Warning: Seizure ahead.

I have made the executive decision that I will not be working beyond my Oct 31st contract here in the RGV.  I have had enough.  Details later, I assure you.  I just think it's time to move on, I'm starting to accumulate a poor attitude about my career, and I need to get going before it really sets in and I decide to chase diamondbacks on the Sahara.  I always seem to get stimulation overload every time I start shopping for a new assignment.  Because I don't get to be as choosy as travel RN's in the past, I'm constantly riding the fence between trying to get what I want, and not ending up unemployed.  EEK!  I've gotten calls about assignments for places all over, from RI to SC to DC to KC to MI, but for one reason or another, they don't work.  Yikesabee.  

PrayPrayPray.

Hola Nola!

You MUST go.  It's so silly and fun.  New Orleans is full of fun accents, gorgeous architecture, and whimsy.  Don't bring up Katrina.  You'll spoil it.  I know, it was terrible.  No reason to not wear mardi gras attire, sing karaoke, and flounce about in the streets.  While you're at it, you should sample the beignets at Cafe du Monde.  If you're there with a supergreat friend like Coco, she'll find you a awesome plank painting leaning against a storefront, steal it, and give it to you.  Warning: don't try accidentally/on purpose to go into a strip club.  They won't let you in without a male in your entourage.  Whoops.  I consider it serendipity.  Yikes.  Another warning:  watch for falling beads thrown from balconies above.  They kind of hurt when stupid guys THROW THEM AT YOUR HEAD.  

Love Love Love!

I'm no foreigner

I'm completely familiar with Mariah's vocal ability.  She was my first love, first cd purchased, my favorite song belongs to her still.  All of this had been overlooked as of recent by her poor fashion taste and penchant for plastic surgery/young men.  Have you heard her newest rendition of "I wanna know what love is"?  

Welcome back, MC. Leave the cleavage behind.  

Silly Girls.

Stace and I like to do childish things.  Labor Day weekend in Houston was no exception.  We played on the boardwalk, rode the trolley, ate disgustingly delicious food, and shrieked at the aquarium.  Eek Sharks!

the date.

It's been eight years.  Can you believe it?!  I was fifteen and about to start my junior year of high school.  It was to be my first year of Running Start at EWU, so I hadn't started yet.  I woke up at TL's (we had set the alarm to get up and watch this really horrendous morning talk show featuring Mario Lopez.....I shudder as I type.) and we turned the TV on.  First thing she sees is Tony Blair on the screen going on about how he and his nation will be strong to defeat any and all enemies.  Then she reads the banner across the bottom of the screen that says the twin towers were hit in an apparent terrorist attack.  Her conclusion, that she shrieked to me in the bathroom?  The damn British attacked us!

It's bizarre to remember how terrified I was, even from three thousand miles away.  I had nightmares for months.  Makes me wonder about the people who lost loved ones.  Do their nightmares stop?

Proud to be American on this day, even if not organically.

Love Love Love

Sweet Sam.

I have joined the ranks of Dads and Grandparents everywhere in being completely wrapped around a little girl's finger.  I'm gonna be a cheeseball about this.  I think about her all the time, I wonder what kind of girl she will become, and I wonder how much I will get to do with it.  I worry that she isn't being given what she deserves.  It's hard to love a little thing like her; you want to jump all over her world, spray her with invisa-shield and slay all dragons that dare threaten her every joy.    Sometimes I'm bitter with TL for bringing her into my life and making me fall for her before I was ready to settle down and help more.  That's really immature, I realize, but I feel secure knowing that I have made no guarantees of maturity on this thread.  All the same, as soon as I feel bitter I then feel so thankful because TL has never given me anything so great as Sam.  In all issues Sam-related, I find myself torn.  Wouldn't it be the right thing to do to just swallow my antsyness and go home for a while?  I could help out, be there to help raise her, start my subliminal messages about the Zags, Hudson jeans, and Apple computers.  In the same breath, won't I have so much more to offer Sam if I see as much as I can now, in order to tell her things later?  Am I just a selfish, silly girl chasing butterflies or is there some substance to my wandering?  There is no clarity. Lordy, I need to get out of Texas.  The grease in the air is getting to my head.  

The Silk Tape Road: Thai edition *graphic.

This picture of my arm is gross.  I know it.  It looks like I have kidney failure and am suffering from severe edema and third spacing.  This is what my heat rash looked like while I was in Thailand last July.  It was bad.  It erupted one night after I indulged in an hour massage and suffered a subsequent fever.  It was so bad I could hardly sit still.  I had heavenly visions of scraping my skin off with a grapefruit spoon.  The reason why I am subjecting my blog to this horrendous graphic is because it helps me tell the story of my run in with the Thai healthcare system, the silk tape road along the silk road, if you will.  

After two days of this, I admitted defeat and proclaimed that I was in need of intervention.  The antihistamines alone were not effective.  I needed steroids.  After a desperate failed attempt to call a friend in the States (thanks a LOT, dr jim) I was directed to our house mom, Pi Dang who tsked her tongue and told me, "you need doctor-skin."  My mind quickly panicked.  The one time I had ever seen a dermatologist I had to wait weeks and reschedule three times before I was seen for fifteen minutes.  I could not bear this.  Luckily, Pi Dang could not hear my inner whimpering and promptly guided me over a street from our guest house to the local "Doctor-skin".

I wish I had a picture of the inside of that office.  What I can offer you is this description:  it looked like the DMV.  Rows of bucket seats packed with people, all waiting for one purpose.  I sheepishly followed Pi Dang as she made negotiations in Thai for me to be seen.  I could feel the glares as people noticed and were horrified by the condition of my skin.  Had it been biblical times, a cloak and proclamation of "unclean! unclean!" would have been appropriate.  At first, the nurse at the reception desk said that the doctor would see me in three hours.  What a relief!  Three measly hours?!  No big deal.  Apparently, however, Pi Dang saw this situation as being more dire.  She waltzed right back up and engaged in some seemingly friendly dialogue, which miraculously ended with my wait time being cut to thirty minutes.  I fervently stammered a prayer to God, asking Him to bless Pi Dang like He has blessed no other.  

After waiting awkwardly in the "dmv" and ignoring the children who pointed and made disgusted faces, I was shown in to the doctor's office.  The cutest gray haired Thai man ever waited for me, with his UV light on.  He intently studied my every extremity twice, before peering over his rimless glasses and declaring: "this is very bad."  I had to laugh, while wondering the cultural ramifications of a foreigner threatening his life if he didn't give me some steroids.  Luckily, this wasn't necessary.  The dear, Harvard educated man wrote me prescriptions for everything I could ever hope for.  

I was then ushered to the front desk, where the nurses of this office filled my prescriptions and explained my medications to me.  I was handed four little plastic baggies with exactly enough pills, and two creams.  As she was tallying up my total, the nurse looked at me apologetically as she told me my due for the six prescriptions and my office visit: 820 baht (read, 27 bucks).  She perked up however, when she told me that upon knowing my ethnic background, she charged me the lower, Thai price.  "Chinese close enough," she shrugged.  I could have leapt over the counter and kissed her.  

Imagine, if you will, what this fiasco would have been like if I were in the States.  Should we even start?!  Nah, let's just grin and appreciate how much better they do it over there.  Obama, take note!

Available by Catalog?

I was struck by this while in the Gap in Houston last weekend.  are we selling jeans here, or the men?   

The product description reads:

Homo sapien male.  likely hunter/gatherer.  tendency towards violent video games and toilet humor.  available in easy (no tequila required), loose (not even beer required), boot (cowboy edition), straight (gay available by special order), standard (basic potty trained only), and authentic (meaning warm body with a pulse).  

additional training required for functional relations. 

requires many meals, laundry services preferred.

batteries not included.