My favorite time of day

...but not my favorite temperature. At least it's warmer than it has been!





I think the only thing cooler than playing number games with the clock is looking at the pictures time makes (thanks to Chris). Ok, well maybe not the coolest thing, but pretty close to it :)

I think today was supposed to wind up our stretch of beautiful, sunny days. It's been so nice! Gazza and I walked around Greenlake today with her fancy schmancy new doggie pack. If I do say so myself, she looked pretty awesome with it! She had a good time, and then Katie came and took her around again while I went off to work. I think she's pretty tired. She likes Katie and her cats, too, so she had a good day. Even so, it's sure nice to dive under the covers tonight with her at my feet :)

Note to self: the pooch will do almost anything for a croissant or a sprinkle sugar cookie (I hear another poem coming on....). Seriously, now this is a dog after my own heart!

Who we are

Saw this on the Target shopping cart with my mom the other day. How very, well, American.



On a completely serious note, I saw this picture in an email today. I don't know who it's copywrited to, but it's a tear jerker.



I have a couple friends who have or are currently serving. "Thanks" just doesn't cut it.

Here we go again...

So I was testing Ragazza out at work today (in case you're wondering, she failed), but as I was loitering outside, I ran across this:



Seriously, what is it with this state?

We'd best get started!

On the trip back from the Redwoods, Jason and I composed our A-to-Z lists of things to accomplish before we kick the bucket. Jason's was as follows:

Add two and two and not get four.
Buffalo a buffalo
use "Cryptosporidia" in a sentence without describing a bacteria
Drink a lot of beer
Eat a rattlesnake
Fly by the seat of my pants
Grow an ear on a mouse
Handle a howler monkey
Invent a mongoose whistle
Juxtapose juxtapositions
Kill and eat an imaginary deer
Leap over a leopard
Move things with my mind
Notify a next of kin (Jason, you've got a warped mind)
Open a wiener dog petting zoo
Pay off my loans
Queue a set of cues into the shape of a Q
Read original works of George Soulie de Morante
Stalk a snipe
Take a road trip
Uncover a conspiracy about a conspiracy
Vexate authority
Walk a snake
Xerox classified documents
Yodel like I mean it
Zip a zany zipper

Aim high my friend, aim high :) Mine was...

Appreciate jazz
Barrel race
Converse fluently in Spanish
Dive the Great Barrier Reef
Eat calamari (and enjoy it)
Foxtrot
Grow a big garden
Horse trek
Inspire a crowd
Juggle
Keep a ranch
Land a deep sea fish
Marry
Narrate a book
Organize my pictures
Publish a book
Question motives
Read Atlas Shrugged (the $10 bill is still in the back cover, Dad)
Sing karaoke
Train a horse
Understand calculus
Violate the laws of gravity
Worship unceasingly
Xray my knees and find healthy joints
Yodel in the Swiss Alps
Zipline in BC

Where is sher?

My cousin's kid (second cousin? half cousin?) still mixes his pronouns up. My favorite one is "sher." "She" and "her" are thusly combined in one easy to remember form. It should all be that simple!

Sort of reminds me of a poem my fifth grade English teacher read to us.

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five!

Worth a quiet read

"The search itself is a form of worship. It is a response to the awareness that God's image is both male and female."
~Virginia Mollenkott in The Divine Feminine: The Biblical Imagery of God as Female

It's a topic I've felt strongly about since it was brought to my attention in a "women and religion" class at ASU. The more I've thought about and looked into the topic, I see the relevancy for myself. I don't think I'm alone in this. While I'm not sure I've ever been accused of being a feminist (that was always Jess's domain), I think this is an important issue. Yes, obviously language is "just semantics," but words shape much of our world. Given that we discover on our own and are taught gender differences early on, I think it's all the more important to acknowledge and deal with the gender (or really, lack thereof) of God. Inclusive language and validation of the femininity of the Godhead (yes, it's in God's character) would be a great start. We talk about how people without father figures can have difficulty with the masculinity of God; in light of that, why are we not just as eager to assert his femininity?

Just a thought.

A short update

Random thoughts and loosely corresponding photos because I can't think very clearly...

Today at work was madness. We've had this streak of, dare I say peacefulness in the ICU, but now we're back to the usual.



My mom came to town for a short trip. I doubt I'll ever move back to the Midwest for any period of time, but I do miss my family. My sister took this picture near our house when she was out for Christmas:



And I ganked the following picture of Jeremy and Miki from Chris's Facebook. It really makes me smile :)



Gazza is doing better every day. We're still not out of the woods, but she inexplicably started retrieving tennis balls out of the water today at Magnuson. Something inside of her just clicked and I was so happy to see her really have fun playing. She and Tate, my cousin Katie's dog, just love playing together!



Having issues with the poop bags...



Katie and Tate last week.



Shortly before she spazzed out in the cold water.



As far as she'd go last week...

Colledge graduates

On the cupboard in the galley:



Ah so. We have a "magical chilly place" on our unit. Posted above this sign is the Merrian Webster definition (and spelling):



(In case you can't read it from my fuzzy picture, somebody further scribbled, "obviously needs to be on the dangerous abbreviations list. causing too much confusion.")

Seriously, I love my job- I fit right in with my mad spelling skillz :)

Just an observation

A somewhat less festive corner than last month....



On a random note, why are there so many toilets and sinks under the "free" section of Craigslist?

Back in MY day...

Remember when you had to memorize people's phone numbers (or at least keep a physical address book)? When the first three numbers after the area code meant something? Or for that matter, when the area code meant something? I haven't changed my phone number since Arizona, so I still have a Phoenix area code. I'm not alone in this- a fair number of people I've met have kept their out of state numbers (cue the "mobile society" schpeal). Still, it makes me smile a bit whenever somebody recognizes it and says, "Oh, Arizona right?" A surprising number of people are tied to both Arizona and Chicago! And speaking of phones, here is a photo from mine of the frost the other morning, brr!



Wierd iTAPEN assumption of the week: it assumes first that I mean to text "homiletics" instead of "google." Who researches this stuff?

Mini Gazza update: she spent forty minutes in the car at church (and the remainder in church) without flipping out. And some amazing people have come through again to watch her this week while I work. How lucky am I?

Gaza update

For those of you who have been listening to me stress over Gaza these past two weeks (and those of you who haven't had the pleasure!), I'll give you a little update:

We've gone to a couple dog parks around Seattle, and it seems to be a really good thing for her. She's letting strangers approach her without cowering (usually) and has started playing with the other dogs. She cracks me up because she'll engage another dog to play and then spaz out when he chases her around. When she's chased, she runs to my side and cowers. What did she expect? However, she will snap at other dogs when they bother her too much instead of rolling over on her back and hoping they go away.

On the separation anxiety front, she's making baby steps. The vet did a thorough exam and she checks out fine. The behaviorist is confident that she's capable of being alone while I'm at work, but they both agree that the time frame is a bit of an unknown. So armed with Prozac, Valium, a decked out back of the car (think bar and lounge doggy style), and some really understanding friends, we're taking it day by day. As long as I can find people to watch her while I work (hey! that means you!), I'll keep working with her. She's costing an arm and a leg and I hate to say that money is the limiting factor here, but that's what it boils down to. I can't afford doggy daycare for the days and nights that I work.

I'll spare you the details, but I will say that the whole reason I'm writing this entry at midnight (night is for sleeping, remember?) is because she just spent thirty minutes by herself in the car without losing her marbles, destroying the car, or otherwise destroying herself! And then another ten minutes while I was in QFC! I can only leave the apartment for less than fifteen seconds, but she made it half an hour by herself in the car! I'll be able to keep her in the car while I work, so once we get to that time frame, we'll be in the clear.

I sound like a nutcase right now, but I'm clinging to any hope with her progress. I want to keep her more than you can imagine, and I will sleep better tonight knowing we're at least making progress :)

So here's another picture of my raggamuffin, anxious to play with the other dogs:

Feeling slightly less guilty

During our community nursing semester in school, we were paired with nurses throughout the community so as to be exposed to nursing outside of the hospital setting. It definitely wasn't my favorite semester (that is, if I had to pick a "favorite" semester in nursing school...), but I did have a few enjoyable experiences. There was one particular experience, though, that I wasn't quite sure what to make of. One day my preceptor asked if I would mind keeping myself busy for an hour or two while she did "an errand." I didn't quite know what to do at first, but since we were by the mall I knew I'd figure something out to do!

When we met back up a while later, she told me she had been to an interview for a nursing job at a different agency. I thought it was funny, actually, and it served to reinforce my growing belief that nursing everywhere must apparently just be the pits. Part of me thought it was unprofessional, though. Not just because she left a student during clinical (not that I was complaining!), but because she was doing it on company time.

While that is probably true, in the process of starting and leaving The Forefront and arriving at This Hospital, I've realized something else. I don't think I generally give allegiance to things "just because" (ok, well outside of ease anyway), but I guess somewhere inside, I had hoped to give loyalty to a job and just assumed it would be given back in turn. As we all know from The Forefront debacle, this is not the way the working world, well, works. I think I was a bit too harsh in my judgement of the preceptor that day.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm beginning to understand (and accept) the fluidity of nursing as a career. It's not that we're all egotistical, it's just that nobody else has our own best interests in mind. Somehow I doubt that was the lesson I was meant to learn in clinical that day, but then again, the CON and I never did see eye to eye on nursing education...