Happy Autumn Equinox!

full moon equinox

hands like branches reach for rain

and feet root in dirt

Tonight my roommates and I took off our clothes on our front porch and ran around in the rain under the full moon. Happy equinox! It was the second time in a couple weeks that we've delighted in the joy of water in the high desert--the last time by swimming in the Pecos river. Ahhhhhh it was so. so. nice.

Life has been jam-packed recently. I joke that I "live in the future" because I'm always shocked at the passage of time, not to mention disoriented from working nights. What? It's almost October, 2010? shut up, who time-transported me?

I worked 5 out of the past 6 nights, which were all consumed in craziness. This was after nearly a week away from the hospital because I was taking a course in advanced life support in obstetrics where I learned fun things like repairing buttholes that have ripped during childbirth. This past week I took care of a girl who was on her way to jail for instigating a fight, but had to get checked out first because she'd been kicked in the stomach. A woman who was in jail for 7 months and then out for four months, and claimed she had gotten pregnant before going to jail, making her at least 11 months pregnant (umm impossible + her belly was about 6 months in size...which would mean she got pregnant in jail). We had one set of twins. I caught a baby for a woman who came in and delivered in 4 minutes. One night I assisted in a delivery and then I was the recorder at a code on the med-surge floor, for which the guy did not survive--thus experiencing someone's entrance into this world and another's exit. And last but not least: I got a tire blowout one night on the way to work, and then had a c-section where the mom went into respiratory distress on the OR table, they struggled to get the baby out and had to turn him around inside of her and then use forceps to get him out, and then the dr and I had to resuscitate the babe, as he was almost lifeless at that point. Both ended up doing well though.

There's probably more, but I'd rather not think about it....on the up side, I discovered a new breakfast burrito stop on the way home from work and I've started commuting with another spunky little nurse who works on med-surge and has a wonderful southern accent :)

In other news, I've started blues dancing, which is incredibly sexy and fun and relatively easy. There are no moves or steps per say--it's all just listening to and feeling the music and the other person's movements. And the music is wonderfully diverse--from traditional blues, to hip hop, to show tunes, to pop, etc.

The aspens are turning color here and the mountains are splashed with red and orange--soon the mountains in which Santa Fe is built will look like they're on fire. And speaking of which...Zozobra was a couple weekends ago, which is part of Santa Fe's Fiesta celebration. It involves burning an enormous marionette puppet, filled with the town's people's gloom from the past year. People drop off wedding dresses, legal documents, letters, or simply papers with what they want to free themself from written on on them. And then 50,000 people gather to watch it all go up in flames.

That's it for now. I'm looking forward to going to Oakland and Kansas City next month, but am also so excited to spend more time rolling around in the New Mexico dirt before it snows :) and learning things I almost wish I didn't know at the hospital!

xxoxoxoxoxx