My "Social" Experiment

Let me tell you a little bit about myself and my little social experiment.

I'm a nurse. Well, I'm LICENSED to be a nurse. Currently, nursing is pretty far from what I want to be doing. Okay that's not true either.
I'm a certain kind of nurse. I function well in two very distinct jobs. Either I can be a home health nurse taking care of adorable dottering old folks and whiling away afternoons setting up their meds and doing their dressing changes while listening to them tell me stories of long ago times or I can be a psych nurse specializing in outpatient mental health or inpatient dual diagnosis drug and alcohol rehab. Quite a stretch right? Well, I've spent my nursing career sampling different jobs to see what I enjoy most. Of course I did all that when I thought I would be married forever and that my dear husband would always be there to have the other side of the income coin.
I was always the ancillary worker. His job, while usually paying less than mine, had better benefits for him and was a good, home town job. I was content to take lesser jobs so that I could take care of the kids and kinda be around when they needed me growing up because for a large part of the time they were growing up he worked non negotiable evenings. That meant if I wasn't going to open house and little programs and talent shows and taking them treat or treating, nobody was. And it was all ok at the time.
Flash forward and the kids are now grown. Youngest just graduated last May from high school. And now I'm divorced.
I didn't handle this little divorce as well as I thought I would. I mean after all I pretty much hated his guts for our entire 25 year marriage but I'm slowly coming to realize that there was more love sprinkled in there than I had previously thought. It was just overpowered by the vicious hate that we had for each other. Well mostly the vicious hate I had for him. He claimed he never hated me. And to my knowledge neither of us ever cheated on the other. That's not why our marriage failed. Everyone in small town Texas here thinks that is the reason but it is not. Small minded people just think whatever they want is fact.
Anyway, shortly after we separated a over a year ago was when my final nursing job came crashing down around me. They had hired a complete and total nut job as the Director of Nurses and she wanted all of the old staff except the one ass kisser she was grooming OUT of there. So she made it her mission to get rid of all of us in any way she could.
And after watching a place that I loved and respected so much go down the tubes so fast under her new regime, I gave in and said Fuck it and quit.
So now I'm poor... well that wouldn't do. So I was forced to sell some mineral rights so that I could have some money to hang on with until I got over all the terrible things that were happening to me. I was in a deep dark depression, saddened over the separation and the fact that we just couldn't seem to get it together enough to pull it back together no matter how many times we tried. It's very daunting to give up a 25 year marriage. Especially when you started it at 17 years old.
I stayed home for literally nine months. I seldom went outdoors. I avoided people at all costs. I wanted no part of any of it. I went out when I had to and that was very rarely to buy supplies for the house. I watched tons of daytime tv and squandered my money. When I would get online or buy a paper and look for nursing jobs I would get literally sick to my stomach. The town I live in has NO jobs for nurses save for the horrible nursing home which I have worked at four times and do not intend to work at again. That meant I would have to drive at least 30 min or an hour five days a week one way to get to a job. After having driven 120 miles round trip daily for four years I was sick to death of the prospect of driving anywhere on a regular basis to get to a job I couldn't probably stand.
Both my daughters worked at a little home town cafe owned, of all things, by a high school boyfriend of mine who barely even remembered me. They loved their little jobs and then one day an opening came up and they asked if perhaps I might want to work.
Well, how odd. I had not done anything outside of nursing for 19 years. I'd never worked in food service in my life, but it was just a cashier job. How difficult could it be? And after all, I didn't seek it out, it just came to me, so I figured God was telling me to get up off my ass and finally get back out and be in the public around ....omg...people.
So my little experiment began. I've worked as a nurse in this little town of 5k people several times. Alot of people knew that I am a nurse. Even more of them knew I was getting divorced. And in case you have never lived in a small town, boy oh boy do the small minds and big mouths love to gossip!
It was very ...interesting...to watch the looks on people's faces when they came in and saw me working as a cashier. You could see the wheels turning..."did she lose her nursing license? Is she under investigation? Is that why HE left HER?" and probably lots more uglier things that I don't want to know about.
Some of the more sarcastic ones would ask me if we were trying to turn it into a family business. And so, it's been a learning experience for me to work in a different and somewhat less "grand" position than I've been used to for so many years. It's been interesting to see how differently people treat "service workers". How callous and unkind they can be, or controversially, how kind they can be. It's been very enlightening to me to learn so many new things about human nature. No, I haven't explained them well today in this post, but they are here, inside me and some day I will.
The really interesting thing to me is how much I love this job. And how it saddens me to know that I soon have to leave it. While it is fun, and virtually stress free, it doesn't pay the bills for my one income existence. Nursing will.
So I have it in front of me... knowing that I have to go back to fifty hour weeks (including drive time) and severe stress...and wishing that I could just stay where I am and make enough money to get by. Just to get by. I don't require much else except the ability to pay my bills. Yes I would like to travel and do fun things and buy toys. But I would so much rather be a happy person daily at the little job I have and not do any of those things. Hell, I haven't done those things my whole fucking life. No need to start now. Lol.
Anyway, there's a job opening up at, of all things, a prison nearby. It won't be a hellacious drive and I've dealt with fuck heads in the rehab game and in the mental health game so hopefully it won't be too bad if I actually get it.
Ironically, my ex husbands new girlfriend that he just looooooooves to death is a guard in the prison system. Silly dyke bitch. Thankfully it's not the one I'm aiming for.

Stay tuned... who knows what fresh hell will happen tomorrow. :-)

Karma is for real

As I sit here in my doctors office being stared down by the heinous bitch who I call the gatekeeper, I am reminded of the four years I spent as the gatekeeper of a local mental health center med clinic. There were times, probably more numerous than I even recall,  when I took out my frustrations with the behavior of the patients on the scheduling book. If they made life hard on me,  I didn't jump through hoops to get them in so they could get more xanax after their recent overdose,  etc. I made them wait just like everyone else. Sometimes longer if I thought it was for their own good. 
So maybe this bitch thinks it is for my own good that she will never give me an appointment. Even when I can't breathe. Just because she disagrees with the meds I am on.
Like I said people... Karma is real and I'm paying mine off every day.

Men are pigs!

How does that grab ya?  Do I seem to be making broad statements about generalized behavior? Do you disagree or feel like you are part of the 1% who are good men?
Yeah?  Well so does he.
And that shit could not be farther from the truth!
Treat your women right. The first time.  Don't "learn your lesson" with the one who has your kids and puts up with your shit for way too many years and THEN treat the NEXT one right.  That's fucking bullshit. Number one deserved it. And you are a Dick for not being the man you should have been for her.

Happy New Year!

I'm hoping to be better at this whole blogging and journaling kind of thing this year. Thanks to Google making things so damned easy to do it really would just be silly for me not to do all those fun things I've been putting off. Like starting my photography blog. And all the great photographer peeps that I follow...well at least some of them...tend to have photography blogs so I thought "why not? Get busy. Show the world what you see with your eyes." But that's not what this post is about. 


In the continuing saga of my crazy life, I should fill in the blanks since the last post. 


I met a guy at the restaurant where I work. Ironically enough, my oldest daughter dated his son in high school. He was actually her first love. And I loved that kid. I harassed him mercilessly. He is a "junior" so my daughter, even while dating him, mostly referred to him as "Little John". I always made random stupid jokes about Sherwood Forest and never quite understood why she felt the need to put the little in front of his name. But I guess now I do... since I have found myself referring to him as "Little John" on occasion since his dad and I started dating. 


John is "a bit" older than me. He's funny as hell and he's completely set in his ways so much so that a block of dynamite could not change them. Yet I find him to be fun to be around and I enjoy our days together no matter what it is we are doing. He has a really wonderful sense of humor mixed with sarcasm that I find pretty much impossible to get mad at. Oh I have a time or two but mostly no. We just kinda get along. We are not racing for the church. We have no rush to define what it is that we are doing. I don't ask him a ton of questions about where he is and what he is doing and he doesn't ask me every two seconds about me and where I am and what I'm up to. 


He does do a few things that charm the pants off me... He opens my car door. Such a simple act but so charming and sweet. He opens all sorts of doors for me. He takes me shooting...lets me play with an assortment of high powered very expensive rifles. AND he gives me encouragement when I blow the shit out of something. Especially when I get to play with pistols and his mouth drops open and he can't believe the targets I hit. I love that. 


He holds my hand and sits with me on the couch. Yes ...another simple thing but the ex simply couldn't find the time or effort to do it unless he was gonna get laid. And he wasn't getting laid if he didn't do it. And he never did it...so he rarely got laid. And that's why we are divorced. 


Anyway, it's kinda weird to be out there dating. I'm not hard core dating like the ex. But I am happy and comfortable with how my life is right now. 


We all got through the holidays with very few scratches and I am happy to say we are starting a new year will all sorts of possibilities and hopes for a better life and better attitude. 


I love my kids. I love my grandkids. I love my sons in law. (Youngest daughter got engaged on Christmas eve) and I am happy in my relationship. I don't know what tomorrow will bring but I can tell you this... planning it won't make it so. 


You must live every day like it's your last. Try to learn from your mistakes and not repeat them. I am still working on forgiveness because I have soooo many people to forgive. But I'm gonna try. I won't have to answer for all of them when I reach those pearly gates. The only thing I have to answer for is my own behavior. So as long as I'm doing my part, they can all go to hell which is where they are headed anyway. Ok ...yeah... still bitter. 


Goodnight and Happy New Year to all!