Today is a beautiful day.

There's a few things I've learned about myself in these 35 years.

1. It is impossible to do more than one thing at a time, and to do it well.
Most of my stress comes in the morning, when Ellie is whiny and needs me to do a multitude of things, when I need to get ready for a day of work, when I start getting emails of things I need to attend to. This makes me feel impossibly frazzled as I try to juggle all of these tasks at once. And yet when I stop and watch myself in action, when I have awareness, I see that I'm actually only doing one thing at a time. Yet the stress lingers on as I feel like I need to be doing more than I already am in the present moment.

2. Whatever I'm doing now, do it fully.
If I'm getting Ellie her breakfast, concentrate on getting her breakfast, on putting love into the food, and on communicating with her with full attention. She sees when I'm divided in my present moment, and it never works out well.

3. It will all get done.
This concept amazes me. As I'm living in my present moment I start thinking about all of the things I need to do, my deadlines, my bills, people I need to call. STRESS. And yet...at the end of the day, these things were all done. And they were not done due in part for the stress.

4. I get to choose how I feel.
I can wander around feeling stressed, or angry at a situation. I can feel sad when I visit my patients, or frustrated by the mundane tasky part of my job. But these events come and go. They do not MAKE me feel sad, angry, stressed, bored, frustrated. I choose to feel that way. Why would I choose so much negativity?

5. Living with awareness makes life a whole easier (and more joyous).
Being sad and angry and frustrated and bored, these emotions happen. But I can let them happen and them let them go. I can have the awareness to REMEMBER that I have a choice in the matter. Life is not forcing me to feel any certain way. Life is not some random turn of events that HAPPENS to me. Life is going on in the present moment. Really, all we have is the present moment. And yet I find that my present moment is thinking ahead in the future or floundering in the past. That is not awareness. That causes pain and suffering because the true joy of the moment is in the present. And I miss it if I'm elsewhere.

6. I'm okay just as I am.
There is no future me that will be better. The past me is come and gone. The me that is ME is the me that is NOW. And THAT me is much happier when I'm truly living in my present now. THAT me, or I should say THIS me, feels joy when I accept myself for all that I am, warts and all.

7. There is no other me anywhere at any time.
Wasting energy comparing lives, businesses, practices, what do they accomplish? They accomplish pain, suffering, a feeling that what I am NOW is not enough. And yet, I am enough. I'm me! I'm exactly what I'm supposed to be. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. And I have a choice, always a choice.

8. Each moment is full of so much.
Even as I'm typing on this computer I notice the sounds around me, the birds starting to wake up, the smell of my coffee. There is nothing dull about this moment, about this time of the day when the world starts teeming with life as it awakens. It's not dull because that's not how I choose to see it.

9. There is so much to feel grateful for.
When I reflect on my gratitude the small stuff becomes even smaller. There is so much to be grateful for.

10. Today is a beautiful day.

Sweater Weather

As we settle into a new season our crazy summer living has come to a halt. Weekends with no plans (wha?!), deep cleaning the house, knitting, reading books, THIS is my preview to winter, and it's only fall, and it's still beautiful and we are still going out into the world to explore it, but the pace is certainly changed. I like it. Today the sky is dark with the promise of rain and I even get to wear a SWEATER. Oh my things are changing.

I decided to kill my Month in Review because a) it wasn't very interesting and b) it was a bit of a pain going through all the pictures. So anyway, for future me, Ellie or anyone else that may give a hoot, here's what we've been up to lately.

In search of the goldiest spot in Colorado we could find.

She's pretty gold-y too. 

This is my secret hike that we will do every year.
This was our 5th annual Super  Pretty Fall Foliage Day!

I temporarily suspended my life and all duties in it while I powered through these three books.
And then I went into mourning when they were all through. Ah, Katniss.

Ok, back to the living, I knit this hat for Ellie.
It was the first time I had cast onto my needles in a year!
Pattern here. 

Ah, St Mary's Glacier. A big block of ice sitting in a while lot of pretty.

Hoo boy was that Ergo a good investment.I wonder how much longer we can milk it for. Would it be strange to have a 5 year old on my back? (Don't answer that)

Oops, this little leaf one crept back in here. (Has anyone noticed how annoying it is
to rearrange pictures on blogger?) Oh well, I'll keep it. It makes me happy. 

My favorite photo ever.

There's so much I love about this photo. The light, the unassumed position of my daughter reading, and the saying above her head which captures my love perfectly. We were in the library and I quickly reached for my iphone to snap this picture. A mere 2 seconds after I snapped it she was up and on to me that I wanted a picture (and therefore totally opposed to posing). I love it more than I could ever say.

Five more minutes

Ellie's verbal capacity is taking me off guard. The way she stands with her head cocked and her eyes squinty and says "Mommy I don't understand" and then poses some serious question like "You said I could play with the ipad for 5 more minutes". And she means it as a real serious questions but you guys, this cute little baby of mine, and this conversation, I am NOT TRYING to be condescending by laughing but sometimes, SOMETIMES it's just too cute. So today she said "Mommy stop laughing at me". And I did. I don't want her to feel bad. She does not understand the cuteness yet.

Laughter curbed. (Cuteness remains.)

She does this thing now where everything is 5 more minutes. Get your shoes on Ellie. "Five more minutes, mama!". It's time to go. "Five more minutes, mama!".
This is coupled with her desire for "just a little bit more". Everything needs to be "just a little bit more". More juice. More volume. More more more.
"We're going to end the book here Ellie".
"Just a little bit more!".
And if that doesn't work "Five more minutes".

Mama doesn't laugh at that. It's not as cute the 500 timth around.

We are really blessed to be a very short walk to the Denver Zoo, the Botanical Gardens, and pertaining to today, the Museum of Nature and Science.

I still can not believe that there were dinosaurs roaming about the Denver area some millions of years ago. I stood wide mouthed at a full blown Stegasaurus that was oh you know, just wondering about metro Denver. Ellie was not nearly impressed. She had had enough by the time we got to the dinosaurs at the end of the day. So I pulled this one on her:

"Ellie, five more minutes".

She wasn't enthused and somehow I think the joke was lost on her. So we headed home, her with a new dinosaur bracelet and me with dinosaurs on the brain.

I mean, they're really pretty cool.

Oh, In case you were interested, THIS is what Denver looked like 100 million years ago. According the museum...

I saw this idea on Pinterest to turn your instagram pictures into photostrips. I really kind of like it.

Yes.

q-tips, dropping trow, and being the new kid on the block

One time I went in for a check up and the NP noted, upon using her otoscope, that I had a perfect ring of scar tissue in each ear. She was so perplexed.

I wasn't.

You don't have to be a nurse to know that using 1-3 qtips every single day of your life since you were, oh maybe TWELVE, might create a touch of scar tissue. Eventually that scar tissue or the lack of any sort of wax at ALL might disrupt the natural processes that need to take please for the oh, you know minor things like HEARING.

(Dear God please don't let me go deaf because I'm grossly addicted to qtips.)
(and why do they have to feel so good!?)

*******
I recently dropped my phone in the toilet. My iphone. My you-better-hope-to-God-you-are-getting-new-contract-rates phone. So what they don't tell you when you pay that $10/month insurance charge is that when you need a new phone it's a $169 deposit! Well I paid the darn thing and got my phone last night. Everything looks like the old one. Same old apps and contacts. Same useless Suri. Except now? Now I can't hear a damn thing!

So naturally I eased my frustration with a little qtip sesh.

These are definitely NOT the kinds of things I like to focus my attention on.

(Please let this be a lesson to you to not put your phone in your back pocket before dropping trow.)
(Also don't start digging the qtip so far down your ear and with such frequency that you permanently scar it. Trust me on both these issues)

******
I have a new website now. It's www.summersolsticephotography.com. And I made a facebook fan page, WHICH by the way, is beyond awkward asking people to "like" me. There was a lot of buildup and thought in approaching these two major cyber introductions and now that I'm here? Well now I'm kind of scared shitless, for a MULTITUDE of reasons. I just opened the door to a very cool room which I liken to a jazz club where all the people are hip and cool and they wear berets and smoke cigarettes and clap by snapping their fingers. And I just walked in with some boob high pants and taped glasses saying "hey guys, wanna hang out?"

(snort)

It's nerve wracking, yo. There is some serious out-of-my-comfort-zone stuff going on here.

The thing is, I do pretty well in my comfort zone. In fact, I haven't really left it in a while.

I know I can do this! I'm scared and nervous, but I'm also passionate. There's a dream here, an honest to God dream of doing something CREATIVE with my life. There's just a lot to think about and to do, a lot more than I ever realized before I actually started doing it.

Oh comfort zone, I can leave you for a little while I guess.

But I'm taking my qtips with me.

When even sweat and fatigue doesn't wipe the smile off your face

My weekend (sort of) went like this.

I went to the mountains. I got in a van with mostly strangers. I went for a run. I got back in the van. I waited at various locations for other runners to finish. It got dark. I went for a run. I waited at various locations for other runners to finish.  I had a spaghetti dinner at 2 in the morning. I slept on a gymnasium floor for about an hour. I went for a run. I waited at various locations for other runners to finish. I gave a lot of high fives. At the end of it all I gave a lot of hugs. They weren't strangers anymore, and I was giddy with fitness, fun and extreme fatigue.

This weekend was the Ragnar Relay, a 12 per team race from Breckenridge to Aspen, 188 miles. We didn't win but we did pretty well. This is positively from the several Ironman folks that were traveling with us and their badass running examples. It was pretty hard in the sense of being so sleep deprived. But it was gorgeous, and as I told my running mates the scenery alone was like a big cup of coffee, inspiring and uplifting. Especially on my last 6.4 mile leg through Glenwood Springs as the sun started rising. It was hard and uphill but I knew I was happy. It was too pretty not to be.

This weekend was special not just because I ran a cool race or I met all kinds of cool people. It was special because I felt like ME again. Not MOM me. Not NURSE me. Just ME. Fun me. Fun me that's not preoccupied with my kid or my job. NOT THAT I DON'T LOVE AND ADORE MY CHILD but it was....neat....to have a couple of days where I was "just me". And because I dropped my phone in the toilet (YES I DID THIS! AND NO IT WASN'T THE PORTAPOTTY!!!) it was really "just me". Unreachable, grinning, sleepy me.

Man it was fun.

All of the Ironman around me was inspiring. Now I just wanna run!

The Ghost of Grandpa Dick

Yesterday day I watched a big, bearded, formerly burly trucker, who also happened to be my patient, lay on his deathbed. He looked small in the queen-sized bed, always adamant about no hospital bed. He had a lot of pain that we were managing with morphine and he was chronically hypoxic (lacking oxygen). But he was alert. He was oriented. He wanted to know what we were talking about.

He had a big family of brothers, most of them unable, emotionally and/or physically to make the trek to Colorado. But one brother did. One older, balding man who told this nurse many stories of loss. This brother was vigilant by this patient's bedside.  I could see that his heart was breaking.

When all the nursing stuff was done I just sat back against the wall and I watched. I watched this formerly burly trucker hold hands with his older brother. I watched him look him in the eye and say "I'm not scared. I love you". I watched the tears that fell from his family. I watched the looks of love in the room, the ginger touches, the pain in their eyes. I sat against my wall and thought how did I get here? How did I get to be in this man's room, privy to his dying scene, privy to the love and deep pain that permeated the space?

As he lay dying it became clear that this man was in two different worlds: the world of the living and the world of the dead. He was talking about his Grandpa Dick, a man that I later learned he had never met. His brother knew him before he died. This patient described Grandpa Dick and said he was at the front of "the people", waiting for him.

Grandpa Dick. This happens a lot, where people see other people that have passed. This phenomena blows me away more than I could ever articulate. It is consistent. The dead appear. The dead are present in the dying space. They often visit with the dying hours and even days before the person dies. I have another patient who just last week started getting visits from her mother and sister, both passed. This happens with such strong regularity. If you didn't have a faith in afterlife it makes you question it, it does. How does Grandpa Dick appear when he doesn't even have a memory formed of him? How can he describe him without knowing him?

The man died in the early morning hours. He was a good man and I miss him.

My hunch is that now he's with Grandpa Dick.

Three girls, one weekend

Three girls being myself, my daughter and my mom.

I love those girls.