This won't hurt a bit...

The best job I ever had...

2009-09-13T20:11:00.005-04:00

I went to college and got a degree. I worked for several years, gainfully, in corporate America. The daily grind, the paperwork, the TPS reports (no lie, they were called TPS reports..). And when I started to feel unfufilled, I went back to college, got another degree and worked for a few more years in a wonderful, people serving, people helping, soul-satisfying job.

And then this past June, I got a new job.

The hours are crap -- and I've worked my fair share of nightshifts as a nurse. No salary -- in fact, the money I've spent to sustain this job is mind boggling. I had no training, no manuals and really, little relevant experience. But I was hired. And my only charge in this 24 hour gig is also my demanding boss, my task master, my impatient ruler and my giggle filled, spontaneously pooping, truly blessed gift from God.

And I've come to find out that the benefits are unmatched.

As bleary eyed as I might be after a sporadically slept night, the bright eyed, toothless smile from ear to ear that greets me over the rail of his crib as if to say, "Oh good!!!! You're awake too!! Now we're awake together!! What are we gonna do today?" makes my heart swell.

The sweet smell of his breath as he dozes so trustingly and snuggily on my chest. The knowledge that the folds of his chubby thighs and the clothes that I swear fit him yesterday that I can't snap closed today are because of the amazing, life giving milk only I can give him. And the quiet anticipation of the day I get my first hug from him - the first time he tells me he loves me, and the secret hope his first word is "Momma" (because my first word everyday and the last word of my prayers every night is "Ollie").

In a moment, on the evening of June 24th, I immediately understood that I would do anything, truly anything, for this blessed baby. And I immediately felt initiated into this amazing cult of motherhood. I have been entrusted by God to care for and rear this sweet child -- and I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to devote every fiber of my being to giving this child everything he needs to grow up happy, healthy and safe.

This is the best job I've ever had.

Deliver me. Please.

2009-06-07T14:28:00.005-04:00

Pregnancy is really magical. This tiny life that you (and likely someone else) created becoming their own person right inside you. You can feel their every movement. I marvel that after my initial role in pregnancy (ahem), that my body is already pre-programmed to crock pot this child for over 9 months knowing exactly what to do and when to do it. All I have to do is provide the fuel, the cargo room and the transportation.

There are a few big lies out there about pregnancy, though. And I realize I'm not the first pregnant woman to ever live, so perhaps my revelations aren't all that earth shattering. The biggest lie, however, is that pregnancy is 9 months. It ain't. Look it up. 40 weeks -- divided by a 4 week month is actually -- ha, 10 months. Which is probably why after 9 months most women, no matter how magical their experience, are totally ready to end the inside magic/ever-enlarging-ness and get to the outside magic/poo. We're psychologically programmed to "be done" after 9 months.

And I'm there.

Looking back, I can't believe that I've been pregnant for nearly a year. The morning sickness seems like ages ago, as does fitting into regular clothes. I think of the early months of worries that I will soon be trading in for a lifetime of different worries. And the strange anxiety to deliver a healthy baby as soon as possible because the thought of anything going wrong at this juncture of the pregnancy -- so close to the end -- would be all too terrible to fathom.

You know how when you learn a new word you somehow see that word all the time after that? Well, I think that phenomenon extends to pregnancy as well. I notice other pregnant women all the time. All of my television shows seem to be featuring pregnancy at one point or another. I also find it interesting that, per Hollywood, you cannot deliver any shocking news to a pregnant woman without her going into labor. If this is some secret trigger for labor, could someone please whisper something shocking to me soon?

I posted before about the amusing one liners I found myself on the receiving end of -- and, happily, they kept coming. I was recently in the hospital elevator -- taking the long trip to the top floor where I work. The elevator was full of miscellaneous visitors, myself and a male coworker. It was quiet. I was minding my own business. Suddenly my male coworker pipes up, shatters the peaceful silence and says unnecessarily audibly, "So, Cathy, am I the father of your baby?" Wow. I mean, Wow. Come up with a clever or, hell, appropriate retort to THAT. I, 40 shades of red, came up with, "No, my husband is. But thanks for asking."

For non-Facebook followers, I have been chronicling the ever growing girth and chunk of my in-utero son. 4 weeks before his due date, he was already 8 pounds. So you can imagine, if he's hanging out at a solid 8 pounds what *I* must look like. I get it. I'm big. Believe me, no one is more familiar with my hugeness than I am. But for some reason, people really feel the need to let me know just how big I am and how much it has shocked their day to have set eyes on a pregnant woman who is just so damned huge. I get that it isn't meant as an insult. I get that some humans (most of which I work with or encounter at my place of work..a strange gathering place for people with the mental disability of flowing thoughts right from their brains to their mouths ) are incapable of seeing something without immediately commenting on it -- it's a lack of the internal filter. What I have come to love more than the "Oh my God, you're huge!" comments (which, I openly admit I am getting crustier and crustier about responding to in the moment) are the "Oh my God, are you having twins?!" comments. When is it ever appropriate to comment on a woman -- nay, anyone's size? I am thankful that 1) I am not thin skinned (though, currently I am large skinned..) and that 2) these comments always start with "Oh my God", so that I am able to have that moment to steel myself to the upcoming remark, sigh loudly and thank them for their thoughtful observation.

In opposition to all of that -- I've had to wait 9 and a half months for a random stranger encounter that was actually 150% positive. Today, at the store, a woman shopping next to me said, "I just have to tell you how beautiful you look." Just like that. Maybe it was pity or maybe she works where I do, too and was once pregnant, or maybe, just maybe I really did look beautiful at that moment, but I stopped her, touched her arm and thanked her so very much for telling me that.

When I was first pregnant, I was told that my pregnancy was, sociologically speaking, community-owned. People see a pregnant woman and want to touch her and engage her. While it's magical for me, other people also think it's pretty magical to have a new, growing life inside someone else. It also freaks some people the-hell out. When I enter stores, men will hurry, unfailingly, to hold the door open for me -- their faces dripping with some mixture of trepidation and sheer panic that I might actually deliver a baby in front of them -- to their utter horror. (Funny sidebar -- I understand that this "door holding" thing is temporary. Hold the door for me when I'm pregnant, sure, but when I'm carrying a baby carrier or pushing a stroller, I'm on my own.)

I think that for men, even fathers, pregnancy is still a fairly mysterious process and they'd prefer to keep it that way. They know enough about how it happens, less about what happens during the pregnancy and only where babies come out. One of the Mister's co workers tells my Mister that fathers in the delivery room is far too modern a notion for him. When and if his wife has a baby (and to be honest, he'd have to actually snag himself a wife first.. ) he will be firmly entrenched in a waiting room with a box of cigars -- and that is his understood role. My Mister has been a champion during the whole process, really. I must commend him. He has read books, learned all the terms and asked thoughtful questions of the doctor. We recently had a trial run of pre-term labor at the hospital a few weeks ago. He calmly ushered me to the car and remained a pillar of strength and fortitude for our overnight stay. He didn't flinch at the gross stuff -- of which there was a fair amount -- and I half had expected him to, but he did leave the room for the IV insertion. Needles aren't his thing.

Our new son is anxiously anticipated to arrive in the next two weeks -- whether of his own accord or with some medical intervention. Everything that I could possibly make ready has been readied -- pregnant or no, I'm still terrifically Type A. Last weekend was spent cooking, baking and food-saving furiously -- frozen dinners of our typical fare all ready for the nights when neither of us will have any desire to cook. The bag is packed, the car seat installed. Even the cats have been prepped -- per baby book -- with diapers to sniff and other baby shiz to familiarize themselves with that thing that will completely usurp their place in our home and hearts.

Now we just need that baby. I hope to do proper introductions in my next post.

Meet our newest addition: Bizzaro

2009-06-04T12:46:00.004-04:00

No, no, not that newest addition.. I was referring to the neighborhood stray/ferral/someone-else's-outdoor-cat-that-just-prefers-our-deck. We noticed him last year when we first moved in. He came around every so often to sunbathe on our deck, chase birds and generally wreak havoc on our two indoor cats who would not bear the sight of another cat on what they considered to be their deck, even though they are indoor and know nothing of the deck.

And it is because of my cats' indoorness that from time to time I'd catch this other cat on our deck out of the corner of my eye and have a moment of sheer panic that my indoor cat had somehow found himself on the deck. All this because of the strange resemblance of outdoor cat to my indoor cat, Bernini. Hence, we have dubbed outdoor cat: Bernini's Bizzaro Twin, aka: Bizzaro.

Meet: Bizzaro. Seen here in his usual environment -- our deck. I think he looks so grumpy because I came out to photograph him and not to bring him his usual dish of food.

Compare to: Bernini. His expression is likely due to the shock that I wasn't at that moment bringing his food out to Bizzaro. And also a slight pleading expression that we not decide to adopt Bizzaro.

They walk alike, they talk alike and at times they even sleep alike. When kitties are two of a kind! Really, this is Bernini keeping close tabs on Bizzaro -- who couldn't be more disinterested in Bernini so long as the food keeps coming.

And that's what's gotten us into trouble. Bizzaro started making regular appearances around Easter. My nieces were here cooing about the new kitty outside, Bizzaro is so damned cute and he sits at our door crying that real "I'm super hungry!" kitty cry (come to think of it, all kitty cries sound like that...). And thus we, well, I, made the first fatal error: I fed him. The Mister duly scolded me for it, but the next day I caught him filling a bowl. And thus it has been even since. We are enablers. We are feeders. And to Bizzaro: we are suckers.

He couldn't be more friendly. He purrs, he does that kitty curly walk around your ankles when you come outside. My nieces, from one weekend with him, are taken with him and ask about him whenever they call. Really, he's like our dirty little ferral kitty secret.

The truth is, we don't know if Bizzaro has another family/families. He wears no collar and is perturbing our cats at all hours from the back deck. Sometimes I hear him as early as 5AM when I'm getting ready for work and we've seen him outside licking himself close to 11PM. We don't let him in the house -- he has no contact with our kitties, in case Bizzaro is really a Typhoid Bizzaro carrying all manner of kitty ailments.

But last night when that monsterous thunderstorm went through, The Mister heard the truly desperate pleas from the back deck -- Bizzaro was stuck in the downpour. He made a snap decision, grabbed Bizzaro and carried him through the house -- with our two cats, completely dumbstruck in horror, following close behind -- to the front porch where Bizzaro could at least be under cover for the duration of the storm. Our cats refused to speak to us for the rest of the night (even though *I* was upstairs and had nothing to do with the Bizzaro transportation..).

With our real new addition close to being a more tangible addition, it is desperately unlikely that we would actually adopt Bizzaro. Plus, I cherish the relationship with our current cats -- no matter how tenuous it is these days because of our consistently daily feeding of Bizzaro. We will likely take Bizzaro to the vet to have him scanned for an owner's microchip ID, and if that fails, we have purchsed a collar to put on Bizzaro with a little note asking the owner to please collar, and hell, FEED, the cat.

In the meantime, however, I have already set aside a little tupperware dish near the door with food in it for Bizzaro -- for whenever he shows up today.

Another blog for my mom

2009-06-02T12:44:00.002-04:00

Dear Mom,

With any luck, this will be the last photo you'll see of me before you cease to notice me at all. Oh, you might notice me as the person who brings to you the smaller, more important thing that you really want to see. I have come to terms with that.

Hope to see you soon -- and hope to have someone new to introduce you to by then.
Love,
C

Requiem for the birds

2009-04-02T15:53:00.003-04:00

I blog with bad news, friends. It would appear that this morning, as the Fed Ex guy attempted to deliver the Mister's weighty delivery (I hesitate to use the phrase "the Mister's weighty package" in a somber moment like this..) that something went horribly awry.

From what I can surmise, our dear single mother Robin must have done her usual dive-bomb at him as he attempted to bring the package to the porch. Perhaps it startled him, he discovered the nest on the door and thought he was doing us some big favor.

When I came downstairs, I found my cat crying at the front window. Outside lay the large Fed Ex package, the door wreath on top of it, the nest upside down, and sadly, friends, all four eggs shattered on the concrete of the porch. From my calculations, they would have been hatching in only a few days.

Maybe it's my hormones, or my compassion for gestating things is on overdrive at the moment, but I sat on my front porch in my pajamas crying and crying. (Naturally, I called the Mister and tearfully told him that his Fed Ex delivery was bathed in the blood of baby birds. He thinks I ought to call Fed Ex. For what? So I can hear the guy on the other end of the phone chuckle at the loony lady calling about his delivery driver smashing a few eggs?)

I rehung the wreath in high hopes that Robin will come again and perhaps give us another chance to foster her brood (though I learned that the correct term for a nest of eggs is "clutch"). I buried the little eggs under our rose bush -- perhaps overdoing the sentimentality of the situation. Rest in peace little Shadrach, Meshach, Abendnego and Egg.

Bird is the word. Subtitled: If you ring my doorbell, duck.

2009-03-26T17:19:00.004-04:00

Oh, what a lovely door and an even lovelier spring wreath -- you might say. That's what I said, at least.

And then I got a closer look.

And an even closer look.

It seems that in a matter of less than two weeks, my new wreath and not-new door have become home to a knocked up, single mother bird who desperately needed a spot to harbor her eggs. Momma bird works fast.

I do not have any strange bird paranoias (unlike some Besties I know, ahem.). My main thing with birds nesting on my front door are thusly:

1) The high potential for bird poop on my door and surroundings.
2) The higher potential that a startled bird -- Momma or otherwise -- may fly INTO the house when the front door opens. Then I have cats who will go bitchcakes. Or keep sleeping. Either is likely.
3) Everytime someone attempts to ring the bell/knock, there a flurry of bird flying at their head. My sister in law can attest to this -- in fact, this is how we found said nest.
4) The constant cheeping and worm barf that comes with newborn birds.

I addressed my concerns with the Mister who believes that we ought to leave the birds alone. Not because he has any real, deep bird love, but because he does not want to mess with "baby-things karma". Addling birds eggs might not leave us in a favorable light, karma-wise, considering our current baby-thing and nesting tendencies. A fair point.

So the bird & eggs stay.
1) Bird poop will be cleaned up on an as-needed basis.
2) Birds in the house will be dealt with -- either with feline intervention or a broom -- I feel we can't really be faulted for this.
3) My aunt suggests a note of caution to those entering the porch.
4) Wikipedia says baby birds stay in the nest for 2 weeks. I can deal with the cheeping for that long.

In that case, I decided to align myself with the bird and potential birds. I named them. Robin is the mom. Duh. And her babies are: Shadrach, Meshach, Abendnego and Egg. I thought there were only 3 eggs, to learn upon my camera footage there were actually 4. And by that point I had already hit my creative contrete wall of bird names.

Bird updates to follow?

For a show I don't fraking watch, I sure do know a lot about it.

2009-03-21T20:46:00.002-04:00

No, I don't watch Battlestar Galactica. I'm married to someone who does and have occasionally stumbled into the room to see it, but, again, I reiterate, No, I don't watch it. And no, I really don't care to. Yeah, I know. It's a great show. No, no, "It's a deep, complicated, engaging show!" says my Mister. In fact, and I mean this with no ill-intent, I usually sleep through it. The Mister lovingly cues it up on the Tivo about 20 minutes after 10pm each Friday night, and that somehow Pavolvian-ly triggers me to begin my 40 minute nap on the couch.

I know, I know you're going to tell me if I would just watch the first few episodes I'd be all hooked. No, really, thank you. And I certainly have no intention of ribbing those of you who have chosen B.G. as a lifestyle choice.

Part of my problem is that I'm in too many T.V. show committed relationships already. I can't get involved with who is or is not a cylon. Who fraked a cylon. I can't manage mental tallies of who we know for sure would appear in a cylon directory.

And for all that not watching I do of B.G., I have a few complaints.

1) And I think you'll all agree: Does it just bug the nuts out of you when an actor whose character not yet dead on one show appears on another show as a different character -- like you weren't going to notice. Like you can totally watch show #2 and not think that, say, Starbuck has really cashed in her B.G. chips when she's all geared up to play the tattooed, oversexed anesthesiologist on Nip/Tuck. Incidentally, I wouldn't have noticed this except that the Mister, who does not watch N/T (He has no intention of watching it except that he's married to someone who does and occasionally stumbles into the room when it's on.), blurted out in one of his passing-bys, "Hey, that's the chick who plays Starbuck."

2) Starbuck, by sheer mention of her name, makes me want coffee. They ought to have given her a more clever name. Or hell, at least a brighter disposition to carry such a sunshiney name.

3) The Mister assures me I am mistaken, and maybe I, by my presence alone, just bring it out in shows -- but B.G. seems like soft porn. I know, coming from someone who watches Nip/Tuck. But for real. As rarely as I'm in the room, someone's always having some serious space-sex. And they aren't always too terribly discriminating about that whole "with-whom" part. Dead people, real people, real robot looking people, people with creepy eyepatches.. I thought their world was being destroyed? I thought each one of them was plagued with creepy, reoccuring dreams? I thought their junk-heap ship, La Galactica, was on its last space leg and they were pleading to their too-numerous-to-count gods for answers? Peeps seem pretty down with all that to be getting it on so much.

4) And why did Creepy Eyepatch Dude choose a skin-toned eyepatch? That just made it extra creepy, sir. And how did C.E.Dude land the hottie with such a creepy eyepatch? See, it could only happen in space. Though pirates are near and dear to me, an eyepatch on a man is a deal breaker. Unless the eyepatch is obtained post-first date. And even then it demands some reconsideration. Be honest, you agree. I'll say it, I'm an eyepatch-ist.

5) Funny that all of your little baby fighter ship things run just fine, but that big one that you park them on is falling apart. Might want to have the mechanic take a look at it.

6) Where's the funny guy? The guy who lightens up the mood with a great one-liner? Perhaps if the show is pre-Earth they haven't made anti-depressants yet, because everyone's so gloomy. Or if the show is post-Earth they didn't have enough cargo room to store the medication for 38,000 people tooling around space.

I'd go on, primarily about the finale, but I fear that a few of you have not yet seen it and I'd hate to fill your mind with questions at that, the most final of finales.

Seriously. I don't watch the show.

A blog for my Mom.

2009-03-11T18:14:00.002-04:00

"Some people have cats and go on to lead normal lives."

2009-03-11T17:50:00.003-04:00

Still being relatively childless, I do frequently find myself photographing the antics of my cats. We have two of them. Bernini, the first born, has grown into quite a large, voluminous cat of massive proportion (The Mister calls it '"fat". I call it "extra".). He's sweet, simple and functions entirely on instinct. Hershey is our petite, conniving and cunning cat. She thinks things through. She processes. I dare say, she reasons it out. I'm very thankful she is without the capability of speech because she would best me at debate.

Bernini, sweet and simple, I think, frequently forgets that Hershey exists. When he discovers her, which it seems like several times a day he has to introduce himself for the first time to her, his instinct tells him to Alpha-Cat himself on her. She really loves this, let me tell you. And it's a good thing she's about 1/3 of his size because she darts a lot more efficiently than he can chase. Sometimes, though, size counts. And often we'll hear her cries and find Bernini firmly entrenched on Hershey, who is helpless to escape. (At this point you're like, "Holy crap. Have the baby already and stop writing deep and thoughtful explanations of your cats in your blog.")

I give you: The Anatomy of a Cat Fight

First, there's some pushing.

And then there's some shoving.

Then Bernini asserts his Alpha-Catness and sits on Hershey.

Then Hershey finally dons the look of submission.

Then Bernini leaves.

...And a little something for dog lovers:
A woman at work was telling me that she has a beautiful, 12 year old pure-bred Labrador. That she hates. She bought the dog as a puppy years ago from a breeder and has since had nothing but years of dog pee, disseminated, chewed kitchen trash, barking, jumping, humping, etc. She lives on several acres and over the years has seen the dog take off out the back door into the wilds of her acreage, unable and unwilling to be caught. A few hours, sometimes days later he returns covered in who-knows-what, but lovingly covers her furniture with it.

A few weeks ago the dog took off, as usual. Only this time he hasn't come back. And she's not all that terrifically upset about it. No one in her family is. Maybe he's happily eating someone else's trash. And that someone else is really happy about it. Last week as she shopped at her grocery store, she saw the sign from her local SPCA with a giant picture of HER dog on it.

"The poster has his picture on it, and under the picture it says 'Labrador-mix'," she told me.

"Well, I mean, that's great, right? Are you going to go get him?" I asked.

"Hell no I'm not going to get him. But I am thinking I might call them anonymously."

"What, to tell them that he's yours but that you can't keep him and he has behavioral issues not conducive to your home life?"

"No. To tell them that I paid $700 to a breeder for him 12 years ago -- he's not a MIX. He's pure-bred. He's got papers!" she said.

"So, you want to correct their advertising."

"Yes. I was insulted that they called him a 'mix'. So, do you think the SPCA has caller ID?"

She's having a baby. Subtitle: Let's not get stupid, people.

2009-03-05T12:37:00.005-05:00

So I guess the beans have been spilled, the cat's out of the bag, the fertilized ovum left the fallopian tube.. It's visually and theoretically impossible to deny that I am growing a new human being in my body. And it's all been good news so far, so I don't mind penning a little tongue-in-cheek blog about it (since that tongue-in-cheek's what got me into this mess to begin with! BA-DUM DUM).

First off, it's freaky weird to be doing this. At first, it seemed like quite the bum deal to be so sick all the time -- and so spontaneously, too. I told the Mister that he better love this one a whole heck of a lot because I couldn't guarantee that any amount of mother nature's pregnancy-amnesia hormones that everyone talks about could make me forget lying on the couch unshowered, nauseous, starving, weepy and praying for death -- and want to do it again. Let's not forget my strange, very sudden and ridiculously strong aversion to poultry. Who knew?

And who let the hormones in? Shortly after our brand new, cherry red washer and dryer were delivered -- by "shortly after" I mean: 4 hours -- the washer broke. So all of that enviornmentally sound, tree hugging goodness that the washer assured me of, was lost after running for 4 hours on the first load (that first load pictured in the last blog..). I fell asleep on the couch (Oh yeah, pregnancy induced fatigue boarding on narcolepsy... Good thing I have always been a friend of "the nap") and awoke 4 hours later, not to my nearly-dry-spun clothing ready for the dryer, but to a load of clothing that was being washed, spun, drained, washed, spun, drained over and over. I called the kind people at Sears only to explain my washer/dryer dilema through a completely unexpected and unwarrented haze of tears and wimpers. The lady on the other end of the line seemed understandably confused at my emotional upheaval over appliances. "I'm *sniff* really sorry *wimper*, ma'am. I'm not *sniffle* this upset about the *wimper* washer, I'm just pregnant *snort* and have just found myself in *wimper* tears. Really, *big snort* I'm fine." Then I got, for the first of many times, the relieved response (because now she's dealing with a hormonal pregnant lady and not a certifiable nutjob who really loves appliances), "OHHHHHH! Honey, it's ok. We'll get it all fixed up." (And they did -- new washer and dryer chugging along enviornmentally well these days, thank you.). Meanwhile, my Mister comes home to find me in the kitchen sobbing over the calander, working out a new delivery date with the now-very-understanding Sears lady thinking that judging by my current emotional display I must have been molested by the new washer and dryer. Through the tears I explained that I was fine, the washer didn't lay a hand on me and that the Sears lady was making it all better.

I recently found online a shirt that I'm seriously considering purchasing. It reads:
Yes, I'm pregnant.
Yes, it's my first.
It's a boy.
No, we don't have a name yet.
He's due in June.
I am feeling fine, thanks.

Because that's all I'm saying anymore. Which brings me to my next point -- if women have been having babies for thousands of years -- the platitude that everyone seems to offer a pregnant woman when she worries about any aspect of her pregnancy -- then why does EVERYONE else get to say ridiculously stupid things to said pregnant woman? Pregnant women should be old-hat. We should blend right into society like the elderly -- just another sect of the population that we all know exist but don't need to make asinine comments to/about -- but mainly "to", in my case.

So I've been keeping this mental tally of all the comments -- however unintened -- that have come my way. I joke that I ought to write a book about them, but in actuality, it would be like 3 pages long, since the comments are short. And no one but pregnant women would buy it. And they wouldn't buy it because they're penning their own books about the stupid things said to them. So I figured I'd just go cheap and blog it.

#1: I'm now 6 months pregnant. Which means I've been pregnant for 6 months. Which is a long time. I was sick -- like, pregnant-sick, for the first, say, 3 months of that time. And in all that time, I've had the same job with the same co workers. So why is it that everytime -- and I mean, probably twice a day -- I see this particular nurse that I work with -- she asks me if:
a) I had any morning sickness. (clearly she forgot about my cracker inhaling, ginger-ale slurping filled days all those months ago)
b) if I'm still feeling sick anymore.
Now, I get that she's asking out of concern and sincere interest. But you asked me that 3 hours ago and I told you:
a) yes, a lot. and
b) no, not in the last few months.
And when you asked me that yesterday, twice, I told you:
a) yes, a lot. and
b) no, not in the last few months.

#2: Earlier on, I was having lunch with another co worker -- I add, a coworker I rarely see, am not terribly acquainted with and had never eaten with prior. It was a rare occasion -- both the 'having lunch' and the 'with a coworker' aspects. Hey, my job is busy. We chit chat about stuff and then we have this dialogue:
Her: So how far along are you?
Me: Uh, about 11 weeks.
Her: *disgusted face* Ugh, that's when I had my abortion. I couldn't wait. I was showing and everything, I was disgusting. Are you showing yet?
Me: .....

How does one find an appropriate retort to the old "that's when I had my abortion" comment? I get that we had a lot in common with eachother -- the commonground being pregnant-to-11-weeks part. But I feel our paths diverged from there.

#3: I'd like to group these comments into one section just because it was outburst of commentary on my physique that I appreciated. These comments explained to me why there are shirts for pregnant women that say, "No, I'm not fat. I'm just pregnant.":
"I can tell you're pregnant. Your face has gotten all fat."
"Oh! There it is! You're waddling!"
"You're pregnant? Oh, ok. I just thought you were getting a fat stomach."
"You can see that you're pregnant by your ass."
"Are you sure you want to be eating that? Seeing as how you're just going to be getting fat anyway, I thought you'd be wanting to cut back."

If I didn't have a husband who honestly and sincerely tells me how beautiful I look, good friends who comment on "the glow" and a scale that says I am gaining exactly what I ought to be gaining, I could see how I might be calling the Sears lady back to cry legitimately.

And what is with all the touching? People I work with touching me is weird enough, but strangers? I know this is, like, the most commonly hated aspect of pregnant women -- and people joke about it -- but people still touch you. Oh, right, I know. I should be glad to share this wonderful thing, and I should be glad that people, even total strangers, are happy for me. That's great. I'm happy that they're happy for me. But you touching me, and rubbing me BELOW MY BELTLINE is unacceptable. You might as well touch and rub my boob. Because it would be equally as weird and inappropriate. Plus, Hi. I'm a healthcare worker. I know what is, or what could potentially be on your hands. Thanks for rubbing it on my shirt and a mere few inches of skin and tissue from my unborn, immuno-comprimised child.

I was explaining this phenomenom to my Mister and he says, "What's the big deal? People are just excited for you." I say, "I know they're excited, but can't they be excited with their eyes and not with their hands? How would you feel if you told people you were an expectant father and everyone grabbed and rubbed your crotch to congradulate you -- just because they were excited for you?" He says, "Well, what would be bad about that?"

I am admittedly just starting to sigh and let the touching/rubbing just happen. I am helpless to stop it. I feel like I just need to join the ranks of the molested pregnant woman. What kills me is now at work, the older women -- the touchers -- will have one or, ha, two hands on my belly and carry on a totally non-baby-related conversation with me. For example, "Hey, Cathy. *two hands on and rubbing* Did you page the doctor about that patient yet? I was thinking *rubbing, rubbing* that we might want to move that patient to a different unit."

I once read a Dave Barry column that said that you ought not to comment on a pregnant women actually being pregnant unless you can see a baby physically emerging from her body. I think that's a fair statement. Yesterday I had my first spontaneous-stranger-spotter. I was in the elevator at work. Reading a Newseek. So I wasn't rubbing my belly. I wasn't saying outloud, "Oh, hello baby in my womb.." (Yes, I read Newsweek and, indeed, I read them in elevators at major metropolitan hospitals. I work on the highest floor. It's a long ride down. I take reading material. What?) A woman comes onto the elevator and after a moment she says, "Oh, when are you due?!" And for a moment, I panicked. Thinking: Christ, am I that big?! (And then we went into the usual script: June. Yeah, it's my first. Very excited. It's a boy. Nope, no names. I'm feeling great, thanks.)

But you know what? It really is exciting, for all my huffing and puffing. I've spent a blog complaining about the freaky parts, but the wonderful parts are the sincere excitement of my friends and family. The friends who haven't seen me in a few weeks whose mouths go agape and say, "Holy crap! You're having a baby!" Being woken up in the night because my little human is kicking/punching/mamboing wildly in his cramped quarters. The box of children's books that magically showed up on my front porch from a book-loving college friend (we've already started reading them to him, C, thanks!). The sister in law who arrived with little blue baby shoes with airplanes on them for my piloting Mister -- to counteract all the pirate stuff I've been buying.

And when, and if, #2 comes along I hear the fanfare is way, way less enthusiastic. So I ought to zip it, let the belly hang out, encourage people to feel me up now in these next three months before I have an actual baby for them to rub and hopefully not molest in the truest sense of the word.

How I know I've passed into Adulthood. By: Cathy

2009-01-21T13:48:00.002-05:00

Because I got new appliances for Christmas from the Mister, delivered today, and was SUPER stoked about it.

Awesomeness extends to their functionality, efficiency and environmentally friendliness. But primarily to their REDNESS. My sweet new cherry-red front-load washer and dryer. The first load is efficiently washing now (you've got to get the scent of 2 million other people off your clothes somehow, right?).

And it makes a super awesome cat-toy.

In-Awe-guration

2009-01-21T11:03:00.008-05:00

I came, they inaugurated, I nearly froze to death.

I could opine here about how wonderful it was to be there (it was!), despite the cold (it was!). Or about how being in that crowd of 2 million other shivering Americans really made the "We are one" more real (it sort of did, until I was very nearly and very literally smacked down by a vexed teenager who decided to use my mother's short stature as her camera tripod and I had to step in -- but in all fairness, she was the only disgruntled of the 2 million I encountered yesterday, well, her and her pesky sidekick who actually raised her hand for a moment to perform said threatened smack down of yours truly.). But you know all this. You've seen the little interviews on the news and the blurbs in the paper about what it meant to people who were going, who were there and those who were totally bummed that they couldn't make it.

It was all of those things. It was also, secretly, my hope that they took some really big aerial shot of the National Mall and in twenty-some-odd years it'll appear in a middle school textbook and I'll point at it knowingly (because, to chip away at the creepy thought of me having any access to a middle school textbook, it might be my kid's?) and say, "Hey, I was standing right there, near the Washington Monument's corral of well-supplied porta-potties (seriously, they were really well supplied.. overstocked, almost) on the backside of a grassy incline where you couldn't see much but pressed your ear into the cold air to hear it all go down over the loud speakers and tried to avoid being smacked down on a day of much hope and change."

I spent nearly the entirety of the day holding hands with my mom -- because she's my mom but primarily so I didn't lose her and more importantly, she didn't lose me. At times, particularly when we got close to the Mall, I felt as if I could have just picked up my feet and been been carried, rather smashed, with the undulating crowds. People, inexplicably, brought babies strapped to their chests, toddlers clinging to their ankles and strollers that would knock you in the back of the leg in the rush. People, inexplicably, thought it was an excellent time to light a cigarette and proudly smoke it while having 80% of your body surface touching other people.

I have since heard that there were no major incidents, few injuries - none of which were even remotely life threatening, and that DC Police have reported no arrests from yesterday.

I have never before seen so many people in my entire life. I have never before been in such a big crowd. I have never before felt my bones vibrate with the sound of one crowd's unanimous cheer. I have never before spontaneously hugged and been spontaneously hugged by so many strangers -- all of us celebrating the same thing.

So enough with the drippy emotions. Here is what I saw. Or in some cases, didn't see.
A few viewing rules and disclaimers:
1) I love my camera. Except that sometimes when I try to take a picture of something and a small fraction of that frame is in motion -- say, 2 million people assembling on a large open space -- the frame can go blurry. I can't help that. I'm a nurse, not a camera technician or a photojournalist.
2) My visual appearance varies very little from picture to picture due to my staple winter-weather attire. That might not bother you, and you very likely may not have noticed it. But in uploading each picture I kept saying to myself, "Damn, I look retardedly the same in every shot." I've dealt with it. You do the same.

Inaugural crowd rules stated no bags allowed. So my mom created her own stash. And she had EVERYTHING in that pocket, man. I'm convinced if I hadn't dragged her out of the hotel room when I did, she'd have thought of a reason to stash the bed linens, too. Oh, right, and my mom and I look nothing alike. I get that a lot.

The early throng of inaug-goers on my hotel block.
For non-Metro DC-ers, this is the 3rd street tunnel which runs under the National Mall as part of a major highway that bisects Metropolitan DC. The whole road was closed Tuesday and was used as a pedestrian tunnel -- which for someone who has driven this stretch countless times (ie: me) it was strange to be walking on it.

He didn't even vote for Obama, won't directly benefit from his administration, but hey, Canada knows what's up. Holla 'atcha!

And then the going started to get thick.

And then "the going" was some new classification of "thick" that was closer to "stationary". Looking back at the Washington Monument. Inaugural-shiz occurring behind me.

Said corral of porta-potties and my mom's hand/camera. To pretend to watch the inauguration, our backs were to these poopers. Cha, we were pretty far back. At one point people were climbing on top of the potties for better viewing (if I thought for a single second I could puzzle out how to get onto one, I might have considered it. ). For one dude, he wasn't having any of it -- and because it was either his job or because he thought it ought to be his job -- decided to clear off those rabble-rousers from the Johns and started rocking each one back and forth to force its up-top occupant off. Which, incidentally, prompted much wall beating from the inside occupant who probably saw their life -- and other things -- flash before their eyes, trapped in a rocking porta-pottie. That is NOT how I'd want to die, man.

Well, this was my historic view of history.

As the going started to get thinner I decided I ought to start making some photographic memories for the unborn grandkids. Just to prove to them that it was more than me pointing at their middle school textbooks. I needed real proof.

One of the better souvenirs being hawked along the way. The official Obama hand puppet. Which was funny, but as we got closer, appeared a little creepy. Trillions of vendors selling the same crap left little for me, the avid souvenir shopper. Until I happened to overhear one lowly vendor shouting about his wares. Official (and everything being sold yesterday was indeed Official) Obama condoms. Mine says, "The Ultimate Stimulus Package". Can you beat that? Can you? And more so, can you beat dragging your half frozen mother to a stand to watch you sift through condoms and then actually buy some? On second thought, it would have been stranger if she had dragged me back.

And then the strangest thing to happen to me on Tuesday:
I met Don King in our hotel lobby -- which went something like this:

Scene: Hotel Lobby
Mom and Cathy enter, shivering and commenting about how got-damn glad they are to be back at the hotel by the most ass-backward, long way thanks to DC Police street closings, in the warmth and geez, a nap sure does soun....
Cathy: HOLY SHIT! THAT'S DON KING! Or at least someone with really unfortunate Don King hair.
Mom: Whoooo?
and... SCENE.

Don King, ladies and gentlemen, who was MORE than willing to take several pictures with me and kept calling me "Baby" as only Don King could do. And everytime I had to address Don King, I actually called him "Don King". As in, "Excuse me, Don King, but could I get a picture with you?" and "It was such a pleasure to meet you, Don King." You know, I never pegged myself as someone who accosted celebrities for photos. Especially since if I had my pick of celebrity accosting-photos, it would not be Don King I would choose to accost. (Especially since my mother chose to tell me later that the day before, she was walking the touristy streets of DC and aided two young ladies in taking their picture with "some white-haired guy from CNN with a really, really well tailored overcoat". Cha. My mom met Anderson Cooper without knowing it, without telling him how utterly awesome he is, without saying that his premature white hair looks so distinguished on him and he has flawless skin, without mentioning that his mother's idea of "boot leg jeans" is a joke (his mother is Gloria Vanderbilt), without saying that her daughter has only been madly in love with him (and hello, knows who his mother is) since his early days of Channel One news in homeroom when she was a freshman in high school, without chloroforming him and bringing him back to her daughter's love-lair...) However, it might come as no surprise that Don King is known for little else these days than his love of being in photos -- regardless of who might be taking them and for what purpose. So really, rather than being that stereotypical, photo-snapping Joe-American, I was really making Don King's day. (Or else I've just created a very elaborate justification and I really would go bitchcakes around one of my celebrities de jour.) And let's be honest, I'm nearly positive at least a quarter of my brain cells were frozen at that point, so I can't really be held liable for the decisions and accostments I made that day.

So, in summation: in the chanted words of my countrymen yesterday -- Yes, We Did.

We sure, the hell, did.

What you didn't expect to hear at 7AM coming into work today....

2009-01-09T21:00:00.002-05:00

At the start of each shift, the new nurses coming on get a quick brief about the patients on the unit from the nurses coming off. For patients who try to get out of bed, are combative or a host of other issues, we put their beds in the hall for better visibility from the nurses station -- a bed in the hall now saves a lawsuit later, right?

At the morning meeting, the night charge nurse said, "Oh yeah, and the old guy in the hall? Don't walk too close. He's a boob grabber. And after he grabs you, he'll start playing with himself."

The best part of this story -- and you didn't think it could get better -- was actually somehow being in the hall at the same time when he "caught" one of the older nurses who bent over him to fix his gown. I admit I was not much help to her as I was laughing too hard.

Holy crap, I love my job.

Much to OPEC's chagrin....

2008-12-12T21:06:00.001-05:00

I just filled up my 16 gallon tank for less than $26.

Nice.

Here endeth the lesson

2008-12-02T22:24:00.003-05:00

Just so you're all sufficiently warned, the following is a story that will make you sit way back in your ergonomically sensible office chair and say to yourself, "Phew. Am *I* glad I picked a job where I can sit here in my ergonomically sensible office chair and check email all day and NOT do what Cathy does all day. Damn. Her job is way gross. Just thinking about it makes me want to vomit in the back of my mouth a little bit. I can't believe she warned me and I still read that blog. So gross.... OOOO, I got an IM from someone!"

As I've mentioned before, our unit gets our fair share of nursing students. As a good nurse, I take sometimes several students with me throughout the day to teach but more likely keep as a captive audience for 12 hours to listen to my terribly bad jokes. Today was no different.

So my patient, an elderly gentleman who speaks no English, which doesn't matter because he actually doesn't speak thanks to the series of strokes he's had over the years, cannot take anything orally -- also thanks to the series of strokes he's had over the years. So when he (uh oh! Here comes some medical jargon you've likely heard on E.R. or House!) spiked a temp today the only way to administer the Tylenol to bring down his fever was either through his feeding tube or.. um, the other way. Pills down his feeding tube were out of the running. And I bet you didn't know that your dear friend Tylenol makes and markets little bullet shaped suppositories that just go.. VOOP! up the pooper.

I assembled my gloves, lube and little magic Tylenol bullet and gathered my students. "Watch what I do and then we'll talk about why I did it this way." Don gloves. Open bullet. Apply lube to bullet. Position patient. Make attempt at explanations and apologies to patient. and in one quick gesture so you don't have to ruminate too long about where your finger is.. VOOP! up the pooper. (It's at this point when you're making a face and hating my job, right?)

As I pulled my hand away, somewhat.. uh, sullied, one of the students gasped and said, "Holy crap, the glove on your finger BROKE! GROSS!"

Cooly, I held up my hand. The gloved part on my pooper finger broken and rolled back. In my coolest, all knowing voice I said, "And that's when you weren't paying attention, ladies. When dealing downtown, you always double glove."

A lesson I think we might all take something away from. Always double glove.

Updates, delicious leftover updates... with gravy

2008-11-28T17:56:00.020-05:00

Its been a long, wild trip these past few months. And by long, I mean about 5 miles from the old house to the new house. Let's review:

First we lived in this house. We had the only, most lovely tree on the street that bloomed for one precious week a year (seen here) in all out vibrant pink and then spent the rest of April pooping pink petals all over the 'hood. And it was charming and cozy and we didn't have to get to know our neighbors because not only did we not speak their language (or do decent charades..), but knowing what dialect that was added more chaos to our would-be neighborly good will. Ahh, the melting pot of Northern Virginia.Then we did a little bit of this "SOLD" action. With a great deal of thanks to my Catholic superstition, clever staging, adorably irresistible cat and savvy real estate agent, we unloaded the place onto a lovely young couple (which, by referring to them thusly, makes us as a couple sound terrifically aged.) who were about to join hearts and hands in blessed (and sometimes not-so-blessed, can I get an "AMEN!"?) matrimony.

And have now found ourselves the proud owner of this little beaut. That front porch is going to the future home of an honest-to-God porch swing come spring. We just need to figure out if the original builders intended for such a thing to be affixed to the porch roof. Say "adios" to visitor spots, parking passes and street parking and a great big "hello, lover" to that driveway, seen here in half of it's driveway glory (Snow shoveling? Not it.). And although we do live in Virginia and it would be most appropriate to have one, we live in Northern Virginia, so no, that truck ain't ours. Ladder, neither. We have a backyard with grass now and not dirt because the shade of the townhouse row behind us inhibits the growth of vegetation.

And then there was the matter of the actual move. For some reason, as many of you know, moving boxes are insanely expensive. It's cardboard. What on earth makes it ok to charge so got-damned much for these things? No matter. As I thankfully learned, I work at a veritable cardboard FACTORY. That's right, you guessed it: A hospital. Whilist I slave away on the 10th floor, glamoursly ankle deep in body fluids and doling out immeasureable amounts of comfort and kindness, the real dirty work is happening in the bowels of the place (ha, hospital joke! bowels.. ha!). Endless shifts of doozers unload hospital stock and leave mounds of totally decent, large, strong boxes in their wake. I spent the better part of a month bringing home as many boxes as I could each shift. Which was great -- free boxes. Which ended up being bad when the movers arrived and turned out to be literate. Our movers, mercifully, didn't judge us long. When their faces said: "Where in the hell did you get these boxes, crazy?" I jumped in with a longer-than-needed explanation on where exactly I procured them.

My boxes:
Don't worry, Mr. Mover. We practice safe-moving -- we use latex.

Wow, nothing is creepier than a box full of isolation gowns (which, incidentally, are remarkably warm to wear when on the night shift and you didn't bring a hoodie). You might ask: What requires isolation and what makes it so black-tie that it requires a gown? And I'd answer: Most of my MRSA ridden patients and hey, we're just fancy like that.
Enviornmentally unfriendly, perhaps -- but more importantly, nurse-sanity-ensuring friendly. They are underpads, and they are disposable.

Water that can't have babies. It's sterile.

The ever-popular: BEDPAN. OOO, and it's "pontoon style". (Remind me to regale you sometime about how I personally invented -- and might soon patent -- a technique involving hospital-issue maxi pads to keep these particular bedpans from sticking to the tender backsides of the elderly who like to sit for prolonged periods of time.)

I find personal cleansing better than impersonal cleansing. And I like personal cleansing so much I often times find myself striking a similar pose.

So then we moved.

And we celebrated our first wedding anniversary. (I hear that statistically if we can make it to 7 years that our chances of splitsville go way down.. 6 years to go! Unless it isn't working out, then .. 5 years to go! Oh, how I jest. Catholics don't divorce. We just live in tight lipped silent treatments until our 50th wedding anniversaries!) Now someone, and I really must find out who, decided that you must somehow preserve the top of your wedding cake and then eat it on your first anniversary -- regardless of whatever other bacterium are also eating your cake a year later due to your poor storage methods. Luckily for us, someone gifted us with a FoodSaver for our wedding. The top of our delicious cake was its first victim and has made the move then from its site of origin in Pittsburgh, Pa for the wedding to our house in Virginia. And then again moved in a cooler to the new house (see our new little beaut way above) this past month. So you can imagine my reluctance and perhaps my overactive professional healthcare experience about consuming any portion of year-old cake. Compounded with the fact that, as mentioned before, cake happens to be the most blessed substance on earth to me. Year old cake, however, does not elicit from me the same inner fuzziness. And I really hate to have any personal problems with any member of the cake family.

As indicated by the enthusiastic thumbs-up from my mostly-better-half, the cake (precious, precious Red Velvet..) ended up not being all that terrible. It wasn't so great that I went on the house the rest of the cake, but it also wasn't so bad that I ate it for good measure and posterity and then drove myself to the E.R. to have my stomach pumped before I suffered food poisoning. So that was positive.

And then before you knew it, it was time to playfully hack images into unsupecting vegetables. My older sister has an annual pumpkin carving party at her house -- her young girls invite school pals to come in costume and paint pumpkins and bring their adult parents to drink beer and fuss about having to carve a child-selected pattern. Every year my Mister chooses a pumpkin pattern, conceals it, carves in near solitude and then has a big unveil when everyone says : Holy crap, who did THAT one?

His first year it was Yoda. The party had already moved off the driveway and into the house for dinner, the sun had set and my then Boyfriend was out in the dark carving in the dim beams of the porch light.

His Homer Simpson was so delicate that by the next morning, the fine lines of Homer's face had all nearly caved in. But it had one glorious night of jack-o-lanterning.

This year, I believe the Mister truly outdid himself. While I don't intend to open a political forum here, the choice was clear this year. And the pumpkin said it all:
Yeah, that Count von Count from Sesame Street was mine. It was pretty awesome. Sadly, no one fought over the Count like they fought over Barack. Because my sister lives a distance greater than the Mister felt comfortable transporting Barack over, a bit of a row broke out between mother and sister about whose front porch Barack would grace come All Hallows Eve. Again, no one fought over the Count. Bastards.

And at last we find ourselves celebrating that gorge fest that is Thanksgiving. Remembering, of course, of all the wonderful memories we've had to be thankful about. All the little and big things, blessings and things that may not have seemed like blessings at the time but probably were, and for all the good things that the future holds.

I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time in my own home, on my own dishes. And damnit, I cooked a turkey. (Really, they kind of cook themselves.. it seems a lot harder than it is..) My real pleasure, actually, was getting to use my wedding china -- which I had not even unpacked and in some cases even un-gift wrapped. I got to really fance it up with fancy china, silver and crystal. And who enjoyed it most out of my Mister and I and my inlaws?

The cat.

In the next 7 days I will be 30. Feel free to leave all your well wishes here or in gift form. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I think I'm pretty glad to be out of my 20s, and yet I always thought 30 was so grown up and I don't feel that way yet. You 30 year olds will have to weigh in on sorting through the emotions of my 4th decade of life (yeah, the fourth. Count it out.)

And because we're still that childless-couple, we take pictures with our cats. (The Mister vetoed any sort of holiday decoration for the cats, who would have been decidedly more pissed off looking festooned with Santa hats..) Besides, do you have any idea how hard it is to make two cats look in the same direction for the duration of a shutter snap?

In case I resort to my slacker ways and not blog until I have a litany of things and pictures to share, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Feliz Snow!

Tidbits, Morsels and Shneckins

2008-09-14T21:40:00.004-04:00

The best 30th birthday cake. Evah. It even includes 30 mini cupcakes. Cake genius.

Every 30 year old secretly wants a Star Wars birthday party.

Complete with Pin/Stick-The-Thing-On-Darth-Vader. Sadly, the birthday boy came in second.

This is how the cats help with the packing and moving.

The Mister's aforementioned Grand Cayman-ing company decided to offer a magnet contest. With the "Save the Date" magnet for the trip, one was to make a creative something using their fridge as the backdrop. Seriously. How can I not win? I own more tacky magnets than all of you combined. Incidentally, the company magnet is in the small boat on the right. Contest results pending.

When my bestie and I went on our Historical Marker road trip a few weekends ago, this was the most clean and usable restroom we came upon. And it was in the middle of a park. Clearly, though, that is some valuable TP. They had to padlock it.

I bet they play a lot of Risk in this town.

Death by Kokomo

2008-08-31T18:48:00.016-04:00

It would happen that I managed to marry a man who has more musical talent in his little finger than most of us have crammed into our iPods (Yeah, I'm talking to you, Bestie. I know what's on your iPod.). I knew this, though. We first met in 1998 singing our little freshman/sophomore hearts out at an a cappella concert with our respective groups. We shared a first-ish kiss over a grand piano in the music building at William and Mary (that I believe we entered by means somewhat suspiciously similar to breaking and entering. I don't know. It was a long time ago, he knew the way in and I was a few jello shots past sober.) while he serenaded me in the middle of night. Years later when we decided to make a go of "us" long distance, he used to set the phone on the piano during our long, late night phone conversations and play me love songs, namely Simon and Garfunkel's "Kathy" just to let me know he was thinking of me. He plays a hell of a piano, sings in just about any range comfortably, has perfect pitch, an unmatched ear for hearing-it-then-sitting-down-and-playing-it, owns a great air guitar and set of air drums and plays them proficiently. In short, I marvel at the man's talent. He continues to awe me with what comes out of his mouth when he sings and what his fingers can do to ivory keys.

And so it really came as no surprise when his CEO tapped him to arrange and record a promotional song for the company's 10th anniversary trip next year to Grand Cayman where every company member and guest (read: me) will be charter flown to Grand Cayman for a 4 day weekend at an all expenses paid resort. No wonder they were named as one of the Washingtonian's Great Places to Work.

The plan was for the Mister to record lyrics about the company's trip to the tune of the Beach Boy's "Kokomo". Then, I believe, a music video is going to be made of different employees lip synching to the Mister's vocal track. The whole piece will be shown at the company Christmas party this year to get people amped for the trip -- and where each employee will be gifted with a CD copy of the Mister's vocal stylings.

At first I wanted to stab my eyes out. "Kokomo" is on a short list of songs that could really make your skin crawl (a few of the other offenders on that list, and I'm sure you'll agree, were: The Pina Colada Song, Don't Worry, Be Happy..). Did you know, incidentally, there is so such place as Kokomo? Totally made up. There's a Kokomo, Indiana, but is that really where you want to get there fast and then take it slow? While it is the quintessential beach song, hearing the Mister arrange it on his computer note-by-freaking-note had me on the brink of insanity, man. My Bestie and I sat on the downstairs couch listening to the first few notes play out on the keyboard, "dah duh-duh" (sing: Aruba..)... A pause.. some scribbling... "dah duh-duh"... Another pause.. All night. We lovingly dubbed the experience, "Death by Kokomo".

Yesterday the Mister headed to a professional recording studio to "lay it down" as they say in the biz. And sitting on the couch with the studio guy at the sound board, me waiting for my Death by Kokomo, my Mister recorded an amazing tribute to his talent. Let me brag here: the man didn't start this process with sheet music. He totally rearranged it for himself. Not only did he rearrange the song for him to sing, but he arranged a four part voice harmony that he sang as well, and was recorded on top of each other so that it sounds like 4 different people -- namely, the Beach Boys -- when played back.

The song is cheesy. The lyrics were penned by the higher ups to be corporately appropriate. But I believe the Mister turned the whole project into something of such quality that even the CEO wasn't expecting in the end.

On the way home from the studio I had the Mister play the original "Kokomo". I mean, it's okay. Then I asked him to play me his version. Which I much prefer:

A fair is a veritable smorgasbord-orgasbord-orgasbord

2008-08-27T23:58:00.010-04:00

Our foray into Real Estate has truly been the bread and butter of our summer. It's been all: Who wants this house and do we want that house. Big creepy words like: appraisal, equity -- and scariest of all: packing & moving.

Well, the latest happs is thusly: We sold this shiz. We bought new shiz. Report to follow.

So on a recent Sunday when we were unceremoniously booted from our old shiz so that the soon-to-be owners could poke around all our nooks and crannies for the afternoon with a home inspector, the Mister and I put on some sunblock and headed to the county fair.

Just so I can sound as snotty as possible, it wasn't my county's fair. A county I'm not entirely sure even has a fair. I mean, what would they have there? Vendors selling tapas and starbucks and tents with software engineers and traffic cameras? No, no, we went one county over, which apparently was enough distance to make it all rural and backwoodsy.

Please to enjoy my photodocudrama: The Prince William County Fair.

The critters: Cute, but smelly.

Honestly, what on earth could be cuter than a pile of sleepy bunny babies?

A rooster who uses too much gel, clearly.

Baby goats. Super cute.

It wasn't so much the cute baby chicks I was aiming to capture here, but the jaded sarcasm of some 4-H youth who evil-ed out the egg. A bad egg, indeed.

A goat barber. No more of Billy Goat's gruff, I'd say.

A cow's butt. But I didn't have to tell you that.

The look the cow gave me when she saw I was taking a picture of her butt.

My best attempt at looking farm-ish.

The bad farm jokes: And there were many.

Ain't nothing nearly as funny as a picture of someone looking like they're milking an unsuspecting cow. Oh how my Mister argued about posing for this, but it would appear by his smug expression that the gent did protest too much.

Uh, hi. I didn't write it. I just read it, giggled a lot and spent a lot of time trying to get the best picture of it.

*Insert obligatory black and white cock joke here*

The educational aspects:I mean, really, Who knew?

State laws about baby chick minimums? Is that the legislation my tax dollars support?

The viddles: or rather, the artery busters.

I appreciate the honesty of this sign. No fancy names, no pretense. Because in the end, fried dough doesn't need to be called a doughnut or a funnel cake or a twinkie to be tasty. At its most basic level, it's just fried dough. And we love it.

What else would you get at Fry City?

Is it wrong that they chose to use a chicken figurine to hock their chicken dinners? I dunno, it seemed wrong.

And in case we forgot where we were for a second, thank God for the 12 year old who submitted the confederate confection. While I'm sure s/he was silently applauded for their loyalty to the stars and bars, it would have been uncouth to give them a ribbon. Holy crap I love cake, though, regardless of its political messages. I'd really be happy to debate state's rights while eating that cake.

The carnies: who could not have appeared any more uninvolved from their task of ensuring the paying public's safety on their rinky-stinky, death trap rides.

Heaving Bosoms and Throbbing Manhood: Part II

2008-08-27T23:34:00.002-04:00

Indeed I believe I can make this heading into a two parter. While the first was primarily literary in nature, the following tends more towards the patients under my constant and ever excellent care in the horsepital. Here goes:

Heaving Bosoms:

While attempting to place the heart monitor electrodes on a patient, it would seem that her rather large, flapjack-nearly-to-her-waist breasts were impeding my ability to place the heart leads where they ought to be. Which prompted a phrase, like so many phrases I find myself uttering at work, that I never thought I'd ever have to vocalize: "Excuse me, Ma'am. I can't quite reach. Could you please hold your breast up for me?"
My patient last night made me take off her bra because she herself couldn't reach the back snap with the IV in her hand. I felt like a total pervert.

Throbbing Manhoods:

Often times when the elderly are bedridden in the hospital for prolonged periods of time, they get a little swollen with fluid. When that prolonged period of time is even more prolonged and you toss in, say, a large exploratory surgery, some time on a ventilator, two rotten kidneys and a bad ticker, the swelling can be tremendous. Fluid retention in such cases, for the most part, starts in the hands and feet, then the legs, then the abdomen. When it gets bad enough, few of your 2,000 will be spared from the puffiness. And for a dude, that primarily means that your junk is going to be huge. And not in a good way. (Incidentally, the best way to help lower the swelling is to elevate the offending limb; leg, arms, etc. In the aforementioned cases, however, I happen to be an excellent elevator of junk. I learned a great technique from an ICU nurse while in school and can sling that scrotum high enough with merely two hand towels to get it at least 25% smaller in 12 hours. It's a skill and a talent. And it rarely hurts. I can see my gentlemen readers grimacing now.) So my patient a few weeks ago fell victim to his circumstances (extended bed rest, bad kidneys or "beans" as we call them, sucky ticker and a nice large surgical wound from chin to navel.) and was therefore, much to his chagrin, sporting a rather cantaloupe sized manpart. Not ever carrying around said part, normal or enlarged, I understand there to be a small amount of thigh maneuvering needed for basic movement. This dude, however, was deliberately avoiding any and all movement because of, I guess, the physics of balancing a very sore cantaloupe on ones thighs. Sure enough, the time came when I had to move him. With visitors in the next bed, I lowered my voice for his privacy. With my two hands under his junk ready to lift it off his thighs for movement, I whispered to him, "You're going to move your legs to the side of the bed and I'm going to pick you (meaning, rather, "it") up on the count of three." His arms shot out and grabbed my wrists and with the most pathetic of faces and the most desperate of voices he said, "Please don't pick me up off the bed by my scrotum!" This poor bastard thought I was going to literally move his entire body via his scrotum.

With blogs like these, no wonder there is a nursing shortage.

Heaving bosoms and throbbing manhood.

2008-08-02T15:45:00.005-04:00

I recently read a piece discussing the thing(s) in your possession that you fear might be uncovered and exposed in the event of your sudden and unexpected passing/abduction or unanticipated abscond-ment from general life. In any case, I didn't have to search my mental inventory for all that long to identify the item(s) that make me red in the face when the thought of their discovery crossed my mind.

Years ago a good friend of mine told me of "the box" in her.. well, hidden at her place.. it would be wrong of me to divulge its location.. that needed to be disposed of in case she made a hasty departure from her mortal coil. Specifically -- disposed of in a timely manner between the moment of her death and the arrival of her mellow dramatically grieving mother. Her best friend had been tapped as the primary remover in that case. In the event, however, that the primary were to be extinguished in the same proverbial POOF! or maybe was, I don't know, unavailable, I was to be the runner-up disposer. Maybe that meant I would be crossing crime tape or rummaging through the smoldering ashes, but I accepted the assignment and swore to hold off on my tears of grief until I had properly protected her mother from the secret contents of that shoebox.

I trust all of you dear readers not only imagine the contents of that box but likely have a similar. Don't we all. Mine, hers and yours all duly concealed at your individual locales and revealed to special someones and disposers. I'm all set, really. I sleep well at night knowing my secrets are safely out of sight and in the fact that my mother's prospective grief stricken state will significantly impair her ability to puzzle out the best spots for all that secret stuff.

No, no, what reddens my face is what I keep out in plain sight hoping that passers-by fail to notice it/them in the humdrum that are other home furnishings. So far, so good.

You see, back in the college days I had a girlfriend who I discovered on more than one occasion in the sultry company of a romance novel. Smut. Trash. I made the requisite remarks, asked if she was at that part of the book yet and generally made my best attempts to shame her for being on the cusp on adulthood with her head embedded in something either too young for her not yet a lonely housewife or too old for someone who had likely been past the teen aged mystery of 3rd base. And then she challenged me. She challenged me knowing that I can rarely resist a dare or a challenge (which has gotten me into more trouble than I can detail here.). She offered me the book and advised that rather than knock it, I ought to read one and then make all the jokes I wanted.

With eyes properly rolled, I accepted the book and later embedded myself in chapter 1. Then 2. Then 10. And then before I knew it, teary eyed, I turned the last page.

I read romance novels. And I like them. No, I love them.

In the few years after college, it was my prime reading material (which in hindsight is sad to say.. but yes). I found a small used book store in my old hometown that became my crack house of romance novels. I would slip into the parking lot praying to go unnoticed and with large sunglasses on, make my way into the store. There I could trade my castoffs for credits towards new, cheesy, completely unrealistic sex filled stories. The romance novel section was in a dark back room of the store and filled ceiling to romance-loving floor with the yellowed pages of used books. There I would spend hours nurturing my high by judging books by their Fabio-encrusted covers -- never, never making eye contact with anyone else there to slake their own romance novel thirsts. Then as quickly as I had skulked in, with my brown paper sack bulging appropriately with my newest fixes, I'd sneak back to my car and get home as quickly as I could to enjoy them in the privacy of my one bedroom apartment.

Now, before you go casting me into that stereotypical category of women who read romance novels, I need to tell you a few things. I was pretty selective, if that counts towards my now waning reputation in your eyes. Historical novels only, completely false or somewhat rooted in historical fact were my specialty. Anything with a pirate, clearly. Towards the end of my run I found the westerns intriguing. Modern romances did nothing for me -- while I could scoff at the lack of time it deftly, and it was always "deftly", took some roguish knight to locate a naked woman under her layers of period dresses, I found the jet setters and corporate millionaires far more unbelievable. Lets say I preferred my heroes to be aboard pirate ships or gallant steeds rather than convertibles.

And another thing. Though you may not believe me, I didn't ever read them as a typeset equivalent to the Playboy. Though the plot lines were skimpy, the settings were vivid, the characters defined and the story enveloping. And somehow, every time, I'd find myself having to put the book down so that I could heave a big girly sigh at that last paragraph. It is mindless reading and I could easily cover 100 pages in an hour. Beach reading, waiting at the dentist reading, cookies in the oven and waiting reading, something other than television reading.

In the last few years, I haven't touched a romance novel. Just before my big move to Northern Virginia, I visited my crack house one last time where I turned over close to 80% of my collection. I used the credits to buy real books. In the front of their store. Just before I left, I could hardly help myself -- and I threw a longing look and a whispered goodbye to that back room -- using all of my personal strength to not go in. Not at all unlike the strength of the heroines in the first few chapters of my books before they are breathless with need and cannot resist him, in like, chapter 5. I kept a few -- my most favorites. And they now sit, all together, by author, on my bookshelf.

No one noticed, and if they did, they said nothing. Said nothing like the characters of my books say nothing of their heart bending love for each other that causes all the ruckus of the plot line, until, like, the last chapter when they are both relieved that they've been hitting it but really, hitting it all along with love. *insert a big heaved girl sigh*

I've spent the last few years with my nose in books of every fashioning. After nursing school when my books didn't have to have bold face terms and glossaries anymore, I have covered a very wide variety of topics. Influenza epidemic of 1918, an array of Civil War topics, good solid well respected American literature, you know, the usual.

And then, one day last week as I perused my bookshelf for my newest read, I saw them staring at me. The back bindings of the books with the lusty covers. They looked sad and particularly dusty. I ran my finger along them amusingly trying to remember the general plot line for each.
Then I took one out. And I read the back. And before I knew it, I was sprawled on the couch flicking the lighter under the proverbial crack pipe of my romance novels.

It has been less than 7 days I am already through over 800 pages and countless intimacies. I'm on book #3, and I can't promise I'll be able to stop myself. I find myself planning a trip back to my old stomping grounds so that I could see, just see, if that old used bookstore is still open. You know, if they got anything new. I mean, I could just look, right?

So now you all know. I've cleared my heaving bosom of the shame. I feel better now that I've gotten it off my silky chest. This way, when I turn up missing or when the mourners stream through the house to pay their respects no one will be cattily whispering about my torrid romance novels and how they never knew.

And when you all are streaming through the house to pay your respects, don't even think about it. That box will already be gone.

The colors don't run. Y'all.

2008-07-09T15:00:00.010-04:00

To celebrate the 3 day weekend of our Nation's Birthday, I mysteriously found myself participating in events and activities that were so gosh-darned-tootin' American it makes me nearly want to vomit red, white and blue while choking on my all-American hot dog and funnel cake.

Friday, July 4th
Well, this one was my idea. It has been my idea since this past October when I had first heard of it. And I then had to spend the next, what, 8 months working on the Mister to get him to go along with me. It would be his first time -- and while you want someone to always remember their first time, you want it to be a really good first time and don't want to spend that first time with amateurs. So, what could possibly be more American than spending the day at the Civil War reenactment of all Civil War reenactments -- Gettysburg, Pa. The mother of all Civil War battles -- the largest battle to ever occur on this hemisphere (are you scared that I knew that?) and to mingle among people dressed in the period -- most of them convinced they were the person they have dedicated their lives to impersonating.

This is a damned good Robert E. Lee. I mean, WAY better than the Lee at the last reenactment. My shirt, for those of you who do not make a habit of leering at my bust, has a picture of General Lee and reads: Most Likely To Secede, Class of 1825. (Referring, naturally, to his graduating year at West Point. Duh.). Like a 5 year old with new duds, I held out my shirt and said, "Hey, you're on my shirt!" He read it, but didn't react. The Mister feels that the Robert E. Lee inside him must have been offended as the real Lee wasn't all that crazy about secession. Whatever. It's a good shirt and terrifically Civil-War-Reenactment-Tastic.

I saw Stonewall (and it's a pretty convincing Stonewall. I mean, seriously. He looks JUST like him, no?), if I may be so bold as to just call him 'Stonewall' here, from across the camp and exclaimed wildly to the Mister, "Holy shit! It's Stonewall!! Let's follow him back to his tent.... No! Don't follow him so closely, I don't want to seem WEIRD." Because following a man dressed as a dead Civil War Lt. General back to his tent at a reenactment of a Civil War battle that said dead Lt. General didn't even live to fight in -- that's not weird at all. In any case, I was so excited to meet him -- well, the fake him -- that I could hardly, literally, catch my breath. When I went up for the photo op, I actually was at a loss for words. The Mister offered, "She's your biggest fan." Stonewall kept his legendary stoic expression and just nodded. I continue to grin and pant like a moron. He goes on, "I mean, I know more about you than anyone else here because she loves you so much." He nods. I grin. Photo snaps. I grin and walk away and immediately take out my phone to call my mother to shout, "I just met Stonewall Jackson, Mom!" No, there's nothing weird about that at all.

The Mister put in a little time with his Yankee homeboy General U.S. Grant. (Another Civil War General who was not at Gettysburg, 1863, but showed up for the reenactment, 2008. Not because he was dead, but because he was busy waging war on Vicksburg. That's dedication. And, incidentally, he is one of only 3 Presidents who had the rank of General or higher. Is it scary that I know that?) And for those of you who don't make a habit of leering at my husband's bust, his shirt say what you think it says. And yes, I bought it for him. Throughout the day I'd notice people reading his shirt and then looking at me. Anyway, it suited him for the day and made it seem like, "Hey, I'm not into it. I'm with her. And she's into it."

This was awesome. In the "living history" camps, people set up period camps and reenact the people who would have been in these camps -- cooks, generals, privates, undertakers, etc. And here we have the prostitutes. They asked me to wait outside, to which I responded, "Totally fine. You ladies take care of him so I don't have to." They gave him lemonade and rum cake and rubbed his back. They remarked how hard it was to get lemons because of the blockade for supplies, specifically southern lemons. They were just "supporting our boys in uniform!". It was awesome. And it hardly mattered that they were all old enough to be my mom and weren't the slightest bit hot or even Civil War hot.

People came from all over the country -- and as we learned -- all over the world to be at the 145th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg -- originally taking place (with real guns, et al.) July 1-3, 1863. Unlike other reenactments, this is the Olympics of reenactments. Only the best and finest Lees, Grants, Jacksons, Longstreets, Hills, Stuarts are there. And while the Mister, at his first reenactment, pointed out that we were spending our July 4th commemorating a day when Americans slaughtered Americans, it was more a tip of the hat to a time in our young country's history that forever changed it. I digress, lest this blog entry go on and on about the Civil War. Appreciate the sheer amount of personal restraint I am exercising here.

15,000 reenactors showed up to do dubious battle for Cemetery Hill. After an awesome and educational mortar demonstration, the battle raged on.

The day was fun, educational, a little rainy later on in the day and a fine mix of all manner of American breeds.

We were the assholes who didn't bring rain gear. Some kind old woman loaned us her umbrella until the battle started and umbrellas were banned.

But then there was this guy. This guy who I followed all over the grounds to snap the perfect picture of. The Mister fears that by posting pictures of random strangers and then poking my personal brand of humor at them that I am opening myself up to litigation. I am confident this man does not own a computer and knows very little of the Internet.

And not take a picture of this guy?! Complete with wife-beater, denim shirt with the sleeves ripped off and, like the cherry on top, chewing on a hay straw. Aww, and look. His friend has a John Deer hat on.
It boggles the mind that these shirts were printed, likely en masse, without being proof read by someone literate. I support the sentiment, I shake my head at the state of grammar these days.

Saturday, July 5th
American Civil War -- check.
National Museum of Crime and Punishment -- coming right up! From Medieval times to Bonnie and Clyde to Mobsters, Serial Killers, CSI and Americas Most Wanted -- every wall was dripping with awesomeness. A whole educational section on prison tattoos and what they mean. A case full of prisoner-made shanks! A touch-screen quiz on serial killers (I got 15 out of 16 right. Scared?). My Bestie and I cracked the safe in the demonstration.
We tried our hand at being "booked". We wanted to look serious. We wanted to look hardened by the justice system. But we couldn't stop giggling. I particularly appreciated our fake-o cohorts.

Then we were jailed. Which, really, is totally possible. We've had the discussion wherein we decided: If you go to jail, I'd commit a crime so we could be cellies. Don't we look tough?

Sunday, July 6th
Why stop here? Why not git me a gun and shoot like an American. Alright. I did.

My personal experience with firearms is admittedly (though not unashamedly) minimal. My father used (and likely still does) own a replica Revolutionary War long rifle (clearly where my father Revolutionary War-zigs, I learned to Civil war-zag.) complete with bayonet, flint and muzzle load. I must have been about 8 or 9, but my dad took my brother and I to a firing range on the Air Force Base near our house. Too small to hold such a long firearm standing up, my dad set me up on my stomach, sniper style, and taught me the general basics of loading such a rifle (as if such information would come in handy one day -- "You hold still, house robber, it's going to take me between 20 and 45 seconds to load this thing."). On my first shot, the rifle recoil slammed into my little shoulder and the flint popped out and hit me in the face. My mom vetoed any future rifle trips.

Years later, in my twenties, I found myself at a wonderfully odd Halloween party in Norfolk. Hindsight has since mentioned that it was likely a bad idea (You know. Those situations you find yourself in and later wonder how you ever made it out of your twenties alive with the dangerous things you occasionally found yourself involved in and hope your children don't ever ask you about because it would ruin your opportunity to say something like, "I was never so stupid as to....." or try to justify it with, "....I was lucky when I did X, but you shouldn't..") , but several of the gentlemen folk at the party decided a small excursion to the lake behind the house with a large semi automatic weapon for firing practice might liven things up. I, in my favorite "lounge singer" dress -- a chartreuse number covered, and I mean COVERED, in sequins -- was offered a chance to fire the thing. Less flint this time, same recoil and a large sequin patterned bruise on my right shoulder for weeks after.

And the on the other side, never seeing the gun, but seeing the damage. Patients with, what we lovingly refer to as, GSW. Gun shot wounds. A gang fight resulting in a shot to the chest, a showoff with a shot to his thigh (who knows, coulda been a Halloween party in Norfolk.), a suicide shot to the head that missed and instead took off half the face and a suicide or mercy killing (never found out which) shot to the chest at close range that miraculously missed the heart and ribs only collapsing the lung.

So when the Bestie's new beau suggested the Mister and I join them at a firing range for handguns, I figured, why not? My first impression was that damned recoil -- only with a handgun was far further from my shoulder, thank God. And the noise -- even with earplugs. It would also seem that years of Duckhunt and the like have served the Mister well and he was a remarkably good shot. I wasn't so bad myself -- even with my ambidextrous ways.
I might spend the next two weeks in perpetual fear that the Mister will wind up dead and I will be the key suspect -- seeing as how 1) they always finger the spouse as the culprit and 2) I (and my Bestie, the most likely alibi) am covered in gun shot residue.

Yup. I shot those bullseyes. Granted, it was at about 3-4 feet away, but our handy handgun instructor, aka the Bestie's beau, informed me that most handgun usage is within 7 feet -- so learning to shoot at close range isn't a bad idea. I showed my Bestie and she said (well, yelled, since we had earplugs in.) "Great job! Good to know you could hit the target when it was like, on top of you."

The Usual.

2008-06-22T09:01:00.002-04:00

I'll admit that more often than not, especially where food is concerned, I am a creature of habit. I consistently order the same thing at the same places and rarely branch out. You call it "limited", I call it, "knowing what I like" (or "having a sensitive Irish stomach unwilling to experiment".. whatever, same difference.) That being said, my personality trait being understood, I loathe the thought that I am... dum-dum-DUM ..predictable. Somehow, the same order, every time makes me unique. Like a snowflake. A snowflake who always gets the sauteed chicken breast at Sweetwater.

The Mister is a pretty big fan of bagels after 7:30 (yes, that's A.M.) mass on Sundays. With my work schedule lately, it sure has been a hot bagel minute since I've been to mass (God understands..). It's the same bagel place we always go to. And I always order the same thing: salt bagel, untoasted with fat free honey almond cream cheese. And it was just this morning, as we walked up to the joint, I was thinking that I didn't really feel like a salt bagel this morning.

As I stared up at the menu behind the usual guy who works there, he smiled widely at me and enthusiastically said, "salt bagel, untoasted with fat free honey almond cream cheese?" I paused. I swallowed the shock of it all and said, "Uh, wow. Um, yeah. I can't believe you remember that." The guy smiled even wider and went about making the bagel. I sank back from the counter which cued the Mister to ask, "Don't you just love the small town feel of this place? I love that they know what we always order."

Which reminds me. I pride myself on the blessed (and sometimes accursed) anonymity of Northern Virginia. There is something nice about moving around in a crowd, seemingly unnoticed.

So, no, I actually don't love the small town feel of our bagel place. I ate my bagel begrudgingly -- actually asking them to make it on a french toast bagel rather than the salt, my original plan.
The Mister, happily chomping on his bagel, also known to the bagel guy, asked, "Isn't that awesome? I mean, we do come here every Sunday at the same time."

"I just don't like being that predictable," I said. "You know, I live fun and fancy free and order my bagels as the mood strikes me."

"Yeah. You always say that."

Nurses eat their young.

2008-06-14T22:19:00.003-04:00

But not, like, their actual young, just, like, their professional young.

As a new nurse, who somehow survived the daily mental-ass whooping that is nursing school, I can totally attest to this. For some odd reason, a lot of seasoned nurses will go out of their way to degrade a student nurse. They'll follow you around to nit-pick every flinch you make near a patient -- or worse, they don't follow you at all and wait for you to drown in your own sweat and fear. They'll take each and every opportunity to launch a vicious pop-quiz lightening round on you and make sinister smiles at each other while you fumble through a drug guide or look desperately for the "smart" classmate who always know this stuff. For me, it didn't take so well. Older nurses certainly made their best attempts to eat me, but lets be honest: I'm bitter, sarcastic and don't go down all that easy (insert requisite innuendo here.).

Maybe, for me, it was being older, less intimidate-able or just downright uninterested in some unit nurse's power trip every fall semester. I watched countless fellow students run into a linen closet to cry, turn seven shades of dark red in a nurse's station holding back tears during a verbal assault or sit in their cars after class screaming about how they were never going back. Here's a phrase that could earn some awe from a class of nursing students anywhere: I never cried in nursing school. I shook my fists a lot and raised my voice, but nary a salted tear rolled down my face from August 2005 until May 2007.

But let me clarify: this is not all nurses. And there were plenty of fantastic nurses who gave of themselves and their time to help mold the new litter. I am endlessly proud of be a part of this profession. I just don't know why some of us had to pay in tears and psychotherapy to be a part of it.

Now, as a nurse, and as a nurse who is on the other end of student nurses on the unit, I find myself really going out of my way to ensure they aren't eaten (and we have a few nurses on our unit with grumblie tummies, if you get me). Nursing school was hard enough, man. Getting out of the classroom and textbooks and into the hospital with some real-live-sick-people is supposed to be a relief. It's supposed to be the part you look forward to. The part where you are able to reaffirm to yourself, "Yessss. THIS is what I want to do.."

I love having students follow me, actually. It gives me an opportunity to assure them that they'll be on my side of the bed soon. It surprises me every time at how much I actually have learned in a year on the floor -- and challenges me to teach them in meaningful ways. I look to find interesting things for them to see, encourage real patient interaction, versus wallflowering-it near the door and try to "tie it all together" for them -- without scaring the hell out of them at the lightening pace at which we work, the multi-tasking Xanadu we create and must maintain and the knowledge we have to produce at a moment's notice for a family member or a doctor.

I guess through all of this, someone noticed. And this summer I have been assigned my own nursing student. One girl who I am supposed to mentor all summer. I know, right? Me, mentor someone? I have no business mentoring anybody, let alone someone who will eventually be caring for human life.

I've really be savoring the past two weeks with her. I love sharing my passion for this profession with her -- and best of all, she has the same passion. She's quick to learn and easy to teach. The program that sponsors her summer internship requires that she check off a few boxes in the way of skill-sets. And it's partly my job to ensure that she gets as much exposure to procedures and skills as possible in the next 8 weeks.

Task #1: Drawing blood. The poor thing has to have 50 "sticks" this summer. And sadly for her, we're on a renal unit where ain't nobody got nothin' in the way of veins up in that piece. So, I offered up my healthy, well hydrated vascularization to her pointy needle. (This is gross, I know. More people have shivered at this retelling than have commended my selfless offering of my own arm in the name of education. However, it was the kind nurses during my schooling that offered up their own arms that taught me just how to do it right. I thought I ought to make my own deposit into that karma fund.) Freakily enough, I found myself tying off the tourniquet on my own arm and walking her through the stick. She got it on the first prick. Which, for a nursing student, inspires greatly needed confidence. Beware, patients in renal failure! Ain't no vein too small.

Task #2: Learn to insert an IV. Well, hell, she did such a fine flipping job on the blood draw, why not step it up a notch and have her access that veiny goodness for a more permanent amount of time. This time, however, I brought in other experts to walk her through the process. Suddenly, the experience became a "too many cooks in the kitchen" scenario with nurses and nurse's aides swarming her advising on which spot would be the best to hit. I told her she could try for any vein she wanted ~ which, sadly for me, was the one on the inner part of the arm that hurts the very most to stick. I braved through it -- taking every effort to not make a bad face that would discourage her. Once she stuck me, she had the vein and then missed it, likely going right through it. It just ain't all that easy to insert an IV.

In anycase, I have a more confident, ready to try it student nurse on my hands this summer. And on my arm, I have a nice signature of her first attempt to stick another human being.

Incidentally, this was a very hard picture to take all by one's lonesome. And secondly, based on the looks at the grocery store (which is the only place I have been other than the hospital, and large bruises are common, if not mandatory, for hospital folk) I assume that I look like a woman who sassed her man or else a new IV drug user.

Hubbas for your humor-wantin' trubbas

2008-06-01T01:47:00.004-04:00

1. A ha! On the market less than 24 hours and already we've had a "looker" come through. I told you Saint Joseph a la Jimmy Hoffa in the backyard was the way to go. Though, I fear it is likely that they might:
A) have benefited from seeing the last, holdout magnet I was allowed to keep on the fridge until yesterday when they made me take it down in favor of a totally empty, naked fridge. it read: Everything I know, I learned in prison. I feel it says a lot about us as homeowners.
B) have spent less time admiring our kickass digs and more time pouring over my sickeningly adorable but currently invalid cat who is bearing the sad mark of his recent facial surgery (long story, thanks for asking, he's fine. Cross your fingers on biospy results, eh?): the dreaded pet collar cone. The bill read: Elizabethan Collar, $8.35. Entertaining pictures to follow.
C) want to buy the house, but only on the contingency that we include said sickeningly adorable but currently invalid cat who steals your heart. Cha. Not a chance.

2. Cause it made me laugh:
3. In a recent "how to be awesome at everything, you strong, proud, independant woman-you" article in some nameless magazine I happened to be reading, they offered advice and tips about everything from organized kitchen junk drawers, bathroom stalls sans TP but specifically: on wooing your corporate I.T. guy into being a little more affable when your I.T. needs are severe. The thought was that you need to meet him where he is. Tell him a joke that will loosen the personality muzzle that he uses to keep his emotions from being vulnerable in a non-avitar world (I can say all of this without malice. I married a computer geek.). The joke offered by said periodical was this:
Q: What did Spock find in the Enterprise's toilet?
A: The captain's log.
I'm on the brink of creating an I.T. problem just so that I can try it on someone who potentially will appreciate all aspects of the joke. I urge you to try it on your respective I.T. peeps.

4. I was recently at an event where I was, by and large, unknown to the majority of the other guests there. Like the go-getter I pride myself on being, and the extrovert that Myers-Briggs claims I am, I put myself out there. Strike up conversations, break the ice. I encountered one individual seated next to me. I opened with a laugh line. The man turned his head to me, expressionless. "I really ought to tell you that I have no sense of humor, " he said plainly. I chuckled and elbowed him, "Then it's going to be a long night sitting next to me. Careful, I might make you laugh." The Mister leans over and whispers, "No, really. Knew him in college. He has no sense of humor." I mean, who admits that -- no sense of humor. Everyone, even the non-funnies, claim to have a great sense of humor. It's that part of our human DNA that makes us all believe we're great drivers. Could you even imagine knowing and accepting that about yourself -- you couldn't make/take a joke? Jesus, what kind of tv programming does he watch? It boggles the mind.

Anybody want to buy a house?

2008-05-29T17:03:00.004-04:00

Alright, alright, so if my friend on his European pilgrimage on foot (HI, D!) can notice and remark on my lack of blogs this year, I guess I can step it up today and crank one out.

Here's my thing: blogs, ideally, are meant to chronicle the little menial but comical and sometimes drab daily happenings in a way that is best done with wit, sarcasm and a little poetic license. The last few months for me have involved a very intense course of action intended to sell a house. Specifically, our house. And frankly, there is very little funny and much more drab in the preparations of real estate. Truth be told, I had several intentions of chronicling that drabness to celebrate its remarkable drabness with all the little fix ups around the house in some DIY themed blog with the before and after pictures of all the improvements we were making. However, I only mentally reminded myself about this gleam-in-my-mind's-eye blog halfway through said project without having taken the before picture. Alas, no blog.

And with selling a house on the brain, it leaves very little time for anything terribly comical to happen in the periphery of one's life with which to compose a blog about. Occasionally, I'd find myself in some funny circumstance (for instance: on a recent weekend trip to Orlando with the Mister for an ever-so-brief break from wall paint and carpet installation, we found ourselves lounging in the resort pool after a hard day of amusement parking. The Mister and I commandeered a volleyball and likely spent the next 5 minutes showcasing our extremely poor volley skills to the rest of the pool deck, just the two of us. After an hour, however, we had about 8 or 10 kids under the age of 12 factioning themselves into two teams with us to set up a makeshift game. While the kids mainly showed us up skill-wise, though we had them on height, life experience and 401Ks, the Mister turned to me and remarked that for the parents watching us with their children, this wouldn't be weird until I left him alone in the pool with the kids and he started offering them some sweet-tea, a la Dateline Predator style.) or have an entertaining conversation (for instance: at work talking with a doctor about a patient's progress over the phone. When I finished my medically sound report to him, I ended with, ".. and so now you're abreast." "A BREAST? Did you just call me A BREAST?" he joked. With the quickest wit I may have ever mustered, I replied (to the horror of nearby coworkers), "It's better than if I called you a boob." Oh, I slay me.) that I'd remind myself to retell here, but a few lines about an isolated funny moment seemed to highlight the greater percentage of drab doings in my life these days. Woe is me!

However, if comedy has not arisen from this foray into real estate, a little insight has. Namely, how two people edging 30 years young could have possibly amassed as much crap as we have. (I shudder to think of our stored tonage when we edge 50 or 60 - storing our nonexistent's children's crap in addition to our own.) In the name of "emptying the space to make it look larger" ~ I believe the fashionable term here is "staging" ~ we rented a storage unit. Going through the things in house-storage bound for storage-storage - things that I personally hadn't unpacked since I packed them leaving my dorm senior year of college some 6 years ago that had been collecting dust in mom's attic until I decided that my cohabitation with the then Betrothed would be a permanent arrangement suitable for mass communication of my storable stuff - I was beset with highschool/college memorabilia that I couldn't remember the story for 50% of the time (Why did I keep this empty beer bottle? What was the significance of this matchbook? Why this copy of The Flat Hat?). I had, in actuality, packed, kept and stored crap for 6 years. So had the Mister. ( For the record, he had more.) Decluttering the storage bound stuff left us with a still remarkable amount of storage-bound stuff and the storage unit now resembles some cartoon closet that when the door opens is a perfect (though tidy, I am still terribly Type A Obsessive Compulsive) mash of stuff packed right to the door frame. But, for our prospective home buyers (of which I hope there are DROVES of them..) our home looks hardly lived in, clutter free and well staged.

And then onto the selling part. The house is on the market, officially, tomorrow. It's so grown-up, I can barely stand it. As a dependent casualty of a military career in full bloom, my youth was full of sellings and movings. My father hated real estate agents and used to remark frequently during those selling times about how they were leeches who were more about the commission and less about actually working to sell your house. (Sidebar: He also felt strongly about Interstate-side attractions that he labeled "tourist traps" about which he'd rant on and on -- even after we'd long passed them -- about their worthless/money grubbingness and as you can imagine, we'd never stop for them. In my adult-car-owning-hood, I make it a point to stop at as many as possible now. Likely in some small rebellion to what I thought I was surely missing out on as a child. During few family trips to amusement parks - a tolerable, lower tier level of "tourist trap" - he would calculate the cost, per ride, that he felt the ride was worth and figure, then, how many rides we had to ride to make the entry fee acceptable. I somehow made it through my childhood, however, feeling undeprived.) So the sign outside of our homes nearly every two years always read: For Sale By Owner. And similarly, in my adult-house-owning-hood, thank God for real estate agents.

Still, having moved as much as I have, I remembered the process of getting a house ready, but was completely overwhelmed by the actual work it took to do so when it was my turn. I called my mother recently solely to commend her ability to prepare a single family home by herself -- as her hubs/my pops was already at the next military base doing something militaryily minded -- with three loony children most likely following behind her to redo what she had just undid. She solemnly remarked, "Yes. You three were sent to a lot of movies in those days."

One of those childhood sellings I remember quite distinctly. I never knew much about the process because I was a kid -- but I remember overhearing my parents talking about how much it was going to sell for. Several days later, someone called the house and just asked, "Your house is for sale?" 10 year old me replies, "Yup." Voice says, "And how much are you asking?" I quickly, but confidently, spat out the number I heard my parents discussing (It was probably the busybody in me trying to be included in the process). And then I heard -- nearly simultaneously -- the click on the other end of the line and my mother rushing to the phone yelling, "What did you just say?! That wasn't right!!" I don't know what part of it wasn't right. Only that the incident has always stuck in my mind that home sellin' is for grownups, man. So now when people are asking me "What are you asking for it?" I find myself muttering, looking at my shoes and stammering, "Uh, I dunno." I'm a great salesperson.

As a psuedo adult, I, in normal life doings, find that if there's a problem, yo I'll solve it. But nothing gets my goat, man, more than a problem that I have no control over the solution: house selling currently at the top of that list. I've done all that I humanly can on my end to sell this house and now, tomorrow, it is out of my hands into this great unknown abyss of faceless people to whom I can do nothing to cajole them into buying it. In that case, I turn to utter superstition. An old house selling 'stition is to bury a small statue of Saint Joseph in the backyard. Saint Joseph, a carpenter, has been appealed to, as storytelling has it, for centuries, in the name of opportune land transferal. According to the story, German nuns would bury Saint Joseph medals around the land they hoped to acquire for a new convent, hoping that St. Joe would intervene on their behalf so that might obtain it. My mother is a big fan of this tradition. It is said that St. Joe must be buried in the BACKyard, FACING the house and upside down (apparently, for reals, upside down makes him uncomfortable and he works faster. Whereas if you put him right side up, he'd take his own sweet celestial time?) She jokes that after instructing a home-selling cousin to do this, they buried him in the front yard facing the street and the house across the street, not even on the market, sold. After your house flies off the market thanks to Jesus' dad, you're supposed to dig him up and put him in a place of honor in the new digs. Otherwise, the house will continue to turn over to new owners -- a skip in the heavenly record of St. Joe's miraculous ways. After selling the last Omaha house in my youth, the clan had moved to Virginia before my mom remembered to dig up St. Joe. She fears, still, that she has sent that house into a veritable real estate tailspin by leaving him there.

Don't be fooled. I bought a St. Joseph statue. And it intends to be buried this evening -- I didn't want St. Joe getting on the selling bandwagon before I was ready to vacate the joint. All in good time, Joe. Amusingly, aforementioned friend D remarked that on his current travels through European Catholic kitche on pilgrimage path, there are signs in religious paraphernalia stores stating: "Catholicism is not MAGIC. Please don't bury Saint Joseph." Puh-lease. I totally intend to put St. Joe in the GROUND, man, and on his haloed head. To hedge my homeselling bets, I took the statue today to our church to have it blessed. That oughta include the choirs of heaven in our real estate endeavors. While I waited for the priest to come over to the parish office to perform the deed, the secretary asked, "You aren't going to bury that, are you?" I said, "Uh, yeah. I am totally going to bury it. That's how you make it work. " She leaned in, "Well, don't tell him that. Tell him you're putting it on the mantel or something." Right. Lie to the priest. That'll make Saint Joseph a party to my plan. Luckily, he didn't ask. And I whipped out some rosaries for him to bless, too, just to distract him from my oddly commercial looking Saint Joe statue. (It came in a kit. I appreciate commercialized, well packaged, efficient Catholicism.)

Sunday is our first open house. Unfortunately for me, I am working the Sunday nightshift, so I have to sleep all day Sunday to be ready for work. Which means I can't sit in my car outside like a pervert and watch anxiously as people leave our house trying desperately to read their faces or to talk on the phone loudly saying, "Oh honey, but this is the house that I REALLY LOVE, it's PERFECT. Did you see it's finished basement, 3 1/2 baths, vaulted ceilings, sunny kitchen and new carpeting?" And so I won't creep out potential buyers by actually sleeping in my bed when they come through the house, which would be super creepy when you think about it -- but I really could sleep through it -- I'm going to put in some Z's at the Bestie's house while she's away on vacay.

So. Seriously. Anybody want to buy a house?

When the going gets tough, the tough go to the Historic Triangle

2008-04-23T17:15:00.004-04:00

Being an aforementioned military brat, the idea of "home" is a fleeting one. Rather than an all encompassing "home" -- a place that has a smell, a feel and a monopoly on emotional comfort -- I have lots of sort-of "home"s. The home where I learned to ride a bike. The home where my older sister and I had to share a room. The home where my brother and I had to share a room. The last home my parents were together in. The home I moved my stuff to between college semesters. For simplicity, my home is with my husband (& cats...)-- wherever he is. And a Christmas "at home" is at my mom's.

Nearing 30, I found a place, though, that feels more like the quintessential idea of home to me. Like nothing really bad can happen to you there. A physical place where I know the streets and where the good bowling and eats are. A place I can drive around and find myself constantly pointing out that place where this and this and this happened. To me, and to a lot of people, that place is Williamsburg, Virginia.

After an emotional and personal set back this week there was only one place to escape to. Grabbing my husband and Bestie, we set out to Colonialize ourselves for a weekend and see if we could eat our weight in Sno-to-Go. By exit 236, my mind was clear, my heart less heavy.

Being in the comforting arms of The Burg helped me let my guard down, let out the sillies and let me put my troubles on hold.

Summoning up my inner pirate aboard Jamestown's Susan B Constant.

Why pay attention to the real tour when you can take funny pictures with the ye old Jamestown stuff? And oddly look like you and your Bestie planned to wear the exact same outfit?

A day in Williamsburg is far from complete unless you've played 18 holes of Pirate's Cove Putt Putt.
..18 holes. And loved yourself a pirate.

There's never a bad reason to have cake.

2008-04-16T20:12:00.005-04:00

Funny how word about cake being served can bring an organization to its knees -- a screeching halt, even, as workers run to get their square slice. Today was no different.

I learned today, however late, that there was a small shin dig going on with the dialysis nurses -- a group just off our unit with whom we (we= my unit) are friendly and indeed include in our shindigs.

A particular dialysis nurse there has caught my eye since I was a student nurse and I'd see him around the hospital. He's not much to look at, but I'm telling you, I swear that he is that guy that uses "finger guns" for reals in conversation. And so, not knowing him, but seeing him often, I referred to him as "Finger Guns", though he probably doesn't know that since I haven't told anyone else that I think of him thusly. Problem being, I have not actually seen him finger gunning anyone. And I don't know him all that well enough to actually finger gun him to see if I could get finger gunned in return. It's a work in progress.

But that's beside the point. The reason for the cake-serving season in dialysis today was that apparently Finger Guns has been saving all his nickels and dimes -- for 15 years -- to buy an RV. And he just did. And he wanted to throw an RV party to celebrate. And there was cake. And I had some. And it was the good pudding cake kind. And hell, it's just about the finest reason I can think of to throw a cake party. A new RV.

I had some delicious cake, didn't see the RV and didn't get to finger gun Finger Guns at a moment when it might have been truly appropriate and he might be so amped that he'd finger gun me back, thus proving that he really is Finger Guns. Damn.

Now, a word about this RV. He's apparently so tickled with this thing that he's driving it to work. Likely, he'll spend the next 15 years saving up for the gas for such an extravagant commute. He's parking far beyond the hospital, cause hell, could you park an RV where you work? I asked him today -- Any big trips? Where you planning to go? -- and he says, "Well, just work, really." Nice.

And it occurs to me that if I hit my head really hard and woke up wanting to own an RV, I'd buy it and drive in the HOV lanes assuming that no cop would pull me over because, really, what idiot drives an RV all by them self?

Now, if I had worn that shirt......

2008-04-10T20:42:00.005-04:00

Getting onto the elevator in the employee garage this morning, I encountered a lady I see nearly every morning. However, I barely saw her face this morning because -- complete with her employee badge clipped to it -- she was wearing THIS shirt:

Now, beyond the fact that she was wearing a T-shirt to work -- and we don't have casual Thursday.. -- I think if you glean nothing else from my blog, you know that I work in a very, very multi cultural environment. Patients aside, my coworkers come from all across the globe.

It was a bold fashion move this morning by her. And to think I got "talked to" for the Mister's high school homecoming shirt that had pirates on it. Huh.

Begorah.

2008-04-08T16:13:00.004-04:00

Cashing in on belonging to such a richly witty heritage, I am bound to share with you a few of my favorites.

May those that love us, love us.
And those that don't love us,
May God turn their hearts.
And if He doesn't turn their hearts,
May He turn their ankles
So we will know them by their limping.
~Irish Blessing

May you live a long as you want,
and never want as long as you live.
~Irish Blessing

There's gonna be some sweet sounds, comin' down...

2008-04-08T13:27:00.006-04:00

... on the night shift. Which is really where I do all my best thinking. All my blog composing, which, HA, I bet you all thought was just a distant memory covered in dust to me. To be quite frank, I had a moment's panic thinking that I might not be able to remember my blog password, but Thank God, unbenounced to my computer-security-obsessed husband, I generally use some semblance of the same password for everything. A few alternated keystrokes and I usually figure it out. Shut up, you all do the SAME thing. Alpha-numeric combination, my a$$.

We have just returned from a delightful, if not wet and cold, jaunt to the motherland. Well, my motherland. And which also makes it my mother's land, too. Ireland, for those of you not totally up to date on my ethnic identity. I brought the Mister -- his first trip over the "pond" -- assuring him that Ireland was not scary EUROPE, it was Diet Europe. All the flavor, and not so much scary foreign language with Anti-American sentiments.

We kissed the Blarney Stone (#2 for me. Watch out, I'm so freaking charming now you all won't know what to do with me..).

We nearly got blown over the Cliffs of Moher and we took a neat jaunt into Northern Ireland. We did a lot of driving. We met up with my wonderfully hospitable and charming Irish cousins. The Mister was the most kick-ass left-sided driver, EVER. We made Dingle Peninsula jokes. He loved it. At least he told me he did. He loved it until he got a cold two days before our return. Then all he wanted was his/my bed, recognizable cold-medicine names and a bag of Ricolas. Poor bastard.

Lucky me, I was able to fight the jet lag home AND go right onto the night shift at work. Which was awesome. I don't mind the night shift, to be quite honest. And if it didn't put me at complete social hour odds with my husband and friends, I might consider it full time. The whole atmosphere is more chill, really. No anxiety stricken families (they be outta there by 8PM, when visitin' hours be over...), scant Doctor presence, few tests and access to sleep inducing medications for patients. It's a recipie for time to get work done, and a few magazines read.

My issues with the night shift have grown on me gradually. Namely, the girls who work the night shift always work the night shift and have become accustomed to running the joint as they see fit. Namely, choosing the radio station. And that wouldn't be so bad except that they insist on choosing the station that only plays slow-jams. All night. For 12 hours. And because there are, apparently, only so many slow-jams available, that the station rotates the same 4 or 5 songs every hour. By 6 AM, I'm delirious with the "love to love you, wo-man" tunes. That wouldn't necessarily be so bad except that the 3 or 4 other nurses I work with add insult to slow-jam injury by crooning along with said slow-jam. It's a marvel to me that they can remember what function Coreg has on heart rate, why you don't give morphine to a pancratitis patient AND all the lyrics (including all "Uh"s and "yeah baby"s) to every song. Where are they finding this kind of time?! It became quite clear to me that the only musical inputs in their lives are slow-jams when I had to call one of them at home and the ring-back tone was a sexy slow jam. Which is ballsy, since I'm not sure I'd want just anyone calling me to hear that.

Which brings me to my next point. There is nothing inherently wrong with slow-jams, but it is truly remarkable how many different ways, tunes and words can be used to sing about wanting to/going to/working on having sex with a woman. Which is fine. I'm sure a quick perusal through my iPod would wield just as much horror to them, though not of a sexual "what I am gonna do to your body, lady, when we all alone, uh... yeah.. uh.. WOO" persuasion. However, there was one night I put my nursing shoe down and said if I heard "Low" one more time I thought I might mercy kill myself right there in the nursing station and could I please change the station. For a blessed 20 minutes I heard good shit. And I was the only voice knowing all the words filling the nursing station. After a quick trip to a patient room, I came back to hear "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones playing. What a great song, man. I mean, really. What a great song. Except that I realized all the other nurses were discussing how terrible it was -- this SATAN music that I had put on. They decided that they just couldn't, in good conscience, listen to this DEVIL music. I argued. I pleaded. I insisted that it was a clever, lyrical weave of sarcasm and wit by the Rolling Stones -- old men who continue to love-to-love-you-wo-man without actually having to say it (helloooo, "Start me up"??), but sadly, I was overruled. And so thus is my night shift. I have begun bringing my own earphones because sometimes I think my brain waves are being slowly manipulated by all the slow jams. And then I live in constant fear that they'll see I'm listening to Air Supply.

The night shift also poses interesting problems when I come off of it. When most people live and do shit during the day, I sleep. Unless there is some reason for me to stay awake (And sometimes that reason is Paradise Hotel 2. Don't judge.). Recently, our furnace broke. The Mister scheduled the repair man to come between 8AM and 11AM -- so I wouldn't be totally disturbed by letting the repair guy in. He arrives and I take him to the furnace in the basement. He's chit chatting and I'm dead on my feet. When we arrive at the furnace, I swing around and say to him, "Well, yeah. So this is where the magic happens." What's worse, is that I didn't see anything wrong with saying that for a solid ten minutes.

When it comes to strangers, I usually don't mention I'm a nurse anymore. At first, I would tell anyone standing still long enough what I did because I was proud and I dig the respect that people immediately have when you tell then what you do. And then I learned that after they shower their respect on you, they inundate you with medical questions or the story about how terrible or how wonderful your hospital is. Or the really long story about their child/mother/sister/friend's recent illness. Or worse, the symptoms they are currently having -- and should they go to the doctor for that? So when the repair man showed up and I'm all black-eye-circles and sexual innuendoing the furnace, I just made the excuse that I worked a night shift and forgive my rather subdued attitude at the moment. My fatigue made my attempts at artful dodging transparent. And in the end, he found out what I did. And then my plans of sleeping on the couch while he fixed what needed to be fixed until I had to sign something, turned into him sitting at the dining room table to talk about "when it hurt to pee -- why is that?" and how his mother is at this one hospital, but he wishes she were at MY hospital because it's better there (probably) and the time that his son.. blah blah blah.

Yeah man, the night shift.

Incidentally, my Lenten cake-giving-upping did pretty well. It wasn't a perfect 40 days, but it was better than last year, which gives me room to grow for next year. Naturally, the minute I give up cake is when grateful patient families inundate the unit with thank-you treats to the nurses. As one nurse slathered her face in delicious looking cake, she commented to me that if SHE gave up cake, the last thing she'd be was closer to God. Nice.

As we move liturgically towards Pentecost, I'll make a Pentecostal effort to blog more. I had a few irrate emails about my absence. My bad.

I lent Jesus 40 days of desserts. I'm hoping He'll return them come Easter.

2008-02-06T21:54:00.000-05:00

I can't believe you're still here. You still come to visit me after weeks and weeks of nothing? Christ, you're a good friend. And here all I have are vague excuses and veiled attempts at explanations for my lengthy blog absence. Excuse: Life, man. Sometimes it sucks you dry.

So I come back to you with ponderings of all things Catholic, but particularly Lenten. The season, which ashily began today had my little Catholic brain in knots the last few days thinking of how exactly I would appropriately commemorate these next 40 days of sheer Catholic guilt and repentance for my ever growing list of sins and grievances against the Almighty.

Last year was my first really 'good' and 'well played' lent. I gave up desserts, particularly cake -- without which I am hard pressed to find a reason for living. I permitted myself the indulge in the moist delight on Sundays (which, where I grew up, was kosher to do. The priest growing up said that Sunday is a day of celebration, always, even during lent. And to partake in what you have sacrificed all week on Sunday pleases God (phew) and also gives you just that much more fortification to make it one more week doing without. I couldn't agree more. Because I do love cake.) and on ultra special cake-days, like Valentine's day, and the occasional birthday-it would-rude-to-NOT-have-cake-at-this-party-party. In a cake filled nutshell, I cheated, but I swear I wore the Lenten game face longer than I ever had before. Additionally, my clothes fit better. Crap, I must really eat a lot of cake in Ordinary Time.

My Bestie has decided to give up on the sailor mouth this year. She figures it has a two pronged effect. One: she checks off the "gave that shiz up for lent" box and Two: she stops swearing inappropriately at her cush corporate job.

I could use a little of that myself (primarily when I found myself saying "This is going to fucking hurt like hell" to a cocaine addict who didn't understand my initial professional, cleaner and classier explanations of the procedure I was about to do. The Mister said, "Couldn't they fire you for that?!" I said, "No. Two reasons. One: He's a coke addict and we all know how we have to talk to coke addicts sometimes (clearly.. don't you?) and Two: National Nursing Shortage. Bam."), but ultimately figured that really, without my favorite four lettered words, this blog would be nearly nonexistent and I might die from my boring, flair less conversation skills. Truly, it is my tragic flaw (among others, to be sure.. let's not waste time listing them here.)

I decided that again, giving up desserts this year would be the sacrifice that God was looking for. And I think I really need to go Lenten balls to the Lenten walls this year and do it up (excluding Sundays of course. I am still human.) And while man cannot live on bread alone, he must have the Word of the Lord, he must also have cake. 'Tis true.

Additionally, I learned that my locale of employment is practically teeming with Catholics. I spent the morning thinking to myself, "I didn't know S/HE was Catholic!" We Catholics tend to lay low and not make a big fuss of the whole Catholic thing. Perhaps it is a throwback to those good old days when being Catholic had to be all secretive about their Catholic-ness when it was all underground -- literally. Granted, they were being slaughtered, but who didn't like being in a secret club. Secret clubs are cool. I mean, really. And how odd it is that as secretive and un-talky-about-our-Catholicness we are 364 days of the year, we spend one full day of the year wearing a large black smudge on our faces to out ourselves to everyone (and each other) about our beliefs (which might explain the slaughter part from many years ago... just a thought..). And on the level, it's really hard to be a smartass, a hardass or any other kind of ass when you're wearing a mark on your head that means you know you ought to be nicer to people -- and they know it, too. It kind of ruins my flow, man.

I met my fellow guilt ridden, meatless and fasting colleagues this morning at mass -- which is a strange religious bonus I have through my employer. My office building has a chapel complete with Catholic priest. What does YOURS have? Course, my office doesn't have a gym or any sweet watering holes nearby and it usually has a wafting odor of lingering poo and recycled air, but hey, we have a a chapel complete with Catholic priest. Now don't go bombarding my hospital's HR webpage looking for openings, ok?

And incidentally, 20 hours in and all I can think about is cake and my Bestie had lost nearly $1.50 in quarters today by about 11:30AM at a quarter a curse. Who knew the poor might ultimately benefit from the potty mouth of a good Catholic?

From the mouths of patients...

2008-01-06T02:55:00.000-05:00

I forget, often times, that there are people in this world who don't have degrees or, for that matter, any real iota of interest in medical science. To me, your body is the most important and proximal possession you have and will ever have. And most people, judging by my 12 hour shifts, have not even glanced at the owners manual. Everyday I am shocked by how little people know about their own bodies. And it is not that I expect people to understand the renin-angiotension system of the kidneys, but just that, as we say, "the air goes in and out, the blood goes round and round, and any variation on that is a problem."

And so I find myself being broadsided by questions and comments from patients and families that my first instinct is to make a smart ass remark to ~ and I have to exercise a significant amount of personal restraint. I find it remarkable the places that people choose to get their medical information from. And better yet, when they are corrected by a medical professional, how fervently they fight for their inaccurate speck of knowledge.

My job, a lot of the time, is teaching. Educating. Informing. And I like that part. It plays to the 8 year old Cathy inside me, chalk in hand, ready to play teacher. Everyone listens with rapt attention and I hold court for a few minutes about why they're cutting you open and how. Or why that tube is there. Or why you haven't pooped and why you should.

A few of the one-liner gems I've had in the past few weeks are as follows:

* On my way transporting another patient, I am stopped, quite suddenly and abruptly, by a man in the hall who says, "Excuse me, Nurse, but is there a bug going around?" I say, "A bug?" He says, "Yeah. Like a stomach bug. Because my stomach hurts... *pause* Why?" Why, indeed. Sir, you are in a hospital, first of all, a place of many bugs. Second of all, nurses are not abreast of each and every strain making the rounds.

* Patient's wife: "Why is he peeing so much? I mean, where is it coming from?" Me: "Well, we gave him some medicine that will make him urinate a lot. The purpose is to pull the extra fluid from his tissue and then he'll pee it out." Her: "Uh huh. Where's his tissue? And what does that organ do?" Literally. She wanted me to point out the organ in his body called The Tissue.

* Patient's son: "I don't get it. If it isn't in the small intestines or the large intestines, then where else is it?" Me: "There are more places in your body than just your small and large intestines, sir." Him, in all seriousness: "Oh yeah? Like WHERE?"

* Patient's son, who has been with him all morning says because the patient is actively dying, "Nurse, I'm going to go get some food from the cafeteria. While I'm gone, please don't mercy kill my dad, ok?" Me: "What? No, no, we don't DO that here. No one is going to mercy kill your dad." Him: "No, well, I saw on tv that a lot of times they mercy kill patients. And a friend told me that his dad was mercy killed at a hospital while he was out. So please, don't mercy kill my dad." Someone needs to lay off 60 Minutes. (Tempting retort: Oh com'on. One more mercy killing and I get a set of steak knives!)

Love and marriage...

2007-12-16T11:47:00.001-05:00

I guess it's a good thing Disney didn't make sequels?

So hurry up! And bring your juke-box-money!

2007-12-11T01:08:00.000-05:00

A friend recently emailed me a picture of the Mister and I cutting our usual rug at a friend's wedding. Now, while I know -- and my friend knows the context of this picture, a fresh pair of eyes might easily misinterpret this:

Why, if I didn't know better I'd think I was sassing my man something awful and he was about to get all domestic violent on my ass. (My, but aren't we dressed fancy for a disturbance!)

No, he was just telling me, and I him, in such an animated fashion, that -- Your WHAT? Tiiiiiiiiiinnnn roooooofff - RUSTED!

Love me, love my cat(s).

2007-12-11T00:40:00.001-05:00

I'm married. And so that automatically disqualifies me from sounding like/being the proverbial "crazy cat lady" ~ except that I am currently, to the best of my knowledge, childless ~ which, in times like these, does less for me in the way of convincing you that my cats are not the feline replacements for a human infant as a repository for my love, affection, attention and primary source of my social storytelling. And, sadly, another strike against me is that since my own recent birth into the digital age, the subject matter taking up the most room on my camera (other than my foray into the Civil War and our pleasure cruise to South America ~ neither of which resulted, either intentionally or un, you'll never know HA, in the creation of or otherwise illegal obtaining of a human baby for which to otherwise hog the rest of the digital space on my camera) is the cats.

Am I still able to feasibly convince you that I am not a 'crazy cat lady'?
Huh.
Really.
That sucks, because the whole rest of this post is funny, dare I say, ZANY pictures of my cats.

This is Hershey. She loves the Mister and could really do without me.

This is Bernini. He loves you because you're in his line of sight at the moment. And that's enough for him.

Hershey loves feathered things. It reminds her of her primal instincts that we pesky humans try to squelch in her.
Bernini lives and dies for a good box.

The Halloween costumes, much to my chagrin, didn't go over well with either of them.

Bernini's first sex ed class with a classy souvenir purchased in classy Cartagena. It's a flute. Ironically, this particular one doesn't whistle. You can blow and blow on it, and nothing. *insert obvious joke here*

They sleep when the sleepin's good and wherever the sleepin' strikes them.

Bernini is delighted we finally put up that big green cat toy that we bring out once a year.
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Phew. I stopped the post just as it was getting a little crazy cat lady on you.

You're welcome.

300 ways to leave your lover?

2007-11-22T04:26:00.000-05:00

If at first you don't secede, try, try again.

2007-11-16T15:24:00.001-05:00

For the record, I was born in the uppest part of the great state of New York. I split my formative youth between Plattsburgh, New York and Omaha, Nebraska. My mother's family spent much of 1861-1865 being thoroughly oppressed and occasionally starved by British rule in Ireland. My father's family spent the same time thinking out word problems and likely arguing the logistics of the Nation's current events in New Hampshire -- in the end, picking up the musket and joining the ranks of Massachusetts and New Hampshire brigades.

My time south of the Mason-Dixon line - compared with time lived elsewhere- is only recently tipping the scale in a C.S.A. favor. I spent most of my first 15 years not knowing much at all about "The War between the States" and "The War of Northern Aggression". It didn't figure into my life and didn't interject into my daily paradigm. Within my first month of living in Virginia, the cruel bullies of my suburban middle school swapped "new girl" for "Yankee girl". I didn't realize I was a Yankee -- more so that we were still having to label people thusly.

Long story short, I have in these short 15 years since, cultivated a real love and appreciation for the Civil War. I'm interested in less of the political "why we fought" aspect (except that I'd be happy to tell you that they were fighting for their "rahts" in my best period Southern accent), less about the dates and the outcomes of the battles, but more about across-the-board topics: battlefield medicine, biographies of the key players, espionage, sabatoge and this country's still strong fascination with what happened across 5 Aprils from 1861-1865 -- from Fort Sumter to the Appomattox Courthouse.

Here's what I can tell you -- briefly.

I own a book listing and cataloging all of the Virginia Historical Markers all over the State (stop judging me). On frequent occasion, my bestie and I head out in a random direction and make a sweep of all of the signs in that area. Once upon a time it was about checking off the sign, now it's all about what that sign says and how important (or not) that event might have been -- and hell, it's all about the places and people we encounter in between signs. Two words: Dinosaur Land. We're exploring our State. And though nerdy, it's pretty awesome and awesomely addictive. I feel it's sort of a crime to live in such a history-rich state, a state that's one of the oldest in our great Nation, and to know little to nothing about the people who have walked on this land from the beginning. Hell, I've been to the spot where John Wilkes Booth was captured and shot -- have you?
Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson is my all-time, hands down favorite Civil War general. Again, not so interested in his politics (though they are interesting.. ) but more so about how the charisma and later myth of this single man has permeated time. The conspiracy theory about what WOULD have happened if Jackson had lived to Gettysburg (one theory being in all seriousness: We'd all be speaking German. -- I'd be happy to walk you through that explanation if you're interested.) I love him so much. (but not like I love-love JEB Stuart for the ladies man that he was... he purportedly lost the South the battle at Gettysburg because was busy loving some ladies.. and I love that about him.) I love him so much that when wandering through a Crap-shop-Gift-Shop at a rest stop off of the Pennsylvania turnpike, I came upon a t-shirt bearing the likenesses of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. It says in large letters "Lee's Stonewall". And it was on clearance. (Can't imagine why.) And I bought it. Worse yet, I wear it. But not OUT, because let's be honest, we live in a touchy society where a shirt even slightly honoring a dead Confederate general is considered to be a racist proclamation. And though I clearly don't feel that way, I respect that that's what some persons may perceive -- even if I don't agree with it. (Funny story: I accidentally did wear it out once. The weekend of my wedding in Pittsburgh. I had worn it to bed the night before and the next morning had to make a quick run to WalMart. I threw on glasses, pants and flip flops and grabbed my purse. I didn't realize I was wearing a shirt with stars-and-bars on it until I saw the look of someone's face the moment I entered the store. And then it's too late for explainin'.)
Wartime medicine and surgery -- in any era -- pretty much paves the way for modern techniques. When else do you get to try that wacky idea to save someone then when they're likely going to die miles and miles from any REAL help anyway. Shit, if someone had known to tie a damned tourniquet on General Johnston at Shiloh, he wouldn't have bled out from a gunshot wound to the knee that he could have easily survived. Don't even get me started on why Stonewall bit it too early. His likely pneumonia, them bleeding out his "bad humors" and absolutely no grasp of microbes and infection turned his arm wound into a mortal injury. More lives were likely lost on the battlefield from infection, dysentery, poor water supplies and parasites than from the gun/cannon/bayonet. (Interestingly enough, 'Southern Anemia' is another conspiracy theory about why the war favored the Billy Yank in the end. Hookworms live in the ground and get picked up by people walking barefoot. 100 hookworms can drink about 1mL of blood. Which isn't much, but when you have 10,000 or more hookworms in you, you do the math. The poorly outfitted Confederate army lacked shoes more often than not. So they didn't loose because they were beaten, they lost because they were all so damned anemic. Plausible?)
I didn't realize I had such Southern sympathies until the Mister and I made our first of many annual trips to Gettysburg, PA to meet his father (a Civil War-BUFF, man.) and tour the battlefields. We may as well have left the Mister in the car once Dad-in-Law and I hit the battlefield-talk and ran. It was at one of the most pivotal locales of Gettysburg where his father was gesticulating wildly across the landscape and saying, "When WE flanked this way and met the charge here, WE then... " and I thought to myself, "Wow, he's got it ALL wrong. WE were the ones over there and the ones making the charge and WE... " And then it hit me. Without knowing it, I had sometime switched my mental "We" of belonging and Civil War nationality from Yankee to Confederate. And the rest is (sort of) history.

That all being said -- and really, there is so much more to be said -- the Mister works with a gentleman in his office who is an actual takes-it-very-seriously reenactor (Stickles translation: He's on team T.I.T.S.). And while he belongs to a Virginia regiment for the Confederacy, he does own both uniforms. Most reenactors do, in fact. And this is what a lot of people don't get. It isn't about replaying a battle to show who was mightier or who ought to have won. It isn't about freaks trying to live in the past. It's about conveying history. It's about telling a story. And I dig that. I dig it from a distance because I'm not into reenacting (yet?).

So dude-who-works-with-Mister had a battle engagement a few weekends ago commemorating the Battle of Cold Creek out in Western Virginia. And as the Mister was unable to make it, I went. And I dragged nursing-school-now-kickass-O.R.-nurse Jenni with me. And it's safe to say we both had a pretty awesome CivilWar-tastic time.

As we skulked around the camps -- eating some lost southern delicacy known as "Fry Bread" -- we encountered so many reenactors. Not one to miss a good photo opportunity, we kept asking to get a picture. The strange part was that though they very graciously and excitedly agreeded to be photographed with us, every last one of them had a startling element of surprise -- like no one had ever asked them to be in a picture in uniform before. And that's what baffles me. How could you NOT have people queueing up to get in a picture with you dressed like that?

No matter. I took advantage of them. I took pictures with the best dressed, the worst dressed, the guy claiming to be General Custer, and the man who looked like an emaciated Robert E. Lee in desperate need of a shave.

Somehow two nurses managed to find the Confederate medical corps completely by chance. Apparently there's a niche in reenacting for everyone. Real doctors and nurses will suit up and act as their professional ancestors would have in a real battle. This gentleman, who I only approached for his rotund good looks and silver cup of grog, turned out to be a real medical doctor in a DC hospital.

The first of our Confederate dead that day. That fry bread'll get you.

Seriously. Dude was just sleeping. Like in the shopping part, not the camp part. Weird.
Robert E. Lee? He's rocking it here, but imagine what he looks like normally, like everyday.

Not only did I stalk this man for a better part of the afternoon -- waiting for my chance to get a picture with him -- but I managed to acquire a slouch hat and confederate flag over the course of the day to match my aforementioned Civil War t-shirt that I felt might only be worn outside my house for just such an occasion without wry looks from others.

Jenni with the artillery boys.
The apparent Confederate bias in picture taking was merely a product of 'not that many Yanks' in the spectator area -- and the ones that were there weren't interested in pictures with the girl in the Confederate slouch hat and Stonewall Jackson t-shirt. It's a rough feeling when a Civil War reenactor thinks YOU'RE dressed funny.

General Custer actually had to be talked into taking the picture with me because of my Rebel garb. I think the General did protest too much, though, because I don't know how he didn't hear and secretly love me exclaiming to Jenni, "Holy shit! It's General Custer! Get my picture with him!" Custer's little lacky there thought he was pretty funny. Cha. See if they appreciate that humor at Little Bighorn, friend.

Not much, what's new with you?

2007-11-14T01:45:00.001-05:00

My apologies for keeping you all waiting so long. That is, if any of you continue to be waiting. After all this time, I'm wagering this blog has tumble weeds and sounds like crickets chirping.

But, I come bearing pictures. Everyone likes pictures. Less wordy words, more fun pictures. So, dear friends, let me chronicle for you the last month for me.

I had a pirate-tastic bachelorette party.

Highschool, College and Adult-Life friends all in attendance. And dressed as pirates.

Even my mom came ready to pillage.

then, I got married. Before you ask, yes, married life is treating me pretty well and please don't ask about babies.

We rehearsed it.
Given away.Taken (sexy)back.

Did a little posing.
Did a little dancing and made some kissy faces.

Taught young ones the art of "fingerguns". I think she's got it.
And still had time to hang out with some more pirates.

then, I honeymooned in exotic locales.
Like the back deck of a cruise ship where they didn't allow children, had ample sun, empty deck chairs and frequent waiter visits from the bar. A place where a newly married girl could shake her new husband in the casino and reading smut and Civil War historicals all by her lonesome. THAT'S a vacation.

And some windy putt putt on the top deck of the ship after a formal dinner.

Hair in my face does not alter my golf skills. I have no golf skills.

The sunniest moment we had in Cartagena, Colombia as we sailed into port. He was still sleeping and I was busy mastering the "self-taken" shot. I'm getting so awesome at it.

And then it rained. And then we experienced the lagoon that is the poor urban drainage and sewer systems of Cartagena's Old Walled City. I have no idea what the significance of this statue cluster is. Seriously. But let's play "Find Cathy's Feet". At which point the Mister says, "Do you think the sewers are so bad here that we're wading in raw sewage?" Thanks for saying that outloud, my love. It wasn't a real worry until just then. (Note: I spent the majority of the time in Cartagena quoting "Romancing the Stone" to the Mister only to find out that he had never actually SEEN it. Which is a crime unto itself. So then I just spent the day saying "Jo-ahn Wyyy-l-der" in my best Colombian accent.)

And then we drank Colombian coffee. Which warmed up our drenched rat appearances.

And as we sailed away, the rain miraculously and ironically stopped. And then we were dry again.
Early morning arriving in Panama.

The Panama Canal -- arguably one of the most impressive feats of engineering. Like the nerd that I am, I have awaited this Canal trip for a very long time. It was nothing short of amazing.

The cruise ship itself is considered to be "Pana-Max" -- meaning it is the largest permissible dimensions for passage through the Canal. While in the loch, the ship had no more than two feet of buffer on either side. And we never bumped - not even once. It was an amazing operation. The picture here looks down the side of the ship from our balcony to the concrete of the Canal below. Notice our proximity to the edge.

With the cruise ship, we sailed from the Atlantic through the first set of lochs to the Gatun Lake where the Mister and I boarded a very small passenger boat that took us the rest of the way to the Pacific. Wouldn't you know -- it rained most of the day.

As the water empties from the loch, the ships in the loch go down with the water level. This loch took us down nearly 35 feet, hence our ability to touch the wall. So they say, and so we're gullible enough to believe, a married couple touching the wall of the Canal is destined to be together forever. Which makes no sense whatsoever. But, I wager, with this legend plus the Crim Dell where we became engaged, I think I've got this "forever" thing in the bag, man.

The largest doors in the entire Canal system. They were built and shipped each as one piece from Pittsburgh, PA -- the Mister's hometown and site of our recent nuptials. These doors fit together to within a few millimeters of accuracy, metal-to-metal, creating a perfect water seal when shut without rubber or other materials.

We boarded a bus to traverse Panama back to our awaiting cruise ship that evening. My camera is still catching its digital breath. The Mister was quoted at one point saying, "I think you have enough pictures. Seriously. Stop taking pictures."

And then I got rigged up the next day to zip line through the rain forest in Costa Rica. Scared straight by the infectious disease doctors at work, convinced I would come home with Malaria/Yellow Fever/Typhus, I appeared to be the only asshole on the excursion with any real intent on covering up and closing the would-be mosquito buffet of my integumentary system.

I warned him, I swear I did. But he decided to shirk the long sleeves. Point of him keeping a nurse around only to ignore her: none. (He didn't get bitten and remains disease free. But that's beside the point.) Ah, love at 250 feet above the rain forest floor. (P.S. No bug bites. Not a one. Could have been the 35% DEET spray I was wearing, too. Or the 3rd world variety vaccines I got before I left. )

And finally, the pinnacle of the trip. Being conned into a cruise ship game show whereby I ended up stuffing balloons into a sumo suit to beat out a Norfolk, Virginia (ironic to come so far to end up so close to a neighbor) firefighter (who beat me by one damned balloon!). And the crowd went wild.

I shook it at someone else's wedding days after returning from our honeymoon.

I traveled to Tucson for a dear, dear friend's wedding which I was honored to be a part of.

You'll note that he is the pirate from my wedding. Yeah, we make the rounds.

Wow, it's so nice when it isn't your wedding.

I don't want no scrubs.

2007-09-28T22:08:00.000-04:00

Let's review one of the primary reasons I got into this business. YOU wear trouser socks, nylons and pumps to work. I wear athletic socks and crocs. YOU wear Ann Taylor to work and iron and flat iron/blow dry/screw with your hair. I wear scrubs, hoodies and a ponytail. Oh right, and I help people and find the rewarding benefits of nursing to really fulfill my soul. And I basically show up to work in pajamas.

That being said, I was informed today that perhaps scrubs aren't the most flattering work ensembles ever made for me.

I have really been down playing the hitchin' at work (T minus one week!). I'm the new girl, and I have only one chance to make that first work impression and generally loathe the idea of being "that girl who's all giggly and amped about her stupid wedding." At the bequest of a new friend, I brought in pictures of my wedding dress -- with me in it -- to quench her curiosity -- on the stated proviso that I only show her. Midway through her gushing, a coworker who hails from a far more blunt, candid and "from brain to mouth in under .4 seconds!" country and culture pops her head over and takes a gander.

"Oh WOW, Cathy! That is beautiful! And I never realized you were actually THIN!"

Huh. I'm still not sure what to do with that. Offended? Flattered. Offended? Flattered.

Another quality, fun-filled, pooptastic day at work!

2007-09-14T16:23:00.000-04:00

Seriously, if it isn't a wedding blog these days, it's going to be a hospital blog.
Build your bridge and get over it.

This work week's learning points were:

I am, despite my fascination with medicine and most things body-related, horrified by the sound and implication of the word "intravaginally". When I read that as a nurse, it means I'm headed there. Damnit.

Moral: Sure does make "corporate" have a nice ring again.

A patient, suffering from oral thrush (a yeast infection in the mouth.. don't ask), offered up that a quick cure would be to put urine in her mouth. Say huh? Yes, she insisted. In the deep south where she grew up, her grandmomma said that when the baby has thrush, rub some of its wet diaper in his mouth and it will cure the thrush. *pause* I advised her (with every fiber of my being trying not to judge her with my facial expression) that I didn't think the doctor will write an order for urine. I read a lot in nursing school. I never came across that one.

Moral: If it involves urine in a functional use, it isn't a good idea. In fact, it's just plain gross.

My patient's call light goes on. I go in. She says: "I think I had a bowel movement. My thought bubble says: "Do you not know? How can you be unsure about this?" After inspection, I learn that she thought right. I finish cleaning her up and am applying some cream to her backside when she spontaneously poops again -- on my gloved hand. I say aloud: "You just had another bowel movement." She says in a surprised voice: "I thought I felt something."

Moral: Thinking really is believing.

Get your Colonial on.

2007-08-31T13:47:00.000-04:00

Recently I took a quick trip through Williamsburg, VA, what some reading this may refer to as the Mother-Land/Mother-Ship/Place with Mug Night/Land of all that is warm and comforting about not being an adult or expected to be an adult.

Super-quick trip, really. But enough time, clearly, to stop at Snow-to-Go, drive my car-mate and Bestie by the old Soro house, art studio and frat row. Additionally stopping to balk at the new Barksdale dorms (which I'm sure are delightful to live in and bring much needed revenue to our Alma Mater.. BAH..), point out the Marketplace and the Greenleafe and stare blankly at what WAS Common-Glory and is now the new Amphitheater.

A power walk through the Colonial haunts provided a more picture-purging adventure.

I have to caption none of these photos for you.
You, who know these places as well as I do.
You, who have these same pictures with different heads on them in your collection somewhere.

If you tell a joke in the woods and no one is around to hear it -- was it still funny?

2007-08-28T22:10:00.000-04:00

I have a problem. Well, I have a lot of problems, but one in particular will drive this post.

I really like my job. Like, I really like it. I like it in the way they make movies about people who really like their jobs. My only complaint is that my coworkers, by and large, though wonderfully giving, talented and skilled professionals -- lack any semblance of a sense of humor. I tell jokes, I get confused looks, crickets chirping and then the pity laugh. This could be all about THEM -- in that they have no sense of humor. Or, I'm big enough to suggest that it could be all about ME -- in that I'm not as funny as I think I am. But let's be honest, that's not possible. I'm pretty damned funny.

However, in the few months that I have been at work, I have made hospital-humor jokes that have fallen on deaf, unfunny, PITY LAUGH ears. I have learned to curb my jokes -- which is kind of like holding back a sneeze. It doesn't come out as hard as it would have, but it hurts and your nose gets tinglie.

So I turn to you, my blogging buddies. I have to let out the funny. Please, don't feel obligated to laugh on my account.

1) The majority of my patient-load is geriatric. And when you've lived a long time, your body starts to show the wear of the years and the scars of your past adventures. Like most industries, things come in phases. Some weeks it's all about the poorly controlled diabetics. Or it's patients who don't speak a lick of English. Or it's poo. For the past few weeks, completely regardless of diagnosis, my patients have, for the most part, been missing all of or part of a single finger. Seriously. I have never seen so many 1-finger-short-of-a-high-five cases in my life. And really, it's such a minor observation when, say, they appear to be breathing through two lumps of coal and cigarette ash that were once called "lungs". Details like partial digits missing gets overlooked. So I have found myself coming out of patient rooms and commenting to my fellow nurses: "Hey, did you see that he's missing his entire ring finger?" or "So he apparently lost 3 toes and most of his middle finger in a mine accident."

THE UNTOLD JOKE: "I noticed he was missing a finger. I shook out the sheets and looked under the bed for it but I can't find it. Did he have it last night at change of shift? Think he'll sue?"

2) The proper title to my floor is : Medical Telemetry with a Renal Focus. Sure does pack a wordy punch, huh. None of you have any idea what I do anymore, do you. In any case, in addition to the elder folk, we get a fair amount of transplants. Transplants doing well, transplants on the brink and the organ-formerly-known-as-a-transplant. All of these patients at the time of transplant take oceans of expensive pills everyday for the rest of their lives. One of those pills is an "anti-rejection" pill that does just that -- prevents the body from kicking the new organ out of the abdominal-party. Because I'm new I frequently find myself on the buzzer holding end of a nurse quiz show by my bosses and new hire managers. The process makes me feel incredibly awkward and so I usually try to distract them with jokes they don't laugh at. Strangely, it works. While discussing the functionality and pharmakinetics of anti-rejection meds, I commented:

THE TOLD JOKE: "Anti-rejection meds. Huh. Too bad they're so expensive. I knew a lot of kids in highschool who could have really benefited from such a pill." *insert pause, slow understanding and then a slight pity laugh*

Phrases you likely don't use at YOUR job.

2007-08-22T05:21:00.001-04:00

1. "You got poop on my arm."

2. "Let me see your testicular swelling."

3. "When YOU'RE the nurse, you can make that decision. Right now, that's MY job so you'll need to back up."

4. "Don't let your fingers or your penis touch the inside of the specimen cup."

5. "I'm sorry, Doctor. I'm not here to hold your soda."

Man, and I got to say all of these THIS week.. Wow.

Finally facing my Waterloo

2007-08-10T22:51:00.000-04:00

Who here can say with all honesty that high school wasn't the biggest social kick in the pants ever. I'd rather re-write my resume or move to a new house (packing, unpacking included) than do a day of high school over.

But I've moved on. I've grown up and am far too mature to dwell on the angst of high school. And really, it wasn't all that bad.

Except for gym class. Where I might be able to use multisyllabic words and find the hidden most meaning of a Toni Morrison book, I was a looser in gym class. I broke a girl's nose once in gym class with a Frisbee. Totally. But the absolute bane of my gym days was my complete and utter inability to ever do a chin up {Sidebar: Who here has ever done one chin up in their life? Seriously. Speak up. I'm curious if I would have hated you for your athletic prowess back then}. Once the gym teacher felt so bad for me (and a few other weak upper-bodied high school girls) that he hoisted us up so that we might feel some simulated version of chin up joy. I'd stand there in my county-issued cotton outfit and glare maliciously at the boys (and butch girls) who would do rapid fire sets of chin ups -- just because they could (and probably seething in my own jealousy because if I could do it, I would have been just another one of those assholes showing off too..).

And now that I've joined a new gym I find that my favorite machine has a direct view to the chin up bar where I spend 40 minutes watching the spirit of my macho high school classmates reincarnated into the young 20-something men that frequent my gym.

ENOUGH, I say! Damnit, teach me to do a chin up!

I met with a personal trainer last night with the simplest of requests --
Me: "My fitness goal? Oh, easy. To do one chin up."
Him: "Just one? You only want to do one?"
Me: "I'm ok with more than one, but one will complete me. Anything after one is chin up gravy."
Him: "I could have you doing a chin up in a month or so. How's that?"
Me: "Awesome."

Me Today: Holy crap. Ouch.

One month, huh. If my arms don't fall off before then.

Extra! Extra! Read about how I'm pretty awesome!

2007-08-09T13:37:00.000-04:00

I like my job. A lot. Everyday I think about how much I didn't like that other job that I had and how I am so much more significantly happy at this job.

Better than that, my job likes me. I was hired to my hospital unit over two years ago -- before even starting nursing school. They felt I was a "sure thing", gave me lots of money and I signed away the next few years of my life to work there. Cha. Like I wouldn't be working there anyway. The lady who has been orchestrating this since 2005 in HR and I have developed a friendly relationship. We both drive 10+ year old Volvos with illuminated dashboard lights of some sort -- burned out bulb, check engine, service -- you know, the usual -- it's a good place to build a commonality, man.

Anyway, it would appear that this HR lady does a once-monthly piece for the Health Section of the Washington Post highlighting the awesome things going on at my awesome juggernaut-of-health-care-hospital. And she asked me to contribute this month. It's cheesy, it's saccharin sweet, (it's true..) but man, it's me on the cover of the Health Section of the Washington Post discussing my otherwise uninteresting reasons for choosing health care as my second career. (Me and a few others' reasons, I think, but let's just focus on me, shall we?) Sunday's paper man. Pick it up. If for nothing else, there's coupons in there.

Holy crap, I love my job.

Things I Learned This Week by: Cathy Laws

2007-08-03T22:17:00.000-04:00

Apparently, Ebay feels that my user name 'celaws' is too "soft" a user name as it is also the start of my email address. Long story short, I received an Ebay love-note asking me to change it. Great, no problem. After much chin-scratching, I decided to go for a user name incorporating my would-be new-name. It's a good time to start getting used to it, right? Go ahead and change from my 4-letter, all-letters-make-a-sound name -- a name that is an actual plural noun that gets messed up so frequently it might make your head spin -- to a 6-letter, all-letters-make-a-sound name that is never misunderstood - weird. Seriously, I get Lewis, Law, Lawson (and this is not counting people starting my name with a K..) -- I got "Oaws" once and haven't figured out how that one happened. (and why not start the name-transition since my mom's big plan for me to go into the practice of law, ideally a judge, just so that I could use the name more effectively -- ie: "Judge Laws" -- so great it's almost a tv courtroom show....didn't pan out for her..) So yeah -- put that new name into effect early as to give me time to start acclimating to the idea. I thought I might sign a credit card receipt with my new name one of these times just to put into practice what I've been rehearsing on paper at home like a lovesick 6th grader -- but I keep loosing my nerve, fearful the transaction will be voided, alarms will go off and I'll be hauled away for name fraud. A friend of mine, the morning after her wedding, made a big deal to the new-hubs about signing her "new" name for the first time on the breakfast room service receipt. It came, she scribbled and when waiter-dude left, she realized she'd still signed her "old" name. Yeah, I'd like to be all ready to perform when the time comes. It's just how I roll.

And in the idea of name-changing, I was told that I ought to make all my big bank, rollover, etc. transactions now before my name changes and it gets sticky. Which was awesome, because I really wanted to spend most of my afternoon on the phone with two separate investment companies on several different calls getting that squared away. I know, woe is me. People in the world are starving and I am trying to rollover my 401K.

This week the hospital is putting me (and others..) through a critical care nursing fellowship to last the next few weeks, intermittently. The first day was the most boring -- primarily because they spent 8 hours introducing to us the foundations of critical care -- foundations that we heard about 10,000 times in nursing school (when to call a code, how to not stick yourself with a needle, what TB is... ). One of the more priceless powerpoint slides that I managed to stay awake through was about the importance of handwashing. Don't get me wrong, it's super important. If you're not all that sick, come to a hospital, hang around and see how much sicker you can get (I should go into hospital advertising... ). There are so many grossy-gross things floating around and it's way to easy to take them, as a nurse, from patient to patient if you don't wash your hands. But screw the patient, imagine what you're exposing yourself to. Ew. IN ANY CASE, the powerpoint presentation was meant to hit on the highlights of when you ought to wash your hands: after using the bathroom, before and after eating, when your hands have visible soil or bodily fluids on them, before and after patient contact and after contact with anthrax. It just seemed like an awfully out-of-place list ender.. La, la, wash your hands when they're dirty and when you TOUCH ANTHRAX. I'll be honest, my biggest concern was that I don't know that I'd recognize anthrax if it were sitting on my lap. But I guess it's good information to tuck away. How about we just wash our hands. Period.

If this whole "nursing" thing doesn't work out the job that I might be the worst at would be mine-hunter. Well, "minesweeper" I should say. Judging by my abilities, or lack thereof playing it continually over the boring stretches of class these past 2 years, I'd say that in a real world scenario, I've decimated thousands of acres of rural farm land, made amputees and/or widows/orphans out of countless villagers and most likely completely annihilated myself into the tiniest bits more times than I can count. I'm terrible at this game. And I'm legitimately bad -- not like "don't really make an effort" bad. I really try. I stare at it, I think about it, I count out loud. It's a bad scene. Now, if someone needs Bejeweling, I'm there.

It occurred to me in one of my more thoughtful moments this week that getting married's biggest bonus at this juncture is that I never have to be called out by a DJ as "single" and be made to stand in a lowly clump of women attempting to catch a bouquet. Aww, man. And then there's that chick who is, like, DYING to catch it. My condolences to those of you still left in the clump and my heartiest sympathies to those of you who find yourself on the business end of that girl's elbow-to-your-face when she makes her dive. Your day of exodus will come. I'd advise you to fake-like-you're-not-single, but let's be honest. Someone else at the wedding wants to gleefully watch your ultimate humiliation and spotlight your singleness and will inevitably shout for the DJ to hear: "Get up there XXX, you're SINGLE! Don't you want to catch the bouquet?!"

Oh, and I officially joined the 21st century this week and purchased a digital camera. Now don't go getting all excited. I have yet to come upon something to photograph that isn't my cat. And it is likely that when I do come upon such a subject I will be camera-free. It has been a hot minute since my sorority days of constant-camera-clutching and so it might take me a while to get back into the memory-capturing swing of things. Unless you just want me to post the random pictures of my cat. I didn't think so.

Code Walker: Where are you?

2007-07-24T22:06:00.000-04:00

So while everyone else is muggle-deep in Harry Potter's bidniss, I'm spending my quality time at work. (I might as well come out and tell you all that I didn't make it past book 4. It's good stuff, really it is. Stop judging me. I just fell into that category of people who have nothing against HP, liked the movies alright but just didn't get all wacky-wizard for the books -- my breaking point was book 4. And I'm ok with that. Stop judging me. I've been judged all weekend by the Betrothed, who without a jealous look from me, spent all weekend in bed with Harry. In the end, I think they just decided to stay friends.)

Backstory:cause this won't be funny without the explanation. And, actually, it still probably won't be funny. The one other hospital employee who I know reads this will sit back in her seat and howl. The rest of you will stare quizzically at your screens. The hospital has recently instituted a new policy -- Code Walker (advertised to the staff as "Code Walker: Where are you?" -- which I call "Code Walker: Texas Ranger"). Wandering elders are put in special bright green gowns (differing from the gowns of the more sedentary, stationary sick people at the hospital) so that on the off chance they mosey away from where we expect them to be, we can call a "Code Walker" and have their description and name announced over the hospital intercom. Basically it means -- look for the old dude in green and hey, couldja coax him back up here?

While joining some fellow coworkers to give a difficult patient a bath, most of us donned patient gowns over our scrubs to keep from getting messy. Because I can't take most things seriously, I put on the green gown. It got the laughs I wanted it to. Which was good for my humor-ego.

One of the more pioneering nurses took a picture on his contraband-during-work-hours cellphone and sent it to me.

Not funny to you -- seriously funny to me. Gowned, gloved, strangely looking mid-sneeze and giving a lame thumbs up.

Holy crap -- I love my job.

I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry. -- Rita Rudner

2007-07-19T20:24:00.000-04:00

Seems that all my blog buddies are on summer hiatus. That's ok. But I mean, really, how am I supposed to know the neat details of your everyday life? Pick up the phone and actually call you?! I can't really talk, though, see, cause I've been on my own starting-work-planning-a-wedding hiatus myself. So we're all forgiven.

And speaking of that wedding. It sure is creeping up on all of us. Maybe not you so much. Kinda on ME actually. Oh yeah, and the Betrothed too -- who in a few shorts months will need some other clever moniker for blogging purposes. I'll be honest. Getting him a new blog name isn't high on my list of things to accomplish in the next two months. He doesn't read this anyway. He sure doesn't know what he's missing. Maybe he does.

In all honesty, the wedding planning is, dare I say, pretty easy. We've had over two years to make decisions, buy things, reserve people and places. There is little left to do that I can't PayPal on the internet, get in one big trip to Michael's or finish up in this weekend's trip to the Williamsburg Pottery Factory (aka: Little Mexico.. seriously, have you ever BEEN there?). So I don't blog to complain and be all bridezilla on you.

I blog about a wedding we went to this past weekend. An old highschool chum of the Betrothed. Nice guy, really. I encountered him at the reunion last year. She's nice too, even though I'm pretty sure she carries a pink glitter pen with her at all times and has a serious stash of stickers and Precious Moments figurines in a curio cabinet somewhere. And I don't roll like that. And if I did, I wouldn't tell you. Ever.

So Saturday we get all duded up and head out to AMISH COUNTRY, PA. It would have made a better story to say that she was Amish, but the story looses nothing to tell you that the ceremony was at an old clapboard Baptist church IN Amish country. Unfortunately for the Betrothed, he has never seen Harrison Ford's 1980's classic "The Witness" (and clearly has not spent any amount of quality time watching movies on the USA channel..) and so my numerous -- and I mean numerous -- references and quotes from said movie as we drove down the dusty road served only to confuse and piss him off. ("Four-thirty! Time for milking!".... "I'm dying to know if any of them have some wrecked volkswagon in one of those garages and are romancing the hot Amish girl by playing the radio..."). When we arrived to the church 45 minutes early, I persuaded him to continue down the road so that I could shamelessly stare and wave at more Amish people and excitedly squeal at my the viewing of my first Amish buggy en-route. We turned around when we hit gravel. (Because you aren't anywhere you want to be anymore if you hit gravel. It leads to no where good. At least no where that smells good. I'm a city girl. Or at least a suburban girl. I don't DO gravel. )

The wedding was nice (if not very purple and a minister who needed a very serious lesson in comedy before attempting it in their ceremony). The reception was nice (if not very purple with mediocre cake and an obnoxious DJ). I reserved my normal wedding-reception excitement (wine-dancing-cake-dancing-wine) on our way to the hall as I knew no one at this wedding except the Betrothed -- and the groom (who I knew barely and I figured might object to spending the evening entertaining me..).

It was mediocre cake, but it made for an awfully strange reunion with another old HS friend of the Betrothed. Both commented on their inability to run for office now.

My fears were dashed away as soon as I got to know some new friends at Table #13 -- the awesomest table at the reception. Table #13 stuck together, man. None of us knew anyone else there and that is what bonded us together. We cracked on the poorly dressed, the jellyfish dancers and the sloppy drunks.

Before we knew it, Table #13 was dancing as a table. We decided to photo document it. The Betrothed cleverly decided to bring the magic of the table to the dance floor with our actual table number.

It was basically the Betrothed and I taking odd pictures of the #13 in different places.
Huh. Seemed funny at the time.

I mean, yeah, he was with us as a 13, but like, woah.

Who brought THIS dude?

And the polka dot dress was way cute sans sweater. But, sadly, I lost a button during the Charlie Brown Cha-Cha Electric Slide song and so for modesty's sake, I opted for the sweater.

So -- now I blogged. It's your turn. Go.

Plastic-Bag, PlasticBag, Plastic-Bag, PlasticBag

2007-07-03T12:08:00.000-04:00

(Title: A little throw-back to The Tom Green Show, for those of you who care to remember or admit to watching it.)

I make a sincere attempt to not use this blog to be preachy. Sometimes I can't help myself (*cough* donate blood and fill out an advanced directive and donate your organs *cough*) and I admit that. I feel that this entry might be one more of those times.

Let me start off by telling you a little more about my love affair with Al Gore. A year ago I thought that I was in touch with the environment. I thought I was sincerely making my efforts. Then, like so many of you, I saw "An Inconvenient Truth" and was truly moved. Truly moved. I was shocked by the very inconvenience of that truth, but I was also scared to death of the damage we are inflicting on our planet -- a planet I had every intention of my children and grandchildren getting a go at. I filled up my bike tires. I made an extremely concerted effort to reduce the trash that the Betrothed and I put out twice a week -- and to up what we can reuse or recycle.

My older sister informed me that those following the ways of Al Gore -- doing THEIR PART to save the planet -- were following what is now known as "The Gorical". It isn't about browbeating your coworkers, it's about taking home that soda can from your office and recycling it if your office doesn't -- I'll admit I will grab someone else's soda can or water bottle from the trash to pop it into the recycle bin. It's about using tupperware instead of new sammich bags everyday. Washing plastic utensils instead of getting new ones each day. Using the fabric grocery bags instead of the plastic ones. In our house, and now in my Bestie's, when we have an item to recycle, it is "to be Goricaled" or to be "given to the Gorical".

My recycling efforts stepped up from my soda and soup cans and plastic water bottles to everything plastic that I could wash and recycle. Yogurt cups, McDonald's Parfait cups, the plastic thing the angel food cake comes in.

And then I was directed to the recycling guide in our community book. (If your community recycles, check our their policies. I learned that mine accepted junk mail, old phone books, magazines and catalogs -- all to be recycled. Of course, shred the parts that have your name on them. It is just another great way to reduce your trash and lessen your "footprint".) Ours stated that they only accept 1's and 2's -- plastic things with necks and screw on tops. And everything else plastic that I was recycling was slowing down the recycling process because it had to be sifted out and trashed -- reducing the recycling efforts. We, as a nation, can only recycle 1's and 2's?! Look around your house. Your apartment. Your office. What percentage of the plastic that you see has a neck with screw on top? Are you recycling it? Are you aware of what becomes of the plastic of the 3-7 marking that is not recyclable? Did you know that that has every piece of plastic that has EVER BEEN MANUFACTURED is STILL on the planet? We cannot destroy it. And only 3-5% of all that plastic is recycled. Plastic is an amazing thing, TO BE SURE, it has changed our lives, improved our safety, saved our money, but doesn't it strike you that we must be more conscious of what happens to it? Just because we can manufacture something simply and cheaply doesn't mean that we should?

I was directed to an article that has entirely changed my thoughts on plastic -- if, indeed, I ever had any real thoughts on plastic. I urge you to take five minutes and read about exactly where our plastic is going and what plastic is doing to us health-wise. (Because, please, you're at work reading blogs. I know you. I think you have a few moments to read something substantial like an article -- you've already boned up on CNN.com and WashingtonPost.com.) I'm not advocating a ban on plastic - hardly. I'm merely suggesting that we find ways to avoid plastics that we cannot recycle and increase our recycling of the ones that we can. And maybe the geniuses among us can figure out how to recycle 3-7. Or maybe how we can eliminate 3-7 and have all plastics be 1-2. (Shout out to Whole Foods -- who have abandoned plastic deli containers for cardboard.)

If you feel comfortable, pass along the article to your friends and coworkers -- post it in the lounge. Surely, most people are unaware of this issue. People need to realize the value of doing "their part" -- doing what they can.

Because enough people doing "their part" could be a whole lotta people and parts.

Oh, and while you're at it. Donate blood and your organs and fill out an advanced directive. Thank you, that is all.

P.S. I *know*! What happened to Cathy, man? She's all green-this and recycle-that? She went from smoking Pepsi drinker to running planet saver. Cha. -- Well, I can assure you, no trees have been hugged in the writing of this message.

A tip of the campaignin' cap to my photoshop saavy friend

2007-06-24T22:40:00.001-04:00

She felt my pain when my mom got to go to the fund raiser and I didn't. She felt it hard because I didn't shut up about it for a long time. She heard all about the litany of questions I carefully wordsmithed for my mom to ask Senor Obama. She's a good friend.

And in good-friend style, she's made me my very own keepsake -- as if I were really there.

THAT'S what friends are for, my pretties. 'Cause that's what it would have really been like had I been there. For serious.

My mom is (politically) cooler than yours.

2007-06-24T15:23:00.000-04:00

Guess which one is MY mom. One of these things is NOT like the otherrrr...

What I find funny and what you laugh at might be two different things.

2007-06-19T19:47:00.001-04:00

We are a reality show waiting to be caught on camera, man. This past weekend, the Bestie, the Betrothed and I made a pleasant day of Luray Caverns in Luray, Virginia via Betrothed's plane. Rather than give our 100% undivided attention to the tour guide (who, to be honest, could have used a little more inflection to amp our interest), we decided to take funny pictures underground instead.

Ahh, the classic, make-it-look-like-I'm-touching-something-far-away-and-taller-than-me-
with-simple-camera-tricks picture. Clearly, it was the do-over-and-over joke de jour.

An aerial shot of somewhere, Virginia. I don't know, really. I was sleeping.

And apparently me sleeping was photo-worthy.

Hubbas for my Orientation-For-New-Hires Trubbas

2007-06-19T19:13:00.000-04:00

1. I have had to constantly remind myself that I am being paid for this. A week long orientation that is "business casual" and covers mission, vision, values, disaster plans and patient rights. (About that "business casual". I have quite the business casual collection from my corporate years. When I reached for them yesterday, they squinted at the closet light and nervously questioned their purpose. It has been two glorious years of jeans, sweatpants, shorts and best of all, scrubs. And now I have to spend a week in lined pants with button down tops and heels?! I am being paid for this. I am being paid for this.) I am bored to tears and want so very desperately to grab my Newsweek or my crossword puzzle out of my bag (brought along for only the most desperately boring of moments) and go to my mental happy-hour. But then I remind myself that I'm being paid for this and it probably wouldn't make the most stellar impression on my new employer.

2. On the upside, while I am in a room full of nurses with years of experience on me, I know shit they don't. Lots of shit, actually. Like where the employee garage is. The secret, fast ways around the hospital. What overhead pages sound like and mean. For every clinical rotation I have had in this hospital system I have had a mini orientation to the computers, the facility and have spent enough time in the place to know how everything there rolls. On the downside, for every clinical rotation I have had in this hospital system I have had a mini orientation to the computers, the facility and have spent enough time in the place to know how everything there rolls and I still have to sit through this. I am being paid for this. I am being paid for this.

3. Either I am getting older, more bitter and jaded, judgmental and impatient -- OR -- I am the butt of some cosmic joke. With the exception of my chosen career path -- I hate being in a room full of a personality cross-sections. For example: yesterday's orientation day was full of ALL the new hires, not just nurses. And while I'm sure some of those nurses would annoy me to the point of homicide, I was more referring to the OTHER new hires.

Like, say, dude in front of me with the super-heinous "hey, my 1992 middle school called and wants that gawd-awful short sleeved, button down orange silk shirt back" outfit with the white athletic socks with his dress shoes (hello, didn't you get the business casual memo??) who, incidentally looked like President Logan from 24 and Mick Jagger had a baby, had to raise his hand with either a pen like he was at a press conference or else with his "Red Rum" finger in the air as if he had something very pressing to say.
The girl on the other side of the room who didn't look old enough to be a babysitter who prefaced every outloud thought (and there were many) with "So, this is my first job and all....." The same girl who, as we all knew well by the end of the day was starting her first real job in medical records, argued with the orientation-lady that she ought to be permitted to go to the nurses' clinical/patient orientation today, rather than her records training, because she was thinking about maybe going into patient care someday.
The older woman who informed the "Disaster Preparedness" presenter who had only just explained that in the event of a disaster we're all "essential employees" that she didn't think she'd be able to respond to a hospital or local disaster unless she was able to attend to her feline's needs first.
The lady behind me who felt very importantly about commenting on everything that was said throughout the day. Sometimes it was words: "Really." "Really?" "Wow." "Huh, I did-not-know that." "Guuurrrlll.." "Ha-ha! You said it." Sometimes it was just grunts of emotion: "Hm-mm-mmm" "*shocked "say what?" sound*". Really, though, sitting in front of her was kind of a full circle experience for me, though. See, I think she must be related to the family that I always end up sitting in front of in church every Sunday. These two women, mother and annoyingly annoying daughter, were apparently told that the congregational responses during the service and occasional hymns are secretly a competition to see 1. Who can say it faster and finish the last word of the phrase before the entire rest of the congregation and 2. Who can be heard best and loudest by the priest. And where's the husband/dad in all this? He's busy cooking up the worst halitosis this side of the diocese. So much so that it creeps over the pew into my pew and gags me. Apparently I complain about this family so much that the Betrothed suggested I sit somewhere else. Good idea.
The woman behind me today who used to be a prison nurse at a high-security women's prison in the psych unit. Good LORD, you know she has some good stories. I'm working up the courage to start a conversation with her about her best shanking story. In addition to my appreciation of substance abuse as, what my pal Jenni called, a spectator sport for me, I do enjoy a good Lockdown show about prison culture -- repeating constantly to myself and anyone in the room that I wouldn't last a DAY in prison. My big mouth and my need to make inappropriate jokes would have me on the business end of a soap-in-sock attack before lunch. I accept that.

4. I got my nursing lisence in the mail yesterday. It's officially official. I got my hospital badge and it actually says RN. I've started selling my textbooks and review books online. It'll all be worthwhile once I get out of this week.

Man who want pretty nurse, must be patient.

2007-06-14T20:36:00.000-04:00

And officially, as of today, that could be me. At least the nurse part. (I might substitute "pretty" for "smokin' hawt", though, in my own humble way) I have passed my boards and have been awarded a license to practice nursing by the Commonwealth of Virginia.

That may clear up to some of you where my bursts of hilarity in blog-form have been lately. Since graduation I have been up to my proverbial eye-balls in review classes, Princeton Review books, flashcards and the like. I wrote lab values, disease etiologies and the developmental stages of children on neon green posterboards and put them in front of the TV so that I was always keeping them in mind. Yeah, the Betrothed loved that. (Though at times I'd yell down, "Hey, what does it say for Hct?" "What does that mean?" "No matter, what does it say for Hct?" ) I took the test yesterday, managed to refrain from spontaneously vomiting on anyone nearby and learned this morning that hey, I really can be taught.

I begin my hospital orientation next week (read: paycheck, sweet sweet paycheck. Checking account, meet paycheck. Yeah, I know it's been a while..) and the following week they set me loose on sick people. Only more for-reals this time. Like for-serious, for-reals. Which is an intimidating thought, but hey. So long as they aren't as sick as the example patients on the state exam, I think I can muddle through it. Hell, I know I can muddle through it.

In the meantime, I have had my employee physical (sick nurse = not so good for hospital..) which included a drug test. Also a good idea. It was my first drug test evah and I think I may have gone in with a little too much newbie enthusiasm. It would seem that my own infatuation with docu-dramas about the squalor of substance abuse may have had the lab tech marking "URGENT" on my urine cup. It went a little something like this:

Lab tech: "So yeah, pee into this cup. Don't set it down, don't flush and don't wash your hands. I'll be outside the door listening."
Me: "That must be an awkward part of your job. So hey, what are you testing for?"
Lab tech: "Cocaine, crack, meth..."
Me: "AWESOME!"
Lab tech: silence
Me: "Uh, I mean, cool that you can test for all that."

I had a little celebratory dinner with my lab partner nursing pal -- who also passed (YEAH!, J, RN!) -- and we were anxiously peering around the restaurant for people who looked like they might choke or go into cardiac arrest and staying away from them -- fearing that we may actually have some sort of legal obligation now to act. That's the spirit!

Pomp up the Circumstance. Pomp it up.

2007-05-26T20:57:00.000-04:00

Friday, May 18th, at 11AM in the Patriot Center, George Mason University College of Health and Human Services thought it right to bestow upon me a bachelor's of science in nursing (or as we like to abbreviate, a lot of B.S. about N.).

If I may sound so haughty, I already got some B.S. bestowed on my a few years ago. That's a lie, it was some B.A. Which isn't as funny to say. In any case, I felt that I had already paid my respects years ago to the gown and mortar board of the ceremony. So I decided to pay more honor and respect to my nursing ancestors and wear an honest-to-God nursing cap, complete with tassel. Years ago, a nursing student's school would have a "capping" ceremony. Each school had a cap that was unique to the institution and it was a big deal. They don't do that anymore. Probably because in the hospital caps are a cesspool of germs and grossness. With a little Encyclopedia Browning, I found out what the old George Mason cap used to look like and bought one as similar to it as I could. My infamous lab partner joined me and we braved the commencement line-ups hoping we wouldn't be booted for not being uniform with our fellow graduates.

Much to our surprise, the faculty loved it, we were commended for our creativity and nod to nursing tradition, and our classmates seethed with jealousy that they had not thought of something nearly so clever.

I don't know why the "thumbs up" pose has worked its way into my paradigm so much these days. But that nursing cap sure did make it easier for the family to find me. Oh, that and that I had my cellphone to call them.

Ahh, your humble student speaker gives her heartfelt speech about nursing with your brain, but also nursing with your heart. Nursing a body, but nursing a soul, too. Nursing a patient and nursing a community and the world.

Incidentally, why do graduation gowns + jumbotrons make everyone look like they've been eating nothing but cake for the last month?

The blur, given away by the white smear on top, is me getting a dean-love-hug on my diploma-getting-stage-walk.

Ah, my family. I don't know why we're standing in height order or why we've gone all 8th grade dance on you with boys on the right and girls on the left.

Lab partner Jenni complete with matching nursing cap. So she tells me, someone stopped her after the ceremony and said, "Now what's the significance of the white hat versus the green flat ones?" And then she fell asleep during the picture. Hey, better now than during my speech. Cause that might have hurt my feelings.

My bestie and digital photog. One of my biggest cheerleaders these past two years. You probably wish you had a bestie as bestie as mine. Good luck.

And finally, my dearest Betrothed who just bought himself a lifetime with a nurse. My biggest fan, my greatest support and my first congratulatory text message when I got back to my seat.

My graduation-trip to Orlando. By Cathy Laws.

2007-05-25T13:30:00.000-04:00

Nothing clever or smart to say about it. We went to Universal Studios, Orlando. We had an awesome time. I recommend it to my friends. Even my enemies -- they should have a good time too sometimes. It is way better and way funner (it even demands that I use bad grammar like "funner") than Disney, and if I may be an adult here -- more for your money.

We went. We rode coasters. We hob-nobbed with fictitious characters. We ate funnel cake. We took funny pictures (Disclaimer: well, we thought they were funny).

Yeah, that's me hanging out with the X-Men. I actually made the Betrothed stand around for their photo time appearances, waited in line with children and then proudly walked up and made like I was a super hero for a second. In hindsight, I wished I had posed with a little more "save the day" gusto.

This was us on the Universal Studios' answer to the Teacup ride. This was prior to spinning. Hence the look of well situated stomach contents and newness of sunblock application.

My favorite Seuss story is that of the Star-Bellied Sneeches. In addition to a ride dedicated to the "I'm okay, you're okay" ideals of the story, which I rode twice with twice the glee of the 5 year olds behind me, they had a small sandy area where a few plaster sneeches sat out catching melanoma. Though I'm guessing the chemical balance of that water might have taken the stars off their bellies without the use of the Sylvester McMonkey McBean or their 10$.

I dunno. The Betrothed looks good with that Arabian Nights background. Plus, the sign behind him that you can't read says "Lucky Monkey" and points down. Ain't he, though?

A painful chapter of my youth was when my family -- I believe my sister -- made the suggestion that my laugh (surely, you know me, you must be familiar with its ear shattering, cackling qualities) was like that of Senor Woodpecker's. When that got into the hands of my dastardly brother, it wasn't long until all of my 4th grade comrades were mocking me with the same. I am still recovering. I have harbored a secret loathe and dislike for the character since. I aimed to make peace with him on this trip. Mocking him seemed like the best way to start down that road.

The Seuss-o-sel. Again with the elbowing of young children for the best steed.

I have seen The Mummy countless times. I have ridden this ride 21 times. It is awesome. They stage these stilted mummy men outside to creep out the guests and keep line wait times low, I think. I think he's about to steal my soul through my ears. Sweet.

Just an innocent slushie and time check. We were pretty much those assholes in the park waiting and snickering behind hordes of tourists taking legitimate pictures so that we could take these for our own (and ha, your) amusement.

See, I can let bygones be bygones. Woody and I have reached an unspoken understanding.

The Betrothed checks his time against Jaws' tonsils. Crap, we're so funny.

From what I understand, I could use a few of these detonating in my life.

They can, Sweetheart. They can.

The trials and tribulations of self tanner.

2007-05-24T14:25:00.001-04:00

I was blessed that though I come from hearty, 100% Irish roots that my skin does not scream in horror at the sun whenever I step outside. In fact, I am one of those people who can honestly say, "I rarely burn -- I tan first."

I spent most of my formative years in a pool, everyday, all day, every summer. I maintained my summer swim-suit tans all winter. Hate me, I know. I never used sunscreen, though. I had sun poisoning twice (or was it three times?) and sustained a sunburn so bad that I was told I likely had second degree burns on my shoulders and back. It was an awesome weekend where I developed a brief, but unforgettable love affair with aloe and then learned to love my skin falling off my body. Well, these days, finishing a nursing degree and all, I'm seeing the error of my ways. I am scared to death of my probable date with melanoma in the years to come. Friends are having "suspicious" moles removed, SPF is coming in 50 and higher and to top it all off, they just opened a tanning salon near my house -- which flabbergasted me because I didn't realize anyone still went. Don't they read the paper?! 15x the sun's rays in a 10 minute session at the beds. (Incidentally, I used the beds twice for a friend's wedding years ago. I had gone corporate, lived in an office building under florescent lights, hadn't seen my skin so pale in my life and was afraid I'd frighten her family out of the church with my gleaming whiteness. I had little instruction in the ways of fake-bakes and shouldn't have told the tan-guy that I tanned easily. He cooked me. And personal as it may sound to share with you all, I got a tanning bed burn on the nips. Christ, that hurt. And then I was done.) So yes, foolish, foolish people who go to tanning beds.

Melanoma aside, I am getting married in a few months. Holy crap. I'm getting married in a few months. There's a dress involved, numerous pictures meant to last a lifetime to memorialize this sacred event are going to be taken, you get the idea. When I tried on my strapless dress this past October, I still had my "cruise tan" from March. My older sister (jealous, clearly, because her red-headed Irish ability to burn is directly proportional to my "black-Irish" ease at tanning) scolded me, "Hey, ever heard of MELANOMA? Jesus, get some SPF. And you can't have that tan for the wedding." I do everything my sister says. Seriously.

My instructions this summer were to "cover the hell up", "use some SPF, for chrissake" and get no tan lines that might otherwise distract from my beauteous dress. I'm doing well. I have SPF 50 that I use, bought new makeup and creams with SPF and have been staying far out of the sun whenever possible. When the Betrothed took me to Orlando a few weeks ago to celebrate the graduation (pictures to come, I swear..), I gooped up and bought new shirts to keep my shoulders and neck color-free.

With a recent try-on of the dress, it has become clear to me that white-on-white was never a good look for anyone in or out of the mafia. I need some damned color but am hesitant to enlist the sun (or its cohorts) in my efforts. I called my sister. I do everything my sister says. Seriously.

I didn't want to oompa-loompa orange myself with pure self tanner and I didn't hear good things about the marriage of mystic-spray on+white wedding dress+sweating bride. She suggested that I trial run those new lotions that have some self tanner in them. Dove, Jergens, Neutrogena. I do everything my sister says. Seriously. I went out and bought the Jergens (contents appear to go easier on those of us with sensitive skin) and began my week-to-tan excursion from white. I had to enlist the Betrothed (much to his chagrin) to do "the back". He moaned the whole time about going to work tomorrow with "tan man hands".

This morning I have a nice little glow, I must say. No, I still lack the magic of a digital camera to share my transformation with you all. Far from orange and less sickly-white than I was, this appears to be going well. Tonight is round-2.

I'll let you know when I'm bottle-sun-kissed. And I'll take a picture if I'm orange.

Nurses have balls?

2007-05-21T13:10:00.000-04:00

Well, banquets, not balls. We're not all that fancy.

My healthcare posse of nursing pals that I met Nursing School Day-1. Their intelligence, sarcasm, perseverance, bad jokes, affinity for all things nursing and gross, dedication to the field, lunchtime conversation and loyal friendship got us all through. Here's to them. They kept me going. Peg, Jenni and Emily. Three amazing nurses coming to a hospital near you. Well, not near you unless you live near me. I can't vouch for the nurses near you then.

And don't judge me and my dark-as-hell photo because I still lack the almighty power of the digital.

Graduation photos to come. Those are digital because I had digital friends at the ceremony. So there.

Anywhere that sells funnel cake is alright with me.

2007-05-21T12:54:00.000-04:00

Part of my "Huzzah, She's Done!" celebrations lately have largely included trips to amusement parks (in addition to endless shopping, quality Tivo catch-up and not-blogging). Time off, warmer weather, a private pilot at my disposal and an insatiable appetite for coasters -- sounds like a recipe for awesomeness.

It takes very little prodding to get the Betrothed behind the yoke of an aircraft. A day trip to Williamsburg? Check. Enough jet fuel? Check.

Two awesome, if not overly chatty, copilots? Check. Seat backs up, tray tables locked and all carry on bags in an overhead compartment? Check, check.

A 3-D movie about pirates that is remarkably STILL playing at Busch Gardens? Check.

Adults elbowing children out of the way for the best horses on the Carousel? Check - *OOF* *pow* - check.

The ability to duplicate the same ridiculous pose on two separate rides? Check.

Do you know why they call it "golf"?

2007-05-21T12:45:00.000-04:00

Because every other four letter word was taken.

'Tis true. I graduated from a lifetime of putt-putt this week and was taken to my first driving range with honest-to-God clubs. The Betrothed even bought me a sweet golf glove. It makes me look prettyhard core, actually.

The range is set up all electronic-like. They issue you a little swipey card with your name on it. To get your bucket-o-balls, you put in your card, and the machine programs each ball you get with your name on it. When you whack your balls (insert obvious joke) onto the driving range, it will, ideally, fall into a pit -- which recognizes your named ball -- and assigns you points. All well and good unless you suck a great deal, which was my biggest problem.

Actually, my biggest problem was more about my obsession with attaining points, rather than perfecting my heinous golfing skill set. Ball goes in a hole on the far right of the course because I have a "wicked slice" -- points awarded, all is well. Ball rolls four feet from the tee, but my knees were bent and I didn't bend my wrists, golf-clap but pointless.

To add insult to injury, I, a right hander, have always handled my sports equipment, inexplicably, on the left (and Wow!, did that piss off my dad growing up. ). The Betrothed's family, who exited the womb with a set of clubs and the know-how to use words like "birdie" and "handicap", were perplexed to aid me "on the left".

On the upside, the joint has a full menu and a bar.

She CAN be taught!

2007-05-04T14:56:00.000-04:00

I'd like to take this moment to tell you all something desperately important and pertinent to your everday living: I'm done. (I'll give you all a moment to absorb that.) Yes, that's right, I've finished nursing school. And successfully at that.

(Sidebar: I finished so successfully that I got an email from the school saying that I've qualified to wear honor cords at graduation. Go me. But because I am a bit of an academic snob (GO TRIBE), I can't help myself from railing on some of the unfortunate persons who co-attend this university with me, I share this with you. I went to the bookstore to purchase said honor cords -- because, really, it wouldn't honor the school enough unless I was shelling out money, and since I'm only there a few more weeks, they have to really make the squeeze on me. The cashier looked up my name on "the (short) list" and said I was supposed to get a green cord and a gold cord.
I say, "Cool. What does it mean, versus two greens or two golds?"
She says, "It means magma."
"MagMA?" I say. She rolls her eyes at me because she has judged me to be an idiot.
"Yahhhh. Magma coom lawdee?"
"Magma, huh. Sweet."
It took all that was in me to not say with my biggest, fakest smile, "Lava with honors?!")

Today was my very last day of schoolin'. I'd say it was my last day at the hospital, which it was, but really, only my last day with a badge that says "STUDENT NURSE" -- which is almost always read as "TRY NOT TO DIE BECAUSE SHE MAY NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO RIGHT AWAY". Today was my last day at the hospital to be an imbicile. To hang IV tubing and manage to drench my pants in saline. To wipe a butt and accidentally get poop on my arm (though sadly, I don't think poop-joys are restricted to student nurses only). To say, "I can't. I'm just a student. I'm not insured to do that."

Which perfectly segues me into, I believe, one of the best nursing school stories I've had to date (and I've had some good ones). And since today's the last day for nursing school stories, I guess it officially is the best story.

I preface the retelling with some background information that the medically-lay person may not know. Healthcare being what it is today, a lot of previously fairly-majorish procedures can be done now at the bedside. Most of these are performed using "sterile technique" which involves sterile gowns, gloves, caps and masks. Once you are "sterile" you cannot touch anything un-sterile or you have just become un-sterile (or "dirty") and have to start over. This theoretically prevents wayward germs from entering the procedure space and infecting your patient. And while germs are everywhere and nothing is ever truly, 100% sterile, it is the very best effort to keep infection at bay. It takes a while to learn to do this smoothly. The majority of lab-skills in nursing school involved teaching us to do some procedures using sterile technique, how to move about, how to pick things up and how to, most importantly, keep it all sterile.

Being in the ICU these past 7 weeks I have been aparty to numerous sterile procedures. Doctors come in, gown up and get to work. And it seems almost as soon as they're sterile, their phone always rings. (I know, I know. No cell phones in a hospital. These are special "in house" phones that run on some mystical frequency other than cellular. All doctors and most nurses carry them. ) In such an instance, the doctor usually turns to the nurse assisting him and asks them to answer it. This involves reaching back and behind or over and around the sterile gown rifling through the doctor's alltogether searching for the phone. Then you either answer it yourself and have the annoying relayed conversation of"he wants to know if... Oh, great.. Ok.. The doctor says... " -- or you just hold the phone up to the doctor's ear.

Wednesday night, my patient crashed. Luckily for the patient, the past two weeks have turned on some light bulb in my head and I no longer feel like I'm all thumbs in emergency situations (maybe just 4 or 5 thumbs, but opposable thumbs). Scads of healthcare professionals streamed into the room like there was free beer and set about making her not-die. A lot was going on. Other nurses were pushing drugs into her. She was being intubated for a ventilator and they were preparing to "shock" her. The attending (Grey's Translation: McDreamy) doctor was calling the plays and the young ER resident doctor (Grey's Translation: Bailey, 'cept a dude) was prepping her. I assigned myself to the ER doctor who was to insert a central line into her femoral artery. I was not sterile, but in assisting him, I sterily dumped supplies onto his sterile field (without touching them) and did "dirty" things for him (ew, don't be gross. But he was cute, so yeah, sorta, I wish, but not really. But kinda.)

He got the line in. And in the middle of suturing her, his phone rings. He turned his back to me and said, "Can you get that, please?" I immediately thrust both of my hands under his sterile gown, like I have done numerous times before on other doctors, and into the two back pockets of his scrubs groping around for the phone.

He turned his head over his shoulder and with my palms soundly on both of his ass cheeks he soberly said, "My phone is on the table."

I quickly retorted, "Well, then I guess that was a freebie."

I don't believe that anyone else, in the hubbub, heard the exchange. I nearly fell apart with laughter, but managed to keep it together. He, on the other hand, found nothing funny about the situation. I suppose I had just molested him.

The next day I resolved to keep my perverted hands to myself. When I arrived on the unit Thursday morning, of course the same young ER doc was there -- who I had never seen before the night before but, clearly, was destined to have to see everyday now. He was with a group of doctors on patient rounds in the ICU. I hung back to listen to my previous patient's progress. I happened to notice that he was staring at me. Then it occured to me that he was not staring at me at all. He was fixated, and squinting, at my chest (which requires little squinting from 50 paces.. let's be honest). I thought, Oh God - he must have thought I was coming onto him last night and now he's checking me out or something. (I'm terribly humble.) I followed his eye line and realized that was actually reading my hoodie. I just bought it as my own personal homage to my impending pomp and circumstance. Across the left chest in small lettering it says, "I have decided, after I graduate, I am going to be a pirate." I'm very professional. He, humorless to the end, remained unimpressed. A smile, I fear, might have cracked his face.

So that's how I go out as a nursing student. Pirate aspirations and shameless molestation of an overworked, under-funnied doctor. Awesome.

I have a quote on my fridge from one of those daily-rip-off calanders for nurses. It says, "Nursing is a kind and generous profession. Nursing school is cruel and unusual punishment."

It really is. It sure was. And now it's over. Horray!

You all can commence your illnesses (eh, better wait until June) because Nurse Cathy is on the job.

'Allo guvnah!

2007-04-26T04:00:00.000-04:00

So I hear that Her Royal Maj is heading to the beloved Alma Mater next week. I really would love to be there, but yup, you guessed it, I'm caring for the infirmed....AGAIN. Man, if only those sick people would get better it would really free up my schedule. I mean, GEEZ. I've been practicing my Queen-wave for years and have nearly perfected the "elbow-elbow-wrist-wrist-touch the pearls" movement of it all.

In any case, it would seem that Queenie isn't the only one making grand speeches this time of year. Yours truly was recently selected to be the student speaker at her nursing school graduation. Which, when you break it down, only means that my mom will have a FAR easier time locating me in the arena during the ceremony. Oh, and I suppose it means I might also have the rapt attention of an entire sportsplex full of people. Hm, maybe "rapt" is a strong word. I'll have their polite attention. And much like there is no such thing as "bad" publicity, any attention at all suits me just fine. Of course, it tempts the inner entertainer in me to give the people more than what they bargained for on some Virginia-hot May graduation day. It will take a great deal of personal restraint to not crack jokes or worse -- laugh at my own jokes.

I wrote this little speech of sorts and submitted it for consideration for this little shin dig -- maybe to convey a small message of importance, but also maybe decidedly to keep myself (and others.. I'm very considerate) from having to give my polite attention, even a second longer than 5 semesters, to certain windbag classmates, I have already had to listen to for far too long, who may also have submitted speeches. I can say with great certainty that no one loves the sound of my voice more than moi (and surely, the Betrothed, who finds it to be like sweet, sweet music... somewhere he's inexplicably groaning and holding his belly as if in great pain), so why not throw my hat into the competition? Much to my (and my mother's) delight, and probably to the chagrin of others, I was chosen.

I wouldn't even dare dream of posting that speech here. It is fluffly, sappy, altruistic, hopeful and worst of all, truly meant from my heart. It would totally ruin my rep. It's one thing to have a room full of strangers hear it and think that I'm a charming, thoughtful girl about to make my mark on healthcare -- but it is quite another to let you all, having seen me at my finest moments of jaded sarcasm, think me, even for a second, a softie.

It was the best of times, it was the not-so best of times.

2007-04-22T01:28:00.000-04:00

While I don't have enough "real" material with which to compose a decent, attention holding post, I am hoping to string together elements of the last few weeks into some respectable slathering of words and funnies so that we'll still be friends.

Call it stream of consciousness. Potpourri. Factual events. Lingering impressions. I give you the most recent, haphazard chapter of my life in no particular order.

I ran my first half marathon. Well, I ran MOST of my first half marathon. I walked the nasty, nasty hills of Saint Louis mouthing the words to Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" while I bopped my head in time. I admittedly did not train as hard in those last few weeks as my running partner did. I was too busy staying up all night with sick people and sleeping like a homeless person during the day. Running partner? She kicked ASS. I kicked some smaller versions of something that sometimes, when you squint, look like an ass. Some people call it an ass, and I kicked it by most standards. I finished in a respectable time, didn't mangle my gimp knee and managed to snag a beer at mile 11, which, let's be honest, was a solid highlight of running for THREE HOURS. Without the promise of beer, however, what do you ladies think of meeting up in 2008 for a group race somewhere? Think about it. Roll it around in your mouths for a while. I hear quite a few of you are starting your own little running regimens. Maybe a nice 10 miler?
It's less than 30 days until I actually graduate from nursing school. Less than 2 weeks of hospital work left, however. I breathe easier with the thought of both. I look forward to massive amounts of time devoted to sleeping and catching up on all my Tivoed shows.
I have no desire to harp on the tragedies that happened earlier this week. I think we are all already carrying around some grief about it in our own ways. Strangely, however, the creepy culprit of the whole thing lived not a quarter of a mile from my house. In my development. The myriad of news vans and media machines blocked the street. His poor family isn't there anymore (for what it's worth, they lost a child unexpectedly, too, though arguably, they lost him a long time ago), but the police cones still litter the street and make it hard to forget every time you drive past.
Vitamin enriched diet coke. "Diet Coke - Plus" for those of you new to the idea. What on earth. Are we at that place in our society when we obtain our vitamins from something on the opposite side of the spectrum from nutritious? What's next? Snickers bars with vitamins?! (I might be down for that, actually.) Incidentally, and not to burst your bubbles, you'd have to drink over 15 of those sodas to get your daily value. Though that isn't a very hard feat for some people. They'd probably have cancer from the artificial sweeteners sooner than they had the vitamins, though.
I am generally against people who, in the name of making a point, ask a rapid-fire set of rhetorical questions that they immediately answer before pouring into the next unnecessary question. For example: Do I think that Twin Peaks was an awesome show in the 90s? Yes. Do I think that maybe my mom should have been more aware that I was watching one strange, disturbing show in my impressionable youth? Yes. Do I think that my love affair with Kyle MacLaughlin started when he was but a mere black-coffee loving special agent sent to find Laura Palmer's killer? Yes. Do I think it's amazing, in hindsight, that the show was so ridiculous that it managed to stay on the air as long as it did? Yes. Do I worry that sometimes, absentmindedly or when drunk, I might actually have a conversation like this? Yes.
Last week (and between 2AM and 5AM, just like I told you) a 22 year old patient coded and YOURS TRULY gave him chest compressions. Yes, I performed my very first CPR (sans rescue breaths) on a living human being not named Annie, and no, he wasn't okay. I mention it proudly and without grief for the poor dude that I was wailing on because he lived. I (and probably some of the heart stimulating medications they were pushing into him at the time -- but let's just say ME) pushed a pulse back into this kid after nearly 10 minutes of pulselessness. The best part here (I mean, the best part other than him living, of course) is that I broke two of the dude's ribs with my totally-sweet chest compressions. If had even the slightest idea how to print the image of his chest x-ray with my fracturing handiwork visible so that I could post it here for my own glory, you bet your asbestos I would. I would have it framed and put in my entryway. I save lives and break bones. What an awesome dichotomy. This is the best job ever.
A salesman came to the door recently while we were eating dinner. It wouldn't have been so terrible except that he rang the bell and then immediately rapped on the screen door -- a concoction of sounds that sent our youngest, and most tough-acting, cat running for her damned life with every piece of fur on her body standing straight up right behind the couch. She stayed lodged back there for so long, trembling in fear that the Betrothed bent himself over the back of the couch to make sure she didn't need a few life-saving rib fractures. There she shuddered and next to her -- two very small, but distinct droplets of cat pee. My cat wet her pants with fear. I nearly wet mine laughing.
If what Imus (a man I had really never heard of before last week) said was so terrible (and I'm not here to debate that at all), then why do all the news anchors keep repeating it over a week after it was uttered? Isn't it offensive to keep hearing it over and over? Why do such a crude and disrespectful slur justice by continually saying it? Just a thought.
My last patient was a lady who miraculously survived her OD on God only knows what. I saw her practically lifeless body wheeled up from the ED before my shift ended two days ago, and when I came back the next night she was well into her first day of detoxing. Awesome. Apparently part of detoxing that they don't write about in textbooks is the strange aversion to one's clothing and the need to be constantly naked and showy. In my attempts to redress her and make her comfortable (a feat desperately impossible, sadly, given the nature of her stay with us) she called me a bitch and threatened to pee on me. Which, really, after hours of a night shift fighting with her to remain clothed and sedated, I would have LOVED to have seen -- at least seen her attempt.
This morning I tried on MY-my wedding dress in the shop for the first time. It arrived and more importantly, it zipped perfectly. (The BFF and I did have an amusing round of singing "Jesus, let it zip" a la Carrie Underwood. Not only did it zip, it was a little big. I was literally scolded by my bridal consultant of undetermined national origin for loosing weight. I swear I didn't do it intentionally. In that case, though, Doritos here I come.) I started to get the excited chills and bubbles in my stomach of anticipation of being a bride and most of all, marrying a one of a kind man who makes me happy in ways no one else has. (And no, that wasn't a veiled reference to sexin'.)
I hear that my beloved Catholic Church has recently rescinded their whole stance on "limbo for unbaptized babies". Which is good news for unbaptized babies. Apparently it wasn't a true tenant of Catholic faith, it was just some little tidbit that managed to squeak its way into every Catholic education class ever since the dawn of time. Or the dawn of Catholicism. Whichever came first. Could be either, really. So, then, might it be safe to assume if there is no limbo that every time a bell rings an unbaptized baby gets, what, jeered at by baptized babies? That's rough. But that's just how Catholics roll. We're a tough crowd.

There. Consider us caught up. What's new with you?

It's late. And it takes so little to entertain me at this hour.

2007-04-10T02:57:00.000-04:00

A certain YouTube-ing was brought to my attention and I feel it only right to share it with you all. Chances are, actually, you saw it weeks ago, chuckled, rolled your eyes and will judge me for being so behind the hip-culture times and posting this like it's new-news.

Judge on. It only affirms my love for the film, my breath holding until I can own my very own copy and my longing for semi-appropriate occasions for which to purchase it for other people under the guise of a gift so as not to seem like I'm strangely forcing it on you. Which I would otherwise.

I urge you. Visit here. Turn up the sound and go ahead, let the goodness wash over you (even if you all already saw it last week when it circulated your offices. I remember when I had an office once...).

Living Upside-Down

2007-04-10T02:12:00.000-04:00

Like a bat. A vampire bat.

Surely I'm not the first person to ever work a night shift. I realize that. But it's the first time I have ever worked a night shift and truth be told, it screws with you.

I worked my first shift from 7pm Sunday night to 7am Monday morning. To prepare, I was told, I ought to stay up as late as I could Friday night -- through the night, if I could -- and then sleep like the damned dickens all day Saturday and stay up that night, sleep Sunday and then get up and be ready for my first night shift. I did just that.

Friday night the BFF (who was coincidentally celebrating her birthday) came over for cake, presents and a good, old fashioned slumber party minus the slumber. She, Lord freaking love her, made it to about 2AM before passing out on the couch. Thankfully, and if by providence, there was an "Intervention" marathon after that on A&E and it kept my solid, if not a little droopy eyed, attention until 5AM. I love docudramas about squalor. Saturday night was much of the same, save no BFF. My dear, dear specially-special cat stayed close to me - often throwing me loving but, "Seriously, we aren't going to bed now?" looks until about 6AM. I thank MTV for their "True Life" marathon that kept me up that long. {That being said, MTV is sinking very low when they are "True Life"ing kids who like to surf. Where are their meth addicts and teen aged prostitutes? Please. It's the bottom of the squalor barrel to have a 1 hour show about melanoma-bound, tragically bottle bleached headed teens complaining about wanna-be tourists who attempt to steal their waves. They are lucky nothing else was on. }

Staying up all night used to be the norm -- remember? Of course you do. I remember in college thinking that if I saw even a peep of sunrise I was doomed to be a waste-of-space the whole rest of the next day. If I could sneak into bed, eyes averted without seeing the light, however, I somehow tricked my body into thinking it was just another late night. I am trying to function by similar theories now. Though it's usually close to 6AM when I do make it to bed now, I don't look outside at the horizon. It's still easier to pretend it's just another late night.

I will say this, however. Staying up all night is lonely. Very lonely. I can't blame the Betrothed. He's pushed his bedtime as late as he can manage to keep me company. On an up-side, however, I utilized a late-night trip to Wal-Mart to purchase a craft kit whereby I have taught myself how to knit. I'm a few inches into, what appears to be, a scarf. It appeals to my artsy side, keeps my fidgety hands busy and more importantly, functionally keeps me awake.

Staying up is one thing. Driving TO work at night is another. First of all, showing up to work at 7PM is weird. Traffic is weirdly nonexistent. Watching it get dark outside while you putter away inside is weird. Physically it feels like jet-lag and that's weird. The lost bustle of the place, the lack of bodies, chatter and general goings-on is weird. My main concerns were: 1) What meal am I eating when I go on my break? Lunch? Dinner? Some strange combination? (answer: unknown. Eating breakfast-light on one of my weekend-training sessions left me hungry. Eating dinner-heavy last night made me feel ill around 3AM. Lunch at 1AM is just ridiculous.) 2) Is the hospital cafeteria even open in the middle of the night? (answer: yes. Though limited in your selections, you still have access to some hot, cafeteria-tasting food at 1AM. Phew.).

From what I know of night shift nurses, a patient - any patient, is statistically most like to code/crash and die between 2-5AM -- more so than any other time of the day (and strangely more so during a full moon...pregnant women are most like to start labor during a full moon, as well. Weird.) That being said, it sucks for that patient, but serves as a good learning experience for me. And let's all remember that I'm trying to sink my student teeth into as many good learning experiences as I can before I'm expected to do anything nurse-y for a paycheck. My time is running out for that. Last night -- no dice. Everyone lived to see another day. Good for them.

My training sessions appeared to work for the most part. The "clock-watching" started around 4AM and I started to make quick walking laps of the unit to keep myself alert. Towards 7AM sitting down became dangerously risky for sleeping.

I made it home this morning around 8:15AM and promptly fell asleep -- probably literally before my head hit the pillow. I cannot remember a time, seriously, when I had ever felt so tired. I slept until mid afternoon when I resumed life as a normal person -- at least for a few hours, and at least until the Betrothed had to head to bed. I'm set for night shifts for the majority of my semester (which is a mere and blessed 4 more weeks) and so I must assume the position and live upside down for a few more weeks.

In the meantime and in addition to my new knitting habit, I think I might be putting the Betrothed and I into the poor house with the way I'm pay-per-viewing movies to watch in the middle of the night. Thankfully, we recently obtained Showtime (solely, and I mean solely, to watch The Tudors) and I have been able to set-to-record some movies I haven't seen in a while and will surely utilize to entertain me in the wee hours. On the otherhand, I have no idea what or how much I have been eating lately. I don't know when one day ends and another starts anymore. My workout schedule (and more importantly, my training for the upcoming Saint Louis Half Marathon I'm slated to run this weekend) has been upturned entirely. If I can see the finish line in the faint distance before I pass out, it will have been a success.

So don't mind me. It's 2:45AM and I have to get back to my shows before I head to bed in a few hours.

Heaven knows we need them here.

2007-04-04T09:50:00.000-04:00

So this whole "nursing" thing seems to be working out really well, I must say. Phew. I'd really hate to be 43 days from graduation and think, "Smooth move, exlaxx.. Going back to school.. What were you THINKING?" Several very long shifts into it and I'm feeling more "in the groove".

The ICU is a busy place and everyone talks fast and in abbreviated code. I don't have to fake my, "Oh, yeah, totally. I get what you're saying. Oo, that sounds SERIOUS" face anymore. I'm getting it. I'm making connections. I know where the bathroom is and which chairs at the nurse's station to avoid because the doctors like to sit those and I hate getting "the look". The awesome experiences (not always for THEM, persay, but for me, they were totally awesome..) happen everyday and I'm learning new ways of disguising gross things so I can tell the Betrothed when I arrive home without him looking piqued. Bonus.

I had another one of those "Yes, THIS is why I'm in nursing" moments yesterday when my little man with either TB or Necrotizing Pneumonia (neither of which are a good thing.. but thankfully TB was ruled out meaning *I* don't have TB after hanging out with him..). Heavily sedated and Spanish speaking (the patient, that is) I would putter around his room in my whole outbreak getup (I swear to you I couldn't make this up if I tried..I had to wear the hood part. ) speaking what little Spanish I did know to his sedated self. When he woke up yesterday, ready to make a full recovery, I'm happy to say, he was kissing my hand and telling me in Spanish that he appreciated me being so nice to him while he was asleep and he thanked me for all of my kindness by trying to speak Spanish to him. He heard. Senora Via of my highschool years would be SO proud. {Little known, but heavily researched fact that hearing is the last thing to "go". Dying, sedated, comatose -- they can almost always hear and process the sounds. So talk on with your bad self.}

But what I really wanted to get up on my soap box about (and I seem to be doing that here a lot more, forgive me..) has to do with a patient experience I had last week. A young woman in her early 50s (yes, that is young considering what the mean age we usually see is..) died very, very suddenly of a bacterial infection that had not been caught by her regular doctor. It was terribly tragic. I stood across the ICU watching her devastated family come in, 2-by-2, to weep uncontrollably in each other's arms at her bedside. Out of all of this grief, however, they decided to donate her organs, which were young, healthy and still very much viable -- and very, very wanted. I loomed around the transplant coordinator as she called her contacts to tell them that they had a liver, lungs and kidneys for their patients. You could almost hear the elation and joy on the other end. 4 people were going to get a chance to live out of this tragic death. And that joy counteracted all the sadness a few feet away.

In my sly, sneaky, slithery way I managed to secure myself a spot in the OR during the organ harvest later that day. I will miss playing "the student" card in 43 days. In all honesty, they were happy to have me be there. Showing a future-nurse the benefits of organ donation only makes me one of their army when I'm on the floor -- I might be their first line of information with families.

Her bedside nurse and I brought her lifeless, but alive thanks to the ventilators et al that kept her oxygenated and perfused, body to the OR together. We helped to move her onto the operating table. Her left arm fell loose and I noticed she had something in her hand. Her nurse put her arm in front of me as I moved towards it. "It's a note from her daughter. She asked that we tape it to her hand so that she can have it with her during all of this." I looked closer and the only word I could make out on the folded paper was "Lucky". Truly, I had to turn away and blink hard to keep the tears from rolling down my face. What a word. "Lucky". She was lucky to have had this mother and their relationship? I don't know. But I know that her being here meant it was lucky to those other families rejoicing at their new chance at life. Lucky, indeed.

The whole process took over five hours (oh, my aching back and feet, let me tell you. Students don't sit in the OR.) . They flew in the transplant teams from all over the Eastern Seaboard to harvest, collect and return home to transplant. These scapel-slinging cowboys mosied into the OR like they owned it. Introduced themselves around and began their work.

The room was respectful -- all the while appreciating that this was still a person and not just a cavity of organs. It was an amazing procedure. "Amazing" hardly begins to cover it, really. Physicians from all over were on speaker phone in the OR as the surgeon measured and verified each organ. Collective breaths of relief were expelled when the voice on the other end would say, "That's perfect. Our recipient needs that size. We'll have them ready in 2:45." Each organ was removed in turn and the respective surgeon clutched it to himself lovingly as he walked to place it in the preservation fluids. He packed it up himself, said his goodbyes and left. Our patient was lovingly and respectfully put back together and prepared to go to the funeral home.

The transplant coordinator told me that often times they will have the donor family meet the organ recipient. It provides an element of closure for the family. She told me about a wife whose husband had passed very suddenly and donated his heart. The wife later met the recipient and wanted nothing more than to listen to her husband's heart beat in its new chest.

What kept me from bursting into tears over this tragic sadness was the thought of the families on the other side. Their joy. To have received "that call" today that they had the liver or the lungs or the kidney. See? And then the loss of this young woman wasn't all in vain.

So my soapbox moment today is to urge you to consider being an organ donor. Heaven forbid that anything happen to you when your organs are prime, but should it... Whatever you have or don't have on your driver's license doesn't matter. When the time comes, your family can override whatever you've elected -- you won't be able to argue. So make sure your family knows what your wishes are. Yes, even now. Last week I urged you to all make out your Advance Directives -- which, on some -- depending on the state -- indicates your wishes for organ donation.

I know. When did Cathy get so grim? It's all death, necrotizing-whatever, poopers and organ harvests to me now. I promise, when I'm a for-real nurse, this will all taper off. The funnies are still happening, really. I just felt this was more important to impart to you all.

But for a closing funny -- as a nursing student, we make boneheaded mistakes. They're not life threatening or dangerous, just boneheaded. For example. I keep forgetting to take the cap off of things. So I'm pushing and pushing and nothing's happening -- I start to worry -- and then I see the cap. Awesome. I was taking care of a dude last week who was receiving his medications down his feeding tube. So, you crush up things, mix it up, draw it up in this big plastic tipped plunger and push it down the feeding tube. No problem. Well, left in there by myself to manage this, I was mixing it all when I somehow ended up squirting his stool softener all over my face. Thankfully it wasn't his stool-stool, just the softener. So I stepped back. Took a breath, wiped off my face and resolved to try not to be such a bonehead anymore.

Don't be a bonehead. Donate your organs when you aren't using them anymore. (<-- did you like that? it was all smooth and unexpected..)

Kevin Federline. Poop. Et al.

2007-03-28T15:01:00.000-04:00

I would like to state for the record that Kevin Federline's handlers have, to this moment, ignored last week's retort to their first ignoring. Bastards. Incidentally, while telling my older sister the saga, she stopped me and said, "So wait. I'm still caught up on the fact that A) you knew he had a search engine, B) you went to it and actually searched on it with hopes of a prize and C) pester their webmasters about grammar?!" Clearly, she doesn't feel my pain. And she's totally missing the point. Clearly. Pashaw.

And with absolutely no attempt at even the slightest of segues:

I got to watch a colonoscopy (pooper on up) yesterday -- and then a subsequent endoscopy (pie hole on down) -- don't worry, the classic joke says, they changes the tubes in between procedures. I've been courting a pretty involved love affair with fiber for nearly a year now. Yeah, yeah, fiber = poo, but it's so important to understand why that's... important, man.

Most of the most Americans do not get anywhere near their daily recommended fiber intakes -- roughly (ha! roughly) 25-35g a day. Fiber's main function in the body is to huddle around fat globules and carry it out of the body -- and slick up the pipes in the process. Otherwise, fat roams free and makes a beeline, generally, for your ass. That's why it's ok to have a higher fat food if the fiber is high, too. Not that too many exist.

When you're getting your daily fiber (I won't split hairs here about soluble and insoluble fiber, both good, but you all know how to work google.), you are reducing your cholesterol, promoting your heart's health, dodging colon cancer (cause, I'm not going to lie and tell you anything can stick around long enough in the pipes to even think about cancer when you're getting your daily fiber), and for the ladies, with your daily fiber, it can prevent up to about 230 calories from being absorbed and later signing a lease in your ass. That's a candy bar. Seriously. A good candy bar. I read a recent study that said that for athletes who are familiar with the pre-competition "carb-loading" might benefit more from "fiber-loading" instead.

There's a really great product out now -- and it's the most evolved product of a long line of past products (Metamucil, etc)-- called FiberSure. It's in the vitamin section of the store in a big blue bottle. Each teaspoon is 5g of fiber and it dissolves completely and, more importantly, tastelessly into anything -- ANYTHING. I put it in spaghetti sauce, yogurt, coffee, anything. Yeah, we're pretty regular in this house.

So much is being said these days about whole wheat, whole grain products. Read the label to be sure. But on the upside, there are so many better tasting products that are delivering more fiber per serving -- which really makes getting all your fiber so much easier. Whole wheat pasta, for example, sucks. But, Barilla Plus (in the yellow box) is a whole wheat pasta that doesn't taste anything like whole wheat, but still has all the goodness in it. And potato bread -- who doesn't like potato bread? Try the whole wheat version -- 4g per slice -- with all that potato bread goodness.

In any case -- back to the colonoscopy. Dude was having some issues with the pooper (I won't get gross about the details). As we're all taking this vicarious trip through his colon, you can see what years of bad eating does to a pooper, and in turn, a body. Uclers, diverticula and general irritations. I leaned over to the nurse and said, "What causes all of this, really?" and she whispered back, "What prevents it is easy. Fiber, fiber, fiber." I leaned back into the corner (because that's where all health care students (medical, nursing, etc.) all end up at some point -- smashed into a corner so they can watch, but surely to not be in the way.) with a big grin.

I get a lot of flack (I was going to say "crap", but that seemed, somehow, inappropriate here) from my close-bys about how I'm always, ahem, tooting the fiber horn. Well, here it is. It's a good horn to toot. Keeps weight off, promotes health of so many body systems and hell, you end up so regular you can set your watch by it.

The moral here is eat more fiber. Oh, and boycott Kevin Federline.

What really happens when the Grey's Anatomy Drs are making out.

2007-03-26T09:50:00.000-04:00

I have just woken from the "recover sleep" of my first 12 hour shift on the ICU. The shift was great and in 12 hours I learned so much, remembered that I remembered so much and changed more bedpans on two patients in 2 hours than I had the entirety of my nursing education thus far.

It was new knowledge, old knowledge and poo. As it should be. Ahh, all is right with the world.

What else happened? It was gooey, to be sure. I'll offer some scenarios, let's say, and you can attempt to assemble the gooiest 12 hours possible, kay?

1. I helped to hold down, by physically putting myself nearly on top of him, a combative patient who they were attempting to start a new line on because he had ripped out (dahhhhhh!!! Poop is cool, but ripping out one's own lines gives me the willies) all of his previous IVs. The man was detoxing from quite.the.binge and was hallucinating some awesomely scary things in the room. I wonder if "nursing student pinning me down" was one. 'Cept that totally happened.

2. The non-English-speaking patient who would sweetly ask for the bedpan by pointing at his crotch and saying "Poo-poo." Once on it, he would clasp his hands in front of himself with a big smile of satisfaction.

3. I removed the arterial line on a patient's wrist and had to apply the requisite 5 minutes of pressure on it (it truly, truly squirts otherwise.). We sat together and watched trick-billards on tv while we waited. As I was bandaging him up, I asked him when he was buying me dinner. Obviously he had to buy me dinner since we had just held hands for 5 minutes and don't tell me it didn't mean anything to him. He burst out laughing and said he'd be happy to tell his buddies that he had held hands with and then had dinner with Gloria Estefan, because, of course, I look very much like Gloria Estefan. (On the level, do I?!)

4. A patient had recently had a liver surgery. The incision, called a mercedes incision (you might creatively figure out why), went across his entire torso and was closed with staples. He asked me how it looked and I said, "Well, the good news is that this ensures your pirate costume for Halloween will be awesome." He quickly retorted, "Oh good. I just need to find my eyepatch and convince the parrot." He, incidentally, was about to be transfered to a step-down unit. I assured him that at least here, in the ICU, the jokes were free. They weren't free in the step-down.

5. Why you need to, even at your age, put your advance directive/DNR wishes in writing ASAP (In Virginia, you don't need to have it legally notarized, only witnessed. If you know how you'd like to be handled if you can't handle yourself, get one, fill it out and sign it. Make sure your loved ones have copies.) An elderly stroke patient who was long ago brain dead sits in the ICU. He is on a ventilator, fed by tube feeding and is systematically shutting down so much so that he is on continuous bedside dialysis. As we turned him and changed his sheets, he is so dead that his bright yellow skin is falling off. It is disgusting and terribly sad. The man is rotting in his hospital bed. His sweetly smiling and doting wife sits close by, keeping the hope ever alive, asking when he'll be on the kidney transplant list and won't it be grand when she can get him home.

6. A patient who had attempted suicide and failed, somehow managed to get his suicide note into his chart. Which I promptly read. It was sad, it was desperate. It was written on a post-it. Is it tacky to write your suicide note on a post-it? As I said to the nurse, "A suicide note on a post-it says, 'Goodbye cruel world! We need milk.' Is that how you want your last words on earth?" At least it stuck to the chart.

7. Another bed-panned patient would ask for it, get one and when we came back ten minutes later he'd sigh heavily and say, "Ahh. False alarm. Sorry girls." Dude, it's totally cool.

8. Jack Bauer came in and tortured one of us until we gave up the location of the cafeteria.

9. All of the above.

10. All of the above except, sadly, for 8. Which would have been awesome.

Don't you all want to be nurses?! You pay in bedpans for the awesome stuff. Just wait until I start working nights.

Now I know how Britney felt.

2007-03-22T21:05:00.000-04:00

I've been bamboozled by Kevin Federline!

You'll please remember that two days ago I alerted the powers-that-be at Kevin Federline's new search engine about a simple, yet glaring typo on the front page. It was a sweet email. Kind in its way of gently reminding them of what Mrs. <insert elementary school teacher name here> taught them so diligently all those years ago. Kind, like the reassuring hand of a mother guiding her young to righteousness and prosperity.

And those fuckers bamboozled me. They made the change alright -- but they failed to A) email me in response, hell, any response, to my sharp, sharp eye. or B) award me a prize. Either would have been acceptable, though B would have been preferable. I mean seriously. Who doesn't like prizes?!

Based on my general impressions of the American population's grasp of basic English grammar, I can't imagine that they would have been beset with all that many emails, similar to my own, about their all-too-common typo. So I felt it only fitting that they hear from me one final time. And no, I have no shame when it comes to outright asking for verbal appreciation and/or (preferably) prizes.

Dear Sirs:

I am delighted that you have made the appropriate corrections to Mr. Federline's website. However, I feel that your lack of acknowledgment of my grammatical prowess a little offensive. Does this not in the least warrant even a "thank you" email? Would you have preferred that I remained unknown to you and left such a garish error on Mr. Federline's site such that others might regard him as less intelligent?

Instead of making funny jokes about Mr. Federline (who, let's face it, has been a fairly easy target these days) amongst ourselves, on our blogs, on MySpace, myself and some pals, graduates of accredited four year institutions of higher learning, decided to help a brutha out and bring your kind attention to the typo.

Perhaps I could still beseech you for a small prize of some sort? Com'on, you must have loads sitting around your workspace. Some small recognition in the form of a thank you email or some other such Kevin Federline paraphernalia.

Seriously. My feelings were hurt.
All the best and with English grammar love,
Cathy Laws

Arr, I be your nurse.

2007-03-20T15:54:00.000-04:00

The mailman just came. And yes, it's been a slow day for me, hence 3 posts.

Back to the mailman. He brought me my recent online purchase. Isn't it awesome?

On that same note, I asked my mother if she could sew me neat scrubs for work out of fun fabrics (instead of the current choices which are en mass: A) cartoon characters. I refuse to wear cartoon characters unless I work with children. Which I also refuse to do. They squirm, they have parents and you have to calculate everything that goes near them and I hate math. B) old lady floral prints. I am not an old lady. I like old ladies. I like old men more, they complain less. And the more I look less like an old lady before my actual old lady time is great. Besides, just because I can't wear all my oldjob Ann Taylor gear anymore doesn't mean I have to wear the Chico genre scrubs now.). My first suggestion was pirate scrubs -- jolly rogers all over it or some such. However, it was pointed out to me that while they would be the awesomest, it might unnerve a patient if their nurse was wearing skulls and crossbones all over her top. Point taken. I might need to tone it down a little bit.

But no one can stop me from wearing this underneath. Ha!

(I will attempt to refrain from posting further regarding the goings on of the rest of my day. Attempt to.)

I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

2007-03-20T12:41:00.000-04:00

If you're like me, you were very much looking forward to the very public and very cruel demise of Kevin Federline -- and were given just the opposite. KFed has managed to pull through this looking, by comparison, mind you, COMPARISON, like the mature, head-of-haired, business savvy adult.

I have just learned that he has, in his genius, launched a search engine. (It could have been worse, really. He could have launched a porn site or something equally as heinous.) The best part is that if you're searching something at some specific and mysterious time, you stand a good chance at winning some magical KFed prize. I've been searching for the last 30 minutes, nonstop.

But don't be fooled by his flashy and mesmerizing search engine. There is a typo on the front page. Written in that thug, gangstah font trying to look all hard is a typo. I love it. Shame, too, because it was just SOOO classy to begin with.

I, red pen always in hand, wrote their webmaster a quick email:

Hey friends

You have a typo. "Its that simple" on your front page should read "it's that simple". Apostrophe "s".

Do I win a prize for being grammatically astute and saving KFed's good name from academic shame?! Hope so!

Love,
Cathy Laws

I'll spend the rest of the afternoon with my fingers crossed.

Sock it to me.

2007-03-20T12:06:00.000-04:00

I'm good at a lot of things. One of which appears to be recovering gracefully (I use the word loosely. If "gracefully" means that I've just become accustomed to laughing at myself, then yes, it's fitting here.) from the daily onslaughts of embarrassing situations that I find myself in.

This morning as I prepared to exit the house, I appreciated the fine, fine weather that appeared to be the pleasant harbinger of the spring to come. I put away the heavy coat in hand and instead reached for the airy windbreaker (proudly emblazoned with the Betrothed's employer from last summer's company trip to Canada. 300 employees beset this poor little town with matching windbreakers -- but hey, it's a quality jacket nonetheless.).

I drove to school (I know, and here I told you all I was done on campus. For good. And then they make me go back for a 30 minute refresher on the hospital computer system. ). I parked. I walked the normal distance from a college parking lot to the college classroom. I stopped and talked to friends. I made my way to class. Sat there. Then left. I went to the nursing office to pick up some forms.

And it was then that I noticed someone was tugging on the back of my jacket. I turned around to see one of my fellow students pulling something off the velcro air-flap on the back of my jacket. Ahh, clearly some fuzz that accumulates mystically on velcro things. Yeah. No. In a flutter of giggles, the student hands me one of the Betrothed's brown socks. Which had been stuck on the back of my jacket. All day. All over campus. A sock. His sock. Inexplicably living on the back of my jacket in the coat closet for, presumably, months -- and making its big debut on my back all the way across campus today.

That dastardly jacket is seen here -- with all of its clones all around. It's still a quality jacket. Awesome. Glad his underwear isn't as like minded. I may not have been able to laugh that off as well. It's clear that his laundry is out to get me.