Reference

Accent: Detroiter with Canadianisms- eh? Some Utahn expressions and that ubiquitous vaguely southern military drawl with the persistent use of acronyms and Sir and Ma'am. Picking up some wicked Bostonian. Not to mention speaking in accents, some good enough to confuse. Chatted with a Brit, so I simply adopted his accent, thinking he was putting it on. He finally asked me where, exactly, in Britain I came from, as he couldn't quite place it. I said, flatly, "Detroit." He really was English.



Booze: No. Beer. Well, I don't go near vodka, having had it thrown up on me. I will have a G & T in the summer, occasionally. And I like a sip of tequila once every few years. I only like the really good stuff, and that in very, very small doses.

Chore I hate: I don't mind any chore so much. I just hate having to do it over and over and over. So, dishes/laundry/cleaning the kitchen after meals - that sort of thing when it's all the damn time.

Dogs /cats: I like both, but cats fit my life better. Anyone reading here knows about Moby.

Essential electronics: I am such a geek with this, but not in comparison with most of my in the business computer friends. So, iMac, camera, damntv.

Favourite perfume/cologne: Hate 'em all. Inherited my mother's bad reactions to scents. Noxema.

Gold/silver: N'eh. Used to care, but things have changed.

Hometown: Wherever I lay my head. See "Accents."

Insomnia: Rarely. I have to be hungry or in pain not to sleep. Cannot sleep during the day, as I found out trying to work night shifts. My life falls to bits, then.

Job title: Staff RN. Surgical. RN Circulator. Fall Guy. The one who dresses the surgeons funny.

Kids: Fairygodmother to the children of friends.

Living arrangements: Cozily with D, soon to be in a 1bdm, bsmt.

Most admired trait: Humor. In myself or others. Paired with integrity and kindness.

Number of sexual partners: Depending on how this is counted, about a dozen, or a half dozen, or as I now count it - one.

Overnight hospital stays: Tonsils at about age 5. Infection age 17. Gastritis in Saudi Arabia - age 29. Night shifts - as rarely as possible since. See "Insomnia."

Phobia: Swarms of insects. One of anything I can deal with, live and let live, observe even, kill if necessary. But a whole bunch of little creepy biters beating at my face- hear me scream. Car trouble freaks me beyond reason.

Quote: "I think that fish is nice. But then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?" - Douglas Adams.

Religion: My dogtags read "No rel pref." I think of myself as a Fortean. Or a pantheist. All of them are right, all of them are wrong.

Siblings: Not really. My brothers were so much older, they were not exactly children with me. But I have two of them.

Time I usually wake up: The alarm, a purple, original-iMac shaped clock, Big Ben Chimes, goes off at 0507. That is what it says, it is actually set ahead by I-don't-know-how-much, and I am easily fooled every morning by this. I hit the snooze alarm down, I often do not remember this. It goes off again 9 minutes later, 0516, 0525, 0534. I usually make myself get up here, but on Thursdays, when there are morning meetings, I wait until 0543.

Days I don't work, it varies from 0700 to 0943.

Unusual talent: I do funny voices. And puppets. Funny singing puppets.

Vegetable I refuse to eat: Cabbage. Anything soaked in vinegar too long.

Worst habit: Picking. Picking at edges and zits and labels and whatever is loose or bumpy.

X-rays: When I had a tiny evulsion fracture of my big toe, the VA X-rayed me. I still had to walk all over the semi-mountainous campus of the U of U, but got out of having to do any more Army runs. Broke it getting out of bed.

Jammed my knuckle at work, walked over to talk with my D's orthopedic surgeon, he was working, so he told me to x-ray it myself on the mini C-arm in the room. He came over and looked at it, said, "Yeah, looks like you cracked it. Tape it to the next finger for the next six weeks, let me know how you are doing."

Yummy foods I make: I have a wonderful Bread Pudding with Rum sauce recipe. Mostly, I am an adequate cook, just learning to spice better.

Zodiac sign: Go Fish.

Childhood

I read a disturbing post at Simply Wait. About kids laughing more than adults, at a rate of 400 times a day for kids, and 15 for adults. And all through it, I kept wanting to shout, NO, no, it doesn't have to be that way.

I don't know how anyone gets through a day without laughing. I laugh when the cat almost trips me up on my early morning rush to the bathroom, til he flops down on us at night. I make D laugh whenever I have a chance. I make it a point to amuse my patients and the people I work with. Sometimes it is a quiet chuckle, sometimes a belly laugh, but life is a funny thing.

And as for kids "owning" other pure pleasures...

*Running for pure pleasure

Ok, granted my knees hurt too much to do it often, but I will do an arms in the air dance down any sidewalk when I feel good. Out walking with D, do a pirouette and a spin from his hand. I didn't much run as a kid, although I scraped my knees often enough. Probably to do with the hard orthopedic shoes. I enjoy moving fast through any space, which I why I have a cracked knuckle from 3 years ago, innumerable bruises and surprise scrapes that I find long after I acquire them.

*Climbing

Ah, well, there is the lack of good trees. But I will walk any wall.

*Cannonballing into cold water on a hot day

See, I never liked this when I was a kid. Water painfully up the nose, for one thing. But I am much more willing to walk in the rain, especially a thunderstorm. I don't mind the cold so much, and I am so much braver now.

*Playing dress up (without needing to shop for designer clothes and matching accessories.)

A talent of bellydancers. Gimme some tricot and a floaty scarf, and I'm swirling with the other bulgy women, feeling fancy. I've never paid full price for any "designer" clothing...thrift shops being what they are.

*Catching fireflies in jars.

Not the fault of adulthood. Pesticides have reduced the number greatly, there really are not many of them now. I would probably prefer to just enjoy a meadow full of them of an evening, not needing to trap them to see the wonder.

*Jump rope

Ok, knees again. Not fair to hammer on about it. I do better with hula-hoops now.

*Hopscotch

Always a boring game, and the neighborhood girls made me go last. Big deal, any kids that like it can have it.

*Skipping (tell the truth, when was the last time you saw an adult skip? Not that I'd particularly want to see it, but still...)

I skip. I skip with D, who stopped sometime in grade school- it being 'babyish'. We skipped for joy when first going out, while laughing, and never stopped.

*Playing make-believe and having no one question whether you plagiarized the characters or the dialogue.

I write. Instead of make-believe with other girls telling me how my story should go, I tell my stories however I feel. No more damn "Sleeping Beauty," ugh.

*Putting on a real baseball uniform and having your family watch you play--not because you're a superstar, just because it's fun.

Egads. Never did that in the first place. What kind of not-poor-like-me childhood are we talking? Not that I gave a rats about baseball.

I don't have to play house anymore, I have my own apartment, that I clean and decorate exactly the way I want. I can walk through mud puddles, which I do when I have my boots on. Instead of getting yelled at, and then having cold wet feet. I don't have to wash dishes after every meal to someone else's satisfaction, in my own home. I please my own sense of clean, to my own satisfaction. I do not have to drink a glass of milk with every meal. I don't have to iron my clothes, unless I want to. I can stand on my couch, if I feel like it. I can sulk if I am moody.

I get very angry at nostalgia about childhood. It was awful, and the laughter is in part a defensive stress release for misery and lack of control. A well lived adulthood beats childhood hands down. I do have to follow orders and comply with rules at work, but my bosses have to answer to the law, and their bosses as well. I chose my work. I can, after all, quit. I had no such choice as a child, no options, no escape of any kind. No safe place, nor any means to find one.

I shall have a cup of tea, and some chocolate, then go make D laugh.

Tourists (Photos)

Waiting by the U S S Constitution, to get a tour of a Nova Scotia ferry.


A new, and baffling way to tour the city. (?)


Photos of photographers. Glad they didn't ask me to take a picture of them with those cameras.


Guy walkin' his lobster. On a stick.

Grateful

I winge a lot. I complain about pains and irritations, stupidity and misplaced energy. It's a trap, of course, and I know it. So, well, I want to make more of a habit of gratitude. Because, I have deep wells full of reasons to be grateful.

I am grateful I was sent to catholic school. I got a solid education and subversive reasoning skills that inoculated me against irrational religious beliefs, and an appreciation for irony.

I am grateful for the manipulative and abusive ex, who taught me many invaluable negative lessons, and got me to Utah needing a second job. Which led me to D, with the eyes to appreciate an emerald in cammo.

I am grateful to have a good, living wage, secure job, that I enjoy more than not. A roof over my head, clothes on my back, food on the table. I do not take any of this for granted.

I am grateful, and deeply humbly so, that ours was one of only a few basement apartments in this building not to have our doors open, lights on, fans blowing sour fetid air, from saturated walls and flooded carpets, into the hallway at 0600 Monday morning. We did nothing to deserve to be spared. That we were largely packed for the move in two weeks would have made it, in some ways, easier for us. We did pass on the card of our beloved rental agent to our neighbor.

I am grateful to have a calm, mellow and affectionate cat, who sleeps on my ankles, and comes to sit close to us, or equidistant from us. That he has never scratched us, nor bit us, and that his worst habit is a bit of "thinking outside the box" usually in the tub or on the bathroom floor. Easily cleanable, and keeps him from being perfect. He has become the soul of our home, and keeps us both cheerful and calm.

I am grateful that although I have some painful problems, my health is actually fine, with no serious issues.

I am grateful that D and I amuse each other so. After 15 years, we are each other's favorite comedians. We have needed it. We know where each others buttons are, and only press the funny ones.

I am grateful for friends who are decent, honorable, kind and funny people. Beyond words I appreciate each unique, eccentric, dear one.

I am grateful for each breath.

Gosling (Photo)

The rain continues here in New England, with widespread flooding. This flock of geese along the Riverway look to be having a rough time of it. Especially that little bundle of non-wet-proof feathers in between the two geese conferring. I did not approach them closer, as they can be a bit bitey.

Umbillicus

A completely unsurprizing bit, from me, painfully edited.

Umbillicus

Shoes (Photo)

Cards

My family played cards, a lot. Euchre, Rummy, 500, Pedro, the quartet games, bidding and dealing, suits, partners and trumps, no betting. Rummy was played with a big old Oatmeal box filled with rubber washers, parceled out and collected back in at the end of the evening. As soon as I was old enough to play adequately, I was expected to join in.
Mostly, I actually enjoyed getting good at these games of strategy and luck, judgement and cooperation. I knew the rules. Stories of amazing hands, daring wins or ridiculous failures, were de rigeur. And if I kept my ears open, I heard hints of family secrets.

I was compared to my older brothers a lot. Not in the sense of "Why aren't you more like Dave?" More in the sense of "You have that same silly laugh, like when Dave is really touched." Or, "You sounded just like Bill when you said that." At home, this came from my mother. In the card evenings, aunts, uncles and granny would play this on me as well. How much I looked like one or the other, or was smart or funny like them. I took this all in with intense curiosity, and a bit of pride, because I adored those two boys, even as they baffled and frustrated me. I clamored for their attention, and sometimes got it. After they moved out and away, while I was still very young, I fantasized about them coming back to take me out of that house, out of school, out of my increasingly oppressive life, and enforced card games.When I was tired and didn't feel like dealing with adults, I had a habit of throwing games, although it would be thrown back at me if I was caught - and the excoriation would start in the car on the way home. That's when I heard from my father about how I was selfish like them, thoughtless and ungrateful. How he knew I would hate him, too, and treat him like crap, like they did.

The comparisons continued, and both compliments and condemnations were phrased in the form of a genetics proof. My mother would make a point of telling me how much I really was like my father, which was both why we should, and why we didn't get along. My father would fail to insult me by comparing me to my beloved aunt. The game became a bad habit, joyless and pointless, but hard to stop playing. I reacted against being like the father I so hated, but I could also see the faults of the family members I loved. I was fascinated with and repelled by the genetics I was dealt, and pondered what I got from whom and how.

I have come to accept that I am a lot of my father. I scrounge, nothing makes me happier than finding a perfectly good lamp/tv stand/chair in the recycle room. He loved to walk the alley and find bits of board that might be useful someday. I have his temper, although I train mine like a strong dog, to be safe around children. I have his black going grey hair, and I dye mine like he did. But I do not hide that I dye it, nor am I embarrassed to admit as much. I can lie straight faced, but only when necessary, to protect. Not just for the hell of it, as he would say he had a cold if he needed to skip something because he had a headache - puzzling lies that covered perfectly good excuses. I get his migraines, and his tendency to depression and despair.

My cousin, who I have recently gotten to know because I live near her for the first time, is an unexpected connection. I feel a similarity, a resonance, in her. I do look like my brothers. But I am also very like my friends, who share stunning similarities with me. D in particular. So much so that one of his friends asked, after first meeting me, him how he'd "Found a Female D****?" I remind new cow-orkers of other people that they know. So?

I am myself. I am all of the DNA gathered in my cells, the people who taught me and tested me, the hand I was dealt. And I am the unique game that I play out with those around me. I pour myself out and make my wager every day, and gather myself back in, to try again tomorrow. I avoid cheaters, but when I have no choice, I play as well as I can.

I still have a soft spot for Jokers.

Move

I had my own room, the only girl, the last child by 9 years. It was converted from a bathroom. When my brothers moved out, I got their room, and stuffed it with my brother's left behinds, which I treasured. I went through phases of collecting, like TV Guide covers. Eventually outgrowing and purging the crap. I never kept old school projects, with the sole exception of a paper mache whale. My 'own room' was an assumed essential quality of life.

I moved from my parent's house to Kalkaska for four months, a job, a failure. Back to their house until I reclaimed my scholarship and found an apartment to live near school, bad roommates and all. Still beat living under rigid long outgrown rules. Then another crappy apartment, other bad roommates. Then an apartment with the not-yet-ex. A move across the country. A move to a rented house while I was away in training. I voiced no opinion since I expected to move out first.

When I escaped from the ex, a medium box of childhood stuff and my Army gear was about all I had. Some clothes, not that I had much at that point. A single futon frame and a foam mat. I lived in friends' basement room for the two weeks it took me to find an apartment. The new place was bare, and I had my small piles stacked around the edges. Within two months, I would be back to two duffle bags and shifting at the whim of the US government.

I have moved more times than I can count. The long painful process of picking through and discarding or packing everything I own has been a constant theme of my life. Accumulating and thinning, examining and starting all over.

I could put in one medium box items I have had since childhood. High school yearbooks, (3), Raggedy Ann, a small decorative chest - a gift from my brother. A few small odds, mostly in those drawers of the sort : "That may be useful, so I will keep it." Most of my Christmas ornaments - which belonged to parents, grandparents, and elderly neighbors who gave them to the only family in the street with children, when they were no longer interested in putting up a tree. I wound up with most of the survivors. Adding a number of my own over the years.

D went through a similar series, from parents house to crap apartments with varying degrees of tolerable roommates. Then a room in a rooming house where he was afraid to actually sleep. I proposed, he said no. Although he wanted to spend his life with me, he was not keen on the wedding thing. So, he moved in, and the place filled with stuff, and we adjusted. It took time, and a yes, a very tiny wedding. I yearned for my own room, still. Another move to a new, huge apartment, several guests would visit in the back bedroom, and second bathroom. It was a shiny new place, badly built, with "issues." We had medical bills, we moved to an older, cheaper, and (not obviously) better place.

We lived in that well maintained, cozy two bedroom apartment for five years, then moved across country, shedding crap at an amazing rate. Then a large one bedroom for a year, a benefit of the traveling agency, accumulating items for useful reasons. Only to take a studio for solid financial and quality of life issues, and paring down again. Only to find out it was going condo, and at luxury prices. A third move in three years, and I have lost the ability to actually feel the annoyance, though it is there. Still, a better location, better rent, an actual bedroom again.

Somewhere along the journey, I stopped missing having my own room. Our lives slide along together, I do not need the space, because I am given privacy, without asking. We do not need more stuff, because we have each other.

Anyone need a glass lemon juicer?

Yearning (Photo)

Satire

I cannot make this a political site, I just can't.

But, please, if you feel that being liberal minded is an honorable position, and that many frightening actions are happening at the upper levels, thank Stephen.

Window (Photo)

Of course, he is not allowed in the kitchen window, since to get there he must paw the sink and counter. Still. Aw.

Dream

My essays have dried up, temporarily. They are lurking in my back-brain, wordless and busy-leave-us-alone-would-you? So I try to squeeze out what is left in the open tube, trying to make it last until the move, so I won't have to move more stuff. This month may be about making do with what I have not yet packed, and knowing I will find it again in the new place as the boxes are opened.
I point you toward
Chaos
And
Toys


I dreamed I was in the OR. Only it was all of wood, ancient place, smoothed and gleaming wood. I walked around to find supplies, and realized, though I had worked there before, that there was a nearby door to the outside, and it was a green and warm spring day. The air smelled fresh and sweet, and I promised myself I would go out the next chance I got.

I returned to the OR, and the case had finished. I thought it would be about 10 AM, but it was actually 4PM, and nothing else to follow, so I could take a break, or go home. I was delighted that the day had gone so quickly.

An old friend, W, picked me up, to drive me somewhere. I didn't know where, but I trusted him, and enjoyed talking with him as we drove. He picked up his wife, who began to ask questions about what I was doing these days. I said I was being sent to Europe with the Army Guard. She told me I would need a few large trunks to move all my stuff. I told her no, I would only be bringing two duffle bags. Then realized, they would also have to issue me all new gear, since I had turned all the old stuff in years ago. She asked me if I would go as an officer, and I said, no, then they could get me again and never let me go. I would go as an enlisted.

I awoke, convinced I would have to go to war, but only really concerned about the logistics. And feeling sad I had lost contact with W. And that having a door in the OR that lead directly outside was hardly good architecture. And that a large black cat was asleep on my foot.