Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

'Babe in the Woods' could be the next film title for that talented sheepdog pig. I wonder why the producers didn't think of that. Anyway, I don't mean to talk about pigs, but about age.  I don't much like it when people ask how old I am, partly because sometimes I don't remember. I went to a church dance when I was in high school, and as this guy was slow-dancing with me, he asked me how old I was (probably just for sake of conversation). I had to think...so, I would not be attending a church dance if I were younger than 14, so I told him 14. Then I remembered that I had been going to these dances for a while, so I corrected myself and said 15. Then I realized that I had actually gone on a date recently, and as the recommended age for dating in my church starts at 16, I was, in fact, for real this time, 16. We didn't talk for the rest of the dance. The other part I don't like about the age question is that I feel the question puts me on a chart as s

Sad to say, I don't even know what Patrick is the saint of. By going back several generations on my Dad's side, I can claim that I'm Irish. However, he never knew any particular traditions, and for a good portion of his life he didn't even know he was Irish, so when the blessed, jolly day of Saint Patrick comes around, I feel like an average American. Let me amend that: an average Mormon  American. But I made a few gestures of celebration, in my own particular way. aww, look at the little Irish girl dying melted cheese green and pouring it over cooked cauliflower wearing green (mainly because it's socially enforced) eating potatoes, cooked cabbage, and corned beef eating pistachio pudding (hey, it's green) indexing  death records from Ireland reading the Aubrey/Maturin novels by O'Brian (Maturin is Irish) Listening to The High Kings Watching How to Train Your Dragon  (my justification here is that Vikings were an important

This past weekend, right smack in the middle of 2 2-day back-to-back work days, I went to an ACLS class. For those balderdash fans out there, ACLS does NOT stand for Association of Claustrophobics Living Solely, the American Counsel against Love Scenes, or anything else my brothers could come up with. It is the Advanced Cardiac Life Support certification class. Which meant that I was trying to prevent my mannequin from dying on me. I have quite a history with mannequins. Okay, about 5 years. My nursing school instructors would give us a scenario and ask us to speak to the mannequins, which is actually initially really weird. After a year in nursing school, I could go up to a mannequin and talk pretty freely (they have the gift of silence). "Hey, Fred, how are you doing. The chart here says you hurt. Could you show me? Oh, are you paralyzed? Do you have something in your throat?" Etc. One of my favorite experiences was when our lady mannequin gave birth to our baby mann