Hello again.

Hello there.

It's been a while.

As in since last August kind of a while. As in I dropped off the face of the Earth, went on a little journey around the universe, had several life changing events occur, and now have found my way back, back to this little blog I had so carefully tended for the better part of my 20s.

It was never my intention to be gone so long. Life simply swept me up, like an Oz-bound tornado. But I'm back now. I've missed this. Writing is one of the biggest parts of my self, and even though life has been incredible and beautiful these last few months, there's been a part of myself missing, the writer self who always yearns to over analyze and over share.

So for today I'm just dipping a toe in the water. Loosening up those creaky blogging joints. Dusting off the proverbial cobwebs. (Can you tell I've missed metaphors as well?)

For those who don't know, and even for those who do, even just for myself, a quick summation of all that has happened since last August:

1) I got engaged. To a man I love.

2) Subsequently I started planning our September wedding, a process I've thoroughly enjoyed and been inspired by, but which has been far move involved and complex than I ever could have imagined.

3) I completed a Clinical Immersion on a cardiac intensive care unit during my last semester of nursing school. I cared for the sickest of the sick. I witnessed too many lives ending, but more than a few lives renewed, hearts brought back from literal standstills, happy endings made possible my medicine. I learned so much. I grew so much.

4) I helped my fiance pick out and buy an adorable little 1920s bungalow. And in November we moved into that house together. We have been working ever since, making it lovely and our own. It has been challenging, exhausting, and rewarding. I love every inch of this house, even its flaws, and I am so happy to make it a home with my future husband and our beloved, neurotic dog Sandy.

5) I graduated from nursing school. I earned my second Bachelor's, a BSN, and then a few weeks later I took and passed my NCLEX and became an RN. I am so proud of those two letters. I still get a little flush of pride every time I refer to myself as a nurse.

6) I started a job as a pediatric nurse at a local hospital. I will be orienting until almost May with a preceptor. I've been working for seven weeks, and my experiences are hard to explain in any brief terms. But I am so happy to be where I am. It is what I wanted from my first day of nursing school, where I always kind of knew I would end up, working with kids. Being a nurse on this unit will at times be near impossible, because of the insanity, chaos, patient load, frequent admissions and discharges, because of the diagnoses of some of the children, and what they and their families face and take on so bravely. I know I will be tested, to my very limits. But I am so ready to take it on, to be a pediatric nurse. My work life will rarely be boring. It will almost always be hard. But nearly every second of every day will have meaning and purpose, and that is the reason I went to nursing school.

So that's life in a nutshell, excluding a whole host of other trivial and more minor things. But that's the loss of not blogging since August, not talking about those trivial and minor things. Those are the reason I started this blog, the reason it is named what it is, to celebrate and document the hundred thousand small moments and details that make up the texture of life. I love the little things. And I'm ready to talk about them again, to slow down this crazy life a little, to write about the things I might not remember in fifty years but will want to remember.

Life has been good lately. It's been overwhelming. It's been a million different things. And I'm read to write again.

For anyone who is still listening :)