Alaska Or Bust

Failure was not an option. I got up at 6 am, after only a little over 3 hours sleep and went to work. The sprinklers needed to be fixed today. They have been broken for a good 6 months, but I have been able to manage by attaching a sprinkler attachment to the hose and moving it around. Tomorrow, my trip to Alaska begins, so, the yard must be self-watering or I will come home to a dead garden.

Lindsay tried to fix the system a few weeks ago and gave up. He said something about needing a volt meter, but didn't get around to it. I used the old fashioned method of working with live wires to see what sparked. It has now been rewired, the timers work and I didn't even shock myself.

Now, there is a new problem. The dogs managed to break three sprinkler heads and it wasn't just the heads. The pipe leading to the heads, deep underground broke. After two trips to the hardware store, I got only one fixed.

I'm tired, can't dig anymore or make any more trips to the hardware store. I'm done. I'm hoping that the geysers will spray out sufficient water to keep the yard more or less alive.

In the meantime, I have finished packing. I have my evening gowns, high heels, down jacket and mittens in the suitcase and managed to come in under the airline weight limit. It's not easy packing for a trip involving hiking in cold weather, dancing in formal gowns and getting it all in one suitcase that weighs less than 50 pounds. I had to leave out the tiara.

Anyway, I will be gone a little over a week. Take care.

Icky Stuff

Perhaps this monstrosity is a ring holder, I don't really know. Whatever it is, it gives me the creeps. It looks like it should be coming out of the ground on Halloween.

Sarah is back and we did the lunch and marathon shopping thing. We just picked up where we left off and it was like she was never gone. I've got to be honest, though, it was more exhausting than working a shift in the hospital. Sarah hasn't had any fun stores to shop in during her year on the Central California coast. Making up for lost shopping time, Sarah bought a couch, recliner, ottoman, bench and a shopping cart full of stuff for her new house. I got off a lot cheaper.

This creepy thing was on the back of someone's car. Whenever they hit the brake, the red eyes on the skeleton lit up. Ewww.

Finally, this icky photo is of Meat Loaf performing Paradise by the Dashboard Light. It is true that he is only acting out the lyrics and is demonstrating reaching second base. He is also just trying to be funny and entertain the audience. But I really don't like it.

It is disrespectful to his back-up singer, Aspen Miller. Meat Loaf could simply run his hands up and down her sides like he did in the original video with Ellen Foley. The audience can use their imagination for the rest.

This makes me uncomfortable because I can imagine what it must be like for her to go to work everyday and be pawed by her boss, even if her workplace is the stage and Meat Loaf is her boss. She can't really make him stop it without risking losing her job. He has all of the power and acts like he owns her. I would have much more respect for Meat Loaf if he would treat Aspen like a lady.

Perhaps we are lucky that Meat Loaf didn't do this song with his other back-up singer, who is his daughter. But Aspen Miller is someone else's daughter. She deserves the same consideration and respect.

Paradise by the dashboard light

OCD And Meat Loaf

I don't recall living in a cave for the past thirty years, but I'm starting to wonder. There are other worlds out there that I never knew existed. This realization happened a couple of weeks ago while watching a commercial. I liked it. It is the rock and roll, AT&T commercial where a dad agrees to buy his son a cell phone. It is cute, but completely went over my head. My problem is that I had never heard of Meat Loaf (the singer, not the recipe).

Lindsay mentioned that the song was a parody of Paradise By The Dashboard Light. That meant nothing to me. He found the video on You Tube and made me watch it. I haven't been the same since. I'm not exactly obsessed with Meat Loaf, but I can't stop watching his videos. Well, maybe I am a little obsessed. I have cut down on my blogging because there is only so much time in the day and I have to make time for Meat Loaf. There are thousands of videos of him and I must see them all.

I was already familiar with some of his music, I just didn't know whose music it was. It didn't interest me enough to find out, much less buy it. What I like is watching him perform and analyzing him. His performances over the past thirty years range from genius level to embarrassing. I've been studying his life history and trying to understand his performances in the context of what was happening to him at the time. I could go into a long dissertation on the subject, but who really cares but me?

In the meantime, I'm trapped in this obsession and hope that it goes away soon. But there is hope. My Princess Diana obsession was bad too, but eventually I came to my senses. That only took about fifteen years. It is all ancient history now, but some day I will have to write about how the Princess of Wales affected my life. I'm not expecting as much from Meat Loaf, although I may have to buy some of his CD's.

Crazy Rules

At work, we are all walking around with dead beepers in our pockets. Administration occasionally checks to make sure that we are wearing our beepers and if anyone is beeperles, there is hell to pay. They don't work, but if our carrying a small, dead electronic device makes the bigwigs happy, we will comply.

Actually, we are happy that the beepers died. When they were alive, they drove us nuts. If any patient anywhere on the floor hit their call button, then all of the pagers would go off. The noise or buzzing was non-stop. Several times, I threatened to soak all of the nasty noise-makers in a bucket of water. Perhaps, someone beat me to it. Anyway, they are dead. Woo Hoo!

Administration has come up with a new rule that makes as much sense as carrying a dead beeper, only it is much more dangerous. It involves restraining patients. Administration will not allow us to both put a patient in restraints and have a sitter watch them.

What this means is that if a strong, highly agitated, confused patient must be tied up for their own safety, we are not allowed to have anyone watch them to make sure that they remain safe. We must all leave the room and just hope that they don't break the restraints or hang themselves when they wiggle down and try and jump from the bed. A few years ago, we had to watch a video about a patient who died this way.

We will continue to do what is right and will watch people in restraints when necessary. It is one thing to carry a broken pager, it is quite another thing to allow a dangerous, out of control patient to be left alone. Some rules are meant to be broken.

Angry Wet Dog

I don't know what the big deal was. It was over a hundred degrees. A bath should have felt good.







Georgie was so mad that he refused to sit on the couch with me afterwards.

Creative Parking Solution

This is one way to park two vehicles in a too small garage.

Shopaholic's Dream

Some big development has been going in along the freeway near my house. As usual, the top of a hill was cut off and the sides were terraced like little rice paddies. The steep sides along the freeway were covered in cloth of some kind to protect it from erosion. It is ugly, of course, but nothing worth Blogging about. It is just the kind of thing that happens all of the time.

My first inkling that this development was different was the edge of one building that is visible from the freeway. The building, even in the land of McMansions, was just too big to be a home. It is a residential area, so I figured that it was a new school being built.

Next, a couple of stone monoliths appeared on the side of the steep slope. I didn't know what they were, but didn't really care.

Now, I'm excited and happy. The monoliths are signs. The name Target appeared on one of them. Next came a Kohl's sign, then Circuit City and Lowe's. There is still plenty of room for more store names. Please let there be a Pinkberry up on that hill somewhere.

I live on the side of Santa Clarita that has few stores. If I want something besides food or gas, I have to drive to the other side of the valley. It is so thrilling to have stores a few minutes from my house. With gas at $4.1699 a gallon, I want to drive as little as possible.

Current Cheesecake

Sarah says that her photos in the previous post are out of date. This is a current photo. (In case you are wondering, they are real.)

Life Is Getting Back To Normal

Sarah, my best friend from nursing school is returning to L.A. The central California coast was freezing, windy and overcast. How can a Valley Girl tolerate such conditions? Why should she have to? L.A. is paradise.

Sarah sold her L. A. home over a year ago at the peak of the market and rented a home up north, a couple of blocks from the ocean. In the meantime, the housing market collapsed. Sarah has now purchased a house in the Valley and made out like a bandit. In the meantime, I'm a hundred and fifty thousand dollars poorer, but it's just a paper loss, I keep telling myself. *sob*

Anyway, I'm looking forward to our "ladies who lunch" days and our shopping marathons. The photo above was taken a little over a year ago on our last shopping adventure. We were testing out furniture by lying on it.

We bought so much stuff that day, the only way to get it home was to put down the top on my convertible and pile the stuff on top of Sarah. She could barely breathe underneath the pile.

For the gentlemen who may be new to my Blog, these are a couple of extra shots of Sarah. Yes, she loves to cook and is good at it. I'm looking forward to a good, home-cooked meal.

A Coming Home Surprise

So, the idiot husband went to Thailand and decided to have some fun, which consisted of unprotected sex with prostitutes. In his place, I would have just visited the sites and taken lots of pictures, but that is just me. He is now lying in a hospital bed waiting to see what the cultures grow.

He has a nasty rash in his groin and some of his joints are swollen, red and painful. His lovely, sweet wife thinks he has perhaps gout, although, some rare tropical disease can't be ruled out. It is a terrible shame. They are such a nice couple with two well-behaved, beautiful daughters. The husband appears to have everything, a lovely wife, children, house, good job and gonorrhea. We will know for sure when the cultures come back.

Hopefully, he will have a strain that responds to antibiotics. Some strains of Gonorrhea are not treatable. Who knows what strain is going around in a South-East Asian whorehouse?

He says that he and his wife use condoms, so with some luck, she will be fine. I would expect that the wife will need to be told of her husband's little problem, anyway. Condoms aren't infallible.

I hope that the family isn't torn apart by this, but I could understand why the wife would not want to be married anymore to such an idiot. Perhaps if I were a man, the situation might make more sense, but I honestly don't know what would possess a man to do something like this.

A New Camera

My new camera arrived, so of course, I'm playing with it. It has a pet setting, which is a great idea. It can focus on a moving target, like Georgie, below.

He needs a hair cut, but I like him the way he is. Sometimes I put a pony tail on top of his head to keep the fur out of his eyes. He really hates that. The rest of the time I just put spit on his head, which acts as a styling gel.

Last Fall, I tossed some larkspur seed across the ground and it came up. I really expected the gardeners to think it was a weed and pull it. That is usually what happens. I'm still fuming that the gardeners weed-whacked my day lillies just as they emerged from the ground.

I'm still working on learning the macro setting. The photo below is out of focus, but I liked the artsy effect. I love photographing flowers at an extreme close up. The new camera appears to have more potential to get in close. I like my new toy.

Three Episodes Of Stupidity

A patient was complaining of lung congestion, so the doctor on call was asked to see the patient. He made a quick visit and scribbled an order before leaving the floor. The order said to ambulate the patient. Normally, that would be a good thing to do, but in this case, we will not ambulate him despite what the doctor wrote. The patient is paralyzed from the neck down. If the doctor had shown us the order before leaving the floor, we could have pointed out that minor detail. It's a little sick, but we got some laughs over that.

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Another doctor ordered a setting on a PCA (patient controlled anesthesia) machine that would have been fatal. The nurses were trying to program the machine, but couldn't get the machine to accept the settings. I was asked to come help them. When they told me what they were trying to do, I asked if they were trying to kill the patient. I wasn't being sarcastic. They understood what I meant and answered that no, the patient was young and healthy.

I told them that the dose would likely be fatal, but they insisted that they were just following doctor's orders. I looked at the orders and the decimal point was clearly where they said it was, so the doctor must have been either tired or insane when he wrote it.

The manufacturer of the PCA pump, in a mark of genius, made it impossible to set the machine at such a high setting. Otherwise, the nurses, stupidly, would have carried out the doctor's stupid order and overdosed the patient.

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We have another patient who is going to be staying with us for a while because he has a stupid mother. The patient, who is in his teens had all of the classic signs of appendicitis, so his mom brought him to the ER. The surgeon said that his appendix needed to be removed. The mom refused, so a second surgeon came and said that the appendix needed to come out. The mom refused again. A third surgeon gave the same opinion. The mom finally agreed, the kid was rushed to surgery, but the appendix had already burst. Caught in time, he would have gone home the next day. Now, he will be getting antibiotics for weeks and is one sick kid.

It's a wonder that anyone leaves the hospital alive.

Garden Styles and A New Camera

My garden doesn't look like this very often. There was no sun today, but I didn't mind. It was easier to pretend that I was in England. It takes a great deal of water to keep this green, over-grown look, but I don't really care. I should. Water comes from hundreds of miles away and there is a drought, but still, I don't care. I must have my English garden regardless of the consequences.

Lindsay is in to native gardens. Environmentally, it makes more sense, but it doesn't look like mine. His garden is mostly dirt with dead-looking plants. He has even had problems with Building and Safety responding to neighbor complaints about his yard. What is a meadow to him is an un-mowed lawn to others. After explaining his yard to officials, they will back-off, but still. Who wants a yard that creates enemies?

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I bought my third digital camera today because my two previous cameras are broken. They are still usable, but a challenge to operate. The viewfinder of the Nikon is non-functional as the result of a fall. The flash on the Olympus doesn't work. My new camera is a Canon. I hope that I have better luck with it. It should arrive next week.

Before the digital cameras, I had an old-fashioned Olympus. I was hoping for an engagement ring that Christmas, but got the camera instead. It was completely manual and took time for me to learn, but it took great photos once I got the hang of it. It was so heavy, though, especially with the separate lenses, that I preferred to leave it behind. That got me in trouble with my eventual husband, but jeez, that camera bag felt like it was filled with gold nuggets.

I used that camera for over twenty years, but switched to digital on the same day that I bought my computer. I love being able to see the photos immediately, but it comes at a price. The digital cameras are fragile and don't seem to take as good of shots as I could get with a manual camera. I could buy a manual digital camera, but they are extremely expensive and I don't want to risk spending that kind of money for a camera that may only last a year or two, especially since I'm butter-fingered. But at least the digital cameras are light. There is always one in my purse.

I'll have just enough time to learn the new camera before leaving for Alaska. It is coming up fast. Yippie!

Mystery Blood

I walked around for several hours yesterday with a band aid on my finger because of the belief that my finger was cut. Blood had been dripping from my hand, so I examined my hands. There was a tiny scrape on my finger. It didn't look like much, but there was no better explanation for the blood, so I washed my hands and covered the scrape.

A few hours later, I looked in a mirror and noticed the big bloody scab on the end of my nose. How on earth did I scrape the skin off of it without feeling it? I took the band aid off my finger.

It must be time to trim my nails. Maybe I should wear mittens.

The Red Bags

Sorry the picture is out of focus; I was in a hurry. That's how it is at work lately. Anyway, that red bag is a bio hazard bag. It contains a bloody drain pulled from a patient.



We have special bio hazard bins for icky stuff like that, but the doctors find it easier to simply toss the bags under the counters at the nursing station.



In the doctor's defense, the bio hazard bins are ridiculously far away. Everything is far away at the new hospital. But if the doctors just toss bloody bags at the nursing station, then it becomes our problem and we have to go on the long trek to properly dispose of it.



It is tempting to just leave the bags there and let them pile up, but I'm pretty sure who would get in trouble and it wouldn't be the doctors.

Sky Valentine

It scared the heck out of me. I was sitting on the patio reading the paper when something swooped down out of the sky. It turned out to be a valentine from the sky, a red balloon with "hugs & kisses" written on it. It landed in a red rose bush and got caught.

The dogs weren't too happy about it either. MacKenzie was ready to kill it until she realized that it was just a balloon.

I was left with a problem. Should I keep my valentine or free it so that others could have a surprise too? I decided to keep it by rationalizing that the power company doesn't like Mylar balloons because they tend to knock out the power if they land on a power line.

The next day, I felt guilty that the balloon was trapped on the rose bush. It needed to be freed, so I let it go. It stuck around because the helium was gone. A couple of days later, the wind blew it away. The power is still on, so I guess things turned out okay. But if you don't hear from me for awhile, you'll know what happened.