work

I made a friend yesterday. I have another friend that says that I'm good at making friends. She says that I just sit by somebody and say, "Hey, I'm kt," and then we're friends for life. I think she's right; that's usually how it goes.

But anyways, my friend Joe is in the same program I am in at M. He works on the floor above me. He works in the ICU. So when my patients get too bad for us to take care of (which is really really bad), we send them to his floor. He sees death more. And yesterday, he talked about it a little bit. He had a code on his floor, and he had to do chest compressions on this lady, and the family was wailing in the background, cause she was in her early fifties. And she died.

And he was going to leave it at that. But I can't handle that. Because there's more to it. There's coping with death. There's going to work again. "How are you?"

He went on to say that the next day, he just stayed in his apartment the whole day long and didn't really move. He just watched a little tv, ate a little, just sat there thinking. He said work was a relief when it finally came. Something to do. C.S. Lewis says that work is one of the best things in life. I agree with that. I get depressed if I'm not moving. And work is one of the best ways to move, because you accomplish something.

I worked at a state park for a summer, and I loved it. I worked hard every day. I felt really strong by the end of the summer, and I had the meanest farmer's tan. And my work pants were really dirty. I worked in the mud and in the dry dirt on sweaty, hot days, so you would take a shower, and the tub would be black. You had to make sure you cleaned it out so mom wouldn't have to clean it up. And there were always black boogers, and you had to be careful when you cleaned out your ears so you didn't push the dirty further in.

Usually after work, that summer, I would go for a run. Almost everyday, and it didn't matter how hot it was. I'd get my shoes on, get my tunes, and run to EastWest and Three Cord Wonder, my favorite pure volume bands. I'd listen to music about loves gone all wrong or being in heaven or seeing His face or something else that stirred a fire in me and run and run. I got pretty good by the end of the summer, cause I ran with Katelyn, and she said it was a good run for her, too.

And I was with my best friends at work every day. And we laughed until we couldn't move and would complain about how we'd lost all muscle control cause we were laughing so hard. We were stupid girls sometimes, but it didn't matter.

I think that's part of the reason I want to go to the jungle. I want to work hard. I want to move well and be strong like I was that summer. Even stronger.

There was this one time that I blazed a trail at that state park. My boss just gave me a tri-blade and said, "I want it to go from here to there." And I did it. And he came back later and said, "That's the best trail I've ever seen." My dad even got to see it. And he said it was a good trail, too.

I felt pretty good. I'm a good trail-blazer. I felt like that when I crushed beaver dams, too. I got sent on that mission by myself a lot. It was way out in the boondocks. Just me and the beaver dam and my awesome tools. I liked going out there alone better than with one of the guys. Cause they would say things like, "There's no way we're gonna get any more of that dam." or "We did everything we could." I never felt that way. That's usually how it goes when I have to quit something. If I just had one more hour. Just think of how much more awesome it would be. I always felt like that when I counseled at camp. I just wanted one more day with so and so. She would gain so much more in that one day.

I was on weekend maintenance, and I was the only one. So I would get there by myself and get to do whatever I wanted, mostly, which usually consisted of mowing or fixing things. Sometimes they were the things that I had broken earlier in the week and didn't tell anybody about. Sometimes my boss would even forget to make a list for me. But it didn't matter, because I usually finished the list in a couple hours anyway.

This one time, I was mowing on the weekday, and I ran into a sign, and it fell over. The 4x4 was rotten right at the base, so when I hit it (kind of hard), it broke. So I hid the top of the sign in the trees, and fixed it on the weekend. The sign was about a foot and a half shorter when I got done with it, which I still laugh about. But nobody ever noticed. At least they never said anything.