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Twenty years ago I was eleven years old living in Athens, Georgia. I attended a middle school that looked like the ones on TV, indoors, hallways lined with lockers. The inside of my locker had a Johnny Bravo sticker from a cereal box, but I wasn't a Johnny Bravo fan. I just wanted to decorate my door. And when I did have cereal again, I would fish the new box for another sticker, hoping it was Courage the Cowardly Dog instead.

I started middle school three times: fifth grade in Mississippi, sixth grade in Georgia, then seventh grade in San Diego. It's an easy personal detail I toss in for social kindling whenever someone decides to go around the table and share 'fun facts' as an icebreaker. But my sixth grade year was split up; I left sometime during the holidays. Literally went from a block period schedule with two electives—typing, violin—to kiddie pool stuff like recess and nutrition break. Yeah, I was probably stuck up about it. Didn't want to play tetherball 'cause my old school seemed so Boy Meets World-ish by comparison.

As with any coming-of-age interlude, that half year in Georgia felt like an entire grade or two for all the side characters and episodic vignettes it contained. Memories work like that. They stretch time in some places. One thing I usually forget to mention, though, is that I was a painfully average child living in Athens, Georgia on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

A shadow seized us as we the children, and our adults, and the whole country, spent a week or more watching smoke fill our TV screens. My homeroom teacher sat on the edge of a counter, facing the class, and asked us if we understood what was happening. He had a black microphone clipped to his shirt. A wire trailed from the microphone to a bulky recorder on the counter next to him.

"A plane crashed."

"Two planes crashed."

"America was attacked on its own grounds," said our teacher.

Planes crashed. Buildings fell. It happened in New York City. Nine-one-one was the day, and the number for help. We were attacked. We were hated. We were scared.

We understood that much.

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So about that time Steve went off to college… #BluesClues25 pic.twitter.com/O8NOM2eRjy

— Nick Jr. (@nickjr) September 7, 2021

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Mom wanted to go for a walk yesterday afternoon. We took some family pictures near the lake. It was good to be outside. Next time we should bring bread for the turtles.

Now I gotta hop on the treadmill. I had weed gummies last night and ate too much again. Plus I want milk tea later. Maybe bring some to work. It sucks that I only had one night off, but tomorrow (Sunday) should be time and a half. Happy Labor Day weekend.

Somebody to lava

Realized my last entry was about work and habits and vitamins and wow. I'm sorry. I really am that dull. Think a part of me also holds back the deepest, darkest, lurkiest thoughts here in case someone I know ever finds out I still blaaawg.

True to form, though, I'm just back with more of the same. They have me scheduled as resource tonight, but the unit is short. I don't know if that means I'll take patients. Either they'll find someone to fill in or they won't. I need to change the way I think to survive. Enter self-preservation mode. Ironically, spacing out--dissociating?--might make me a better worker. I tend to get way too frustrated whenever I hit a wall, which is often. And in most hospitals, it sounds like those walls are closing in more and more each day. Perhaps a better metaphor is the frog that doesn't notice it's slowly being boiled alive.

Mandu has been...wonderful. Cleaning the best he can. Buying me roses. Steaming frozen soup dumplings over lettuce in what's either a deep pan or a shallow pot because we don't have a real steamer. Putting air in my tires. Taking care of the street rat. All this on top of teaching, another job that's been oscillating erratically in the court of public opinion for the past year and a half. I could cry. I really don't deserve him.

After canceling our wedding twice (and every major trip since then), we are trying to go to Kauai in a couple of weeks. I kind of think it won't happen for us. Kauai is the strictest island. So says my coworker, a Hawaii enthusiast who visits every chance he gets. Not going won't break me, because I know how lucky I am. And I understand what cities have to do to deal with this virus that continues to mess up our sad little lives. But if we make it there, if we really pull off this perfectly ordinary vacation, I just might break down into tears over it.

Dear Internet Void,

It's a day off, and those don't amount to much lately. I almost never go outside. This afternoon, after sleeping in too long (again), I realized that the sun hadn't touched my skin for a few days (again). So I brushed the webs off the sides of my little swinging chair, moved it to a warm spot on the grass, and sat there maybe fifteen minutes. One of my nursing instructors said fifteen minutes is what our bodies need to synthesize vitamin D. I think I read the same thing online somewhere. Sounds right. I've been pretty good about popping a daily multivitamin. It's the other stuff I can't be bothered with when I get like this--drinking enough water to flush it through, eating a few bites to aid the absorption of the fat soluble ones, remembering that daylight is a thing.

Oh, there it is--literally as I type--a direct text from my lead asking me to pick up tonight. To be resource. I told her I will cover breaks. 11pm to 3am. I'm fizzling out. Haven't been sleeping well. My back hurts. What else can I say.