New Years Eve - 2009

I've been listening to BBC World Service on the radio. For the past few days the theme has been: What has your year been like?

What has my year been like?
In January I started further education to become a nurse anesthetist. It was exciting, stimulating and challenging. I feel that what I learn enriches my work and visa versa. At the same time it is exhausting to study full-time while working half-time and at the end of the first semester I wondered how I would get through the next.

Father died this year. I spent a month with mother and father in february/march which I really enjoyed. He was doing pretty well then, stacking firewood, pruning apple trees etc. I could concentrate on getting Mother back on her feet after her knee replacement surgery. In retrospect I am happy to have spent those weeks with them.

When I returned from America we picked up my 50th birthday present from the children: Lucy, a 4 month old belgian shephard puppy. She is a real sweety: a bit shy, quite smart and very active.

In May Father began experiencing increasing falls and weakness of the extremities and it was discovered that the myeloma had migrated to the brain. What a disappointment after the blood work had been getting better and better all through the winter! This new complication is very rare but has a bad prognosis: 3 months from what I could find out.

Summer vacation: we celebrated my birthday on Skibladner, the worlds oldest paddle steamer. Then came a week in Paris, my present from Husband. There we wandered the streets, visited churches, parks and museums. My favorite experiences were the Monet water lilies, the stained glass windows of Saint Chapelle, the Cluny museum and the Weleda massage. We also spent a weekend at the cabin in Valdres, and had a visit from Tante Christina. On August 1st we went to California for 3 weeks where we visited Ilian and Roland, drove up the coast, into the mountains and the desert.

When we went to Cortland on the way home to see Father, he was dying. Not knowing how long it would still take, I went back to Norway as planned. However, 5 days later I was back on a plane heading for New York. Adam called just as we were leaving to go to the airport to say that Father had died. They were all there when I arrived: Ilian had just come from California. Roland, Adam, Mother, Beren and Tormod were there, and Ann, the family friend who had held his hand when he died. We spent 2 weeks together, preparing the funeral and after that, just spending time together. I feel I have come closer to my family this year.

While I loved the weeks spent with family, I was missing school, and came back with a research project to make up and new projects to complete. This whole fall I seem to have spent catching up. Catching up on missed classes while I was in America, then after I had the swine flu, catching up on missed shifts of practice nursing. The fall semester ended with a home exam. Writing it was fun and I learned just how much I can pack into a day when I schedule properly. The results aren't in yet. I feel unsure as to how it went (update: I got a C. Dissapointing)

And so we come to Christmas vacation, where I am trying to force myself to take a break from studying, but am finding that it's all catching up with me - how exhausted I really am. Outside we have 2 feet of snow, and temperatures around zero Fahrenheit. When it is so cold I find myself holding my breath waiting for something to break down: the car, the electricity or the water. At least we have lots of firewood.

Right now, I'm still so exhausted that I am not even looking forward to college starting up again on Monday - I'm scared to death I won't make it, I guess. And also that overworking, like I have to for at least another 6 months, I might make some fatal mistake at work or in practice nursing: a mistake of judgement or of priority. Somehow in the I next 3 days I have to psych myself up to go into the new year with a positive attitude, to take hold of it and make the most of it. But now I am going to bed. Will try to write a forward looking post tomorrow.

Happy New Year!