Peace out, dude

In my travels down I-15 to Salt Lake City today,  while trying to avoid getting run down by a whole host of Utah drivers going 20 miles over the speed limit, I saw the most awesome thing ever. This car (picture it with less paint and more rust):

....being driven by a guy who looked like he walked right out of 1966. Riding with the window down, he had long scraggly hair, a beard, and a somewhat unfocused (stoned?) Woodstock look about him.

It was a Back to the Future moment and I actually laughed out loud.

Other Utah driving observations:

1. Utah drivers LOVE to change lanes. Just 'cause.....no real reason for it other than they can.

2. Caution should be exercised while entering the four lane US 89, because there is no merge lane. I found this out in a heart stopping, teeth clenching moment, as I merged onto the highway only to find that I was not, as I thought, in a merge lane (like a REAL highway) but rather in the outside lane....with a semi truck barrelling down on me. Don't ever let anyone tell you that a Ford Taurus can't get up and go, because when I said "GO, CAR, GO!!" as I floored it, that trusty little Grandma car said OK!! And I was 0 to 70 in 2.4 seconds. Seriously.

3. While I understand the concept of a carpool lane, the sign that screams "DON'T CROSS OVER THE DOUBLE WHITE LINE" (into the car pool lane) really just makes me want to cross over the double white line - just to see whether or not the world would stop spinning around or if I would be suddenly surrounded by 5 Highway Patrolmen salivating over the idea of citing me for breaking the white line rule. Really, what is the reason why people can't merge in and out of the carpool lane at will?

People have tried to point out that I have become a Utah driver, given that I have a Utah license plate but I always counter with the fact that the South Carolina Palmetto tree and moon on my back window trumps any license plate.

 .

Gnomes in Charge of Time Management

www.tumbleweedchaser.blogspot.com

Clock from Shellyka

In a world where much smarter brains than mine reside, there are lots of theories about time. Quantum Theory. String Theory. Etc., etc. I don't pretend to get any of it. However, I do have my own theory about time. And here it is:

Gnomes live in my clocks. I'm sure they're quite happy and comfortable there but they are very, very naughty. Just when I think I'm going to have time to do something, they move the hands of the clock and speed up time so I have no time at all to do anything of any lasting importance. They also work in reverse, slowing the clock down, usually during Sunday School and meetings at work.

I know I'm not alone in this problem. Lots of people I know also say they don't have time to do the things they want to do. They should check their clocks for gnomes, also.

Work gets more than its share of time, so I believe that the gnomes in the hospital clocks are especially good at what they do.Taking a day off doesn't help - it only makes the day I go back worse and I have less time than before. Having watched other Chief Nursing Officers I've worked under scramble with their calendars I erroneously thought that I'd be better than that. I'd be able to control my calendar. In the immortal words of my daughter:

hahahahahahahahahahahaha........

That calendar controls me. Gnomes must really hate Chief Nursing Officers.

I have the blessing and the curse of being interested in lots of  (maybe too many?) things but there isn't enough time to pursue them with any success. For instance:

• I gave myself until June (yes, this past June) to finish my Dad's book. I'm on Chapter 2. 

• We have this wild hair to visit France and hike the village-to-village walking trails in two years which has prompted me to want to learn conversational French. So far, I can say: "Comment vas tu?" (How are you?) and "Ou sont les toilettes?" (Where is the restroom?) 

• I have this wonderful Nikon D5000 camera, which every now and then I take a really good picture with, but I know it will do more. I have the books. I have Photoshop. I have the subscription to the website. I just don't have the time. 

• I have some really nice piano solo music written. It just takes time to get it recorded and published.

• There are so many books and so little time. Currently I'm reading The Help (I know, I know - everybody else has already read it, but remember that I have a Gnome Infestation and I don't have any time!). Dreams of My Russian Summers by Andrei Malkine is coming up next. The title sounded like a great book to read during the summer but, at the rate I'm going, it may be fall before I get to it. 
• And, of course, where it really gets annoying is that there is never, never, never enough time for this:

My next task after posting this will be to search for a good Gnome Removal Company.

If I can find time.

Bodies - The Exhibition

The local museum has decided to run "Bodies - The Exhibition". I feel like I am so in the minority on this, but the whole idea of this display disturbs me.Trust me, I'm not squeamish and I've certainly seen my share of deceased persons in my lifetime. But, there's just something weird and freak show-like about this whole thing.

These shows are big business and have toured all over the world under the cover of science and education. People flock to them - as people will when presented with something sensational. Certainly, the museum will make a great deal of money. And, I'm sure it's very, very interesting. In a morbid, sick kind of way.


In nursing school we were taught that the passing of a life was a sacred moment which should be treated by us with the utmost respect. It was drilled into us that a person deserves as much dignity and privacy in death as in life. We were taught to be gentle, speak softly and respectfully, and be humbled by our inclusion in that sacred moment. So, the idea of taking human bodies and displaying them skinned, sliced, and engaged in bike riding, tennis playing, and ballet - all for our entertainment - is nothing less than offensive. Have we forgotten that these bodies were people?

And then there's the whole controversy surrounding where the bodies come from. Were they really donated by consent? How coincidental is it that they're all Asian?

No one I've talked to seems to agree with me, so I am a lone voice in the wilderness. But I think staging an exhibit like this says a great deal not only about the degeneration of our sensitivities and what we're willing to embrace as entertainment, but also what some people will do to make a buck.

Shame on us.

Thinking on Willy and his Kin

When my son, Jarom, was 7 years old, we went to see the movie "Free Willy". He loved it so much that we bought the movie. We bought shirts with Orca whales on them. He had Orca whale curtains in his bedroom. He ate, slept, breathed, and dreamed Orca whales.



My how time flies.

At any rate, at the end of the movie there was a short documentary on Orca whales with information about adopting a whale. My little son thought he would really like to adopt a whale, so we mailed off $35.00 then checked the mail every day.

Finally, it came. A huge packet arrived with information about "his" whale, including a picture of her and the exciting news that she was a new mommy whale. Her name was "Princess". She was beautiful.They were holding a contest to name her baby. Jarom named him "Cody".

...we had a small problem over a big whale...

But, in spite of all the excitement, Jarom was a little emotional over the whole thing. In fact, he was downright hysterical.

"What's wrong?" I asked. "Don't you like your whale?"

"I didn't get a whale", he said. "You told me I'd get a whale and all I got was a picture."

There are moments when you realize that there's been a misunderstanding. There are other moments when you realize there's been a BIG misunderstanding.

This was one of those times. My sweet little seven year old son thought that he was getting a whale. A REAL whale. And he was having nothing to do with any explanations about the realities of where we would keep such a thing, much less what we would feed it. I appealed to his compassionate side. A whale wouldn't be happy in Idaho. No, even a swimming pool in the back yard wouldn't be big enough.

Honestly, to this day, I think he's still upset that he didn't get a real whale.

So, all this news about Tillicum, the whale that killed his trainer this week, has made me think about how much my son loved (loves?) Orca whales. He loved everything about them. He wanted to swim with them. He wanted to go see Shamu. He wanted one to have and to hold from this day forward.

Now, we all know that the whole reason Sea World keeps whales in swimming pools in the back yard is for the money. And, we faithfully shell out the money to see a magnificent creature that, if not captive, would probably never be seen by most of us. And I can't help but think that those trainers that work with them are very much like my son. Enthralled. Mesmerized. Giddy at the thought of it all.

But, with all that said, I'm re- hearing again in my mind the conversation my son and I had years ago. I know you love Orca whales. I know you want one. It would make you happy.

But the whale wouldn't be happy.

And isn't that something to consider?

I've got the music in me

 

As a product of the 70's, I'm a fan of Styx, Boston, and on days where the Rocker Mom (as my son calls me) is feeling mellow, I enjoy a little Barry Manilow, Carpenters, England Dan and John Ford Coley, etc.

...what if I find myself in the Metamucil aisle?...

Which is why I was surprised this evening to find that, as I was driving down the road listening to KGTM (Good Times, Great Music Oldies Station) I was irritated by the music. It was making me anxious and annoyed. I didn't want to listen to it.

So, I dialed on over to KBYI where they were featuring songs by Tony Bennett. Ah......that's better. It reminded me of my grandmother who always had her radio on and tuned to the Easy Listening station in Savannah (who, by the way, loved Percy Faith and his orchestra).

I wasn't sure how to feel about turning off "my" music because it was bothering me and listening to my grandmother's music because it was, well, just less bothersome. Does this mean I'm getting old?

I'm having a little Chronological Crisis here. I'll be a grandmother in about a month. Does that mean that some chemical change has started to happen in my brain that I want to listen to my grandmother's music?

What if the chemical change gets out of hand and I start wearing sensible shoes and support hose? What if I find myself in the Metamucil aisle? Do they still sell Geritol? And why am I asking!?!?

I suppose I'm over-reacting a little. (Just a little.) Perhaps I just needed to get away from it all for just a moment and go back to a friendlier place where my grandmother was sitting at her kitchen table, building her floral arrangements, and listening to Percy Faith. Now that is a sweet memory.

However, I'll be sure to let you know if my hearing starts to go.

A rose is a rose....or maybe it isn't.

Some days things happen and they really are without explanation. Like today.



(Note: this post does not need viewer discretion, although it may seem that way at first. Just bear with me....)

One of my "other job duties as assigned" is releasing bodies out of the hospital morgue to funeral homes. It sounds worse than it is, really, other than the fact that the funeral home folks always - and I mean always - show up at lunchtime.

Most of the funeral homes will send big guys in black suits to do the job. Historically known as undertakers or morticians, they have fancy names now like Funeral Home Directors and Death Care Coordinators. Whatever they're called, they get paid to bring a skinny little gurney with a red velvet zip-up bag, package up the deceased, and roll him/her out the loading dock and into their hearse.

At this point I think to myself what a weird place I work in. I mean, think about it. Where else can you work where dead bodies get rolled out the back door on a regular occasion? Maybe a Las Vegas casino....but nowhere else I can think of. 

But I digress.

At any rate, they're always extremely dignified and respectful and I truly stand in admiration of these people who have made it their living to deal with dead people. I'm thinking I'd be a little freaked out by that, but they don't seem to mind it.

...what's a girl to do?...

One of our local funeral homes has a tradition that probably originally seemed like a good idea but it has trouble in the execution. They send the pick-up guy with the traditional accessories (zip-up bag and gurney) but they also send him with a long-stemmed red rose. My thinking on this is that someone back at the funeral home thought it would be a really nice gesture to do this but there needs to be an inservice or something because the guys in the suits that come get the body never have any idea what to do with it. Usually, they get the body all packaged up then they remember the rose. They pick it up, look at it, then (with a shrug) toss it on top of the red zip-up bag and out the door they go.

Today, that particular funeral home showed up to pick up a body. We got everything taken care of then, as usual, the big guy in the black suit remembers the red rose.  He picks it up, looks at it, then holds it out to me and says, "Here. This is for you."

Ummmmmm.......

What's a girl to do? I couldn't NOT take it, so I graciously accepted it, gushing "oh, that's so sweet....thank you!". Oh, gosh. Now that I'm remembering it in detail I feel like such an idiot. I wonder if he looked at my reaction, then thought how pitiful this poor woman must be. And it wasn't even a real rose. It was a fake one.

So, I took the rose back to my office and pondered what in the world I should do with this fake flower, intended to, in some fashion, ride out of the hospital with a deceased person, and presented to me as a gift across a dead body while standing in a morgue.

You'll be glad to know that I threw it away. I couldn't keep it. It had too many memories attached to it.

So, I've been laughing at myself ever since. It used to be that cute guys who were truly interested in me gave me REAL flowers. Now my romance consists of being handed a fake rose by a weird undertaker in the ambience of a morgue.

If I said it was better than nothing, you'd really start worrying, now wouldn't you?

Land of the Free, Home of the Jackalope

Legend has it that, in the 1930's, Douglas Herrick and his brother discovered the first jackalope in the American West. (It should be noted that the brothers Herrick were taxidermists.) Their "discovery" put their hometown of Douglas, Wyoming on the map and, in true American entrepreneurial fashion, the town has capitalized on the discovery and has even gone so far as to build an eight foot statue of a jackalope in the center of town.

The elusive jackalope (a.k.a. lepus temperamentalus) is, theoretically, one of the rarest animals in the world which makes the sighting of a jackalope quite exciting, indeed. It is a very shy animal but, when provoked, is extremely aggressive and uses its antlers to attack its opponent. The jackalope comes by these personality traits honestly since it is the product of a now extinct pygmy deer and a species of killer rabbit. The rarity of the breed is attributed to its ability to mate only when lightning flashes.

The jackalope has the amazing ability to imitate any sound that it hears, including the human voice. Cowboys have reported singing around the campfire and hearing a distant, exquisite tenor voice providing harmony. They are certain that this is the voice of the jackalope. This ability to copy the human voice has enabled the jackalope to fool potential captors by yelling, "I think he went that-a-way!".

The only known way to capture a jackalope is by putting out a flask of whiskey at night. The creature is particularly fond of the taste of whiskey and, when it becomes intoxicated, is much easier to capture.

I have had my own personal encounter with a jackalope, when it was served to me at a dinner hosted by some friends. Our hosts had prepared a beautiful meal with delicious food, including the tenderest, tastiest meat I had ever eaten. When I complimented our hosts on how good the meat was, he said "that's jackalope meat". A discussion about the merits of jackalope meat ensued. I remarked on it's mild flavor (not gamey, like one would expect) and our host gave me tips on purchasing the meat from hunters, since it wasn't available in the store.

Two whole weeks went by before I was informed that what I had really eaten was nothing more than turkey.

Turkey? But, I thought......

Really, I had seen stranger things. A stuffed and mounted rabbit with antlers on its head seemed believable enough in a place where people ate buffalo burgers and washed them down with root beer. Nevertheless, I had fallen for the oldest Idaho tourist prank in the book.

This experience prompted me to never again be thought of as an outsider. So, when I heard that only tourists don't know the words to the Idaho State Song, I made it a point to learn the whole song. Every word.You can listen to it here. Or, next time you're sitting out by a campfire in the evening, listen closely.

Maybe you'll hear a jackalope singing it for you.

An open letter to Mr. Charles Darwin

Dear Mr. Darwin,

I write this letter to you from a time that you - yes, even you with your wild imagination - could not even imagine. You'd be quite happy here, with all your "scientific" ideas. You would be delighted to see the rise in atheist, anti-religious views.

Yes, you'd fit right in.

I know that you are considered to be one of the brightest scientific minds of your time. Considering that you lived in a time where doctors thought that bloodletting was a good idea and Civil War medics were hacksawing off arms and legs sans anesthetic, that's not saying much. I understand that you lived in a time where science was, well, not very scientific so when you said that human beings started as sludge in the ocean and somehow miraculously grew legs and climbed out of the sea (and that by some great accident) people thought you were a genius. Brilliant. A legacy in your own time. You probably thought you were right. You probably thought you had it all figured out. I'd like to think you meant no harm.

But let me respectfully tell you, sir, that I am ticked off. You might be dead, but your crazy ideas of how we climbed out of sludge and became what we are have taken hold in the bright minds of not one - but BOTH my sons. MY sons - who are destined to be missionaries, priesthood leaders, righteous fathers in Zion, defenders of the truth.

Curse you, Charles Darwin. Curse you for confusing my sons with your silly ideas of evolution. I mean, really - where did you come up with this stuff anyway? Lizards turn into birds.....birds turn into monkeys.....monkeys turn into people.....

Heaven only knows what you thought people might turn into. I mean, it is a progression right? Perhaps we'll all be scaly, eight foot beings with two heads and three arms? (Too bad your ideas are so nuts - I could use an extra set of hands.) Or maybe we'll all look like Mr. Potato Heads with interchangeable parts. I'm an evolved being! I can take my ear off and put it where my nose should be! Look! I have eyes on the side of my head!

Or maybe you didn't think that far. Actually, you didn't think at all. You were mad at God. He took your baby. I understand that upset you - who wouldn't be upset? So you decided to eliminate God from your life, then you came up with your own hare-brained ideas of how we got here.

I wish you had kept your ideas to yourself. That's what I wish.

But, you didn't. And now I have to fight to keep any real truth in the minds of my sons. So, I will tell you that there are two things I am really looking forward to.

The first is that I want to be there to see your face when you come to a full realization of how completely, utterly, totally wrong you were.

And the second thing I'm looking forward to will follow when I give you a big piece of my mind. You want to see evolution at work? Fine. You're going to see me evolve into a great big mother bear. Prepare yourself, Mr. Darwin, because that day is coming.

And you are gonna' get it from me.

Why?

OK, so we like peanut butter at our house. I wouldn't say that we like it any more than anybody else, but we consume our share of peanut butter sandwiches. When Joshua's friends are around, we probably consume more than our share of peanut butter sandwiches. So, one would expect that we'd have an open jar of peanut butter in the pantry.

But could someone please explain to me why I have six - count 'em, six - open jars of peanut butter in the pantry? Apparently the peanut butter peeps at my house think that peanut butter isn't any good unless it's brand new and never been opened. So, if there's a new jar of peanut butter in the pantry it gets opened. Even if there are five other already opened jars ready for bread and jelly.

Therefore, I'll let you in on my new secret. I'll be hiding new jars of peanut butter in the laundry room until the old jars have been eaten. Seeing that no one ever goes in the laundry room except for me (a blog for another day), the new jars will be safe and I'll have room in the pantry for something other than half empty jars of peanut butter.

So, this is the dress that everyone's talking about. I'll admit I didn't really like it. It looked like a cross between a prom gown and a Halloween costume I wore once where I was supposed to be a sheep and glued cotton balls all over a white sweatshirt for effect. One of my most memorable experiences is visiting the Smithsonian Institution's exhibit of dresses that First Ladies have worn to inaugural balls. I couldn't get enough of it. Apparently, I'm not alone.

However, it is equally interesting to me that Michelle Obama is a woman with degrees from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, she's a former associate dean at the University of Chicago, and prior to landing the position of First Lady she was a vice president in the University of Chicago hospital system. No small credentials there. So, I did a quick search of CNN which revealed the following "headlines" about Mrs. Obama:

• Michelle Obama Fashion Debate
• Dressing Michelle Obama
• Inauguration Style
• Fashion expert critiques Michelle Obama's dress

All that intelligence, experience, and competence and all the media can find to talk about is what she's wearing to the dance. Amazing.