The interns are newish nurses who want to work in the OR, so they get on the job experience at the various ORs in the system, a month at a time. One of the interns will be staying with us, the other will go to the Main.
You do the math.
Ok, I'll do it. Three interns in two rooms, and our new hire gets priority in the higher technical and longer running room. And I had the trauma doc's two fractures, and the hand doc's two. So, I shepherded the pair of interns, one to do the core circulation. The (the bright one that I wish we'd hired, but she'll need the trauma skills at the Main more since she's young and high-speed) I threw stray lessons at ad hoc. Showed them how to use the big C-arm x-ray, which is a whole other skill that most places don't even allow RNs. Showed her how to scrub, don gown and gloves and had her help open. To-be-hired-intern I let fly, and just kept her up in the air. Too much me-talking for my preference, and utterly exhausting, but I wanted them both to have a good experience. They seemed pleased.
Once I got home, I was pretty much done, fell asleep on the sofa next to Dylan twice, and crawled into bed at 1930. Eleanor instantaneously hopped up on me, and was my velcro cat for the night. Got up aching, thought it was about 0200 or 0300, but it wasn't even midnight. NSAID drugs, crawled back, slept until 0730, woken with a one-two cat paws to both my eyes. It's sweet, but unnerving. Eleanor happy to have me stay in bed another twelve hours, but I nudged her off. She's been chasing with Zeppo ever since.
My niece sent me a message, wanting to get in contact. My instinctive reaction to genetic kin is to throw up every defensive wall and be ready to hurl stones. Drawing up compassion for a woman who has lost her grandmother, and is running low on other family, is also automatic. Kindness in, dump out.
Such a trait of my FOO, to say Love! before there is any connection. It's a big red button that reads "Overheat! Remove from Service!" to me. It's the stuff marked "Love" that is full of artificial ingredients, and not one drop of real love in it. But, I don't know her, except as a child, when I was myself young and troubled.
It brings up some of the worst years of my life, from the side, some of the ways I coped. My brother and his family lived close enough to my parents' house when I was in HS that I could ride my bike there. My parents objected to my necessary route, but their desire for me to be closer to my brother and nieces, cancelled their objections to mere grumbling to be careful. I just needed somewhere to be that was out of that house. My SIL was very much in the "But faaaaaaamily!" cult. She simply didn't believe my father was unkind to me in any way, that he didn't actually love me or certainly not that I actually hated him.
This era stretched into my awful relationship and wedding. They liked the ex, which contributed to my self doubt about my own muted alarm buttons.
A miserable stretch that I've worked hard at processing and forgetting.
And the two niblings were, well, children, and I've never particularly liked children, part of the reason I've never born any. There is simply no relationship there, only a distant acquaintance. Maybe if I think of her as a cousin, I can give her some of what she needs, without draining myself.
Grief is a dredge, all sorts of half rotted crap emerges, and the stench is awful. Shoes float up with detached feet inside. Lost ships may be better left lost.
My brother sent the obituary. The photo of my mother was one I'd never seen before, I don't know how old she was when it was taken. She was cute, though. And I'm definitely her daughter. It says she graduated high school, which she always told me she didn't, because she always hated school, and quit shortly before finishing because she got the job as a seamstress making trusses. My brother also spelled (Dylan and)my last name wrong. It's not that spelling is important for itself, but careless spelling suggests a certain carelessness of other detail. Especially when it comes to names, it implies that the person isn't important enough to make sure the name is correct. Once is funny, a pattern speaks volumes. Especially since his paternal family name has two I's, two L's, two E's and one R and a total of ten letters. If you can spell that one right, and know how important it is for paperwork to make sure it's right, then not spelling others' surnames properly is hard to justify.
I don't mind that he misspelled in this case, because I already know that any "love" from them is so-called, empty of nutrients, over-sweetened and leftover.
Niece/cousin? I don't know. So, I responded with neutral kindness, and sent her the link here as a sop. The younger brother read here for one or two posts, then never again. No one else of the FOO has done as much, and that will likely be the case again. I have my own family, and enough friends, real love and wonderful cats. Which also means, I have enough left to slosh over and seep where ere it shall drip.
This is the impossible task for any of them, the path to the Golden Fleece. The fleece doesn't care if anyone finds it.
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