Occasionally, I find a book I like to read over and over again. Most of Anne Lamott's books are like that for me- she's got the tattered Christianity over the previously messed up life that seems to fit me quite well, too. And this poem by W. S. Merwin was the epigram in one of her books. No matter how many times I read this, it speaks to something visceral in me, and touches deeper every time.
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on the stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you
with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is
W. S. Merwin
printed from "Travelling Mercies" by Anne Lamott, Anchor Books, a Division of Random House.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
off-gassing on earth day
I woke up at 0700 yesterday, after only two hours of sleep. I’d gotten off a 12 hour shift at 0415, and getting out of bed was sheer torture—until I remembered why I was doing it. We have a burn to learn scheduled. I drag my sorry tuckus into the shower and out to the car, slam a few shots of coffee, and make my way to station 1, where we pow wow and team up.
We drive up to the burn site in the Rescue just as Leapfrog Towing was dragging—er, towing—the last of the three mobile homes into place. “Mobile home” in the most literal and also most generous sense of the phrase, because these three structures hadn’t been decent living spaces for some time. I vaguely remember going on a chest pain call in one of them a couple of years ago; you know, the typical 300 lb patient naked in the very back bedroom, hallway barely big enough to walk through even before it was stuffed full of tchotchkes and National Geographics.
It’s a small crew today; five teams of two or three folks each, and then Incident Command, who has brought his lawn chair, two engineers, the Safety Officer, and the usual light team, who will also act as team leaders inside, since only a couple of us going in have our FFI certs. I’m partnered with a kid I’ll call DogBoy, since his official nickname is BeastMaster for reasons we won’t go into now. DB’s dad is a career firefighter, DB has been a volunteer for a while, he’s a good kid with a good heart and a great sense of humor. He looks dubiously at the third mobile home, a hulking brown mass of metal held up by wood blocks and tires that have been so flat for so long the rims are half-circles. He clears his throat. “That one makes me a little nervous. Why can’t we burn houses instead of mobile homes?” he complains. I point out that 1) we are in Deliverance country, or at least the Northwest version of Deliverance country, and there aren’t any houses out here, and 2) at least we are getting rid of some of the mobile homes. Three in one day, actually. He concedes, and quits whining. Briefly.
We start setting up, laying lines and filling the porta-tank, locating the cooler and the potty, identifying exposures. DB and I are first on exposures, so we get to hose down a couple of tall, moss-covered trees and a beat up old fence with foam that looks like drippy flocking on a Christmas tree. My feet and hose line get tangled in a Judas limb hanging over the side of the fence, and down I go. One thing I love about being a firefighter, though, aside from the fact that I get to squirt lots of water at big fires, is that everyone is klutzy in turnouts, and while I might fall down a bit more often than most, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. And unless you can see the back of my helmet, nobody knows it’s me. (Although on a different fire, I did hear somebody ask where I was, and Chief said, “Look for the firefighter who fell on her butt. That’s Firefighter Girl.” So maybe turnouts aren’t as anonymous as I’d like to think. . .) Anyway, one of the firefighters on RIT, or Rapid Intervention Team, whose only purpose is to rescue downed firefighters, came at me and the tree branch with his axe raised. Rescuing a firefighter downed by a renegade tree branch may have been stretching his job description a tad, but he rose to the occasion, and the branch was kindling after a few whacks.
DogBoy takes this opportunity to tell me that he had a small bout of diarrhea this morning. I’m not quite sure why he feels the need to share this with me. I ask him if he’s nervous, and he gets that guy thing going—you know, the squared shoulders, the look of disbelief and aloofness on his face. As if. By this time, it’s our turn for attack team, and I’m kind enough to let DogBoy have the nozzle for the first couple of attacks, and he’s new enough to not realize that later lights have better fire. Heh heh heh.
The teams managed a couple rotations each through the first mobile home, and then the second, which I would describe more as a hovel, had four lights before our turn comes up again. Captain Snappy and Chief lit the second of the two rooms, and Dog Boy and I sat and waited to go in. I watched our three-person back up team check each others’ gear, and nudged DB. They looked like nothing more than a bunch of chimps in a line, grooming each other. DB started laughing. I started having doubts about their competency. But then DB started poking around my mask and hood, under my helmet, and I made him promise to eat any bugs he found. He crossed his heart, hoped to die, and stuffed my errant ponytail down into my coat. Then we sat, and watched the light take hold.
A usual training light is nothing special. Maybe a couch or a pile of pallets on fire, lots of smoke, some good, controlled flames. But Captain Snappy knew it had been a while since I’d seen fire. And he also knew I’d let DogBoy have the nozzle the first few lights. I was about to head in, and Snappy held his arm across the doorway. “Oh, no, FFG. Wait.” So we watched as flames climbed the walls, and smoke billowed out the vents and windows. “Now?” I asked. Snappy shook his head. Flames started rolling over on the ceiling. “Now?” I asked. Snappy shook his head again. We backed away from the heat of the doorway, flames poured out the top, and Snappy said, “Take it whenever you want, FFG.” Whoot whoot!! And I got it. I got it all, and then they let the whole thing burn.
Afterwards, sitting in rehab, sipping on a Gatorade and munching on M&Ms that had only slightly melted in my turnout coat pocket, DB finally got it, finally realized that perhaps good things come to those who wait; ie, better fire. I promise him the nozzle for all the lights in the hulking brown thing. They’ve just started lighting it, and it goes faster than the other two—burning mobile homes is like starting a fire in a big metal box. They burn hard and fast once they catch. DB gets one good light, we’re rotating teams like nobody’s business, and we’re on backup just getting ready to go back in when the tones go off for a severe respiratory distress up valley.
IC points out an engineer—120mph—and DogBoy and I to take the call. We drop our helmets, coats, masks, packs, and gloves, race to the Rescue, climb in, and then race back to the packs to turn off the air and bleed them. Then back to the Rescue, me behind the wheel, 120mph in the officer’s seat, DB in the back. We go enroute, and this is much easier than driving an ambulance code 3 on the coast highway, but 120mph is asserting his testosterone and comments on my cornering. I bite my tongue to keep from mentioning the bucking sawhorse he ran over with the engine last year, or the fact that he tipped the engine into a ditch once. I look down at my mud-splotched, ash-streaked arms, the flotsam coating my turnouts. I slow the Rescue to appease 120mph, see DogBoy in the back with the paperwork, getting our gloves ready. And I feel a sudden flush of comraderie, that feeling you get at family reunion campouts after you’ve been bickering with your relatives all day but then you look at them in the light of the campfire and see how big their hearts are.
We pull in to the residence, grab the gear, and tromp in. Our patient is sitting in his LazyBoy watching his big screen TV. His new caregiver hovers nervously. I recognize this guy, seen him in the ER a couple of times, and he turns, looks at me, points his finger like a gun and winks like he’s some kind of dapper Rico Suave instead of an overweight, chronic respiratory train wreck. The caregiver may have exaggerated slightly when she called 911. I laugh, bat my mud speckled eyelashes at the patient, and get his vital signs. We chat until the Meth Central medics get there.
Once we wrap things up, we head back to the burn. DB seems anxious, and I ask him if three lights wasn’t enough for him. But he’s more concerned about missing lunch, and we pull up just in time for fried chicken, potato salad, and cookies with little tiny m&ms in them. It wasn’t just a good day; it was a great day, and even after two hours of clean up back at the station, when I knew exactly where my body would be aching the next day, and I knew I’d need 14 hours of sleep, 6 advil and a whole tube of BenGay to even move the next morning, I wouldn’t have changed a dang thing.
We drive up to the burn site in the Rescue just as Leapfrog Towing was dragging—er, towing—the last of the three mobile homes into place. “Mobile home” in the most literal and also most generous sense of the phrase, because these three structures hadn’t been decent living spaces for some time. I vaguely remember going on a chest pain call in one of them a couple of years ago; you know, the typical 300 lb patient naked in the very back bedroom, hallway barely big enough to walk through even before it was stuffed full of tchotchkes and National Geographics.
It’s a small crew today; five teams of two or three folks each, and then Incident Command, who has brought his lawn chair, two engineers, the Safety Officer, and the usual light team, who will also act as team leaders inside, since only a couple of us going in have our FFI certs. I’m partnered with a kid I’ll call DogBoy, since his official nickname is BeastMaster for reasons we won’t go into now. DB’s dad is a career firefighter, DB has been a volunteer for a while, he’s a good kid with a good heart and a great sense of humor. He looks dubiously at the third mobile home, a hulking brown mass of metal held up by wood blocks and tires that have been so flat for so long the rims are half-circles. He clears his throat. “That one makes me a little nervous. Why can’t we burn houses instead of mobile homes?” he complains. I point out that 1) we are in Deliverance country, or at least the Northwest version of Deliverance country, and there aren’t any houses out here, and 2) at least we are getting rid of some of the mobile homes. Three in one day, actually. He concedes, and quits whining. Briefly.
We start setting up, laying lines and filling the porta-tank, locating the cooler and the potty, identifying exposures. DB and I are first on exposures, so we get to hose down a couple of tall, moss-covered trees and a beat up old fence with foam that looks like drippy flocking on a Christmas tree. My feet and hose line get tangled in a Judas limb hanging over the side of the fence, and down I go. One thing I love about being a firefighter, though, aside from the fact that I get to squirt lots of water at big fires, is that everyone is klutzy in turnouts, and while I might fall down a bit more often than most, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. And unless you can see the back of my helmet, nobody knows it’s me. (Although on a different fire, I did hear somebody ask where I was, and Chief said, “Look for the firefighter who fell on her butt. That’s Firefighter Girl.” So maybe turnouts aren’t as anonymous as I’d like to think. . .) Anyway, one of the firefighters on RIT, or Rapid Intervention Team, whose only purpose is to rescue downed firefighters, came at me and the tree branch with his axe raised. Rescuing a firefighter downed by a renegade tree branch may have been stretching his job description a tad, but he rose to the occasion, and the branch was kindling after a few whacks.
DogBoy takes this opportunity to tell me that he had a small bout of diarrhea this morning. I’m not quite sure why he feels the need to share this with me. I ask him if he’s nervous, and he gets that guy thing going—you know, the squared shoulders, the look of disbelief and aloofness on his face. As if. By this time, it’s our turn for attack team, and I’m kind enough to let DogBoy have the nozzle for the first couple of attacks, and he’s new enough to not realize that later lights have better fire. Heh heh heh.
The teams managed a couple rotations each through the first mobile home, and then the second, which I would describe more as a hovel, had four lights before our turn comes up again. Captain Snappy and Chief lit the second of the two rooms, and Dog Boy and I sat and waited to go in. I watched our three-person back up team check each others’ gear, and nudged DB. They looked like nothing more than a bunch of chimps in a line, grooming each other. DB started laughing. I started having doubts about their competency. But then DB started poking around my mask and hood, under my helmet, and I made him promise to eat any bugs he found. He crossed his heart, hoped to die, and stuffed my errant ponytail down into my coat. Then we sat, and watched the light take hold.
A usual training light is nothing special. Maybe a couch or a pile of pallets on fire, lots of smoke, some good, controlled flames. But Captain Snappy knew it had been a while since I’d seen fire. And he also knew I’d let DogBoy have the nozzle the first few lights. I was about to head in, and Snappy held his arm across the doorway. “Oh, no, FFG. Wait.” So we watched as flames climbed the walls, and smoke billowed out the vents and windows. “Now?” I asked. Snappy shook his head. Flames started rolling over on the ceiling. “Now?” I asked. Snappy shook his head again. We backed away from the heat of the doorway, flames poured out the top, and Snappy said, “Take it whenever you want, FFG.” Whoot whoot!! And I got it. I got it all, and then they let the whole thing burn.
Afterwards, sitting in rehab, sipping on a Gatorade and munching on M&Ms that had only slightly melted in my turnout coat pocket, DB finally got it, finally realized that perhaps good things come to those who wait; ie, better fire. I promise him the nozzle for all the lights in the hulking brown thing. They’ve just started lighting it, and it goes faster than the other two—burning mobile homes is like starting a fire in a big metal box. They burn hard and fast once they catch. DB gets one good light, we’re rotating teams like nobody’s business, and we’re on backup just getting ready to go back in when the tones go off for a severe respiratory distress up valley.
IC points out an engineer—120mph—and DogBoy and I to take the call. We drop our helmets, coats, masks, packs, and gloves, race to the Rescue, climb in, and then race back to the packs to turn off the air and bleed them. Then back to the Rescue, me behind the wheel, 120mph in the officer’s seat, DB in the back. We go enroute, and this is much easier than driving an ambulance code 3 on the coast highway, but 120mph is asserting his testosterone and comments on my cornering. I bite my tongue to keep from mentioning the bucking sawhorse he ran over with the engine last year, or the fact that he tipped the engine into a ditch once. I look down at my mud-splotched, ash-streaked arms, the flotsam coating my turnouts. I slow the Rescue to appease 120mph, see DogBoy in the back with the paperwork, getting our gloves ready. And I feel a sudden flush of comraderie, that feeling you get at family reunion campouts after you’ve been bickering with your relatives all day but then you look at them in the light of the campfire and see how big their hearts are.
We pull in to the residence, grab the gear, and tromp in. Our patient is sitting in his LazyBoy watching his big screen TV. His new caregiver hovers nervously. I recognize this guy, seen him in the ER a couple of times, and he turns, looks at me, points his finger like a gun and winks like he’s some kind of dapper Rico Suave instead of an overweight, chronic respiratory train wreck. The caregiver may have exaggerated slightly when she called 911. I laugh, bat my mud speckled eyelashes at the patient, and get his vital signs. We chat until the Meth Central medics get there.
Once we wrap things up, we head back to the burn. DB seems anxious, and I ask him if three lights wasn’t enough for him. But he’s more concerned about missing lunch, and we pull up just in time for fried chicken, potato salad, and cookies with little tiny m&ms in them. It wasn’t just a good day; it was a great day, and even after two hours of clean up back at the station, when I knew exactly where my body would be aching the next day, and I knew I’d need 14 hours of sleep, 6 advil and a whole tube of BenGay to even move the next morning, I wouldn’t have changed a dang thing.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
not really my idea of a great date. . .
I came off a 16 hour shift at 0415 this morning, driving to pick up my son with my head hanging out the window in the rain so I wouldn't fall asleep. Busy, busy for the first few hours, then steady the rest of the shift. A dozen IVs, and I only missed one, and that was because the patient's PCP was bedside, and I get performance anxiety. But I got it on the second try, although I cheated and went AC with an 18g. But, yeah. A sixteen hour shift.
What was I thinking?
Oh, yeah. I was thinking about paying rent, and insurance, and car; fuel, power, phone, and that one slightly important thing for little ol' hypoglycemic me. Food.
Of note to male hospital patients (I think I'm going to type this up and hand it out when I put op sites on IVs): While starting an IV and drawing blood are, by their very nature, intimate, just because I'm sticking you with a very big needle doesn't mean I'm coming on to you.
Repeat after me: IVS ARE NOT FOREPLAY.
On the other hand, I think one of the reasons I love my job is it allows me so much human contact. I used to be such a touchy feely person, but somewhere along the way, even hugs from friends started making me uncomfortable. In any case, the contact of another human, even through purple nitrile gloves, is nothing to sneeze at. We all need it. And patients appreciate the human aspect of a caregiver who is willing to touch them, hold their hand, offer support more compassionate than empty words. I've watched medics, nurses, and doctors with patients, and the ones who have the greatest rapport with people are the ones who are willing to touch.
Near the end of the 16 hour shift, when an ambulance brought in a patient for nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea after eating at Taco Bell, the charge nurse made a small, snide comment about the slightly expanding waistlines of some of the older medics. One of said medics, in the middle of ordering a tasty breakfast sandwich from the night kitchen, who actually bikes 40 miles a week, and who obviously has lost no hearing whatsoever from almost two decades of sirens, abruptly hung up the phone. He glanced at me. I glanced at the charge nurse. She and I snickered. The medic shook his head, then shook his finger at me, and said, "You be a good girl, now."
There must be some sort of blue light special lately for comments on my behavior. Which is, I might add, always good.
What was I thinking?
Oh, yeah. I was thinking about paying rent, and insurance, and car; fuel, power, phone, and that one slightly important thing for little ol' hypoglycemic me. Food.
Of note to male hospital patients (I think I'm going to type this up and hand it out when I put op sites on IVs): While starting an IV and drawing blood are, by their very nature, intimate, just because I'm sticking you with a very big needle doesn't mean I'm coming on to you.
Repeat after me: IVS ARE NOT FOREPLAY.
On the other hand, I think one of the reasons I love my job is it allows me so much human contact. I used to be such a touchy feely person, but somewhere along the way, even hugs from friends started making me uncomfortable. In any case, the contact of another human, even through purple nitrile gloves, is nothing to sneeze at. We all need it. And patients appreciate the human aspect of a caregiver who is willing to touch them, hold their hand, offer support more compassionate than empty words. I've watched medics, nurses, and doctors with patients, and the ones who have the greatest rapport with people are the ones who are willing to touch.
Near the end of the 16 hour shift, when an ambulance brought in a patient for nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea after eating at Taco Bell, the charge nurse made a small, snide comment about the slightly expanding waistlines of some of the older medics. One of said medics, in the middle of ordering a tasty breakfast sandwich from the night kitchen, who actually bikes 40 miles a week, and who obviously has lost no hearing whatsoever from almost two decades of sirens, abruptly hung up the phone. He glanced at me. I glanced at the charge nurse. She and I snickered. The medic shook his head, then shook his finger at me, and said, "You be a good girl, now."
There must be some sort of blue light special lately for comments on my behavior. Which is, I might add, always good.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
sisyphus in my own back yard
Yesterday, the angst that has been building all week came to a head. When I get angsty, I need to get outside and dig in the dirt, plant flowers, turn compost, whatever. The day showed promise early on; you know, sun breaking through the clouds and all that. I lingered over coffee, finished a book, headed out to the garage for my gardening tools. As soon as I unlocked the garage door, thunder crashed and a wall of rain hit the pavement.
Okay, it wasn't quite that dramatic, but it might as well have been. So I sighed one of those long-suffering sighs and headed back in. I decided to be optimistic about the whole thing, and poured another cup of coffee. The sun came out. I headed outside. See above. Rinse. Repeat.
Back to the whole angst thing. Like I said, it's been building all week. The kids and I have been working in the back yard, building raised beds for an herb garden, digging into the hill to lay a patio. The wheelbarrow perched precariously on the hill no matter which way I tilted it, and so for every successful load of dirt carted to the compost pile, another tiiiiiiiiips back into the hole with a boomcrash. Just like Sisyphus, only my rock is a flippin' wheelbarrow. Anyway, that's what I'm working on, shovel in hand, sweat pouring off me, when I hear the sound of 4 boys, all around 12 years old, giggling and saying, "heeeeeere, kitty kitty." I look up and see them crouched around a car, rocks and very large sticks in hand. I should mention that I don't lose my temper often. But the few things that make me see red involve bullying and cruelty to animals and children. I charged up the hill with shovel in hand, screaming at the top of my lungs, red faced and, quite likely, frightening to look at. MixMan and Miss Diva paused briefly in their playing and stared, gape mouthed. The boys and cat scattered in opposite directions. There was a brief moment of silence, and then Miss Diva said, "Mama. You said the f-word."
Whoopsie.
So when I found the pet rat dead on my front porch yesterday morning, I just assumed the little 12 year old punks had left it there, even after the neighbor who disposed of it declared the predator must have been a hawk. Miss Diva and I headed to the garden center to buy some flowers to cheer us up, and came away successful. The day was brightening, at least until I bent to get into the car and smacked my head on the roof. My immediate reaction was to jerk away, and I bonked the other temple on the door. I showed great restraint in the language I spewed at full volume there in the parking lot, you'll be happy to know. I double checked with Miss Diva, and she confirmed I hadn't cursed once. Good thing I've been practicing with make-up, because I have a positively stellar bruise on the side of my forehead.
Firefighter Girl, thy middle name is Grace.
Miss Diva is adept at conversation. So much so that I forget sometimes she's only 4. She sang in the shower this morning, some made up song with the refrain, "I'm a grumpy old soul, yeah, yeah!!" I shake my head in wonder. She is so demonstrative, too- huge hugs, sloppy lip-gloss kisses. Sometimes, she comes up behind me, pats my tuckus rather hard, and says affectionately, "I love your great big butt!"
Ohh. Thank you.
So we wait for the rain to pass. The kids play Plinko behind the futon with the round wooden coasters; MixMan builds impossible block towers and reads Dr. Seuss out loud, vrooms his cars and trains on the floors and up the walls. Miss Diva flounces around in her princess dresses and crooked crowns. She declares today a blue day, and will wear only clothing items in shades of blue. I write poetry, listen to music, clean muddy footprints and puddles of water from the doorways, sneak bites of chocolate from my hidden stash while the kids aren't looking.
On the Meth Central Med Center front- my IV skills are getting better, and I've managed a couple of tough ones on the maternity and surgical wards. I was congratulating myself on a tough foot stick in the ER- this guy had one, and I mean only one, vein, and it was sitting there on his foot, and I stuck it with no hesitation with a 22g, got a great flash, advanced, it was in, I was ready to tape it down, and he started screaming. Whoa. I wasn't even touching the damn thing at that point. There was a reason he didn't have any other veins, and I'm pretty sure he was hoping for some pain drugs, and I let him know that this was his one chance for IV meds, and he told me to f--- off and get it out. So I calmly removed the catheter, smiled politely, and left him there.
My new car is finally growing on me. Well, not really, because that would be kind of bumpy and make jeans even harder to wear. But I'm learning its moods, when it doesn't like starting, what makes it happy.
Going really, really fast makes my car happy.
Itemized list of things found behind the futon while vacuuming today:
2 slightly battered wooden coasters
1 catnip mouse
feather collection (I thought the pillows were feeling a bit less plump)
1 gameboy game (Yoshi's Egg, I believe, and it found its way behind the couch rather forcibly when MixMan got frustrated with it)
2 markers in colors very similar to the fresh markings on the wall of the stairwell
1 very frightened cat
2 hairballs
Guess what? The sun just came out. I think I'll sneak up on the garage, see if I can get some digging done in the back yard.
Firefighter Girl. Digger of hills, champion of stray cats and snails.
Okay, it wasn't quite that dramatic, but it might as well have been. So I sighed one of those long-suffering sighs and headed back in. I decided to be optimistic about the whole thing, and poured another cup of coffee. The sun came out. I headed outside. See above. Rinse. Repeat.
Back to the whole angst thing. Like I said, it's been building all week. The kids and I have been working in the back yard, building raised beds for an herb garden, digging into the hill to lay a patio. The wheelbarrow perched precariously on the hill no matter which way I tilted it, and so for every successful load of dirt carted to the compost pile, another tiiiiiiiiips back into the hole with a boomcrash. Just like Sisyphus, only my rock is a flippin' wheelbarrow. Anyway, that's what I'm working on, shovel in hand, sweat pouring off me, when I hear the sound of 4 boys, all around 12 years old, giggling and saying, "heeeeeere, kitty kitty." I look up and see them crouched around a car, rocks and very large sticks in hand. I should mention that I don't lose my temper often. But the few things that make me see red involve bullying and cruelty to animals and children. I charged up the hill with shovel in hand, screaming at the top of my lungs, red faced and, quite likely, frightening to look at. MixMan and Miss Diva paused briefly in their playing and stared, gape mouthed. The boys and cat scattered in opposite directions. There was a brief moment of silence, and then Miss Diva said, "Mama. You said the f-word."
Whoopsie.
So when I found the pet rat dead on my front porch yesterday morning, I just assumed the little 12 year old punks had left it there, even after the neighbor who disposed of it declared the predator must have been a hawk. Miss Diva and I headed to the garden center to buy some flowers to cheer us up, and came away successful. The day was brightening, at least until I bent to get into the car and smacked my head on the roof. My immediate reaction was to jerk away, and I bonked the other temple on the door. I showed great restraint in the language I spewed at full volume there in the parking lot, you'll be happy to know. I double checked with Miss Diva, and she confirmed I hadn't cursed once. Good thing I've been practicing with make-up, because I have a positively stellar bruise on the side of my forehead.
Firefighter Girl, thy middle name is Grace.
Miss Diva is adept at conversation. So much so that I forget sometimes she's only 4. She sang in the shower this morning, some made up song with the refrain, "I'm a grumpy old soul, yeah, yeah!!" I shake my head in wonder. She is so demonstrative, too- huge hugs, sloppy lip-gloss kisses. Sometimes, she comes up behind me, pats my tuckus rather hard, and says affectionately, "I love your great big butt!"
Ohh. Thank you.
So we wait for the rain to pass. The kids play Plinko behind the futon with the round wooden coasters; MixMan builds impossible block towers and reads Dr. Seuss out loud, vrooms his cars and trains on the floors and up the walls. Miss Diva flounces around in her princess dresses and crooked crowns. She declares today a blue day, and will wear only clothing items in shades of blue. I write poetry, listen to music, clean muddy footprints and puddles of water from the doorways, sneak bites of chocolate from my hidden stash while the kids aren't looking.
On the Meth Central Med Center front- my IV skills are getting better, and I've managed a couple of tough ones on the maternity and surgical wards. I was congratulating myself on a tough foot stick in the ER- this guy had one, and I mean only one, vein, and it was sitting there on his foot, and I stuck it with no hesitation with a 22g, got a great flash, advanced, it was in, I was ready to tape it down, and he started screaming. Whoa. I wasn't even touching the damn thing at that point. There was a reason he didn't have any other veins, and I'm pretty sure he was hoping for some pain drugs, and I let him know that this was his one chance for IV meds, and he told me to f--- off and get it out. So I calmly removed the catheter, smiled politely, and left him there.
My new car is finally growing on me. Well, not really, because that would be kind of bumpy and make jeans even harder to wear. But I'm learning its moods, when it doesn't like starting, what makes it happy.
Going really, really fast makes my car happy.
Itemized list of things found behind the futon while vacuuming today:
2 slightly battered wooden coasters
1 catnip mouse
feather collection (I thought the pillows were feeling a bit less plump)
1 gameboy game (Yoshi's Egg, I believe, and it found its way behind the couch rather forcibly when MixMan got frustrated with it)
2 markers in colors very similar to the fresh markings on the wall of the stairwell
1 very frightened cat
2 hairballs
Guess what? The sun just came out. I think I'll sneak up on the garage, see if I can get some digging done in the back yard.
Firefighter Girl. Digger of hills, champion of stray cats and snails.
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