Twenty and twelve things I am grateful for this year

1. My month in Oregon
2. Getting another job in hospice
3. Mindfulness and Compassionate Communication retreat
4. Wendy's visit in May
5. Weekend in Bisbee with Eric
6. Yamuna Body Rolling
7. Christmas
8. Spending a weekend with Meredith in Portland
9. Becoming better friends with our neighbors
10. Finding Jenna Woginrich's books and blog, and The River Cottage series
11. Having a deeper and happier relationship with Eric
12. A few good hikes
13. My trip to Seattle in February
14. Getting back to my healthy weight (officially as of this week!)
15. Camping in the White Mountains with Eric last July
16. Finding the chicken run of my dreams
17. Eric setting up the chicken run and making it dog/cat/hawk/escape proof
18. Going to Breitenbush with my mom last summer
19. Becoming closer friends with Cynthia
20. We really didn't have many mosquitos in the house this year.

1. Spending one day a week with Mead, almost all year long
2. Wellbutrin
3. Relationships with my patients
4. The chickens
5. NIA class with Tama
6. Our garden/backyard has really grown and improved this year.
7. Hundreds of walks with Clover
8. A lot of time to read
9. Mom's visit earlier this month
10. The new raised bed
11. I am just starting to feel more comfortable and confident as a hospice nurse.
12. My hope and excitement for 2013

Five things I am grateful for today

1. Yesterday Clover and I went to visit Mead and Tutuli. Tutuli is Mead and her boyfriend's wiener dog, named after a Sonoran hot dog stand. Tutuli and Clover are very good friends and wrestled and played chase for most of the afternoon. It was fun seeing Clover so happy. Here is a picture of her grinning and a picture of her and Tutuli playing.

2. I had Friday off from work which was relaxing and nice. Then yesterday Eric and I both started getting sick. I don't feel too horrible, compared to other colds and how my patients feel.

3. Eric and I have been hanging around, reading books, watching Youtube videos about beekeeping. It's nice to be together. I finished Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior a little while ago.

4. I am so excited to plant the raised bed!

5. A chance to chat with Wendy this morning

Five things

1. A good day at work
2. It looks like it's going to rain.
3. I am taking tomorrow off!
4. Eric left me a sweet note on the bathroom mirror.
5. The new Barbara Kingsolver book is pretty good so far.

Some things I am grateful for today

We had a wonderful Christmas, just relaxing at home. We brought a wintery fruit salad with mango greek yogurt over to our neighbor, Kathleen's house. It was fun getting to hang out with her family and some of our other neighbors too. We went for a walk around the neighborhood. Mostly we just were snuggly and relaxed. I made us dinner: ham, roasted green beans, mashed potatoes, corn and creamed spinach. What a lovely day.

I am very grateful for all of the sweet and thoughtful presents, especially from my mom, Mead, Ana, Kevin and Julie, and Eric. Oh, and Clover got me a package of five massages. How nice of her!

I have the irrigation for the backyard about half way set up thanks to Shannon. She came back over on Monday and we worked on it for a couple of hours, until it got dark. Soon I will have a self watering garden!

Work is a little less stressful right now.

Three of my patients are dying good deaths--symptoms are managed, families are coping well and taking amazing care of their loved ones. It's beautiful to watch.

Eric had today off. After I finished work we took Clover for a walk.

This is dinner. I am not in the mood to cook so this is a collection of what sounded good: pineapple, pear, tomato slices, extra sharp Tillamook cheddar, celery sticks with a little herb chevre, almond rice crackers, two little chunks of toscano with syrah and a few macadamia nuts. I call it "snack dinner" or a picnic.

Eric bought these really cute Halloween plates with different compartments/sections for different foods so that things don't touch. There is a time and a place for food touching, and a time and place for it absolutely not to. I appreciate that Eric gets that and bought me this gift in October. It feels good to be understood.

Happy Holidays!

Five (+2) things I am grateful for today

1. The new raised garden bed
2. Shannon's help building it
3. Mead gave me really sweet and thoughtful Christmas presents yesterday! This lovely wrist cuff made by her cousin's wife, two compost tea bags for my garden, a beautiful book of cloud photographs that she has taken and had bound, and a tiny painting of an airstream with a saguaro cactus by an artist we both love. She also got Clover a really cute squeaky toy. She loves it, of course.
4. While Mead and I were together we also went to the feed store to buy some layer feed for my chickens and dog Christmas presents that she needed to get. Then we came home to drink tea and coffee and catch up.
5. It was 70 degrees yesterday!
6. Nine glorious hours of sleep
7. Eric and I are hanging out from when he gets out of work through the whole evening.

New Raised Bed

My backyard now has a 10' by 4', 18" tall raised bed! I've been gathering the materials all week in various trips to Lowe's. The blocks are 36 pounds each and the bed has 44 of them plus 22 cement seating blocks on top. This week has been all about carrying heavy things.

I started by assembling the structure before the dirt arrived yesterday morning:

Then I lined it with plastic sheeting to help keep the moisture inside the bed:

The soil arrived at 8:05am!

Then I started shoveling soil into the wheelbarrow and making trips from the driveway to the backyard:

Around 10:30 my arms felt very fatigued and I had only shoveled maybe 1/3 of the dirt. So I called our friend Shannon to see if she wanted to come over and rescue me. Shannon is the strongest person I know AND she has worked as a landscaper for years. She said she had seen my facebook post inviting people to come over and was already planning to come help. WOW! What luck! She came over about a half an hour later and the dirt really started to fly! She stayed for a couple of hours until the job was done. Here she is with two packages of peat moss in the wheelbarrow. She makes it look like nothing but that's 6 cubic feet of peat moss. When we finished she asked if I wanted to go to Ace and look at irrigation options. She also was helping me plan my little greenhouse shelf. It's fun to have friends excited about these projects along with me. Mead has also given me some great ideas for the garden.

I heart dirt!

Here it is! I am so happy with it!

Eric says that the blocks need to be staggered for it to be structurally sound. I can't really move today so he is going to fix that when he gets home from work. Right now Clover and I are lying in bed while it gets light. I've been enjoying a book about vegetable gardening in the Southwest and slowly planning the garden. Here's the plan so far for the winter raised bed: nantes carrots, golden and candy cane beets, green onions, bulb onions, garlic, and some other awesome things I can't remember right now. I'm thinking of spending some time sowing seeds on Christmas. Maybe by then I'll be less sore. As for today, I think I'll take it very easy. Eventually I might make it into the kitchen to make breakfast, we'll see.

Come February I'll be starting seedlings for all sorts of other plants for spring/summer. More on that later!

Five things

1. In ten hours, 1.75 cubic yards of dirt will be delivered and then I'll create a raised bed. Pictures to follow.
2. Kindness
3. A nice warm day, somewhere in the 60's
4. Tonight I attended a winter solstice NIA dance class. It was a candlelit class and several people I knew were there. It felt like a little party--I loved it.
5. It's the weekend and Christmas is just a few days away! Yippee!

Five things I am grateful for today

The shootings in Connecticut are weighing heavily on my heart tonight. I am so sad for everyone involved, those victims, their families, the teachers, all of the traumatized kids. It is just tragic.

1. My friends and family
2. Safety
3. The sweet, baby monsters in my life
4. A good, small town childhood with innocence intact
5. Kindness

Five (x2+2)things I am grateful for today

1. One of my patients died a good death today, and his family took really good care of him.
2. Our hospice medical director gave me a really thoughtful Christmas package today. Today was her last day--I couldn't be less happy about that. But I AM really grateful that I had the opportunity to work with her/learn from her for the past few months. From her specific explanations of why she chose which meds in different circumstances to putting my hands on a liver failure patient's abdomen to show me what a "fluid wave" feels like to her hilarious sense of humor to her kind heart, I have benefitted so much from working with her.
3. My boss gave Clover a Christmas squeaky toy present today.
4. I celebrated our bereavement/volunteer coordinator's birthday today with her at Paradise Bakery--so nice to be with her.
5. A nice phone chat with Momster
6. Dinner with Eric
7. Helpful insight about my present and future
8. When I pronounced that patient today I felt connected to Life, in the big sense, connected to all things, you know?
9. Snuggling Clover
10. Green tea
11. One of my patients held my hand and said, "I love you, Darlin" to me today. Mmm, such sweetness. And we spoke frankly about whether her life is still worth living and other deep thoughts that she's been having. Some moments in this job are breathtaking.
12. A mandarin orange gift, picked right from the tree

And last but most best, my mom visited this weekend and it was SO great to be with her! She made our house very festive with her beautifully wrapped gifts and great decorating ideas. We had an awesome time together and I hope she comes back VERY soon. We miss her already.

Five things I am grateful for today

1. I slept like a rock last night. Like a rock who sleeps.
2. I am officially going to start working 32 hours a week very soon. It's funny, I already feel more relaxed.
3. Today was a good day at work.
4. Eric, Clover and I went for a walk right before sunset.
5. For dinner we went to Smashburger. I had a grilled chicken sandwich with garlic sauteed mushrooms, swiss cheese, lettuce and tomatoes. Oh, it was so delicious!

Today was a really nice day.

Five (x2) things I am grateful for today

1. It's 3:40 am, I'm awake and not at all anxious about it. Wow. Thanks to Wendy for introducing me to the concept of First sleep and second sleep during a nice, long chat last weekend in which I was walking Clover and she was cooking healthy, delicious food for the week. Anyway, this is the first time since we talked that I've found myself awake for an extended period during the night. There is quite a sense of freedom in letting go of "the uninterrupted eight hour block" as the sleep ideal. I slept soundly from 9:30 until 2am, then woke up, read for awhile, made a list of important details that I could easily miss (one of my coworkers turns 50 next week, we need to plan some way to celebrate. Remember to bring nail clippers to a certain patient's home on Monday. Buy cauliflower tomorrow, etc.) and now am taking the time to write. It's funny because with the recent weeks of insomnia I've been waking up and feeling really frustrated/panicky about getting back to sleep. This concept frees me up from worrying and gives permission to really enjoy the time. After all, I complain a lot about rushing and right now, there is nowhere to go, nothing I have to do. All I can do is catch up on the things I find most relaxing. If you frequently wake up in the night for a couple of hours and then go back to sleep, this article is definitely worth your while. Thanks Wendy, you make my life better in so many ways!

2. Tonight we went out for Greek food. It was SO delicious! We shared spanakopita (okay, I mostly hogged it by taking a third of it to go for breakfast tomorrow) and E ordered a gyros platter and I had a steak and spinach salad.

3. After work I was feeling really stressed out and Eric took me for a walk around this little lake. It worked wonders.

4. Work went fairly smoothly.

5. Tomorrow something awesome is happening!

6. The mix cd Wendy made for me is so great!

7. I am really enjoying Anne Lamott's new book about prayer. It's simple and funny and profound and beautiful, like most of her writing.

8. Our house was cleaned by a friend of Eric's today. My favorite part is the way she organized the fridge. Oh, it is a sight to behold. If my bed weren't so cozy, I would go take a picture for you. Too bad.

9. I've been really indulging in fantasy gardening lately as I imagine the raised bed I want to create. I think it will be 3 or 4 feet x 10 feet, made of cinder blocks, and filled with organic dirt from this place in Tucson who delivers it by the cubic yard. And by "delivers it" I mean, they dump it on your driveway and you deal with it. Did you know that a cubic yard weighs about 1400 pounds? And I need a cubic yard and a half! Amazingly, a cubic yard of high quality, organic dirt is only 33 dollars plus delivery (delivery is 39 dollars). I'm used to buying a cubic foot for around five dollars, so this is a pretty awesome deal.

I'm planning to buy our seeds from Native Seed Search, here in Tucson. There are so many reasons to buy seeds from them: 1. They are a local nonprofit. 2. They sell seeds for plants that grow well in the Sonoran Desert, so many things do not fair well here. 3. I am also planning on choosing only open pollinators so we can save seeds from year to year. A lot of the seeds at Lowes/Home Depot are not open pollinators and therefore produce seeds that are infertile.

Now all I have to do is pick a weekend to dedicate to shoveling dirt into a wheelbarrow and hauling it to the backyard. Now seems like a good time to start some back strengthening practices! Maybe I'll do it the weekend before Christmas and make this a present to myself. P.S. I'm not opposed to hiring a strong helper, if you know anybody looking for a few hours of work! I'm trying to spare Eric on this one because he has done all of my other hard labor and deserves a break.

10. The house is fairly clean and my car is vacuumed. All that's left is washing Tiny Clover and the sheets!

Okay, time for second sleep. Ha! Night night.

Five things I am grateful for today

1. A yummy dinner with Eric Frey: caesar salad, chicken sausages and apple and orange slices. (homemade sourdough croutons on the salad)
2. Last night I slept for 10 divine hours.
3. An awesome workout before work, when I left the gym my arms were so fatigued that it was a little difficult to put my jacket on.
4. Two good patient visits
5. Wendy sent me an awesome new mix cd. Thanks, W!

Wonderful Sunday

Today pretty much rocked. I woke up around 5:30 and have been having fun ever since. My plan to relax in the yard was foiled as usual by my desire to get a bunch of things done.

This morning I straightened up the mess I've made all week, swept the floors, paid bills and fed the chickens.

Mead came over for breakfast and crafts. I made us breakfast quesadillas with scrambled eggs, jack cheese and green chiles inside. Then we worked on Christmas presents.

Mead and I stood in the backyard scheming about raised beds, rainwater harvesting, bike racks, compost, and a few other things. In case I haven't mentioned it lately, she is one neato friend.

After that I went to buy a new toaster oven as I like efficient baking and our oven takes 10 minutes or so to preheat. That's wasteful and also annoying in the summer when I don't want to heat the whole house up. Our current toaster oven is finally dying--I bought it used about 4 years ago so I guess it's no surprise. Anyway, I bought this Kitchen Aid one because it isn't digital, they're made in the U.S., it has great reviews and I think most of the things I want to cook will fit inside of it.

Then I bought some groceries: yellow carrots, red cabbage, avocados, clementines, tofu, chicken sausages, no nitrates chicken hot dogs, and some other stuff.

I stopped by the nursery right by our house to buy some already established herbs and they sent me home, telling me to plant seeds again just not so deep. Who knew you could still plant things in December? Tucson, you are a weird and special place. So I did, I planted herbs all over again and some more lettuce, spinach and swiss chard. I have veggie fever, I tell you! Next spring I am planting a couple of citrus trees, I think.

Clover and I went for a nice, long walk on the Rillito and I got to catch up with Wendy. It was great to just chat about cooking, growing things, people's idiosyncrasies, magazines, sleeping and other nice mundane things.

For dinner we had pumpkin ravioli tossed with a couple of tablespoons of sage infused, balsamic, brown butter, with apple chicken sausages and a green salad with carrots and pecans and an apple cider, honey mustard, herby vinaigrette. Also we had a little homemade limeade--I finally squeezed those limes from my patient's tree. We have a few liters of limeade now. I think I'll put some mint in one of the jars.

Did I mention that yesterday E hung up that yard art/sculpture thingy for me? I'll try to take a picture of it soon.

Some things I am grateful for today

It's Saturday! Two days of no patient visits. I do have to go in to the office for a few hours today, but it will be quiet, and Clover and I will walk there and home.

My library books on hold came in yesterday: Barbara Kingsolver and Anne Lamott's new books!

Eric found an 100 gallon water harvesting container and is bringing it home this weekend! I would like to get to the point that most of the water for the garden comes from the sky, at least part of the year! Conveniently Mead knows all about water harvesting so I'm hoping she'll give us a few ideas about what we need to do. We already have gutters so I don't think this will be too involved of a project. (I've said that before!)

Looking at the big picture of the yard, we've made major progress: we are growing a lot of our own greens, we have chickens and we are composting. Adding water harvesting to the mix makes it nearly perfect! I also would like to have solar power but that might be unrealistic with a rental. Also I would like to have a long raised bed to grow A LOT more food in. 4x10 feet or so? I might do that project in the spring? We'll see.

Yesterday was so awful that I have to just say I am thankful it's over. It was the icing on the crap cake that was the whole week. I know I am usually positive here, but I'd hate for you to get the idea that I'm some sort of Pollyanna.

Last night E took me out to Sweet Tomatoes as we both got home late and were too tired to cook. YUM. I really like Sweet Tomatoes, particularly I love Joan's Broccoli Madness. And it's great because we work really hard all day and then there are limitless options of chopped up, healthy, scrumptiousness that we didn't have to prepare or clean up after. It's like a dream come true on a day like yesterday.

I slept so well last night--I even dreamed that I was on vacation at a farm and learning to grow all kinds of things. I also dreamed that I went for a long run on a beautiful country road with no cars on it.

I'm not going to rush around and accomplish a lot of things this weekend. In fact, I am using some of my overtime cash to pay a professional to clean our house later this week. Also I'm going to go grocery shopping for easy to cook, healthy food. My hope is to relax and prepare for next week. My boss will be on vacation so I think it will be a lot like this week but I have to cover a patient of hers and whatever admissions we get this week. Something really awesome is happening next Friday afternoon, so I need to get the job done between Monday and Friday afternoon.

Other plans for the weekend: read in the backyard, take Clover for a long walk/run, go to my dance class tomorrow, do a little crafting with Meadz tomorrow morning.

I am starting to seriously scheme about dropping my work schedule back to 30-32 hours/week. Maybe early January? Happy Birthday to me? I was thinking about it a lot on Thursday and then got this fortune: "accept your independence and use it wisely."
Okay, wasn't one of the reasons I went to nursing school that it would afford me good life/work balance? Because THIS is NOT it. THIS is not making me happy. I do still love the patient care, I just need a little less of it and a little less intensity. I need time to recover from the pace of it and the tragedy.

I want to take better care of myself. I recognize that this level of stress is not healthy--I've been sick 3x in two months! And all three times I've been so stressed out right before getting sick. During my interview with my company I told my boss' boss that I only wanted to work full time for a few months and he said that would be fine. That was in March! Then they didn't give me enough hours for a few months and since July, there have been many 50 hour weeks. I'm grateful for the savings that has provided and now I think it's time to back off.

My boss has inspired me to take care of myself by taking this next week off when we are busy as heck and basically I feel like we are drowning. It seems like an impossible time for a vacation, yet she is taking it anyway. Yes, we are busy but she is taking care of HERSELF. I started to feel resentful of this (I am the one left to pick up the nursing side of the slack for a week after two really, really hectic weeks when I haven't felt I've had time to catch my breath) and then I realized, I too can ask for what seems like an impossible request. Thank you, N., for modeling good self care. I think sometimes I expect to get what I want without having to ask for it. I sincerely appreciate this reminder that it's up to me to gently/assertively express my own needs.

Okay, time to feed the chickens. I can hear them scratching around, chirping and kicking their feeder.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!