lift off!

Ladies and gentlemen! For the first time ever, I have created.... plant life!

That's right! My starts have started! Not only did my lettuce come up, but I have a tray of artichoke starts, and some valiant scraggly spinach that is really trying hard.

Totally not their fault to be lagging behind though. I did just about kill them by forgetting to water them for a week or so.

Okay, maybe it was a little longer than a week.

Mike showed me a neat trick though. This after he stole my seedling soil mixture for his own basil starts under his fancy-smansy plant lights.

Considering I only had egg cartons and our open window area in the back (plus batting away 4 curious kiddos, who, for whatever reason, seem to believe that anything not physically in the garbage can is theirs to mess with), I was not doing that bad on my own, but Mike's little trick of putting the cookie sheets under the egg cartons seemed to really do the trick.

Now I need to figure out how to get them in the ground without killing them.

I think people would actually be amazed how often I use that phrase. Hmm.

Night shift

In the next few weeks I will be back to the land of the living, interacting with other people in the light of day, not wearing hoodies or listening to music on my earphones while doing 24 hour chart checks at the nurse's station. That's right. I'm going back to days.

There's a few things I will miss about nights, though. Not that dizzy disoriented 3am feeling that, no matter how much sleep I've gotten the day before, seems to have no way around, or the way patients you've cared for a good 8-10 hours are asking who you are at 7am in the morning. I won't miss waking up two hours into my 'night' completely disoriented, wondering not only what day it is, but why the house is so quiet, and what happened to my boys... and omg, my boys! Where are they? 

Yeah.... so, there's some things I won't miss. 

I will miss the people though. Night people, from my experience anyway, tend to be laid back individuals with an unreal sense of humor and fortitude. Not much offends them, not much hits them off kilter. Maybe it's the isolation from any other normal part of society, but night people tend to be tight, but not above taking one more under their wing. There is a great deal of empathy you feel working on nights. Like you're part of your own little community. 

That, and I usually have enough down time to check my email, jot down some poetry or finish a book without 'management' pulling me aside to tell me about our standards of 'professionalism'. 

Hey! I was watching the lights. No one's dead. Let's all relax, shall we? 

Night shift feels very romantic in the way that gothic ghost stories are romantic. It's nothing you want to do for, like, the rest of your life, but the experience, I feel, is valuable. To work on the other side of the clock, to be the Watcher. The Healer tiptoeing through the hallways, counting stranger's respirations per minute, emptying their catheters--- It has a mysterious untouchable quality to it, I guess. 

Or that could just be the lack of sleep talking. Sorta like adrenaline making colors seem more vibrant than they are. Or something like that. 

Anyway, I'm going to days. At some point. Management, power that it is, hasn't changed my schedule yet. Ironically (gah, I hope I'm using that right), the gal who got the position that I applied for in ER is the reason I am even moving to day shift, so as soon as she's gone.... Management, the power that is, did say something interesting to me the other day though. 

"You can help us out though, right? While we make the adjustment?" 

They were referring to the change in schedules, of course. Moving one person to days, finding another to take my place. And I said sure! without really thinking about it, because that's what I do, only to think later: oh crap. What did I just agree to?

I really hope that I didn't agree to doing two different shifts at the same time. Say it with me: Please don't make me do both! That would completely ruin the romantic mystery.

sorry Hollywood.. I think the french won this one.

Okay, so my husband is what you might call a bit of a movie buff-snob. I can't tell you the last time we actually went out and saw something on the big screen--- I think it might have been Shrek---- but, when it comes to knowing his movies, I don't know anyone else that has logged the kind of hours my hubby has.

Praise be to Netflix! (end shameless corporate homage).

This is how it's rolled: My hubby, bless his heart, decided a good while ago (more than a year--- I don't even pretend to keep track of time anymore) to take care of his mortal temple by jogging on our treadmill several times a week. Fast forward many months into the future, and said hubby has lost a net total of 70+ pounds. Which, if you're like me and numbers don't really always make sense to you, is a BIG deal.

Seventy+ pounds is a lot of movies.

Of course, Mike doesn't just go for the stand by shoot-em-up blockbusters. Nope. Mike likes movies with subtitles. Because you can actually follow the story without blowing your speakers while jogging on the treadmill, a contraption louder than our washer (a difficult feat, believe me). Well, and also because movies with subtitles are BETTER than your stand by shoot-em-up blockbusters. They have synopsis lines that make me depressed just reading them (a mark of a truly good movie, in Mike's book). An couple examples:

This inventive drama charts the disintegrating relationship between newly married twentysomething Justine and her melancholy sister, Claire, just as Earth hurtles toward certain collision with a newly discovered planet. 


Abandoned by her husband in a country foreign to her, a Colombian struggles to take care of herself and her two children on the streets of New York. 

Now, I'm not trying to diss on Mike's preferences. To each their own and all that--- but I'm the kind who likes to read the book jacket before I commit myself to anything. I want to know that things won't be too terribly sad, and even if they are, the story itself is redeemable. If it's not, then I'm really hesitant. Mike, on the other hand, seems to be drawn in by the experience itself, whether it's a fatalistic end-of-earth tale or the underdog who never gets a break. The more down to earth and real-feeling, the better. The words Criterion Collection or Swedish turn of the century psychotic thriller make him salivate, while for me, anything with the words Tina Fey or comedy tour can make me pop up and pay attention.

I tend not to pay much attention anymore to what Mike watches. I've never been a patient movie-watcher anyway, and even when I am, I have a tendency to talk my way through the boring confusing parts. Hollywood was made for attention spans like mine. I'm the movie goer sitting behind you that you swear is drunk or on something, simply judging from the enthusiasm of my.... uh, engagement?

I like to talk to my characters. Sue me.

Suffice it to say, it's taken most of the decade we've been together for Mike to convince me to watch something in its entirety with him.


Enter last night. 


It was a pretty typical night. Me, on the couch with my laptop, Mike, on the treadmill scrolling through Netflix (go corporate America!). Me saying I'll probably head to bed soon, Mike saying that he's just gonna jog and be right in.

And then he started his movie.

To fully appreciate the moment, let me try to explain it this way: Jason Bourne + Eiffel Tower + mobsters + The Rock agile enough to jump through spaces the size of a front loader dryer door.

Getting it yet?

If you're more of the visual kind, maybe you want to see it yourself: It's called District Twelve. It's French. And be advised: There's two of these bad boys!

Enjoy!

buttons

Shoes are the bane of my son's existence. In the cold of winter or the cement boiling heat of the summer, my son prefers to have his feet unfettered. He revels in the feel of his bare toes against the elements, even when said elements turn his toes an amusing shade of purple. He basks in the ever-surprising sun-baked burn a bare driveway in August can produce. Worts, slivers, insect bites--- He's endured it all in the name of freedom. This son of mine will even take the time to take his shoes off during the five minute drive between our driveway and the school.

This same son is convinced that buttons and shirts should not mix EVER. Even if said shirt had a T-rex eating a front loader being driven by a light-saber wielding Jedi knight on the front. One button can outdo all graphic coolness. Even if the buttons claimed undying love to even just the concept of being the same vicinity as a shirt, my son wouldn't stand for it. Buttons and shirts are for Cole what interracial marriage was for Americans in the 1930s: unthinkable.

This isn't to say that my son is an intolerable bigot. He's not. He doesn't bat an eye when he sees other kids wearing button friendly ware such as polos or flannel (or as we call them in our house, Sunday shirts). In fact, if cookies are involved, he's been known to actually wear one. Over a shirt, to be discarded at the first available opportunity.

Perhaps it's not so much a hatred of buttons as it is an unwillingness to knowingly strap himself down to anything. I'm pretty sure the kid would wear his boxer underwear as shorts and run around shirtless at school if given even the hint that mom wouldn't body tackle him with socks (the third clean batch of the week, thank you very much... not that anyone is counting).

This is the same kid that told us that the nice thing about hot weather is that you don't have to comb your hair anymore. The sweat does it for you.

There's some dinner time conversation for you.

I can't say that I can't relate. Not about the sweat thing of course (although there were some years in high school where, I swear, running cross country did wonders for my hair), but the desire to walk around in my underwear, unembarrassed. Fortunately, there are some things that surviving childhood does for (most of) us. We grow hair, our skin bulges and retracts, leaving odd fault lines..... in short, I don't really wanna see myself in my underwear, let alone strut around where people can, like, see me.

Someday, my Cole will also know the paralyzing dignity of being an adult. I guess I can give him a few years without the buttons.

now I just wanna take a nap

It's April, the bulbs are bursting out of their winter-encased straight jackets, the sun is out, the birds are strutting around with self assured possessiveness---- The world is again waking up! This is good. But, I just wanna sleep.

Well, not all the time. Just when the boys are at school. So, just most of the time.

I did go for my jog this morning--- Joyce Carole Oates says herself it's good for the writing soul. Which I'm trying to take seriously, or at least, seriously enough that I've been trying to figure out some professional-looking forums to give and take some peer feedback. Alas, everything I'm looking at looks like it's being moderated by goth teenagers whose idea of a poetic prompt is a picture of cheesy looking tulips while italicized lyrics of a Three Dog Night song plays underneath.

I mean--- wow. Basically, all the poems people are posting seem to be stuck on love and suicide. I mean, really: sooo high school.

I don't know where people go to be taken seriously. I'm not just saying this as a woman, either, although, historically at least, I think we have the rawer end of the deal with all that. I mean, who decided that raising kids was a career? Getting paid, having a job--- that's a career. Having kids is not a job, not a hobby, it's your life. There's gotta be something else that you're good at, that you crave.

But, then, that's just my opinion, because I think women should be seen as more than just vessels of the next generation. However, before I let my mouth run off---- again---- back to the inspiration that is the internet, or, perhaps more accurately, where the lowest denomination gets its pats on the back.

I don't know, maybe I'm just being cranky. I read something earlier this week: 'we're all cowards at the starting line.' It's one of those lines that's supposed to be inspiring, in an intimidating sort of way, but it got me thinking, and now, when I wanna just lay down, it's what pops in my head. Maybe I just don't have the guts to truly write. I don't wanna know how much I can improve, because that only highlights how bad I am at it right now. Hmmm.....

Well, I have a few hours til I pick up the boys again. Better get to napping......

please, please, please, let me get what I want

Spring break this week, so that's nice! Unfortunately, I'm actually at work from Monday to Thursday, but I also have a job interview for a day position in the ER on Tuesday, so.... fingers crossed! I'm kinda nervous, because it would mean getting to know a whole new group of co-workers and schedule and ways of doing things. I've only ever been a floor nurse, meaning I start with a certain group of patients and pretty much stay with that group for the duration of my shift. ER is the opposite. In and out.

I kinda really really want this job though. I want to get my hands in there, with some acute care stuff. I have a good 9 years (oh gah, how old am I?) of medical surgical floor nursing experience, and I love it, mostly because by the time patients get to me, they are not bleeding messes of yucky. ER, acute care.... they've always intimidated me, in that, they make me nauseous and slightly dizzy to think about. Did you know all the ER nurses start their own IVs, for example? I don't think I've done a single IV start in the last five years, at least.

Anyway.... fingers crossed!

Also: does anybody else get an unaccountable craving for fudge brownies once the spring time bulbs start to surface? Or is this just coincidence?