Where's the Calm?

I think I just have to face it...I'm not done with practicum yet. Technically I am, but there's this pesky contract, so last month I still averaged 40 hours of clinic and birth work per week, without counting drive time (and the occasional day stuck in Olympia just because it costs $15 to make a round trip home, and I'm not doing that even if it means I'm stuck without anything I really *want* to be doing for 4 hours...I have escaped, from time to time, into a fiction book at a park). And then there's fact that I don't really WANT to pull out of practicum early (on time? before my contract ends, either way), not when every new thing I see there is one more new thing I don't have to do solo later.

I honestly don't know what I'm going to do with myself once my clinic obligations are over. Imagine whole weeks stretching in front of me without the structuring influence of clinic time, or even *gasp* being on call. Any way I start up, I get at least a month with absolutely nothing structured for me. THAT is a crazy concept.

This week, I have reaffirmed that I detest prelabor rupture of the membranes. Stop sending that scenario my way, please. Enough hospital transfers with nonexistant labors. Enough prodding women who really, if they weren't ruptured, we'd tuck into bed and see a week later in actual labor. This phenomenon is seriously getting on my nerves, and I harbor no illusions about it disappearing when I've set up my own practice. I just dislike it. A lot.

Despite all of this, I have rediscovered fiction books. Or the fact that my library has them and can order more of them. And the fact that I read quickly, after all, something I'd forgotten in the haze of TRYING to read hundreds of pages of very dry text every week.

Also discovered that the weather still dislikes me, at least a little. Yard sale day dawned with lots of thunder. Not a lot of rain, but effectively chased off the (not so big) masses. And off to Goodwill we go, 'cause I'm not into hanging on to this stuff.