To Willis!

My #3 son and I are to be off again to our mountain retreat in Willis VA. I have rented the Jeep so we can get pass the rutted dirt roads to our rutted "drive way". We are going to get the travel trailer ready for summer. It needs to be leveled and a small porch/deck built. We are hoping for good weather Wednesday and Thursday and it looks like we are going to get it for a change. If the weather gurus get it right it will be warmer up there than here at the beach.

Happy easter

Spring Break

*Spring break is here and I have to get up early in the morning to use the computer. As has been the pattern since I don’t know when, yesterday was my day off so the weather was less than ideal, with it being the first day of spring break all the little kiddies were home and since the weather sucked, my #3 son and his friends were on the computer killing each other in some war game. I’ve never allowed my son to have a computer in his room so get to sit and listen to him talk, yes talk, over the internet in real time to his buds and some other people who he only knows on the internet discussing battle strategies. It reminds me of a virtual paint ball game. I find it interesting. Every once and a while I’ll ask him questions while he is playing and he seems willing to teach an old lady a new trick but I just cant seem to get the hang of it. I like paint ball but I can’t get into the virtual mayhem.

*Things are looking ok for the trip to the mountains. I want to get the camper ready for the summer. It needs to be leveled and I want to build a small deck. I have confirmed the Jeep rental. A ragtop at 70mph is not the most pleasant of rides but when I hit the mountains its great. Today the weather channel says Tuesday through Thursday should be good so with my #3 son and farmer Tim’s help I will get things ready for the summer!

*I have taken 8 days off this spring break 4 of those days will be getting the camper ready days and 2 will be gardening days. I’ll need to go back to work to rest!

I've done all I'm going to do tonight. I'll see if I remember what I did tomorrow and see if I can figure out what happened to the first photo of Trip!

 

Let's try this for the umpteenth time! It's hard to remember what button was pressed and when.

Any way this is the boy, Zeke. The girl is Trip. Zeke is much more laid back than Trip
 

My view some day

If all goes well in around 3 years this will be the view from my front porch

Pressed the right button. This is my girl. The only to get her to stand still is to have a frisby or ball ready to throw. That is why she looks so intent

trying new things out

I have been trying to learn how to publish photos. I have figured out how to get the digital photos on the blog but can’t seem to get the scanned ones to publish. Well life is a learning curve and eventually I will ask the right question or press the right button and I will figure this out.

My first photo on my blog is one of my dogs taken at Christmas 2004 using my sons HP 1.5 mega pixel camera that his dad got him. I can see that this blog hobby like any hobby can get expensive. Been looking at digital cameras and there are a lot of them out there and you don’t seem to be able to go by price range. Oh well sooner or latter I will find the camera that is right for me.

lets try this out 

March 20th

This March 20^th has two roles to play. First it’s Palm Sunday. Second it’s the first day of spring.

*I have my clothes laid out for church not an easy task seeing as I do not own a dress. You see I am one of those holiday Catholics. For me getting dressed up is putting on my best pair of jeans and a nice top. Frankly I don’t think god is going to fault me the jeans. So I will go to mass, have the true pleasure of seeing folks I have not seen in a while and hopefully enjoy the sermon. I work Easter Sunday so I will miss that holiday and for that I am sorry because Easter is the most important Christian holiday. With out the resurrection of Christ there would be no Christianity.

*As I sit here looking out the window on to the deck, I see a steady light rain and the mist that comes with it. The rain is so light that drops are able to form on the branches of the live oak. These drops get fatter and eventually fall the rest of the way to he ground. It’s very hypnotic.

This is the first day of spring. Spring will start officially in just a few minutes. This year the Vernal Equinox comes at approximately 7:30 am EST. From now on the days will get longer here in the northern hemisphere.

We have just gone through one of the ten warmest winters since they started recording those things. Seven of the ten have happened since 1990. What problems will the lack of snow in the upper mid west bring? How will the warm temperatures effect insects? I have always noticed that if we don’t get a good freeze we have a lot more bugs. Is this warm weather a trend that will last all year? The most important question, how much have we humans contributed to this increase in temperatures?

Those question and more go through my mind as I sit sipping my coffee watching the rain fall and reform on the branches of that live oak and then continue their journey to the ground. The answers are in my mind. I know that more than one thing affects the weather and in the end nature will balance all things out with or without a human presence.

Oil

A lot has gone on this past week, but what I think has really struck me is the increase cost of gas and the subsequent push to drill for oil in the Alaskan wilderness.

This is one of those things I have no answers to or even suggestion for. I have to drive to work so I need fuel. I need tires and oil. I heat my home. I have all the typical electrical devices, and in many cases more than one of them. I use pharmaceuticals. My shoes have rubber soles. I am a consumer of petroleum and I don’t want to pay anymore than necessary for these things.

I try to be conservative. I drive a car that gets 35 miles a gallon to work. I buy only cotton clothes and soft goods. I try to keep the heat down and conserve electricity. I’m not as good about recycling as I should be but I try not to waste.

So what is the answer? I feel I’m fairly typical. Do I support increased drilling in pristine wilderness so I can continue my standard of living? And will drilling in these remote places really help reduce the dependency I as an American have on foreign oil. Will this drilling give me a false sense of security, allowing me to continue as I am, not looking for alternatives? Are these not some of the questions that were asked in the 70’s?

As I have said I have no answers, but the questions I ask myself may help me make decisions that are more earth friendly.

Moving out......again

My #2 son is moving out again. I did not find out from him, the girl who he is going to be a roommate with called me to see if my son was good about paying the rent. Of course he is so I told her so. I met up with my #2 son at the local Wal-Mart, quite by accident, were I said “I understand you are moving out.”. To this he replied “I was going to talk to you about that. If it does not work can I move back?” To that I replied “Son” I do call him son. “I love you and of course you can come back, but make it work.”

I have mixed emotions about this move. I want the kid out of my house. The thing that sets me back a little is that this house he is going to move into is co-ed. There are 2 males and 2 females living there at this time. This will be interesting to watch.

Yester-daze,

The March lion is back.

Yesterday was so nice. I turned the small patch of ground I call a garden, getting it ready for the vegetables I will plant. Weeded the area that holds the perennials flowers. Cleaned out the strawberry patch. Tossed the ball to the girl dog. Took a long walk with one of my friends. Got the binoculars and watched a loon in a canal as it dived and stayed under for what seemed like ages. I did nothing but what I wanted to do.

The weather called for thunderstorms all day yesterday, but the sky stayed blue and the winds light. I have been working so much lately and it seemed as if every day I was off the weather was bad, or I had to help mom or do some other errand. But yesterday I kept for me and I’m glad I did.

Last night as I finally sat in my big comfy chair to watch a little TV, the rain, wind and cooler temperatures came. The sky is clear today but the wind and cool temperature stayed.

I’ll stay inside today looking out the window at the flag across the street as it flutters violently in the wind, and at the live oak in my yard as is sheds its leaves getting ready for the rebirth of spring. I will enjoy the silence interrupted only by the wind chime on the deck. This I will do until the others wake up. Then there will be hair cuts to get and errands to run and then back to work tonight.

But I had yester-daze…

TV

I wont say I don’t watch TV, I will say my family watches VERY little of it. I wasn’t turned from the TV by too much advertising, what turned me off was the constant barrage of negativism.

I was reading in Parade magazine, the little magazine that comes with the Sunday paper. In it was an atricle by Dr. Joyce Brothers about shame, and why it might not be a bad ideal to feel it from time to time. There is little shame on TV today.

Language is a powerful tool. It can give the greatest pleasure and the worst hurt. Much of what is in TV is flat out not good. It seems to desensitize people to the feelings of others by numbing our minds with a constant barrage of pictures and sounds. We are becoming a people with no privacy. We are becoming a 15 minutes of fame people. Much of TV does not let us feel good about ourselves, our society, our world.

I’m not against TV. I like some of the things on it. I don’t feel it is necessary to remove it from the home. Just turn it off from time to time. Be selective.

Flight of thought

I woke up this morning to the words of a Bob Seagers song in my head "I woke last night to the sound of thunder how far off I sat and wondered...." I thought about that song for a while then my mind wandered to how I need to build a shelf to hold the DVD player and VCR in my room. It was 3:30am !

I put this out of my mind, said to self go back to sleep, but instead into my mind popped "does the front yard need to be dethatched" , I need to get down on my hands and knees and measure the thickness of the thatch. Its 3:50 something am...

Go back to sleep.

But it was not to be. From my obviously totally awake subconscious to my trying to sleep conscious popped the most important observation "If I replace the closet door with a louver door I could put that wing back chair mom gave me in that corner". It was 4:18 am..

Maybe it was because I worked Thursday day shift, then Friday night shift, slept till 2pm on Saturday and then had chocolate cake after dinner. What ever it is I'm up and I guess I will mop the kitchen!

After I have my cup of coffee, fool around on the computer, take the dogs out, sort the laundry.....

In like a lion...

March: In like a lion out like a lamb.

When I was a kid in school we were told that but as an adult most times it seems the reverse has been true. Not this year, here on the Outer Banks it has been windy and cold. I see in my minds eye the picture of the fierce cloud blowing wind that the teacher always put up the first of March with a little lamb following it. It never mattered what school I went to every teacher did this. I guess that is why I pay attention to the approach of March. Maybe its because March means spring is near.

March on the Outer Banks is a time to prepare. The tourists are not here yet. It's like the ebb of water before a tsunami. This ebb is followed by a small wave at Easter and maybe a few more waves before the crushing wave that is Memorial Day. But March is for the locals. March days get longer as the sun moves slowly up in the sky. It reflects on the marsh softening the browns and showing the faint green trying to come out. Birds start to return. Fishermen and crabbers get their boats and pots ready. Business people have this last little bit of time to get ready. The rest of us take a deep refreshing breath and just wait.

Today is calm, the sun is shining, and although the temperature is only expected to reach the low 40's I can tell it will be a good day, but all is not lost, the March Lion has not given up. According to the weather guru Saturday is to be rainy, and windy, and cold.

MORNING

Woke up this morning to 36 degrees humidity of 75% light winds and sunshine. Beautiful day. You can tell by the weather that I have to work tonight and Sunday night. Of course the rain is going to be here starting early Monday morning, Oh well. It is a very nice morning took the dogs out for a minute to get their business done. The air was crisp but pleasant, light breeze not a bad start the day.

I'm so tired you could put me on the back wheel of your car and I'd roll

Well it has been a long week, started my three 12's in a row Monday night. I cant remember patient acuity being so high, but it must be everywhere.

I work at 2 different hospitals. In one I work on a step down unit, that's just below the ICU, the other hospital I work at is a small 1 medical floor hospital not many beds but a great learning experience for me. I work PRN (as needed) at both hospitals. This allows me to spend more time in the VA mountains. I just work around my trips to VA

I got a job working at the small hospital hoping to get in to their ED, but since all I wanted was PRN the med floor supervisor grabbed me. I did not know how I was going to like it, all I had ever done was telemetry or step down & emergency nursing so this was new to me. I will say I like the ED more, but the things I learn working in this small 19 bed hospital will be an asset for the rest of my career, witch at this rate I don't know how long that will be!

Any way it's been hell this last week, the small hospital had to keep patients it wanted to send to other hospitals because the other hospitals were full. The stepdown unit in the large hospital had to keep patients and take patients that needed ICU care because everything was full. I call this the week from hell and I am tired.

I will be spending the day doing laundry a little carpentry and watching TMC. Its a good day for it. The weather here is cloudy with a damp cold. Not a good day for yard work. The dogs are lying at my feet. My dobby mix, Trip, likes to put her 75lb body under the computer table and on top of my feet and my 90lb lab mix, Zeek likes to get as close as he can to the chair so that I have to be careful not to roll over him. The cat, May is in the bed room enjoying the bed, she will come out when she gets board.

My youngest son is in bed he was up late last night playing army with other people on the internet. I let him do it every once and a while, he has no school today and he has to be up early tomorrow. My older sons the ones who left home only to return have both gone to work so at this time it's just me.

one hour break:

Just had a great conversation with my friend in Florida. Its 70 something degrees in Naples and she is sitting on her porch. We had a nice 1 hour conversation so now I have to stop writing and get to messing around the house.

Distractions

Well I need to do my taxes. Today is the day I set aside for them. So far I have colored my hair, messed around with map quest plotting ways to the family reunion in August! I have been to the UNC NPR home page and sent them a little money. I'm listening to Radio Paradise and they are playing some great music. I visited Fragments From Floyd were Fred's blogg has a link to another map site. I do have till April 15th to get the taxes done......