pastor esteban came to devotions today.
he talked about isaiah 11:6-9

"The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.

The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,
and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest.

They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. "

his three observations were that:

1. supernatural things are going on (unnatural animal relationships happening here)
2. there is an absence of fear (predators and prey are coexisting in harmony)
3. peace and restoration

so he proposed the idea that the diversity of animals can be compared to the diversity of humanity, including race and all that. so as the kingdom is restored, reconciliation is increased. and not just living with one another, but also helping one another and unheard of things, like eating each others' food. hehe.

anyway, i like that the knowledge of the Lord fills the earth.

and then there is peace.

9 months at esperanza tomorrow!

i should write a list of things i've learned.
but i think i will do that for the next 3 months so that i can have a complete list for 1st year in practice.

or maybe i should write a list of things i need to learn. or should have learned but didn't. dah!

big babies

lots of crying large 3 and 4 year olds this week! they are like time bombs... going from crying, to laughter, to crying, to laughter.

all needing "emergency" school forms signed. ay!

i guess that's one solution

a while ago i had a patient who had this giant tattoo on his arm that says:
"I
LOVE
VERA"
in a 5-year old's hand-writing/block letters. he got it 40 years ago or so, and vera was his first love at age 18. they lived together in boston. after a year she left him. he married someone else. but the tattoo remains.

so throughout the appointment, dunno if i should have done this, but i was trying to think of ways to change the tattoo.
like,
"....maybe you can tattoo ALOE before the VERA..."
"...maybe you can tattoo VERDAD..." ('truth' in spanish)

anyway, my assistant is a little more sensitive and just encouraged him, saying "that's a good way to remember your first love of your youth." (in her head she was prolly thinking "the folly of your youth")

so today another patient comes in and there's a tattoo of 73 on his wrist and underneath there is a big rectangular green blob. so i asked him to tell me the story of his tattoo. 73 is something about when he went to vietnam with the army. and the blob - "that used to be a girl's name! but i had to block it out for the new wife."

:D

i always become what i judge.

last week our office manager was on vacation but she still came into work for a few hours one day because there was THAT much to do (at our growing non-profit) and not enough people around to do it (people often call in sick or kids are sick or some kind of personal crisis, which is common among most of our staff who are from north philly).

in my mind i thought she was crazy and needed to let go of work. it's her entitled vacation time, after all!

yesterday i was working late because of a bad judgment call. and then ended up leaving all my paperwork undone. well worth leaving at that time, though, because a friend was visiting from out of town.

anyway, i ended up going to clinic today for a couple hours. and everyone pointed fingers at me, that i wasn't supposed to come in. so now i gotta retract my judging thoughts, as is what always happens.

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on vacation time - apparently workers in the united states are leading the world for number of unused vacation days. i definitely plan on using all of mine by the end of the year.

something to consider though:

-tom's of maine encourages their employees to use 10% of their vacation time volunteering for a cause and/or for others in need. that's great!

-elsevier/mosby allocates a few 'community service' days to their employees. it's like, paid time-off, but designated for helping people.

clinical FAIL day.
but it's good to learn these things now. since these mistakes aren't really costing me any money. heh.