One week from today, I will be on the el headed downtown to take my nursing boards. I have been studying constantly and I am beginning to think in multiple choice questions. In so many ways, it feels I have been holding my breath for two years, and until i see the words PASS on a computer screen, I will not be able to let it out. Nursing school was a compressed, intense, overwhelming experience that doesn't end at graduation, no matter how excited you are to see your diploma (mine came in the mail this week) or how soon your student loans bills are coming (november, along with my impending heart attack). Nursing school ends somewhere between the minute your test shuts off, the next 48 hours of anxiety (and heavy drinking) and the moment you see P-A-S-S with your name next to it.

This morning at 5:30am, through random circumstances involving Joshua's increasingly crazy job, I saw one of my favorite professors and his wife, who are both nurses. Standing with them was a woman who just passed her NCLEX on Wednesday. I don't believe in luck, but I believe God comforts us in mysterious ways...and so I was really relieved to have met that woman and have seen my professor again (a small-ish man who was wearing biking spandex and those strange clomping bike shoes; let's be serious, this situation was actually hilarious. In addition, Joshua will be traveling in a van that follows my professor and other bikers for 230 miles, driven by the woman who recently became a registered nurse. If I have anything to do with it, he WILL shake her down for all the info).

This apartment is getting packed up...and messy...and dirty...and my nursing books and CDs and paints chips for colors we are thinking of in the new place are everywhere and although I did just talk about feeling comforted, the physical space around me sucks right now. I need to get off the computer and organize something.

That is a phrase I do NOT use often.