Why, thank you, I'd be honored!

I am so excited! One of my top two picks for faculty advisors said yes to working with me for an Honors project! Full speed ahead! Here's the proposal:


I am interested in looking at the cultural competency of BSN students. The rationale for increasing cultural competency among nurses is obvious (but would be fully outlined in my final paper of course), but the logistics of doing so is much more complicated. We tend to leave the concept of cultural competency in the abstract, and never truly integrate it into practice. I've heard nurses ask patients, "Are there any cultural practices or beliefs that we should be aware of?", and I cringe because most of us aren't aware of our own practices and beliefs because they are so integral. It's a little like asking a patient if they are experiencing lupus - it's not a very answer-able question.
Using the nursing process, it seems smart to assess the level of competency that students have in issues of diversity awareness, personal values, etc as they begin nursing school, before interventions are planned for increasing that competency. As I've been researching the topic in order to write a resolution for ANS, I have found a tool (Josepha Campinha-Bacote's IAPCC-SV) that measures the level of cultural competence among healthcare professional students. One of the focuses of Campinha-Bacote's research is cultural desire, or the motivation to learn about culture and interact with awareness. I am particularly interested in trying to get a sense of the readiness to learn among the BSN population with regards to issues of culture, diversity, tolerance, acceptance, awareness.

So the research question I'm considering is: What is the level of cultural competence among BSN students at this school of nursing?

what're we here for again?

Last night at 130am, I was very busily filling in my week's schedule, and looking for the chunks of time to get groceries, write up the scripts for the Nursing Student Outreach project, and buy puzzles for our upcoming SNA conference. I realized that I had yet to find the chunks of time before class on Thurs that I could skim the material.

I get very attached and almost proud of how full my schedule is. It becomes a challenge to see how many activities I can cram into one day - tomorrow, I'll be in seven different places to meet people! What do I win?!

What's so funny to me is that the classes, the school, well they're the reason for all this hubbub, the very stage where the drama is happening! And yet, my focus is so often NOT on the classes. I'm very attentive during class itself- and I'm an excellent studier the week before the exam. But day-to-day, keeping a focus on the coursework? Blah.

Part of this happened during my transfer from bare bones community college to big-time, fancy-pants university. I want to get my financial aid worth! A lecture and panel on incarcerated women? I'm there! Meet a couple folks about an LGBT movie night? Absolutely! (by the way, I'm gearing up to ask the powers that be to host a gay movie screening and discussion - wish me luck!) Print off that stuff on 100 Projects for Peace, with the application that's due today for $10K of funding when you have a tiny idea of something involving kids and Quakers and art... sure, why not.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the feline tumbleweeds are taking over again. I'm currently debating between allocated $50 to an air filter that would suck the cat fur out of the air, possibly, or vacuuming more often, which would reduce the total mass of fur, but would stir it up that much more.

Off to bed, with four Advil for the sore new-filling-tooth (my first in 21 years!) and the hopes that I don't kink myself all up again in my sleep after that yoga class.

night.

ouch.

Why is Blogger offering to type in Hindi for me? Did I select something or is this some sort of blog worm? ah, never mind. I can't be bothered.

1. i have a headache. likely because it is in fact quarter til two and my ass is not yet in my ridiculously comfortable bed, with the window open to ridiculously cool air.
   
2. my tonsils hurt. like i've been smoking american spirits, which i HAVEN'T and so this sucks super bad. i've had right tonsillar megaly for about two years now, and at some recent visit, hopefully not my annual pelvic, it was deemed 'no big deal'. But it hurts. it feels like the nasal passages are inflammed? is that anatomically possible? I just want to figure out a way to squirt some warm water somewhere that will make it feel better! Gargle? Snort? Mouthful of it and breathe through my nose? flark!
3. i have my first clinical in peds on monday. I'm terrified. this won't surprise you. more details below.
   
4. i am contemplating asking the principal for a transfer to the cooler 2nd grade teacher from the asshole 2nd grade teacher. the risk in asking? that she might say no, and then I'd have to resign myself to dealing with the asshole all goddamn year and I just don't know if I work myself up to ask for this, and then I don't get it, how badly will that actually suck?
5. I. must. stop. signing. up. for. things. Run for election on state Board of Directors of Assoc of Nursing Students? Excellent! work with LGBTQ folks on my side of campus? Great! Read with kids at my kid's school twice a week for an hour? Super, thanks for asking! Work on the World AIDS week planning committee? Okay! Go to the Global Health Committee meeting because it might mean inroads with the community health folks at the SON? wellll... Meet with SON folks about gay stuff? good idea, but is this the semester for it? sigh.
6. i got a haircut today. i'm growing out the crew. shaggy surfer boy chin length here I come. in the meantime, I'm working on how to make it less fuzzy looking. the stylist said that using scissors, not clippers, will help. and smoothing serum. and i'm driving home, thinking, yeah, having it be all one color instead of salt and cinnamon might help, too. Who AM I that I wash my face twice a day, pluck my eyebrows, purchase and actually wear kitten heels, apply nailpolish, and consider dying my hair again? it's like a remix of the 80s. I thought I was done with all these femmey trappings! (also planning the breast reduction I want with my signing bonus. eep!)
7. my dishes still aren't done. yes, it's been at least 3 weeks since I updated. i still haven't washed that lasagna pan and i only recently ran out of clean gladware, so I actually will have to do it now.
   

Peds Clinical
Get this - Summer was my first clinical rotation, right? Med-surg, adult health, GI floor, lots of ostomy bags and wound vacs. Tube feedings and such. I only had a pt with a NG the last day of the rotation, and managed to fuck that up by removing the old nasty tubing to the canister and throwing it away, gettting distracted on my way to the supply closet to get new tubing and getting called back to the patient's room bc he was nauseous bc i had left him off suction too long. i still don't get NGs.
So, after that 11 weeks of patient care, I had a week of finals, three weeks off for break, and then the first half of the semester was my psych rotation, where it's simply not a good idea to touch the patients. I did vitals on the unit one morning, and I took a BP for a man who was having a hypotensive crisis (with a seated BP of 72/54 and a standing BP or 62/42, he was sent back to his room to wait for the physician - thank you for the excellent example of how to NOT provide patient-centered, competent care). No direct physiological patient care in about three months.

My first shift in peds rotation will be in the PICU. I'll be there for only one shift. I'll go in at 9a, get info on my patient. This is at a hospital where I've not worked yet, so I have the access codes for the computer, but have never used them. I'll come back at 1pm and work til 7pm with this patient and a preceptor, whom I've never met. I was thinking that this was fine, because it was just going to be observational, right? They won't let me touch really sick kids, will they?

Then I read this paragraph* in the syllabus, while looking up what to wear. It took me ten minutes to calm down and realize that I won't be in the Peds ED tomorrow, that's not for another two weeks. Then I started to freak out again when I realized that the only IV that I've ever started was on my lab partner, and the canula kept sliding out and I tried to shove it in with my finger... I'm all about the psychosocial support. I'm *very* supportive. Drawing blood? Fuck that. I gotta go.

Okay. Time for bed. I'll be up in a couple months, when it's winter break.

*Clinical Experience: The student will spend time in the Pediatric Acute Care in the Pediatric Emergency Room setting, where he/she will participate in caring for acutely ill children. Included will be nursing interventions such as triaging patients; assisting with procedures such as assessments, IV starts, blood drawing, teaching families; and providing psychosocial support to children and families.

still thinking...

Minority Midwifery Student's got me thinking again.

Our Research prof was talking last week about how she had this radical discovery after her first focus group in the Latino church. She wants to know if cardiovascular interventions for Latino folks like education on risk factors and exercise and whatnot are more effective if they are sponsored by the church. The church members interviewed said - We are glad that you are here and wanted to ask us questions and listen to what we say. And so we really feel that we have to tell you that we don't have time to talk to you about cardiovascular health and diet and exercise. We have enough other things to worry about - like when to buy food, keeping the car running or enough money for bus fare, and making sure that someone can always be home with the baby."

I'm getting all these messages lately that I'm not listening to what I am hearing. from newFNP, MMS, and my own District Health Action Committee that does not in fact want to talk about health disparities in the schools of my district, but would rather continue to advocate for compostable lunchtrays. I love the idea of corn-plastic cups, and composting lunch, and organic food for all school children. Get that Fast Food Nation guy in here right now for a sound bite. But also, there's shit going down that I would like to be working on, and instead I'm real busy jacking around.

I've been writing scholarship and election essays about how I want to work community health after I get my MSN, and after I spend a couple of semesters taking more conversational and health-care focused Spanish. But the more I edit those essays and really pay attention to what I'm saying, I realize that they are not reflected in my current day-to-day. In fact, I could be practicing my Spanish at the store up the street instead of driving past it to go the big chain store. I could be listening to Spanish on my mp3 player on the bus.

I wonder if I'm putting off the idea of working at the clinic until I am an FNP because I'm really scared to do that. Part of it is that I haven't had Community Health yet, but since when do I wait for the nursing school to come bring me the shit that I want to learn? I've trotted out to the workshops at the Pharmacy school on Plan B and over the library to meet up with the gay folks.

I guess I have this idea that once I go into the clinic as a practitioner, that I'll only be able to stay so long before my motivation/energy will be used up. Seems like that was my experience as a patient or the parent of a patient at the clinic - after a few visits, when I knew that being treated like shit was the norm, not the exception, I would go in with these high hopes, trying to muscle through as much bureaucracy before my momentum wore off, like that slow motion football player throwing off tackles left and right, and finally leaping over the goal line by inches... She finally... gets... the prescription... and she's clear.

Workshops on incontinence are important, yes. Seminars on the IRB process for the survey/honors project I want to do on nurses' cultural competency w/r/t LGBTQI folks, good. But following up on the shit that I said I was doing is also critical. And it's bugging me that I say I'm doing it for the people who will give me money, but I'm not doing it yet.

maybe that's why I'm still awake at 2am?

why, White People, why?

My people are busy sucking again.

Listened to report the other day about how a patient was noncompliant with the Kwell shampoo. I perked up because this is the new admission that I saw coming in, a 30-something AfAm male with 5" dreads. What is Kwell shampoo, I wonder? And why are they trying to wash his head? And why are they confused that he would be noncompliant with this plan? The report on this patient ends with the fact that "pt did allow us to apply the Kwell lotion and understood that we would need to leave it on for 8 hours. He stated that he was offended by our original request and that he had psoriasis. After our conversation, he seemed less agitated and was less loud."

okay. let's get the bullets out:

• I don't know a thing about the situation, because my instructor wouldn't allow me to talk to the staff nurses about it.
  
• kwell shampoo is apparently used for lice, according to my clinical instructor.
• did the patient in fact have lice?
  
• does the staff have a clue that rules for washing and caring for white hair are totally different from the rules for black hair, and dreads have their own policies and procedures as well? Did anyone do a quick google search on whether kwell shampoo was the appropriate treatment for a patient with dreadlocks and lice?
  
• Yes, lice IS in fact a concern in this unit, as it would spread like wildfire and be very difficult to eradicate.
• However, did the patient in fact have flaky skin on his scalp that got mistaken for lice by the intake nurse?
  
• And, was this nurse the same one who left the report, because I've watched her and she has demonstrated a marked lack of social adeptness in a variety of situations. Including, but not limited to, responding to a patient's statement during community meeting that he doesn't know where his stuff is and didn't receive an itemized receipt for his belongings when he was admitted by saying that "you shouldn't bring things of value with you. I mean, when I go to the doctor, I don't bring all my cash and my jewelry and whatever with me!" Um. Hi. I have a comment. This patient was involuntarily committed and brought here in cuffs. What the fuck did you expect him to do?

so.

minority midwifery student has been writing of this bullshit this week.

and I'd like to add my offer of help to all my people. White folks, let me know if you need some help on this from one of your own. I'll be running a little workshop on Saturday in the park, come on by and we'll have graham crackers and talk it through.

Eritrea is a cool word to say! and folks there use bread for forks!

On my second day of spring break:

1. The campus bus drivers, as a group, were the most talkative that I've ever experienced. Usually, the drivers that serve my route are pleasant, but in a sharing-an-elevator way, with a nod and smile and sliding eye contact that doesn't demand anything else. I feel comfortable NOT making small talk with someone who is responsible for mine and many other lives. But today, they were all about the weather, and initiating the Have a great day! and Thanks, folks! and The S bus is broken down, so we'll be making one stop at Lennox and then resume our express service this afternoon. I wonder if there was some sort of in-service, or if spring break makes them sprightly.
2. The director of the LGBTQ office on campus is absolutely on point! I made an appointment to talk with her about ideas for a project that I could submit for the SON's multicultural award (read: $1000 scholarship). I had some really vague stuff about men in nursing carrying a gay stereotype, and tracing the roots of that deeper. She started talking about best practices, and how in one study of very out college students, 46% of them stated they were not out to their health care provider. Which is huge! How can I provide adequate health care to a person when I don't know what sorts of things to be on the lookout for? And the curriculum, as I've seen it thus far, doesn't necessarily include those things to be watching for (one of which is apparently an almost 50% chance that you won't know the patient is queer, transgendered, etc.). There's a line in a textbook that up to 10% of my patients could be gay, and so don't ask questions like Are you married? that assume heterosexuality, but nothing beyond that. I'm excited. and she said that I have to watch a video called XXXY about two intersex people.
   
3. I did about four hours of not very much in the library today. organized my pens. made a list of what I should do for each class in each week of the remaining semester. Did half of the two remaining homework assignments for my online Nutrition class. Found my Health Assessment textbook - which was a blast of good luck, since I didn't know I had lost it, and I have a test in there on the Thursday we get back. I also signed up for two shifts this week, which means that today was my only day to do all the catching up I thought I might do over spring break. Well, my prof did say to relax, right?!
4. Had the most loverly evening with the kid. We went to Whole Foods and made big salads and had interesting conversations about the Red Sea and the Mediterrean and the Caspian and what countries border those. Is it normal for a first grader to have this kind of grasp of world geography? Do I need to get this kid tested or something? He hand-jives a lot, does that indicate that he's gifted? We picked out cupcakes from the dessert case, and pastries for breakfast, and just had a wonderful time in each other's company. We ate on a blanket out in the front yard, because it was stunningly beautiful outside, and the house is an utter shithole at the moment. He put together our new spinning rainbow flower thingy, and I laid on the grass and was happy and still.
   
5. Got my second disk of the Facts of Life season one in the mailbox. Oh Blaire. Don't spend your time with those ridiculous boys, Jo will be along in a few short episodes for torrid sexual tension! I swear, this show is stupider than I remember, but I'm loving Ms. Garret more and more.
6. Fart. Fart. Fart.
   

It's a Big Big World

I was up till 4am reading at Obama's site, watching his YouTubes and typing a letter to him (which was embarrassingly autobiographical, and will need heavy editing before anyone but me and my cats see it). I finally got my copy of The Audacity of Hope from a long hold list at the library, and the library clerk told me that Obama is on her friends list on MySpace. How bizarre. It reminds me a bit of Clinton's sax playing on Saturday Night Live.

More than the intricacies of the internet, I'm a little shocked that politicians have time to write books. As I skim Audacity, I'm feeling grateful that this politician has written a book. It seems like a remedy for the sound bite. The idea of a sound bite offends me in part because I worry that someone (ie the politician) will think that I choose to get my information about a topic in that manner. I'd like the book, instead of the movie trailer. (Unless the trailer is for a two-hour documentary by Al Gore in which he sums up his life work thus far with heart-rending animation of floundering polar bears, in which case the movie will be an acceptable substitute, and the trailer a good teaser.)
An excerpt from The Audacity of Hope that caught me where I stood yesterday:

I understand the frustration of these activists. The ability of Republicans to repeatedly win on the basis of polarizing campaigns is indeed impressive. I recognize the dangers of subtlety and nuance in the face of the conservative movement's passionate intensity. And in my mind, at least, there are a host of Bush Administration policies that justify righteous indignation.
Ultimately, though, I believe any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharply partisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we're in. I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it's precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face as a country. It's what keeps us locked in "either/or" thinking; the notion that we can have only big government or no government, the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace "socialized medicine."
It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off of politics. This is not a problem for the right; a polarized electorate - or one that easily dismisses both parties because of the nasty dishonest tone of the debate - works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government. After all, a cynical electorate is a self-centered electorate.

Typing this out made me read much more carefully! I hadn't seen how skillfully he enumerates the tactics of the Republican party, while ostensibly discussing the habits that thoughtful citizens should avoid. And on my first and second reading of this passage, I kept thinking of that study about how narcissistic college students these days are.
But on this reading, I'm struck by how he has captured the feeling that I have when I hear Cheney say things like "The American people won't tolerate a policy of retreat." Actually, that's exactly what I'd like to request, sir, and furthermore, it makes me feel hopeless, excluded, and insulted to hear my exact sentiments negated. Yes, I feel Cheney is still dangerous. He's certainly dangerous in a foreign policy sort of way, but he's also psychologically dangerous to Americans, when he reinforces ideas that are not held by the majority, with that nasty sneering tone that dares anyone to countermand him. It's bullying, and it makes me feel useless.

I've used up my blog time getting all these links (why can't research papers be written with links instead of those pesky citations!), and I haven't got time to wax poetic about political crushes. I need to think that one through anyway before I post it - it may be a bit heterocentric.

And I need to remember to add Suzette Haden Elgin's LJ to my links, as she is certainly one of my Favorites. Check out the entry on March 4th. Good stuff. She makes me want to make new words.

All My Babies

Wow.

I arrived late to the screening of All My Births, and was graciously ushered in by the woman in charge. She said, I'm so glad you came, and you haven't missed the birth! The bit that I missed apparently set up the story of this rural midwife, practicing in Ga. in the 1950's. Part of the story (it's a scripted documentary, which is apparently pretty rare) was to follow one woman, who was actually a part of the community that Miss Mary served, and received good prenatal care. There was another woman who did not come for prenatal care, had had a history of stillborn premature babies and this character was portrayed by an actress.

The birth was incredible. The lead in was stunning. Long shots of Miss Mary scrubbing fingernails to elbows, and then still shots of her supplies laid out carefully around the bedroom on newspaper. She made this delicate little trash bag out of folded newspaper that she dropped her sterile gauze pads into after wiping the mother's vulva. Metal butter dishes filled with water and nailbrushes and more sterile gauze that had boiled on the wood stove. It was quiet, so quiet. There wasn't much moving around, either by Miss Mary or the laboring woman. The birth happens in real time on the film, from the crowning (which amazed me, because the head kept showing and then retreating, peeking out and then sliding back in, over and over!) to the delivery of the head, then shoulders, then slip the rest of the body, and there's a baby!

I cried as much about the tying of the cord as I did about the actual birth. Miss Mary said, "We're going to go on and cut you loose now, little one". I'm processing all the cardiovascular stuff we've been learning this week, about the rapid changes that occur as babies switch to breathing air from receiving the maternal oxygenated blood, and it had a much more emotional impact. Sometimes, learning the details of a process make it less real, more memorizable, more detached and clinical. To see this birth, and really understand what was happening within that child's heart while she's worked on him was astounding. I had to talk to myself about this very logically, because my first instinct was to think of the time in the birth canal like a code that would need to be called if it went on too long.

The sound was apparently all dubbed over, and that intrigued me. Was the filmmaker trying to make it easier to watch? Trying to emphasize that good births are quiet? Or trying to allow the visual to override the auditory? I was expecting more talking by Miss Mary, more chatter to calm the mother - but the chatter in my birthing room certainly didn't calm me, now that I think about it.

I had somehow gotten the impression that this film was intended as a cautionary tale, to show how backwards rural midwives were. And what the flyer that I picked up afterward said was that All My Births was intended to be a teaching tool for midwives of the time. The gracious woman from the Center for Documentary Studies said that the film has been deemed a work of art worthy of preservation into perpetuity, and seemed to think that a DVD might be available. Apparently, the filmmaker had made another film before this with a dry title like Contemporary Obstetrics Today that featured only white laboring women and clinicians. I'd be interested to see that, and see if they were hospital births, and how the two portrayals differed.

In other news, I think that my friend hung up on me today because I responded to her reports of nausea with a dissertation on borborygmi and the reflexive navel-clenching reflex.

hmmph.

so. still awake. now, instead of blaming the quart of coffee I had today, I'm staying up to keep an ear out on the kid. (he is breathing much more regularly and quietly now. regular is good but quiet is not, since it makes it harder to know if it's regular, for fuck's sake.)

the mania i was whining about a week or so ago - thinking I was signing up for too many things, setting myself up to fail, stretching myself thin, the cliches are endless and all boring - well, it looks different to me now. Calling it mania seemed histrionic, even at the time.

there was a whiff of inauthenticity about it. even in my own head. i'm not really scared that i'm going to sign up for too many things and not be able to do them. that's possible. fine. that's even happened before. cool. i'm scared that I will say out loud in a crowd of some sort - I can do this thing! and screrch the music stops and everyone looks and waits for me to do the thing. well.

this is true of any role I have ever taken on or currently hold. mother, student, queer person, writer, smart person, sarcastic bitch, teenager, spiritual woman, aware to the immensity of the horror and the beauty of the world. i sense that there's a right way to do that, to be that, and the fear and the judgment starts immediately that i'm not doing it well.

and the moment that the music stops is the moment that i lose the connection with the present moment. you know, like literally, i'm bopping along to the music, really feeling it, and rip - gone. bereft. The Void.

So, I think that I was calling the lack of presence, the lack of attention, being in the costume but not in the moment, going along acting like my heart isn't broken open, trying to say that I can't do but so much, trying to call out of work in advance of even being scheduled the shift - calling that mania. because it feels all fast and scary, like i've done a thing that is too much, said a thing that can't be unsaid, actually articulated a desire or some shit like that.

and my last web-based expedition this evening led me to inga's site. and this excerpt from her book, which really synthesizes a lot of what i've been reading, thinking, hearing , singing and seeing lately:

An acquaintance and I were talking about this just the other day. He was telling me that he hunkers down into his daily life scheme of things because he cannot deal with all the horror in this world. I told him that I cannot live like that. He thought I was full of shit. “You can’t take in all that stuff,” he insisted. “It will drive you insane.”

But I disagreed. I hear this sentiment often, in a variety of forms.

Your average pissed-off citizen in the U.S. is willing to fight for three or four “causes,” maybe, but the line’s gotta be drawn somewhere.

When you’re present in the world you don’t just see one or the other. The horror and beauty go hand in hand. Even as this environment breaks your heart, the world fuels, protects, instructs, inspires, guides, and gently humors you.

So things balance out.

The whole excerpt is worth the read. seriously. This is deeper, bigger and wider to me than 'we're all desensitized to the horror and destruction around us and it's perfectly normal to feel hopeless' idea that i have held for many years. I have thought many times that the reason I was all of a sudden feeling so overwhelmed, tired, full of despair, was that I was taking on too much that wasn't mine. that i would go insane if I tried. that it was good self-care not to take stuff in. (and i do believe deep in my heart that is good self-care not to take in the medical emergencies on Discovery Health and the random tragedies that the folks at work want to wring their hands about for entertainment. that's self-serving melodrama.)

this is a way to re-think the idea that i can't work on all the causes I want to because i'm so busy paying the bills or going to class or raising the kid. that feels like a cop-out and it is. If I'm truly present in paying the bills, going to class and raising the kid, I may not be able to show up at a committee meeting for some non-profit. But being fully present (in the world, not the environment, is the HUGE distinction that inga is making here) IS working on the causes/issues that are important to me.
it's true that I'm interested in more things than I'm passionate about, and sometimes i latch onto the interest, and subsequent lack of follow-thru, as a nice-n-sneaky way to say i'm not good enough. Add it to the list of things I haven't done adequately or haven't done at all. oh, me. i can take in that star that was twinkling directly at me last night. the world, not the environment.

i swear, next week, i won't have a single deep thought. i'll watch wallace and grommit all weekend and expunge all of the cathartic self-examination* from my communication, web-based or verbal. no no. i can't mean that. i can't start talking about how this is all because of my impending period, or whathaveyou. it IS true for me that I'm full of this stuff lately, and it IS true that that's embarrassing to say out loud, and it IS true that I'm honored when others are willing to say shit like this. perhaps it should be a little more internal dialog and a little less internet rambling in the wee hours of the morning. shrug. if this was livejournal, i'd throw it behind the cut so noone had to scroll thru it. and this is all very rough draft, stream of consciousness. (what isn't at 2am?)

it's important to talk about love and imagination and what it feels like when your heart breaks open. look away if you're embarrassed by it; that's what I always did when my mom embarrassed me.



* from rob brezny's free will astrology

Leo Horoscope for week of February 22, 2007

You're strong medicine these days, Leo. You're 100-proof mojo. You might want to consider pinning a warning label to your shirt or jacket. It could say something like "Caution: Contents are hot, slippery, and under pressure. Use at your own risk." It's not that you're evil or neurotic. It's just that as you revisit and revision your deepest psychosexual questions, you have so much cathartic potency that you're likely to transform everything you touch into a more authentic version of itself. People with weak egos will be afraid of that, while those with strong constitutions will love it.

In the Beginning...

Bouncing around this afternoon, trying to gather a shitty day into a tidy package to be thrown away later tonight. belly is empty, head is full of all the stuff I should get done and thinking of N.'s advice to do something after class to de-stress before I try to study. sounds good - like get out of bed if you can't sleep within a half hour so that you won't associate the bed with tossing and turning and kvetching, but with soothing, silent sleeping. mmmm, sleeping. I worry, though (of course), that i'm giving myself an out, and that's the last thing this procrastinator needs - I used to tell myself I could read fiction while I ate lunch, and then I'd get up and do my chores, but instead, I'd keep getting up and get more food, and lunch lasted two more hours.

I started with the newsletter from my women's group, timed for Imbolc, which happens to coincide with the full moon tonight. There's a note in my WeMoon asking how I can honor this full moon in Leo (my sun sign), with the barest buds of Imbolc? To me, I think the answer is in all the stuff I've done in just the last few weeks - big changes that were tiny at the time, things that represent a lot of work in the past and microscopic shifts of perspective, and then bing, the whole knot falls apart in my hands. Finally figured out how I could shift the problem I had with arranging kid custody - I stopped ending the conversation when the kid's dad tried to sidestep. magic! Looked at this whole "Be a Good Person" thought spiral from a totally new perspective with a workshop on Byron Katie's Work - and realized that when I'm invested in how bad someone else sucks, I'm waiting for them to stop sucking to start Being a Good Person. poof!

so, anyway, newsletter, yada yada, good stuff, but I want a copy of that poem by Alice Lovelace. She performed it at the beginning of the Praises for the World concert/event in Atlanta a coupla years ago, and I can still hear her voice ringing. In hunting Alice on the web, I find Project South, which I need to know more about. These days, everything is spinning in terms of nursing school - can I work this into a project for an Honors class, can I take my Nutrition book to the elementary school and answer questions from the kids about why mama says some foods are good and some foods are bad for you, can we do some sort of Healthy Behaviors event at the school (with a much much cooler name than that). My disciplines class is really motivating me to think about why I wanted to do this, what I'd like to do as a nurse, and how many of the same reasons that I rejected nursing as a high school senior still hold true. I have this weird sense of pressure to get all those things wrapped up and eradicated before I graduate - gender roles bullshit, racial disparity in education from a myriad of causes, socioeconomic hierarchial limits. So, I'm reading this site in those terms - how can I get in with these folks and learn the stuff they're laying out, with the plans to apply it to prevention nursing, community health, equity of information kinds of ways. And, as always when I'm reading very carefully phrased mission statements and such - what is it exactly that they do?

So, on the eve of Imbolc, with the barest buds of spring, I know I've got another six weeks of winter (at least) and another three week Mercury retrograde period to get through before the action of spring really begins. I also know that the seeds I'm planting now are what will bloom then (hopefully), so I'm going to spend some time thinking about what I'm flinging out into the field.

I ended up with the last few paragraphs of this speech by Alice Lovelace, given this time last year about some stuff that's close to my heart (the role of artists for change) and something coming up this summer apparently that I want to know more more more about.
From Chaos to Clarity: The Price to Be Paid by Alice Lovelace

now, i will go do my Nutrition homework and start studying for Health Assessment.