Tuesday, November 21, 2023 (post for Nov 14-Nov 20th)

 Ahoy! More business, so I’m going to try to both recall events and write them down in the 23 minutes I have until my therapy session.

Last Tuesday, the 14th, I went to lunch with my parents, my brother, and Garren for my birthday. Ashley could not come because her babies are little and a bit rowdy. And she lives an hour away. Sad face. It was nice though. My mom gave me a Christmas cook book, a blanket, and some chocolate covered pretzels. 

Wednesday I went to class then I went to work. At midnight it turned the 16th and was my birthday! I went to the hospital cafeteria and bought myself a slice of cookie pie. When I was doing midnight vitals, one of my patients had asked me if I had any kids and I said I had a 16 year old son and a 13 year old daughter. They said I didn’t look old enough to have a 16 year old and I said, “I’ll be turning 38 in a few minutes!!” One of the nurses heard that in the hallway and everyone wished me a happy birthday and was really nice. 

Thursday, my actual birthday, I slept most of the day. Then I got Miriam from art club and pretty much drove her straight to swim practice. But in between she gave me this mug:

It says, “Super mom, super wife, super tired!” Super right, Miriam!!

Josh went to work straight from school, so I didn’t see him. Garren surprised me by getting some dinner for us to enjoy together before I had to leave for work. We were going to try Backyard Taco for the first time, but couldn’t get there due to some traffic issues. So we just got panda. It was a very nice little surprise that made my day! Then he gave me my first gift: A subscription to the Hallmark channel! And yes, I have already watched 4 Christmas movies instead of studying Arterial Blood Gases. 

As I was getting ready to leave for work my manager surprised me with a bit of a birthday gift. She floated me to the monitor room! I was happy about that because working the floor is kind of killllling me. I had also wanted to work the floor that night, though, because after 3 months I finally feel like I’m relaxing a bit on the floor and fitting in a little more. So at about 2am I got a call from my floor asking to come up to the unit. So I went up there and one of my nurses, Shannon, had bought cupcakes and cookies to celebrate my birthday! So I stayed up there for a little while and visited with everyone. It was so nice! I feel very awkward and fumbly sometimes on the floor. I try to show my best self and sometimes when that is my focus it just ends up in disaster. But I’m finally feeling a little less awkward. 

Friday, I had to wake up early, around 1:00pm, to go pick up my mom from a surgical procedure at Mt Vista. I missed it! Then Garren reminded me that I have a way of romanticizing my past and remembering the good things. He reminded me how terrible it could be at times. Ha. But I had a lot of good times there too. I really missed it. I was also glad that my mom didn’t seem to remember that her mom died there! Or, at least she didn’t mention it. So I got Miriam from school and drove them both to mom’s. Miriam stayed with my mom to take care of her because I had to go to work. Miriam is a caretaker by nature. She is very sweet and took good care of my mom. 

That night I worked in the monitor room. 

Saturday when I woke up, I spent some time cleaning out my Gardyn and putting new plants in. Then we celebrated my birthday by going bowling, eating sandwiches at Steve’s Krazee Subs, then to Coldstone for ice cream. It was nice! Garren got me a steam cleaner for our floors for my birthday. Then he immediately used it! Ha! Then we went for a long walk as a family. It’s so simple, but it’s one of my favorite things. :)

Sunday we went to church, relaxed, did a little house cleaning, then went for another walk.

Monday I had my last clinical. I was on the Med/Surg Trauma unit at Chandler Regional Medical Center. It was a slow day, but that was okay with me. I’ve been struggling a lot physically lately, so I’m kind of limited to what I can do  now :/

Well, I need to go log in for my therapy session now. I’m so glad I started my OCD/PTSD therapy again. It is helping so much in this stressful line of work. My therapist is amazing. 

I have just 3 weeks left until I am done with Block 2. Then I’ll be 50% nurse!

Flashback Friday to lots of November 17ths

 

So, three years I go I took my nursing school entrance exam! Sweet, naive Melissa. . . . I do believe this is a good path for me. I don’t know what else I’d do. Interior design wasn’t going to work out because WTBM wore me out dealing with customers. I lost all my patience. And Fashion Design wouldn’t have worked out either because there are no jobs here for that. So nursing it is! I hope going into nursing will allow me to do those other things though. I’d like to finish my Interior Design and Fashion Design degrees and I think nursing will let me do that. I also want to get the culinary associates :) hee hee. So many things to do!

4 years ago I ran this half marathon in Las Vegas.. It was a few weeks after Cyndie had died. I remember I was supposed to go with Trena. We had booked a hotel room at the Luxor. But it didn’t work out for her to go. I think it was meant to be that way because then Garren went with me and since it was after Cyndie’s death it was just meant to be.  

This one is fun. I drove my kids to school then drove to the airport, hopped on a plane to Los Angeles, got a rental car, drove to San Diego, picked up Ashley at her house, went to a Bastille concert, took Ashley home, drove back to the airport, flew home, drove home, picked up my kids from school (the next day) and went home and crashed! SO FUN!!! We had a blast!

Soooooo this one hurts. There is actually a lot of pain behind this picture. Garren bought me a harp for my birthday. I was so excited as I had wanted a harp for a while. I messed around with it most of the day and could pluck out a few tunes by the end of the day. I made a video and posted it on Facebook. Then I got an email from Garren’s sister saying, “I’m glad you got your harp!” Then it was immediately followed by something along the lines of “I’m not going to work for you anymore, I will be sending all your supplies and unfinished orders back. . .  BUT I’ll be keeping all the money you prepaid me for orders!” (The last part wasn’t included, but that’s what happened). I can’t even tell you how I felt in that moment. I am tearing up now just recalling it. This was the worst day of my life. The pain they caused me cannot be expressed in words. If I had been anyone else they wouldn’t have done that. If they had worked as seamstresses in a window treatments business for someone that wasn’t their sister they would not have done this. So why me? Why do this to someone who helped you in a time of need? This was our busy season for work as everyone is decorating for the holidays. They sent back unfinished orders that needed to go out before Thanksgiving which was the following week. I actually had people from church that stepped into make up for them. They should be embarrassed about that. Thankfully the people from church didn’t expect payment because I had already paid them in advance for this work and they were not going to pay it back. This was also my first holiday season with Miriam and all I can remember of it is this pain and working 20 hours a day to make up for their shortcomings. To this day one of the sisters has never acknowledged any wrong doing. The most I’ve heard from the other is “There was wrong on both sides.” They did wrong by me then and are still not right by me. I try to forget and move on, but this event was so significant that I can’t forget it. It was cruel and hateful. It caused me more pain than I have ever experienced in my life (oh, yes, I did mention my sister dying. Nope, this event has impacted the course of my life more so than my sister’s death). While I was working 20 hours a day trying to get their orders out on time as well as mine, I was writing out checks for my other seamstresses and I remember thinking something was wrong when I couldn’t remember how to write one of my seamstress’s names. I was trying to write a J and I couldn’t remember how. I called Garren and told him he needed to come home from work and stay with the kids. I drove myself to the emergency room (very slowly, like 20 miles an hour because I wasn’t all there cognitively). I got in and told them I thought I was having a stoke. They brought me into triage and asked me several questions. I remember being able to tell that they were talking, but not being able to make sense of what they said—kind of like the Charlie Brown teacher. They immediately got me back fro a CT, but it didn’t show anything. They said I was probably having a nervous breakdown from stress. Oh, how I wish I could have sent his sisters the bill for that ER visit. 

The cruelty of their actions haunts me to this day. It was personal. Like I said, had I been anyone else they would have sucked it up and finished their work then quit. Not sent back unfinished orders during the busiest time of year. And during a time when I should have been enjoying my daughter’s first Christmas. I don’t recall anything of her first Christmas. And I hate them for that. The cruelty of it all. . .  Unimaginable. The only comfort I get from this is knowing I would never do to anyone what they did to me. One of the sisters even behaved this way toward Garren earlier this year when he was doing his mom’s estate. She blew up at him over the estate stuff and it really hurt Garren. He even brought it up the other day and it’s been almost 6 months since it happened. The reason it is so impactful when they behave like this is because it’s not a brother/sister tiff: it’s a disrespectful jab at what we chose to do with our lives. It is an insult to our work, our profession. Brother/sister tiffs are generally forgivable. But insulting what someone has chosen to do for their career is just cruel. It’s personal and it hurts. I don’t think I will ever get over this. It haunts me. How on earth someone could treat another human the way they treated me is something I will never understand. I can’t put those puzzle pieces together. I gave them work in a time of need and they stabbed me in the back. 

I have not played this harp in years. I joined a little Harp Circle in Virginia for a while and played with it then, but it just reminds me of this day and that stupid email: “I’m glad you got your harp!” I am working on not letting things like that ruin things for me that could add to my life. So I do plan to pick it up again soon. Possibly over the summer when I am on a break from school. I am working in therapy on disconnecting things from events. So hopefully I will be in a good place this next summer and I can enjoy the music again! Maybe even teach Miriam! I just don’t want to hold on to this anymore. They did wrong by me and have never made it right. I know I can’t expect that of someone, but they should. I’m their sister. They hurt me. Why is it so hard for someone just to say they’re sorry? That would do so much for me just to hear those words. I am working in therapy on accepting that those words will never come. But it’s hard because whenever I interact with them I know that if something ever happened between us again they wouldn’t accept responsibility. Nothing is ever their fault. So I avoid interactions with them altogether. They want to have a family reunion next summer and I don’t want to go. I don’t want to spend time with people that could do what they did. Ugh! Okay, I need to stop writing about it because I’m going to a bad place. I must still care for them in some way though, because deep down, I would never wish them to feel the pain that I have felt as a result of their actions. I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone. Ever. I just wanted to be a part of them. I wanted to do something great with them. And it could have been great. They were so talented! But they took some things personally and took offense where none was intended. We could have made a really cool thing together. I just wanted to be a part of the family. Well, I did go on to make something incredible. Just did it with other amazing, talented women. I guess this experience did do that for me. it led me to the most incredible group of women. In my time leading WTBM I employed 26 people. When this happened, that was the worst time of my life. What it led me to became the best years of my life. And that business I created and most of those amazing women are still with the company! One of them that is still with the company was one that stepped in to finish some of the sister’s orders when they sent them back to me unfinished! She offered to help me in my time of need and it ended up being a good fit for her and has blessed her family for more than a decade! Her husband has lost his job a few times over the years and we were able to keep them afloat with the income from the business. Such neat experiences in the business that I will cherish forever. So while their actions were cruel and painful and continue to cause me pain to think about, it led me to some beautiful women that gave me the experience of a lifetime!!