Sunday, February 03, 2008

I'm a Lie-Abed

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Most people out there would say it was time for me to wake up anyway at three in the afternoon. The only reason I did get up now is a pounding headache fueled by the need for caffeine. I spent most of my life raging in what I believed at the time to be futile resistance against the daily grind of waking at a reasonable hour and being profitable. Most of those years were spent in school: twenty years learning and two years teaching.
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They told us in nursing school that it was a simple fact that you had to accept. Working night shift for the first several years of year nursing career is part of paying your dues. I gladly accepted a job working evenings and began the happiest time of my life. For the first time in my life, my waking was not governed by an alarm clock. jc and I would go to Miami Beach at midnight for diner food at Big Pink. We would go to bed at three am, and I would wake up when I felt like it. Another decision I made at the time was not to work full-time. I had been surviving for years on minimum wage. With nurse's wages, I could afford not to spend my whole life working. jc adopted the philosophy years ago: don't wait until you retire to enjoy life.
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So that brings me to now: working night shift and loving it, waking up only to silence my headache with a cup of Scottish breakfast tea, brewed from loose leaves.
(Pictured above are our tame, wild, yard deer. I threw a banana peel on the compost a few days ago. Yesterday, when I walked out the back door eating a banana, they came begging. The little fellow ate my whole banana and then ran off with the peel. Hope it isn't bad for him.)
Rose

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