nursing (patient advocate, teacher, communicator). Because I put in ...

I love going on vacation - I hate catching up on the work that is waiting for me when I get back!  One day I believe that I will be able to have my lesson plans completed and will just need to tweek them a little before each class - however I am now very much still new at teaching and so I still have to prepare many hours prior to each class (a lot of the time studying the information I will present to make sure that I know it well enough to teach it).  Consequently I had to work long days this week to play catch up.  In addition, I knew that I was going to head up to the condo on Thursday night for our Sister's Retreat and I didn't want to have to work at the condo. Of course Murphy's law always applies when you are working hard to get something done.  In this case Murphy appeared in the form of a co-worker who had multiple stressors appear in her life that left her unable to carry her own workload.  Therefore my boss asked me if I would be willing to take...

 I never have a been a great fan of roller coasters - I know that they can be thrilling at times, but other times the rapid, constant ups and downs tend to make me nauseous.    My life right now feels like I am stuck on a roller coaster - and my emotions can't seem decide whether they want to be up or down.   The previous post talks about the passing of my father-in-law Ross.  3 days after Ross passed away, I took my last two finals of nursing school.  Whew!  After two very long years, hundreds of hours of studying, gaining 40 pounds from stress, and shedding millions of tears of frustration, I am finally finished with nursing school!  I came out of my tests feeling like a thousand pound weight had been lifted off of my shoulders!  The relief of completing something so difficult is pretty much overwhelming!  Needless to say, I left the school feeling like I could walk on air and I couldn't wipe the smile off of my face. H...