jesus radicals

Little Children Pray
So Lucky Little Lamb is learning about God and Jesus (and Muhammad, and the Buddha, and Vishnu, and Krishna....we're Christians and Unitarians, and I majored in Religion in college....) We rad some bible stories and talked about God. Who is God? What does God look like? Those kind of questions. Then we talked about praying. Talking to God. Asking God to show us how we can be better people. I tell her when she prays she can ask God to help her to be able to keep herself out of harm, or to watch over her friends and family, or to give a little peace to others who live in danger or sadness...And Lamb says, "I have an idea." But she has to whisper it. And what's her idea? "Maybe we could ask God to turn the light on."

We have a theologian in our midst.

So the Ram came down with SACOB--severe acute crafting obsession/compulsion. For Lamb's birthday party I decided to make a fish-shaped cake using 2 round cakes. First I struggled with the whole Betty Crocker vs. from scratch thing, and decided Betty was just fine for a gaggle of 2-4 year olds. I used the kind with the pink and blue swirls. I baked two 9" rounds. When they cooled I cut a 3 inch wedge out of one (for the mouth), cut a smaller wedge out of the other and then cut it in half. Then I was stumped. So Ram looked at it, did some more cutting and sculpting, and viola! We had a bulge-eyed goldfish cake with a fancy tail. I started icing it, and Ram asked, "can I do some?" In 5 minutes the project was out of my hands. Ram did the rest of the decorating, although he did let me put the fish shaped sprinkles. It came out wicked cute, and much more detailed than I had planned! My mother (Madame Ewe?) tooka digital photo of it, so I'll post pictures soon. We'll see how long SACOB lasts.

Pirates of the Caribbean I am so looking forward to this movie. Better yet, I'm looking forward to seeing it at local drive-in. The drive-in is a blessing. We can all go out together, and Little Lamb is usually asleep by the time the (usually more adult) second feature starts. There's a playground, really good drive-in food, more fun than you can shake a stick at!

I've passed the climax of post semester. I don't have any homework, or studying or preparation for something. I just don't know what to do with myself. I actually went to a cafe and had breakfast and read a book twice this week, and got to work on time. And all I'm doing at work is filing and checking files and alphabetizing, and organizing and registering and listening to music--what else? oh yeah--and socializing. I have so much work to do at work and it's easy and I can day dream while I do it, and still get stuff done. I've been quite productive. I feel like a little office squirrel. All for $13+/hour plus 403(b), generous benefits, paid vacation (4 weeks/year, plus 4 personal days, holidays, and more sick time than I can shake a stick at. I love my job, my co-workers are all nice, my supervisor is cool, folks order Japanese food for lunch on a weekly and we all chat and eat together on a weekly basis. And it's only 17.5 hours a week. I love my job.

I think this weekend I'm going to find some wood and cut circles to fit in the bull's horns. So project #1 will be Gemshorns! woo hoo!

So I'm driving home yesterday, up 5 & 10, which is a two lane road, and the [asshole] driver in a an 18 wheeler truck coming the other way, spits out the window, and his nasty phlegmball splats on my windshield, most of which I can't wash off because it falls below the reach of the wipers. I was so grossed out I started gagging. I thought I was going to throw up. Just thinking about it makes me gag. You know, I can wipe up the nastiest crap that comes out of anyone's orofice, as long as I'm in a clinical setting with gloves at my disposal. And I've cleaned up my fair share of poopy diapers--gloveless. But in any other circumstance, like driving down the road, I cannot deal with other people's body fluids--not even on my windshield. What a way to start the week, huh?

Lucky Little Lamb was feeling most unlucky today. She had a simple visit with her NP to look at her ears. She refused to let her look into her ears with the otoscope. She only consented to the tympanometer (a painless thing, too) if she could hold the probe in her ears herself. Then on the way to her exam room again we ran into Becka, and she fell apart because she wanted Becka's muffin. She has yet to warm up to the whole health care thing. This weekend she fell and scraped both her knees in two separate incidents. I was surprised she let me take them off today. I did it after she'd bathed and they were pretty much falling off anyway. She is not one to be tricked or bargained or bribed into doing something she doesn't want to do. Frustrating as it is at times, I love her independence and willfullness. It will serve her well one day.

He shaved!
I'm done with exams and classes til the fall!
I can read non-nursing books!
I can stay up late even when I don't have insomnia!
I can go to the gym! I'm taking aerobics two days a week!
I can make gemshorns, knit, sew, and find all kinds of useless but beautiful or functional and beautiful things to make!
We can all go to the drive-in!
Our gas bill will be negligible instead of astronomical!
I can go without socks for weeks on end!

Life is good!

For some reason I get spammed daily by a porn website. Something about farm animals and farmer girls. I can't help but think it came from my blog or my email address. Well, in case anyone there was confused, Lucky Ram is not some bighorn sheep, he's a human man, and we have a human child, Lucky Little Lamb. Their nicknames have nothing to do with an unnatural affection for farm animals. It all began at Ram and my first Christmas together as a couple. We were walking in the woods making up alternative lyrics to Christmas songs. I was singing "The Little Drummer Boy", and when I got to the part about the little lamb, Ram stopped me and said, "I always thought they were saying something about a lucky little lamb." Well, we are easily amused, and found this quite humorous--for a really long time. Lucky Lamb seemed apropro in many aspects of our lives. We both have curly hair (we're "lamby", a phrase coined by another friend of mine). There's a religious connotation, Christ being a shepherd, the is Christian a lucky lamb. And then there's my whole inner conflict with eating meat. Lucky is the lamb who does not wind up on my plate, and I thank the lamb who does. Then there's the whole knitting, spinning, etc. connotation. I sold some knitted tams under the name Lucky Lamb. See? Totally innocent. So when I started this blog, I decided to make up silly nicknames for us. Lucky Ram--you know, he's a guy. Lucky Little Lamb is our little kid--oops, I mean lamb. Parthenia is not a sheep, and I'm not much of a shepherdess, but I just really dig the name. Lucky Ewe just sounded corny.

Anyway, my exam is tomorrow, and tomorrow night I have to hand in my Sociology paper which I will write tomorrow. Then I'm done for the summer, and can start making stuff.

Ram shaved his beard into a lamb chop-like design (another one!). I hate it. He looks like Duane Allman or someone from Lynard Skynard or Foghat. I like the Allman Brothers, but I certainly don't want one in my bed. He looks like a Confederate flag waving redneck, and it gives my flashbacks to some of the shadier folks I knew in Memphis. And Yankee that he is, I don't think he understands why I his facial hair deeply disturbs me. To top it off, for some reason he's taken to wearing one of my snoods, but he tends to push his hair all up to the front so it looks like he's wearing an Andy Capp hat. My otherwise handsome, fine, sexy husband looks like a weird freak. I want my hippie husband back, with his medieval hair and viking beard!

So here's what my Mother's Day was like:
In the morning we reminisced about my first Mother's Day, when I was 9 months preggo and ready to pop (which I did 2 weeks later), and Ram gave me a really cool knitting book. We went to Slyvester's or Jake's for a pancake breakfast. We're too broke this week to do that, but we'll go out next week.
So I laid in bed until my back started to hurt, snuggled with Ram and Lamb, and read (the dirtier) excerpts from Lady Chatterley's Lover. Talked to my mom. Ram went to Dunkin' Donuts and got us bagels and coffee and donuts. I read some of my favorite excerpts from Lady Chatterley's Lover to Ram, and we joked about Mellors' philosphies and my sad attempt to do the Yorkshire accent (gave up quickly). Then we continued our cleaning rampage, which we had begun the day before. I cleaned my drawers out and reorganized my clothes. I need some new clothes. Later that evening I did some homework and compared certain scenes in Lady Chatterley with the book. I fast forwarded the explicit scenes because Lucky Little Lamb was watching.
After Lamb went to sleep Ram and I watched more of the featurettes on the LOTR dvd. This time we watched some of the costume galleries. I was a little confused about why Boromir had chainmail only on his arms, over that nice silk mack daddy shirt. He's actually wearing a leather shirt with chainmail arms under the mack daddy shirt. I just don't get why he wore the chain mail through the whole movie, even when he was chillin' at Rivendell. I am revved up and inspired to do some mad crafting when my exam is over (on Thursday!) And we're going to have a clean house to boot.
After Ram went to bed I had a bad case of insomnia, so I stayed up, folded clothes, listened to music and tried to de-stimulate. John Thomas probably would have spent some quality time with Lady Jane had I gone to bed, but I my mind was in overdrive. I went to bed really late--like 4 am. At least I got some work done. And that was my Mother's Day. Meloow and low key, and too much bad food. We unplugged the oven to use the clothes dryer, so I couldn't cook. Bummer!

I just made a meat pie. I have crossed the vegetarian-meat eater's line. Can I really say I'm a carnivorous vegetarian if I eat a savory pie made mostly of meat? My stews have a significant amount of veggies, but meat pie is mostly meat. And damn good. It's easily made into a vegetarian recipe using tvp or seitan. So here's

The Shepherdess' Franco American Meat Pie

1 small onion chopped (which I didn't have, but would have been nice. I used extra garlic instead)
3 cloves garlic chopped
1 tsp or less salt
1/4 tsp or more fresh ground pepper
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp sage
1 1/4 lbs cubed buffalo, lamb, beef, or other type of meat or meat substitute. Ground meat would work, too, I guess.
1 cup sliced mushrooms
3 carrots chopped (over a cup)
1 cup cut green beans
2 pie crusts. One for the top, one for the bottom. I only had one crust and no butter to make another, and it was just fine as an open faced pie.

Prebake 1 crust 8 minutes at 375. In a skillet brown the alliums (garlic and onion) with a little olive oil. Add ingredients and some water (about a cup). Sprinkle spices and simmer 20 minutes. Drain the excess water and oil and spoon filling into the crust. Use the other crust to cover the pie, cut slits in the top to let out the steam.
Bake at 450 for 15 minutes then at 375 for 20-30 minutes.
Say random French like Voila! and Oui! Oui! or make a smarmy "French" snicker and remove pie from oven. Let sit for 10 minues and serve. Optional: continue to pretend to be a snickering French person who can't speak French, and make fun of zee stupeed Americains who cannot cook zee French cuisine correctement. Or pretend to be a snooty American who thinks she's just perfected zee French cuisine. Either way, this recipe might be what we need to mend the rift between our two countries. Make fun of the other and break bread together.

International Association of Forensic Nurses Parthenia's career choice de la semaine: Forensic Nursing. Actually it's one of those lingering career ideas. It ties in well with the whole Women's Health Nurse Practicioner thing. And there's even a Forensic Nursing program in Aberdeen, Scotland. (Place where Ram and I would like to live--of the week). So the idea would be to work a year, get SANE certified (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner), and go to grad school at Fitchburg State, which has the closest Forensic Nursing program. Why forensic nursing? I loved Quincy when I was little. It's multidisciplinary, sounds exciting, helps people in a variety of settings, I'd get some ER experience (last week's career path). I could also do prison nursing, examine suicide, murder, sexual assault, physical abuse.
Well, we're off to the playground.

So I'm trying to write this Godforesaken nursing care plan, which is not about Boromir, but about the 9 year old patient from Tuesday. I'm writing it the way my mom does her work: with the tv on. I'm watching Lady Chatterley, which has a really cool nurse in it, Mrs. Bolton. It's a little distracting during the love scenes, but I'm managing. Watching a young Sean Bean and Joely Fisher go to the broom certainly makes writing post-op adenoidectomy procedures much more fun. Now I know why my mom watched tv while she wrote her dissertation. Although I don't think she was watching the, um, kinda stuff I am. Here's to Mrs. Bolton!

May I make a quick vent and say that writing nursing care plans is one of the most painful, tedious activities I can think of and I love to write? (Obviously I love to write, I'm writing about my blissfully mundane life on-line, for all to read, yet it's doubtful anyone reads, and I still don't care.)
Okay. I vented. I feel better. I'd rather write a mock nursing care plan on a fictional character (see previous post) than about someone I actually took care of.

Went to the Higgins Faire at the Higgins Armory Museum - Worcester, MA I went in my lovely Italian Renaissance working woman's dress. Ram and Little Lamb wore modern clothes. I was one of maybe 5 or 10 people in garb who were *not* part of staff, and many of the staff were not in garb. After my initial horror and humiliation I held my head high and had fun. I love wearing that dress. I'd wear it to work if I wasn't afraid I'd rip it on my chair.

The Lord of the Rings : The Two Towers Official Movie Site
I saw The Osbornes for the first time a couple of weeks ago. As my friend Becka put it, it's interesting to watch the family process. How many nursing dianoses can one think of in just one episode? Then I go to thinking about other movies. What kind of nursing dianoses can one come up with for any given character in LOTR? This could be more fun than the Sean Bean Drinking Game I've been working on. So let's start with Boromir, my favorite character...

Anxiety, related to actual or perceived threat to self-concept secondary to ethical dilemma (to take the ring or not).
Outcome: The patient will describe his own anxiety and coping patterns. (Which he kinda did with Aragorn on several occasions)
The patient will use effective coping mechanisms. Which he didn't when he tried to take the ring.
Interventions: Assess level of anxiety, provide reassurance and comfort.
Remove excess stimulation, limit contact with others. Well, that could be a little difficult. Get rid of the ring.
Assist person with anger. I think this is the key intervention.
Powerlessness, related to personal characteristics that highly value control.
[defining characteristic: overt/covert expressions of dissatisfaction about inability to control situation that is negatively affecting outlook, goals, and lifestyle. Ooooh, good one! ]
Pain, acute related to arrow wound.
If they'd been able to bring him to the ED of the local hospital and perhaps helped him...
Outcome: The patient will relate relief after a satisfactory relief, blah blah blah...
Get this man some morphine, and suture him up.

And of course there's Impaired skin integrity, related to arrow wound.
Risk of infection related to open wound.
Fluid volume deficit related to blood loss.

This could be more fun than the Sean Bean Drinking Game, and certainly more educational! Yes, folks, I'm a great big geek.