What goes on in my head.

Hello, and welcome to "what goes on in my head".  I lead a busy, happy, entertaining, challenging and sometimes confusing life in the real world.  Then there is THIS place, inside my head, where a lot more stuff happens. I observe and absorb all kinds of things that then rattle around in my head, mix with other things, and pop out at unexpected (and sometimes inappropriate) times.  Now I will try to put them into some sort of  coherent form for your entertainment.

I chose "A Mare's Nest" for the title because I like the imagery of something rare and improbable, complicated, disordered, illusory, multi-faceted and intriguing.  A mare's nest can be all of this.  Mirriam-Webster defines it as a hoax or illusion, a muddle or medley.  This is my life, inside and out.  The "mare" also refers to a horse, and horses are something you will read about here.  There are four of them here in my "nest", which also includes a three other resident humans and many transient ones,  young and old, big and little, of all colors, shapes, sizes and persuasions.  Dogs are here too, and cats, goats and chickens.  The numbers vary from day to day, the personalities are as varied as snowflakes, and together we make joyful noises and hideous messes.  

When I leave my nest for work, I go to the Emergency Department at my local hospital, where I am an RN, a triage nurse, a patient educator, a grumpy coworker, and at times a traffic cop, referee, and bossy mother figure.  All these things are interesting, fun and extremely irritating by turns.  ER stories can be disgusting, infuriating, mind-boggling, sad or hilarious. They are endlessly entertaining. 

My doctor, who is also a friend, tells me that most middle-aged, chubby, uncoordinated women prefer to be sedentary, but I do not.   I like to be outside, and at times raise flowers and a garden, foals, kittens, puppies and fawns.  I have big rowdy dogs.  My partner and I are working on a cabin we are restoring as our someday retirement home.  Lots of friends and family are lending their hands and knowledge. I love to ride horses, especially up mountains and thru streams.   I love to swim and kayak and ride in boats.   Of course there are many mishaps.  No, they are NOT part of the fun, but they do make good stories.

The people in my life are also many and varied.  I have a large, clannish, loving, conservative, fundamentalist, loud-mouthed extended family.  Time with them can be wonderful, or completely hideous.  My roots came from these people, raised in a small town and a small world, with many values that I have absorbed. In other ways we are sort of aliens to each other and along with family dinners, card games and campouts, there are arguments and misunderstandings and clashes in world-views of epic proportions.  

Most of important of all in my mare's nest of a life, are my "chosen" family.  These are the people that have something special and unrecognizable that makes me happy to be with them.  Some of them really are biological family. Several are cousins who feel like siblings, and their spouses, who do as well.   One is the remarkable person who shares my life.  One is a friend of 20-plus years who has the same kind of busy, frenetic brain as I.  One is a twenty-year-old guy who is the "child of my heart".  Another is not really my niece... but she is mine.  A woman not really old enough to be my mom.... but seems like a second mom to me.  Kids and babies that aren't mine at all but call me Meme and know where "their" toys are, at my house.  These people are the best of everything about my life. But that doesn't mean that sharing a life with them is always simple.  No...  I am not drawn to simple, uncomplicated, easy people.    

Take all these "ingredients" and add many random thoughts and interests, dozens of repressed smart-assed remarks per day, and a heavy dose of sarcasm.  Mix them up in a frenetically busy, multi-tasking,  tangentially inclined brain.  Let it stew in the fog of an introvert's secret internal life for a day or two.....  We will see what results.