I may have recovered from the plague, but this does not mean I'm in a better mood.

Yack!

Saturday I thought I couldn't stay awake because of a Guitar Hero/Happy Gilmore marathon.

Sunday I I thought perhaps I am really getting old and can't hold my late nights the way I used to.

This morning I thought a midget was using my head for a bass drum in order to give the little garden gnomes in my stomach, with their steel toed, hobnailed boots, mail covered gauntlets, and World War I Kaiser helmets, something to tap dance to. Or were they doing the polka? No matter. My tongue feels like a week old wool sock and I'm pretty sure I've had some kind of fevered out of body experience today while watching WWII films like Bridge on the River Kwai and Midway.

Excuse me, while I go shave my tongue.

I'm not quite sure why I feel the need to take trips in the car. A hearkening back to my childhood perhaps? I can't say. Although, I have now done the Boise run so many times as an adult, it no longer seems to be the nightmare trip from hell it once was. Being stuck in a car for 8 hours with two children goes a long way to making it seem less than euphoric, however. Bless the person who developed the portable DVD player. Double bless the angel that modified such a gem into a dual deck DVD player so two different movies could be played simultaneously. And all hail whomever devised the sanctified gift of headphones. I really don't know how my parents suffered through so many years of "he's touching me...he's eating my ice cream...where are we NOW?" and all manner of similar complaints. It is a little sad that my children have never played road sign alphabet (waiting breathlessly until we got to the Blue Mountains and the coveted "Snow Zone" sign for the "z") or license plate bingo. The staples that kept me and my brother from going insane with boredom after being made carsick from reading too long in a moving vehicle up mountain roads. Back then you couldn't even get a radio station for most of the trip...no wonder my kids are candy asses!

SHSo'C got me some fabulous earrings for Christmas...you've seen 'em. I am so enamored of my gifty that they have not been out of my ears, except for very brief periods of activity where I feared losing them. I was thinking the other day that there might arise such an occasion where I would be required to wear different earrings, like say, at a wedding. *cough*Anne!*cough* What's a woman to do if she refuses to remove one of her most treasured gifts? Hey, I still have scars from where my ears were double pierced. I have a piercing stud from the last time I triple pierced my right ear. Anyone see where this is going? Anyone forget I am sometimes RETARDED? If so, refresh your memory here. Never mind that I haven't had earrings in any holes but the originals for the last 15 years or so. Never mind that I am too impatient to walk downstairs and get some ice to at least numb the skin. I mean hey, I can get the piercing stud in about 1/4 to half the way; the rest should be cake. So, I grabbed some isopropyl alcohol, doused the stud (hey! I am a nurse! Cleanliness in next to not getting a raging case of MRSA), and proceeded to cram the piercing stud into my former piercing. There were a few touch and go moments when I obviously left the original path (read: scar tissue) and ventured into virgin territory. I knew this because it hurt like a sonuvabitch. Let it be know there was a brief moment when I contemplated the wisdom of this venture, but....meh. With perseverance, and a desire for some Everclear, I was successful! Now to the next ear. Long story not so short, I am now double pierced (keep it clean!) once more. And never shall these baubles be removed. Because I plan for the skin to grow over them and become a permanent part. Like a sapling growing around a guide wire. Surgery will be a bitch; they'll have to tape my whole head. The one thing I forgot about was how uncomfortable it is to talk on the phone with one's ear double pierced. But that may be related to slowly violating the integrity of my earlobe, I'm not sure.

One last thing before I toddle off the the womb-like state of my bed: Lt. Nixon has written a short story that I think you'll enjoy. It is at turns hilarious and heartbreaking. No zombies, but some fine reading and kick ass tunes! It may also give some an insight to these brave and amazing people who walk among us. Go give it a read; you'll be glad you did.

Another nail in the coffin of professionalism

Had a lovely patient today. It was her 6th baby, this was a surprise pregnancy and surprise! It was a boy! She had a history of really fast labors and she wanted an epidural this time, just for kicks. She decided since this was her last, she would enjoy it. The doc came in and broke her water at 1 cm and I cautioned her, very strongly, that if she felt the slightest twinge, she was to call me. I came back in every 5 -10 minutes like the obsessive compulsive I am, "How are you? Anything going on I should know about?" I'm sure I was driving her crazy, but she really wanted this epidural and I really didn't want her to miss it. About 30 minutes after the doc broke her water she called out and said she was starting to get uncomfortable. So, I checked her cervix.

Me: "SHIT!"
She: "What?!?"
Me: "You're four centimeters."
She: "SHIT!"

We scurried around and got her epidural in....and then I apologized for swearing at her.

Definition of irony: Crisis day at work, nearly every room full of patients, unscheduled C-sections, a-hole anesthesiologists, not enough staff, real wrath of God type stuff and where is our union rep, who also happends to be the union president? At a meeting. On unsafe staffing. Would you care for our input on the unsafe staffing situation Madame President?

Day without Pepsi

My head around about 10 am today

So starts my first day without Pepsi. Why am I quitting Pepsi you may ask? Go ahead, I'll wait. After a long and loving relationship, I thought it was perhaps time we parted ways. I believe if you are so dependent on a beverage that you have to leave the bosom of your family on Christmas day to make a Pepsi run because you are about to run a marathon without leaving a 4 foot square area, perhaps a step back is needed. That and the fact that Pepsi has changed it's logo to an ugly ass sphere of conformity.


(h/t to Lt Nixon for the heads up on the change in the logo)
Is it moi, or does this look familiar? My grandfather thinks the current logo looks like his 8th Army patch, so I guess everyone has differing opinions on the aesthetics. I think we should just go back to the logo from the mid 1980s: simple, pure, Pepsi.




Tougher than I thought!

I could survive for 57 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

I don't like you

Yeah, well it's two way street kid! Tell your friends.

Self defense? Why would I need self defense?

This kid is bad ass!

There aren't many adults that would take on a pitbull (without a big freakin' stick), let alone a scrawny 9 year old. Meet Drew Heredia who has been taking Brazilian Jiu-jitsu for about 2 months. Drew and a 12 year old neighbor were walking with her dog when a pitbull ran out and attacked the dog. The neighbor tried to intervene to save her dog when the pitbull turned on her. That's when Drew threw down a rear naked choke hold:

He wanted to kick it, but he thought the dog would just bite his leg
Instead, he put the move on him. "He was moving really hard like
one of those rodeo bulls," Drew said. "Then he went limp." For more
than 20 minutes Drew held the panting dog until animal control officials
arrived.

Note to self: don't mess with Drew.

Happy Birthday E!

My favorite song from his 1968 Comeback Special. (Don't call it a comeback, I've been here for years!) He was hotter than Spam on a hot plate.

Har.

Okay, so I need a little levity right now. SHSo'C admirably fulfilled his duties as a righteous SHSo'C by sending me this gem:



All the high points and drama condensed for the attention deficit. Which is perfect for me.

One of my new favorite sites, which I've been hiding from some of you, because, let's face it, you're not nearly as twisted as I am, is Fuck You Penguin.
It makes me laugh on a daily basis, but today was perfect. Yesterday wasn't too bad either. It may have something to do with the amount of brain cells I drowned in malt liquor from the ages of 12-21, or it may just be that I'm a deranged sociopath, but I think these are some of the funniest things I've seen animal-wise. And right now I say bring the funny. Anything new strike your bones de funne?

I'm trying to avoid my usual grieving process (retail therapy) because we all know the mack truck of retail therapy is gonna tailgate the hell out of me here pretty quick (and the hits just keep on coming!) so I'm shopping around for a new template for my blog. Which I will debut soon. (That's right, channel that into something creative...or at least a giant waste of time and not money) If I don't screw it up.

Gleanings

There are a few pearls of wisdom I have gleaned either from or because of my grandma and the wisdom of her 81 years, 8 months and 19 days of life. Some them I have deduced myself from many long and varied conversations with her and some I learned by the flat of her hand or whatever was handy. Literally. So here are a few, with no particular reason or order of importance:

• Do not stomp down the hall and slam the door to the bathroom in Grandma's house. She can see through solid objects and will open her can of whoop ass right when you are naked and about to get into the tub.
• You can leave Grandma's house before daylight, be gone all day without word one to her, but if you've been fishing, by God those fish better be cleaned before you come back into the house.
• If you catch a mess of smelt from the town sewage reclamation pond and freeze them for later, don't tell Grandma. At least not after she's eaten one.
• She doesn't care if you've been skinny dipping because she did it all the time. But if you are off with that Barnett boy on the back of his snowmobile with a fifth of whiskey, you're gonna wish you hadn't. Even if you are with your best friend. And you're 13.
• Raising three wild boys and one girly girl is a rough job.
  
• Three wild boys will set a farm on fire.
• Three wild boys will chop up their sister's doll with a hatchet just for fun.
• Three wild boys will kick the crap out of anyone that messes with their sister...that includes their girlfriends.
• If you and your cousin set fire to the aerosol can pile at the dump and large exploding fireballs land in the trees in logging country, causing every firetruck in town to come out for it, Grandma will know it was you no matter how much you deny it.
• There is no golf shot that cannot be made with either a 3 wood or a putter.
• No one in their right mind should be seen without their teeth in.
• If Grandma had a hysterectomy at 29, you can forget about her feeling sympathy for you needing to buy "supplies" in a town of 500 people where everyone knows you on sight. Even if you are only 12.
• If you mow the lawn without being told, Grandma will buy you a bottle of Night Train. And then take all the heat when your mom loses her shit.
• Grandma will tell you all the way home from the bar that she has driven that road in her sleep and you really don't need to drive if you don't want to....even as she and Grandpa are strumming giant Zucchinis like guitars.
• Grandma lived a full, rich life. And nothing is better than that.
  

Unexpected Day Off

So much time....so little motivation.

I got a little surprise at 0530 today. A phone call telling me that I had been mandatorily (that's not really a word, but it works for me) low censused. Meaning, we had few patients and even after 10 years, I'm still low man on the totem pole as far as seniority on day shift goes. What can you expect when nearly everyone there has been there 20 plus years? My point here was, I didn't have to go in. This was completely fine with me because a) I'm getting a little over working there and b) I had stayed up until 2345 playing "Guitar Hero." Good times, good times.

I had many thoughts of what I could do today. Workout, clean house, organize pictures, sew, run to Good Will, take down Christmas lights, the list was endless. What I got accomplished was this: took the kids to the bus, tried to nap, worked out, showered, tried to nap, took down Christmas lights in a monsoon but did not put them away, aaaannnndddd that's about it. Oh, and I watched a movie. And tried to nap. Unfortunately, my brain never shuts down enough to actually sleep, which was a drag since I was a trifle fatigued. But I give myself kudos for not spending 8 straight hours trying to advance my career in Guitar Hero. So, I'm not a complete loser.

*snerk*

Doing some of my daily reading at Ace of Spades
and saw this totally awesome commercial from Australia.



Apparently, I'm running a special on all things vaginal, but I laughed until I almost wet 'em! How come we get commercials of mothers and daughters walking on beaches talking vaguely of "freshness," and they get comedic masterpieces of this magnitude?

Enough Already

WTF? I mean really!

I rarely drink, believe you me!

I was skulking around the beer case in Albertson's today, trying to figure out which libation SHSO'C would best like for the restocking of the fridge, when a gentleman that looked not a little like ol' Mel here walked up to me and mumbled, "Nothing looks good, but I know I might want something later." I'm not sure what his aim was in trying to tell me, and the mouse in my pocket apparently, that he wasn't a constant drinker. The disheveled hair and the bunny eyes at 1300 might be attributed to a night shift worker just waking up after a usually not restful daysleep, but the overwhelming aroma of 6 days of Old Milwaukee wafting off his person made a lie of that assumption. It wasn't until I passed the next aisle that I saw where I should have directed him.

Really, I think this may have been more to his liking and, if memory serves, there is a hell of a lot more bang for your buck with MD20/20 or Night Train than there is from swilling some half-assed beer. Even the too-too microbrews preferred around here can't get you hammered as fast or as hard as some good old fashioned rot gut. We were known to mix Boone's with moonshine...woooo doggies! Talk about a hangover of epic proportions, but the trip was worth it!

I recently received a funny email from the Kiminator with a plethora of hilarious ads from the 1940's. Hilarious and in some cases, completely freaky! Take this one, for instance:



Okay, the image sucks and is blurry so here is a link to a clearer image

Ladies, and gents who like 'em, this is an ad for a Lysol douche. Douche. Lysol. Roll that around in your melon for a minute. The ingredients in Lysol are Ethanol/SD Alcohol, Isopropyl alcohol, carbon dioxide, benzalkonium chloride, and 2-phenylphenol. Does this sound like something you want to swish around in your sensitive naughty bits? And if you're a guy, would you want to stick your naughty bits in that swamp of chemicals? I think not.

Then there is the text that says if the marriage suffers a "slow down" so to speak, the wife should look no further than her stinky whooha for the blame. If she would make sure to "safeguard her dainty feminine allure" her hubby wouldn't have to be rambling through cat houses in an effort to satisfy his urges. One of these ads reminds women that feminine hygiene is not a "now and then" endeavor but something that should be done regularly. No shit, Sherlock. Maybe if this skank practiced feminine hygiene more often she wouldn't need to listen to the quack who encourages her to swish her mucous membranes in carbolic acid. But, wait, I don't know whereof I speak as the manufacturers assure us that "gentle, non-caustic Lysol will not harm delicate tissues." WTF? This is the same crap they tout hospitals use in order to seem less like a petri dish and obtain the level of cleanliness found in the average week old bar towel. I'm thinkin' my "delicate tissues" may just protest.

Are you kidding me?

I swear, if these kids have one more snow day, I'm gonna hurt someone!