The world can be a heavy place

Work has been pretty busy this week.  It is winter in childhood virus-land and everyone in the community seems to be sick.  Add to this weird accidents and occurences and it makes for some long days.   I was on call Tuesday and had a few calls to make yesterday and had planned to finish up some paperwork during lunch.  I came out of the room with my last morning patient to find out the person on call for the day had just run over the ER.  She was called over because a child had come in in cardiorespiratory arrest.  I'll leave out the details but all she could do was watch as the team already there tried unsuccessfully to revive the little girl.  To say the least, it put a damper on the day.  And, from a completely selfish perspective it put me even further behind as I was seeing her patients during lunch.  I was glad to get through what I needed to finish at the end of the day and get home.  Mike and I escaped to our favorite thai restaurant for dinner and finished the meal with a cream brulee.  (Yes, I'm still occasionally not a strict vegan ...)  I have today off and am grateful for a little breathing space.

And speaking breathing, I've been re-reading _Going on Being_ by Mark Epstein, one of the first books that I read on meditation while in St Louis.  The book really spoke to me at the time, and it's gotten me re-energized and interested in spending some sitting time meditating again.  More on that another time.

Ready for spring

-The post time is incorrect, it should say Monday March 9, 8:30 am. -

It is snowing yet again this morning. The snow is pretty and all, but I'm ready for some warmth. Here is a picture of our house in the snow last week. (Inside pictures to come soon, promise.)

These bricks look familiar

We made a trek to Bellingham today. (And, it was a trek too. I'm still amazed at how long it takes to get to places from the peninsula.) I haven't been up there for a few years. The reason for the visit was to meet with the woman who is officiating at our wedding. But, we walked around campus for a little while as well. So many new buildings; it feels like the campus is getting bigger even though they are just building on the same land the university has always owned. The green space is just shrinking. I was amazed, as we walked ,at the memories that came flooding back even as I was just staring at the bricks on the walkways. How much time did I spend staring at those bricks day after day after day for 4 years as I was walking to class? Yes, that means my head was down as I was walking, which was probably true.

The meeting with our officiant went well. She was an important person in my life from those college years. I'm glad Mike finally got to meet her. We talked to her about who we are to each other. It felt good to verbally validate our relationship to her. This wedding process feels a bit daunting as we are going to attmpt to write out own vows. We'll see how that goes. Mike and I are both shy about public attention, even with friends and family. But, this is partly why we getting married, to announce publicly our love for each other, since our relationship up until this point has been kept so quiet. So, I guess we are just going to have to get over that shyness at least for one day.