Even though I don't believe in hell, I think there must be a special place for those lost souls that light other people on fire - or throw hot grease on , dip in boiling water, or put their body parts on hot stove/oven/grill surfaces.
Can you tell I am still spending far too much time working in the Burn Unit? Special kind of evil, there.
Shooting someone? Stabbing someone even? But to BURN someone? Come on! That is just too twisted for color tv (to quote Steel Magnolias).
And then there are the strange ones - the people that light themselves on fire. WHY? Can someone explain this? If you want to kill yourself, why not chose a less painful path? Pills? Throwing yourself off a very tall building? Even putting a bullet in your head, but to douse yourself in gasoline then light a match?
Oh, and in case you haven't figured it out - it isn't a sure path to death either. It IS a sure path to excruciating pain, extensive repeated surgeries, long term hospitalization, and certain mutilation and disfigurement.
As a nurse, especially one in a teaching hospital, I see a lot of patients that probably shouldn't live. Ones that doctors manage to keep alive for far too long in the name of science. People pulled back not only from the brink of death, but from death itself. People that were heading to the light or what-have-you, but we yank them back just in the nick of time so that we can torture their bodies for a few more days/weeks/months longer. People that if they do manage to survive have a terrible quality of life after we "save" them.
I have told my family I will haunt them if they don't stand up for me and tell the doctors to back the hell off and let me die if I have a terrible brain injury (but don't necessarily qualify for "vegetative"), if I have burns over greater than 50% of my body, if it looks like they are going to amputate all my limbs or I can't move my arms or legs. The living wills all talk about "persistent vegetative state" but there really are very few cases that are that cut and dried. Doctors will say "There is hope. We don't know that much about the brain, we won't really know until they wake up". By the time it gets to the point where waking up is an option - and I am not talking about Hollywood waking up here - no one just opens their eyes and says, "bring me a grilled cheese, please" - I am talking about long slow wake ups where the patient might just get to the point where they open their eyes and move one arm, but can't speak or eat normally. By this time you've got a feeding tube and are headed for a long term care facility. Then it is much harder to let someone die.
Hard stuff. Even for someone like me that has, at this point, seen a lot of death. I know the hope people have for their spouse/child/parent. I know the ones that can't and won't let go. How can you? How can you make that choice? How can you decide for someone else what their life should be like? Especially if it is a child? I am starting to realize that it is much easier to say what I want/don't want. I am an adult that has lived and loved and seen life and death. I know the kind of choices I am making and sharing with my family. Children are so, so much harder. No one should ever have to see their child suffer. Yet we also ask for so much more suffering from children than we would ever want or expect from ourselves. Because they haven't had the chance to live/love/make mistakes/wildly succeed/go to Disneyworld - whatever - we ask them to endure great pain, great suffering so that they may have that chance one day. So that we can hold onto them a little longer, love their bodies that we have nurtured and grown in our own bodies.
Not preaching here, just trying to work through the abject suffering I see on a daily basis. And I DO know that my own ideas about quality of life have changed for myself since I have become a mother. There is a lot more suffering and pain and humiliation that I am willing to endure now that I don't want to leave my children without a mother in this world.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
FO: Clapotis
Do not get excited. I finished this last summer, but I finally have some great pictures of my goddaughter in it.
Pattern: Clapotis by Kate Gilbert
Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Luscious Single Silk in Rook-Y
Mods - none
Problems? Um, had an issue with dropping one of the stitches down and ended up having to cut a bar of yarn and then spit splice it back together.
I think she likes it. Her mom says she wears it quite often and has gotten several comments about it. I told her it was a very popular pattern and to not be alarmed if strangers wanted to pet it.
This yarn is really truly amazing. And I have over half a skein and another full one left over. I used less than half the yarn I ordered. This yarn went so far. Any ideas of what I should do with the left overs? Probably around 800 yards left. I could knit a tank or vest with that much.
Pattern: Clapotis by Kate Gilbert
Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Luscious Single Silk in Rook-Y
Mods - none
Problems? Um, had an issue with dropping one of the stitches down and ended up having to cut a bar of yarn and then spit splice it back together.
I think she likes it. Her mom says she wears it quite often and has gotten several comments about it. I told her it was a very popular pattern and to not be alarmed if strangers wanted to pet it.
This yarn is really truly amazing. And I have over half a skein and another full one left over. I used less than half the yarn I ordered. This yarn went so far. Any ideas of what I should do with the left overs? Probably around 800 yards left. I could knit a tank or vest with that much.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Do not read if the f-bomb is going to offend...
I am in my winter slump. After the holidays I can't seem to get anything done. It is the same way every year but for some reason I forget about it until I am in it again. And fucking February is the worst of it. The crocuses and the daffodils are blooming, but in case you haven't heard, people, IT IS STILL FUCKING WINTER and I HATES it.
This pervades my entire existence. So I haven't blogged since December, ach well, I wasn't a blogging regularly anyway. And there are only a few people that are paying attention here anyway, so who cares, right?
And I have been stuck working in the fucking Burn Center for like the last 2.5 months straight. That is another thing I HATES. It isn't the work so much - I mean it is just a branch of the surgical trauma stuff that I dig. It is the stories. I mean, it takes a certain amount of just plain EVIL to burn someone on purpose, you know? I mean, who gets pissed off at their girlfriend and LIGHTS HER ON FIRE. Or their husband, or their CHILD. Yes, there are kids there and while I don't have to take care of them, I have to see them. Makes me cry. Big time. And the doctor/nurse climate there isn't all that great. The main doc doesn't really want the nurse to do any independent thinking and I am used to being part of a team. I don't go for the doctor's handmaiden shit too well.
But it is into the knitting. Terribly. I can't finish anything. Or if I finish it, it really sucks. Here is the run down.
* I free knitted a hat in this gorgeous yarn (there is a big clue there - I don't free knit anything) and it was just way. too. big. Like it was too big for Paddy-O even if he would be willing to wear a slouchy beret style hat in lavender, golden yellow, cream and brown variegated yarn. I got my mom to frog it for me.
* Then there is the sweater I knit for Paddy O for christmas. It isn't bad looking - a Cobblestone knit in some lovely tweedy green with flecks of brown and orange in it. It is FINISHED. Except for the kitchenering (is that a word?) of the armpits. Plus, I am scared of finishing it because then he will want to wear it and what if I am totally doomed by winter and it doesn't fit? It is, after all, my first adult sized sweater. I am paralyzed by fear of failure here.
* The Lady February Sweater? Nothing wrong with it. Looks like it will fit and all that. Knitting it DIC Classy in Some Summer Sky and the yarn is amazing. The fear here is that it will really be unflattering on mhave and here I will have put all this work into a sweater (not to mention this gorgeous yarn) and it will look like shit on me. And it is February, in case you haven't noticed, and therefore my mommy body is at it's whitest and flubbiest and I really think I might go drown myself in Jordan Lake if I put all this work into this sweater and then it looks like hell.
* A hat made of odds and ends in simple rib stitch - looks like it will be too small for an adult head and too big for a child's.
* Spring Forward socks (from Knitty) are the only thing getting any action. Bus knitting. I have turned the hell, I mean heel on the first one and am working my way down the foot. But it is a sock - and while it is shaping up to be a very pretty one, it will still need a mate when I am done with it. And since it is strictly bus knitting, it isn't moving very fast.
Part of me thinks I should just start something new and see if that will turn things around. The other part says if I fuck up another knitting project in February I might stab myself with the closest knitting needles.
At least I am doing some reading. See my sidebar for the latest. Just finished The Friday Night Knitting Club, and why didn't anyone warn me it was sad?
Here is what is in the stack - anyone want to suggest which one I should start next? Maybe the heaviest thing I should read right now is a Hello Kitty coloring book, but I am open to opinions here...
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaimon
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Better by Atul Gawande - although that might be cutting too close to work for February reading. Written by a surgeon.
Kushiel's Justice by Jacqueline Carey - I am just obsessive enough to go back and read the entire series before starting this one - and she has two more after it that I need to read too. These are some of my favorite books so maybe I want to savor them sometime other than February. Or maybe they would be a pick me up? And not too difficult a read...
This pervades my entire existence. So I haven't blogged since December, ach well, I wasn't a blogging regularly anyway. And there are only a few people that are paying attention here anyway, so who cares, right?
And I have been stuck working in the fucking Burn Center for like the last 2.5 months straight. That is another thing I HATES. It isn't the work so much - I mean it is just a branch of the surgical trauma stuff that I dig. It is the stories. I mean, it takes a certain amount of just plain EVIL to burn someone on purpose, you know? I mean, who gets pissed off at their girlfriend and LIGHTS HER ON FIRE. Or their husband, or their CHILD. Yes, there are kids there and while I don't have to take care of them, I have to see them. Makes me cry. Big time. And the doctor/nurse climate there isn't all that great. The main doc doesn't really want the nurse to do any independent thinking and I am used to being part of a team. I don't go for the doctor's handmaiden shit too well.
But it is into the knitting. Terribly. I can't finish anything. Or if I finish it, it really sucks. Here is the run down.
* I free knitted a hat in this gorgeous yarn (there is a big clue there - I don't free knit anything) and it was just way. too. big. Like it was too big for Paddy-O even if he would be willing to wear a slouchy beret style hat in lavender, golden yellow, cream and brown variegated yarn. I got my mom to frog it for me.
* Then there is the sweater I knit for Paddy O for christmas. It isn't bad looking - a Cobblestone knit in some lovely tweedy green with flecks of brown and orange in it. It is FINISHED. Except for the kitchenering (is that a word?) of the armpits. Plus, I am scared of finishing it because then he will want to wear it and what if I am totally doomed by winter and it doesn't fit? It is, after all, my first adult sized sweater. I am paralyzed by fear of failure here.
* The Lady February Sweater? Nothing wrong with it. Looks like it will fit and all that. Knitting it DIC Classy in Some Summer Sky and the yarn is amazing. The fear here is that it will really be unflattering on mhave and here I will have put all this work into a sweater (not to mention this gorgeous yarn) and it will look like shit on me. And it is February, in case you haven't noticed, and therefore my mommy body is at it's whitest and flubbiest and I really think I might go drown myself in Jordan Lake if I put all this work into this sweater and then it looks like hell.
* A hat made of odds and ends in simple rib stitch - looks like it will be too small for an adult head and too big for a child's.
* Spring Forward socks (from Knitty) are the only thing getting any action. Bus knitting. I have turned the hell, I mean heel on the first one and am working my way down the foot. But it is a sock - and while it is shaping up to be a very pretty one, it will still need a mate when I am done with it. And since it is strictly bus knitting, it isn't moving very fast.
Part of me thinks I should just start something new and see if that will turn things around. The other part says if I fuck up another knitting project in February I might stab myself with the closest knitting needles.
At least I am doing some reading. See my sidebar for the latest. Just finished The Friday Night Knitting Club, and why didn't anyone warn me it was sad?
Here is what is in the stack - anyone want to suggest which one I should start next? Maybe the heaviest thing I should read right now is a Hello Kitty coloring book, but I am open to opinions here...
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaimon
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Better by Atul Gawande - although that might be cutting too close to work for February reading. Written by a surgeon.
Kushiel's Justice by Jacqueline Carey - I am just obsessive enough to go back and read the entire series before starting this one - and she has two more after it that I need to read too. These are some of my favorite books so maybe I want to savor them sometime other than February. Or maybe they would be a pick me up? And not too difficult a read...
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
All Time Favorite Gifts
Nora wrote this post about favorite gifts you have given or received. I loved the idea and I have been dredging up the ghosts of Christmas past to come up with my favorites...
1. Last Christmas my mom put a black shawl on her Christmas list. Just one to throw over her shoulders in her cold church on Sunday mornings. She was never so surprised at a gift than when she unwrapped one that I knit for her.
She never expected me to actually knit one. She taught me to knit several years ago and it didn't really "take" until the last couple of years. She cried when she opened it. Always the sign of perfectly received present.
2. My grandmother needlepointed stockings for everyone in the family one year. The amazing thing was the personal attention to details she put in each one. My mom's had a piano, a baton, yarns for needlepointing. The main focale point was two blond children (my brother and I) decorating a christmas tree.
3. The year my father bought me a stack of books and cd's. It was the first and only year he bought my Christmas presents himself. My mother and my stepmother had always done it for him. It was the year after he and my stepmom divorced and the year before he died. The first and last Christmas gift my father ever chose for me himself. And he obviously thought about it and picked things he knew I would like.
4. My mom and I are making dumpling bags for all my neices this year. I don't know yet how they are going to like them, but the experience of knitting them with my mom has been priceless.
5. The first Christmas I spent with my in-laws I was 27 and Paddy-O and I were still only dating, but serious. His parents came to my mom's house for the holiday. I spent a lot of time and effort choosing things that are particularly North Carolinian for his parents. Hand-crafted bees wax candles from Old Salem, a book on golfing in NC, a dried flower garland to hang over a doorway (still in my mil's den), baked moravian cookies. I put so many hopes and dreams into the gifts - that they would find my home-state lovely and welcoming. That they would be glad to visit again. That they would love me and want me to be a part of their family.
How about you? What are your favorite gifts?
1. Last Christmas my mom put a black shawl on her Christmas list. Just one to throw over her shoulders in her cold church on Sunday mornings. She was never so surprised at a gift than when she unwrapped one that I knit for her.
She never expected me to actually knit one. She taught me to knit several years ago and it didn't really "take" until the last couple of years. She cried when she opened it. Always the sign of perfectly received present.
2. My grandmother needlepointed stockings for everyone in the family one year. The amazing thing was the personal attention to details she put in each one. My mom's had a piano, a baton, yarns for needlepointing. The main focale point was two blond children (my brother and I) decorating a christmas tree.
3. The year my father bought me a stack of books and cd's. It was the first and only year he bought my Christmas presents himself. My mother and my stepmother had always done it for him. It was the year after he and my stepmom divorced and the year before he died. The first and last Christmas gift my father ever chose for me himself. And he obviously thought about it and picked things he knew I would like.
4. My mom and I are making dumpling bags for all my neices this year. I don't know yet how they are going to like them, but the experience of knitting them with my mom has been priceless.
5. The first Christmas I spent with my in-laws I was 27 and Paddy-O and I were still only dating, but serious. His parents came to my mom's house for the holiday. I spent a lot of time and effort choosing things that are particularly North Carolinian for his parents. Hand-crafted bees wax candles from Old Salem, a book on golfing in NC, a dried flower garland to hang over a doorway (still in my mil's den), baked moravian cookies. I put so many hopes and dreams into the gifts - that they would find my home-state lovely and welcoming. That they would be glad to visit again. That they would love me and want me to be a part of their family.
How about you? What are your favorite gifts?
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
A Finished Object
This little sweater has been done for awhile, but I finally managed to get Paddy-O to upload the camera so that I could share a photo...
The Wonderful Wallaby knit for the Sproglette from Blue Faced Leicester hand-dyed in the Coastal Sunset colorway by Morwenna at Mosaic Moon. Took me about 3 weeks of bus knitting to knock this little baby out. She had the gall to say to me afterwards that she really would prefer I take the hood off.
She took it back when I told her I would just give it to Widget if she didn't want the hood.
The Wonderful Wallaby knit for the Sproglette from Blue Faced Leicester hand-dyed in the Coastal Sunset colorway by Morwenna at Mosaic Moon. Took me about 3 weeks of bus knitting to knock this little baby out. She had the gall to say to me afterwards that she really would prefer I take the hood off.
She took it back when I told her I would just give it to Widget if she didn't want the hood.
Friday, November 14, 2008
An old love...
I am so bad at this blogging thing. Mostly, I think, because I have had so little to say and yet my life has been so full.
But one thing I wanted to share is that I seem to have found my reading mojo again. It has been gone since Sproglette was born over 4 years ago. Gone in a bad way.
See, I used to read constantly. Ever since I learned to read I have always had a book with me. They were my friends when no one else wanted to be. Yes, I was the little girl with the horrible buck teeth (then braces) and the thick, thick coke-bottle bottomed glasses that were always a big heavy plastic frame to hold the weight of the lenses. So to escape from playground ridicule, I read books. My grandmother was a librarian, and I don't even remember getting my first library card, but I have had one ever since, wherever I have lived.
Up until I had kids, I would go to the library once a week, check out 3-5 books, read them and return them the next week. Rinse repeat. Almost always novels. I love science fiction and fantasy, classics, contemporary stuff, well, really, all of it. I have a BA in English with a minor in Comparative Literature. In college I would sometimes be reading 4-5 novels at once.
After Sproglette was born, I delved into parenting books like it was nobody's business and then I just stopped. I couldn't read the way I liked to read anymore - there were too many other demands on my time. I could no longer stay up until 4 am finishing a book. I couldn't stay awake when I got in the bed to even try a chapter a night. There are so many great books I started and then just couldn't continue with because I couldn't remember what I had read the night or 3 nights before (Hello, Neal Stephenson? I love you, and I own the entirety of The Baroque Cycle, but I just can't do it right now. Maybe when the Widget goes to kindergarten I will be able to give you the attention you deserve).
So I have started reading again finally. And I didn't start with anything too long, or too complicated. And I am not rereading something I have read in the past either. And they are novels and they lovely, and somehow I am managing to read them fast enough to finish them.
So for my own purposes, I am going to keep track of books finished in my sidebar. November is the beginning of Novels again for me.
Hello old friend!
But one thing I wanted to share is that I seem to have found my reading mojo again. It has been gone since Sproglette was born over 4 years ago. Gone in a bad way.
See, I used to read constantly. Ever since I learned to read I have always had a book with me. They were my friends when no one else wanted to be. Yes, I was the little girl with the horrible buck teeth (then braces) and the thick, thick coke-bottle bottomed glasses that were always a big heavy plastic frame to hold the weight of the lenses. So to escape from playground ridicule, I read books. My grandmother was a librarian, and I don't even remember getting my first library card, but I have had one ever since, wherever I have lived.
Up until I had kids, I would go to the library once a week, check out 3-5 books, read them and return them the next week. Rinse repeat. Almost always novels. I love science fiction and fantasy, classics, contemporary stuff, well, really, all of it. I have a BA in English with a minor in Comparative Literature. In college I would sometimes be reading 4-5 novels at once.
After Sproglette was born, I delved into parenting books like it was nobody's business and then I just stopped. I couldn't read the way I liked to read anymore - there were too many other demands on my time. I could no longer stay up until 4 am finishing a book. I couldn't stay awake when I got in the bed to even try a chapter a night. There are so many great books I started and then just couldn't continue with because I couldn't remember what I had read the night or 3 nights before (Hello, Neal Stephenson? I love you, and I own the entirety of The Baroque Cycle, but I just can't do it right now. Maybe when the Widget goes to kindergarten I will be able to give you the attention you deserve).
So I have started reading again finally. And I didn't start with anything too long, or too complicated. And I am not rereading something I have read in the past either. And they are novels and they lovely, and somehow I am managing to read them fast enough to finish them.
So for my own purposes, I am going to keep track of books finished in my sidebar. November is the beginning of Novels again for me.
Hello old friend!
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Book Review
Have you read The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein? I always thought, as a child, that it was a lovely lesson in giving and being selfless. We read it to kids at summer camp as councilors to teach about sharing and as a parable of Christ's sacrifice for humanity.
I pulled out my old ratty copy the other night to read to the Sproglette. As I turned the pages I grew more and more horrified. That poor tree. Just kept giving and giving while the boy kept taking and taking. Eventually the tree is only a stump and yet is so proud to be able to give the old man (that stole her apples, her leaves, branches, limbs and trunk for his own selfish gains) a place to sit his tired, selfish ass down.
Funny, now I don't see this as a parable of god's love for his children anymore. It really rings as misogynistic - how a man can take and take from his wife or mother and never have to give anything back. The ideal woman would be happy just to have sacrificed everything for her man/child.
Not this woman. Not this tree. I'm going to teach my kids that we don't use people for our own personal gain. That we take care of ourselves. That the best friendships and relationships are full of giving and taking. That we don't expect something for nothing. That even when we are given gifts we are gracious and say thank you and are appreciative. That we never take the wonderful people we have present in our lives for granted. We say "I love you" to each other everyday, many times a day.
And The Giving Tree? Not so sure what to do with it now. I don't want to give it away in case it might infect someone...
I pulled out my old ratty copy the other night to read to the Sproglette. As I turned the pages I grew more and more horrified. That poor tree. Just kept giving and giving while the boy kept taking and taking. Eventually the tree is only a stump and yet is so proud to be able to give the old man (that stole her apples, her leaves, branches, limbs and trunk for his own selfish gains) a place to sit his tired, selfish ass down.
Funny, now I don't see this as a parable of god's love for his children anymore. It really rings as misogynistic - how a man can take and take from his wife or mother and never have to give anything back. The ideal woman would be happy just to have sacrificed everything for her man/child.
Not this woman. Not this tree. I'm going to teach my kids that we don't use people for our own personal gain. That we take care of ourselves. That the best friendships and relationships are full of giving and taking. That we don't expect something for nothing. That even when we are given gifts we are gracious and say thank you and are appreciative. That we never take the wonderful people we have present in our lives for granted. We say "I love you" to each other everyday, many times a day.
And The Giving Tree? Not so sure what to do with it now. I don't want to give it away in case it might infect someone...
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