DUOFILIA

Thank you for all your kind thoughts and prayers, my conference presentation went very well. Only one person in the audience had their eyes closed for an extended time, but didn’t snore or drool, and no one threw tomatoes, nor did I have any reason to throw tomatoes at them. So that’s success, right? Actually, it did go very well, and the grand poo ba of the big wigs at the conference came up to me afterward and told me my presentation was “brilliantly done.” Whoohoo!

The best thing about my trip was coming home to my family. I missed getting hugs from the boy and smelling my girls’ hair. Here’s some random observations from my trip:

• Toilet seat protectors: If they don’t rip when removed from the holder, they will slide into the toilet before you sit down.
• TSA agents are getting testier and testier. One kept shouting, sarcastically ”Remove water bottles from your bags. Liquids and beverages are prohibited. Believe it or not, water is both a liquid and a beverage.”
• There are still nice people in the world. Like the waiter who didn’t charge me for the stuffed mushrooms, even after my boss ate some of it, because I had neglected to notice on the menu that they were stuffed with sausage; and the woman who brought me my room service order, with friendliness and a genuince smile; or the front desk attendant who helped me open the gate to the pool one night and didn’t mock me because I was pushing the gate instead of pulling it (I’m gifted, didn’t I tell you?).
• There are still rude people in the world. Like the woman, sitting in the front at one of the lectures, who not only forgot to turn off her cell phone, but actually answered it and had a full conversation on it.
• I saw the tallest woman I’ve ever seen, at the airport. She had to be somewhere between 6’7″ and 6’9″.
• DON’T EAT CORN TRUFFLES. It is the we-are-a-swaky-resort term for huitlacoche. I didn’t know. Now I know. Painfully. In an omelet. You have been warned.
• I had a Sleep Number bed in my hotel room, just like mine at home! Whoohoo!
• You will not need to go to the bathroom until the middle of a lecture. I’ve been to lot of conferences and this is always true. That’s also when you start to get gassy.
• Hair may start out looking good at the start of the day, but by five hours of lectures you start to look like a glam-rock lead singer after a rainstorm.
• The plane home: The bad news: It felt like 90 degrees in the plane and the two year old screamer behind me threw up. The good news: after throwing up the child stopped screaming. The other good news: I sat by a very nice couple who lives nearish me and also homeschools their kids, using the same program I plan to use for mine next year.
• There is nothing sweeter than coming home to one’s children. And smelling their hair.

First of all, I’d like you all to know that my husband, kids, mother, nephew, and myself all went to PF Changs for my belated birthday lunch. I love them. If I was put on a deserted island and told I could have only one food, it would be the vegetarian lettuce wraps. I cannot begin to tell you how luscious they are. Oh. My.

Secondly, I’m leaving bright and early Tuesday morning for Phoenix where I am going to be speaking at a conference. While I have given lectures and done quite a bit of public speaking in my life, this will be one of the largest audiences I’ve had and the first conference presentations I’ve given. So think of me and send a prayer that I don’t either have to duck tomatoes or wake them from a coma.

 

 

This is a personal message to a certain woman I know that is making some incredible changes in her life right now. The journey is not always easy, but it’s always worth it, my dear friend, and your grandchildren will agree. Like I’ve told you, you are truly an inspiration. I’m also very happy to be able to have an excuse to spend more time with you, which is always a great pleasure. Besides be a kind, generous, Christian woman, you are just as weird as I am, which is probably why we get along so well.

God bless you on your journey. Let me know if you need someone to talk to or a hand to hold.

Love,

Sheryle

Produce, as in vegetables, has a cycle, and I’m not talking about the seasonal cycle.

In Spring we all get excited about the new baby veggies arriving in the stores. Asparagus, peas. Or at least some of us do, while others run away, repulsed by green things. In Summer, the home garden crops start coming in. To work and church and neighbors I bring loads of summer squashes, early tomatoes, lettuce, green beans. Everyone says, “ooh!” and “ahh!” and baskets full are emptied within minutes. I am Earth Woman, able to coax beautiful veggies out of the harsh, unforgiving ground. I smile beatifically.

In late Summer and early Autumn, everything changes. You bring in a basket of tomatoes and the crowd parts like they’ve seen a leper. People suddenly have some other place to be. You call out, “Hey, Bill, do you want some tomatoes?” and suddenly all you see is the back of him, retreating, mumbling, “No, no, no.” I accosted several families at church yesterday with no takers of one flat and one bag of tomatoes. One gentleman was impressed by my description of the Black Prince variety, “You’ve never tried these before, they are sooo good” and grabbed a few out of the box before his wife caught him “What are you doing? We already have a ton at home!” He nearly ran, balancing five tomatoes in one hand and his two-year old son in the other.

Finally, I discovered that the one of the bachelors had left his car unlocked because he had gone back into the church to get something. I left the flat of tomatoes on his passenger seat and fled. David later told me he gave the bag of tomatoes to a young couple that is new at our church. They were probably trying to be nice, and yet we knowingly took advantage. At church no less.  

Autumn is here and that means we’re seduced by the produce we haven’t had fresh for a year: pumpkins, pomegranates, potatoes, apples. Then soon it’ll be January and we’ll be tired of it all and waiting for Spring again. I will find myself buying produce and then it sits in bowl on the counter until it starts shrinking and developing new color gradiations. Or it goes into the “crisper” drawer in the fridge. Hah! What a joke, the crisper. It should be called the OSOM drawer, for “Out of Sight, Out of Mind.” Or the Scientific Experiment drawer. Or the WHT — “What the Heck is That?” drawer. Or simply, “AAAAHHHHHhhh!!”

I suggest arranging things differently at the grocery store. I would purchase the lettuce, hand Produce Guy the cash, and then throw the lettuce in a compost bin on the way out of the store. Think of how much time I could save. Are you with me?

Three Link Thursday was on leave (just got out of the psychiatric institution, probably) but is back today and it’s feeling feisty.

Today’s link focus for all my geek, geek wannabe and geek don’t-wannabe friends.

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Blending nature with technology (click on the little memory stick. Literally). Cool.

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Blending my nurse nature with technology. Cool.

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PopSci’s The Worst Jobs in Science articles make me happily embrace my job as clinical analyst (which I am besides being an RN). See, I don’t have to follow anyone around to get a urine sample! Oh, wait, I’ve done that. My patients didn’t pee from trees, thankfully. Did I ever tell you about the psych nurse whose patient used to organize his scybala in order of size and then flick them down the hall? Never mind then. (If you look that word up you’ll be sorry.)

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