Life is Good

Sometimes there is a perfect storm of happiness, when all things good seem to align in unison. My son got his scores back for the medical school entrance exam. Wow! Seriously! We are still giggling with joy. All my children make me proud. What a pleasure to be their Mom. Its the best!

We are up to 35 gallons of strawberries picked. My fingers are permanently stained. We take two gallons a day to the bakery. The rest have been going to town to be distributed to little old ladies to make jelly.

I continue to enter chart data for our Electronic Medical Record. It takes me about an hour and a half per chart. I believe it is going to make our transition smoother, which will make me happy. Anything which helps our clinic increase productivity and decrease stress and panic makes me happy. I am tired at the end of each day. It is a learning process about the elderly and the chronic problems they face. Is it my future as well?

Today is a quilt shop day. Fabric therapy. Who cannot be happy in a quilt shop? Beauty and creativity just oozing everywhere. Life is good.

It's here!...Strawberry season

We picked a gallon of strawberries on Sunday, and three more gallons this afternoon. I was ready to be outside after eight hours of loading charts. It is getting easier, but I know I'm in trouble when they bring me Volume 4 of someone's chart. Its a lot to summarize.

Betty K.'s birthday is this week. I'm thinking strawberry shortcake. Hmmmm.

The Mission

I have committed myself to spending as much time as possible pre-loading charts this summer. I think of it as sandbagging. You do it because it needs to be done, and the better I do, the more peaceful the outcome will be. I do have a trace of obsessive-compulsive personality when I approach a current interest. Everything else gets placed on the back shelf until I come up for air. I will try to maintain balance between work and home. It is not easy. "The right path is not always the easy path" is a lesson not forgotten.

June storm

I love the shades of gray in this photo. The clouds were very low, and moving fast. Rain and wind followed but no harm to home or crops. It did increase the size of the puddle at the end of the corn field. I see ducks swimming where sprouting corn should be. Poor farmer.

A. has been working on his application for medical school and it is finally submitted. It will not be reseased to the schools for another 4-6 weeks, because the application has to be cross-checked against his official transcripts first. By the time requests for secondary applications or interviews come, he will be home again. What a long and detailed process.

Speaking of long and detailed processes, I have started helping enter data into the electronic health record at work. I'm hoping they find a way to scan in the immunization records. It took me 45 min to do one chart on a healthy child. Some of that is learning curve, but I am praying for short-cuts. I think the process will try everyone's patience by the end of the summer. Also, once entered, you can't erase, you can only amend the record to say "oops". Oh, help!

Wedding

Friday was Terah's wedding. It was short and sweet, with her dad as the pastor. The groom was handsome in dress military uniform. L. was a bridesmaid.

It is foggy today so we wil run to Bowman for "parts". It is a farmer thing. Farmers are always working on machinery to keep it running. They have a large skill set. Yeah farmers!

Graduation 2

This past weekend was spent with my oldest daughter to celebrate the end of year 2 of her creative writing program. So much fun to hear their readings in a cozy bookstore with wine and snacks. The next day was the ceremony, an intimate gathering of students, faculty and family. What a nice day. The rest of the time was vacation, ending with a Mexican dinner on our last night together. Congratulations!

Reports from India can be found at www.scrapsfromindia.blogspot.com.

It will be a learning experience for me as well as my traveller.

Today I am back at the quilt shop and tomorrow at the clinic. Life goes on. The corn is planted and the wheat is up. We planted late tomatoes and peppers yesterday. Hope they will grow quickly.

Cool and rainy. Typical spring.

India

My son called me from India today to tell me he arrived safely. He spends the next two months doing a medical internship shadowing physicians in both urban and rural areas. I am glad the first stage of the adventure is behind him. There are interesting days ahead.

His big sister has a presentation of her writing at a local bookstore as part of her MFA program in Creative writing. Middle sister will be job shadowing a medical classmate of mine in rural Nebraska this summer.

Me? Waiting for the strawberries to ripen, catching up at the quilt shop and trying not to think about the transition to the electronic health record. I cling to my delete button to erase my oops and ouch as I type. Pulling weeds is looking like a good time. Love to all.