The long and the short of it

So, last week, when I heard that my cousin wasn't doing so well, I made plans in my head. Who was going to cover for me, what I needed to reschedule at work, who was going to check up on my mom and dad while I was gone, what would need to happen if they wanted to go with, what arrangements needed to be made so I could represent the family in a difficult time. And I had a plan. Alls I needed, though, of course, was....a plan.

So here's something I know about myself: I'm not as proactive as I might seem. I'm actually very reactive - and though I may come up in advance with alternate scenarios of how to deal with various permutations of what "might" happen, I rarely act until I have something to which I can react. So although by the time I got the news of her actual passing I had three (hundred) possible scenarios lined up for the various dates and times they could hold the services...my family actually had to, you know, tell me what I was doing. Which contingency to activate.

As it turns out, they had some difficulty getting my cousin's body released to the out-of-state funeral home (I was thinking about this yesterday. I can't even begin to figure that one out. It's not like they can just strap her in the car and go...), so we didn't have actual plans until this afternoon. The funeral is Wednesday. Okay, I thought, check. Commence with plan for Wednesday!

Until, of course, my other cousin, her brother, called me and said, "Don't come."

I...huh?

And then my uncle texted and was like, "You shouldn't go."

Um.

Both of them, I think, were looking out for me. My cousin's point was that I had my hands full and should use my time to come at a happier occasion (like an upcoming wedding, he suggested. To which I haven't been invited, actually...). He's not wrong - my cup definitely runneth over right now (Happy first day of fellowship! Here's our policy on bereavement leave). But...later isn't really the point....

And so I polled my coworkers. I argued with my parents. I felt confused and abandoned. And then I did what I should've done in the very first place - I emailed my deceased cousin's oldest daughter - who, frankly, also seems to have an interest in healing this rift in the family - and I said, "What is it that *you* want me to do?"

She said, "Come be with us."

And so go I shall.

Done.

It also didn't help that today - my very first day of fellowship!! - I rounded with the pedi neurology team. Whoa. That was...devastating. In the middle of rounds we got called to do a brain death exam on a four year old who'd been found floating in a pool. EMS and the ER had apparently worked on this kid for over an hour to get any signs of life back.

We walked into the patient's room, right, and there, amidst multiple IV lines, tubes, wires, fluids running with life-maintaining meds, there in this chaos was one of the most beautiful, sweet little cherubs I'd ever seen in my life. Who was, very clearly from the moment I walked through the door, merely a shell. What the family describes as a vibrant, friendly, personable and loving child was simply gone. There was just nothingness. And my heart broke.

Life and death...it always amazes me. One expects trumpets, fanfare, a glowing ball of light, something, right? But in truth, the line is remarkably blurry. You're alive; you're dead. It's a process, usually. What is that moment of crossing over? Does it happen at physiologic death? Brain death? Some time before or after either of those? Where is that innocent little soul tonight?

Seems appropriate for a Sunday....

Listen. This post got a little too long and wound up being all about religion and faith and the philosophy therein. This is my blog, my belief system, and my external processing. Please, if you feel the need to leave some comment about how I'm going to hell or have missed the point, just....leave. Now. Quietly.

Thanks, The Management
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It's been kind of a rough day for me today. I slept poorly, which isn't new. I couldn't quite get my shit together at any point today. In truth, this is a smaller representation of a larger truth for me.

It's been kind of rough lately, period.

And there are a million and twelve reasons why that is, but I struggle daily nonetheless with things I never thought would become this important. Or maybe still aren't important but feel like they should be.

One of our patients came into the ER a couple of years ago, high on who knows what (he said he'd been smoking phone books. Nobody believed that as the literal truth, but also, none of us knew of any common substance of abuse that got referred to as "phone book"), requesting detox from ghosts.

That is primarily how I feel today. I feel toxic, I was realizing, as I drove home from meeting Matt for lunch. Matt himself I do not find especially toxic (nor, say, breakfast, which was yummy today). But Matt and I get into these deep, personal debates about such trivial things and the purpose of life and the true place of scripture in religion, not to mention the place of religion in faith. I love having these conversations with Matt because we can; we're both well versed in many aspects of what we speak. We're respectful and polite but engaged and can disagree easily. And it's rarely true "disagreement" as much as exploration. Having come from a strong Orthodox Christian background, a militantly Lutheran undergrad, and a very Jesuit medical school - not to mention that I have an undergraduate degree in a theology-heavy view of Humanities. It was somewhat more polytheistic in its spectrum than his MDiv, but, see above, re: militant Lutherans. We both talked, and we both listened, and had useful discussion of things like the overlap between the Christian faith and Wicca, Judaism, Islam, etc. Given all of the name-calling and hell-sending and hypocrisy and righteous indignation and fear (above all, fear) in that my view of "religion" is so steeped...given all of that, it was absolutely fabulous today to sit at an outside cafe, surrounded by beatniks and people from all strata, basking in the newly arrived spring breeze, eating tasty organic hippie food, with a good friend who can have these discussions with me in a non-judgmental, non-secular, non-threatening way...it helps.

It also brings up a great deal of pain, which I realized about halfway through our lengthy discussion that in large part what I was doing was (if you'll pardon my digression into psychoanalytic babble) discharging a lot of my intolerable affect and painful energy around this stuff, giving it to him to contain, hold, detoxify, metabolize. In lay terms, one might use a word like "dumping." In realizing this, I also realized just how much pain, confusion, disappointment, conflict there is in this for me. I'd not been aware of the extent of this before today.

The interesting thing, to me, I was thinking on my way home, is that God is never the pain, confusion, disappointment, conflict. God and I are on solid terms. It's people that I can't seem to grasp.

Apparently my faith, which is a different entity than my religious affiliations, is something a bit more mystical than I'd realized until the past few months or so. I believe in the existence of God because I know God. I just do. I see God in the faces of my patients, the laughter of children, the brilliance of spring daffodils, the sweet and complete affective honesty of my dog. I see God in my life, and my family, and believe firmly that I was created in the image of God. Do I believe in the dual nature of Jesus and that He was the son of God? Of course I do. I think we're all children of God, and Jesus of Nazareth had a particular path, and investment of divine energy to understand and reclaim the bond to these creatures that had done exactly what God wanted them to do - develop autonomy. Truthfully? I believe Jesus saved us. All of us - not just the Christians. And in a way, I believe Jesus saved God. Jesus struggled, he was tempted and tortured, and did not always make what contemporary humans thought to be the right choice, but made the "mistakes" he did because they were so important to understanding humanity. This, I think, was his deity. He was the man he was to help us understand God, who through the passing of the Old Testament times had become less vengeful, more loving. Jesus not only told us what he saw as the desires and ideals of God, but showed them to us as well.

I bet Jesus was tired.

I align myself with the Greek Orthodox church, for reasons of culture more than reasons of doctrine, but that doesn't mean I ignore the dogmatic. But when it comes down to the truth of my relationship with God, I draw from countless traditions that are full of good ideas. Various inceptions of Christianity. Wicca. Islam. Buddhism. Hindu. Kabbalah. I've read the Q'uran, the Mahabharta, and the words of the Buddha. I know a lot about voudou and Santeria and Wicca. I get what we're all trying to do here - understand that which is incomprehensible. We don't all do it in as different ways as we might think, truly. I have my own interpretation of scriptures that at times may seem incompatible with things I endorse, but they aren't. Because it all makes sense in how I understand and relate to God.


But - and this is what struck me later, and is ostensibly why this rant has gone on so long - where we get ourselves into trouble is when we insist we've got it "right." This is why wars are fought over belief systems. I'm right, you aren't, and unless you see that you aren't, I'm going to have to annihilate you because I can't tolerate your dissent. And that can manifest itself in a lot of ways - torture, imprisonment, whatever means it takes to break your spirit; actual death; or, simply dismissing you as not being one of the chosen. I, having the one and only very correct answer to this, will spend my life in servitude to something greater (usually very apparent, loud, and obvious servitude, lest you should miss it) and be rewarded with the privilege of Heaven, because I am better and you are not. Poor you, condemned to fire, brimstone, and endless congressional filibusters.

You'll notice that the people who truly live their Christian (or whatever applies) faith rarely feel the need to rub your nose in it. They'll engage you about it if need be (or want be). They'll model it if you watch them closely. But they won't announce it every thirty seconds and smack you in the head with their well-worn religious tome. They will not condemn, they will not disdain. They will love, they will try to understand, they will do their best to accept.

Humanity....we all want to be special, chosen, elite. Christians...Muslims.....hell, have you met a Jungian lately? It's part of our inherent narcissism - the key to which is always poorly structured self identity and the inability of the ego (self) to defend itself from rejection, because it feels so inherently fragile that at any conflict, even relatively minor, it will be destroyed. The Buddha, though, who was self-identified as a philosopher and not a prophet, the Buddha makes all sorts of observations about self and non-self. About how we are nothing.

I've started to come around to this idea. Because it isn't as nihilistic as one might think. My interpretation of this is, we are nothing, precisely because we are everything. There is not one of us on this earth - future, past, and present - that is not connected. As parts, we are amazing, but the sum of those parts is something so big and all encompassing and important that it is simply unfathomable. It's like, consider the fibers of flax or cotton, cleaned and combed and laid just so...spun into a thread with a tensile strength well beyond that of an individual fiber. The thread is dyed a vibrant color, and delicately, painstakingly woven into its place. When you look at the great and impressive tapestry, the individual thread may not be noticeable, but it is of tantamount importance to the design, not to mention the structure - if you pull on that one scarlet thread, the whole tapestry will be altered and may well unravel.

I am special precisely because there is nothing special about me. This is the conclusion to which I've come today. There are many things about me which are good, many less good, many that are defining and I am as unique a creature as one could imagine. But I'm part of some greater whole, and that is truly the amazing thing about me. Life, humanity, the Holy Spirit, a Higher Power...the echoes are endless. I am but a scarlet thread.

And I, too, am tired. But also feeling better about getting that down. I might read it tomorrow and disagree with it some, but you know, if that happens, it is what it is.

This is the crap that goes on in my head all the time, ps. All. The. Damn. Time. This is part of my perpetual exhaustion...

Less stuck

I finally made it home (it's quarter to 11), safe and sound. And don't worry, sadly enough there was no TWD involved in the last post. It was a lot of typing while parked on the I-40 (they do a lot of road construction at night, here, which is great during rush hour. Less great when you're stuck for-EVER when you don't expect to be and are already getting home late).

Maggie was excited. And I so totally love our dog sitter. I left him a note that today was her birthday and she was nine; he wrote back saying she got extra treats and he sang her happy birthday.

She really is the best dog ever. It worries me that she's getting up in years. Not that she knows that, so don't tell her. She still acts like a crazy puppy.

One of my patients had a great moment in therapy today. It was really phenomenal. 

Sparrow is an aunt!! Her little niece hatched today. She's very cute in pictures. Sparrow's flying south tomorrow to snuggle her in person. I'm a tiny bit jealous.

Oh! And! Today was Match Day, so we got a whole crop of new soon-to-be-interns. I think we got a really good group of incoming colleagues.

Tonight was also my last Mindfulness class. That course wound up being better than I expected from the first few sessions. It turned out to be an interesting bunch. I wish it had been a few weeks longer, because I feel like we were just starting to really hit our dynamic.

Today was actually kind of rough, but on the whole, I kept being reminded that I have really good people in my life. Which is what I'm choosing to take away from today.

Wiiiiiii!

(You have to say that out loud. The double entendre is in the onomatopoeia. Gesundheit.)

I think that somehow today I recommitted to my "change your mind and change the world" plan, that I again decided optimism for its own sake was warranted. The last week has tried very hard to suck the life out of me, and rather than fight it, I've decided instead to simply refuse to let it.

Today wound up being another good day. In truth? Yesterday was pretty hard, but when I focused on the good in it, I found that there actually was quite a lot. Today had it's rough edges as well, but, you know...

I overslept a little, but managed to pick my cousin up in time for her to carpool with me to CH. I dropped her off at work, ran some errands, went to Starbucks and mostly played on Facebook worked (I'm still buried beneath a pile of unwritten and overdue notes. But I got two discharge summaries done this morning. There's hope). I met my completely awesome shrink (have I mentioned how much she rocks, offering me a Saturday slot and whatnot?) and we actually had a really good and productive session. I bummed around at Border's for a while, picked up a book for me, one for my dad, one for my aunt, and then swung by and picked up my cousin, who it turns out had a very interesting morning (and has also caught the plague, which is sad. Damn patients, can't keep their germs to themselves). I dropped her off, got lunch, hung out with my folks.

And? I finally broke down and bought a Wii. I? So totally heart that thing (don't worry, Claud, I don't have the cow game yet). It was a bit beyond my means, but my folks helped out and there were gift cards involved. I bought a second controller used at GameStop.

I have to say... it was completely and totally worth every penny, merely to play Wii Bowling with my dad.

I also sucked it up and bought Super Mario Brothers for Wii, which is not actually that good a Wii game, but totally makes up for it in nostalgia. If, of course, you're from the generation that spent countless hours of their childhood playing low-resolution but high-awesomeness games on the NES. It was remarkable, how I even remembered where the little one-ups and bonus boxes and whatnot were in the original game, like it was somehow stored in my body memory. And after my parents went to bed, I sat there remembering sleepovers and Skittles and Cool Ranch Doritos, summer afternoons with my cousin D (who saved the princess way before I did), big hair, "boy-crazy" friends, jelly shoes and Hypercolor t-shirts.

It made me smile way more than any of those things ever did at the time.

And in the midst of today I made plans for tomorrow. Family time in the AM, folks have to be at the airport by 3ish, and then they get on the big silver bird back to the Chi. After I drop them off, though, Cleo and I are celebrating our collective survival of the past two months or so in typical girly fashion (what isn't made better by a mani-pedi?). And then I have dinner plans later, although so far the plan is exactly as cohesive has, "Let's have dinner tomorrow. What, 7? Yeah, that'll work."

Plus, Maggie and I found the first evidence of daffodils poking through the ground today. Spring is coming!!

Even as completely stressful as this week has been, it's been good to have my family here. And the stress I know about (much less what's lurking in the shadows) doesn't show too many signs of letting up anytime soon. So, I guess there's a choice to be made. I have strong family ties, good friends around me, I have the best dog ever. And every day people let me intimately into their lives and get a fleeting glimpse of the boundless expanse of wonder that is the human psyche.

How can I pass that up?

Love-ly Thursday

So, today....I had zero patients scheduled, and zero actual inpatient responsibilities (I'm on Neurology this week, so technically I should be shadowing in clinics, but...). Fortunately, in a rare moment of foresight, I noticed this last week, and continued to not schedule patients for today.

I'm trying very hard these days to take advantage of opportunities when they come along.

So I worked remotely today. I did actual work, and frankly got done in three hours more than I probably would've accomplished at the big house all day. And then, you know, I went to the gym, I gave my cousin a knitting lesson (her very first hat - and very first excursion away from scarf knitting - turned out SUPER cute). I went and did the recruitment dinner with Peng and Rene. I hung out with my dog and watched an hour of SVU. All in all, a sunny, balmy, lovely, productive, enjoyable day.

Except I think I ate too much at dinner, and now my tummy hurts. Which adds to the headache that I think I got from the wine.

I'll get over it.

Holy cow, it's 2010.

So, it's a whole new year.

I had a wonderful time last night. Hung out with the old crew (it was, after all No Pants New Year, season 8), stayed up until 5am, laughed, talked, remembered why I adore these people so much.

I thought a lot yesterday about the changing year. It's sort of arbitrary, like a birthday - nothing is really different about the day to day, but in a way, that's also not true. Because for whatever reasons, we associate these things culturally with new beginnings, taking stock, and moving forward.

2009? Wasn't all bad. It wasn't generally all that good, mind you. The last few weeks in particular were amazingly stressful. But some very wonderful things happened in 2009. Life keeps going; it's blissful, horrible, awesome and terrifying all at the same time. You can resist the flow if you like, but in the end you have no real choice but to keep moving with it.

I frequently can't believe I'm a third year resident. Partly in the sense of, whoa, where the hell did the last two and a half years go? But also, you'll remember that my entire first year I couldn't convince myself that they weren't going to turn around one day and fire me. I couldn't conceive of the possibility of being promoted to second year. And yet, time goes forward. I'm still employed. I'm halfway through my tenure at Baby Blue, exactly, and somehow two and a half years seems both like a heartbeat and an eternity. I love my job. I know psychiatry. I know what psychiatrists *do*. Three years ago, I couldn't have said any of these things.

And I'm continually amazed at the caliber of the people around me. I'm perpetually marveling at all the good people in my life, frankly, local or otherwise. I have wonderful people close to me - the family I've created in my life and the family created for me. I have amazing friends, colleagues, and people that touch my life everyday. I also have somehow acquired better skills for dealing with the toxic people or interactions that sometimes lurk in my life like depth charges (although, let's be honest, I still have a good deal of skill to obtain in that arena).

We were waxing nostalgic last night on how it's been a decade since the Y2K scare. None of us could believe it'd been 10 years. I was thinking, later, as I lay on my friends' couch in the dark, about what a decade it's been. Thinking about where we all were ten years ago, how much has changed in these years that have just flown the hell by...it makes me think I can't even imagine what we'll be talking about on the eve of 2020.

I've been thinking this week how my life at times feels almost unrecognizable from what it was 10, 15 years ago. One of my relatives posted an old picture of me on Facebook a while back; one of my friends came into my office the next day and was like, wow, I almost didn't recognize you. And I said, yeah, well, those were different times. He asked if I had the same personality then that I have now, and I honestly wasn't sure of the answer. Similarly, I had coffee this week with a very dear friend whom I haven't seen since we graduated from medical school, and she commented that I seemed very different from then. I asked her to elaborate, and she said she noticed how "anxious and tired" I seemed.

I can't argue with that.

She reminded me that the girl she knew in medical school was confident, put together, always on top of things. What she didn't know about that was two things: A, it was a ruse. I'm still the woman who keeps her shit together in a crisis, still the one who puts out fires, still the girl who gets it done. Those things are true about me, and they're part of who I am. But I've been able to get much more in touch, for better or worse, with the side of me that is, frankly, a mess. Who isn't so good at being a grown-up some days. Who drops the ball occasionally, can't find the floor of her closet, and has learned how to live with (shudder) a low census of roaches in her apartment. Who sometimes is too passive, who often gets her feelings hurt, who internalizes everything that goes on around her. Who's funny and neurotic and is sometimes a spaz. Who is uncoordinated and imperfect. Who tries not to throw stones in her glass houses and who sometimes finds the storms of her own emotions to be completely overwhelming. Who attaches fiercely and faithfully to people, even though she thinks she rarely lets them see that. Who finally believes that happiness is an attainable reality.

The other thing my friend doesn't know about this, this has been a very significant source of angst for the past year or so, feeling like I don't maintain that facade of Ms. "Everything's under control, here." I feel like it makes me seem weak. In truth, I feel like it makes me weak. But the reality of it is, it's only because I've started allowing that shell to weaken that I've started to understand the many layers of who I am. And, that those components of myself are from where I draw my strength.

And so, we move on into 2010. A new year, a new chapter, and (arguably) a new decade. I have great things in mind for it.

Sunday night

Today was lovely here. Got up late, ate breakfast, napped, went to the gym, had dinner with Claud, traipsed around Target...can't complain. Sundays at home I usually try to go meet up with my old knitting group, but I think they were mostly out of town this weekend.

Also? It's cold out there.

I spent my time at the gym (going very slooooowly on the treadmill, yawn) watching CNN, which was of course talking about today's airplane incident, thinking about how much I don't want to fly back to NC. Apparently, someone also blew up a couple of people in Lebanon, which seems suspicious to me, given that this is the one-year anniversary of the Gaza assaults.

I don't understand war, y'all. Not for a moment. It's all just senseless to me.

"No. Really. Come back soon."

First of all, a very happy birthday to my cousin Danielle. She's a Baskin-Robbins this year (31). Many happy returns. Maybe I'll actually make it down to Texas to visit before we're 32. Or at least before Annalise is!!

Re, the title: I went up to the unit today to see one of my therapy patients who wound up on the inside, and ran into my friend John, whom I haven't seen in a while. The end of our conversation entailed a discussion of how I was going to be back working the inpatient units (also clinic. Eek) in two weeks. He was like, "good. It'll be good to have you back." I said, I'm sure you'd do just fine without me.

I tell you what. I had six patients scheduled today. My last one was at 2 and was the one that was admitted. I got in wretchedly early so I could leave by 4 at the very latest (nooooo problem, right? Ha) and make my rescheduled appointment with my trainer at 5.

I left the hospital at around 5:30 (which, incidentally, was a good hour or more before Peng got to leave. Catatonia slows everything down).

And oy, it was a long day. One of my patients didn't show. Another one cancelled (when I texted her ten minutes after her appointment time and said, are you coming?). I had THE LOUDEST HUMAN BEING ON EARTH's mother and case worker calling me to complain about each other (I'm not telling you whose side I'm on). I had a crapton of prescription refills, paperwork, and lab reports waiting for me. And of course I spent like two hours total up on the adolescent unit.

So my kid, who's getting closer to legal adulthood every day, got "in trouble" for talking to one of the younger patients about sex. I asked her about this, and she says, "well, the other patient had questions. I was honest with her. We talked about what it means to have that in your life. It wasn't like I was giving her advice on positions or anything."

I asked the staff, "what kind of 'talking about sex' was this?" They said, "well...it was about sex."

::sigh::

I'm sure the answer is somewhere between Little Miss Innocent and Little Miss Devil, but, come on, people.

Not to mention...here's the beginning of my conversation with John.

(John is standing in front of the nurses' station and, illustrating a point - although I can't imagine what point - has his hands up over his head and is reaching down his back. I happen to be walking behind him and poke at his fingers. You know, because we're 12.)

John: Hi, Kate.
Me: Hey, John.
John: I'd know those fingers anywhere!
Me: Shh! John! Don't tell them our business!
John: I meant anywhere geographically, not anywhere on my body! That's a whole other conversation we shouldn't have in front of the kids.

The nurses found this humorous (God only knows why). Now, I concede, John and I are both adults. My hands have never actually been lower than John's scapula (I think I've punched him in the shoulder a couple of times), and we're obviously friends, and obviously kidding. And the staff jokes at this level all the time (because? We're all secretly 12 when we walk on that unit). Which is fine, as long as everyone involved is okay with it (John and I know our limits, but part of the reason we get along so well is that he's as dirty as I am, and we both know this). But it does suggest an atmosphere of...casualness and permissiveness about these sorts of things.

There's a lot of ways to "talk about sex." Some of them are really inappropriate. Some of them are really beneficial. And the younger patient in question was a teenager. Hopefully, she's had some formal sex ed at this point. And you KNOW she's had some form of informal sex ed by that age. Plus, sex is kind of a basic human thing (anyone remember Maslow? Or Freud? Or Salt-n-Pepa?). You can make it something that can be discussed openly in a respectful and appropriate manner, or you can make it something that needs to be whispered about at night between bed checks.

I'm just saying.

(In a related story, my Aunt Aphrodite, earlier this week, was telling a story at our big family gathering about seeing this movie which referenced "BJs", and these two older women in the theater in front of her that were like, "What the heck's a BJ?" So she's telling this story, and several of my relatives were like...um...what IS a BJ? She says, think about what it stands for. And one of my uncles starts spelling. Seriously. "Is it b-l-o...?" I finally stuck my head out of the kitchen, and was like, "Oral sex. It's oral sex. Finish the story." Christ on a cracker, I'm THIRTY, people. And a doctor. As funny as it was, spelling things just ain't going to cut it...but back to my point.)

There are a lot of problems with assuming that kids don't talk/think/know about sex and making it a shameful or off-limits thing to discuss. You create a mysterious or rebellious drive to find out. You send them looking to other sources for information that can be unreliable or dangerous. You deprive them of learning what's appropriate to discuss when and how. Like I said, I don't know what the story really is, here, in this scenario, but I don't think it should automatically be a demerit just on principle.

And the thing that's most important to me in a group of kids like this who are at very high risk of abuse or exploitation, you make it impossible for them to talk to you about it. So, you've made it something bad and shameful, which you don't talk to adults about...how do you deal with it if someone's hurting you or making you do things or even just making you uncomfortable?

It's just sex, folks. Funny how it's important, but trying to make it seem unimportant makes it become just that much more important.

Twice the Speed of Life

I'm on vacaaaa-tion. I'm on vacaaaaaa-tion.

Well, okay, not technically until tomorrow. Today I'm really post-call. Yesterday was decent. I saw three consults, two people in the ER, got about 6 hours of sleep. So, not bad at all.

Today has been generally unproductive - there's been some lounging, some napping, some time at the gym, and some planning what I need to do in the next week. And a lot of random driving. During which, I kept hearing this song:



(The lyrics aren't quite right, but you get the idea, and the audio was the best on that clip. I thought the actual best version of the song was this one, except the handheld video will make you seasick and someone passes out in the middle of the performance.)

It's called It Happens, and it's by Sugarland, who is one of my favorite bands. And I just totally love it.

It's sort of funny, actually, because I was walking out today in the rain, and before I actually got outside I was thinking about how gorgeous and sunny it was yesterday and how I was a little confused this morning when I got up and looked out the window and was like, what? Where'd the sun go? But I go out the ER and was walking to my car being all wet and found myself thinking, gosh, I'm so glad it's not raining any harder than this. And my inner critic made some snarky comment about silver linings and I started thinking about how I've been so, like, "Ohmigod, what's coming next?" recently, and I really need to adjust my mindset. Which made me think of one my very favorite lyrics, from a different Sugarland song, which is, I want to find what it means to be the girl who changed her mind and changed the world.

And then I heard this song all day. I'm taking it as an omen (not an idea of reference, so back away from the Zyprexa).

And then I tried to buy the single on iTunes and realized that, somehow, I missed the fact that I already owned this whole album. I was wondering why the previews all sounded really familiar...apparently I last listened to it last July.

Oy.

I mean, what a pleasant surprise.

So maybe I need a little practice at this positive attitude business...