Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

You can tell I'm out of school because this is my third blog post for the month. Ah. Free time. December is an odd month in Houston. Temperature swings can be between different seasons: yesterday it was in the 70s and sunny; today it is in the 30s and more overcast. This last fact made Mark happy, because it was more in line with the Christmas he knows. Singing in the car to xmas tunes. Note the short sleeves; he loves the chill. I am more familiar with shorter days and longer nights in the Christmas season; when I go to work it is dark, and 12 hours later when I come home it is dark. [This is probably more true the more north you go, but I meant as essentially the sole indicator that Christmas is coming.] But this is a fantastic setting for the Christmas season, because it allows us to celebrate Light.  In a neighborhood of houses we know we will never be able to afford, we looked at how magical the world seems when Christmas lights are emphasizing the best and most ...

In our apartment, I am Queen of the Kitchen. And I make a Royal Mess. Even though I've been baking since I was 6, I didn't realize the blast zone I created was in any way atypical. Until college, when one of my best friends informed me that she had never seen anyone make as much mess in the kitchen as I did when cooking. This actually explains why my mother wasn't as eager for me to cook as my dad was--that, and I usually baked sweets. I haven't yet figured out how to avoid  making a mess, but I thought I had at least gotten better at containing it to a smaller area or cleaning it up or something. I don't think I had adequately tested that theory before marriage, because I didn't cook every night as a single person.  I ate a lot of green smoothies, cereal, tomatoes on toast...hey, as one of my favorite jokes says, if it's just me, why cook?  So I now present better evidence to the public.       As mentioned earlier, I'm in charge of the coo...

Fun fact: my sister is super into decorating for Christmas. Sometimes before Thanksgiving. My contribution is usually less tangible (think "singing carols in the shower") Somehow, this is still basically true. I have practically no Christmas decorations (I found one ornament...) and Mark's decor can all fit in a foot-square box. So to fluff up the winter impact, I scattered around some of his penguin collection above the reach of my cat Ruby. But there was one decoration that I couldn't figure out how to safeguard from Ruby: the round holly-berry tablecloth that Mark has (for some unknown reason) that does not fit our rectangular table. I ended up putting it on the back of the couch, and Ruby has been all over it. So our decorations are heavy on the animal impact. Well, there were animals at Christ's birth.

Last week at church, a marriage counselor suggested to the adults that marriage needs some of the adventuring that is more associated with dating in order to continue a feeling of closeness. I wasn't there for the lesson (yay work!), but Mark not only told me about it, he also followed up on it. As neither of us had ever been to the Texas Renaissance Festival, he suggested we take this weekend to go check it out. I knew that people usually went to the TRF in costume, so I donned my only period-appropriate costume. Notice I have a bard. Right there on the left. Mark went as himself. Which turned out to be okay. "The World According to Mark" Shop. How convenient! We started out our day watching a jousting competition; four "knights" beheaded wooden men, speared hanging hoops, and charged at a target with a lance (think A Knight's Tale ), all while on horse. I'm still amazed anyone can show any accuracy while bouncing up and down and forw...

On Wednesday night, I realized that I have virtually no experience in how to engage young boys in a task. Until last May when I acquired some through marriage, I had no nephews [also no nieces,but not applicable here]. My brothers are not that much younger than me--5 years difference at most. And my immediate family was based thousands of miles away from any young cousins, male or female. Basically, the only qualification* I have to be a Den Mother is that I'm female. It's hard to be Den Mother if you're not female. For the past several weeks, our Den meetings have just been me, my husband, a guy named Zach, and our sole Webelos scout Spencer. Spencer is a good kid, and the first month we were teaching first aid. Hey, I'm a nurse. I got this. Then another scout showed up, one who was not as interested in health algorithms. Mostly I would look at him and ponder what the heck I should do. Fortunately, we switched to athletic lessons. And abruptly had 3 more sco...

It's a normal day in the Swenson household (est'd 2016) with Mark and me looking for snacks in the kitchen, when I pull out an applesauce pouch to eat.  Perhaps the package said "Mix well", or maybe I just thought it needed a shake-up, but I knead the pouch for 10 seconds or so--and Mark starts giggling. At which point I realize that when I started to squeeze the pouch, I started a "wee-bee-wee-dee" sound. I wish I could say this is an anomaly, but as I type this post, I moved my laptop and made a creaky "earrr-Ip" sound. When I rinse dishes, a "shwish" escapes my lips. Most of this I'm doing subconsciously, so I am having a hard time creating a translation dictionary for "Sadie Sounds." But Mark is getting the hang of it.

I'll start off by noting that Rorschach, of inkblot fame, had the great misfortune of having a German name in an English-dominated world, made worse by the fact that of the 9 letters in his name, only 2 of them are vowels. With that off my chest, I'll proceed with an abbreviated account of nursing work of the past 2 days. For some reason, moments of time-sensitive tasks decided to say, to heck with order, we want everything now! Two of my 3 patients had transport at their door  at the same time, while the third needed pain medicine. Then 2 of the 3 would call for pain medicine within 5 minutes [that's intentionally ambiguous] while the other needed help to the bathroom. Or the highly-anxious family of the even-more-anxious patient would say said individual needed the wires and tubing lines straightened out now  because it was bringing on an anxiety attack, and I would be trying to get a 4th patient pain medicine right before his  transport left. When I took my lun...

Prior to getting married and starting school, I would take vacations simply to travel. I now realize that's not normal. It's like the little old lady who swallowed a fly--we don't know why she swallowed that fly. Maybe because she was bored, and she could. I still have a little travel bug in me, but now it's a bit more escapist. Laundry to do and thank-you cards to write and a car to fix and school books to buy? Let's put that on hold and drive to Austin. This is not Austin. It's Buccees--a mega-gas-station rest stop. This was our first non-honeymoon vacation as a couple. Mark did the planning, and I provided the location and motivation. Good teamwork. Lady Bird Lake Trail! It was so much fun to introduce Mark to the Hill Country of Texas (as well as Buccee's. That was entertaining too.) Most of the time we were indoors [because it's August in Texas...] but as we drove around we got to appreciate the skyline of hills. Purple martins. They ...

My shift started with a warning from the night shift nurse: "The patient told me he was horny, so I'm interested to know how your day goes." Oh, boy. I went into his room, and he said I looked good. My response was "Well, I got dressed." [which was the WRONG thing to say; I meant it as 'didn't comb my hair, but I'm here and appropriately wearing scrubs', but he didn't take it that way.] He exclaimed "Damnit" then followed it up with calling me a tall glass of water. Such remarks can be flattering, and afterwards they're pretty funny, but in the midst of it, it's awkward. How do you play it off so that the comments stop, but still get them to agree to finger pokes for blood sugar checks? Even though he didn't make any other inappropriate remarks, for the rest of the day, I tried to put off every entry in his room--which was difficult, because I was supposed to do flap checks (a pulse check on a surgery site) every...

I just had an eureka moment. And just like Archimedes, I want to share it. Without the whole complete exposure thing. RomCom, or rather, some romance and some comedy/humor, [and I'm not referring to the movie genre] are integral to surviving relationships. Probably rather key in starting relationships, too. I base this on my relationship with Mark, and since everyone can't have a relationship with Mark [hands off, ladies], I'll give some examples. For starters, Mark and I met on a dating website. They are not romantic, but they are pretty funny. [ Like the old guy who mass e-mailed females asking for something more than platonic love. I didn't respond to that one .] Under the username soccerfan or something like that, Mark messaged me--woolbluegirl--friendly non-aggressive chatter. And so we communicated, until he found out that he was also simultaneously messaging my sister. He handled it well by offering to go on dates with both of us, and decide between us at a l...

I know I'm not a good liar. Fortunately, I'm not in a career where that comes up [and in case you're wondering how that can be when I work in a cancer hospital, the answer is I either tell the truth or tell the patient to ask their doctors]  and hopefully the people who want to be flattered don't talk to me. Actually, I usually hope that I'm not called upon to say anything. Turns out that's not enough. I am finally beginning to understand that I have an expressive face. It helps that various someones have told me that 5 or 6 times. [sometimes I can be dense. Or just inattentive.] I'm pretty sure some friends mentioned it to me in college. I know some of my co-workers have told me...usually they burst out laughing and say "your face!" and I'm assuming that they aren't talking about its general appearance. Plus there is this janitor who calls me the lady of a thousand faces; I think he often catches me when I'm frustrated with somet...

When confronted with a decision between a pet dog and a pet cat, a comfortably-sedated girl chose the cat, no question. Forget the dog. My then-fiancé and I vaguely considered the same decision as we were evaluating what changes marriage would bring, and if apartment restrictions would make us choose. How can one choose a favorite child-from-two-separate-species-not-related-to-you? We decided we'd decide later. "Later" came without my permission and without our consent when I got word that my dog had run away from the pet sitter while I was out of town. She is an odd-looking dog (hairless except for a Mohawk), so I'm not sure anyone would take her in, but she was super smart and loyal and quiet and didn't lick people and she loved me. My cat does not have those qualities. She sheds a bunch even when I comb the loose hairs out; I find cat hair clinging electrostatically to edges of tea cups and on floor mats. Yes, she's around my leg. Sometime...