Friday Morning

By Friday morning I was very tired. Thursday, I'd taken a practical in Microbiology, peering through microscopes, determining the differences between gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, between staphylococcus and streptococcus. A statistics test loomed ahead the following Tuesday. O and I were going out for lunch to toss Big Possibilities back and forth that would involve some considerable lifestyle changes.

Friday morning I was ready to be done with all of it; the classes, the waiting, the uncertainty. To claw my way out of the amber.

When I feel like I want to get out of my own skin, I need to remember that I do actually have a body. When the weather is kind, as it was on Friday morning, I go out to the garden. I need the warm sun shining on my straw hat to pour through me to the the soft dirt between my bare toes. I need to sweat and ache.

So I went out and dug up twelve pounds of volunteer parsnips that had sweetened over the winter. A few were shaped like fine white carrots. The rest were like mandrakes; twisted appendages, swollen tops shaggy with filamentous roots. Products of adverse soil conditions, they warped themselves from pushing through too much resistance. Instead of pouring all their energies into one strong, sure taproot, they had to settle for smaller scattered avenues around harder places.

Nothing is ever simple in a garden. There is the tightrope chemistry of the soil, the balance of composition and decomposition, the miracle of energy converting into matter. It is never a simple thing, but it is good and beautiful, and if tended well it will satisfy your hunger.

I carried the parsnips in and washed them off in the sink. My fingers grew stiff under the cold water. I flexed them dried them off and remembered they were mine.

On my way to lunch, I took the scenic route through our Village neighborhood. To my left was a little pond with an embarrassment of ducks, on the right a horse farm. Just past that was a stubbly field where we had bought our pumpkins the Halloween before. Now it was full of Canadian geese. Over the trees ahead I could make out the tops of mountains I haven't visited in years.

I picked O up for lunch. We headed for the Irish pub in our old neighborhood, but it had been sold to someone with café ideas. We went instead to a breakfast place across the street where O and a friend often go. I'd never been there, so I tested their skills with the basics – coffee, breakfast burrito – and split an order of stuffed French toast with O.

We eavesdropped on the old men talking in a booth behind us about emailing their grandchildren, about their blogs, about Korea. O recognized by his shuffle one of the the homeless men who passed by outside. He misses his open shop where he could watch the street all day and interact face to face with customers.

So we talked about what he wanted to do. The risks involved, steps backward, steps forward. How the boyos would be affected. I urged him to go forward with his plans. I took him by surprise by telling him I knew he wasn't happy where he was at. “As happy,” I amended. He's decided against it for now, this thing he wanted to do. And it seems like the right decision.

We finished lunch. I took him back to his folks' house, visited briefly with his parents. There are troubles there and I will leave it at that.

I picked the boyos up from school. My mom called, so I set up the webcam and she talked with her grandsons online. O came in with the mail.

“There's an envelope here for you,” he said from the other room. I could tell where it was from by his voice.

It was a big envelope.

They don't reject you with big envelopes.

It's not BAD news...

...but it's not really news at all. Or is it? You decide:



From email:

Subject: Ready for Review

Dear NancyPants,

Thank you for applying to the The Big State College of Nursing.
We have finished processing your application.  It is now complete
and ready for the review process.

In early to mid-March, admission decisions will be mailed for
Summer 2009 and Spring 2010 entry terms.  

Pins and needles, people! Pins and needles!

It's time for Rudi's No-Fail Steely Dan Sigil (Thanks, Rudi!)

Update: My hor(ror)oscope. GA! :

The enterprising Aries Moon provokes us to take action, but starting
something new is not so easy today as impulsive Mars forms an annoying
quincunx with restrictive Saturn. We may feel as if every move we
attempt to make is blocked by unchangeable circumstances. Talking
about it won't help, for communicator Mercury semisquares obstinate
Pluto. Fortunately, the Moon's entry into stubborn Taurus at
10:32 pm EST gives us the determination we need.

You may be quite subdued now, even if you are still feeling hopeful
and enthusiastic. It's just that you might learn something that
makes you aware of how much additional time and money may be
required to complete a project. It may be impossible for you to
see an easy way through this reality check, but rest assured that
you are facing a temporary obstacle. Unfortunately, no amount of
hard work will resolve the problem today. The key to success will
be your dogged persistence.

And now we are...38

I'm back. And I'm older as of today. You know, as opposed to every other consecutive day I spend on the planet. Even Neil Gaiman's celebrating, isn't that sweet?* If you follow the link to his first blogpost, it will give you an idea of the posts I've spared you these past weeks.

But I'm happy with JALL's progress overall. It's almost there, and I lived through a critical scene. Not everyone else did though. 'Nuff said.

I've always felt that 38 would be a special year, the year everything was finally ok, the year that I will have 'arrived' somewhere. I'm not sure where that place is. I'm almost there with the book, I have agent leads, I'm in school taking microbiology and statistics and waiting for nursing school, I have old friends back in my life and the boyos will be receiving awards at school again, on Friday.

And I have a box of this. Oh, sweet heavens!

All the while things look dark and gloomy for the planet otherwise. It makes things...interesting.

Missed 'yall. Oh and if you are interested, I have a..mumblemumbleFacebook page mumblemumble...under my Christian name. Nancy and I don't know each other, got it?






*Disclaimer...oh, just go look, will ya?

Off...*

...torturing my favorite angels again.


Close. So very close.






Back soon. Maybe. I'm not sure about this anymore.






Art by Somerled.





*...her rocker.

Coyote

I meant to get back here sooner, but I'm currently in the land of migraine. It hit last Friday morning (and no, it wasn't a hangover – it would take more than a single Guinness to do that). It gathered force through the day, through my oral presentation on communication challenges facing the modern midwife (you didn't miss much), through grocery shopping, until I went to pick up the boyos from school. They came out of school fighting. They might as well have punched me in the forehead. I told them we had to get home, now. They're used to staying after and playing on the monkey bars. More fighting ensued. We got to one of those parking lot meridians that the suburbs are so fond of and I stopped, absolutely floored with pain. I felt utterly bewildered, and probably looked like Clowncar's buck. I couldn't remember where the car was, or which car I'd taken, or even if I'd taken a car. I had the profound urge to just lie down there. My vision clouded over and I couldn't see in front of me.

“Take me to the car, Jack. I can't see.” I held out my hand.

They both stopped fighting. We went quietly to the car. I had to sit in the driver's seat for a few minutes until I could see well enough to drive the half mile home. Why didn't I call someone, ask for help? I wasn't thinking that clearly. I was a horse smelling water and had to get home. Now.

When I did get home and called O, he couldn't understand what I was saying. He got home quick.

After a ménage à trois with Prince Vicodin and his other brother Prince Vicodin, I was able to sleep. Sort of.

I've been treating with ibuprofen since. The rest of the princes keep calling me though.

But what I really want to write about is coyotes.

Before Thanksgiving, O was up in the mountains winning at an overnight high-stakes poker game, and I was relaxing by the fire and working on my previously-mentioned oral presentation when my dog Sam wanted out. As I hooked his leash to his harness, his body tensed and his tail stood straight up. I looked out into the shadows cast by the pines and there he was not ten feet away – a coyote at the edge of the porch. Long-legged, about 45 pounds, stock obviously threaded with dog blood. Silent, stiller than the night. Then gone, Sam barking and snapping after him, my hand freshly rope-burned. One leap over the fence and he was a piece of the night again. Not a leaf crackled under his paw.

I told O about him the next day. Coyotes had already taken down three dogs in the neighborhood, and any number of cats were missing. The foxes are long gone.

A few nights later, I came into the kitchen and heard Sam barking his head off. O had let Sam out and went for a smoke in the garage. I threw open the sliding glass door and ran to where I saw his white body against the dark ground. The coyote was already jumping the fence, about a quarter acre away.

My heart was pounding. Sam was fine, if a little hoarse. I grabbed his leash and gave it a pull. He turned and followed me back into the house. I reached with my right hand for the inside door handle and grabbed air. I stopped and looked. The handle was gone. That's when I realized it was in my left hand. I looked down, thinking I'd pulled it out by the screws.

Here's what I saw:



O came back in from the garage. I held up the door handle for him.

As he installed a new handle the next day (those things are a pain in the ass), he grumbled that at least he knew if he were ever trapped under a car, I'd be able to lift it off of him.

Tuesday, the boyos wanted to go to the park by our house, the one that borders the open space that used to be a bit of a wood before they tore it up for condos that will never be built. There's only a fringe of scraggly willows and cottonwood along a wash at the bottom of the hill now, spared I suppose, for scenery. I sat in the car, not wanting to sit in the cold and snow, and told the boyos to stay on the playground, not to go past the split rail fence into the open space. We noticed the coyote warning signs posted on the lamp post. The boyos went to the edge of the park. Then they turned and ran back to the car.

“Mommy, come quick! Coyotes! We heard them! They're playing!”

And they were, several hundred yards away. I got out of the car and watched them – a mama and her two almost-grown pups crossing the open space. Papa lay on the ground, watching from the trees. Their fur was rough and red in the last light, their tails full and bushy. They were having fun, hunting and running and chasing their tails, yipping in those orange-spiral sounds. Absolutely wonderful to watch. A dog barked, and they disappeared into the scraggly trees along the creek, the sad bit of home they have left now.

What can you do with something so admirable from a distance and so dangerous at close range?

To Battle!

Travellogue

We're going home for Thanksgiving. First time in three years. It's funny, when you live far from where you came from you feel like a guest in your own family. There are jokes my cousins tell each other in emails that I don't understand. There was a funeral last week that I could not attend. But we're going home.

Night driving tonight. It'll be a long reach across Nebraska. We each take half the state. I'm loading up my gear for the reach now – I can't make it across without Joni singing about Amelia, I need Nick Cave -- that devilman with his red right hand, Peter Murphy mourning Bela Lugosi, Johnette Napolitano to deal out her 100 games of solitaire. I need to chase cars with Snow Patrol, I need Steely Dan's wheels turnin' round and round. I need 16 Horsepower and Slim Cessna driving north to Cheyenne. It only makes sense that Death Cab for Cutie drives me home from the passenger seat. Elton telling me it's four o'clock in the morning, dammit.

And coffee. Lots of it.

(Oh happy day! O just came home with a baby thermos for me!)

Henderson, Nebraska is a hotel and a truck stop that only exits at night or whenever a bus pulls up. Otherwise it's all wind and dry grass.

The Mississippi divides the world in half.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

What I Did Over My Summer Vacation, Or, Why I Want to Be a Nurse

Ok Dear Readers, here's my essay. I need to send it in before Friday. I'd greatly appreciate a quick but thorough read-through to catch any typos, grammatical errors, Freudian slips, silk slips, or stoatgobbler mangroves (thanks Stucco).

Thank you, guys.

Discuss your motivation and professional goals for a career in nursing. Include any experience that demonstrates your preparation for, and understanding of, the profession of nursing. Also include experience with diverse groups and/or underserved populations. (Diverse groups can include characteristics of gender, age, ethnicity, race, geographic location, education, etc.)

The simple answer to the question, “Why do you want to be a nurse?” comes from my positive experience with nurses through hospital stays during my pregnancy. I would love to work in labor and delivery and give back to all the scared moms-to-be the reassurance and excellent medical care that was given to me. But I have come to realize that my desire to become a nurse actually arises from three periods in my life.

The first time I cleaned the inner cannula of a tracheostomy tube I was five years old. The 'trache' belonged to my older brother C, who suffered from occipital encephalocele, leaving him brain damaged and completely paralyzed. I helped my parents care for him for the next nine years, until his death at the age of sixteen. I felt that cleaning his trache, feeding him and rubbing his head during one of his frequent seizures made a big difference in his quality of life, and I still believe this. But just before my brother's death, I watched a nurse (a friend of the family who came over late one night after her shift) help with C's new feeding tube. R expertly handled the procedure, as well as reassured my mom and put her at ease. I wanted to emulate her, to be of 'real' use to someone who was suffering. I've never forgotten R, and have tried to take her tone and manner while counseling others through their grief; those who have special-needs children, or who have lost a child or cannot have one of their own. R taught me a very important lesson in patient and family communication that I believe is vital to nursing. And taking care of C from an early age gave me an intimate understanding of the needs of the disabled.

My family is a medical family. My mom was a medical technologist, one cousin is a nurse and another is a pathologist. I've always felt comfortable in hospitals. As a teenager I worked as a hospital 'lab rat' – entering patient data, filing reports and occasionally retrieving errant paperwork from cadavers in the morgue (gotta love hazing!). One thing I loved about my job (besides the weird pathology stories) was talking to the nurses when they'd phone in CBCs and other results. I remember asking about a ridiculously low white count and the nurse told me it was actually up from the day before. Her patient had cancer. I followed his numbers, wishing I could somehow help him more, the way that she did.

When I was pregnant with twins, I was hospitalized twice for premature labor, then suffered gestational diabetes and preeclampsia. The nurses were the ones who kept my spirits up and kept my babies and me alive. After my experiences, I decided that I wanted to be the person who helped other women in my situation. I want to be there when they hear their baby for the first time of course, but I 'really' want to be there in the middle of the night when they are scared or lonely or when I can do something that will help ensure that their pregnancies have happy endings.

My experiences as the sister of a special-needs child, as a lab rat and as a patient have given me the desire and the outlook necessary to become a nurse. I hope you will consider me for a place in the *** College of Nursing. Thank you.

Everything All at Once

Isn't that how it goes?

I have a chance at getting into nursing school as early as this summer. My next chance is Spring, (actually January) 2010. Here's what I need to do (instead of Blogging) and I have to get it done by Friday:

Have a GPA of 3.0

Got it.

Sign up for and hope I get into statistics (pre-reqs are a bitch, aren't they?) and microbiology together next semester

Done: I got into both classes after a couple of phone calls.

Request transcripts from current college and old alma mater: “Ivy League School of the Midwest”

Done.

Write essay on 'Why I wanna be nurse” -- surprisingly difficult. Which is why I'm Blogging.

Fill out on-line admissions form.

Send in $50.00.

There is also a chance that my tuition will be paid for me – if a certain company likes me. I'd have to sign a contract to work for them for two years afterwards. No big deal. It's not labor and delivery, but it is in another area that has my interest. I could possibly get a job with them right now as a tech, but that's a lot to think about. I need to see if I get into school first, and whether I start in Summer '09 or Spring '10.

The odds of getting into nursing school are pretty intimidating: 1000 applicants, 240 positions. Better odds than sonography though.

Oh, and the other thing? I apparently said the right words to the right person and now he wants to see a copy of JALL when I get it all done and polished so he can find me an agent. I've heard it before of course...but this guy could actually do it.

Anyway. Wish me luck?

Halloween

That's right, I'm back in Mona's Poetry Friday Thang, because I just can't resist her thang, know what I'm sayin'? (Mona, email me about the pennies!)

So here we go. I wrote this while I was supposed to be working out ionic valance numbers. So I got caught and had to go to the board and explain why Rubidium is more reactive than Calcium. The things I do for Art.


At Halloween
we seek to appease you
our beloved dead
(greatly feared)
with black chocolate skulls,
eyes filled with grey salt
that we lick off our fingers.
We even send our children
out into the night.
We hide their faces, tell them
Be good now, ring, beg, run,
And we forget that you
(beloved dead, most feared loves)
may shake the trees over their
laughing heads,
cloud the moon, slick the streets,
because you too are hungry, begging
to be remembered, seen,
touched and comforted.
Who can blame you for your anger then,
shaking the house when the porch lights go dark,
leaving you and the bright empty wrappers
to blow lonely down the cold street?
Beloved dead,
(greatly feared)
tricking us into thinking
you return for a single night
and evaporate with the sunlit frost.



Anyone interested in those dark chocolate skulls can buy one here. Hey, while you're at it, buy me one too! Mmmmm...spicy...

Rough Old October

I'm making bread right now, for a dinner we're taking over to a family who's suffered a terrible loss. O signed me up for it, from a volunteer list sent around to school parents. That's cool; it's my sort of thing.

This is a bit awkward. I don't know them at all. I just talked to the mom on the phone, to confirm dinnertime. The fact that she can answer the phone at all amazes me.

There was that weird' – Hi there, I'm a perfect stranger but I'm going to come over and feed your family because something so horrible that I can't begin to contemplate it, has befallen you. So do you like cilantro?'* – thing. Hem haw. 'Do you know how to get here or do you need directions?' Hem.

Tomorrow will be easier. I have a dear friend, one of the Sushi Babes, who's just had two very large tumors removed, along with any chance of carrying a baby. I've visited her twice already, once with another Babe and a houseful of visitors, and once last Thursday. I can sit and cry with her. I can joke that together we make one whole woman. I can offer her a womb, if she wants to go that route. I can bring music and recipes and quilt while she crochets. We can bitch about the doctors who wouldn't let us keep the nasties in a glass jar – we made them ourselves after all, dammit! And they are such pretty pearls...

But bread and soup. What words do you serve with that, to a total stranger?





*Not my actual words. I'm not that socially autistic. But I was thinking them.

Nancy Dancehall and the Philosopher's Stone

So here's my solution to the bailout.

I'm taking chemistry this semester (did I tell you that?) and I needed some extra credit very badly. So tonight in lab I took out some pennies and did this:

I don't know what all those alchemists were crying about. It was pretty easy.

When I 'm not turning pennies to gold and silver, I get to blow shit up.

I LOVE chem lab!

I Swore I'd Never Do This Here, But...

'Somehow through...I will call it a criminal neglect and incompetence, the people at the top of these firms chose to look away, to take a risk, to enrich themselves and to put the shareholders and indeed the country itself, ultimately the economy, at risk, is truly not only a shame but a crime.'
Jim Grant -- the editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, and the author of “Money of the Mind.”



See it for yourself.



And a question...has anyone seen the protests on Wall Street? You know, the ones where large crowds of demonstrators are holding up signs that say, "Go ahead and jump, motherfuckers?"

No?

Gosh. Whatever has happened to our media? Don't tell me the fourth branch of government is corrupt too!

Questions

We brought the boyos to school on Wednesday, same as any morning.

Parents were huddled together. Some stood with their arms around their kids, in line outside the doors. Everyone was quiet.

What's going on?

Sunday, she was at church, playing with her friends after services were over. She couldn't catch her breath. Her parents called an ambulance. Two days later, she died of complications. She was six years old.

They called in counselors, and last year's kindergarten teachers. The first graders made paper flowers and cards. Some of the girls cried through the day.

None of them really understand.

We parents stood together after school, not really understanding either. Still letting it sink in. The head of the PTCO approached us. We talked about memorials; a tree, a bench, a flower garden. Something. Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of the school.

She told us she was organizing a fund. She told us that a few days ago she and her husband had decided to move back to Australia to be near her family again. This, she said, this reaffirmed their decision. Family is the most important thing, and she'd been away from hers too long. Eight years.

The bell rang. Kids poured out, some still crying, some smiling. My boyos had questions. When we're in the car, guys, then I'll answer them. In the car.

They had a few I couldn't answer, of course. I grew up Catholic. I went Pagan, then heathen. I've witnessed miracles, magic, a Presence. And I'm a woman of science with a voice in my head as I fall asleep whispering, This is all there is; when you die it all goes black...

What do you say? How do you answer?

Declan was ok with my answers. He's accepting, he rolls with things. Jack was all smiles, the tight variety. I'm ok, Mommy. Later he sat outside by himself. He faced the wind, watched the light. Stayed quiet.

The email asked, in lieu of flowers, could the School Community please help pay for a headstone? Times are tight, and...well...

The funeral is tomorrow. We'll be there, with many, many others from our School Community. We'll all have questions. I guess we'll all do our best to answer them.

That's Odd

My cell phone is sitting next to my laptop. I look down and see that my cell phone's flashlight is turned on. I scroll through the commands and turn it off. I set it back down.

Now I'm watching it scroll through the commands to turn itself back on. Blink, there it goes.

That's odd. This sort of thing usually doesn't happen until October.