Personality Profile

I recently did a personality profile. I'm thinking that they may have missed a few things. How do you line up the various quirks, so to speak, of a persons personality.

I'm very compassionate, yet if you piss me off, I won't bring you a warm blanket.

I love a code, yet find myself crying over the old people down the street that died in a car wreck.

I like people, but I don't.

Church people terrify me, I will never measure up to their standards. If they knew the real me, hah! they would never let me in the club. Trust me, my long term friends will even tell you that.

I believe in authority, and am willing to use a baseball bat to get you in line. Yet I question authority every chance I get.

I believe in team work, but don't want anyone else doing my work.

The list goes on and on. I don't understand myself. I will never be able to get past that whole "love your neighbor as yourself" thing, first of all, I barely know my neighbor and second, I would much rather read my book.

Sigh..... and there were no questions about duct tape and creative ways to use it. I see myself as Rat in Pearls before Swine. Oh well.

Attitudes and Latitudes

I recently did a project a work that would be a great time saver for everyone if, well, everyone would actually follow through. Real simple, we have these cabinets in our trauma rooms that we had to check each shift to make sure that everything was in them. I locked them with breakaway locks. Concept is that if you open the cabinet, you replace what was used, relock it. Pretty simple, AND we don't have to go through them each shift now to replace the stuff. We even set it up so that it was pretty clear who's responsibility it was to replace the stuff.

Alas, human nature being what it is, people love the idea, love not counting the stuff, just don't want to do the work to put the stuff back. I don't get it.

This morning, I was told "that happened at shift change, you wouldn't have done it either." Okay, first of all, don't put your work ethics on me. I would have done it. Why? Because I hate counting those cabinets and will do whatever it takes to keep them locked so I don't have to do it each shift. And second, and probably more important, is that if you want change, start with yourself. It's so much easier now. Really, and not just because it was my ideal. It was my ideal to avoid counting them daily. I'm fine with that motive. It saves time for everyone.

Michael Jackson for all his weirdness had a great song with The Man in the Mirror. I'm really trying to change who I am and what others see. Attitude, attitude, attitude.

The People on the Refrigerator

Today I almost met one of the families on my refrigerator. Okay, no one that knows me from work will believe that I am actually quiet shy outside of work. They were sitting two rows behind me in a Sunday School class and there was a lot of time that I could have done it. I mean, it's the new associate pastor of the church, how scary could he be? Well, considering that I've never really spent time with the main pastor, not seeing this happen. I think of all kinds of things I would like to say, but, nope.

When we first put their picture up on the refrigerator, our children were asking who they were. We tried to convince them that it was the new family we were adopting, but they didn't believe it. But it was fun.

Ever notice how many people have pictures of families, of children, cartoons on their refrigerators? There are only a few people on ours, I favor cartoons: Pearls before Swine, Zits, Baby Blues mostly. I love looking at photo's in other people's kitchens. You have an open door into who they are. So is it deceptive that I have people on mine that I'm too timid to meet? But that's another day.

Other Peoples Money

Today at Starbucks I saw a car tag "Tithes." I don't know these people, but that disturbed me. When we give to churches, organizations, or whatever, there is an effort to it. Sure we could use the money for things here, but we give. And when we give to the church, I don't expect an accounting of every dime from them, I want them to live well and enjoy the same things I do. I have close friends that receive their salary from donations, and none of them are frivolous with their money. So why did this bother me? I think because they are saying it. They are spending extra money to show that they are getting their money from other people. This is no different that the people in government that are wasteful of our money. So many don't even care. They would if it stopped and they actually had to get their hands dirty to earn it like so many do.

Grrrrrr This note could go lots longer, but I know so many people are beginning to tire of it.

Culture

Today I triaged a child from a middle Eastern country. The parents didn't speak English well but had a male friend with them that spoke some English. It was very interesting noticing some of the things that were done. I'm sure they were Muslin, wife had her head covered and the fact they were Arabic.

When I took the child's temperature, we do it rectally at that age and she was there for fever, the friend stepped out of the room to not see her bottom. I usually don't expose that much of the patient if I can help it so I thought that was interesting. This isn't a big deal, but it does make me wonder if because we are so casual about such things if we don't set ourselves up for the lack of privacy that we have in the US.

I'm not about to convert, I don't want to live under that much law. But I think sometimes we criticize things that are different without looking at the value they might have.

Of course, lets finish the story. I went to get the baby some Tylenol and as I was giving it to her, she showed me how angry she was at me. She barfed all over me.

One other thing. They were confused when I told them the temperature. I finally realized I needed to give it to them as I took it, in Celsius. The friend kept saying, "37?" I was like, 39, she's sick.

Discord

I hate discord. I hate doing stupid things. I did something stupid today and it lead to discord.

Seems like it's not difficult to do, stupid things. I make fun of strangers for those things. I try to be gracious, but sometimes we are overwhelmed with stupidity and it just comes out. Also, it's what makes things fun in the ER. Otherwise, how many accidents would we really see?

I feel bad, I've said I'm sorry. I will try not to do it again. I figure I'll do something stupid again, hopefully not something that irritates my son. I wonder sometimes if others try not to hurt us as much as we try not to hurt them.

Oh well. Really feeling dismal today. Sorry.

Maybe It's Over

Normally I like to write and be cheerful, but not today. A few weeks ago my son's girlfriend of several years broke up with him. There was no fight, they are still friends, and there is no other guy. I have no problem with her reasons, I understand. For awhile, I thought maybe this would make them realize how much they need each other and they might even become more serious. It was difficult to let go.

I dearly love this girl. But maybe it is over. This is very hard for me.

I saw her today, for a long time I couldn't imagine our life without her. I still can't. But I can see that maybe it's over.

That's it. I think I just needed to write it to make it real.

Still Here

Got out of the habit of writing and want to keep the blog active. Life is always interesting, but I'll write it another day.

Grace

So in this world where we have so little time and patience for each other, I found my own little parable. We have three cats: Martin Luther, Gracie, and Ellie. Each of these cats has come to us after being rescued. Ellie was found at the vets office, she was cute and adorable. Our dog at the time kept sniffing her and wanting to see her while we were there for a visit. I brought her home as joke with every intention of returning her.... and here she is. Gracie was found in a cemetery, we found a home for her but the people were not very caring, she was returned to us fearful of humans and pregnant. It has taken years to get her where she will willingly come out for attention. And then there is ML. He was treed by our dogs, but they seem to love him. The biggest dog even will pick the kitten by the scruff of the neck to move away from something Harrison doesn't think he needs.

The parable: Gracie and Elie absolutely hate the kitten! There is no grace for the new kitten. It reminds me of how we as Christians treat each other. We forget that we too were saved by grace and that we too have not fully walked out our redemption. I just find it interesting.

Introducing: Martin Luther

The day we celebrated Christmas our dogs brought us a present. We weren't exactly excited, they had treed a kitten. The affirmed "cat hater" in my house is the one that retrieved it from the tree and brought it inside. I knew this was not going to go well.

For the first couple of weeks, we danced around the naming issue, since we were hoping to send it back to it's real owner. My husband in particular wanted to send it back, yet even though he was off work during that time, only one "Is This Your Cat" poster got put up. So the kitten remains.

We have two dogs (with long furry tails) and two other cats (with long furry tails) that have not exactly welcomed the new one home. But personality wise this kitten could care less about established protocols (which cat lives in which room, or when the people read the cat that gets to be in the lap), he just does what he wants. So the naming began.

Here are some of the suggestions: John Piper, MacArthur, Augustus of Hippo (I kinda liked this one, but didn't know how to explain to people the history of the name), Calvin (again, I really liked, but it brought up images of Calvin and Hobbes - and that is another case where most people didn't know the background), Newton, Wesley (totally rejected - must not be Calvinist enough), Wilberforce (again, I like it). This should tell you a lot about the people in my house. The final name: for his firey termperment, his commentment to tearing down the establishment, his zeal - Martin Luther (to be called Luther).

After my final 16 weeks of homeschool are complete, I must read up on church history.

12 Days of Christmas

To those of you who do not know, my husband and I are now attending an Anglican church. This is a massive change for us, one that has shocked a few people. Now, I'm really enjoying it, they do the "crossy" thing, you know, where they cross themselves, they don't properly dunk people, they splash water on them for baptism, they exercise during church with all the up and down kneeling, and they have a "fake" break - what they call sharing the peace, we would call intermission (or meet and greet). There are other things, but I'm still sorting it all out. As you can already tell, this is like the Beverly Hillbillies going to big church.

Recently the pastor did a class that he called something like "the Holy Spirit at reveals Christmas" sadly I don't remember the real name because I called it "Advent for Dummies." I had no idea we as Baptist (or whatever I really was) had not been doing things right (not that the pastor in any way implied this - remember who is writing this letter). But anyway, on with why you are getting this. Much to my delight this past Sunday I discovered that we celebrate the 12 days of Christmas. Now, I had to miss the last Advent for Dummies class, so I don't know why or anything, but it did mean that we get an extra two weeks of Christmas caroles and lights. I'm all in favor of that. Then to top it all, we got this great handout that explains the song. I thought that some of you might (in all seriousness) like this and want to be more in tune with what you are singing about. So here it is:

"The Twelve Days of Christmas" was written in England as one of the "catechism songs" to help young Christians learn the tenets of their faith. The songs gifts are hidden meanings to the teachings of the faith. The "true love" mentioned in the song doesn't refer to an earthly suitor, it refers to God Himself. The "me" who recieves the presents refers to every baptized person. The partridge in a pear tree is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In the song, Christ is symbolically presented as a mother partridge which feigns injury to decoy predators from her helpless nestlings, much in the memory of the expression of Christ's sadness over the fate of Jerusalem.

2 Turtle Doves - the Old and New Testaments
3 French Hens - Faith, Hope and Charity, the Theological Virtues
4 Calling Birds - Four Gospels and / or the Four Evangelists
5 Golden Rings - first Five Books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch which gives the history of man's fall from grace
6 Geese A laying - the six days of Creation
7 Swans A swimming - the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven sacraments
8 Maids a milking - the eight beatitudes
9 Ladies Dancing - the nine Fruits of the Spirit
10 Lords A leaping - the ten commandments
11 Pipers Piping - the eleven faithful apostles
12 Drummers Drumming - the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostle's Creed.

So... there you have it. Now what will be running through your head the next time you hear the song? I thought this was neat and wanted to pass it along. Of course, sadly, the church has no idea (but they will soon - we're going to attend the newcomer's class) what they have let in the door. Other's may think it, sadly, I will probably say it....

Christmas - a bit late

I haven't written in forever. See, one of the child units got married and I've been a bit busy. We are very excited, love the girl. There was no loss involved. He will continue to grow as a man and we have gained a new member of the family. I'm excited.

Tonight we did Christmas, yes, late. There was no tree, no decorations. The house is still recovering from the blessings of the showers and all the other gifts that were given. There was no room for decorations. However, I don't think we could have been more joyous! The youngest was probably the funniest, but then, there was competition. Two gifts were rigged with explosives, but then you weren't sure after that first one. The neglected middle child wrapped a gift in a duck tape, with pictures drawn on. All in all it was great fun. We gave them gifts from their childhood: chocolate for chocolate milk, lego's, and toy skateboards (each had money attached for clothes) and then other gifts.

That's it for now, just felt like I negected all.

Duh

So I think I've met the dumbest parents yet. I can't imagine this one being topped. The parents come in (I'm in triage) with their two week old baby. According to them, the baby had an episode earlier in the evening where "she didn't breathe for a whole minute and was as red as a tomato." Okay, plausible..... but the usual color would be blue, not red. Sadly, they kept talking. Seems the whole story is that the doctor told her that the baby was a week premature, when actually the baby was two weeks premature. (for those not in the know, this baby is fully cooked). The problem they had was that "no one assessed the baby's lungs before birth or after" and they wanted it done. They watch TLC and know that what they need is an amniocentesis. I'm sure my readers will know that they are, oh, at least two weeks late for this procedure and the lungs would have been assessed with a stethoscope (similar to what I did in front of them) prior to leaving the hospital after birth.

We admitted the baby. I think it was to protect it for a few hours but you never know. After waiting in the ER for several hours for the admission team to come, the baby's daddy got mad and said they wanted to go home. Reassurance was given, and they went to the floor shortly after. When the nurse that took them to the floor returned, she was flustered. Seems when they got there, then the daddy threw a fit to go home. DUH, you're already there...... stay awhile.

I know people get frustrated and don't realize that the wait to go to the floor in this hospital really isn't that bad. I was used to seeing some folks be in the ER a day or two at times, so a few hours to me wasn't bad. Anyway.....

Memories

Funny how they catch you off guard. Worded last night, didn't eat supper, just some pretzel goldfish (yeah, they're really good). So I went to breakfast. The hospital where I work is across the freeway from the office complex where my dad worked the whole time we lived in this state, 1965 until he retired. When I was a kid, he would sometimes take me to the office, and then we would go to lunch at the hospital cafeteria (the food was really good back then).

This morning, as the sun was new over the complex, as I sat and ate my breakfast, many memories of my dad washed over me. I have so missed them both lately. It's invaded my dreams, my waking hours....

One of my fears is that I won't be remembered for who I really am. I hope I am remembering my parents in the way they would want. I remember a lot of fun, I think of how my dad would react to the news of the day, my mom in my work. It's painful, yet peaceful.

I think I need some sleep. What I would like right now is a medically induced heavy sleep, however the best I got is Tylenol PM and herbs. I'm guessing chocolate wouldn't help.

The Problem With Boys

I love my sons, dearly. However sometimes I long for a girl. It's time for school to start and first let me remember the days when I would order the new books for the year, the workbooks, the reading books (for those out of the loop we home school). The books would come and I would thumb through them, thinking about how much fun we would have as we did the workbooks.... yes, my imagination ran away with me. Alas, these boys, each of them, their idea of "color the balloon red if it has a vowel in it" was to draw a single line of red in it. Never fully coloring the balloons, or whatever. Now, I could have "beat" them into submission, but that wasn't the point. They never liked the new stuff, they never liked school, they never liked reading. Buying school supplies for them was an exercise in "I don't care."

Today I went shopping for a few things we need for our last year of school. I wandered around the store, looking at all the really cool stuff. But every folder I looked at, well, all I could think of was that he really doesn't care what it looks like unless it looks girly, then he deeply cares.

I just don't understand, guess I never will. Maybe there will be grandchildren, girls....... but I probably won't understand them either......

*sigh*

The Bugman

So I really need to know if I'm the only one. When the bugman is scheduled to come, my house gets cleaned more than any other time. Which is sad. We really don't have bugs, well, currently there is a crop of fleas. But that's because of the cats and their inability to get rid of said fleas. Compared to what the bugman probably sees other places, we really aren't that bad.

I really liked the last bugman, he was in seminary. Don't know this new one yet. Hopefully we won't have to see too much of him. In my state it didn't get very cold this winter so the mosquitoes and fleas have been horrible this year. Actually I've seen a lot of june bugs in the house, and I don't understand that. Maybe the kids are standing at the door with it open welcoming the critters in.

Just curious. Have busted my butt today cleaning, I'm tired and grouchy now. Frankly, a glass of wine would be so nice, but it might involve me getting dressed and going out to get it. Not there yet. Oh well. There's always tomorrow......

The Bright Idea

I had an ideal. Been thinking about it for a couple of weeks. It just wouldn't go away. You know how it is, and then every time I looked at the "victim" it just seemed to get better and better in my mind.

So today was the day. Should only take a few minutes. I figured I could do it before 1) the victim caught on and 2) I ran to get my hair done.

I gathered the needed supplies. Dog/cat shampoo (purchased yesterday for the occasion), a towel, the sink was clean, the cat was caught. She was so excited, I was going to pet her. I had run about an inch of water in the sink, figuring that would be enough. I gently placed said cat into the water. That was when things began to go downhill. First, the cat said "no" then "no' louder. Now, she is declawed on the front paws, but not the back. The back legs flashing, she was able to pull the drain and get the water out. Round 1 to the cat. I suggested nicely to my spouse that maybe he could help me a bit. He really didn't want to get involved, but did grab the cellphone camera. Got the drain placed back in the sink, more water un, spouse conceded to opening the shampoo for me. Round 2: me.

Don't know if you've ever bathed a cat before (I have, wasn't this bad on the previous cat) but you kinda have to be quick. Okay, it's an understatement. Real quick. However, I needed the fleas to get bathed as well, so I tried to extend this one out some. Round 3: cat.

Next is rinsing the cat. Oh, need I add that the cat is not being still by any sense of the imagination. She is all over the sink and counter - picture a bucking bull with me having one hand on the cat and the other trying to do the washing and/ or rinsing. Many times she was totally in the air or on me while I was trying to gently return her to the sink. Round 4: me - I got her rinsed.

I stuffed her into the towel, wiped as much as I could, and put her in another room. I had not really planned on a shower, but the cat didn't quite get all of me, so I went to shower. I guess the summation would be from the hair dude: "what happened to your hair?"

The cat is still pretty mad. The other cat is hiding. I'm thinking... the other cat drinks from the commode. I may just push her in, squirt shampoo in, flush a couple of times and be done with it.

You know, I've had no energy since then, wonder why......

The Birthday

The future daughter in law was here for the weekend and we celebrated her birthday!! Cannot describe how much we love this girl, she is everything we could want for our son.

You must understand that over the years for every birthday one of my friends has been to pretty much every party. Besides the fact that we like her, she can sing Happy Birthday on key. As the boys have gotten older, we have joked about no one in our house singing the song because, well the boys are happy to have cake. Another thing is that my children are a bit, well, conservative in their emotions at home. They are happy with cake and presents and that has made it easy for me.

So Saturday at 11pm we are finally all home to eat cake and do presents (spouse and I crawled out of bed for this). So as we are standing there looking at the cake I look at DIL and say, "we pretty much don't sing Happy Birthday." Son adds a comment in about how terrible we sound at singing. She gets this look on her face, and for unknown reasons I started singing the song. I'm thinking, I'll sing the first line, we'll laugh....... Okay, again, never had girls... they are foreign creatures..... she started dancing. I was shocked, kept singing. The boys stood there staring, mouths ajar. It was awesome!!!

I love this girl. She is bringing new stuff to our life daily!!!

Ear's and Twats

Yes, I know, "How could these possibly be related?"

Here's the story: I'm doing triage in the ER. A young lady comes in and tells me all about her earache, she's in pain, 10 out of 10, blah, blah, blah. My observations: she's flat faced, no visible signs of pain (yeah, I know, we aren't supposed to go by that), never touches her ear or that side of her face, totally calm as she talks. Fortunately for her, she's there early enough we can get her back right away. When the lady helping me takes her back to the room, she comes back and tells me, "You won't believe what just happened!! I took her back there, they pulled back the curtain and she then says, "Oh, I need to be checked for an STD." Seems the doc overheard and was none to pleased. I mean, that really doesn't constitute an emergency.

My response.....I didn't know ears and twats were related. NOW I know to ask if you have ear pain whether your twat hurts. Geez, people.

Do Your Job

When you go into healthcare there is one thing that we all know will happen at some point or another. We will have to pee in the cup. It may be for the initial job screening, it may be random, or it may be *gasp* because some idiot lost the narcotic (and yes, that idiot could be me, but it wasn't).

So this facility didn't seem to know what to do when the event happened, and although I asked several times about whether or not I needed to pee for them, I was told no, "you weren't in the room." I figure, heck, they know what they are doing. I was wrong and so were they. I was awakened to be told that yes, I had to pee when I came back the next shift. I work nights, so I started drinking extra around 5am, but my last trip to the bathroom was at 3am. Employee Health opened at 7:30, I figured since so many people were having to come it would be easy to get us done. Three of us showed up, actually one got there ahead of my friend and I, she left about 7:45. There's another girl in there for something else, we tell them we are there because of the missing narcotic. I offered that I hadn't peed since 3am. They offered us water. Now, wouldn't you think they knew we were there for a pee test from that. Thirty minutes later they tell us the girl has left to go get cups for us to pee in. I can not tell you how upset I was at that point, but I was trying to not make this any worse. So after an hour (again, we should now be off work, we've been up all night, etc) the girl comes out, she's upset saying, "I had no idea you guys were here for this." I looked at here and said, "But they brought us water and we told them." She was so upset that I couldn't be mad at her.

My point is this, those people that ignored us didn't consider the fact that we had been up, that we were totally inconvienced by other people not knowing policy. And while they sitting at their desk watching TV they were keeping us from going home after 12 hour shift. Anyway, never has peeing felt so good, nor has a drug test been so easy.