My "Give a durn" is busted

Pain, ladies and gentleman, is annoying. It can be overwhelming. It can be sharp, or dull, or burning, or aching, or cramping, constant or intermittent, radiating, positional, reproducible...the list continues. It can be indicative of a true emergency-internal organ damage, MIs (heart attacks), aneurysms, CVAs (Strokes)...but most often, it heralds much less emergent malfunctions.

I am no stranger to pain. I have ended up in the ER on more then one occasion-usually arranged to be the most inconvienient time possible. I fractured and disloacted my L elbow. I've sprained both ankles (and once my other elbow) numerous times, given myself whiplash falling on my head, straddled a balance beam, and had appendicitis to name a few painful incidents. I won't deny that I cried, when I fractured my elbow I screamed. HOWEVER, even at 14, I did not continue to scream all night. In fact, I ran out of tears pretty quickly. I had bursts of pain that reduced me to crying, especially while trying to sleep that night awaiting surgery in the morning, but as far as I can recall, I did not moan and groan and scream and cry for hours straight.

I am making this point not to try and boast about my pain tolerance. I was a moody, emotional, and highly dramatic child who would throw tantrums over far smaller things than broken elbows. I am making the point to illustrate that even at 14 I had enough control not to make a total brat of myself just because I hurt.

I try, really hard, to be patient with people in my line of work. I tell myself not everyone has the same pain threshold, sometimes it's the scariness that makes it seem worse....and sometimes people are just pathetic. I'm sorry! I tried. I can't help it, the slobbering drooling moaning crying tantrum throwing drama royalty make me want to give them something legitimate to cry about. Especially when that something is heartburn. Especially when they are forcing themselves to hyperventilate and then complain that their hands are now going numb. (My response, "Yup, keep on breathing like that and they'll contract in a muscle spasm thats really painful. Your feet will too." I find this a far more effective response than pretending like I care and telling them to "calm your breathing down, just relaaaax." BS) Especially when their blood pressure isn't the tiniest bit elevated, in fact, it's a very healthy 110/70 ish the entire trip to the hospital. Yeah, I wish I could reach through their chest wall and grab their heart and squeeeeeeeeze. THAT would be what a heart attack feels like. And I bet the pain would leave them breathless, not groaning and moaning like a ghoul straight out of a kids book.

My theory: If you have enough energy to groan/moan/scream/cry for over an hour, than you don't really hurt all that bad. Pain is annoying, but it is NOT an emergency in and of itself. I will try and be sympathetic, I will prop you up to make you comfortable, give you a sheet to cover up, listen to your complaints and ask you questions to assess you, but do not expect me-or anyone else-to whisk you straight to the head of the waiting list just because you hurt. And quit whining.

Creativity Burst :)

I've finished 5 more scrap book pages and have the last 2 of year 2010 already partially mapped out :D

Also, I have a great idea for a childrens book. I'll probably never get around to doing anything about it, or if I do, I'll never finish it, but it's fun to think about in my head. I like taking my imagination for a good brisk jog now and again.

I moved my current "oil painting in progress" into Brian's room so I can pick up on painting it. I've relegated Brian's room for the oil painting, the living room for scrapbooking, and my room for all other DIY projects. The house is well and truly messy.

Although I AM trying to clean the kitchen. It goes it bits and bursts. I'm also doing laundry even as I write this. I know, thats not so much a burst of creativity as it is a burst of doing ANYTHING around the house since I have been highly unmotivated to even get out of bed since Brian left, but I figured I'd add it in.

Oh and on a more depressing note. Don't talk to me about Afghanistan. Don't talk to me about the SF guy who got killed by a sniper or the Chinook that got shot down and killed all those men. Don't talk to me about ANYthing Middle Eastern war related. At all. Period. Yes, Brian is in Iraq for this deployment which is considerably safer. But then he'll be home for HOPEFULLY a full 6 months before getting deployed again with a 99.9% chance that he'll go to Afghanistan. Just, don't mention it. I do not have enough coping power to watch the news, I don't want to think about the escalation of violence, I don't want to talk politics. I have my own guns, don't push me on this.

Notice any wild mood swings? Yeah, me neither, amazing how stable I am for this deployment....

More scrapbooking time! Yay!

This post is more of a pointless ramble. I apologize, I had hoped to keep this blog a little more focused and organized. But right now, I'm pretty unfocused and chaotic so rambling is just gonna have to work. I'm pretty sure what little function I had in the left side of my brain has completely shut off and I'm running on full right sided power at the moment. I'll return to normal posting in a few days when I get pictures of the aquarium and then today's beach trip loaded to the computer. Thanks for reading.

Georgia Fun!

I had a wonderful time visiting my cousin Zechariah and his wife (my cousin-in-law?) Sara in Georgia. I was pleasantly surprised at Georgia in general, they live in Duluth and the area actually looks similar to VA. AKA, not filled with sand and scrubby ugly pine. If I could get over not having a snowy winter Georgia wouldn't be a bad place to live.

ANYway. I got there early and spent the morning with Sara (Zech was at work)and we tried introducing Remus to the Boston Terrier pups, but apparently Pigsby wasn't a big fan of Remus and what one does the other follows :/ Poor Remus, big baby that he is, suffered a little bit of bleeding from his ear but inflicted no damage in his own self defense. The Bostons were corralled and relegated to their crate where they spent most of the visit. We discovered that just Buster was ok with Remus and Sara showed me the high-flying ups the Bostons have, it was extremely comical. The noises the Buster and Pigsby made were even funnier, the snorts and grunts and wheezing, haha.

That afternoon we went to see the aquarium which was a blast! It was crowded, so hard to see all of the exhibits, but I'm dragging Brian to it when he gets back because the exhibits are spectacular. The bulugas and whale sharks where definite crowd pleasers but I think among the smaller exhibits the spider crabs and the little hole dwelling fish (can't remember the name) were my favorites. Zech gave us a guided tour, we even got to go to some of the "back stage" areas and see how the aquarium managed some of the exhibits, it was really cool. THEN we got to see some of the dolphin training and get good seats for Zech's performance as "The Star Spinner!"

It was so much fun! Cheesy, haha, yes, but it's geared mostly for kids. It was great to finally see one of Zech's performances, didn't know my cousin had such a good singing voice :D Also, the little boy next to Sara was hilarious. There was a fire alarm activation before the show started and it messed up the lightening and turned off the video that was playing on the screen to keep people entertained while everyone got seated. Since Sara had been explaining to the little boy how the lights would lower in the audience and then light up over the dolphin pool I guess he assumed she was the one running the show. As the lights kept switching (getting a lot of false alarm "ohhhhhh!"s from the crowd) the boy finally turned to Sara and said "Can you get your iphone out and open up your App and text someone. I'm bored now." Then during one part of the show there is a storm complete with "rain" falling on the dolphin tank. Well, the storm abates and the rain gentles while the Star Spinner (Zech) sings a song about the dolphins. The boy was not amused, sitting with his legs drawn up to his chin he states "Um, it's still raining out here!" At the end of the show Sara asked how he liked the show and he responded very noncholantly "It was ok." Hahaha tough crowd.

I enjoyed it, it is so cool that this is what my cousin gets to do for work. How much fun! Afterwards we had dinner with some of Sara's friends (a couple she had actually matched together) then watched a redbox movie and ate icecream back at the house while Remus drooled all over everyone and Sara armed us with Fabreeze to combat the Bostons natural gassyness. Ah, living with dogs...

Next day I went to Mass with Sara which was gorgeous. I love the Catholic service, the beauty and the ritual and the specialness of it, it is truly a place where I can "be still" and listen. Then we ate at the Flying Biscuit which is the absolute best breakfast place I have EVER been to. Delicious! My meal consisted of the best grits I have ever tasted, and chicken sausage, spinach, mushrooms, penne pasta, cheese and eggs all scrambled together. Pasta scrambled with eggs? Who knew? So good!!! By the time I had eaten the grits and most of the eggs I could barely take a few bites of the homemade biscuit on my plate, but that too, was scrumptious. Sara and I then made a quick trip to JoAnns for some DIY Nursery projects. (Can't wait to see the finished projects!) and I now have a million and one ideas floating around for projects of my own.

Oh it was just a great weekend :) Back to the grindstone tonight. Hope it's better than the past few weeks have been. Craziness!