Found a Peanut

I seem to have found a kitten - his name is Poncho. I call him Peanut. He was very very scared of everything at first, but right now he is leaning up against my right leg purring and cooing like a dove. He is orange and white and likes to make a nest in my once glorious spider plant. He likes sleeping, eating wet cat food, killing my plants and sharpening his claws on corrugated cardboard. I love him. In other news, I passed my national NP boards last month, started a new job this week and have read two decent novels in the past week while I awaited feedback from my adviser on the last chapter revision I sent in. I have since received feedback, so I have no more time for such leisure activities. Blast. I so enjoy an evening of reading and cat snuggling by the fire.

Forever. Also, a day.

It has been a long time, friends.

So much has happened in the past year... I accomplished miracles, loved deeply and experienced great loss and great adventure. In the past year I ran a half marathon, I reunited with a lover (although it ended, it shaped the corduroy pocket in my heart that holds all my very best things), both my maternal grandparents passed away within a few months of each other and my one time beloved, fluffy fluffy dog, Fancy Pants, passed away as well. During this same year, my youngest niece was Bat Mitzvah-ed, I reconnected with dear old friends, went to my 20th year college reunion and generally became aware of how rich my life is in terms of connection. I also saw and did wonderful, magical things: I saw a meteor shower, bathed in wild waters in multiple states, slept under the stars in the gulf of Mexico, the woods of New York and the wilds of Alaska, I saw horizontal lightning, double rainbows, dolphins and manatees and flying fish, took a niece to Alaska to camp, hiked a peak in the Adirondacks, nursed a sick mother back to health and made and ate good food and loved, connected and felt, a lot.

Currently I am looking at a new job, it starts in October and will be working in the OB/Gyn department at a public health facility caring for the under served. I also have finally registered to take my boards and will be sitting for them at the end of the Month. I am still in the PhD program, but just by the hair of my teeth. I have a meeting at the end of the month that will make my decision to stay or go.

I have had a lot of loss this year, but also accomplished wonderful things. I have shed a lot of tears this year - both for sadness and joy - but I think it is an understatement to say that I am well. I feel strong in my heart - happy (mostly), healthy (thankfully) and very, very rich in connection in terms of friends, family and loved ones. And, today I learned that I have paid off my car (just in time to repair the bumper I bumped into submission), so yay for that!

I will try to update this more regularly - and by that I mean more than once a year.

As ever, when change is in my heart, poetry is on my mind. It is fall, which always sways my heart toward sleeping in the woods...

Sleeping in the Forest I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.

from Sleeping In The Forest by Mary Oliver