When I was little my mom used to tell me that different sorts of weather happened because of the angels in Heaven. If it was snowing the angels were having a pillow fight, if it was thundering God was yelling, and if it was raining the angels were crying. The storm that passed through last night dumped a torrential downpour on the area. We were spared any serious weather, such as what Oklahoma experienced when the tornadoes touched down on Tuesday.
The last few weeks I've felt like crying, and have, often. It's the stress of family and school. It's not so much the two combined, but separate factors inherent to both that test my strength almost daily.
It all goes to my order and chaos theory of my life. Order and chaos evolve through my life in sort of a cyclic manner, ebbing and flowing at different rates. Sometimes there's more order and others there seems to be extreme moments of chaos.
Our youngest son has tested us to no end over the past week. We've not only caught him after he's smoked cigarettes, but he also brought three Ds home on his report card, and to top it all off he snuck out of the house Saturday night. All in one week.
How did we find out he snuck out? Let me tell you. Sunday morning Big B went downstairs first, and I followed soon after. Once I arrived downstairs he informs me that he thinks AW had just gone to sleep. AW was on the couch in our great room, where the kids will often sleep on weekends. When Big B had checked on him he noticed that AW's hair looked wet.
Why would his hair be wet in the morning, at about 8 o'clock in the morning? Let me tell you. I went out and felt it and it didn't feel wet as if he'd just wet it with water. It felt wet with grease, and I don't mean a little oily scalp type of wet. I mean greasy as if he'd smoothed cooking oil through it. Yuck!
I immediately sent him upstairs to shower. No one lays on my pillows with grossly greasy hair!
While he was showering I went into his room and found the pants he'd been wearing the day before on his laundry basket. They were more soiled (he'd ran through a mud puddle earlier the day before and there were streaks of caked on mud on the pantlegs), than they had been when he'd changed into his PJs. There were smudges of what looked like caked on powder on them. Of course this clued me in to the fact that something was definitely up and I set out to find out exactly what.
What did he actually do to get his hair greasy like that? Or to soil his pants like they were? Let me tell you. At first we couldn't get a straight answer out of him. Long story, short, he had snuck out our side door, went to a "friend's" house, snuck in the window there, and then they both left from there and went to some 17 year old's house. AW is 12. At first he told us that they'd put mousse and gel in his hair, which I knew wasn't right because those products don't grease up like that! His final contention was he "couldn't remember" what it was they'd used.
Aw's hair was still greasy after showering, so I decided to wash it. I shampooed it twice to no avail. I had to go to Quantico that day(never again on a Sunday!!), so he went with me and we stopped at a Hair Cuttery on the way. The stylist washed his hair with their "most clarifying" shampoo and it barely did anything. She asked if I wanted her to do a special treatment. I agreed to have it done. He had to sit under one of those dryers for several minutes with some sort of chemical on his hair. It was a smidgen better. She cut his hair and we were on our way.
Taking a 12 year old grocery shopping is torture, but only for him. He didn't ask for anything. He really didn't have much to say.
Here it is Thursday and he's washed his hair daily since Sunday. It is still somewhat greasy. Bleck!!!
The school part of stress is well, never ending. Stress occurs, even in the best of nursing programs. It's the nature of the beast.
We as nursing students should not have to deal with inadequacies of a program though!
What's going on now, you ask? Well, I'm not going to get too far into it as it will enrage me, and since the sun is shining today I would like to have a good day. It's pretty much more of the same, along with frustration over a teacher who doesn't teach, just reads from PPTs and unfounded, bottomless accusations against my classmates. These problems aren't exclusive to my program, I'm sure, which is another reason I'm choosing not to blather on more about it. However, along with everything else it doesn't help. It hinders concentration and progression!
As with much in life you just have to press on. You have to push past frustrations and not let them consume you.
