You know you wanna

Hobble hobble

Our kitchenette hasn't done much in the way of encouraging healthy eating habits here, but I think we haven't actually been doing too badly. Last night we lost all control, though, and not only drove out to dinner but drove seven miles away to a Popeye's. In our defense, the base is surrounded by old housing projects and some really suspect "businesses." Seven miles was more of a safety precaution. As for why Popeye's, well, I have no excuse.

But it was good... and I had a leftover butter-saturated biscuit for breakfast. Feeling remorseful, I ran for another hour this afternoon through this (sadly poor picture quality, but hey, it's a cell phone after all):

With this as my soundtrack:

The chicken and biscuits were definitely worth it!

Ouch

The Beast was hit by a car yesterday evening. She's fine, I promise, but hearing those words were awful. Amazingly enough, she only has some bruises and road rash after full xrays and thorough checks from the parents and vet. My parents say she's been walking around with her tail half mast, but the limp is gone and she even chased after the ball.

Erica said it right. This dog has nine lives! Good Lord, Gazza, haven't we gone through enough??

My mom sent this picture this afternoon. She was watching a train go by.

Distractibility

So there's a problem at the church we've been visiting back home. Actually, it's my problem, but it's a tough one.

Twice now we've randomly sat a few pews behind a man and his wife. I couldn't tell you what he looks like, but I'd recognize the back of his head a mile away. You see, he has a bald spot exactly the shape of a pair of lungs- complete with the curve on the left side into which the heart fits nicely.

I cannot concentrate on anything else. I keep thinking about how the thinning hairs near the trachea would be like cilia. Help.

Run

My relationship with running is ambivalent at best. My earliest memories of organized running, if you can call it that, are ones that included feeling sick (and a few cases of throwing up afterwards). Not exactly inspiring. But I still remembered how good it felt to run as a kid- stretching my limbs and moving fast. I figured there was still some merit to it all and periodically got into running clubs or ran with friends. Not surprisingly I was never very good. Then, after seven knee and a minor heart surgery,* I had more reasons not to enjoy running. Quite frankly, I was scared of it by that point.

It's been over the last three years that I've entertained the idea again. Rarely timing myself (heart rate is more important after all), I've tried to set aside my own harsh self-judgements and competition to concentrate on enjoying it. That's right, I want to be one of those smiling runners. So I vigilantly monitor my legs impacting the ground for wobbles and pain. I slow down when my heart rate is uncomfortably high. I refuse to huff and puff so hard that it's no fun. And those are the times that my peripheral vision blurs and I begin to enjoy the ride.

There was a sermon the other day at church about angels. I'd never really heard much about angels in any sort of biblical study before. The pastor talked about how seraphim are actually a class of angels who exist only to praise God. Immediately I thought of how I've imagined hiking with God just walkin' along with a pack beside me and how cool that would be. So to think of wandering around with a herd of angels wasn't that much of a stretch.

As I ran along a pretty stretch of road at home one evening, I imagined them running alongside of me. We were all taking in the stunning sunset over the Gulf of Mexico and pretty white sand beaches. Yesterday evening, they were back again with me on a dirt road through the golf course admiring the pastel sunset** over the hazy woods and settling dusk. A cardinal flashed by, reminding me of Indiana, and a small rabbit hopped along a few feet next to me. It reminded me of desperately trying to pack in the fun on waning summer nights with neighbors. A squirrel seemed to be watching the swollen river run by us, now safely tucked in between its wooded banks (temporary ponds still dot the golf course and threaten the roads after all of the rain, but most of the roads themselves are out from under the flood). Some hawk was calling from the sky. It reminded me of the ones that call out to the canyons in the Southwest.

An hour of running later, transient bilateral knee pain, one heart palpitation, and African dust gritty in my tennis shoes, we sprinted home, thanking God for such a gift.

*An EP study with ablation isn't open heart surgery. In fact, it's a procedure in which you're only moderately sedated and they access your heart through large veins in your groin and neck. However, tell the person lying on the operating table with multiple wires threaded into their beating heart and the possibility of a permanent pacemaker that it's "minor."

** Alabama has no shortage of these. In my opinion, they've been rivaling Arizona's.

Questions that keep me up at night

What is it about bananas that makes them so difficult to correctly simulate the taste? Conversely, what is it about pears that makes it so easy?

still breathing

It's the same old thing- when there's nothing big to talk about, you find yourself with lots to say of minimal importance. When things get busy, there's too much to say of note so it ends up coming out like a five year old's rendition: an'nen we did this an'nen we did that an'nen we tried to do somefing an'nen we went to sleep!

So at the risk of being that five year old, here's the skinny:

After enjoying Peleke's early return and quiet time in Michigan, we had two days together back home to enjoy biking, eating sushi, and generally being our socially avoidant selves. In short, it was awesome. Then he took off again for the great state of Alabama, and I joined him here until mid-December.

Alabama isn't as bad as I'd been led to believe. Now, that's not to say it's a thrilling place to be either, but the weather has been mostly pleasant, the base is pretty, and our room is nice. I'm determined not to take those things for granted (dearth of social opportunities and a job notwithstanding). Most of all, it's still really great to be close to Peleke again. Poor guy is swamped between his training and his other schoolwork, but it's only for a few more weeks.

We've been doing a lot of driving with no slowing down in the near future. On the drive up, the speed limit creeping up from 50 mph to 70 mph, I found myself feeling pretty anxious. I realized that while I had driven on Beaver Island and then around home for a week, I haven't driven much and definitely not very fast. The thought of 50 being speedy is comical, I know, but it felt uncomfortably so. I'm still getting reacquainted with my hunk of metal.

As Peleke does homework, I've been doing more driving than usual for our road trips (read: more than ten minutes). He's learned first hand of my aversion to crunching Corn Nuts (only to be used in dire stay-awake situations!) and was a good sport to the Pat Green, Jeff Black, and John Denver ballads streaming steadily from the radio. I know, he's a saint. I won't lie, though-I won't miss all this time in the car.

In other news, I'm finding this place interesting. For the sake of blogging, I've deemed it RAFB (Random Air Force Base). More on it later. Right now I'm going to raid our dorm style fridge and attempt a walk without getting trampled by the random hoards of running airmen in blue and orange that have taken over the campus today...

Beaver Island photo dump: round one

The week and a half my mom and I spent in Michigan is best told in pictures. Most of you have seen the Facebook link with them, so here are the highlights for those of you who haven't:

mostly nice weather but beginning to get colder and rainier

ironing leaves between wax paper- remember doing that?

making apple sauce

leaves across the lake turning colors

fishing with the hula popper

Gazza wasn't too keen on the dinghy

hiding

in their respective spots

dogpile

There was a lot of sleeping, eating, reading, and puzzle doing going on!

Up to the highest height

Yesterday was beautiful. The past week has been made up of blue skies, warm days, cool nights, and relatively tourist-free living. I found myself saying, "This isn't so bad after all!" Then Peleke reminded me how miserable the summer was. So while it is that bad in the summer, this time of year ain't half bad!

We went to a church class in the morning with the intention of going to the service afterwards, but I firmly believe even Jesus would have skipped out on church to go play outside on a day like that! Gorgeous. So we packed some water and grapes and went out to the island to fly kites.

As a side note, neither of us had heard anything about Hurricane Ida and were surprised this morning to hear of her impending landfall in our neck of the woods. Oops. At least we're out of the way at the moment! Guess there's something to be said for watching the news and reading the paper...

Calling names

Growing up on and around sailboats, I was only partly aware of my avoidance of stepping on the seams between the concrete slabs of the dock but very aware of the sense of unease I got from walking on the wood plank edging. They were often slick and the height of the pier to a kid seemed more than it probably was, so walking along the edge of the dock was a small thrill. Lying there was a different story, though. My sister and I spent untold hours on our stomachs with our arms hanging over the sides, scraping our nets along the underwater portions of the docks and dumping the results into a bucket to comb through. In the Northwest or Caribbean, it didn’t matter- the creatures were mysterious and fascinating. We freely shared our finds (crabs, worms, limpits, etc) with random folks on the dock, the sailing community being friendly that way.

One rainy afternoon in some long forgotten port in the Pacific Northwest, my sister and I were walking back to Foggy Mountain, yellow slickers snapped shut and hoods pulled up. Stepping in the coils made by random ropes and hoses, I was surprised to hear somebody call my name. Looking back through fat raindrops at the men busy with something on the dock, one of them waved and said hello to me. Confused, my seven year old mind tried to place him. Did he know my parents? It was likely enough, but no, he denied knowing them. In fact, he asked if I knew why he knew my name at all. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember my sister calling me back to our walk. He smiled and laughed as we turned away. Then he called out to me, “it’s written on the back of your rain slicker!” I remember laughing.

I have no doubt he was just a friendly soul looking to brighten a little girl’s day. Besides, some of our things were labeled growing up- including life jackets and rain slickers. The memory gives me a vague sense of nostalgia for the “good ol’ times” when you could send a kid into the harbor in safety.

Fast forward twenty years.

The longer I work as a nurse, my name and title clearly printed next to my picture, the less often I’m caught off guard by random people addressing me. But sometimes it still does surprise me, a relative stranger directly calling my name. Then the foggy memory of that day hovers on the fringes of my mind- a soft breath of Northwest air in the dry, sterile hospital.

Oh baby!

Words cannot describe how happy I was to hear that Anicette, one of the cleft palate babies aboard the Africa Mercy, had her surgery. When I saw the pictures, I couldn't help tearing up just a little. In my mind, Hubert and Anicette will forever be linked. They were together in the same ward for a time while I was there and, I'll be honest, I thought if anything that the results would be the other way around. So for both of these babies who faced incredible odds...

Way to go Ani!!

I would give almost anything to pick her up (she's got fat on her now!) and snuggle her fuzzy head.

Oink oink

I got my flu shot today, figuring my poor immune system is sufficiently regenerated enough to actually respond appropriately. So we'll see. Even though I still sometimes get the flu, I get the regular one each year because I think it's worth the tiny risk inherent with injecting dead things into your body.

I am a little concerned about the flu shot I got today, though. The dude was efficient (I barely felt it) and even pretty funny about the whole thing, but I noticed that he A) didn't aspirate and B) injected my shoulder joint. I suppose inoculating my shoulder is better than straight up injecting flu vaccine into my arterial blood supply, but neither is preferable really.

So if I get the flu, I may be miserable and achy, but I fully expect my shoulder joint to be ache-free!

Next up? Swine flu vaccination tomorrow...

(how swine flu is really spread)

Home again home again!

Ahhhh, it's nice to be home. Peleke is off again for the week, but it has been great to fall asleep with the full moonlight streaming in the windows and then waking up to sunlight, a cool breeze through the open window, and the birds filling the air with happy songs.

And the distant thud of shells hitting the range. Whatever.