sand pit.

Sand Pit by Neal McTaggart

dream.

Last night I had a dream that Simba died.

In the dream he was writhing on the floor and his belly started to distend until it burst open exposing all of his internal organs. Everything seemed to be in order with the exception of some green tubular material present in front of the cecum and appendix in the lower right quadrant of his abdomen. In the dream this wasn't out of the ordinary, though.

When his stomach opened, I knelt down and successfully closed him back up like a purse or a clam shell. I yelled to Phillip, 'we have to get him to a doctor!' but he had left the room. He came back in and told me that we shouldn't let him suffer. I said something to the effect of 'what do you mean?' and then I looked at him, at Simba. He was staring at the ceiling, had obviously gone into shock and was about to die. I held him and was overtaken by a palpable sadness.

I woke up distressed and started thinking about my mom and my sister. Both of them had lost dogs in the past year and had to have them put to sleep. Then I thought about the inevitable which I suppose I never choose to think about - Simba will almost certainly die within the next 5-8 years. Will I one day be in a vet's office holding Simba while he dies from a lethal injection? The thought was so painful that I started to cry and I had to get up at 4am in order to distract myself from thinking about it.

....

These are trying times. I suppose I am on the verge of something. It's funny how you can go along thinking everything is fine and reasonable and secure and then, bam!, life is laughing in your face. I'm so good at the game of self-deception. In fact, I am possibly the only person who can get something over on me...I know all my weak spots. Namely, my need for quiet and normalcy. Peace and security. And I will pursue them, even create them in a vacuum.

Is it that I don't deserve to have them?
Do my actions preclude me from having them?
Or does the tone of my own personal energy and thoughts drive them away?

Eventually, though, I wind up in the same place.
Picking up the pieces of an inevitable loss.

Perhaps my dream was more of a statement about loss and how I will try to hold it together even when everything is dying around me - ignoring repeated calls to let it go, don't prolong the suffering.

I didn't see this coming.

beautiful on the inside.

Finalists in a Chiropractor's Beauty Contest, 1956.
photographed by Wallace Kirkland for Life Magazine.

found here.

great collection of photos.

there's something about number one...

I've been watching 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' episodes from the beginning with Phillip. We have just launched into season two.

I'm really enjoying the show, even though the earlier episodes were pretty goofy. The writing is progressively getting better.

Jonathan Frakes, though, what a character. He acts like a cross between Tim Curry and Theda Bara.

Gotta love Commander William T. Riker. :-)

waiting.

...for Internet Explorer to install...



MyNursingLab.com only works with IE8.

I hate Internet Explorer and haven't used it in about two years or more.

Criminy. This sucks. I am wasting valuable study time.

Grrr...

Jean Watson’s Assumptions of Caring.

• Human caring in nursing is not just an emotion, concern, attitude, or benevolent desire. Caring connotes a personal response.
• Caring is an intersubjective human process and is the moral ideal of nursing.
• Caring can be effectively demonstrated only interpersonally.
• Effective caring promotes health and individual or family growth.
• Caring promotes health more than does curing.
• Caring responses accept a person not only as they are now, but also for what the person may become.
• A caring environment offers the development of potential while allowing the person to choose the best action for the self at a given point in time.
• Caring occasions involve action and choice by nurse and client. If the caring occasion is transpersonal, the limits of openness expand, as do human capacities.
• The most abstract characteristic of a caring person is that the person is somehow responsive to another person as a unique individual, perceives the other’s feelings, and sets one person apart from another.
• Human caring involves values, a will and a commitment to care, knowledge, caring actions, and consequences.
• The ideal and value of caring is a starting point, a stance, and an attitude that has to become a will, an intention, a commitment, and a conscious judgment that manifests itself in concrete acts.