Let me tell you ...looking for a new job is a lot of work.

The job market has changed considerably since I was last looking.

Now, I really do feel like the more education you have (even if it isn't marketable as such) the better off you are..staying in school will be emphasized by me to my kids. I will, hopefully, help them get the most for their money.

For instance..my son decided to take 2 summer courses because he is changing his major. Responsible of him? Well..those extra courses cost 2700.00 plus books. I think these colleges are all in for "counseling" you into taking as many extra courses as they can..is it possible to get a BS or BA in four years anymore? We pay for our son's tuition so it matters to me. I think those that use grants or scholarships or other people's money do not care as much. I'd rather put that money towards a graduate degree for him. It will add up to that if he keeps taking extra courses each year. I really would like him to do a semester abroad too. THAT would be worth the money!

Most days, now, I search and look through all of the new postings on Monster.com, Career Builder, etc..plus I search the individual web sites of the local hospitals and universities and the newsletters and papers.

I am coming to some conclusions:

I need more education to do the work I'd like or think I'd like and
I am lazier than I thought.

I was trying to move into a different area of Nursing but that is like starting all over again and after 25 years I don't know how much I really want to do that...
I may try some consulting work within the field I feel most informed. ElderCare is my strong point. I wanted to gracefully move out of home care.

I would love to write and be paid for it and even had a bite but I have not yet gotten that situated. I never thought I'd choose a job where the money was the last concern but a writing job would be totally different..very special for me and a way to get moving. I am working on an article for a nursing magazine too..

I like being home, being available and having time for leisure and for choices. I like exercising almost everyday. I like seeing the city and visiting with my friends and family. I like not having a million things on my mind. BUT..having less to do makes me do even LESS. I no longer care to remain on a schedule and I am finding myself being a bit lazy every now and then, when, before, I'd never really BE LAZY...I would rest when exhausted. I am trying to clean and extra thing or two but I haven't been writing MORe like I thought.

I haven't worked regular work hours in years..and do not think I can look forward to that at all. I am not a sit-behind-the-desk, 9-5 type of person.

I have decided to get on a writing schedule. My work out schedule will be done in the morning from now on.

Last week I didn't feel good and I cannot write when I don't feel good..I can't think straight. Now I feel better.

My four kids are everywhere but with me. Work, school, friends, cousins, parties, grandparents.
I've been trying to schedule a day trip to NYC with the little one but the time is not there especially to coinside with his friend L.

My dad is having a cardiac cath done tomorrow. He has been having dizzy, weak, and sweaty spells (out of the blue)(feeling good one minute and then boom, a spell). His BP is high, his cholesterol is high and his Triglycerides are high. His HR is high (in my opinion). This is the 6th episode at least..and now they've decided to do a cath. His stress test was normal. Lots of times stress tests are not accurate. I am telling you all this in case it happens to you..so you'll know.

I will be at the sea shore for july and august most of the time. I will relax and enjoy that as much as possible. I will miss my central air conditioning. I get nervous when I change houses and routines but I am trying to feel the freedom of not having to come back and forth to work.

This week we are still doing the graduation parties..most of which have been fun and it is nice to see all the people you don't always get to see so often.

I often think about what I do all day and how much of it is IMPORTANT. That is really necessary for me. I like to be productive..not just laundry and cooking. SO when I walk my dog I pick up the trash in the park and I try to let everyone know that they really should pick up after their dogs. It is NOT fertilizer as one of my friends inferred to me. Today, I did some pastry shopping for a former patient. He was happy. I know the small details help life's meaning.

I came across a quote:

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it". (Mahatma Gandhi)

I don't know how to explain it and I don't know exactly what it means...I DO know I agree with it.

Forrest Gump thought Life is like a box of chocolates. I think Life is more like a bowl of cherries:

Cold enough, timed right, you begin. The soft ones are a bit disappointing. The moldy ones are noticeable, hopefully. The hard, sweet, ruby red ones are FINDS. But after one of them, how do you proceed? And how do all the rest compare? You stare into the bowl and you wish you could take a picture, moisture is beading so perfectly. It is so hard to pick without squeezing. But squeezing is cheating. Cheating changes the taste. Even the hard, juicy ones taste different when you have to pinch so many beforehand. One at a time you eat them and enjoy the great ones as best you can, the soft ones are inevitable, the moldy ones are, at least somewhat, avoidable..until the bowl is empty and all is left is a bit of sweet red cherry juice at the bottom.

HMMMM....slurp out of the bowl or use a spoon or rinse it away?

It is your choice and isn't that wonderful.

Of course, I slurp.

For all those that have a need to be reminded of the afterlife: life is bigger than we know it to be.

My friend Angel wrote to me this morning and brought tears to my eyes...so I asked her if I could post her email here and she said "yes"....and then, "our memories sustain us, this gave me a feeling of peace."

MY DAUGHTERS BirthDAY WAS YESTERDAY..SHE TOLD ME THE NIGHT BEFORE THE BABY (her 3 year old son) SAID TO HER .."MOM, GRANDPOP GINO (who died recently and suddenly in a car accident) AND PAT (who died at 20 years old recently from lymphoma) ARE FLYING IN HEAVEN AND WanT ME TO TELL YOU 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY'"..THAT WAS AFTER 12 Midnight WHEN IT WAS HER Birthday! IMAGINE, HOW SCARY IS THAT? SHE GETS FREAKED. I BELIEVE IN IT..The baby DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS his mom's BirthDAY...AND whY MENTION PAT AND GRANDPOP..I ASKED HER ABOUT PAT SHE SAID THAT PAT EVERY YEAR WOULD CALL HER ON HER BirthDAY AT MIDNIGHT TO BE THE FIRST ONE TO WISH HER HAPPY BirthDAY...!

What a nice birthday present! Who can ask for more?

SP

Over 21 years ago I worked at St. Agnes Medical Center in the hemodialysis unit. The hospital was a few blocks from my very first house. 6 a.m. was starting time! Back then 6 a.m. was much earlier than it is now. During the winter that hour WAS the middle of the night, but life was exciting for me. My new husband would soon be a real live attorney and we were planning a family. I worked in a neighborhood hospital where the patients were all familiar. Their day brightened a bit by my newlywed stories and my youthful innocent naivety. Some days my car would not make the 9 blocks to the hospital and that would be my drama story for the day.

Maggie and Maggie were my two good friends. We met on the job and clicked instantly. Both Irish Catholic girls from outside South Philadelphia they thought I was adorable. I was intrigued by their ways and just the fact that they were working in a neighborhood far from their homes was shocking to me. Our head nurse was great and the Nephrologists were our buddies. We were called “sisters” since we all shared the same birthday. We had many other similarities. The social worker was a pretty neighborhood Italian girl with butt length brown hair and big brown eyes who looked more like a librarian than a South Philly Milly. We (the social worker, myself and the patients) teased the “sisters” and the others about pasta fagioli and Sunday gravy and broccoli rab…all things they did not have the pleasure of eating each and every week. Everything important always points back to food when you are Italian. We felt sorry for them and were shocked each and every time Maggie said after work she took a hot shower, had a big dish of oatmeal for dinner and then went to bed. I loved her too much to think ill of her for that but could not fathom eating cereal for dinner.

Maggie #1 was tall and her blue eyes sparkled through her long curly brown hair. She was suspiciously thin and compulsive with her work. Her hands and feet were long and feminine. We teased each other about our shoe sizes (I was a size 5 and she was a size 8). Not even the men wear a size 8 in South Philly. She looked happy but worried. She was from Virginia and grew up in a house with 7 sisters and brothers and a dad who was the community Pediatrician. His practice was in his house. Maggie said sometimes the doorbell would ring in the middle of the night by parents distraught with a sick child. Her mom would perk the coffee and Maggie would help her dad with the sick child as much as she could all the while in her nightgown and bathrobe. She felt somehow her pajamas comforted the sick children.

Maggie met her new husband at the hospital where she worked as a nurse. He was a psychiatric fellow. Of course, Maggie thought she was on the perfect road to recreating her childhood years once again. Psychiatrists are peculiar individuals, though. I always thought they were the most interesting of all the medical doctors. They kept to themselves, they had a certain dignity and I knew they knew lots of secrets. Compared to the surgeons who walked around the hospital in their paper shoe covers and those green scrubs laughing too loud and boasting too much about that 12 hour surgery or that quick save, psychiatrists were hardly seen and barely noticed. Maybe they were quiet because it never really seemed liked they saved anyone. Their success stories just walked around numb and empty seeing blankness in front of them, but calm and cooperative, so therefore seemingly “cured”.

I always wonder how a doctor chooses the specialty he practices. Sometimes, it is the same as his father, other times it is something she was always interested in and other times, it is a searching or a longing to fix personal dysfunctions. Psychiatrists go through rigorous evaluations and screenings before being allowed to care for and treat other people’s minds and sometimes their souls. They must prove over and over again their altruistic motives. Psychiatrists are very intelligent people; some are even able to fool the evaluators and tests.

Maggie #1 spent her day trying to pretend her marriage to a brilliant psychiatrist was idealistic. She talked about having many children just like her mom and baking cookies all day long, day after day. Maggie was a caring nurse and very good at her job. Her patients left the unit feeling as well as can be expected; not overly tired and dehydrated which is sometimes due to the professional not paying close enough attention to the machine that is extracting the patient’s total blood supply, filtering it, cleaning it, removing the poisons and extra fluid normally done by the two kidneys found at our lower backs and then giving it back to the patient just like it was the most normal thing in the world. A shared lollipop lick, a shaking of hands, a kiss on one and then the other cheek are all normal instances of sharing, all familiar, all recognizable. The large, snake like, ropey grafts and shunts in a dialysis’ patient’s arm or leg or groin or their green skin tone or extreme fatigue are not. Some days, Maggie’s patients looked better than she, who was becoming thin and frail. Her blue eyes were underscored with dark circles, her hair was brittle and thin and she looked like she might be suffering from anorexia nervosa. Her work became even more perfect, her diet very well controlled, her efforts enormous.

The brilliant psychiatric husband was the son of another brilliant psychiatrist, one who was the son of another; Duke University published practitioners, professors and medical judges and expert witnesses. The young husband never felt good enough, never felt accepted or loved and so, like his father and his grandfather he drank and abused the closest people to him until they stopped speaking to him and cried themselves to sleep every single night.

Maggie #2 was tough. She had a sweet way of speaking but came right out with how her new husband and she fought all the time, had nothing in common and lacked affection for each other. Maggie #2 was brought up to stick with it, give it time, and work it out. She was Irish Catholic and she meant it. Her husband remodeled their home with his own two hands. It looked like all his love went into the walls and floors of that house. He is definitely an expert craftsman. Three kids later and it was all over. Maggie kept the house and the husband moved out. Now, they are both married again, seemingly happy. Maggie said to me she wonders how sometimes it seems impossible for a relationship to work and then other times it seems so simple.

But nothing is simple.

The dialysis units and machines work so effortlessly to maintain and sustain life that without those treatments life would surely end, hearts would cease to beat, lives would altogether halt: the good and the bad parts, there would be no more chances. The patients sleep and watch TV or read for two to four hours, three to five days a week. Those patients know their potassium levels daily and how many pounds of fluid they can tolerate until the next treatment. Some of them work and dance and write and read and make love and treat every day as a gift. Others sleep and gorge themselves with fluids to try to douse the unending thirst and squelch reality. Most have two to three sizes of clothing and shoes, some have supportive family and friends.

Maggie #2 makes Sunday gravy and calls me to say she is thinking about me. Maggie #1 moved back with her family and we have lost touch and I think of her often and hope she is baking cookies and getting fat.

Dialysis is a chronic treatment that sometimes lasts for years. The room is set up like a living room: recliners next to machines, televisions above the chairs. Each seat is assigned and it becomes like your seat at the dinner table: the most comfortable and familiar for a particular amount of time each day. The person sitting next to you either becomes a very good friend or a distant seat partner. The worst thing about dialysis is when a friend/patient dies. A chair is suddenly empty. The others are too afraid or sad to ask. Some patients are really missed, for their personalities made it all bearable, some are just reminded of their own inevitability. Then, suddenly, the chair is occupied. A new patient looks around and wonders how he is going to get along with the others. Everyone is suspicious at first and most reject the sudden change, thereafter, times allows for familiarity and the new patient makes friends and it all goes around again.

No one can predict the outcome of any situation no matter how much they plan or how much effort they put into it. It is all a matter of how things go, what takes place and how we react. Control is what makes us feel better and yet we really have the ability to control much less than we think. We need to realize that and make the best of MOMENTS. We need to make the best of Friends.

The head Nephrologist divorced his wife and married the social worker. They now are living happily ever after and are said to be best friends.

The patients and nurses and doctors will come and go, live and die, and the ones that find it worth all the trouble are the ones that make the best of situations they have no control to change.

Dialysis keeps progressing. The technology today is much more advanced than 21 years ago, although the process is about the same. The machines now are more efficient, like little robots.

Nothing is really all that wonderful without the kindness and love of others. Not dialysis, not psychiatrists or surgeons, not husbands or wives, not social workers and not patients.

We all need the help, influence, cooperation and friendship of others.

We can live without our kidneys but we cannot live well without our friends.

There are some friends and families that give away a kidney, some during their lifetime and others at the time of death; the patient who receives the donated kidney is envied by their hemodialysis friends. The one donating the kidney undergoes a long operation and recovery period. The transplant recipient spends the rest of her life on medication that has many side effects and consequences but also makes it possible for that person to live a “normal” life.

Some kidneys are sold on the black market. In poor countries, kidneys are harvested and sold for pennies. Sometimes that needless organ takes a whole family out of devastation.

Other organs such as hearts, lungs and pancreases are transferable, but only thru death, as the donator cannot sustain life without it

I worked with a doctor who contracted hepatitis from a patient in the Operating Room. John was a young, Jesus-looking man, friendly and warm and smart. He joked with the staff and hung out with everyone at the bar across the street after work. Lots of nurses were in love with him. He was doing a fellowship in surgery and cut himself with a scalpel that recently sliced into a patient with hepatitis B. John immediately got sick, he turned yellow and was dying faster than the speed of light in the hospital’s ICU. Hepatitis is highly contagious just like AIDS and is just as devastating. The whole place was in mourning. The nurses walked around crying, the doctor’s were helpless. Our hospital had a helicopter that routinely brought patients in from car wrecks and gang wars and that Trauma Unit was amazing. Now we waited for someone we loved to die. Now we felt what waste was like, how helplessness happens to even great practitioners. The nurses on our unit started a rosary prayer vigil; no matter John was Jewish. We carried around plastic rosary beads and said prayers in between administering medications and hanging IV’s. We remembered the prayers and the miracles as we filled water pitchers and changed bed linens. And as we waited for John to die we prayed for a miracle as we lovingly bathed and cared for our other patients thinking if we did a real good job God might see us quicker.

And then we heard the helicopter. And then we heard the announcement. John was being air lifted to Children’s hospital where they had a harvested pancreas and liver from a young man that died just last night in a car accident. We cried for the person who died and we cried and prayed for John. We all worked with lots of energy and happiness blanketed the floors like sunshine after a long heavy rain.

I wonder if the family of the man who died knew how many people they made believe in life again. That very day is when I knew we had the greatest health system in the world, one that isn’t perfect but is professional and caring and efficient, the very one that makes us proud.

John survived and was working again within months. He is now a pediatric trauma surgeon at John Hopkins University. I think about him often and hope he is well. I know his experience has made him an even better surgeon.

Sometimes a little bit of a bad time can change us, for the better. We need to see the good in the bad. It is always there.

What a relief to read John Stossel's book: Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get out the Shove-Why Everything you Know is Wrong!

First of all, I surely admire the long title! There are certain times when you just need a lot of words to say something accurately.

Aren't words phenomenal?

Anyone that knows me knows, if I am with you and NOT talking...it usually means I am mad about something. I am a happy go lucky person about 25% of the time. My left frontal lobe swells every now and then but the other 75% of the time my insides are turning and my head is spinning OR I'm sleeping.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I am a deep thinker. I don't mean that as a self flattering statement. I do not consider myself to be in the same place as Voltaire, Wolf, Merton, or Stossel.
I consider myself almost schizophrenic thinking deeply about all kinds of nonsense and then sometimes hearing those voices telling me to say something out loud or to soapbox about this or that or challenge a friend's statement or way. Lots of times, I think about how the world is going straight to hell in a handbasket. I fume over our overconsumption, lack of integrity and downright uninformed dum conversations. Sometimes I will hesitate to say things like that for fear that I may sound like a knowitall or arrogant but that isn't how I see it at all. As a matter of fact, when someone talks to me and insinuates I may not know the full facts or seems to think I cannot fight fair because I am not on an equal playing ground, it makes me think deeper, it makes me do research, it makes me want to learn. More people need to learn the world around them and see it for what it really is and not for what they think it is...to be able to not only argue and converse intelligently but maybe make a real difference somehow. The first step is to really step away from ourselves and look around and then find out why, really why, things are the way they are and what can and cannot be done about it. We need to take ourselves away from the center of the universe first.

The world needs us all. Badly.

I pick up this book, at the library....HMMMM John Stossel...he always seemed like a really good reporter to me and a bit miserable. Right up my alley. He goes against the grain. He is brave. The book is great and it explains so much nonesense for what it is...NONSENSE.

Remember the day you found out advertisers lie? Remember the day you felt manipulated into buying something you didn't want or need? Remember finding out the news is slanted? Remember realizing: "believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see". Remember when you heard the food industry tricks you into thinking your eating something healthy when it is really CRAPOLA? Remember reporters LYING for copy.

We need to not repeat what we hear but to find out about it and then talk about it and then do something about it. Short sightedness is really dum. DUM.

SOOOO when I was in my corner this morning churning about something someone said to my oversensitive self, I opened John Stossel's book and realized I am not crazy, afterall!

Towards the end of the book there are a couple of pages about being happy. Myth: Some people are just born happy. TRUTH: Apparently so.
Studies at the University of Maryland found that some children are literally born happy or unhappy. Scientists there used electrodes to monitor babies' brain activity when they smiled. Babies who smiled a lot had more measurable activity in their left frontal lobes. "There are certain brains that are more predisposed to experience happiness compared to other brains" Dr. Richard Davidson told John Stossel. "You're just born with it".
Or not...

Other things that make us happy: pretending to be happy, putting a smile on, feeling in control, being religious, and having close relationships. Things that do not bring happiness include: money, youth, lack of disability, and having too much leisure time.

The book is definitely worth reading...it might make you more informed, it may make you feel less crazy, and more importantly it may make you happy.

I was thinking of the patients I no longer see. Those people I felt were part of my important life, my day. I feel like I had broke up with a serious boyfriend. My life changed in an instant and I almost can forget, but every now and then, I remember. I miss them.

WOW.... Time just flies right on by. This past week has been like a whirlwind and it isn't scheduled to slow down anytime soon.

Today we had the school picnic; the same picnic I enjoyed for 8 grade school years. The place has changed a bit, a water park was added and security guards now patrol the entire area but the soft serve is just the same rich creamy sweetness as it always has been and the free and fun feeling the kids have is familiar. We used to put the Blessed Mother in the front window of our houses so it wouldn't rain the next day. I tell my kids that now and they look at me like I have 16 heads. We BELIEVED our Holy Mother kept our picnic days sunny and bright. I still do.

We had a lot of fun. The kids go on their own, with all of their school friends and ride the rides, try their hand at balloon darts and float around on a big, round, brightly colored water tubes. They can cavort with their buddies and try out their first kiss and eat junk food all day long. My 10 year old son won his little girlfriend a stuffed animal for the third year in a row. It is so sweet that it warrants at least a sentence here. We came home sunburned and tired.

My husband and I were immediately due at a party. A good friend was nervously throwing a first class affair for his mom and dad's 50th wedding anniversary. We are part of his neat, warm, extended family and that was a nice feeling...our inclusion of his important event. We sat and chatted at a table of people that felt friendly and nice.

Last night I was out with girlfriends who I know well and really like...at times...sometimes, I feel like I might even love them, and we argued and I got aggravated. I just shake my head at feeling like such an alien among familiar faces. ...some of them I've known for over 30 years. Tonight I was able to interact with almost strangers in a civilized, friendly, nice way. How do I have more in common with people I don't even know? Maybe it just seemed that way.

That got me thinking... what exactly makes people get along? Circumstances? Beliefs and ideals? Political views? Lifestyles? Souls mingling? Fireflies winking?

Tomorrow, my husband and I will get our chores done: the gym, the laundry, the kids and try to get away for a night and a couple days to our shore house, alone. Our 21st wedding anniversary is on the 7th of this month.

We've had a life of fulfilled wishes. I prayed to God for him and my kids and not surprisingly, I got it. Why am I not surprised? It has always felt to me like something meant to be, something that was bound to happen, a "no brainer". During these years we've had many sad times. Lots of deaths: his parents, my grandparents, his much too young cousin and his well loved aunt. We also started a business and enjoyed it for 7 years and then closed it/sold it ..and that, also, felt like a death. Less importantly, we've seen our youth die and our wishes wane. Now, I look at the person who, at one time, I almost lost.

I might as well tell the story.

We were "dating" and for whatever reasons, we broke up. I forgot and remembered for 13 months. We both tried a different path, another rode, a new beginning. Suddenly it hit me... I realized I was going to have to either make a decision and forget it all for good or try to save what never should have been lost.

Basically, I begged him to see me again. Slowly, we talked and I tried to be patient ..until we became engaged and then married and then he became a lawyer and we had a baby and then three more and then a business and a house at the shore and then......

I realized it then, just as I know it now, I cannot live without this person. Sometimes, that is a hard thing to realize; I like being independent. Tonight, as many nights, some lady told me if I ever wanted to get rid of my husband to just let her know. We kidded about it.

I thought about it all. It may seem that my attraction is his good looks, his well sculpted body, his strength, or his accomplishments. How can I tell anyone that none of that is ultimately appealing to me? After a while, the physical person fads behind their real presence.

I wonder who I'd complain to about my kids or my crazy girlfriends. How can I chit chat with anyone else over a cup of coffee and a half of biscotti for him and the rest of the bag for me? Who else is jealous that their husband folds a nicer load of laundry? How can I remember 30 years ago like it was yesterday and feel the exact same way? How can I have four great kids and know that he feels exactly the same way about as I do about them?

Oh, we go through the rearranging of the loaded dishwasher and the annoying crunching of celery or the intolerance of certain habits but all in all I got my wish.

There was a time I tried to forget, but I am so glad I didn't.

My wish was, like most girls, to have a marriage like my parents.

We are pretty darn close.

29 more years to go until 50!