The Happiest Place on Earth

Okay, first of all - MAJOR photo and video overload on this post! I know I've said that before but I've really outdone myself this time. Hope it's worth it by the time you survive till the end!

This last week was really crazy busy - we went to Disneyland! It was my first time going (and Mira's, obviously). We went with some members of Mark's family, otherwise it wouldn't have been feasible to take Mira. It was still tricky and of course it would have been easier if we hadn't taken her but I wasn't quite ready to leave her for so long yet. Plus she got into Disneyland for free so at least it didn't put us out that way.

Before we get into all that, here are some random pictures of Mira:

Eating Cheerios for breakfast

Yay Cheerios!

I love my Cheerios so much I'm going to share with the dogs!

Mira is quite good at sharing for an 11 month old. She shares pretty much anything she can, and smiles so big when you take what she's offering, but 2 seconds later she wants it back. Oh well, it's the thought that counts. She's also developed this habit of chucking any food she doesn't want right over the side of the high chair - she'll even glance down to make sure the dogs are there first (and of course they are, since they figured out pretty quick that they can get free people food near the high chair), then grab a handful and deliberately drop it on the floor. It's hard to discipline when it's so dang cute! Discipline is going to be so hard anyway, because anytime I tell her "no" for anything, and no matter how sternly and purposefully I say it, she grins and giggles. Seems a bit ineffective with that attitude.

She could definitely walk if she wanted to - she can do the squats and bounce up on her tip toes completely unsupported (and my opinion is that if you can do that, you can certainly walk), and if she holds onto your finger she takes off walking super fast and giggles the whole time, and we've been able to trick her into taking a few steps by herself a few times, but the second she realizes she's not holding on to anything she freezes, drops down and crawls off. She's totally just psyching herself out. Well, she'll figure it out when she's ready. There's certainly no rush for her to learn to walk from my end. :)

Okay, now for the trip! On the drive out we passed through Primm, Nevada, and stopped at the Buffalo Bill Casino, which is home to, apparently, one of the steepest roller coasters in the world. I took a video of Mark riding it:

Driving for long distances with a baby is tricky - I felt bad making her sit trapped in that car seat for so long but all things considered she actually did pretty well. We'd have to make a couple extra stops for diaper changes and meltdowns but we were able to drive from Salt Lake City to Disneyland in one day - we left at 3 AM but we did it! The next day was our first day in the park:

I'll be the first to admit that yes, this does sound very cliched, but I really did feel like a little kid again going through Disneyland. I remembered how much I used to LOVE watching all the Disney classics, like Cinderella, Snow White, Mary Poppins, The Little Mermaid, Pinocchio, Alice in Wonderland, and how much those movies are ingrained as part of your childhood. What a wonderful feeling it was to go back in time like that! And it was mind-boggling to realize how many movies we watch are Disney! Movies like Indiana Jones even. It was so fun to just walk through the park and see the different themes and look at the little girls dressed up as their favorite Disney princess (if Mira had been just a little bit older you can bet she would have been all dressed up too!), and of course catching glimpses of the characters wandering around. I just loved how it all really was a "theme" park. All the cast members working on a ride were dressed for that theme - this was the epitome of "Spare no expense."

As far as riding the rides went, we were able to take Mira on some of them, like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, Winnie the Pooh and of course the carousel, and for the other ones we all took turns watching Mira so the others could go on rides. Mira did well on the rides - if it was completely dark on the ride she would start crying and she got scared on the carousel this time, but otherwise she didn't have any problems. Here comes the picture overload:

We let Mira "drive" a car in Toon Town

She sure was having fun being in control of the wheel!

Hold onto your hats - Mira's driving!

Whoooaaaaa!!

Aaaaahhhhhhh!!!

Mark isn't sure about the mouse ears.

Okay Mom - really?

Riding the merry-go-round. She actually got scared this time.

Modeling another set of mouse ears.

Mira meeting Mickey Mouse himself! And she didn't cry!

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E!

Riding the Winnie the Pooh ride.

Having fun is so exhausting...

Tigger's body language says it all!

Again, no crying from Mira. I think she liked being the center of attention.

With Pooh bear, Eeyore, and Tigger.

All of the above plus Cap'n Jack Sparrow, I mean Mark

We got a 3 day pass so we spent the first day in Disneyland, the second day mostly in California Adventure, and the third going back and forth. We stayed in one of the resort hotels so we were able to walk to the parks, which was nice except that it was all so huge and spread out that it took a good 15 minutes to walk in to the park, not to mention getting to anything inside the parks. And maneuvering a stroller made it trickier too. You'd think that going in the middle of February would mean fewer people but it still seemed really crowded to me all 3 days - and we went in the middle of the week too! I don't even want to imagine what it's like during the summer or the weekend (or both, god forbid).

You would also think that since we were in southern California we would have sunny, 70-degree weather the whole time (since that's what the weather always is in southern California). As luck would have it, it was cold, windy and rainy for 2 of the 3 days we were there. Go figure. But since we were there we had to make the most of it so we did as much as we could anyway. That was my one complaint - we spent so much time running around we couldn't really relax. We were too busy getting our money's worth! We were up early every morning, walking around the park and hurrying to cram in as much as we could every day, and we pretty much didn't leave the park till closing each night. It was exhausting! I wish there was a way to go through this without being so harried about the whole thing.

As fun as Disneyland is, I really enjoyed California Adventure! It has more thrill rides, and they do something every night called the World of Color Light Show. I've been trying all day to upload some videos of the light show on to here but for some reason it's not working - so here are a couple pictures and when I can figure out how to get the videos uploaded I'll do that on another post. It was amazing - think the fountains at the Bellagio in Vegas, only set to Disney music, with amazing bright colors, fire, and scenes from Disney movies projected onto the water. Trust me, it's so cool! The pictures will have to do for now and they don't come close to doing it justice.

The Paradise Pier at California Adventure.

The coolest ride I've ever come across was in California Adventure. It's called the Tower of Terror and it's based on The Twilight Zone. True to form, it had a theme - it looks like a hotel, even on the inside. It had furniture and pictures and props from the 1930s, covered in dust and cobwebs, the cast members were dressed like bellhops and they acted like they were actually hotel employees, not just ride attendants herding you through as fast as they could. The ride itself is in a maintenance elevator. You sit down and put on a seat belt, and I would not recommend this ride for anyone who has a fear of getting stuck in an elevator when it breaks down - because that's basically what happens. The short version of the ride description is they shoot you all the way up to the 13th floor, and the elevator doors open so you can see you're at the top of the building and you can see all across the park. Then they flash strobe lights in your face so you're blinded and then you're dropped several stories in the pitch black. Then they'll shoot you up a few stories, drop a few more, up several more, the whole thing shudders and you drop again, then you're up at the very top again, then you drop to the bottom - and remember you only have a seat belt to hold you down. Really - just a seat belt. It. Was. Scary. But thematically one of the coolest rides I've ever come across.

You can kind of see one of the three elevator shafts. The doors right below the word "Hotel" are the ones that open up when you're at the top.

Tower of Terror at night. I love how they made it look like it used to be a really fancy hotel that's falling apart.

Me trying on Mark's Captain Jack Sparrow hat.

I put in some embarrassing pics of Mark so I'll be nice and include this one of me.

Aren't we a lovely couple?

Awww...

Different kind of awwwwwww..... :)

Mira had to deal with a pretty major schedule disruption this whole week. Not to mention being stuck in a car seat or a stroller most of the day - I felt bad about that but she seemed fine.

After our last day in Disneyland, we took a detour to the coast and went to Huntington Beach. I knew the water would be too cold for swimming but this was an opportunity I just couldn't pass up. In her first year, Mira has set foot in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans! Isn't that beyond awesome?! This is why I knew we couldn't pass this up. We got a lot of pictures from this. (If you want to remind yourself how she did in the Atlantic Ocean, click here.)

Watch me walk!

This is so much fun!

I like walking on the beach!

Let's walk into the water!

Wait a minute...

Her face says it all.

Now she hates the beach.

So there you have it, Mira has been to beaches on both coasts and she hates both of them. I'm sure it's because the water was so cold. I hope we haven't scarred her for life and she'll never like the beach. :) I can't help it, it was so cute!

She did like sitting in the sand and playing with seashells.

She's happy again!

I guess I can forgive you, Mom...

Instead of driving all the way back home, we decided to stop in Vegas and spend a night there to prolong our vacation just a little bit more.

While we were in Vegas Mark did something he's been planning on doing for the last year or so... I swear this man is insane... He jumped off the Stratosphere Tower. I can't believe people pay to do things like this. Several years ago we did the rides at the top of the Stratosphere and even though I love roller coasters and thrill rides, I vowed to never do the Stratosphere rides again because they are the only ones I've ever cried on because I was so scared. Once was plenty, thank you. And Mark wanted to jump off the top of the tower?? Okay, go ahead and I'll stay at the bottom to record you falling. Which is what I did. :) I'm impressed he did it! He even got a certificate saying that he can no longer be called "chicken" ever again. Stupid maybe, but not chicken. Now he's even saying it was so much fun he would do it again! This is one ride I'll pass on. Especially when they write your weight on your wrist so that if you splat they can be sure to find all the pieces. Seriously. And they asked him if he had any last words for his family in case something happened. Are these guys for real??

Tomorrow is Mira's first birthday and I just can't believe how fast this year has flown past! So crazy to think that at this time a year ago Mark was trying to talk me into going to the hospital because my contractions were so strong... We had a family birthday party today so I'll make sure to post pictures from that tomorrow. I never knew a year could go so quickly and that a person could change so much in that amount of time. Best thrill ride ever!

Woohoo!

So first the big news - I passed the Advanced Metabolic Module test! Yay! People kept telling me that I was stressing too much and over-studying and I'd be fine. Well, anyone who knows me won't find it alarming that I was over-stressed and over-studying for any sort of test. I know the material but the part that always stresses me the most about tests is trying to figure out how much detail I need to be able to go into. I talked to nurses who had already tested out of the Metabolic Module and they all said to just go off the study guide we were given. However, that still gives you a lot of leeway when you get things on the study guide that say, "Explain the pathophysiology of DIC (disseminated intravascular coagulation)." Soooooo does that mean you want the 2 minute explanation of DIC, or do you want me to give you the 15 minute explanation and go into this sort of detail:

And then there were questions like, "What's the standard treatment for liver transplant rejection?" The answer is steroids. Then you think, "Wait... that can't possibly be it. That's a one-word answer. There must be more to it than that!" But there isn't. You keep second-guessing yourself - but it really is just a one-word answer.

Anyway, I passed, I'm officially an Advanced Metabolic Nurse, I can stop studying and get back to doing stuff I want to do (like read non-medical books and crochet) and I'll get a nice little pay raise for proving that I'm now slightly smarter. I would have done it even without the pay incentive though - I love to learn new things and be challenged - but I won't turn down an extra 2.5%. :)

Well, on to the fun stuff (Mira, of course). A few days ago she actually took a few steps on her own! And it wasn't to come to Mom or Dad or anything like that... Nope, she was chasing after the cat. Go figure. So Mark and I were really excited, but ever since then we cannot convince this child to try to walk anymore. I think she realized that as cool as walking probably is, it won't get her where she wants to go as fast as if she were crawling. So why bother with walking? So she doesn't. But give her that little pink car and she's like a race car driver - a drunk one at that.

She's also still really into dancing. This theme might be getting tedious to some of you but Mark and I think it's the cutest thing to watch Mira when some music goes on. She's starting to do this crumping sort of move where she puts her hands in the air and bounces up and down. We're trying to teach her to do a "Touchdown!" move with her arms. We're also trying to teach her the difference between "mama" and "dada." Not that she needs to know the difference yet but she might actually be getting the hang of it. For days both Mark and I were Dada. Mark of course was thrilled with this. I started patting myself on the chest and saying "Mama" over and over while I was holding her, then patting Mark and saying "Dada." The next day both Mark and I were Mama. Then the day after we were both Dada again. So cute! But today she started crying when I walked out of the room and I heard her saying "Maaamaaa! Maamaa!" She's never done that before so maybe she is figuring it out.

This picture makes me smile. Most babies fall asleep cuddling a special blanket, or a stuffed animal or some other soft "comfort" object. Mira falls asleep cuddling her bottle. No, seriously. I'll cuddle her and give her her bedtime bottle, and then after she's done with the bottle she still wants to hold onto the bottle until she falls asleep. Weird. But cute, of course. :)

My next goal for a video I need to capture is Mira playing on the iPad. I got an iPad 2 for Christmas (LOVE LOVE LOVE this toy, btw) and Mira being the technology lover that she is really enjoys it too. (Mark was very annoyed with the iPad for a long time - he kept saying it was a waste of money and I don't need it and the whole concept was stupid, but now he gets excited when I don't take the iPad to work with me so he can play games on it.) I have some fun apps for Mira on there that she likes to play. It's so cute to watch her use her right index finger to touch the screen, since that's what she sees me doing. What she doesn't see me do but she does anyway is resort to smacking the screen with her whole hand. Yes, I did invest in a screen protector. :) So I'm going to attempt to get a good video of my techie geek daughter playing with an iPad.

Holy Cuteness!

Mira turned 11 months old today! That is insane - that means that in a month she'll be a whole year old! It can't possibly have been that long already!

Mira is starting to look less like a baby and more like a little girl. Some of her little mannerisms that she's learning - like pointing at things and waving bye-bye and doing her own little sign for "more" (she opens and closes her right hand when she wants more of something... totally not what the ASL says "more" looks like but whatever, we know what she means) - it all really looks like things a toddler would do. She's so mobile now it's easy to forget she's a baby still. She could totally walk off if she wanted to, but she doesn't (thankfully). She can stand by herself for as long as she wants, and she can "dance" without holding onto anything. She plays with toys standing unassisted and drinks a sippy cup standing by herself and she cruises all over the place as fast as anything with her hand barely holding onto the furniture, but the second she realizes she's standing by herself she quickly grabs onto something for support or squats down and crawls off. Well, like I said, I'm not going to push her to walk faster. She's on track and when she's ready to walk she'll just figure it out and when that happens it will all hit the fan!

She still loves that pink and purple car she got for Christmas. Although for some reason now she'll only push it when it's sideways. Even though it's definitely much harder that way, that's the way she wants to do it. Watch her and you'll see she's definitely ready to be walking. (Sorry it's so short.)

 She's doing well with sippy cups, although there's still nothing like a bottle at bedtime!

She's watching the cat

And since we're on the topic of bedtime... It's a constant evolution, I guess. She mostly sleeps through the night still but now that she's teething again she's started waking up in the middle of the night again. Luckily it's just once when it does happen and she's back to sleep fairly quickly, but that would probably explain why I feel so exhausted and sleep-deprived these days. I wish those teeth would just break through already! Her top left is finally through and the top right has been trying to come through for weeks but it's just having a lot of trouble. Her poor gums are all bruised and swollen and it looks so sad. I've never seen that happen before but after asking around it sounds like that's fairly normal and I should stop my PICU RN mommy freakout. Sometimes I REALLY don't like my job. Not because of the job itself but because of the things I see there. It doesn't bother me as much to take care of kids that were born with some congenital defect... There's nothing to do about that. What scares the shit out of me are the kids that are totally normal and healthy and suddenly drop dead with a dilated cardiomyopathy of unknown etiology or the kid who was run over by the parents pulling out of the driveway. You know, ignorance really is bliss.

Anyway, moving on... Mira is turning into a little dancing queen! I think that should be her theme song. Every time she hears any sort of music - a commercial on TV, one of her toys, walking through the grocery store - she starts boogieing! She's so energetic about it that she's almost jumping off the ground (and if she's in her crib holding onto the rail she has figured out how to jump). It is SO cute! And she never seems to get tired of it either! The other day I started playing some music on my phone and gave it to her. She bounced and danced and wiggled for 15 minutes - pretty impressive for a baby her age!

I'm really trying to get into reading her lots of books, since her attention span is finally long enough to last through a few pages of a book. Being the master of mimicry that she is, now she tries to read the books herself. She'll pick up a book, study it with a serious little pondering frown on her face, open the book (which is upside down most of the time but who cares), point at the pictures, and start babbling. "Ba ba ba ba... doo... dissshhh... ya ya ya ya ya.... SHRIEK!!!!!!" I've tried so many times to get a video of this but as soon as I get the camera out she crawls over to me to grab the camera.

I thought we would have to wait about 15 more years for this!

She loves playing with some wooden blocks she got for Christmas. Mostly she likes for someone to build a tower so she can knock it down. Recently she's gotten really interested in pulling toys out of the box or bucket or whatever they live in - and then she carefully puts the toys back in, and pulls them out again, one by one. I'm really afraid to make this observation because everyone thinks their own kid is the super gifted genius, but this seems a little advanced for 10-11 months. Or maybe I'm wrong, but either way she's getting a lot better about playing with toys by herself and not needing me to be in the room 5 feet away from her at all times.

The 1 year mark means it's time for more professional photographs! It's early, yes, but we have a lot of crap happening in the next couple of months. We tried out a new photographer this time, since the lady I usually use only does natural lighting, and I don't think Mira's old enough to do well with an outdoor photo shoot in the winter. We could have done a shoot in the indoor studio but it's small and Mira's getting big and harder to keep in one spot. So we tried out this studio in Draper, which is a long drive but it was so worth it! Especially since we got 70 photos (they told us Mira was the easiest baby they've ever photographed and that's one reason they were able to get so many good shots) that they gave to us the same day so we didn't have to wait for the CD to be mailed to us. Oh my cuteness!! If you'd like to see the whole album let me know, but here are a few of my favorites.

Our little princess

I love this one

This might be our favorite

A bowl full of ruffles!

Watch out, she's in-bound!

Ooh... This looks good...

Hmm... I should taste some more to make sure it all tastes good

The smash cake was so funny. At first she poked her fingers into the cupcake and looked at us like she wasn't sure what we wanted her to do with it, so I took some frosting on my finger and put it in her mouth. Then she got into it! She didn't go completely crazy with it but she definitely enjoyed it and boy was it messy! It was so funny though, she had everyone in the studio laughing. I think some of these pictures will have to be printed off and framed very prominently in our house. :)

Dedicated to a Fallen Officer

Well the year has been off to a bit of a rough start. Not anything really horrible but just a lot of things all at once. The first thing isn't really a bad thing. Last week everyone came down with a respiratory virus and because of all the meds I had to take to function, Mira is now weaned. So it's not a horrible thing like I said, because she was losing interest for the last month anyway and she doesn't seem to miss it at all, plus because I dried up I didn't have any engorgement pain (which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy). So really it was the best way it could have happened. I had been starting to worry about how I was going to wean her since we're coming up on a year (ack!) but this took care of it for me. There is a part of me that's the tiniest bit sad, because this is another reminder that she's getting close to no longer being a baby anymore. But there's a lot of me that's happy. I've talked to women who gush about how much they love nursing and they may as well have been saying that they love to gouge their eyes out with a rusty nail - that's how much sense it makes to me. I did like the cuddle time, but other than that I hated every second of nursing. I only stuck with it for so long because I know it's what is best. Looking back I'm surprised I stuck with it for almost 11 months - I had lots of problems and I didn't like it and when she was little it would take Mira an hour to feed, and when she needed to eat every 2 hours, that was all I did, plus I had no support from Mark at all through the whole thing. I won't air my dirty laundry here (as tempting as it would be to get some sympathy), but at least it's not an issue we need to worry about anymore. So that's done, and now I can wear dresses and turtlenecks and whatever I want to wear again (now that the last of the padding has fallen off I'm less than my prepregnancy weight) and I can ingest whatever I want without worrying about how it will affect another little person - basically, for the first time in almost 2 years, I have my body back. And that is certainly something to celebrate! :)

My free time (what little I have) has been spent studying for my Advanced Metabolic Module test next week. My unit has some advanced educational opportunities for the nurses so we can train in different pt populations. We can have specialized training in Advanced Respiratory, Neurotrauma, Cardiac, and Metabolic pts, plus there's ECMO (extracorporeal membranous oxygenation, which is basically heart-lung bypass, which I will never touch). It involves class time, research, presentations, plus of course hands-on training with that pt population. Besides ECMO, the metabolic pts are the sickest and busiest and have a million things wrong with them - which means there's a million things I need to know for my oral testing next week. I'm sure I'll test out and wonder what I was so worried about, but right now it's stressful to try to learn everything and try to remember what an elevated GGT indicates and what electrolyte imbalances occur with a metabolic acidosis. Since Mira is mobile, the only times I have to study are after she goes to bed (which is when I'm ready for bed), or at work (which doesn't guarantee I'll have time to study). So this is a cause of more stress - I think I'll have to find a babysitter for her for a couple days in the next week so I can leave the house and cram.

The sad stuff involves funerals - not anyone very close to us but you'll see why these are sad. This weekend I went to the funeral of a child I took care of a LOT last summer. I calculated that I spent well over 200 hours taking care of him and he was hands down the sickest pt I've ever had. From a completely detached point of view, this poor boy needed to die. He was so sick for so long - I can't go into details because of HIPAA but he really is in a better place now. But it's beyond devastating for parents to lose their child, especially after going through so much. The parents both hugged me and told me "Thank you for all your help." That was so validating for me - the end result was the same, but at least I helped get him better so he could be at home with his family when he died. Maybe I did make a difference.

This next funeral made national news so everyone is probably already aware of it but I'll review the basics anyway. On January 4th, 12 officers from various Utah agencies went to serve a drug-related search warrant and the suspect shot 6 of them, killing one, Officer Jared Francom of the Ogden Police Department. Ogden is about 20 minutes north of us. The suspect, in a perfect just world, would have had his brains blown out at the scene. The department would have had a lawsuit from the family and they would settle out of court because it's easier and cheaper than going to court, but at least a jackass who had the audacity to purposefully shoot 6 police officers, who were doing their job to protect and serve, would be gone and taken care of. At least the prosecutor will be going for the death penalty, which he should. Obviously this is a subject that is very emotionally charged for me, as you might imagine. We don't personally know any of the officers involved but law enforcement is a very tight-knot brotherhood and you don't have to have personally known an officer killed in the line of duty to lose a brother. Mark goes on calls like this all the time. It could have been any officer. Every day an officer goes to work, they don't know if they'll come home safe. Most of the time they do. But there's always the chance that they won't, and they know that. Maybe that's one reason these police funerals are so hard - but they are absolutely incredible at the same time. It's worth seeing, if it didn't mean an officer had to die to see the amazing show of support from the law enforcement community. Apparently there were officers from Chicago and Philadelphia at this funeral. When an officer from Mark's dept was killed on duty a few years ago there were officers from as far away as Florida. Law enforcement is the perfect definition of a brotherhood. We weren't able to go to the funeral, even though we wanted to - Mark had to work his regular shift and that was when I was really feeling under the weather and I could barely get off the couch. But we watched the procession on TV and there were some amazing and beautiful pictures and videos posted. Here are some pictures.

Notice the firefighters saluting on the ladders

Just to explain this next video so it makes sense to everyone: at a police funeral they do something called a final 10-42. You'll hear a long beep, which alerts everyone on the radio to stand by for emergency radio traffic. Weber Dispatch calls on the radio for Officer Francom, whose number is Whiskey 12. Whenever an officer signs off duty at the end of his/her shift, they tell dispatch they are "10-42." Dispatch calls for the fallen officer 3 times, and when they don't get a response, they announce that officer is 10-42 and the end of watch. I can hold it together during a police funeral until the final 10-42 and then I lose it and bawl uncontrollably because it's so sad. Click on the link to see the video.

Officer Francom's Final 10-42

Here's another really touching video. Just to make it even sadder, someone put Josh Groban as the background music.

Officer Francom's Funeral

I will put up another post with more updates on Mira in a few days. I'll have more pictures and videos organized by then and I don't feel like adding them on here. I don't know why this has been so emotional for me, except that it's a harsh reminder to me, again, that who's to say something like this won't happen to Mark someday? Don't worry, I'm fine, I just need some more time to reflect and I'll be ready to have some cheerful posts again soon. And believe me when I say there will be some AWESOME cute pics! But just not here.

I'll end this with a poem - I think it sums everything up well. I'm sure most people who read this blog have some respect for police anyway, but maybe you can take an extra moment to truly appreciate what law enforcement does for the community.

"The Final Inspection"

The policeman stood and faced his God,
Which must always come to pass.
He hoped his shoes were shining.
Just as brightly as his brass.

"Step forward now, policeman.
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My church have you been true?"

The policeman squared his shoulders and said,
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't,
Because those of us who carry badges
can't always be a saint.

I've had to work most Sundays,
and at times my talk was rough,
and sometimes I've been violent,
Because the streets are awfully tough.

But I never took a penny,
That wasn't mine to keep....
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep.

And I never passed a cry for help,
Though at times I shook with fear.
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.

I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fear.

If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand.
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't.....I'll understand.

There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod.
As the policeman waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.

"Step forward now, policeman,
You've borne your burdens well.
Come walk a beat on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in hell."

Author Unknown