Knits in Church

Family, visible and invisible

2012-02-13T09:15:00.000-06:00

On Saturday, we went to a family gathering to help our favorite cousin move. Shirley wore her Perry costume. One of the cousin's friends inquired how we were related to her.

"Jay's my cousin, and I'm also Perry the Platypus' father," Brian explained as he pointed out the Mimi.

"I'm Shirley the Platypus!" the Mimi wailed.

Last month she announced she wanted a little sister. I told her she'd have to pray harder for it, because I was already doing what I could. That's when she decided that Perry the Platypus was not only her invisible friend, but also her imaginary little sister. Does that make me Perry the Platypus' mother?

Showing off my ignorance

2012-01-17T08:54:00.000-06:00

As I watched this news clip this morning, I found myself thinking. (Always a dangerous pastime.) And I realized there's a lot of room for religious diversity in America, and I'm thankful for the church I'm in. Apart from the fact that to join the church of the Nazarene one only needs to agree to "Jesus, Son of God, Saviour," I'm not good at conformity.

Reasons I'd make a terrible Amish person:
I'm posting this on the Internet.
After this I'm going to check my e-mail, watch a couple of videos, and sing along with the radio as I drive to work.
The bonnets are cute, but I'd have a really hard time growing my hair out.
I love buttons!
I can't sew.
Just because I know how to cook on a wood stove doesn't mean I want to.
Attending school only until eigth grade is so 1800s... wait a second...
If orange traffic triangles on the buggy are "too showy," I'm guessing glitter is off the list. (Kudos to the neighbor for politely and concisely explaining to the reporter why this was an issue important enough that people were willing to invoke their right to civil disobedience and go to jail over.)
Add more in the comments if you think of them!

Shirley the Platypus!

2011-12-23T08:52:00.000-06:00

I haven't been posting many pictures of the Mimi lately. That's because she spends most days running around in only her underpants. While we don't mind as long as she follows some basic ground rules (if someone comes over you must put on clothing, you must wear clothes to leave the house, etc.) it has cut down on the number of pictures we've taken of her.

She dressed up as Perry the Platypus for Halloween. (I crocheted the hat, and the rest is a matching teal sweatsuit.)

Now, not only is that costume the only outfit she's willing to wear, but she's claimed Perry as her imaginary friend. They're currently playing hide and seek in the living room. ( I drew the line when she claimed that Perry wanted chocolate for lunch.)

Cheaper than Xanax

2011-08-31T07:50:00.000-06:00

I've started up a new/old hobby--counted cross stitch. When I was a child, family members would give me cross stitch kits for every birthday, Christmas, etc. I really enjoyed cross stitch, but since I had serious problems with the whole "counted" part of it, none of my projects turned out well.

Beguiled by the prospect of amazing projects like this one, I've taken it up again. (I've never felt the need for zebra skin rug before, but I do now!) So far I'm working on a very simple geometric rug for a dollhouse and it's turning out well.

If my hubris led me to overestimate my needlepoint skills and I fail at it, it'll be okay. I may spend 30 hours working on something which is best used to wrap up catnip and make a very decorative cat toy. It's a soothing, relaxing craft (profanity? How dare you blankety blank blank suggest that I should moderate my language?!) and way cheaper than most of my meds.

Feelin' like a redneck

2011-08-05T07:58:00.000-06:00

When we were in SF, one of the guys at church asked me "What is your ethnicity?"
And I relplied that while there's some Germans, Poles, and Native Americans in my family history, "I'd have to describe my cultural group as "redneck."" And for the most part, that's still very true.

Brian is pastoring again, and he's very happy about it. It's obvious that he's really missed having a place to serve. He's now associate pastor at an area church. (And we didn't even have to move. Yippeee!)

Our new church has a large Native American population. About half the church either is affiliated with a tribe, or related to/married to tribal members. And just like in Nome and San Francisco, I have to accept that there's a lot of things I just won't understand because this isn't my culture. But sometimes it gets kind of perplexing...

One Sunday as I was dealing with the very social Mimi's desire to run all over the church and "talk to my people, Mama!" I heard a voice behind me.

"Hellooo, my Native American friend!" It was the woman who was greeting people at the door, who identifies herself as Chocktaw and Cherokee.
I looked in the direction she was facing and saw that she was talking to the chairwoman of the Grand Ronde Tribal Council! Apparently this is a running gag between the two of them.

Fun with telemarketers

2011-07-22T17:31:00.001-06:00

We get calls from telemarketers all the time. When it's a recorded message "robo-call" we hang up immediately, but if the company cares enough to hire real people to solicit our money, then we can care enough to use a little creativity as we tell them no. Sometims our excuses are even true.

"Hi, we're collecting funds for the Oregon Special Olympics--"
"We get all kinds of weird phone calls that are phishing scams, so I'm sure you can understand if I'm a bit skeptical. There's a gal at my work who is really a coach for a Special Olympics basketball team, so I'm just going to give her money.""But the Oregon Special Olympics--"
"Is a great organization. But because I'm not sure if you actually will give them money, I'm going to give ten bucks to Chrissy at work, because she will." [click]

"Hi, this is Your Current Bank, and--"
"Really? It's eight o'clock at night here. You've always been nine-to-five people. I had no idea you'd extended your hours."
"We wanted to make sure you knew about our life insurance division..."
"Curent Insurance Company has been good to us, and we really like them. They always send us those little pocket appointment books every Christmas."
"We have life insurance, and if you sign up now the first month's premium is free! It's a limited time offer..."
"You called in the middle of my daughter's bedtime routine, so my time is limited too." [click]

"Hello, this is the Oregon State Police Chief's Association, and we're raising money for our campaign against methamphetamine."
"Meth?! That's where all my business comes from!"
"Um, okay...We're trying to make neighborhoods safer and limit the damage meth is doing to our communities."
Belatedly, the though occurs to me that this one may actually be legitimate. "You actually are calling from the Police Chief's Association?"
"Yes, and can we count on your support this year?
"I'm sure you have promotional material to mail us. Send it to us and we'll think about it."

Quote of the week

2011-05-26T07:34:00.000-06:00

"Unfortunately the Ativan I took to deal with my anxiety about going to meetings has made me sleepy during this meeting and that makes me anxious," I overheard one of my co-workers say at the weekly staff meeting yesterday.

And that pretty much sums up my experiences with antidepressants. The trick seems to be finding a medication whose side effects don't mess up my life worse than the depression does.

However, I am back to knitting. I've been working on several pairs of socks based on variants of the modular hexagon pattern in the "Think Outside the Sox" book. It's nice to be at least somewhat back to my usual routine.

When I'm in this mood, yarn is just expensive string

2011-04-15T08:04:00.000-06:00

I've been having a bit of a funk lately. And when I say "funk" I mean "the blues, but without the catchy music."

One of the bad things about a depressive episode (apart from the appetite and sleep disturbances, the thoughts of guilt and hopelessness, etc.) is that I lose interest in some of my hobbies. I'm still spinning yarn, but I've lost all interest in knitting at the moment. Sure, it looks like fun, but I just can't find the energy to care about it.

It may be a bit before I find the time/energy/motivation to get back to blogging regularly. It may be even longer before I can write anything that I consider clever enough to be worth posting on the blog.

In the mean time, I'm keeping in close contact with my mental health person and doing what I tell my patients to do: keep going to therapy and keep taking your perscriptions, because it works eventually.

And if it's not working enough and you can't get ahold of your doc/therapist and you're thinking of harming yourself, go to the local ER or call 1-800-SUICIDE or 1-800-273-TALK, both numbers of the National Suicide Hotline in the US.

Time for pictures!

2011-03-24T08:07:00.000-06:00

The Mimi turned three this month. (Although she seems to have gotten her units of measurement muddled and keeps telling people "I'm three pounds!")

She's also decided that she's a superhero and "borrows" her father's sweatshirt for a costume. "I'm SuperMimi!"
"So what do you do?"
"I'm SuperMimi!" Saving the world from evil one stuffed animal tea party at a time.

You know you're from a small town when...

2011-02-19T09:53:00.000-06:00

One of my friends from St. John is heavily pregnant. She asked for suggestions on how to trigger labor. Another friend had this suggestion : "When my mom was pregnant with me the men in at the St. John Hardware told her to try a big chew of Copenhagan, mow the lawn, and if all else fails tell my dad to start harvest. I was born on the first day of harvest that year. Mom swears she never tried the chew though."

How I spent my weekend

2011-02-07T11:34:00.000-06:00

On Saturday, Cat, the Mimi and I went to the spin-in in Newport. In spite of trying on (and discarding) four different outfits that morning, the Mimi still managed to be clad in nothing other than training pants when Cat arrived so we could car-pool. (And then decided to wear the first outfit of the day.)
The Mimi was amazingly well-behaved for the spin-in. She held my hand (and hissed "no touching, Mama!" every time I visited a fiber booth) and was polite to people. My father-in-law was kind enough to keep an eye on her for an hour or so, letting me sit and spin with people. When I told him I didn't want him to think I was dumping the kid on him so I could goof off, he said, "No, you're going to sit and spin. In our family, that's perfectly fine work." Love the in-laws!
The best part was seeing the expression on his face when someone asked the Mimi "what are you going to do after lunch?" and she said "gonna take over the world!"
I made out like a bandit, if I do say so myself. I picked up a pound of miscelaneous longwool for ten bucks, got some silk hankies (I felt inspired by the Yarn Harlot and I've already dyed them up) and even found some silk/camel fiber at an insanely good price. I'm out of mad money until March, but find it hard to care.
Because the Mimi is prone to crawling in my lap while I'm using the drop spindle and saying "me help make yarn?" and "helping" me spin, she now has a very pink starter spindle and some equally pink wool roving that's for her. Baby's first fiber stash!

Anxiety disorder du jour

2011-01-29T06:53:00.001-06:00

I've been knitting lots of hats lately. I've no idea where the camera is, and no motivation to take pictures of them, but at last count I have completed three hats in as many weeks. I have six more in progress at varying stages of completion.
While I still despise knitting scarves, I'm finding that hats are a good way of using up all my sample skeins and remnant balls of handspun yarn that I keep for sentimental value. Not only are stripes colorful and fashionable on hats, but my CDO (like OCD, but the letters are in alphabetical order, like they are supposed to be) doesn't kick in quite so bad when I'm knitting hats.
As I see it, a scarf should be fashionable, or warm, or soft, or at least pleasant-looking enough that you're not ashamed to take it out in public. All a hat needs to do is fit on someone's head. The fact that there's only a half row of fuzzy pink yarn on a hat project seems an appropriate way to use the yarn and add color--but if it were on a scarf I'd feel the need to rip it out if I didn't have enough yarn to repeat the stripe at the other end for "symmetry."

Found a new pet project

2011-01-13T14:07:00.000-06:00

I try to keep my political leanings to myself on this blog. Sometimes I even succeed. But I feel no such qualms when it comes to sex education and STD prevention. Sharing knowledge about contraception and how to avoid preventable diseases ranks right up there with "Women are people!" on my list of things I want to share with the world. ("Jesus loves you!" is first on the list, but I think that working on the other two as well helps get across the message that Jesus cares about your life as well as your soul.)

Ever since I dealt with an ill-informed minister who declared (in 2005, mind you) "HIV is God's judgement against homosexuality," I've felt extremely passionate about HIV prevention. Especially in over-looked populations, like older women. I realize that no one wants to talk to Nanna about her sex life now that she's dating again, but it's a lot better to have an embarassing conversation with her now than to later look back regretfully and wish you had. If you care enough to remind her to get a flu shot, you should be willing to mention that there's a lot of nasty STIs out there and how to prevent them.

And then I found this site, which seems to link this quite handily with my yarn obsession. Knit A Condom Amulet! What a wonderful way to raise awareness of this problem. (and use up scrap yarn.)

And the antonym of "pot-head" is...

2011-01-01T18:26:00.000-06:00

Holidays always bring out the crazy in everyone. There's something about lots of people in a small house, large amounts of fattening food, and uptight Martha Stewart wannabes who "just want everything to be perfect"--combined with strictures against making any ~~offensive~~ ~~political~~ ~~or religious~~ statements (At Christmas 2008 I wound up in the doghouse for suggesting that Jesus would come back whenever Jesus felt like it, regardless of who got elected president.) and reminders not to bring up awkward family politics that just brings out the collective squirrelyness (not dysfunction, because that implies that you have a plan, and we're way too disorganized for that) that lurks just beneath the surface of even the most WASPy middle-American suburban family.

And since extended holiday dinners with relatives, non-relatives, and screaming children always make me (a lifelong teetotaler) want to pick up binge drinking as a new hobby, I've spent the last two weeks asking patients (most of whom are either in recovery, or avoiding alcohol as part of their probation) very specific questions on what they're planning to do to stay sober over the holidays.

And the responses have been very illuminating. They've ranged from "go to extra meetings," to "my wife won't let me buy beer, and it's too far to walk to the store."

One slightly offended gentleman told me, "I don't have a problem with alcohol."

"That's good sir, but your parole officer does have a problem with you using it. So what are you going to do to keep him happy this holiday?"

"I'm spending Christmas with my in-laws, and they're the most uptight stone-cold sober-heads you're going to find. I couldn't drink even if I wanted to!"

World's cutest photobomb

2010-12-17T21:02:00.000-06:00

The Mimi loves to be the center of attention, especially if there's a camera around.

Toddler excursions into taxidermy and photography

2010-12-07T09:31:00.001-06:00

Shirley's teddy bear, photo taken by Shirley

On Saturday, we went to Cat's house to celebrate the arrival of BTK ("Broken Toothed Killer") from the taxidermist. I was slightly nervous about taking Shirley to the open house, but decided to anyway. For the last eight months or so, our Saturday morning routine has been that she and I go to the farmer's market for a few hours. Now that the market is closed for the winter (because really, who wants to go shopping at an out door market when it's windy and rainy and 35 degrees?) Shirley has been having difficulty adjusting to the new (marketless) routine.

Every Saturday, she wakes up and asks "Me go market?" and then has a meltdown when I try to explain the concept of "closed." (Techno-baby that she is, we've settled on telling her "it's buffering, just like Netflix does. It just takes a lot longer to buffer.") So I thought an open house gathering with friends would be a great Saturday event--as long as she didn't get freaked out by the large dead cougar that was the guest of honor.

[stuffed] cougar, photo taken by Shirley

Shirley and the cougar

She thought it was great! As soon as she saw that people were posing for pictures with it, she wanted her picture taken with it. Then, she wanted to take pictures of it and everything else in the house. Like the picture of "Teddy," her bear that she carries with her everywhere. She's got a good eye!

Spinning report

2010-11-20T09:57:00.000-06:00

I've been spinning up some local wool from Hungry Hill Farm. The proprietress has such an amazing color sense! Colors I wouldn't dream of combining--sage green, ochre, flaming crimson--go into her carder and come out in a riotous Mardi Gras of fiber. It's like happiness in a batt. Not the exhuberant manic intensity of Loop batts, but more like the solid comfort of Mexican hot chocolate. It's wonderful and warm with a surprising bite that keeps you interested.
I'm making a S-twist fingering weight single out of it, which I plan to "menace" slightly to make it more stable. I've never tried this particular spinning technique before, so it's interesting to see what happens.

The perils of democracy

2010-11-03T16:36:00.003-06:00

One of the wonderful things about today (the day after Election Day) is that the trash-talking negative campaign ads have stopped. No more "robocalls" or stupid pamphlets in the mail. And my music will no longer be interrupted by ominous sounding announcements offering words of caution like "Did you know that Steve Cowtipper is an anarchist and cruel to trees? He called for the abolishment of--everything! Do we really want someone like that representing us in Congress?.... Paid for by the Committee to re-elect Dan the IcecreamMan."

Or so I thought. But as I was listening to the radio today, I actually heard the commentator say with all seriousness, "Now that the 2010 election is over, there's only 735 days until the 2012 election, so it's time to start campaigning!"

Signs your family doesn't understand your job #457

2010-10-01T11:06:00.004-06:00

This week, my favorite auntie asked me "Have you given up on your dream to work in an abortion clinic?"
My mind was wandering a bit, so it took a while for the question to register. "I'm pretty happy with my current job--wait do you mean "family planning," by any chance?
"Yeah, that sounds about right."

Writer's block

2010-09-13T08:36:00.003-06:00

I've been dealing with a serious case of writer's block this month. (And my sore throat, which has returned.) While I'm probably writing less words per day in patient chart notes at this job than at any other nursing job I've ever had, when I come home at the end of the day I don't want to write on the blog. I just want to sit and knit or spin and spend some time with the Mimi and Brian.
I've been commissioned to make a baby hat, booties, and mitts for a friend, and she's paying me. I don't usually make baby things, but I will for her. Hooray for yarn money!

Germ theory bites!

2010-08-23T20:02:00.002-06:00

Work has picked up again, and I've been too busy to blog much.

I've gotten some spinning done lately, but much less than usual. Why? Because I, dear friends, have had the glorious, incomprable experience that is strep throat. When your joints hurt so badly that you start to wonder if your thighs bend, and your tonsils are so swollen that you're concerned that you may accidentally swallow them, anything activity more intense than pouring yourself another shot of NyQuil generally doesn't happen.

I'm feeling better now thanks to antibiotics, but I may never like soup again!

Sheep Christmas in July

2010-08-01T20:07:00.005-06:00

I probably should have written about this several days earlier, but I've been having too much fun. Audrey sent me a box of fiber last week as part of our occasional fiber swap. (Someday we may extend this practice to include swapping toddlers, but I doubt they'll be travelling Priority Mail.)

She sent me about three pounds of fiber, and all of it was pretty. I've mislaid the sheet I wrote everything down on, but here's a general idea:

Spice-colored wool roving, with streaks of cinnamon, orange, red, and dark brown. Two batts of Finn/Merino wool in the lightest of grays. Three "Audrey batts" of alpaca/wool that she dyed and blended herself. The infamous "Electric Popsicle" roving. Organic alpaca roving from a small farm in Kansas which has the names of the responsible alpacas on the package! Eight ounces of alpaca locks, some superwash wool, and an absolutely exquisite bump of merino/tencel from Th'Red Head Designs in green and gold! The spinning wheel is calling to me.

Brian says this should keep me in spinning fiber for about a week.

Vacation pictures

2010-07-20T07:59:00.003-06:00

For the Fourth of July, we visited Brian's parents and did the traditional barbecue on the beach. For me, it just doesn't seem like Independence Day without lighting marshmallows on fire. (I've never had the patience to toast them "properly" for smores. Light 'em up and blow them out before they completely turn in to charcoal, I say.)

We introduced the Mimi to her first-ever smore. "I'm covered in sugary goo and I want to share!"

She also recently learned how to feed herself semi-liquid foods with a spoon. Oatmeal got everywhere, but she did it all by herself.

I saw this sign at the Black Sheep Gathering last month. It's an important distinction, but there were so many shops selling handmade baskets that I can't help but wonder if it's just a clever bit of PR.

We visited Mom last month. It's hard to tell what the Mimi's expression is when she has her fingers in her mouth, but note the matching maniacal grins. Insanity is hereditary--you get it from your kids!

Due to other pressures this year (like work) I'm not doing the Tour de Fleece. Mostly because I found out about it (although I really shouldn't be surprised that July happens every year) two days ago and don't think I can "compete." As I see it, the whole point of spinning is that it's a relaxing activity that makes yarn. And when you get right down to it, in spite of the joy yarn gives me, it's just string. Unlike nursing, in which you're regularly reminded that if you screw up, you can kill people (and the board of nursing regularly publishes helpful vignettes of people who have done exactly this) yarn doesn't matter.

If I spend weeks and weeks knitting a sweater out of lace weight yarn on size 3 needles only to get to the armpits and find out that my bust is more than 26 inches, I can rip it out. I can turn it back to yarn, I can use it for stuffing in a decorative pillow, I can cut it up and make coasters out of it. Why? Because it's yarn! I've never punished a failed project by setting it on fire, but I've removed the needles from more than one and just thrown it in the Dumpster because I was that disappointed with it. No one died, and I went on to happily complete other projects.

Cat people

2010-07-10T03:49:00.003-06:00

I am a "cat person." Brian is not. He describes it best by saying, "if cats can read minds, they look at mine and go 'gonna stay away from him!' When they read yours, they think 'As long as I'm nice to the little pink person that's with her, I'll be rolling in gravy!' "

The Mimi also loves cats. She spends a lot of our Sunday visits with my sister in law chasing her four cats around. Three of them treat her with a good-natured tolerance (and ever-present hope that she'll drop food for them.) But the oldest cat, Shakti, is short-tempered and doubtless the reason that my nephew recites House Rule Number One as "cats are sharp--and fast!"

Our neighbor has been feeding a paranoid gray alley cat for the last couple of years. At this point he's no longer completely feral, but he's understandably still a bit twitchy. As we were out gardening last week, he slinked home after discovering his place in the local feline hierarchy. He moved as though every joint in his body ached and was missing a large section of one ear. Large patches of his fur were newly absent and replaced by healing scabs.

The Mimi looked at him with wide eyes. "Kitty has owie!"

"Yes honey, the kitty has lots of owies."

Comprehension dawned as she put new ideas together. "Shakti!"

But true to Brian's theory, he still let the Mimi pet him!

Crazyness in Mackeyland

2010-06-23T08:18:00.005-06:00

It's been a while since I posted last. I'd claim it's because I've been busy, but there's always the chance that I'm just too distracted to type.

This month, the only other nurse at my work quit abruptly, leaving me to cover three clinics. They got a temporary nurse to help out for two days a week; as she's the woman who held this position before me, I'm confident that she's really good at the job. The bosses say that they're trying to fill the empty position as soon as possible, but given the reality of government budget cycles, it will probably be at least three or four months before they hire someone.

And then just as all the turnover and schedule changes were happening at work last week, our family got food poisoning. If you want to lose a couple of pant sizes, there's nothing like some spectacular gastrointestinal distress and no solid food for 60 or so hours to make it happen!

In the midst of all this chaos, however, I have found time for yarn. I may be spinning it instead of knitting with it, but yarn is yarn, right? The first few pictures are of my most recent dyeing escapade. I originally tried to dye the wool less saturated shades of pink, blue and grass green, but the dye struck much faster than I'd anticipated. I sorted the wool by color and intensity and then handcarded it. Then I laid out all the batts in order of color progression.

I'm about two thirds of the way through spinning it up, and I really like the way the color slowly transitions from green to brown to burgundy.

I also bought wool from a local vendor, Hungry Hill Farm, and intentionally tried to spin a big fluffy single on the wheel with a Z-twist.

I used my left hand as my dominant hand, as well as the modified short draw I always use. (My wheel has only one ratio, so that limits what I can do with it.) Making up skeins was more difficult than usual. As the niddy-noddy has broken, I used the baby gate instead.

I didn't quite acheive the lofty bulky-weight single I was hoping for, but it made a nice bulky 2-ply!

Irony

2010-05-22T14:40:00.002-06:00

My art supplies showed up yesterday, the day after my birthday. Unfortunately, since I've got a scratch on my glasses that cuts directly across my line of vision, anything that requires extensive focussing on small details (like, say, looking at a photograph and trying to paint it) causes severe eyestrain headaches. Back to fiber arts for now!

Adorable Art Supplies

2010-05-12T08:57:00.004-06:00

(The Mimi has learned to make faces, and I had to show this off.)

I used to do a lot of painting in high school. And welding. (If my college had had a metal sculpture fine arts program, I probably would have gotten a BA in art rather than a BSN.) For the last several years I've been trying to channel my "creative impulses" into fiber arts as a substitute, but I really miss them.

As I was commuting one morning several months ago, I found myself day-dreaming about how to paint the countryside with watercolor. (Daydreams about welding are pretty normal for me.) I realized I really want to get back into painting. My preferred medium has always been oil, but in my current situation, it has several drawbacks: I have a four room apartment, with no room to dry canvases. (And I'd like to retain my damage deposit when we move next.) Oil paintings generally take (depending on climate) anywhere from several days to several weeks to dry. Add in some toxic paints and turpentine and a small person who has just barely finished the "It's pretty, can I eat it?" stage, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
So I decided watercolor was the safest and least messy way to get back to painting. Finances are still tight for us, but I have a birthday next week. My in laws gave me $20 and an easel, both of which should help quite a lot. I've been checking out the various online art vendors and making a shopping cart of supplies to compare prices, and I found this:

at Cheap Joe's.

I've never heard of the brand before so I don't know what quality of paints these are, but it's so mind-blowingly cute I find it difficult to care!

Naomi wanna potluck?

2010-04-12T13:51:00.006-06:00

On St. Patrick's Day, I got bored. While I was bored, I started thinking about patron saints. Specifically, if there were a patron saint of county health departments, who would it be? And I decided it'd most likely be the gentleman who invented the birth control pill. (Or possibly broad-spectrum antibiotics, as we pass out a lot of those as well.) Unfortunately, as I was pondering this I checked my e-mail and started typing before I'd "fully engaged my brain." Before I knew it, I'd invited the entire public health department to a birthday potluck for Dr. Gregory Pincus, the inventor of The Pill. (Margaret Sanger's birthday is in September.)
I thought the plan would be politely laughed off, but it spread. Before I knew it, I was getting e-mails from other departments (everything from WIC to the developmental disabilities department) wanting in on the fun. (Yes, I work in a mostly female environment. However did you guess?) One of the men who works in my office asked if he was invited, and all I could think to say was "if your life has been enriched by birth control, you are certainly welcome."
"Great--it's because of birth control that I don't have to pay any child support!"
On Friday, when I got to work, the secretary had papered my office door (I have an office! It's awesome!!!!) with flyers about the potluck that afternoon and the accomplishments of Dr. Pincus. think they like me here.
The potluck itself was fun. We had lots of food and we shared about labor experiences, theories of childbirth preparedness, recipes, STDs, and discussed menstrual troubles. (As one of my male co-workers said "Thank you for inviting me, but I draw the line at gender reassignment surgery!")
We plan on doing another in September to celebrate Margaret's accomplishments.

Packages and road trips!

2010-03-19T08:09:00.005-06:00

(This is probably the third or fourth attempt to write this post. I keep getting distracted by things like work, dishes, and the cold which the Mimi graciously shared with the family. It's hard to write anything sensible when your sinuses feel as though they're about to explode from the pressure.)

Last week, the county's infectious disease department, whom I used to work for, had their required H1N1 debriefing and requisite planning for the next mass vaccination pandemic.

Even though I don't work for their department anymore, they still invited me to come--and then badgered my current bosses into letting me come, and paying me to go! I love public health! So we went to Seaside, where I just had to snap a pic of this famous statue of Lewis and Clark. Don't they look impossibly heroic? It says "End of the Trail" on the plinth, but I can't escape the feeling they're saying "Well, Bill, looks like we're lost again!"

When I got back from the conference, I had a fiber package from Silfert waiting for me. (Every six months or so, we do a fiber swap. It allows both of us to rotate our stashes, and cuts down on the nagging from husbands about "you spent HOW much on fiber?") The Mimi promptly rifled through the box, grabbed the baggies labeled "Shirley's girly goth batt" (pink in the photo) and danced around the house with them.

I also got a stunning superwash wool/tencel blend from a dyer I adored in Kansas, but haven't been able to get her products here, as well as some amazing roving dyed by Silfert herself. The brown bag in the above photo is a wool/tencel blend from the spectacular Traci Bunkers of Bonkers Fibers, who has a wonderful eye for color. It turned out to be too slippery to spin on the wheel, so I've been spinning it on the drop spindle instead. It's great fun to spin, and I think I see a shawl on the horizon.

The Mimi turned two a couple of weeks ago. One of the gals from San Francisco sent her this adorable vest. Pink is always her favorite color!

I may post the rest of the pictures another time, but we went on a mass family excursion to OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center to celebrate, and then to Brian's parents' house for a birthday party. Her favorite toy was these over-sized cat toy balls. At least she's stopped meowing at people!

Jewelery is fun

2010-02-27T09:15:00.003-06:00

I'm not really a "girly-girl." I do have two X chromosomes, a nice figure, and enjoy makeup. That's where many of the similarities end. In high school, when all of my friends were busy stalking Justin Timberlake, I had my bedroom wallpapered with the Spokane Chiefs' newspaper clippings. The only adolescent hero-worshiping crush I've ever had was on Barry Marshall, which shows you that I was a massive science geek even then. Now that the Olympics hockey is in full swing, I'm glued to the Internet every evening.

Because Mother Nature has a sick and twisted sense of humor, this does not seem to be the case for the Mimi. The first time we put her into a dress when we were near a full-length mirror, she ran over to the mirror to twirl around and admire herself. Many toddlers disassemble their link-a-dink toys, but she's the only one I know of who wears them as bangle bracelets!

So it's no surprise that her first multi-syllable word is "Jewelery." She likes to climb in my lap, pat my earrings, and say "jewelery, yeah!" with a blissful expression.

As I'm sure many spinners do, I've got a fiber stash of odds and ends that's too small to "do something" with, but I'm reluctant to throw out. You know what I mean: the half ounce of alpaca from my first wash/dye/card experience, 15 grams of recyled silk fibers, half yards of handspun yarn, etc. So I thought I'd card it all together and make some fun batts with them.

Midway through this process, I discovered the hard way that as much as I might like to pretend, large flat hairbrushes are NOT the same thing as proper hand cards. But except for the blisters, I'm pretty pleased with the final results. Carding all the fibers together really evened out a lot of the more vibrant colors, but also brightened up the sedate ones. (After I borrow Pop's hand cards,) I have to try this again!

New job

2010-02-10T09:44:00.002-06:00

On Monday, I started my new job. While almost all of my nursing experience has been in the hospital inpatient setting, this job is outpatient, and out in the community. (My philosophy of anatomy and physiology can be summed up with "Air goes in and out and blood goes round and round. Any variation on this is a bad thing." Likewise, I prefer nursing practice settings in which these things happen all by themselves.)

With the job giving flu shots, my schedule was flexible. Some days it was 9-3, some days it was 1-8pm, but generally it was 11-5. This job is 8:30-5, and that's taking a bit of getting used to. (I can't stay up past midnight any more--not if I want to be a nice person in the morning.)

The Mimi has been having some trouble with this. She looks so confused when I leave for work at the new time. I know there's a small voice in her head that says "Mama is wearing her nice clothes and leaving already? I just woke up half a sippy cup ago!"

Not words of wisdom

2010-01-30T19:31:00.003-06:00

Odd-sounding things I have said to the Mimi this month which I swear made perfect sense at the time:

"It is rude to try to stuff an emery board in someone's sock--especially while they're still wearing it."

"Give me back the DVD and I'll let you play with this hatchet instead."

"You're being a jerk. I don't pick up jerks."

"I am Ma-Ma. Da-Da is the one with the beard."

"We do not disassemble the furniture for entertainment."

"Must you be a punk [this early in the morning, in Fred Meyer, at the library, just because your barette fell out]?"

"Go ahead, throw a fit--you really think anyone's going to notice a screaming toddler in Wal-Mart?"

Rotting my brains

2010-01-26T10:25:00.002-06:00

The Mimi likes to have background noise in the house. It doesn't matter to her what it is, but the lack of music or "television" (we don't have an actual TV but we watch a lot of stuff on the computer courtesy of our handy Netflix subscription) results in a unhappy small person who signs "TV please" emphatically until we either tell her no or put something on.
She doesn't really seem to care what it is (apart from an obsession with "kitty puppy TV" (Garfield and Friends). However, even though I am fond of Garfield, I can only take so much. So we've been watching a fair share of random documentaries. They meet the Mimi's need for background noise, as well as my need for something resembling intellectual stimulation.
So far, we've watched John Cleese's Wine for the Confused (just what it sounds like), Shakespeare's Women and Claire Bloom (a talented theatre star discussing the female characters in the Bard's work) Food, Inc. (how agribusiness is no longer family farms) and the Botany of Desire (what if plants selectively breed themselves to get us to spread them around more?) as well as countless others which weren't particularly memorable.
As long as it's not too violent, I'll watch anything that looks interesting to me. (Except for horror movies, which one might argue fall into the "violent" category.) Is "omnivorous" a word which can properly be applied to TV consumption?

Family Christmas

2010-01-09T13:49:00.003-06:00

I've been too distracted lately to post much on the blog, but I thought I'd put up pictures of what I've been up to in the last couple of weeks.

We had a lovely immediate family Christmas Eve celebration at my sister in law's house. After trying desperately (and failing miserably) to keep Shirley out of the Christmas tree, we finally let her help decorate it. There was a definite line of ornaments all along the tree showing where she could reach!

For Brian's adopted grandmother Shirley, I knitted a variation on the Ice Queen cowl from knitty.com. I hate working with mohair, so I used my silk handspun yarn. And since it was my first time working lace from a chart, I left the beads off.

For a first project working lace from a chart in the round, it was fun to knit and surprisingly easy. I had so much fun working on it that I'm already planning to make one for myself, with the beads!

My brother in law got my name for the massive family Christmas gift exchange. Instead of a gift certificate, he gave me money for yarn. That was very nice of him, and I've already gone on a sock yarn-buying binge at Little Knits. But the way he wrapped it deserves special mention. (Yes, that is a five dollar bill sticking out of a ball of "the wildest crazy acrylic yarn I could find for you.")

I forsee someone getting an especially vibrant hat for his birthday...

Sock monkeys and sweater thieves

2009-12-24T10:06:00.004-06:00

I have a small secret--I love socks. It's not really a secret anymore. They're the project I knit most frequently, and if wild socks are on sale at the local "Tarjay," I will stock up on them. When Grandpa died a couple of years ago, Mom gave me two pairs of his hunting socks. (Since Grandpa spent much of his life on a quixotic quest for the perfect pair of socks that kept his feet warm but comfortable, I've got my suspicions as to whom I might have inheirited the obsession from.)

They're not my size, so I plan to make sock monkeys from them for Shirley and my brother's little girl. As with any much-loved knitted item, they've got a bit of lint on them.

So before I could start the sewing process, I had to take out the sweater stone and de-fuzzify them. The resulting ball of lint was so impressive that I had to share it:

Currently I've got everything done except for sewing the limbs on . Dismembered sock monkeys in the craft closet? Pretty normal for this household.
And in other clothing-related issues, the Mimi has started "borrowing" my clothes several years earlier than I thought she would. She looks way cuter in that sweater than I do.

Shameless product placement

2009-12-18T10:59:00.003-06:00

Normally I don't mindlessly babble about my shopping on the blog. However, I recently found a company that seems to be worthy of that.
Karma Naturals sells almost all of their products in both a full-sized version and a sample-size. So I ordered several samples of their products. (I have a hard time buying perfume in the store, let alone guessing if I'll like it when I buy it online.)
They shipped it promptly. Not only did my order arrive just as I'd ordered it (mixed-up orders are a huge pet peeve of mine) but they even included several complimentary samples with it.
And I love every single one of their fragrances! I'm most partial to the "Relaxation" one, which is a blend of lavender and citrus, but the others are good.
When I have disposable income again, I think I'll be picking up a lot of stuff from them!

Job hunting fun

2009-12-08T10:38:00.004-06:00

I had a job interview yesterday, so I'm much less twitchy now that the anxiety has worn off. Job interviews and exams always make me feel anxious. I always do the best I can and then I always come out of them going "I have no idea how I did!" trusting that I'll find out in a week or two.

Some people offer "Go with your first instinct!" as a possible stragegy for dealing with job interview questions. For me, that's a bad idea. Why? Because my first instinct, while true, is generally not "diplomatic" enough for an interview situation.

When the interviewers ask "Why do you want to work in public health?" they would much rather hear "I want to practice nursing in the community setting." than "I'd like to work in a setting that has patients who can walk."

"Tell us why you're interested in mental health" is best answered with "I had a really good mental health instructor in nursing school and I thought that'd be an interesting branch of nursing to work in" instead of "Well, my family's crazy..."

"What has been your experience working with physicians?" should be answered with "I've worked with some very talented individuals who really cared about their patients and co-workers," as opposed to "Some of them combine the charm of Dr. House with the morality of the cast of Grey's Anatomy."

The fact that my co-workers seem to think I'm a shoo-in for the position makes me feel better about it. Now that the worst part (the whole interview panic) is over, the rest should be much easier.

Best drug seeker video ever!

2009-11-24T10:36:00.002-06:00

This video explains perfectly why I like working public health better than working in hospitals. No one asks for narcotics when you're vaccinating them!
(Be sure to watch all of it--the last 30 seconds are priceless.)

Enabling my yarn addiction

2009-11-20T20:46:00.005-06:00

I lead a fairly boring life. When you get right down to it, so does most of the family. Even the ones who may have been a bit wild in the past now have respectable jobs, like being a substance abuse counselor.
The extended family does a Christmas gift exchange. Pick a relative's name out of a hat, get them a gift. You know the drill.
A couple of weeks ago, my brother in law announced that he'd gotten my name and asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I suggested a gift certificate to a local yarn store.
Then he had to ask the fateful question: "How much money do you want on it?"
Trying to be polite, I hemmed and hawed. But he persisted in wanting to know a specific dollar amount.
My sister in law knits, so I appealed to her better judgement. "Would you explain to your beloved why it's a bad idea to ask a knitter how much money they need for yarn?"
Since their household has close to 25 years worth of collective sobriety, she chose a metaphor that would be easily understood. "Baby, when you were on dope, how much of your income did you spend on it?"

Wrestling with strange toddlers for a living

2009-11-07T11:21:00.004-06:00

I realize people want their kids to behave in public. But this week, I've gotten a bit weirded out with parents making their kids say "thank you" to me after I vaccinate them. It seems well-intentioned, but a bit heavy-handed. Because I'm pretty sure that from the kid's perspective, they've been dragged to a strange place and held down while a lady they don't know just stabbed them with a needle--not exactly something to feel thankful for.
If the kids don't hit/kick/scream too much (and how much is "too much" completely depends on the child in question) I give them a sticker. (Or an extra Band-Aid, if we're out of stickers.) Having them say "Thank you for the sticker" seems appropriate (Although the Happy Hospitalist seems to have issues in this department) but forcing the kids to express unspecified gratitude confuses me.

Finished the sweater!

2009-11-03T10:07:00.002-06:00

I finished the Sonnet cardigan!

Mass vaccinations are fun for everyone!

2009-10-26T09:10:00.005-06:00

The new job is going well. I'd forgotten how wonderful it is to do nursing with people who aren't sick! (And the fact that working for the health department means I don't have to lift anyone heavier than a toddler doesn't hurt either.)

Because H1N1 (swine) flu vaccine is still limited in our area, we're trying to make sure all the "first responders" (police, firemen, EMTs, hospital workers, etc.) get vaccinated. So on Thursday, I got to go vaccinate the local fire and police departments at the new Lebanon Justice Center.

The vaccine comes in the same two forms as the usual seasonal flu vaccine--the nasal mist and the shot. Because of the misinformation swirling around the nation about the vaccine, we had a hard time getting people to accept the nasal mist. (The government sent us twice as much nasal vaccine as the injectable form, so we're trying to save the shot for people who can't have the nasal form.)

Therefore, much of the evening went like this:
I'd look over the guy's form (we vaccinated a grand total of three women all evening, and they were all dispatchers) and say "Congratulations, you're a healthy person between ages 2 and 49, you qualify for the nasal mist!"
Vaccinee: "But I want the shot! I've heard bad things about the mist!"
My coworker K usually took over at this point, as she's worked in the community much longer than I have. "What sort of bad things?"
Vaccinee:"You know, bad things.... All my buddies say it's best to get the shot."
K: (looks at guy's form) "It's just like the seasonal nasal flu vaccine. And you're telling me that you're 35 and you're still falling for peer pressure?"
Vaccinee: "Fine, I'll get the mist."

Watching K use the guys' fear of being thought vulnerable to peer pressure (which might be a form of peer pressure) to bully them into getting the nasal vaccine was priceless. I want to be like her when I grow up!

Retail therapy

2009-10-10T19:57:00.004-06:00

Shirley caught a cold earlier this week, and she shared it with the rest of the family. I hope I'm over it (or have stopped coughing) before work starts on Wednesday!

While I'm very grateful that starched white dresses are no longer required attire for nurses, I've grown weary of the ubiquitous scrubs. While I appreciate the fact that they come in an amazing array of colors, the fact remains that their stain-resistant fabrics, bright prints featuring a variety of cartoon characters, and smock-inspired styling makes me feel slightly unprofessional. Next to the white-coated MDs, I feel like I might as well be wearing pajamas to work.

So you can imagine how overjoyed I was to learn that business casual attire is required at my new employers. Finally, a good excuse to get out my iron (okay, I'm lying with that one, as I've only recently realized that my ironing board is in the garage, precisely where the movers left it a year ago) and my dress clothes. Then I checked through my closet and discovered that not only did I only own one pair of dress slacks but the majority of my tops are summer clothing.

So today, in spite of my nasty cold, I somehow found the strength to go shopping. (It's amazing stuff, Shopping is. They really ought to market it as a cure for the common cold. "Feel sniffly? Try Shopping! You'll feel better in minutes!") I'm hoping some cute new outfits go a long way towards allaying my nerves about starting a new job.

I have a job!

2009-10-07T09:06:00.002-06:00

What does it take to make me finish a sweater? (Don't get Brian started on this topic.) Since I knit mainly for relaxation and have the attention span of a heavily-caffinated rodent, I generally have between five and twenty projects in varying stages of completion.
I've been working on a bulky-weight version of the Sonnet cardigan out of handspun superwash wool since May. I'm midway through the last sleeve, and starting to run low on yarn. I'm down to the last ball, and I have a paranoid fear that I'll be five rows from completion and then completely run out of yarn.
So it has languished in my UFO bin for the last four months. But after finding out that I start a temporary job next Wednesday (and the required attire is business casual) I've been knitting on it like a mad woman.

Ren Fests and good friends

2009-09-21T09:56:00.004-06:00

We spent all of Thursday driving to Hermiston, Oregon and back to see Jon and Lindsay. Why did we spend four and a half hours in the car to drive to a strange Wal-Mart, spend an hour with them at WallyWorld and then turn around and drive four and a half more hours home? Partly because we're nutters with an unfortunate amount of free (jobless) time on our hands and a questionable grasp on the concept of "carbon footprint." (If we drive nine hours in a Prius, it doesn't count, right?)

But mostly because Jon and Lindsay (and their little dog, too) have been our friends for the last eight years. Brian and Jon survived NNU's religion department together, while Lindsay and I were in the same dorm. Then Lindsay and Jon were our next door neighbors when we lived in Nampa. When we moved to Nome for the summer with our four suitcases, not only did they drive all our stuff (and our truck!) to Kansas City, but they also let us live with them for a couple of weeks before we found an apartment.

J&L are moving. Unfortunately for us, they're moving to Alaska. Hermiston was literally the closest they would be to us in all of their 3700 mile road trip. One of the last times we saw them when we all went to the KC Renaissance Festival in 2007. I sadly neglected to bring the camera that time, but we had a blast.

Shirley was much easier to transport at that festival, as I was five months pregnant with her. On Saturday, we went to Shrewsbury. The ground was too uneven for her stroller, so she had to walk a lot more than she was used to. Here she is giving us the patented "I can't believe you took me to this strange place and are expecting me to use my legs!" baby glare.

We saw a lot of strange costumes at the Faire. I didn't take pictures of the worst one I saw, as I firmly believe that some things are so awful they should not be preserved for posterity. (Suffice it to say that if I were an excessively hairy obese middle-aged man, I would choose to wear something more than just a baldrick and a kilt made of skunk skins.)

The runner up, however, would have to be the dragon-girl in the photo below. She wore a parochial-school outfit (think Britney Spears circa 1997) with a felt dragon hood extending down her back. She and her boyfriend were so inseparable during the joust that Brian and I briefly wondered what their inevitable offspring would look like, then shuddered at the mental pictures created.

I was unable to get a picture of the two gentlemen dressed as King Arthur and his squire from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, (complete with coconuts!) but they were a far second from the best costumes I saw on Saturday. This group of cranky Celts with their trophy took the cake!

Spinning update

2009-09-04T08:33:00.005-06:00

Ever since I got my wheel, I've been trying to figure out how to make the yarn I want, instead of the yarn it wants to make.

I had some odd bits of superwash left over from making crazy batts. Not enough individually to do anything with, but collectively I had about four ounces. So I divided each color into three equal piles and put each pile into a sandwich baggie.

Pulling random colors of roving from the bag, I spun each bag onto a bobbin,

and then plied them all together as a 3-ply sock yarn. Unfortunately, plying with the wheel doesn't allow me to put as much twist into it as I do with a spindle, so the final yarn may not be suitable for socks.
I'm not sure what my total yardage was because it wouldn't all fit on my niddy-noddy. (Arguably a very good problem to have!)

I also had a bump of roving I hand-dyed either in San Francisco or shortly after we moved from there. (It's been a bit since I went on an all-out dyeing binge!)

Wanting to make mostly-identical socks, I split the roving lenghtwise, spun half on a drop spindle, and Navajo-plied the yarn to keep the color sequences intact. I've still got the other half to spin up, but I hope the yardage will equal the previous skein.

Baby's first blade

2009-09-03T12:52:00.004-06:00

I grew up on public assistance, and when I became an adult I swore up and down I'd never be dependent on the government again. But I'll do a lot of crazy things to make my baby's life better.

The most recent of those crazy things was standing in line for three hours yesterday at the Department of Health and Human Services to sign the Mimi up for the state-run health insurance program for children. (Because at least one member of our family should be able to get medical care without having to invoke EMTALA.)

Like an idiot, I had brought Shirley along with me in her stroller (and forgot to stuff knitting in my purse!) She fussed a bit, but otherwise was a trooper throughout the ordeal. So I told her that since she'd been a good girl, we' d go to the dollar store and she could pick out a new toy.

And she picked a 15" plastic Halloween cleaver! Not only does it probably glow in the dark and have a skull-shaped hilt, but it also is filled with fake blood that splashes around inside the blade. I tried repeatedly to turn Shirley's attention to other toys, but she would have none of it. I thought for a brief moment that I'd reached success with the pink furry cowboy hat that was just her size, but when I told her she could have it OR the knife, she tossed the hat on the floor and clutched the knife closer.

Next time, I think I'm going to be a lot more specific about what kind of toy she can have.

Every mother is a daughter...

2009-08-31T13:59:00.004-06:00

There are as many theories on raising toddlers as there are parents, but in our house we have four inviolate house rules: No hitting, no kicking, don't exceed the "polite society volume level," and don't walk on the couch! Ignoring any one of these results in "Time Out," when we send the Mimi to her room until she stops screaming.

I called Mom today. And as we were having a lovely conversation, the Mimi began her regularly-scheduled conquest of the couch. "SIT!" I yelled at Shirley, invoking the Voice. She promptly sat, then gave me her best "I was merely investigating the compressability of the couch cushion-I can't believe you would question my baby honor by implying that anything untoward was occurring" innocent look, followed by blowing kisses. (Her new way of appologizing for minor infractions.)

Then, of course, I had to explain to Mom what was going on. "I love her, but sometimes I don't understand her in the slightest."

She chuckled. "Sounds like another little girl I know. Just wait until the teenage years!"

It's too bad that when we visited Grandma she was feeling too poorly to tell stories from when Mom was a toddler!

Tips

2009-08-27T08:33:00.004-06:00

The Mimi woke up at 0615, threw a fit for twenty minutes when I tried to change her out of her soaked outfit, and is now reading quietly to herself on the couch. I love my daughter, but some days I don't understand her in the slightest.

Job-hunting continues. I've pretty much ran out of clinic and outpatient jobs to apply to (I'm kind of done with in-hospital nursing for now) but I realized it's been four years since I had anything to do with long-term care nursing and health care has no doubt changed since then. I've been trying to do "informational interviews" with the HR people from various facilities in the area (like the unemployment office suggested) but so far no one has returned my phone calls.

So I've also been asking nurses I know if they know any nurses who work in long-term care I could call to get a better idea of what their work day is like. And asking friends and neighbors what their experience has been with area facilities and "is there anywhere you wouldn't want to send a loved one to?" (Because if there's a place like that, they probably treat the staff just as bad as the patients.)

So far, I've heard everything from "Elderhome Gardens is great--I spent a few weeks there after my hip surgery" to "Ye Olde Nursing Home is nice, but the staff there always seems rushed," to "Casa de Bluehaired Ladies should be burned to the ground, and all the ashes should be swept up and dropped into an active volcano!" I bet there's a story with the last one, but I'm too scared to ask. I'm definitely not wanting to work there.

In praise of modern dentistry

2009-08-21T19:25:00.004-06:00

I had my wisdom teeth out on Wednesday. Since they've been troubling me for the last four years, I figured I might as well get them yanked while we still have insurance.

And now that the puking has stopped, I'm a much happier person. (Trying to get the part of my brain that was all "Oh my GAWD--there's lots of blood in your vomit! This is BAD! BAD! BAAAAAD!!!" to stop hyperventilating and talk to the part that was saying "No sh*t there's blood in your vomit--accidentally swallowing the blood your mouth incisions are oozing is what's making you vomit! Drink lots of fluids and you'll be fine." was much harder than you'd expect.) I am getting bored with eating soft foods, but not stupid enough to try the Doritos corn chips I'm craving.

One thing I didn't expect is that the swelling makes it hard to project a proper "Mom Voice" (you know the one I mean) when yelling at Shirley for doing dangerous things. And the narcotics make it really hard to sustain "The Look" for longer than a half second. "Don't shtand on the coutsch!" accompanied by a silly grin just doesn't have the desired effect.

However, I have learned from my previous experiences with narcotics that this is not the week to begin new craft projects. Why?

As we were packing up the San Francisco house, I found this random piece of crochet:

Not only does it appear to be made out of my odds and ends of sock yarn, but I have no memory of making it. The best we could conjecture was that I made it when Shirley was first born and I was on lots of pain killers. (Out of desperation, I wound up adding shoulder straps and a ruffled hem and called it a sweater dress.)

Worlds bestest husband!

2009-08-14T09:20:00.005-06:00

I've wanted to go to the Sock Summit ever since the Yarn Harlot sent out the inital post about it. Unfortunately, the budget wouldn't allow for that this year. But it was only two bucks a person to get into the Marketplace, where Brian selflessly minded the Mimi while I wandered around in a fiber-haze.

It was total sensory overload! So much to see, so many wonderful yarns and fibers to pat. So many things calling "take me home with you!" Only the knowledge that our budget is very limited kept me from draining the checking account right then and there.

The Mimi likes people. Doesn't matter, who or where, she likes people. Needless to say, she had fun meeting a lot of new people Saturday.

I love batts and "sparklies." There's just something about the smoothness of the various fibers combined with the fact that I'm simple-minded enough to be amused by not knowing which color will come up next that makes them incredibly mesmerizing to spin. Unfortunately, angora fiber gives me a rash--and almost every custom batt I saw contained it in some percentage. And nothing takes the joy out of spinning or knitting something like getting an itchy rash from it. That's why even the most bored and financially insolvent spinner feels no need to spin fiberglass insulation.

So I was incredibly excited to find this superwash/angelina/recycled silk batt from Enchanted Knoll Farm. Sparkly and angora-free! (And when I showed it to Brian at their booth, he said, "Why do you think I was at their booth? I wanted to make sure you noticed it.")

I found that with enough patience, my wheel will do laceweight. I love this fiber, and I'm having so much fun spinning it that I want to get the most possible "mileage" out of it. I bought 8 ouncess, so I'm envisioning a glittery shawl. (Or I could do a laceweight February Lady sweater, but that's been done by so many people at this point that it's become the knitting equivalent of shopping at the Gap. While I'm busy conforming to everyone else's ideas of cute and beautiful, I might as well go plaster my car with Hello Kitty stickers and paint it pink. )

The colors turned out a lot more subtle in the yarn than they are in the batt. Brian was pleasantly surprised by this. After six years of marriage, it's still a mystery to me how two people with such completely different tastes in fashion and color can live together happily most of the time. He loves earthtones, blues, grays, greens. If the color occurs in nature, he likes it. And while it's not as bad as the proverbial "blind showgirl on an acid trip," there's no denying that I prefer the more saturated end of the color spectrum.

Although my attempts to replace my current drive band (which is several yards of doubled, highly twisted sock yarn) with flexible aquarium tubing didn't work, the wheel spins like a dream. It only has one ratio, but is very sturdy. I can transport it in the car to and from Monday morning spinning without having to disassemble it.

pictures that amuse me

2009-08-04T08:59:00.005-06:00

For years I've been confused by the Protestant tendency to label churches "First Church of Denomination" even when there's only one church of that denomination in the town. But finally some congregation has gotten honest! This is the Second Baptist Church of Cheyenne.

Wyoming was the first state in the country to allow women to vote. I think their State Seal is much nicer than Washington's. (Washington's has the picture of George Washington, and not much else.)

Also at the historic Governor's Mansion museum, (the above seal is the carpet in the office) we saw this amazing log cabin quilt. I am in awe of the maker's color sense!

The Western Wyoming Community College has a permanent exhibit of dinosaur fossils!

All through driving through Wyoming, we saw these bilboards for buying fireworks. Aparently you can buy fireworks year round in Wyoming, not just for Independence Day.

On our return journey through Nampa, we discovered that in the three years since we'd been there, our beloved university had acquired a large water feature and life-size bronze elk statue. (I wanted to get a picture of Shirley riding the elk, but wiser heads prevailed.)

And at long last, we got to introduce the Mimi to the last of the three Shirleys she's named after. Shirley Lee-Warner was like our mom away from home when we were in college.

Photos from Wyoming trip

2009-08-04T08:21:00.005-06:00

We drove 2550 miles in six days! I took a lot of pictures, mostly of things that amused me.

Like the Pioneer Post ginormous playground in Pendleton Oregon. Oh, to be six again!

Alpha Omega Services was a Christian book store and gun shop when we lived in Nampa three years ago. It appears that they've decided to go with just the weapons and gunsmithing, although I notice their window also advertises free Bibles. It is Idaho, so I guess they know their market!

These interesting rocks were in Utah. Utah was the land of lousy drivers, scarily clean gas station restrooms, and undrinkable water. The rest stops we were at all had signs from the health department saying the water was "nonpotable" due to the high coliform bacteria count. This might just mean that the health department checks the water more often than in other states, but still is worrisome.

Grandma had surgery Saturday and by all accounts is doing much better. It was good to see her. Shirley kept running up to random nurses and hugging their legs trying to get them to pick her up. Social baby!

We got to see our dear friends the Mwiingas. Nathan and Tasha have grown a lot since we were there in 2006!

I'll post more random pics in the next post, as the photo upload function is annoying me.

Ewww!

2009-07-28T22:13:00.004-06:00

We're in Wyoming at the moment, visiting Grandma. (Can't find the camera adaptor thingy to upload pics again.) We'd planned to visit her at her home in Wheatland, but she's fallen sick and is at the big hospital in Cheyenne.
Grandma is doing better, but several things have struck me about Cheyenne. First off, darkness makes it very difficult to tell that there is a railway hub a block and a half from your motel. Trains have been going by every twenty minutes or so. I can sleep through a lot of stuff, but that's a bit much!
The hospital here is fairly new--one of the plaques commemorated construction in 2003. It's also designed so the patient floors have an identical layout. Grandma got moved from the sixth floor to the fourth floor, but kept the same room number and location on the floor. Her new room looked exactly like her old one! If I hadn't walked down with her as the staff wheeled her bed, I would have been really disoriented.
All was going well with our visit until Shirley got bored. She started crawling on the hardwood floor, and then she started licking it! I know what gets spilled on hospital floors, and watching that made me really queasy. Needless to say, she got a bath as soon as we got back to the motel.

Really, Oregon?

2009-07-24T07:31:00.002-06:00

I had job interview yesterday for a place I really want to work, and am otherwise wading through the maze of unemployment.
Does anyone else find it ironic that the Oregon Department of Employment's website for filing unemployment claims is www.workinginoregon.org? I suppose it's more encouraging than www.notworkinginoregon.org or www.goodluckfindingajobinthiseconomy.org, but really!

Electronic mayhem

2009-07-17T07:33:00.002-06:00

We don't get Shirley many toys with batteries. The way we see it, she makes enough noise as it is, so why would we want to add to it? However, that doesn't stop the assorted aunties and uncles from giving her toys that make any number of interesting noises.

Like this adorable tea set. It comes with two cups, three treats, and a plate. At least, I thought it was adorable until Shirley figured out how to push the button and make the tea kettle sing its little song every ten seconds. "I'm a little teapot, ready for some tea..." The song is starting to haunt my dreams! Hope the batteries die soon.

That time of the month

2009-07-16T01:37:00.003-06:00

Yes, it's that time of the month, the one where I lay on the couch with a hot pad and whine a lot. Adding to the whining is the fact that lost my job on Thursday, so now I'm trying to find a new job, one that offers benefits, but isn't in a nursing home. (Just because I've got a lot of experience trying to get little old ladies with severe dementia to take their pills doesn't mean I want to do that all day!)

Shirley has learned a new word: no. To be more precise, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I hear this a lot at meal times, as I'm trying to help her hold the spoon. She desperately wants to feed herself, and has taken to screaming "no!" at the top of her lungs at any perceived attempts to hinder her independence. Usually this means she's holding a spoon in one hand and stabbing it into the plate while using the other hand to shovel food into her mouth. Watching her eat is not for the faint of stomach!

On the plus side, however, it is nice to be able to spend time with Brian and the Mimi while they're awake and it's daylight outside.

Billy's wedding pictures

2009-07-05T00:26:00.007-06:00

I haven't posted since right before we left to drive to Coeur d' Alene for Billy's wedding. As a surprise for Billy, we arranged for our college buddy LeeAnn to car-pool with us. We also had Brad's fiancee Carin riding with us, as well as the Mimi.

All was well and good until the Mimi got carsick all over the backseat before we'd even picked up Lee! (How can someone who doesn't even weigh 25 pounds yet acheive that level of projectile vomiting?!) Thankfully, this turned out to be a one-time occurrence.

Lee's date Josh had to work and couldn't go to the wedding, so she found a "new date." (Don't put a garden gnome on your wedding registry unless you want something like this to happen.)

After seeing Billy and Sabera married and dropping people off with their respective rides/airports, we headed south to visit Mom and Aunt Tig.

We also visited Palouse Falls. It's most spectacular in March or April when the spring floods are in full force, but it's lovely any time of year.

The canyon below the falls:

Seeing this really makes me want to take up oil painting again, but I'll have to stick with yarn and other non-toxic art mediums for now while Shirley is in the "It's pretty--I wonder what it tastes like!" stage of development.

Actual conversation with my pharmacy

2009-06-17T08:21:00.003-06:00

For the first time in my adult life I have a health insurance plan that covers therapy. Needless to say, I've been using many of my sessions to try and trouble-shoot (as my mental health person also has prescribing rights) that fine balance between antidepressant side effects screwing up my life and depression screwing up my life. Since we can't change my wacky schedule, we've been trying to do other things to help with the insomnia.

(This is a vast improvement over my previous system in which I'd go to my primary care doc and complain that Ihateeverbody wasn't working. Wherein he'd sympathize and give me a shiny new pen emblazoned with Noyougotohell and tell me he'd heard good things about its efficacy for depression and did I want some free samples to go with that scrip?)

And when I filled my prescription for a sleeping pill this week, I had the following conversation with the pharmacy intern about side effects and drug interactions:

Me, skimming through attached pharmacy handout: "It says here not to take it with GHB. Isn't that illegal?" (To your average layperson, GHB is best known as a date rape drug.)
Intern: "Well yes, but you're not supposed to take it with it."
Me, succumbing to morbid curiosity: "So what happens if you do?"
Intern: "It can be really sedating."

Extra points to my beloved pharmacy for placing a label on the bottle that says "Warning: May cause drowsiness."

I thought they were on vacation

2009-06-14T00:10:00.005-06:00

I thought that, just as pretty much everyone else in the northern hemisphere is appreciating summer by slowing down and doing less, so would the Yarn Pixies. Apparently I was mistaken.

Last night, as I was trying to sleep and failing miserably (I'm going to go back to referring to myself in the first person plural, like I did when I was pregnant with Shirley. Except that this time "we" refers to "me and my sleep disorder.") I was accosted by the Yarn Pixies. They suggested that I could design a surplice-style wrap sweater that was loosely based on those tie-to-fit baby sweaters.

And being gullible and unable to sleep, I took them up on it. So, I'm trying to design a new sweater. Unfortunately, I won't know if it turns out at all like the pictures in my head or the drawings in my notebook until it's finished. But the yarn is amazing and sooo soft, and I'm starting to realize just how much I have under-appreciated the tactile qualities of well-done garter stitch. Beautiful aqua silk yarn to work with, and a lengthy vacation coming up.... yippee!

Mini-vacation!

2009-06-01T22:08:00.002-06:00

I had to work Memorial Day Weekend, except for Monday. But because I work night shift, I got paid 7.5 hours of time-and-a-half from 0001 to 0730 on Monday for working Sunday night! Very nice.

Monday was also Brad and Carin's engagement party in Eugene.

I still question Carin's sanity at wanting to marry my brother-in-law, but I'm very happy for them. I was less happy to attend their party, as I got home at 0800, and then woke up at 1130 to ride to Eugene for their party. Fortunately, by the time we arrived, my Pepsi had kicked in and I managed to get through the party without saying too many stupid things.

Then on Wednesday, we piled in the car and went to Crater Lake. Shirley was very happy at getting to climb on a new bed.

We'd planned to meet with friends of ours from San Francisco, but they weren't able to come after all. This was the view from our window at the Lodge:

In spite of the 70-plus degree weather, there was still five feet of snow in places. So we bundled up the Mimi and let her experience lots of snow for the first time in her life. All went well until she ate some.

Apparently snow that's been on the ground for Lord knows how many months doesn't taste very good!

While we were on the trip, I also started on yet another version of the Sonnet cardigan done with my bulky weight handspun yarn. I've got the body completely done and I'm working on the sleeves now.

Dyeing mishap

2009-05-24T18:26:00.002-06:00

I decided that what I wanted for my birthday was some purple silk yarn. Alas, I have no money in the yarn budget. But I do have a large cone of teal silk yarn. So I over-dyed it with a lot of red, and the initial result was a lovely eggplant color.
Then I washed it. It bled. And bled. And left purple spots all over the bathtub. And now it's back to teal. :( At least it's much softer after a good bath!

The difference between Brian and Naomi

2009-05-17T11:54:00.002-06:00

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Can't sleep

2009-05-13T02:18:00.003-06:00

Not like this title is a surprise to anyone, right? At this point, between working nights and new antidepressants and the nasty cold that's been going around our family, I might as well buy a glittery lavender cape and change my name to "Insomnia Queen."

So time to list some major blessings that have happened recently:

Grandma got out of the hospital about three weeks ago. Last I heard, she is back to her normal self, including playing the harmonica.

I passed my six month employee evaluation at the hospital with flying colors! After the lousy experience I had working at Mills-Peninsula, it was very nice to have my supervisors tell me that they thought I was a good nurse and were pleased with my performance. Incredibly affirming!

I have a spinning wheel! (As always, I'm too lazy to get up and snap a picture of it. ) Brian's parents got me one for my birthday next week. It's a Clemes & Clemes modern style-spinning wheel. Mostly indestructible (always a plus with the Mimi around) and works like a dream.

Work weirdness

2009-05-03T16:05:00.004-06:00

Work has been weird lately. I foolishly said yes when the staffing office asked if I wanted to pull extra shifts this week without looking at my schedule. Therefore, I've worked five out of the last seven days.

The staffing office canceled me for a few hours here and there, so it thankfully wasn't the full 60 hours that my 12 hour schedule would usually cause. Still, I'm very grateful that tonight is my night off.

Every so often the e-mails I receive from my higher-ups make me want to go "WTF?" Especially these two that I read Friday night:
Email # 1 stated that one of my co-workers is in the process of gender reassignment and therefore will now be known as something completely different, starting immediately. (Unexpected, but it is The Zeros.) SO BE SUPPORTIVE, YOU DUNDERHEADS!
Email #2 stated that there would be NO non-work related Internet use while at work. No, it doesn't matter if it's your lunch break. Infractions will be dealt with severely.

How can they possibly be so encouraging and empathetic towards my friend's sex change and yet intolerant of our need to check e-mail at 0315 on slow nights?

And how am I doing with these things?
The co-worker seems much happier and more relaxed, so for shis sake, I hope the rest of this change also goes well. As I told shim, "We love you and we love working with you, but pronouns are going to be a bit awkward for awhile." S/he seemed to take this well.
Last night was so crazy busy I didn't get a chance to chart until well after midnight, so the Internet policy wasn't a temptation at all.

Screaming with Mimi

2009-04-25T08:31:00.003-06:00

We watch a lot of children's DVDs in our house. Not only is it (probably) safer for Shirley's emotional health than watching our Jet Li movie collection, but I'm also trying to get better at my Spanish skills (After years of practice, I believe my competency is now at "extremely verbal toddler" insead of "sedated parrot.") through watching them with the Spanish language track switched on. Lately, I've been working my way through the "Garfield and Friends" series.

Fans of the series may remember the segment "Screaming with Binky," in which Binky the obnoxious clown ("El Payaso Binky") comes onstage and yells "HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDZZ!!!!!!" at the top of his lungs while the other characters try to maul him. Just the sort of mindless entertainment that made the sugar-infused Saturday mornings of my childhood such a trial for my mother.

Last night, we were able to experience "Screaming with Mimi." Immediately after dinner, Shirley was unable to cope with the unfortunate reality that she had drained her bottle of milk and commenced to show her displeasure vocally. When time out in her crib didn't work, I decided that since she wasn't going to be happy regardless of the situation, I might as well go ahead and give her a bath. In retrospect, this plan may have been a mistake. My left ear is still ringing slightly from her wails.

After ten and a half hours of sleep, she's a much happier person, thank God.

Grandma is also doing much better. She's been moved to "the head case floor," and if all goes well should be going home this weekend.

He is risen!

2009-04-17T05:39:00.006-06:00

I love Easter. Probably it has something to do with my childish joy over any holiday that involves special church services, lots of loud singing, and Marshmallow Peeps, but Easter is my all-time favorite holiday in the entire church year. (My favorite personal holiday is the Winter Solstice, but that's just because it means that the light will come back and my seasonal depression will get better. And since God apparently chose to make me with seasonal issues like this, I trust that God understands. It's strangely difficult to find cards that say "Happy Winter Solstice," so I usually settle for "Happy Holidays.")

It's spring-time, flowers are blooming, wildlife is reproducing (A note to the neighborhood feline population: Please try to modulate the volume on your late-night serenades and lover's quarrels. The cuteness of your eventual offspring does not outweigh the disturbance you are currently causing in my sleep.) and God has conquered Sin and Death and Hell! Jesus is risen from the dead, HOW COOL IS THAT!?

I had planned to spend the previous week in Wyoming visiting Grandma, as the 9th was her 80th birthday. However, due to "budgetary shortfalls," we're having to delay the trip until August, when the passes will be clear enough to drive. (I haven't had the heart to tell our trusty Toyota that it's got a four-cylinder engine, but the fact remains that it's mostly fiberglass. I refuse to drive in snow and ice unless it's absolutely unavoidable.)

So we spent Easter weekend with Penny and Dave. After a very disturbing midnight cryptic text message from Mom (which I followed up with multiple panicked telephone calls after I checked my messages at 0500) I found out that Grandma had fallen, gotten a subdural hematoma, had emergency surgery, and was in ICU in Cheyenne.

And as of yesterday, she's still in ICU. Granted, of all the things which can possibly be interpreted as "bleeding on the brain," a subdural hematoma is one of the easiest to fix, but brain surgery when you're 80 is still...brain surgery! I'm trying to turn off the "nursing panic" that comes from having the letters "RN" behind my name and knowing what could go wrong, but it's still hard.

(Extra points to the ICU nurse I first talked to on Sunday when I couldn't get ahold of any of the family. "I can't tell you anything because of the HIPPA act and the privacy laws, OK?"
"I know that," I said. "I'm a RN in Oregon and can you just tell me how many drips she's attached to so I can know if I need to fly out there right now?"
She chuckled. "Okay, I'm not telling you this, but your grandma's awake, talking to us, and doing much better than before the surgery.")

So I'm doing what I usually do when family members are sick and I can't sleep and I'm worried--knitting. I've got about 1200 yards of handspun in a pink/orange/brown/ colorway (And about 2 more ounces of my own "crazy batt" to spin up more in case I run short.) and I've started the gauge swatch for Sonnet. Thank God for nice easy mindless knitting.

Night off

2009-03-29T22:25:00.003-06:00

I have tonight off work, and my sister in law Meegan was crazy enough--I mean kind enough--to watch the Mimi overnight tonight. Brian will be out at a meeting until late tonight, so a traditional date night is slightly out of the question. I'm thinking I'll bake some cookies, watch random things on Netflix, and spin more yarn. Currently I'm trying to spin enough lace weight yarn for a cardigan. 600 yards down, much more to go!

In other news, I joined Ravelry, but have no idea what to do there. Any tips?

Irony

2009-03-27T08:34:00.002-06:00

Last week, one of the nurses who works in ICU was ill enough to be hospitalized on our floor. Being a nurse himself, he had several more questions than your average patient, and made the nurse taking care of him telephone the doctor several times in order to get them all answered.

"Co-workers make the worst patients!" she finally blurted out in exasperation--twenty minutes before she herself had a small seizure at the nurse's station.

Hope they're both feeling better when I work tonight!

Chocolate-covered baby

2009-03-13T06:12:00.005-06:00

Last Wednesday was Shirley's first birthday. I know some parents do full-out birthday parties for their one year olds complete with guests, etc, but we're not "some parents." (They've been canceling my shifts at work lately, so we're much more broke than these possibly-mythical "other people's parents.")

So I baked cupcakes, we sang Happy Birthday to her and then proceeded to photograph her reaction to oodles of refined sugar. (You'll have to imagine the ecstatic baby squeals throughout this process.)

"What's this, Mom? It doesn't come in a jar labeled "Gerber," so I'm not sure I recognize it."

"Oh well, anything this gooey can't possibly be bad!"

"No one told me food could taste this good! What have you been feeding me the rest of the year?"

"Is this what you mean by the words "sugar rush?" I think I like it!"

One Year Ago Today

2009-02-28T07:57:00.003-06:00

One year ago today, I was heavily pregnant, and very whiny. (And puking, but that was pretty much the default setting during the whole pregnancy.)
And I was knitting this for Jen:

(Yes, it is what you think it is.)
But now we can all celebrate Kendyl's safe arrival with Jen and Troy!

My stethoscope's so pretty!

2009-02-19T19:18:00.006-06:00

I lost my stethoscope at work the other night. When I told my co-workers this, they all wanted to know what it looked like.
"Uh, it's a black Littmann stethoscope with a green light attached to the bell."
"Does it have your name on it anywhere?"
"No..."
"Do you know how many people have black stethoscopes?"
Thankfully, Laura from housekeeping (who has far surpassed "Custodian" and is quite possibly a "Cleaning Goddess") found it and returned it to me. But the whole experience caused me to realize that my stethoscope looks just like everyone else's, and I need to do something to make it distinctively mine.
The next night, I had a dream. The dream told me (apparently the Yarn Pixies are branching out) to take the beads I had left over from trying to spin beaded yarn (a complete and utter cluster^%&$ that made me repent of ever wanting to use, let alone make, beaded yarn) and make myself something beaded for the stethoscope.
So I took beads and needle in hand, with no plan of what to do next beyond making a beaded gewgaw to identify my stethoscope. This is what it evolved into:

Lots of people have black stethoscopes. But how many people have a black stethoscope with a pink beaded three-dimensional Cinderella dress on the tubing?

Overheard at work

2009-02-19T07:42:00.001-06:00

As I've said before, there's far fewer male nurses than female nurses employed by my hospital. Occasionally, this leads to some unintentional conflict in the break room. During lunch on my most recent shift, I overheard this conversation:
Female nurse #1: "I loved breastfeeding! Especially all the skin-to-skin bonding with the baby..." (sighs dreamily.)
Female nurse #2: "I know! But after my youngest got teeth at five months and nearly bit through my nipple, I had to wean her sooner than I wanted to."
Male nurse #1 to male nurse #2, very loudly: "SO I'VE GOT THIS PATIENT ON AN INSULIN DRIP..."

We love socks!

2009-02-18T04:36:00.002-06:00

I did a very special dye-job for the roving for these socks. Then, I split the roving in half and spun two (hopefully) identical skeins of yarn. Starting from the toe, I knit until I ran out of yarn on one sock, completed the other sock to the same level, and then knit alternating rounds on each sock until I ran out of yarn.

Specifically, until I discovered that I was five feet short during the bind off. @$&!!!! So now I have to rootle through my stash and find a bit of red/purple/blue that's similar and spin five or ten feet and re-do the bind off.

Still, I think they're stunning.

Shirley has expanded her sock obsession from the security sock to all socks. Mine, Brian's, and hers. As long as it's a sock, she's not picky.

Who wants to fight about politics?

2009-02-09T08:31:00.003-06:00

My brother and I are different people. I know this point seems very obvious to many people, especially as he needs to shave far more regularly than I do.
But this is most obvious when we start talking about politics. Specifically, what should be done to fix the seething cauldron of issues, insecurities, and occasional bursts of outright paranoia that is the United States' relationship with most middle eastern countries. (From their end of things, I imagine that it's a bit like asking a woman's (Let's call her "Iraq.") entourage of female friends what they think of her on-again, off-again obnoxious boyfriend. Some of them think he'd be fine if he'd just stop drinking (or invading other countries) and some of them would love to see him dead. It all depends on which gal (country) you talk to.)
And after a recent discussion on Israel, Gaza, Hamas, and ways in which Israel's situation as a Jewish state in an Islamic region compares to "being the little guy in a prison cell," I had a sudden flash of insight as to the core difference in our world views:
We both believe that diplomacy requires both a carrot and a stick. The main point of disagreement between us is what exactly those should be. Objectively, I know that only time and history will tell whether military might or economic incentives are the better strategy. But in defense of my own position, I must point out that while you can only blow something up once, you can wreak havoc on a country's economy forever.

Waste not, want not?

2009-02-01T11:27:00.002-06:00

There's quite a few random allergies in our family. My body "doesn't do dairy." It's probably technically a form of lactose intolerance, but as Lactaid tablets don't help my problems (nausea, bloating, migraines, and the occasional episode of spectacular vomiting and diarrhea) when I overindulge in dairy products (By "overinduldge" I mean "eat more than one half serving of cheese daily".) that seems to be the best description. One of the nicest things about being pregnant was that God, in God's infinite wisdom and kindness (as well as possibly recognition of the fact that I wasn't keeping down many other foods, so ice cream might be the only shot at getting enough calories in me to support new life) chose to repeal the "dairy issues" for nine months. But I digress.

My mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and husband are all allergic to onions. It's not as dramatic as a peanut allergy, but does complicate cooking. There is a very short list of nice restaurants (by "nice" I mean "has wait-staff and cloth napkins" at which Brian and I can both eat food off of the menu.

When we were in college, we were singularly blessed when a local restaurant, the Dutch Inn, was taken over by a Chinese restaurant chain. The resulting hybrid, the Dutch Inn-Quick Wok served both food off their American menu, as well as classic Chinese American food. Brian would order off the American menu (where onions do occur in cooking, but in predictable dishes) and I would order from the Chinese one (wherein dairy products do not typically occur.)

We weren't sure if Shirley would develop this trait. You can imagine my panic when I realized one day that I'd just fed her a jar of something that listed onion powder fourth on the list. (To be fair, the first three ingredients were "chicken, rice, tomato paste." Gerber makes very simple baby food.) I drove to the grocery store and bought a bottle of Children's Benadryl.

She had absolutely no problems with the food. Just as well, as you're not supposed to use Benadryl on children under two without a doctor's supervision.

Which leaves me with a bottle of Children's Benadryl that I can't return and will expire long before Shirley is old enough to use it. Fortunately, one teaspoon of the nauseatingly sweet syrup is enough to make me sleepy, and two will cause me to sleep for at least six hours. (For those of you who are curious, Benadryl is the "PM" in "Tylenol PM.") It's not a complete solution to my insomnia, but it definitely helps!

Que dia es hoy?

2009-01-27T23:37:00.003-06:00

Ever forget what day of the week it is? I've never been particularly talented when it comes to time-management, but working nights has not helped.

Perhaps it's the fact that when I leave for work, it's Wednesday, but when I come home from work, it's now Thursday. Maybe it's how magically, every single night, I have to change the date on my charting when the clock turns over from 2359 to 0000. Or even the fact that on occasion, (this is Oregon I'm talking about) I have left for work, worked twelve or thirteen hours, returned from work, and then awakened after sleeping for several hours without seeing a single ray of sunshine!

When you're doing a neurological assessment on patients, it's important to make certain they're "oriented" to person, place/situation, and time. This means that my patient who answered the orientation questions with "Paul Revere," "1956," and "Amityville, Texas" was "oriented times zero." (To be fair, "Mr. Revere" had experienced such a catastrophic stroke that we were delighted that he was talking at all, regardless of whether or not he made sense.)

I know who I am, where I'm at, and (usually) what's going on, but without Microsoft's calendar on every computer, I don't have a prayer of guessing the day correctly. Guess I'm "oriented times two."

Babies steal yarn

2009-01-18T20:43:00.004-06:00

As evidenced by the security sock (which you can spot in all of these pictures if you know where to look) Shirley likes soft fuzzy objects. (Except for this teddy bear, which she ignores.

Perhaps it's the fact that it's bigger than she is?)

She regularly grabs yarn, roving, and WIPs if I'm unwise to leave them within her reach. (And now that she's learned how to balance on tip-toes, arm's reach is much higher up than it used to be.)

While I promptly tell her no and take the WIPs out of her hands, (Most of my projects are socks on sharp DPNs. The potential for baby self-inflicted injury is pretty much endless.) I don't mind near as much with the yarn and roving.

Until she puts them in her mouth. Which means that several times a day, I give the following soliloquy:
"No, we do not chew on yarn! We can admire it. We can pet it. We can say 'Oh, what lovely yarn! What pretty colors... It's so soft on my skin...' We do NOT put it in our mouths!"

And as I was giving this speech for the umpteenth time the other day, Brian chimed in with a few thoughts of his own:
"All yarn belongs to the mother! Pay homage to the mother and her yarn stash!"

Look on my fiber, ye mighty, and drool.

Politically incorrect

2009-01-16T10:17:00.002-06:00

I realize that the history of the modern state of Israel is a messy and tortuous one. I know that many bad things have happened to the Jewish people over the years, and I can understand why the Israeli government is a bit "tetchy" about protecting their sovereignity.

But I am incensed by the lack of outrage the American media is showing over the Israeli military's actions in Gaza. If I were a drinking woman, I'd do a shot every time a pundit on CNN attempts to justify Israel's behavior by saying "you have to understand that they need to defend themselves."

Since the pundits and politicians are too chicken to point this out, let me share my thoughts on the matter: I don't care if Hamas is firing rockets into the Knesset itself--you do not bomb schools and hospitals! (Shelling UN compounds in Gaza is spectacularly tacky.) And when a Jewish lawmaker starts drawing comparisons between your behavior and that of the Nazis, you might want to rethink your strategy.

So as I was taught, I will continue to "pray for the peace of Israel." And Palestine, and Lebanon, and Syria...

Gender issues

2009-01-05T23:07:00.004-06:00

Nursng is traditionally a woman's role. Of the ten students I graduted with, only one was a man.
The male nurses I've had the chance to work with have been great, but occasionally the "gender issues" make working with them slightly odd.

Usually when it's only female staff working, our break room lunch time conversations revolve around fashion, celebs and kid and husband stuff. When the male staff are working with us, it can be a bit stilted. (And we generally pass on the discussions on how great Victoria Secret's semi- annual sale is--not that I think the guys would object to that topic of conversation.) Damn fine nurses, but a bit awkward nonetheless.

Because there are so few male nurses, patients also respond to them differently than they do to "you gals." Confused patients are notorious for mistaking male nurses for doctors. And even mentally competent patients often accept what the male nurses say with more authority than they do similar statements from me.

And after spending the last shift doing 1:1 nursing on a sweet elderly lady with dementia who yanked out her IV (twice!) repeatedly pulled off her heart monitor leads, and was spectacularly paranoid about allowing the staff to clean up her bloody sheets, give her oxygen, or give her important medications while screaming "you girls are all in this together!" at the top of her lungs, I really appreciate male nurses. Especially Billy and Jim *, who were kind enough to help me out by using their masculine charms to convince her to let them put in a new IV and get a quick shot of a handy antipsychotic.

*Any and all co-workers who may be mentioned in my blog have had names, ages, (occasionally genders) and other identifying details changed. Why? Because this blog is all about me.

Bad signs

2009-01-03T19:32:00.004-06:00

There are many "bad signs" of nursing.

"It's never a good sign when her white count is higher than her hematocrit." (For people who haven't had their brains sucked out by the nursing profession, this means that the patient is probably septic and headed for the ICU.)

"I admitted the gal in room 208, and I ran out of space on the admission form for psychiatric diagnoses!" is not something you want to hear from the admitting nurse. Ever.

"I ran out of things to give for nausea and vomiting, but he's still puking!"

And yesterday's experience:
At the very begining of my shift, I answered a random elderly lady's call light, and she said, "Excuse me, but when are they coming to get the body?"
I looked across at her roommate (who I knew from the census was going to be going home with hospice the next day) and realized that she was somewhat grayish. In spite of the lousy color, she was still breathing regularly.
I reassured the first lady that her roommate was alive, but it understandably took a bit to get her relaxed. And after a quick conversation with the charge nurse, it took less than twenty minutes to find her a new room with an alert, non-dying roommate.

Family and Christmas insanity

2008-12-24T17:20:00.005-06:00

In spite of the fact that so much snow has fallen on the Willamette Valley that snow chains are required to drive in downtown Portland, this is the largest amount of snow that my back yard has seen so far this winter. Thank God!

The other two "B's", Billy and Brad, came to visit a couple of weekends ago for the annual computer game festival. Now that everyone has steady jobs and significant others, it's a bit more difficult to find time to get all three of "the boys" together, but it's well worth the effort when the plantets and everyone's schedules align.

I love it when family comes to visit! And while I enjoy spending time with (most) of my and Brian's assorted relatives, there's no avoiding the fact that some visitors are more enjoyable than others. I love it when Mom and Aunt Tig visit, but life is just a bit wilder when Billy and Brad come calling. (Most of this is no doubt due to the fact that my parents do not stay up until 2am with us, swapping ribald stories and watching offbeat movies.)

They introduced Shirley to soda. No, no one let her drink any. But she had a blast playing with a full can of Fanta. If you refrigerate them, the rounded bottom rim of the cans make great teething objects.
She has also reached the "security object" stage of development. Specifically, the Mimi has developed a bizarre fascination with my socks, especially this one. (As though I wasn't feeling guilty enough about going back to work!) So she spent much of the morning crawling on the floor, soda in one hand and a sock clutched in the other chubby fist.

Now that she's walking by holding onto things, decorating for Christms has become a major challenge. We decided against a Christmas tree this year, but I did hang stockings and make the house look more festive. (What? You're saying that you don't have a dummy covered in chain maille to decorate for the holidays? Poor deprived souls!)

Bedtime stories and counselling funds

2008-12-14T22:21:00.005-06:00

Before Shirley was born, we started a counselling fund for her. As I see it, all parents WILL eventually make some stupid mistake that their children would benefit from a bit of therapy about. But good parents not only try to make different stupid mistakes than their parents did, but they also try to not make so many mistakes (or such catastrophic ones) that they won't be able to afford the shrink's bill.

In my more cynical moments, I have serious doubts about my ability to do the former. However, I realized that thanks to the power of compound interest, we should be able to do the latter if we started saving early enough. So every time Brian or I say or do something that could conceivably result in a need for therapy, we put some money in the jar.

How much money we put in the jar is directly proportionate to the severity of the offense. Saying "That's Mommy's little nudist!" as she's squirming wildly and protesting getting dressed in the morning--fifty cents. Saying "You're so happy being naked I worry you'll be a Playboy bunny when you grow up!"--empty your entire wallet into the jar right now. And then write a check to the fund for twenty bucks.

We average about fifty dollars a month.

This week, Audrey sent me a ginormous box filled with all kinds of fibery goodness. Cotton, five different colors of wool, and pretty close to a pound of light tan alpaca. (It's hard to tell how much. The only scale we own in this house is used for our ancient coin collecting fetish and therefore refuses to weigh anything heavier than 100 grams.)

I washed up the alpaca yesterday. I've never washed alpaca locks before, so I was slightly concerned that I might have felted it. But I divvied it up into a pile of natural-colored fiber for Pop, and dyed the rest of it in the oven with food-coloring.

Tonight, Shirley was being a real Screaming Mimi. Brian had to deal with the worst of her, as I went down for a nap about 1300 and didn't emerge from my blanket cocoon for another five hours or so. After she failed our "polite society" test several times ("Coo, and the world coos with you. Scream incessantly for no apparent reason, and you scream in your crib alone.") I finally resorted to feeding her and doing her bedtime routine an hour early.

Since Brad and Billy were here this weekend for the annual brotherly computer game festival, I've had very limited floor space for drying fiber. So the alpaca has been drying on towels in the only unused floor space in the house--under the Mimi's crib.

She wasn't calm enough to get to sleep yet, and I wanted to "fluffet" the fiber and spread it out so it could dry faster. Thankfully, it didn't felt too badly, just a little bit around the edges. It turned out so amazingly soft and fluffy that I was sorely tempted to spin it right then--until I remembered that the smell of wet alpaca is akin to the smell of wet dog as far as scents I want permeating the living room go

So I told the Mimi some stories, as she's more likely to overlook the fact that no one is holding her as long as someone is talking to her. And being short on inspiration, I just started rambling with whatever stories wandered into my head. El Cid, how Odin made some questionable decisions, and the less salacious bits of
Wagner's Ring Cycle. It settled her down nicely, but now I need to go stuff a ten in the jar.

Belated blogiversary

2008-11-30T08:12:00.002-06:00

As I woke up un-wantedly this morning at 0530 (so much better than yesterday morning's awakening at 0230) I realized that I've had this blog for awhile. It's been over two years since I started it.

While I initially started it to create a better photo record of my stash and WIPs (and the rare, endangerd completed project!) as well as give Brian some relief from the regular babbling about fiber, it's somehow taken on a life of it's own. (Cue campy horror film music: "It's the Blog! AAAAAAAH!") And that's been a surprising source of support in the last several months of crazyness.

So to celebrate both the support and the blogiversary, the first two people to leave comments will get either handspun yarn or fingerless mitts (their choice) from handspun yarn.

The downside of democracy

2008-11-25T05:50:00.003-06:00

Remember my impassioned plea of a few weeks ago to motivate people to get off their collective backsides and vote? It turns out that an unfortunate consequence of allowing people to vote for whomever they want is that they vote for whomever they want.

Por exemplo...

Sodaville, Oregon is about nineteen miles from where I live. (If anyone who lives in Sodaville is actually reading my blog I should probably appologize for this post, but you have to admit that this is pretty weird.) Thanks to the recent elections, it has a new mayor. Who also happens to have a criminal record stretching across a decade and three counties.

Tell me this isn't funny!

Back to being nocturnal

2008-11-21T01:37:00.003-06:00

I've started working nights again. After working days at Mills-Peninsula and contintuously having my nursing "groove" interrupted by physical therapy, family members, speech therapy, physician rounds, telephone calls from family members, questions from family members who are present, etc. I'm very happy to be back on nights. It's a bit less friendly to my own personal sleeping and waking cycle, but I'm truly enjoying working a shift where the flow of the day fits better with my personal philosphy of nursing: Keep people's pain under control and let them get enough sleep to allow the body to heal.

I'm working at a local hospital, which thank God turns out to be the only one in the five-hospital constortium that offers 12 hour shifts. "Twelves" are rough on the nights I'm working, but leaves me with a lot more free time during the week with Brian and the Mimi than eight hour shifts do.

Mimi, by the way, is teething. She's got a visible tooth coming up on her lower jaw. She was much happier than usual this morning, and then turned into a complete Screaming Mimi this evening. I interpreted this evening's fussing as "I bit my tongue! And since I have absolutely no frame of reference for this event, I think it deserves a full-out four-alarm panic! WAAAAAAA!"

Glad I borrowed a drum carder!

2008-11-12T09:45:00.008-06:00

Last month, thinking I wanted to blend some of the wool I got from Carol's shop with some other fibers, I borrowed Pop's drum carder. (I'm too lazy to run upstairs and snap pics of the batts of Cotswold/soy silk/tussah silk I blended.)
Then, last weekend, we went to the Albany Oregon Natural Fun and Fiber Festival. (At least I think that's what it's called. I got distracted by the yarn before I had a chance to process the sign.)
I got to meet more spinners, and there's a spinning group on Mondays at the local senior center! I'll be working nights as of Sunday, so I might have a chance of going to the group meetings now and again.
Shirley was great at the festival. She babbled and cooed at everyone, and several of the ladies said how much they wanted to take her home with them. (I resisted the urge to blurt out "Please, take her!") Then, having exhausted all of her reserves of diplomacy, she turned into a Screaming Mimi and was a fussy irrational Mimi for the remaineder of the day.
I'm glad she's well behaved in public, but it'd be nice if she was on "good behavior" at home occasionally!
I picked up some amazing dyed Romney locks from the local farm Iron Water Ranch, which I'm plying with this "leftover batt" from Superior Fibers. (Charlotte says she calls them that because they're composed of bits of fibers from her commercial fiber processing and "I'm not sure what exactly's in there. I know there's some Shetland and alpaca and all kinds of stuff." Spins like a dream!) I'm not sure how it'll look when it's all done, but it's so much fun to work with!

Be afraid...

2008-11-02T21:15:00.002-06:00

Very afraid. I just found this news story about a local girl who apparently has great difficulty maintaining a safe speed while driving. (Bonus: her defense to the state trooper who arrested her was that she "had trouble seeing while talking on her cell phone.")
Just when I was starting to get excited about not having to deal with San Francisco traffic...

Vote, dammit!

2008-10-29T21:07:00.003-06:00

While I shamelessly use my blog as a platform to yak about whatever is bouncing through my head, I try to avoid mentioning the sorry state of American politics. (I haven't even brought up Dolores!)

But this last month has convinced me of two things: First, while I believe our American system is "fundamentally sound," it's got a lot of issues. But most importantly, it's convinced me that disengaging and whining is not going to make those issues go away.

These last eight years of the Bush administration have made me alternately very proud to be an American (all those heroic pictures from September Eleventh are quite moving) and equally ashamed to admit I'm American (Guantanamo Bay, need I say more?) But on Tuesday, we have a chance to do something about this crazy mess we call a democracy. We get to vote for someone else to be President.

I'll leave all the fancy words about "civic duty" and such to the poor saps who actually want to run this country. But if you aren't satisfied with how the country is doing and you don't bother to vote, don't bother whining.

random photo

2008-10-26T19:40:00.001-06:00

This is for La's contest. Celebrate her happy news with her!

Sick

2008-10-20T23:31:00.006-06:00

Ever been too sick to knit? We caught a nasty cold at our house last week, and I'm still recovering. I've started knitting again, but am posponing new projects until I'm confident I can count reliably.

As befitting one lacking in fine motor skills, the Mimi does not knit. (I'm postponing teaching her until I'm certain the danger of her poking out her own eye with a knitting needle is past.) At this stage of development, her major form of entertainment consists of chewing on objects. If these objects are ones which her parents have told her are "no-nos" and will bodily remove her from, so much the better. (It's a challenge!)

Now that she's started crawling, picking her up and placing her on the other side of the room from the "attractive nuisance" only seems to encourage her to crawl right back to it. Perhaps she thinks it's a new game...

Here is a picture of her chewing on the blinds at the new house. While we have since rearranged our furniture to block off most of the blinds, she's still fascinated by them. She's also attracted to electrical cords, waste paper baskets, and (perhaps most disturbing of all) Brian's elderly slippers. I felt lunch coming up when I caught her gnawing on them!

Mom's old adage is proving true: "Your children will eat disgusting things that won't make them sick in the slightest--but you'll feel mighty queasy watching them!"

Boxes!

2008-10-13T15:07:00.002-06:00

The movers broke contract several times, charged us outrageously, and were several days later than they'd originally told us they would be, but our stuff is here! Most of it, at any rate. Given that the movers tried to give us several boxes from another family, I have my doubts as to whether or not all of our boxes reached us.... Still, the important thing is, my fiber is here!

I have a job lined up, but it doesn't start until November. That, combined with the amazing economic gyrations the world markets have been doing over the last several weeks, has caused me to view my yarn and fiber stash in a completely different light.

Anyone interested in doing a fiber or yarn swap? It's just like shopping online, but cheaper, as all you have to worry about is postage.

How I spent my September vacation

2008-09-30T21:59:00.003-06:00

Right after Labor Day, we drove 590 miles north to visit Brian's parents. Shirley had a fantastic time, as this effectively doubled the number of people available to hold her.

We also managed to introduce the Mimi to Brian's adopted grandmother Shirley. So far, we've introduced her to two out of her three namesakes!

Then, Brian's mom drove back to San Francisco with us to help us pack. We took a couple of days off to see some of the sights of the city, such as an exhibit at the De Young art museum by my favorite sculptor. Extra points if you can guess who it is and spell his name correctly!

(Although he's really not a bad painter.)

This is from his Persian Ceiling installation. It was like imersing myself in colored light. The entire room pretty much looked like this:

We have safely reached our new home in Albany, Oregon, for those of you who were curious. I will be regularly posting vacation pictures until the novelty of them wears off or I locate the camera so I can take pictures of my current knitting projects.

Baby pics

2008-09-24T09:13:00.003-06:00

The Mimi has discovered her feet. She's also about 16 pounds now, so she finally fits the cute hat and sock set that P made for her and sent all the way from the UK. (P wins the award for the longest distance to send a baby gift from.)

Blessings

2008-08-30T09:27:00.006-06:00

It's been a lousy month. We were blind-sided by church politics and will be moving soon. So while we're trying to sort out where we're moving (The front-runner is Corvallis, Oregon because it's close enough to Brian's family that we can hang out with them yet far enough away that we have a bit of distance.) I'm making a list of blessings.

A lot of people at the church have gone out of their way to show support for Brian. And perhaps responding to my "denial is bliss" approach to church politics, most of the church members haven't changed how they treat me or Shirley.

Dad's doing better and at a rehab hospital.

I don't have to work at [Fill in the Blank] hospital! Ever since the day when I had a 78 year old man who'd had his gallbladder out and he was my healthiest patient, I knew that my current job was leading to nursing burnout. (Out of any given five patients on my floor, at least one will be on hemodialysis, three will be diabetic, two will be incontinent, four will be obese, and all of them will be so weak that they can't walk safely unassisted.) Since the last move demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that working until just before the move is not conducive to sanity, I gave my two weeks notice two weeks ago. While I've got a lot of boxes to pack, not having to go spend ten hours a day at a job that makes me feel like a failure at nursing is a huge blessing.

The RNs at [Fill in the Blank] hospital have a contract! After two strikes, fifteen months without a union contract and God only knows how many ineffective negotiations between the administration and the union, [Name of Corporation], the California Nurses Association and the hospital have come up with a new contract that they both can live with. (Because irony is a cruel mistress, the announcement that they'd reached an agreement came the exact day I turned in my letter of resignation.)

I received a new box of wool! Carol over at the Sheep Shed Studio offers a pound of mixed-color Cotswold locks for $12.50! I used my mad money to buy a couple of pounds, sorted the colors according to the color wheel, and have been spinning my way through the red-orange-yellow locks. (I still have a bag of pink-purple-blue-and blue-green-yellow to process.) It's pretty much endless entertainment for twenty five dollars.

At first, the locks look like this:

Then I beat the locks with a flick carder to open them up and remove the bits of vegetable matter. (Apparently sheep hang out in places where there's grass. Who knew?)

I spin serendipitously, grabbing small handfuls of each color out of the box. Then I ply it with itself. The final yarn looks like this:

I have no idea how much I'm going to end up with for a final product. So far I've got about 250 yards and about half the box left. Should be enough for a hat and mittens or something like that.

The Mimi has figured out how to put large objects reliably in her mouth. While this means that we have to keep her in the play pen (another huge blessing, as Jim just gave it to us) while we're packing, it also means that she's growing more able to amuse herself without someone holding her.

Awwww!

2008-08-29T18:33:00.002-06:00

I just read the most heart-warming tribute to nurses--and from a MD! You can check it out here. The Happy Hospitalist's words made me feel incredibly proud to be a nurse--and even more determined that my next nursing job will have adult patients who can walk, talk intelligibly, and take care of their own bathroom needs.

Babysitting and funeral-crashing

2008-08-17T21:27:00.002-06:00

Brian and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary on Friday. Since I had to work Friday, I tried to find someone crazy enough--I mean willing--to watch Mimi on Saturday so we could celebrate together.

Most of the people who have watched for us before were on vacation or at camps, so I was afraid I wouldn't be able to find a sitter. Out of sheer desperation, I asked Mary, one of the ladies from church. She replied that she'd love to watch Shirley, but had to go to a funeral Saturday.

So I resigned myself to a Mimi-filled weekend. An hour later, however, Mary called back. "I talked to the kids, and we'll just take her with us to the funeral."

Then she proceeded to tell me that we could just leave the kid with them all day and "you can pick her up after your dinner about 8 or 9pm," and that she didn't want paid. At this point, I wanted to hug her, and offer to do all her laundry for the week.

Brian and I had a lovely day doing touristy things in Santa Cruz. When we retrieved the baby from the Lam's, I asked how their day had gone. "She was great--she didn't cry once!"

I'm sure I made some sort of slack-jawed face at this remark. It took a bit before intelligible sound came from my mouth. "Not even during the funeral?!"

"No, and everyone said they'd never seen such a good baby. But don't worry--we didn't hold her all day long. She sat on our laps for some of it."

(Brian and I would consider that "holding," but pointing that out seemed in remarkably bad taste. The important thing is that she was in a good mood for going out in public.)

Clarification

2008-08-13T12:43:00.002-06:00

Perhaps I should mention that my patient who died was a Do Not Recussitate patient and therefore checking to make sure she was "really dead" was the right thing to do. If she'd been a Full Code I would have started CPR, pushed the big blue button in the wall, and had someone go grab the crash cart.

can't sleep

2008-08-11T01:52:00.002-06:00

It's been a lousy week, and it's only Monday! (Although to be fair, my week started on Saturday due to my work schedule.)

I have a cold. My brain feels as though it's stuffed with cotton, and my nose is running constantly. Yesterday, I started coughing so hard I threw up in a patient's bathroom. Haven't done that since I was pregnant!

One of my patients died on Saturday. Although it was expected, it's never good when the CNA says "She's not breathing and I can't get a blood pressure on her." And while she was totally past caring, putting my stethescope on her still chest and listening for the required full minute to make sure she was truly gone was possibly the most awkward thing I've ever done in the name of nursing.

My father is having a bad congestive heart disease flare up and is in the ICU at one of the big hospitals up north in Spokane. We're not particularly close, but it's hard not to worry.

And to top it off, I've been dealing with idiot doctors all weekend.
[Said doctor, after I called about really lousy blood pressures in a patient:] "She's probably orthostatic, just watch her."
Me: "But her blood pressure goes down to 71/38 when she's sitting up--do you want to do anything else?"
Doctor D.: "No, just watch her."

Me: "The patient hasn't had a bowel movement since the third, and milk of magnesia isn't working."
[Different patient, same attending physician:] "What do you want me to do about that?"

But the disturbing doctor quote of the month comes from Doctor G., who's one of the hospital's vascular surgeons. He's a brilliant surgeon, but his order sets are somewhat lacking. He's notorious for forgetting to write an order for a diet after the patient's surgery, leading to calls from the nursing staff wondering "what do you want us to feed the patient?" Apparently we'd called him recently, because I had the following conversation with him a couple of weeks ago:

"I'm a surgeon. I do surgery. When my cell phone goes off, I assume it's because someone's bleeding out."
As I stood there, attempting valiantly to keep my poker face plastered on, he apparently mistook my silence for agreement, for he continued on. "If they need a diet order, call the hospitalist. Or just write something. I'm a pretty relaxed guy--write something and I'll sign it!"

stuff in the mail!

2008-08-02T23:19:00.003-06:00

Two weeks ago, as I was in mid-whine about cramps and periods and "why don't heating pads have a setting hotter than high?" I received a lovely prize package from Barbara.

Not only did she send me a Baby Surprise Jacket kit, but also a (signed!) copy of one of her books. It didn't make the cramps go away, but it really helped with the whining.

As promised, here is a picture of the finished Tour de Fleece silk: (Yes, I realize that it is wound around a picture frame. One of these days I'll get around to making/buying a niddy-noddy, but this works fine for now.) 215 yards of silk, now wound on a bobbin (known as a toilet paper roll in other households) awaiting something to ply it with.

On Thursday, we were awakened by the Screaming Mimi. Some time between her 0615 feeding and sunlight hitting the living room, she had managed to kick off all of her covers. After waking up cold and with a full diaper, she announced her displeasure to the world. Brian changed her, and handed me the 13 pound ice pack to warm up.

She cheered up promptly, but this is what I look like without caffeine.

In other news, the neighbors had a yard sale last month. And for under ten dollars, I managed to pick up an eight quart enamel stockpot, and a 12 quart one. With lids! I'm going to use them for dying fiber, (hooray for non-reactive cookware!) but they do a good job of amusing Mimi as well.