Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

 I know Halloween is beloved by many people, either for the candy or the costumes [or even both!], but for me it's one of those "oh yeah wow the holiday is this week gosh I haven't done anything" celebrations. Thus, when discovering that our church Halloween party was less than 7 days away, I put Mark in charge of deciding on costumes. To my surprise, he was willing to go as "Stitch" if I would go as "Lilo." The plan was we would order his costume online, and I would wear one of Mark's Hawaiian shirts [which he never wears, to my disappointment].  One of our Sunday School kids In the back of my mind, I told myself I should also find that black hair wig that I got almost a decade ago, to better match Lilo's appearance. But this week was so busy that I didn't get that thought to the front of my mind until the day of the party. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I tore the house apart looking for that wig. I pulled out boxes, looke...

 In an unexpected series of events, I got a free piano. There had been an upright piano on the Behavioral Health unit where I work, but because it had metal wires--making it a safety issue for patients who will diligently find a way to harm themselves--it had to be kept locked in a meeting room. It wasn't bothering anyone there, but once we started having morning rounds in-person again, the room was becoming quite crowded. Piano needed to go, I offered to take it, and voila, piano. Obviously in need of some elbow grease It actually hasn't yet left the building; I just moved it from the meeting room into my office one floor up [thank goodness for elevators. also for easy-going officemates].  exhibit A: laminate Once that was done, I consulted the World Wide Web for DIY piano renovations and related questions, which is how I learned that those piano keys are not ivory. I started disassembling it a piece at a time, taking home some of them, partly so that I could consult Mark, bu...

 In the six-odd years Mark and I have been married, we have found that there are two truths about family trips: When we visit my parents, we will do something outdoorsy; and when we visit his parents, we will play hand-and-foot canasta. It is guarantees like these that make it possible for me to avoid planning activities until we get there. It also makes it so that anything else that we do feels like a bonus.  Low expectations = high satisfaction. Or something like that. For example, the visit to my parents overlapped my youngest brother's visit to the parents by 3.25 days. Which means we got to coo over our nieces...and include Jaron and Liz in the obligatory outdoors activity. Bonus. Also, I went on a second  outdoors activity with my dad on e-mountain bikes. Two hour ride, over approximately 26 miles, with only one crash (which was me). And we had been so close to making it all the way without incident! Unfortunately, there was a rock chunk in the path, and I saw it in...

When I first got into the nursing career, I worked at a cancer institution, and I hadn't really expected that, but since cancer is not its own clinical course in the university nursing curriculum, really I didn't have much expectation at all. I have loved the decade I spent working with cancer patients, and I had thought I would keep working with cancer patients...but that's not how life turned out.  Instead, flashback to my undergrad pharmacology and psychiatry clinical courses, when I had thought, Oh, this is not for me. I was terrible at keeping all the street drugs [and their side effects, and slang terms, and reversal agents] straight, and I definitely remember not liking my psychiatry nursing professor at all--yeah so back to present times, and that's roughly what my job is now. Go figure. My actual job, I admit, is not bonified psychiatry. I'm the medical nurse practitioner in charge of the general medical  care of all of the patients in the inpatient psych w...

 For the first time since moving to DC, this past weekend Mark and I acted like tourists. Technically I suppose we were hosts to my parents, who were tourists, but since I didn't actually know what I was doing, it feels strange to consider myself a host. Essentially, there were two parts: the Religious, and the Not Religious [but not irreligious]. Religious One of the museums we went to was the Museum of the Bible, which honestly I was suspicious about because balancing capitalism with spiritualism is a delicate thing. I liked this jar because it had a baby jar And there were parts that were a bit kitschy or overwrought (like the voiceover during the Virtual Reality of the Holy Lands), and parts that were overwhelming (like the collection of Bibles throughout the ages...or at least until the King James Version). And though I enjoyed the walk-throughs of the Old Testament and New Testament, I think my favorite part was talking with a Jewish scribe about the story of Hannah. Hannah i...

 I would rather not write this post on Mothers' Day, but I suppose it is an appropriate topic. Actually, I'd rather not write this post at all, but I am so troubled by recent legal proceedings that the choices before me seem to be--write; or--become angry at everybody. I come to this topic as a woman, most obviously because I am one, but more to my intent, I come as a fierce defender of woman. That's not to say all women are great. There are plenty I don't like, and a few that sometimes I really hate, but  woman  is my primary viewpoint. And from that viewpoint, I am disgusted with the wave of legislation that is seeking to limit women's options in health. Please, just consider: is it fair to ban abortion but refuse to offer maternal support? Is it fair to put all of the financial burden of pregnancy and childcare on the woman when--last I checked--it takes two to make a baby? Is it fair to penalize just the woman? Look, I get it, life isn't fair...but we'...

 I do not know if many cultures share the idiom of the glass half full or half empty, but surely there is a comparable expression among all people: the same ambiguous experience can be seen as good, or can be seen as bad. It all depends on the person looking. I suspect that I have not appreciated that analogy much, perhaps because it has become too mundane to consider much. When something's always there, you stop seeing it. So it is quite possible that I have had hundreds of experiences that relate to the perceived volume of cups, but I have just one on my mind. For the past 3 months, I have had abdominal bloating and pain. The whys aren't important [for this blog, I mean. And anyway, they are at this point still unknown] , but the experience is. It leaves me frustrated and uncomfortable. Yet here's the interesting bit: 2 years ago, after my second spinal surgery, I went through similar days of abdominal bloating and pain [the surgical approach was from the front, meaning t...