A little blurb from the Gopher State

So I haven’t written in a bit, and I figured that it’s about time I get some words out there again.  So here goes.  

I keep hearing about this Harlem Shake thing, and I finally went out on YouTube to find out what all the fuss is about.  I don’t get it.  Maybe I’m too old or something.  It looks to me like a bunch of people (mostly dudes) shaking their wieners around while wearing bizarre costumes.  Please tell me if I’m missing something, because clearly, I don’t understand.  It is interesting to watch all the different variations people have done on it, some are actually quite creative.  But one thing seems to remain the same...the wiener shaking.  Kind of disturbing seeing someone do it in a spandex suit or a Speedo...hahaha!  

Jess and I hiking at Bear Mountain

I’ve been short all my life.  Relatively.  I peaked a few years ago at 5’5” (one time, Dana, I swear it actually happened!), but have been in the ballpark of 5’4 and change” for last few years.  When I graduated from high school I was 5’1” and continued to grow throughout college.  I was a late bloomer, I guess.  For most of my life, everyone around me has been taller than me, and those who were shorter were small children.  I was always looking up to some degree.  I went through a phase of dating guys who were 6’5” or taller...not sure what I was thinking.  I think I was just fascinated partly by the length of their forearms and lower legs.  Seriously...if I see a tall man, I stare at his arms and legs.  I can’t help it.  It’s just something that I do.  I just think to myself...his bones are SO long!  When Simon and I moved to Flagstaff, I found myself befriending some very short women.  Shorter than me.  I’m talking like 5 feet tall...with shoes on...if they’re lucky.  For the first time in my life, I actually felt tall.  I had to bend over to hug these women.  I found myself looking down rather than up to make eye contact.  It’s such a weird feeling at 33 years old to be taller than my peers.  

It completely boggles my mind how people who live in Rochester, who drive in winter conditions for roughly six months out of every year, cannot drive in the snow.  Insane.  I was out and about today and was just baffled by the amount of people driving 40 in a 65, by the number of people spinning their wheels in the middle of the road because they were canning on the accelerator, and by those who were fishtailing around every corner.  Come on Minnesota, you can drive better than that!  I’ve spent my last three winters living in Florida and even I remember how to drive in the snow.  And yes, having a four-wheel drive vehicle helps, but I’m finding that not all four-wheel drive vehicles drive the same.  For instance, my Grand Cherokee slides around way more than my Liberty ever did.  It fishtails so frequently that I’m honestly thinking about putting some bags of softener salt in the back.  It’s actually pretty ridiculous, to tell you the truth.  And yes, it has four-wheel drive functionality, but instead of your standard 4 low, 4 high, etc, it has SNOW, MUD, ROCKS, and SPORT.  What in the world is SPORT?  One would think that the fishtailing would greatly decrease while driving in snow with the SNOW function engaged, but there’s very little difference.  What exactly is SNOW anyway?  Is it 4 high?  Is it part-time 4 high where most of the power is still in the back, but a little bit is in the front?  What in the world is going on?  And why can’t I corner the thing in the snow?  Frustrating.  I suppose I should get around to reading the manual, but I feel like a moniker entitled SNOW ought to be pretty intuitive.  There I go, assuming things again.  

A funny thing about Flagstaff that I feel is worth mentioning is the number of seafoam green pickup trucks driving around.  Flagstaff isn’t really all that big, but it’s not tiny either.  During my time there I counted at least four different seafoam green trucks.  And on our way home, I saw another one sitting outside a house in eastern Arizona.  They are all different styles, makes, and models of trucks too, so it wasn’t just specific to one type.  I wonder if there was some sort of promotion?  They’re definitely not faded either...someone purposely painted them that color.  I tried to Google it, but came up with nothing.  I guess I’ll just have to keep wondering.  

Myself, Ellen, Candi, and Kate at the Disney Princess Race

Recently I ran my first half-marathon.  Well, I didn’t “run” it, per se, but I participated in it and I finished it, which was my only goal.  I actually ended up running more than I thought I would...I had initially planned on walking over half of it because I didn’t think that I would physically be able to run the entire time.  I really didn’t stop running (by my own accord) until around mile 10.  It’s weird how the energy of thousands of other people running right along with you motivates you.  The race I did was the Disney Princess Half-Marathon, and it was a complete spectacle.  From start to finish, a spectacle.  To set the stage, there were over 26,000 people who registered for this race.  About 23,000 or so actually showed up to run it...most of them wearing tutus...even the men.  :)  I ran with three other girls, and we all had matching tutus, which was fun.  I enjoyed that part of it.  I even enjoyed the running part of it, weird as that is.  I don’t know that I would ever do this particular race again though.  There were just too many people and the course wasn’t set up to handle the hoards of runners.  There was a point in the race where I knew with absolute certainty that if I tripped and fell, I would probably be trampled to death.  Not really a good thought when you’re supposed to be in the Happiest Place on Earth.  If you’ve been to Disney and you know Main Street in the Magic Kingdom, imagine thousands of runners trying to get through there at one time.  Not gonna happen.  Add to that the spectators that they allowed in to cheer us on, which narrowed the course even more.  I did appreciate the fact that people got up at the butt-crack of dawn to cheer us on though.  :)  We even went through Cinderella’s castle, which was a complete bottleneck.  I knew going into it that this race was not one where I would set a personal best for time, but I was a little taken aback by how the race itself turned out to be the limiting factor in my pace, and not the fact that I hadn’t trained all that hard in preparation for it.  There were so many people walking this race that it was impossible at times to get around them.  And I give them credit for walking it...13 miles is a long walk (and in 3 hours and 30 minutes besides), so I’m not ragging on people who walked it, especially since that was my original intention.  I just wish that the course would have been wider so that the runners could stick to one side, and the walkers could stick to the other.  With the amount of people there, that was pretty much impossible.  I’ve already signed up for another half-marathon taking place in Vancouver in August of this year.  The event capped at 10,000 runners, so it’ll be interesting to see how different it is from the Disney race.  I’m looking forward to it, and I’m looking forward to being able to run outside again.  I hate running on the treadmill.  

Us girls at Epcot

Back to Disney, I have to say that I was somewhat impressed by it.  I went into it thinking that it was going to be like any other tourist trap where they serve you crappy food, charge you exorbitant amounts of money for it, and don’t give you the time of day while doing it.  Every single employee I came into contact with was nothing but pleasant.  They were all smiling.  They go out of their way to talk to you and wish you good morning, good evening, etc.  I didn’t feel like the parks were nothing but gift shops, which was how I felt when I went to Universal Studios a few years back.  I liked that there are free shuttles running constantly that will transport you from park to park, to all the resorts, and to Downtown Disney, which is like a mall/shopping center.  Even the bus drivers were really pleasant.  The food we had was fantastic, definitely better than I had been expecting.  I was impressed that they actually had sit-down restaurants there, and not just little fast-food/cafeteria-style places.  It was more than what you’d pay at a typical restaurant, but I expected that.  The good thing was that I didn’t feel like I was being totally taken advantage of, even though I probably was.  Isn’t that what touristy places do?  Disney definitely has it dialed in to make you feel like you’re not a cuckhold, and they do it well.  One of the good things too about going to the Disney parks was that my friend’s cousin works for Disney, so he told us all the in’s and out’s of the parks and helped us move through them a little better than had we tried to navigate them on our own (and he got us in for free...bonus!).  Those parks are huge, and I would have gotten lost.  We ended up spending the majority of our day at Epcot, and we didn’t even see the whole thing.  I really enjoyed it there though, and am looking forward to going back someday.  One funny thing about Disney...they love their fireworks.  It’s almost comical how many fireworks the parks go though in the average day, and they like them off every single day.  When we started our marathon, they lit off fireworks at the start of each group.  My friend’s cousin made a comment that Disney spends more on fireworks in one day than his yearly salary.  Ouch.  The fireworks sure were pretty though.  So yeah...Disney gets a thumb’s up from me.  Universal Studios, on the other hand, was terrible.  I most likely will never go back there.  

A bit of my inspiration

So I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do with my life when I grow up.  At 33 years old I still sometimes think that being a nurse is just something to do until the next thing comes along.  I thought that when I first started out nursing though, and here I am, almost 11 years later still doing the same thing.  I enjoy my job, even more so now that I’m doing the travel nursing aspect of it.  I think that it’s going to be a drastic change for me to go back to staying in one place for an indeterminate amount of time.  I like the flexibility of working my way through the country one hospital at a time.  But like all things, I know that I won’t be able to do it forever, and there will come a day when I’ve decided that I’ve had enough of working in hospitals.  I don’t know if it’ll be a single event that tips the tables or just a build up of things that I can’t get past.  It’s hard to say until I’m there.  I’ve been thinking though, that someday I might go back to school to be a mortician.  I know, that sounds morbid, but it’s something I’ve always found fascinating.  Actually, I think being a coroner would be even more interesting, but I’m not about to put myself through 8 years of medical school to learn how to treat living people, then do a total 180 and start working on people who have passed.  So yeah, I don’t know.  I’ve always felt a particular kinship to the dealings of end of life care.  I really enjoy hospice care in the hospital.  I think that there is a whole world of comfort you can bring to a person and their family members when death is near, and I enjoy providing that comfort.  I always have.  I think it’s something that I’m good at, and maybe something that I should pursue in the years ahead.  The jump from taking care of dying people to taking care of dead people doesn’t seem like that big of a stretch to me...it’s all a part of life.  It’s weird, I know, but I think it’s one of those things where you’re grateful that someone has an interest in it, because it’s not something that you’d never want to do yourself.  I feel that way about people who work with psych patients, or people who work in emergency rooms, people who build houses, people who fly airplanes...not something I ever care to do myself, but I’m glad there are people out there who do.  So yeah.  There’s that.  I think it’s years away, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about.  A lot of my friends have master’s degrees in one thing or another, and they ask me every now and then if I’ll ever get my master’s in nursing.  The answer has always been no.  I would have to completely change my role as a nurse if I got a master’s degree, and the roles that are currently available for master’s level nursing don’t interest me.  Too much responsibility, and I don’t care for any of the curriculums I’ve researched, and I know there’s going to come a day when I just don’t really want to work in healthcare.  I’m glad that I’ve found a new interest, because for a while there it was a little daunting to think that I didn’t have a backup plan in the event that nursing no longer was an option.

I’m not normally a person who hangs onto quotes, but I came across one the other day that really resonated with me: “There is no ideal world for you to wait around for. The world is always just what it is now, and it’s up to you how you respond to it.”  It’s so true.  I think that we waste so much time worrying about the future and what it holds for us, that sometimes we forget to live for today.  I have friends and family members who are actively preparing for the apocalypse.  To be honest, I don’t want to survive the apocalypse.  If the end of life as we know it comes down to fighting for resources and stashing away anything that might be construed as valuable, I don’t want anything to do with it.  No disrespect to those who intend to stick it out, but that just doesn’t interest me.  It also made me think about people who are on the brink of making the decision to have children, the ones who say, “I’m just not sure I want to raise a child in this world, the way it is now.”  The world is what it is.  My mom said that before having me, she had the same thought.  And here I am, doing just fine, living my own life...and pretty decently, if I say so myself.  Of course, there are all sorts of reasons not to have children, but I hope that the state of the world isn’t one of them.  You make your own utopia.  Of course, that’s easy for me say, seeing as I don’t want to have children of my own, screwed up world or not.  I think the world holds just as many dangers to adults as it does to children.  And honestly, is the world any more dangerous than it used to be?  Or does it just seem that way because of the media reporting every last grisly detail of every single crime against humanity?  I wonder about that sometimes.  I remember hearing about local crimes when I was growing up, and I remember then how scared we were at times.  And now we hear about crimes from all over the country, all over the world.  And it’s not that I don’t think we shouldn’t be aware of the atrocities that people do to each other, but do we need to hear about it so much?  Can’t we hear a little good news once in a while?  Can’t hear about how the good people in the world are making a difference?  It’s easy to think that our world is going to hell in a hand basket when all you hear about are the bad things.  

So I don’t make New Year’s resolutions.  I learned a long time ago that there’s no use feeling bad about failing in something that I never had a chance of succeeding in the first place.  Maybe my attitude on the whole thing is part of the problem.  Or not.  I don’t waste time thinking about it.  But with everyone talking about what they’re going to give up, or what they’re going to do more of this year, I can’t help but think of my own area of improvement.  So here are a few things that I’ve come up with for this year:  

1. I’m going to try to eat better.  I know, that’s vague, and everyone says that, but I’m really going to try to be aware of what I’m putting in my body.  I’m going to start buying meat from animals that are raised and killed humanely, preferably organic as well.  I’m going to try to eat more fruits and veggies, and to drink more water.  I’m going to eat less wheat and corn, as they are two of the biggest genetically modified food products, and I just don’t think we should be messing with that sort of thing, let alone eating it.  I know there are a lot of genetically modified food products out there and that cutting them all out is virtually impossible at this point, but until our government starts labeling them (like they should be) I’m going to try to stay away from the known obvious ones.  Simon and I have talked about trying to totally cut out corn and wheat products from our diet, which is going to be difficult.  But we’re going to try...it’s the least we can do.  
2. I’m going to try to find products that are certified cruelty-free, meaning they don’t use animal products and they don’t test their products on animals.  I’m not going all PETA on you all (although despite their craziness, they do some really great things every now and then), I just don’t think it’s right to test products on animals, not to mention the way they are tested is completely inhumane.  If you’d like to join me, a list of some known cruelty-free products can be found HERE.  Check out the comment threads, as they also contribute a few that are not in the original list, and some insight into some discrepancies with the original list.  
3. I’m going to try to exercise more, and I think participating in organized races is a good way to keep me on track with that.  I’m not going to go all crazy and run every single day, but I think that maintaining some sort of physical fitness is an attainable goal for me...that will be the hardest goal for me to reach, as I’m quite comfortable just sitting on the couch, or sitting at the computer stalking people on Facebook.  :)  Simon is a great motivator, but there are days even he can’t get me off the couch.  I’m going to try to work on that.  As I mentioned earlier, I signed up for a half-marathon in August, and I’ll be doing a Run For Your Lives 5k in April.  If you’re not familiar with Run For Your Lives, it’s an obstacle course race where people dressed up as zombies chase you while you’re running in an attempt to steal the flags off your belt.  Sounds interesting.  I might have nightmares afterwards.  
4. I will not shop at Walmart.  I’ve been working on this goal for several years now, and I’m going to try to be more steadfast in my resolve on this one.  I know I’m only one person, and I don‘t have hardcore reasons for not shopping there, but I don’t like what they do to communities, I don’t like the quality of products that they offer, and I don’t like the way they treat their employees.  I think that’s reason enough to stay away from there.
5. I might think about making some of my own household products.  That’s a lofty endeavor, and I’m not sure that I’m up for it.  But it’s something that I’ve been tossing around in my head.  A friend of mine has a blog and she’s started posting household products that she’s making, and she’s entitled them “good enough to eat.”  Everything that goes into her products is completely edible.  Her standpoint is that if it’s good enough for your insides, it’s good enough for your outsides.  I concur.
6. I am going to quit buying things.  I am a buyer of things...doesn’t matter what it is, I buy it.  I have more shoes, shirts, pants, bags, decks of cards, undies, socks, kitchen utensils, towels, and bath products than I know what to do with.  It’s obscene.  So I have decided that I will not buy anything new without first getting rid of something else.  And really, I could stand to get rid of things without replacing them.  How many long-sleeved shirts does one person need?  Apparently at one point I thought I needed somewhere in the ballpark of 40.  No big deal, right?  My friends love it when I do my yearly closet dive.  They take home things that have been worn once, twice, and sometimes not at all.  They even score things with the tags still on.  Good for them, not so good for me.  You’d think that after traveling for 7 years I would have learned to downsize by now.  Nope.  This is one of my most important goals for this year.  I should have put it at the top!  It’s hard traveling with so little though...there are times when I wish I had that certain shirt or those pair of jeans, when I wish I could keep up with the trends.  Funny how at the end of the day, all I ever wear are jeans, a tshirt, and a hoodie.  That’s just me.  I should embrace it.  I’ve actually been able to sell some of my nicer stuff on eBay, which has helped absorb some of my shopping deficits (sorry girls, Lululemon has high resale value, you’ll never see it in my closet-dive bin).  So there’s that.  I’m getting there.  It’s an illness.  Maybe I should go on meds.  Or just eat more chips...they make me happy...particularly the Kettle brand jalapeño ones...they’re the bomb.      

I sound like I’m turning into a hippie.  Maybe to some degree I am.  I think I’ve just reached a point where I don’t blindly trust what I’m being told, I don’t blindly trust what’s on a label, and I want to be as aware as I can be of what I’m eating, drinking, using, and coming into contact with on a day to day basis, and also how my choices affect others, both near and far.  I’m thinking about me and what I can do for myself to be the best me I can be.  :)  But...I’m being realistic about me and my life and the people in my life...I will not grill you on where you get your chicken, or where you buy your shoes, or what household products you use.  People make the best choices for themselves and their families, and just because they are different than mine, that doesn’t make them wrong.  The choices I’m making are for me and my household, and I don’t expect anyone else go out of their way for me.  So please, invite me over for dinner.  I love it when I don’t have to cook.  :)  And I’m not giving up Doritos.  I know they’re full of MSG, they’re made of corn, and probably more artificial flavors and colors than I can count, but I love those damn things.  I’ve had them exactly twice (well, maybe three times...do the little bags count??) since the beginning of the year.  So I’m not giving them up, but I’m going to try to eat less of them.  That’s a compromise I can live with.  :)                 

Bye Bye Birdie

Lounging by the pool in Cape Coral, FL

It’s a hard thing, losing a pet.  It’s been three days without the Bird, and I still find myself looking for her.  I was under the assumption that since she had never lived here with us in Flagstaff, I wouldn’t miss her as much.  Don’t misunderstand...of course I was going to miss her terribly, but since the end of September, Lady hadn’t been a part of my everyday routine.  When Simon and I made the decision to leave her in Minnesota with my parents for this leg of our adventure, it was one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make in regard to my pets.  Lady had gone everywhere with us for the last few years...it just felt wrong to leave her behind.  Of course she was in the best of hands...few pets are more spoiled than the pets at Sharon and Richard’s house.  I knew she would miss us and we her, but at the time it was the best decision to make for all of us.  As Lady had gotten older, she had started to have less control of her bladder, as all older living things do.  Having accidents was so stressful for her.  She would obsessively clean herself afterwards, and would even try to clean up any bedding or carpet that she had soiled.  She was always watching me out of the corner of her eye, expecting the discipline that she would have received in her younger years for peeing in the house.  I assumed (hopefully correctly, she never did tell me otherwise) that it would be less stressful for her to stay in Minnesota with my parents, who work shorter hours than I, and  who would be more available to let her out more often.  I thought that maybe the stress of not being with Simon and I would be lessened by a decrease in accidents.  And I can’t say for sure.  At the time it seemed like the right decision to make, for all of us.  So Simon and I and the pugs went to Arizona without her.  I cried for about the first half hour, feeling like I had abandoned my most loyal friend.  I had a sense of peace in leaving her behind, knowing that she was going to receive the best care in the world, but I knew that I was going to miss my buddy, my constant companion for over 11 years.        

Lady at the Outer Banks in North Carolina

In early January, my parents brought her down to Arizona with them (and their two dogs) on their regular road trip to the Southwest.  I could tell that there was something different about Lady when she arrived in Arizona.  She was entering her 16th year of life, and life in general had taken its toll on her.  She had led quite the full life for your average dog, and I have no regrets about all the things we did with her and all the places we went together.  In fact, I wish we would have had time to do more.  But everyone wishes that when they lose a family member, a friend, or a pet.  Lady was all three of those things to me and to my family.  I know it’s probably a bit of a “crazy dog lady” thing to do, but I’m going to tell her story...give her a bit of an obit, if you will.  Of course there will be nothing “bit” about it, as I’m not known for my short prose.  It’s the least I can do for her, and I think it’ll help me with the grieving process as well.  So sit back and get comfy, and enjoy reading about the full life of my best good friend.  Rest in peace Ladybird, Birdie Boo, the Bird, Old Girl, Ladybug, Binners, Laderbins, Bird Butt, Big Girl, and whatever other name she might have been known by to anyone she met.

Passive snuggling with Cooper

I met Lady when I was 21 and going through an early quarter-life crisis.  I had just finished my junior year of nursing school, and I just didn’t have a great feeling for the nursing profession.  In my younger years, I had always wanted to be a veterinarian.  Always always always.  Animals had always been my passion, especially dogs.  When it came time to meet with my high school guidance counselor to decide on a career path, he had dissuaded me from the veterinary field, stating that the education process was long, that there weren’t a whole lot of schools in the area that offered a veterinary degree, and that veterinary jobs are hard to come by.  I took him at his word and did no research of my own, and we settled on nursing instead.  Nursing was in the medical field, and it was still caring for living things.  I thought that it probably wasn’t too much of a stretch taking care of people versus animals (and there are days when I have to assume that it isn’t different at all).  And...I was allergic to animals.  Pretty much all animals, especially the ones with hair.  I figured it probably wasn’t the best idea to take on a career in which I was allergic to all of my patients.  So nursing it was.  I did all right.  Nursing school is tough, and having been out in the profession for a while, I feel that there are schools that prepare their students for what nursing is really like, versus what it should be like in theory.  My school fell into the latter category, and by the end of my junior year I still didn’t feel like I knew what nurses really did.  I was having doubts, and I was seriously considering dropping out of the program all together and pursuing my original career choice, which was veterinary science.  

At the top of Hanging Rock with Matt, Suzie, Simon, and I

At the behest of my incredibly intelligent mom, I decided that summer to get a job in a place that takes care of animals.  Either a vet office, a pet shelter, or something of the like.  I ended up landing a position at Paws and Claws, the local humane society in the Rochester area.  Of course, taking this job came with a few stipulations from my parents.  Well, just one...I was not allowed to bring any animals home.  Ha.  We should have all known from the start how successful that stipulation was going to be.  So I got the job at the shelter, while simultaneously doing a nursing internship at St. Mary’s Hospital.  I figured one way or another, I was going to figure out what I was supposed to do with the rest of my life in regards to a career.  And I did.  My nursing internship showed me what nurses really do, what a difference they can make, and how important they are to the patients they care for.  I found my stride, and decided that nursing was the right choice for me.  Scooping poop at the dog shelter...not so much.  I came home multiple times that summer covered in “muddy” foot prints from my canine patrons.  “oh cute, muddy paw prints!” people would say.  “That’s not mud.” was the only response necessary to have them recoiling in disgust.  Yep, all part of taking care of animals (although I do get poop on me at the hospital too...just less of it...hahaha!).  I continued my job at the dog shelter throughout the summer.  It was sometime in July that I first met Lady.  I came to work in the morning and there was this sweet little dog just sitting in her kennel, while all the other dogs were going batshit crazy like they always did in the morning.  Water bowls were flying, poop and pee was spraying literally everywhere, a barking chorus of 20+ dogs greeted me and did...not...stop for the entire 8 hours of my shift.  That was my typical day.  Apparently Lady had been found on a farm outside of Plainview, MN, where she had given birth to a litter of puppies.  The people who lived on the farm were able to give all the puppies away, but no one wanted Lady, so they brought her to the shelter.    

She always curled up in the littlest of dog beds

Lady was different than the other dogs.  She didn’t bark, she didn’t mess in her kennel, and she never went nuts in the morning or any other time for that matter.  I would go into her kennel with her, and she would gently jump up and put her paws on me, longing to be petted.  And to be taken out...she would go about 14 hours without going to the bathroom because she refused to mess in her kennel.  And these were big kennels...she could have gone and easily gotten away from it, but she didn’t.  She waited.  I bonded with her almost instantly, and I looked forward to the days that I worked so I could spend time with her.  After she had been at the shelter for a few weeks, I found out that she was going to be adopted by a couple of ladies who were venturing into dog ownership.  They were cat people, and thought that if they could just find a nice, calm dog, the transition from cat-people to dog-people might not be too difficult.  I was so sad to see her go, but happy at the same time in the hopes that she had found a new home.  A couple weeks later I worked the afternoon shift, and was out walking one of the other inmates (as I called them) when I looked up at the outside runs, and there was Lady, watching me.  Seriously, I ran back to the shelter and instantly went to her cage, where she jumped up on me was so happy to see me.  It was then I decided that I had to have her.  I emailed my college roommates and asked them if it was okay if I brought a dog with me to our senior year of school.  I wouldn’t say it was a unanimous “yes,” but everyone agreed on some level that it would be all right to have a dog living with us (by the way, we were some of the coolest people at college because of that dog...I’ll get to that later).  Convincing my parents was another matter.  Mom was pretty easy to convince, and she deferred the decision to my dad.  So I waited until he was taking a nap to ask him, as the odds of getting an agreeable answer out of him are better when he’s sleeping.  All he asked was, “How big is she?”  I told him about 15-20 pounds, since that’s what they told me at the shelter and I hadn’t actually weighed her myself.  “All right then” was all he said before rolling over and going back to sleep.  I had won!  The very next day I went to the shelter and got her.  Upon arriving home, the first thing my dad said was, “There’s no way that dog is 15 pounds.”  Yeah...she was closer to 35 (okay, 45), but there she was.  After a brief snaffoo with some potty-training (for some reason she thought my brother Mike’s room was her personal bathroom),  she had become part of the family.

Hiking at Hixon Forest in LaCrosse.  The sun was in my eyes

I learned a few things about her in those first few weeks I had her.  She was terrified of men.  I learned from the higher ups at the shelter that when the vet did her intake exam, he noticed that she had a cracked tooth, in a pattern that is more consistent with being struck in the face than by chewing.  So it was assumed that she had been abused by someone at some point, most likely a tallish man.  So she was not having anything to do with my brothers or my dad.  In fact, she nipped at Mike the first time she met him, which is odd since he was the smallest and youngest of the guys living in the house.  She connected with my dad the quickest, and came to love my brothers too.  I think taking her to college with me was the best thing for her to get over that as well...I lived with 5 other girls, 3 of whom had boyfriends who were always coming and going.  She had no choice but to be around men almost at a constant.  And she did get better.  I think she was mostly over her fear of men by the time I finished my senior year.  Another weird thing about her is that she didn’t know how to play with toys.  We’re thinking that she was around 4 years old when I got her, and I honestly don’t know that anyone ever played with her in those first years of her life.  Instead of playing with toys, she would sit down and rip them to shreds until there was nothing left but bits of fuzz, some plastic pieces, and sometimes a squeaker.  She did know how to catch balls, but she would neither chase them nor bring them back.  You basically had to bounce the ball right at her head, and then she would catch it.  And then drop it.  And that was the end of it.  She was absolutely terrified of thunder.  I can’t even count the number of times that she tried to wedge herself under the bed, behind the entertainment center, under the end tables, or in the corner during a storm.  She panted, she puffed, she paced.  There was no consoling her.  I tried wrapping her up in a blanket or snuggling with her, but she wouldn’t have any of it.  She just trembled until the storm passed, and then life resumed.  As she got older and started losing her hearing, the storms didn’t bother her as much, which was good.

Dirty Birdie after hiking in Colorado

Lady adjusted pretty well to life at Winona State.  She attended her fair share of keg parties, and was always a willing recipient of table food.  She even put on her own Freshman 15.  When we went for walks, we were stopped almost constantly by other college students missing their own dogs.  Had I been a dude, it would have been so easy to meet girls.  I had countless offers from people offering to dog-sit her or take her for walks if I ever had the need.  People thought it was the funniest thing to have a dog wandering through a party.  Fortunately Bird never developed a taste for beer...that could have been bad.  Or maybe she did have a taste for it, and college was just too much for her.  Whatever the case, she was never one to accost me over a beer bottle.  Brie, on the other hand, is a total lush.  

Paddle boarding champ

After college Lady moved with me to Rochester where I began my career as a nurse.  She begrudgingly welcomed both Brie and Cooper to the family.  It’s funny, Lady was present for all the acquirings of both my pugs and my parents’ pugs, and she was always the one the little puppies would want to snuggle with.  I have so many pictures of her curled up with a little pug puppy.  I don’t think she was necessarily mothering them, but tolerating their presence.  She liked other dogs; she would absolutely freak out if we were on a walk and she saw another dog.  Whining and carrying on...I never understood what that was or why she did it.  After letting her give the other dog a sniff or two she was ready to move on.

Once I started doing the travel nursing, she got the opportunity that I think few dogs and even few people get...she saw the country.  She hiked with me to top of mountains in Arkansas, North Carolina, Vermont and Colorado, she swam with me in the mighty Mississippi, she paddle boarded with me in the ocean.  She went for a ride on a four-wheeler in Wisconsin and went boating on Lake Minnetonka.  She’d gone across the country and back, from the east coast to the west coast, Boston to San Francisco, Vermont to Florida, and several places in-between.  Over the last few days I’ve been looking through old photos, and I’m amazed at all the places she went with us.  I even have a video of her jumping across a 6 foot stream in a canyon in Colorado.  She was fearless, she was resilient, she was up for anything.  As long as she was with me, she could do anything.        

Surrounded by her pug siblings

Little bits and bobs about the Bird: I’ve never seen a dog who shed as much as she did.  It was insane.  You could brush her all day long and still get hair off of her.  You pet her and fur went flying.  I have no doubt in my mind that there are still Lady hairs floating around our old house in college, and every place she’s lived since then.  Even after we moved to Flagstaff without her, I was still randomly finding her hairs.  It’s like it was her little parting gift.  When we used to go for walks, I always thought her floppy ears looked like butterfly wings.  My brother Chris thought the same thing.  She loved to go for walks, and in her younger years, she loved to go rollerblading with Simon and I.  She would get so excited when we would get the rollerblades out.  She kept up pretty well, and even pulled me along sometimes.  I appreciated having her on those big hills...hahaha!  She loved to be petted.  I think she would have given up almost everything else in life to sit and be petted for hours on end.  She was a little bit of a turd about it...she’d come up to you when you were sitting somewhere and nudge your hand.  She got so good at it that if you just let your arm go limp, she’d find a way to flip your hand onto her head using only her nose.  For a dog who loved to be petted so much, she didn’t like to snuggle.  She would tolerate it for a short time, but then had to move somewhere else.  She definitely liked her space.  She loved to sleep on the bed...not so much when Simon or I were in it, but when we would leave the house we could usually count on finding her in the bed when we got home...always with her head on my pillow.  Being part cattle dog, she had herding instincts.  If she was in the house or apartment with more than one person, she would constantly pace back and forth to do a visual check on everyone.  She hated closed doors, including the bathroom door.  If I knew I was going to be a while in the bathroom, it was sometimes just easier to have her come in with me.  She used to do this chattering thing with her teeth when she would get excited...it sounded exactly like the Predator.  Taking her to the dog park was a bit futile...she didn’t like to play or run with the other dogs, but was content to just wander to each and every one and give them a good sniff.  When everyone had been thoroughly sniffed, she would come back to me and look at me as if to say, “All right, we’re good.  On to the next thing.”  My nephew Jett absolutely adored her.  The feeling wasn’t mutual, but it was really cute to see how much more gentle he was with her than with the other dogs.  She was his Li Li.  And she hated having her picture taken.  In most of her photos she’s being physically held up by one of us, she’s splayed out with her belly up in a position of submission, or she’s facing away from the camera all together.  I don’t know what that was about, but I have very few “good” pictures of her.  But, I feel like the pictures I do have captured who she was pretty well.  I literally could go on about all the little things I’m going to miss about her.    

She was the most fiercely loyal dog I’ve ever met, and she was very tuned in to human emotions.  Even when I was having a bad day and feeling particularly snappish, she still stayed by my side.  No matter what.  There are days that I wonder if I was even deserving of such loyalty.  I guess I’ll have to assume that I was, or she wouldn’t have given it to me.  Through everything, the good days and the bad, the sickness, the old age, the thunderstorms...literally everything, she was always my dog, and I was always her person.  She might have preferred the company of Simon or my dad, but at the end of the day, it was my side of the bed she slept on, it was me she came to first when I’d come home from work.  I don’t know what I did to deserve that from her, but I feel lucky that she chose me.  

Rollerblading at Cherry Creek State Park in Colorado

The end was hard, but inevitable.  Like I had mentioned earlier, she just looked different to me.  She had basically quit eating, and I honestly think that towards the end, she was just eating to appease me.  She would take a few bites, look at me, take a few more, and when she noticed I wasn’t watching her, she would just slip away, leaving her dish of food behind (much to the delight of the gluttonous pugs).  Simon and I came to the decision together that she was ready to go.  I truly and honestly believe that.  I think that at the end, she wanted nothing more than to be with the two of us for just a little while longer.  So we packed her up and brought her to Flagstaff with us.  She didn’t explore the apartment, she didn’t eat, she didn’t drink, she wouldn’t give either of us any kisses; she just laid on the pet bed I put out for her and went to sleep.  I sat with her for a few hours and petted her, played with her ears, rubbed that little spot between her eyes that she liked so much.  I cried.  A lot.  We took her to the vet in town that I’ve come to love...this woman is fantastic, and is the most caring and compassionate vet I’ve had the pleasure of meeting.  She made sure we were all comfortable, and the end came very quietly and peacefully.  Like my mom said, it was the last good thing I could do for Lady.  It was hard to go home without her.  Even though she didn’t even live here in Flagstaff, just having her in the apartment for a few hours felt right, like we were all together again.  It’s sad that our time here together was so short.  It’s strange how having her here for those few hours has me looking for her now.  When my hand falls off the edge of the bed, she’s not there to lick my fingers.  I don’t hear her contented sleepy sighs, or her little yips when she’s dreaming.  I see the empty pet bed and I just fall apart.  She’s just not here anymore...she won't ever be again, and I miss her so much.    

I’m still dealing with intense guilt over putting her to sleep.  I feel like I let her down in some way, but I keep telling myself that it isn’t my fault that she couldn’t live forever.  Believe me, I would have tried everything.  Well, that’s not true.  I could have done more to keep her going for a month, two months, half a year, but I recognized that that’s not fair.  I didn't want her to get to the point where life was an all day struggle for her.  I did the humane thing, the right thing, in giving my furry buddy a comfortable and quiet exit from this life.  Simon said it best when he said that dogs are so innocent, and there’s just a different kind of tragedy in their deaths.

So there it is.  The story of my Ladybird.

                           

My Spiritual Journey

So this is a blog a long time in the making.  And it’s one that I’ve thought long and hard about.  There were several reasons for waiting, all of them valid in my eyes.  I was afraid that people would be offended.  I was afraid that people wouldn’t understand.  I was afraid that I would lose friends over my personal beliefs.  I wanted to make sure that I knew exactly how I felt and that above all, I was able to put it into words in a way that was clear both to me, and to whomever might read it.  But...I’ve spent years listening to others weigh in on their personal beliefs, and even if I didn’t personally agree, I respected their beliefs.  I know that none of us have the answers.  And I use that plural intentionally, because I truly believe that there isn’t just one answer.    

Every journey needs a beginning, and here is mine.  I was born and raised in a Catholic household.  I went to catechism classes weekly all the way through my junior year of high school.  I went to church every weekend.  I refrained from eating meat on Fridays, I didn’t eat before church, and I went to confession.  I was a Catholic.  I assumed that I was Christian because the Catholic faith is considered one of the many sects of the Christian faith.  So by default, being Catholic made me a Christian (I’ll expound on this more later).  I didn’t reserve any ill will towards my friends who were Lutherans, Methodists, or Baptists.  I even went to a Baptist Christian camp in the summers following my 7th and 8th grade years.  I thought that Christians were Christians and that since we all believed in essentially the same thing, we were the same.  Unfortunately, not all Christians felt that way.  

I very distinctly remember the first time I experienced anti-Catholic attitudes.  It was during my second summer at the Baptist camp in northern Minnesota.  I had just finished 8th grade and I was so excited to go to camp for the second summer in a row with my best friend Dana.  We were all sitting around and chatting in the cabin with our cabin mates, when one of the girls said, “I hate Catholics.”  Being 14 years old and not yet having filters, I blurted out, “I’m Catholic.”  The room went silent and everyone stared at me.  No one knew what to say.  It was like I was an impostor in their midst, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  Seconds ago we were just a bunch of 13 and 14 year-old girls giggling and having fun, and now we were divided by faith.  But we were technically all Christians.  It was very awkward, and I still think about that moment to this day.  At 14 years old, I really don’t think there is any way that a young girl could come to the conclusion on her own that she personally hated Catholics.  I doubt she understood all the facets of her own faith at that point, let alone all the facets of mine.  Someone she knew and respected in her life had undoubtedly made the comment that they hated Catholics, and in solidarity, so did she.  This is the conclusion that I’ve come to.  She and I never discussed it, so I can’t say that I know for sure where she was coming from, but most 14 year-olds I know are not educated in religious theology.  

Over the years I encountered several other people with anti-Catholic leanings.  I even dated one for a good year and a half.  He was Lutheran, which in my experience, really isn’t all that much different from Catholicism.  I’ve been to Lutheran services before, and found that I know most of their prayers; their church service followed pretty much the same outline as my familiar Catholic ones.  In fact, the only discernible difference (to me) was that the Lutherans didn’t kneel.  And throughout my life when I would ask other Christians why they didn’t like Catholics, the kneeling was brought up more often than anything else (followed closely by the length of Catholic weddings).  Okay...so you don’t like kneeling.  Then don’t kneel.  But don’t say you hate my faith because we choose to kneel.  That’s stupid and petty.  And in the broad scheme of things, a complete non-issue...there are far more logical reasons to hate Catholics than for the simple reason that they kneel during the church service.  It’s like these other faiths were looking for reasons to hate Catholics.  And I can honestly say, in all my years of attending Catholic mass, not once did I hear a priest bash another Christian religion.  Not once.  But that has been my experience with my particular priests.  I understand that others have had different experiences.  I tried to find good, solid reasons why other Christians didn’t like Catholics, and they were hard to come by.  It became clear to me that not only did some of these people not know the Catholic faith, they didn’t know their own faith.  But they passed on their religious hatred/superiority simply because they felt they could, or because someone at some point in their life had told them that they should.  

I have a huge issue with the way Christians fight amongst themselves.  To be Christian means that you believe Jesus was the son of the God and that he died on the cross for our sins.  I don’t mean to over simplify, but that’s basically what it is.  Lutheran, Catholic, Methodist, Baptist...they all believe that.  All their religious rules and doctrine came afterwards.  It doesn’t matter to me what Christian religion a person happens to be.  If all Christians truly believe that Jesus died for our sins and believing in him and his sacrifice means that we’ll get to spend all eternity in heaven with him, what’s left to bicker about?  Kneeling, eating fish on Fridays, length of weddings, and who happens to be “the most” Christian.  That’s what’s left.  It drives me insane.

I also remember quite clearly the progression of distancing myself from the Catholic faith (I call it my “fall from grace”).  The first incident happened when I attended a mass at a church in a neighboring town.  The alter was in the middle of the church (different than what I was used to), the cup that held the wine was made out of glass, the bread that we had was more like a biscuit, they had a full band, and there were people dancing around the alter waving ribbons around.  Oh, and they didn’t kneel.  They didn’t even have kneelers available for those inclined to kneel.  Now, I had been taught in my many years of catechism that the wine should be contained in an unbreakable chalice, meaning a glass that could not be broken.  Glass clearly did not fit that criteria.  It was also taught to me that the bread was to be unleavened, and the bread at this particular church clearly was leavened.  I was so disturbed by it that I didn’t go up to receive it.  I thought these Catholics were bringing a travesty upon our faith with the breakable chalice, their fluffy bread, and their full band (including a drum set) rocking out unfamiliar hymns, not to mention the people ribbon dancing (I will admit, I didn’t mind that we didn’t have to kneel).  I went home from mass that night and couldn’t get that church service out of my head.  What were they thinking?  I was trying to wrap my head around it all.  And then I started thinking about why I was so sure that the way things were done in my church was the “correct” way.  So what if the bread was leavened?  It was still symbolic of Christ’s last meal with his apostles, right?  Wasn’t that the basis behind the ritual of passing out bread during mass in the first place?  So I started thinking.  And thinking.  And thinking.  I thought myself all the way into a literature class in college that was based on the varying styles of prose featured in the bible.  

For the first time in my life, I was reading the bible.  Not just listening to the selected passages that were recited in church every Sunday, but really reading it.  And understanding it.  And I came to the conclusion that the bible was a collection of stories.  It wasn’t a text listing the rules and regulations of the Catholic faith, or any other faith, for that matter.  It was just a bunch of stories.  Like an adult version of Mother Goose.  I’m not trying to trivialize the bible by comparing it to Mother Goose, but I found some very distinct similarities between the Good Book and a book of cautionary children’s tales.  The bible is essentially a collection of (sometimes very violent and awful) cautionary tales, and from those cautionary tales sprouted one of the largest faiths on the planet.  No where in the bible was there mention of a breakable chalice, or of eating fish on Fridays.  It simply isn’t in there.  At least not in any vernacular that I could discern.  And that’s another issue with the bible...it’s been translated into so many different languages, by so many different people, so many different times.  What’s been diluted?  What’s been left out?  What’s been changed?  In my college literature class, we would read a bible passage and discuss as a group what we thought it meant.  The different responses were astounding.  It was crazy to me to think that a small group of 15 people could come up with such differing opinions on what a single paragraph was saying.  And who was right?  Were any of us right?  Broaden that out to millions of people reading one paragraph, and what do you get?  What do you get when those millions of people read not only one paragraph, but entire passages, chapters, and books in the bible?  Add to that the passages that people cling to, and the passages that people choose to ignore.  It’s no wonder that Christians have a hard time finding common ground with each other.

And lets go one step broader, since we are not all Christian in this world.  Muslims have a book.  Jewish people have a book.  Each faith claims that their faith is the correct one because they have documentation of it.  I’ve read a few stories from the Quran and the Torah, and I found some interesting similarities.  They all have similar versions of the Noah’s ark story (amongst others...this is just the example I’ve chosen to use).  I find that interesting, and I try to find meaning in it.  I’m not a religious theologian by any means and I’m not trying to say I know any more than anyone else when it comes to religions, particularly the non-Christian sects, but I find it interesting that three very different religions contain similar stories in their respective defining texts.  Why do they contain similar stories?  Is it coincidence or is it plagiarism?  Is it something else entirely?  Does it mean we all started in the same place and divided when the waters receded?  And then you have to take into account Buddhism, Hinduism, Native Americans, and tribal cultures, who have multiple gods, or believe in reincarnation, the Spirit World, etc.  Are they wrong because they don't have a bible to guide them?  Why are Christians so convinced that everyone else is wrong?  And I have to make this point, because the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.  People rag on Scientologists all the time for basing their religion on the writings of a science fiction author.  How different is that, really, than basing a religion from the Bible?  They are both texts written by human beings.  I admit, the Scientologists are little difficult to understand, even for me, but they believe what they believe and they have the texts to back it up.  Same as Christians.   

I never really thought of myself as a Christian.  I was first a Catholic, and by definition that made me a Christian.  People would ask me if I was Christian, and I would respond with “Yes, I’m Catholic.”  I didn’t even stop to think about what they were asking and what I was saying.  I never had a relationship with Christ.  In fact, I felt like Christ was a bit of an afterthought.  Some Catholics might disagree with me on this, but remember, this is my take and my experience.  Yours may have been different.  Of course Christ was mentioned and we said prayers referencing him and sang songs that glorified him, but I never felt that we were encouraged to have a personal relationship with him, as some religions do.  So when I started to move away from the Catholic church, moving away from Christianity wasn’t really that much of a stretch for me.  And I have moved away.  That might come as a surprise to some of you as I still take part in prayers at mealtimes and I still go to church with my family when I’m home.  Doing those things is comfortable to me, it’s what I had been doing for most of my life, and it’s something I continue to do to this day when I am surrounded by friends and family who are practicing Christians.  Does reciting a prayer to a God that I don't technically believe in make me a hypocrite?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  I guess that’s for other people to decide.  I’m perfectly okay with it.    

Not being a Christian doesn‘t make me a bad person.  I know that some people feel they need the overseeing eye of God to keep them from doing bad things, but I disagree.  I think people are good because they want to be, and likewise are bad because they want to be.  I don't think there's anyone orchestrating our behavior from above.  Life, as I see it, comes down to choices.  I don't believe that we are separated into the righteous and the evil.  I don’t believe that not believing in God means that I’m destined to burn in hell for all eternity either.  I don’t believe in hell.  Perhaps I’ll have a rude awakening at the time of my last breath, but at this moment, I don’t think I will.  I don’t know what will happen when I die.  Maybe something, maybe nothing.  I don’t know, and neither does anyone else.  Maybe we just cease to exist.  Maybe there's another plane of existence where our energy continues to reside long after our bodies are gone.  Maybe our energy dies with us and we go back to nature.  People can believe whatever they want to believe, but at the end of the day, no one definitively and without-a-doubt knows.  And people have said to me, “You have to have faith, you just have to believe.”  But I don’t have to do either of those things.  I don’t begrudge people for believing or having faith.  Some people can’t imagine life without it; it gives them comfort, it gives them strength, it rights their moral compass.  Whatever happens at the end of my life happens, and it’s not going to change the way I’m living my life today.

People ask me, “If you’re not Christian, what are you? Atheist?”  The fact of the matter is, I don’t have a label for myself.  I’m not Atheist, I’m not Christian.  I don't believe in a Christian God.  I don't know that I believe in a "god" character at all, but I'm not ruling it out.  I don’t know enough about any of it to be comfortable committing to a label.  I have a very "live and let live" philosophy about life.  I might not agree with other people's choices and beliefs, but they have the right to their choices and beliefs just as I do.  I don't feel that we accomplish anything by shoving our beliefs down other people's throats.  Religious doctrine can be upsetting to some people, myself included.  I don't push my lack of Christian beliefs on anyone.  If you believe in God, great.  If you don't, equally great.  I have a saying that I revert to every now and then, and it goes something like this: "I'm willing to let you go along with these ideas, so long as they're not hurting anyone."  I don’t have all the answers, but I’m not willing to trust something blindly either.  I feel like I'm much too rational of a person to believe in something because someone says it's so.  I’m just me, living my life the best way I know how to live it.  I believe in myself, and I believe in those around me.  I believe in what I see, in what I experience, in what I’ve learned.  I‘m no different than I was yesterday, and I’ll be no different tomorrow.  I’m just here on this earth like everyone else, trying to find my way, trying to be as happy as I can.  I take comfort in my friends and my family, my job, my travels, my dogs, and the random people I come across everyday.  My life is very full of very good things, and I feel lucky for that.  

Some might question the timing of this blog, with it being so close to Christmas and all.  I honestly just realized that this evening as I was typing this out.  It hadn’t even crossed my mind.  What really brought this on was the shooting in Connecticut this past week.  It was horrific.  It was awful.  It left me questioning what is wrong with humanity, and wondering why something like that happened in the first place.  People were quick to take to social media, condemning the shooter, the failure of our government to both tighten gun control laws and to find a solution to the increasing mental health population.  Condolences abounded for all those who lost a child or a loved one.  People were also quick to quote scripture, both as a form of comfort and as an explanation for the tragedy.  Many said that they were sad to hear about what had happened, but that they trusted their faith in the Lord and that through prayer he would protect them and their families.  Others quoted scriptures in which the Lord would protect and keep those who were faithful to him, those who believed, and that through Christ all things are possible.  What I am struggling with is how a Christian, especially one who lost a loved one in that massacre, is able to reconcile their trust in God after something like this happens.  Because I frankly don’t get it.  I don’t cut people in my life any slack for doing bad things to me, and I likewise wouldn’t be able to handle the thought of a deity, a God that I believed in and trusted, allowing something like that to happen to me or my loved ones. I personally would much rather hear that what happened in Connecticut was a tragic accident, a case of too many people being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “Everything happens for a reason,” “God needed them in heaven more than we needed them here on earth,” “God doesn’t give us any more than he thinks we can handle,” are all meant to be words of comfort.  And to some they probably are.  If someone said anything like that to me after losing someone as violently and as senselessly as those people did, I would rage.  I don’t want to hear that this horrible tragedy was orchestrated by the very God that swore through scripture that he would protect his people, the very same God who people place their trust in every day of their lives, the very same God who sacrificed his own son as payment for our sins so that he wouldn’t have to punish us like this anymore.  God couldn’t find it within his power to spare those innocent children, many of whom probably came from Christian families.  In essence, are we to believe that he allowed the violent death of the very people he was supposed to protect.  How are people rationalizing this?  Are people really under the assumption that the deaths of all those children and teachers is to be interpreted as some sort of atonement for the sins of the rest of the world, the "wicked," if you will?  As the bible would have people believe, all that ended with Jesus on the cross...or am I mistaken?  

I don’t mean to sound like I’m attacking anyone for their faith...I truly am just trying to understand.  I’m a curious person by nature and I just want to understand the world around me, if that’s even possible.  I’m upset about the state of our country just like everyone else.  Some people take comfort in their faith, some people take comfort in alcohol, some people take comfort in their families, some take comfort in just sitting quietly and thinking.  I’m thinking.        

                                       

            

Checking in

Good gravy it’s been a while since I’ve written.  I’ve thought about it.  I even started a blog not too long ago.  It sounded forced and uninspiring.  Tonight I feel like I have diarrhea of the fingers, so hopefully something good will come of it!

So Simon and I are now living in Flagstaff, AZ.  I’m not gonna lie...I really like it here.  We’ve been here since the very end of September, and so far have managed to go on several hikes, we’ve made friends with a few fellow travelers and we’ve been eating out like there’s no tomorrow.  Seriously, the number of restaurants to try here is almost overwhelming.  I keep telling people that we’re slowly eating our way through Flagstaff.  So far we’ve had Mexican, Latin, and Cajun cuisine.  All of it was phenomenal.  The other night we had burgers at a place called Diablo Burger and it was one of the best burgers I’ve ever had.  It was interesting because it was served on an English muffin, which was something new for me.  I devoured that burger.  I honestly barely remember what it tasted like, it was that good.  I guess that means I’ll have to go back for a repeat tasting.  What a bummer.  ;)

It’s safe to say that we’ve finally adjusted to the altitude...well, at least we mostly have.  We’ll still randomly get out of breath for seemingly no reason.  I’ve been using my inhaler a lot more than usual.  And our noses will not stop running...we’ve been here less than a month and have already gone through 2 boxes of kleenex.  I have no idea what that’s about.  It is more dusty here than we’re used to, and lately they’ve been doing controlled burns in the surrounding forest, so maybe that has something to do with it.  All I know is that I woke up this morning to a pile of kleenex next to me from the previous night’s nose-blowing.  The dogs are loving it...they love to eat used kleenexes...filthy beasts.

I found out that the nursing unit I’ll be working on has 12 beds.  That’s right, 12.  When I clarified with my nurse manager that the unit was indeed 12 beds and not 12 rooms (it’s 6 double patient rooms), she was concerned that I wouldn’t like working on a small unit.  In fact, I’m excited to work on such a small unit.  The last three nursing units that I’ve worked on have been long hallways that left me with aching feet most mornings.  Sometimes I felt like I hobbled rather than walked to the car after a shift.  I used to count a shift of work as exercise due to all the walking that I did.  Not that I’ll be slacking at this job; I’m told that the patients we have will keep me plenty busy throughout my shift.  Speaking of patients, we’ve been told that we have a lot of patients who come from the Native American reservations, mainly Hopi and Navajo.  I’m actually looking forward to learning more about them, since my knowledge of Native Americans is basically nil.  I’ve heard that taking care of them can be challenging due to cultural differences, but any patient at any given time can be challenging, so I’m trying to go into it with an open mind.

It’s nice that both Simon and I will be working on this assignment.  When I took the job in St. Cloud over the summer, I didn’t realize how hard it would be for me to go to work while he got to play.  And Simon and I didn’t see each other as much as we normally do.  I know that a lot of people find it weird that we spend so much time together...I even think it’s weird, but it works so I don’t really question it all that much.  I tried to not be jealous of all his free time, but it was hard sometimes.  I kept reminding myself that it was my choice to take the job, that initially we had talked about both of us taking the summer off.  But I knew that St. Cloud was a great hospital to work in, their staff is great and the patients weren’t too complicated.  I had had a great experience working there in the past and wanted to work there again.  I thought that working in Minnesota for the summer would get me close enough to still see everyone I wanted to see and do everything I wanted to do.  It didn’t quite work out that way.  When I’m away on an assignment, I don’t get too bent out of shape when I miss out on barbecues and camping trips and get togethers because I physically wouldn’t be able to go.  Being so close and still not being able to partake in fun things with my friends and family was torture.  It truly was.  I don’t even know how to explain it without sounding like a total brat...everyone works and everyone misses out on things because of work.  That’s how it goes.  And as Simon frequently reminded me, I was getting to see and do more with friends and family even while working than I would have if we were across the country.  I needed to focus on the things that I was able to do, and quit dwelling on the things I was missing.  I think I just had it in my head that being back in Minnesota means tons of time with friends and family...because normally when I’m back in Minnesota I’m not working and I spend as much time as possible visiting people.  So yes, there was a lot of attitude adjusting on my part taking place over the summer.    

In other bits and bobs not related to my recent relocation, I have decided that I’m not going to write a book.  To be honest, I wasn’t all that serious about it to begin with, but the thought of it was tempting.  I spent a decent amount of time around a good number of friends this summer, and I realized that I’m not a good story-teller.  I’m really not.  And I don’t say that to get a chorus of, ‘but you’re such a good writer!’  And I may be a good writer.  But I’ve found that a good writer and a good story-teller are two very different things.  I know that a person doesn’t just sit down and write a novel...it takes years of practice, years of trial and error, and years of research.  I’ve been reading a lot lately, and I’ve been paying attention to what makes for a good story.  I don’t think it’s a show-stopping plot, a whole troop of colorful characters, or even slapstick humor.  It’s attention to detail.  It’s the ability the writer has to bring the reader into the story as if they were an active participant in the story.  I don’t have that.  I skimp on details.  Half the time when I’m talking I leave out pivotal details on the story I’m trying to tell.  I can’t slow down enough to write about the little things, and the little things are what make a good story great.  But don’t worry, I’ll continue to blather on in my blogs.  And even better yet, reading my blogs is free.  Reading my published novel would not be.  So really, I’m doing everyone a favor by continuing to write here.  :)

I’m an active participant on Pinterest.  If you don’t yet know what it is, visit the site with caution...it’s extremely addictive.  I’ve been using Pinterest for about a year now and I’m finally to the point where I can visit my site without pinning anything.  I used to spend hours on there though.  Lately I’ve noticed a bit of a trend.  Women are pinning pictures of their nails painted all funky colors and whatnot.  Instead of just fanning out their fingers and photographing from above, they are curling their fingers in like a claw and taking the photo facing their palm.  Are you following?  It’s creepy, and I don’t like it.  Those pictures make me uncomfortable.  They don’t make me angry like the pictures of people making hearts with their hands (hate that), but they put me on edge.  Stop making the claw, it’s giving people (me) the heebie geebies.  

This is going way back to August, but what is the deal with water polo?  I felt that while the Olympics were on, there was a disproportionate amount of time spent broadcasting water polo matches.  Nothing like watching a bunch of people tread water while tossing a ball about.  Boring.  I’d rather watch volleyball or the equestrian events or track or crew or some other swimming event...basically I’d rather watch anything but water polo.  Water polo has got to be one of the most boring Olympic sports ever.  Ever.  And I’m not trying to take anything away from the athleticism of the water polo competitors, because they’re in better shape than I could ever hope to be, but their sport is a giant yawner.  

After several years of planning, my t-shirt quilts have become a reality.  And they are fantastic.  Truly, they have become two of my most prized possessions. Sometimes I’ll just sit on the bed and run my hands over their soft cottony covers, remember where and when I aquired a particular shirt.  It’s like a scrapbook that I can wrap myself up in.  And it’s so soft.  I had the quilt made by Campus Quilt Company, and the entire process couldn’t have been easier.  I basically sent them a $100 deposit, they sent me a package that contained layout instructions, customizations, and a mailer to send the shirts back to them.  That’s it.  They sent me updates when they received the shirts, when they were starting to cut the shirts, when they were starting to sew everything together, and when they had completed.  They even called me a couple times to discuss layout issues that they had come across.  They sent me photos of the completed quilts so that I could see them before they arrived at my front door.  They provided fantastic customer service, and a great product besides.  And now I have this wonderful keepsake that I can take with me anywhere...and not only is it a keepsake, but it’s also functional.  After two queen-sized quilts (42 t-shirts each), I still have a few shirts left over, so there will be more quilts in my future.  

In the last few months I’ve become aware of a certain precedent that I’ve set with people.  Someone will send me a picture of genitals on a statue or a turd on the ground and say, “this made me think of you.”  I’m not sure how to feel about that.  On one hand I’m flattered that people are thinking about me.  On the other, they’re thinking about me because they saw either poop or genitals.  It’s no secret that I talk exorbitantly about genitals and poop, so it makes sense that people would think of me when they see either of those things.  I just think it’s funny.  

On a more serious note, I made one of the toughest decisions of my adult life before coming to Flagstaff.  The morning Simon and I left Minnesota, it turns out.  I decided that my dog Lady would stay back in Minnesota with my parents rather than come with Simon and I to Arizona.  It wasn’t an easy decision, and one that I had been struggling with in the months leading up to it.  I may have mentioned in an earlier post that Lady has been having trouble holding her bladder.  With some new medications, things were getting a little better for her, but she was still getting me up at least once a night to go outside.  Which is fine, I had no problem with getting up to let her out.  That’s a lie, I hated it, but I did it because I wanted her to be comfortable...and because I don’t enjoy cleaning up urine off the floor.  Back on topic, with regular toileting Lady was doing fine.  But reality was quickly catching up to me when I realized that if she can’t hold it for 8 hours at a time, there’s no way she would be able to hold it for 13 hours at a time, which is roughly how long she would be left alone while Simon and I were at work.  And the thing with Lady is, she’s smart.  And she’s always been very shameful.  For every little drop of urine that dribbled out of her in the house, she stressed.  She was constantly licking herself, her bedding, and anything else that she thought she may have soiled.  She constantly looked like she was just waiting to be punished for going to the bathroom indoors.  I knew she couldn’t help it, so of course she wasn’t punished, but still she waited for the punishment.  So I made the decision that she should stay home in Eyota with my parents.  My parents work 8 hour shifts, they have two dogs of their own, and are more available to the dogs than Simon and I would be while we’re working.  I still feel guilty about leaving her behind.  I know that my parents are taking fantastic care of her, and they give me weekly updates on how she’s doing.  I have no doubt in my mind that my parents provide the same care for her that I would.  I just feel like I betrayed her by leaving without her.  I’ve had her for 11 years.  She was with me during my senior year of college, during the purchase of my first home, and during most of my travels across the country.  She’s been my constant companion for all these years and I left her behind.  It’s hard.  I guess these things always are.  

It’s difficult to see our pets age.  Brie is now mostly blind and almost totally deaf.  She doesn’t enjoy going for walks anymore because she can’t really see where she’s going, and objects that are so obvious to me seemingly jump out of nowhere and startle her.  Just three years ago Simon and I would take all three of the dogs hiking up a small mountain in Arkansas.  Brie was the most agile of the three, leaping from rock to rock like it was nothing.  Now she can barely jump up on the bed.  Is she miserable?  I suppose sometimes she is.  It’s hard to tell, I guess.  She’s miserable when she’s outside, but when she’s inside snuggled up with me on the couch, she’s happy as can be.  So I guess that counts for something.  

On to lighter things...I just realized recently that Simon and I tie our shoes differently.  I make the one loop and do the wrap around, while Simon makes two loops and ties the knot with the loops.  I don’t know how this had escaped me all these years that we’ve been dating.  Truth be told, since I’ve been wearing Salomon shoes, I don’t ever tie shoelaces because they have a pull cord system.  Spending half the year in Florida for the past three years has left us wearing flip flops the majority of the time.  Today I bought a pair of slip-ons and a pair of velcro shoes.  I don’t have a single pair of shoes with me right now that have laces.  How weird is that?  I think it’s pretty weird.  And the only reason that I bring it up is because while I was home before moving to Arizona, I was wearing a pair of shoes that had laces and I momentarily forgot how to tie them.  It was just for a couple seconds, but I honestly thought I was losing my mind.  

With the help of my friend Dana, I finally purchased a couple pairs of skinny jeans.  And I’ve actually worn them!  And it really wasn’t all that awful.  It’s still kind of strange though.  I only wear them with boots.  After all these years of wearing flare-leg jeans I’m a little geeked out by seeing my shoes, or at least that much of my shoes.  With flare leg jeans I saw the toes of my shoes and that was usually about it.  Seeing the entire shoe is weird and I’m not used to it yet.  So I wear the skinny jeans with boots.  I suppose I’ll wear them with regular shoes one of these days...I’m just not there yet.  Skinny jeans themselves were a huge leap for me, so it’s no surprise the skinny jeans worn with shoes probably won’t happen for another year or so...hahaha!  Other than that though, I’m a complete fashion failure.  I just can’t do it.  Any time I try to change it up and be fashionable I wind up changing back into jeans and a t-shirt.  Or yoga pants and a hoodie.  I feel like fashion looks weird on me, like I’m a poser, like I’m trying too hard.  It’s just not natural for me to be on-trend.  I’ve mostly given up.

And I guess that’s it from me at the moment.  I had to take a break during the writing of this to bathe my dog.  At 1:00am.  I’m keeping some weird hours tonight.  And now I have the problem of going to bed with a wet dog.  Do I make her sleep in the kennel tonight, or do I try to have her sleep on a towel in the bed?  I know she won’t stay on the towel, and if I put her in the kennel she’ll just cry all night.  The washer isn’t big enough for the comforter to fit, so if I let her in the bed then I’m going to have to go to the laundromat to wash the comforter, and I really don’t want to waste a day off at the laundromat.  All these decisions!  I guess if these are the most pressing decisions that I have to make tonight, life isn’t treating me too badly at the moment.  I can only hope that the rest of you have nothing but trivial decisions to make today.  Have a good one.

Stefanie