Going on 80

You may be thrilled (or possibly not) to be reminded (or warned) that March is National Crochet month.

If you’re a crocheter yourself, you already know that the craft of crocheting – as well as knitting or rug hooking – can visit you with some comforting hours of peace and serenity – all while cheerfully keeping you away from wine, whiskey, cigars, dope, chocolate, or Macadamia Nut Clusters. And the pharmaceutical industry that manufactures antidepressants should tremble with fear of what the mighty crochet hook can do to their bottom line.

When you’re crocheting, you are somehow in contented harmony with the universe in spite of its global neuroses and nuclear threats or your unpaid bills. But as you may be aware, there’s a teensy problem with crocheting, not with the craft itself, but with some of its products. When it comes to crocheted treasures, it’s often better to be the giver than the giftee. Here are some examples of creative crocheted hookery that you may have missed out on.

This young man is obviously thrilled to death with his exciting new crocheted jacket, but I hope he doesn’t get buried in it. It would be a shame if this is his mother’s last image of him. Of course, she may have hooked it for him herself . . . . .

Crocheters consider potholders to be very popular as gifts to present to lucky friends and family. I myself have created many such treasures even though I later learned they had a tendency to cause burns, catch on fire, and the woolen ones that weren’t hand-washed in Woolite suffered severe shrinkage. The Christmas versions were quite engaging I thought, though I never saw them displayed at later Yule festivities, perhaps because they had been “lost” or accidentally cremated in an unfortunate kitchen mishap.

The bathroom is another exciting stage for crocheting creativity. This handsome apparel for the toilet may get a little soggy but it’s definitely an eye-catcher, especially when it’s accompanied by . . . . . .

. . . . . a crocheted toilet paper scarf.

When it comes to cozy intimate comfort, what lucky couple could turn down a present like this? I hope they’re legally married because I’m pretty sure presenting this gift to them was a criminal offense.

Of course, fashion is where crochet really stands out. Try to picture how swanky these granny square pants would look paired with that young guy’s jacket shown above.

On the other hand, consider the plight of the hapless bride-to-be whose Aunt Gertrude may have insisted on crocheting her bridal gown and going-away outfit for the honeymoon. Here they are on the runway.

Some women can make it work, sort of. This is the actress Cate Blanchett wearing a crocheted granny square dress at an awards show. Of course, she’d look beautiful in a garbage bag.

Now that you’ve prepared yourself for the worst looks, we should review some of the winning ones. If Aunt Gertrude had only found this pattern for her niece’s wedding dress, maybe the groom wouldn’t have cancelled the wedding.

Crocheted bedspreads, especially vintage ones, are often downright gorgeous! My grandma made one for my Aunt Elsie and Uncle Pete’s double bed. It must have taken her a few years to do it. I don’t know what happened to it, but I remember it looked something like this. Later, she gave me a small purse that she must have crocheted from the crochet thread she had left. I wish I still had it. I thought it was beautiful, and so, for sure, was that bedspread!

It’s likely that most crocheters have created at least one afghan. My mother gave us two that she made and one has had about 50 years of use and is still going strong. My daughter Lisa has made several including this one. She used a soft, supple yarn and it’s really pretty and it’s comfy. I hope her little dog Cheerio doesn’t chew it up.

To spare my pride I wasn’t going to show you any of my own crochet projects, but since we’re talking about afghans, I’ll show you the only one I’ve made. It won 3rd place at our county fair. It didn’t have a pattern because it’s an example of what’s known as freeform crochet. Freeform crochet involves a hook and some yarn, and then you just start “meandering”. No pattern is involved. You just see where it takes you, and it’s my favorite form of the craft because you can use – to excess – every stitch or motif that you ever learned and then some. Crochet hookers, you don’t know what fun is till you’ve tried freeform crochet!

Here’s some more samples of freeform crochet.

My award-winning rug-hooking daughter Judy made an amazing rug for me. Using an old black-and-white Kodak photo of me getting ready to leave on Gene’s and my honeymoon, she actually recreated the scene by hooking it on a real-life rug or wall hanging! I couldn’t believe it. (You can see more of what she’s up to on her website) https://judytaylor2013.wordpress.com/

So I shouldn’t have been surprised to see that a crochet artist has been doing something similar but with a crochet hook instead of a rug hook. His name is Jose Dammers and his speciality is stitched portraits using freeform crochet. Here are three of his freeform crocheted portraits. He has lots on the internet at how to get started. https://www.facebook.com/jose.dammers/

So that’s all I can think of to set you up for National Crochet Month. Now start hooking!

Wanted: recipes to make tuna fish pretend to be prime rib.

If you’re a Catholic, that’s what you need. Ninety-nine ways to trick tuna fish into masquerading as a gourmet feast instead of a ho-hum Friday meal during Lent. I wish I could help, but thanks to my Norwegian mother, I was never exposed to any fish dishes you might care to cook, unless you’re crazy about pickled herring. Just kidding, My mother would have starved before she’d face a herring on her dinner plate. For a very good reason.

According to Mother, she was put to work in a sardine cannery when she was a little kid in Stavanger, Norway. It must have been around 1905. Her job – and those of the other children who worked there – was to thread a needle through the eyes of the sardines before they took their places in the little sardine tins, heads and all. Today though, “modern” canned sardines arrive at your table with all their bones and organs still fully intact (Ahem!) for your eating enjoyment – but with their heads missing . . . . Are you still with me? . . . . I can wait till you get back from the bathroom.

Apparently, sardines with heads – no matter how beautifully the children could align them in the can – are no longer popular as a delectable dining experience. . . . or else, today’s sardine eaters are sissies who don’t want to look their victims in the eye. . . . or else, today’s labor laws are preventing children from sweating over needles in sardine canneries. And perhaps, most Norwegians adults today wouldn’t be caught dead listing the craft of aligning sardines with heads together in a can as a major item on their resumes.

All of which is to explain why I have never eaten a sardine. In spite of her Nordic heritage, Mother didn’t seem to favor cooking or consuming much fish. When I was growing up in Iowa, we thought salmon was a nice fish that swam only in cans, and sometimes on Fridays, Mother would get out the can opener and make salmon patties. Mostly though, Fridays meant we’d be having beans or lentils.

Since the first century, Christians have fasted in repentance for their sins on Fridays to commemorate the death of Jesus on that day. They try to eat less, and it became common practice to abstain from eating meat. But, technically, it’s the flesh of warm-blooded animals that’s off limits. Cold-blooded animals were acceptable for some reason. Today, fasting is mostly only required on Fridays of Lent, but if you don’t crave dining on decapitated sardines, you could still look forward to many other kinds of fish – or even turtles, crocodiles, worms, or snakes. Yum.

But now that we’re into Lent, let’s get back to menu planning. There’s still five more Fridays till Easter!

One of my grandchildren – Arden – is a vegan. He says he doesn’t eat anything that has eyes (unless they’re potatoes). I’d be leaning in that direction myself, except vegans don’t eat any animal by-products either, such as cheese or eggs. Dang it! I was just thinking that a grilled cheese sandwich with cream of tomato soup would be a perfect Lenten meal on Friday. One could always wash it down with a glass of chardonnay. Oh, well. So much for my lofty new career as a vegan.

For each of the next 5 Fridays – unless you can give me better suggestions, the main course here at Kartar Ridge Ranch will probably be: (1) Macaroni and cheese, or (2) Tuna fish salad, or (3) Chow mein with tofu), or (4) “Battered” fish, or (5) Scrambled eggs. But we’ll try to make every effort to be devoutly fasting from having sardines on the menu.

Be humane. Gadgets need just as much care and affection as does your slobbery doodle dog or your love-starved pit bull. Gadgets deserve to have a nice home in a drawer somewhere in your house where they can pretend to be useful and where they may someday be pondered over by future generations who may wonder what they were for.

According to my extensive research on the subject (engaged in while assessing the clutter in our kitchen drawers) a mark of sophisticated civilization can surely be assessed by the number of gadgets contained therein which have no possible purpose that anybody can think of.

Some gadgets, of course, can be quite helpful. Take this one, for example. Future generations may be puzzled to learn that this is a vegetable peeler – used by the humans on Planet Earth who tended to eat a lot of carrots and potatoes. According to Octo-woman, it’s the best vegetable peeler there is on earth, and don’t you forget it. Maybe you could give one of its littermates a nice home, where it can live with you happily ever after till it succumbs after its long and fruitful life. It’s waiting for you to rescue it from its shelter here: https://a.co/d/21Ok4m3

Another gadget worth adopting is this long-handled can opener. I first became acquainted with this strange looking treasure when I was trying to open No. 10 size cans, but discovered it does any size can better, faster and cleaner than any of its jealous competitors. It gets dull after a year or so and I used to replace it with a new one, but now I just sharpen its blade with sandpaper and it repays me by continuing to open cans like they’re made of butter. I know my great-great-great grandchildren won’t have any idea what it’s for because probably by then, their robots will know how to open cans with their teeth, but meanwhile, here in our kitchen, it’s my can-do friend. I just wish I had more cans to open. You can adopt one here: https://a.co/d/8kXrG57

This is another pet gadget you might want to consider adding to your drawers. All of your descendants living on future planets will be able to figure out what scissors were for. They will know that obviously, the object must have been used to cut stuff, but it will be harder to glean what this related little trinket was for. If you cut into as much stuff as I do – paper, cloth, hair, meat, plastic, rope, or possibly toenails- you know that after a time, those handy Fiskars-type scissors lose their lust for slicing through their victims. They get very dull. That’s why you need this gadget in your junk drawer. It’s a Fiskars-type scissors sharpener, and even if you’re not Hannibal Lector, you’ll be glad you made its acquaintance the next time you have some kind of a body to cut up. It’s already housebroken, and you can file for adoption here: https://a.co/d/7E64zUy

And speaking of cutting, we have to talk about knives, – or, as I used to fondly think of them – as my “separators” since “slicing” had become a distant, dull, and rusty attribute of their former lives. Not anymore though. Several kinds of “knife sharpeners” are residing in a drawer here at Kartar Ridge Ranch but this little pet is definitely the friendliest and gets the most treats. As long as I hold the knife securely upside down with the tip extending off the kitchen counter, quick and easy, I can turn the sharpener into a weapon of mass destruction, or, at least, a sufficient means of nicely slicing the contents of a can of Spam. Follow the directions. This lonely but affectionate pet has already had all its shots and is waiting to hear from you at: https://a.co/d/9haBdT6

This is another gadget whose purpose may puzzle our future descendants but it could be a welcome asset in your kitchen today. It happens to be a jar lid opener which – unlike others of its breed – can actually open jar lids. You may be unaware that there are those among us who suffer from opening-jar-lid-impairment and have been known to resort to the use of a ball-peen hammer and very unladylike language. In the interests of privacy, I will of course, not identify the individual by name except to say that it was my daughter Lisa. After finally running out of cusswords that day, she went online shopping and found this gadget and we have been fighting over its ownership ever since. If you feel you would like to make room in your home for a similar pet that you will learn to love, check it out here: https://a.co/d/i0tRKvf

Finally, before I sign off on tonight’s blob, I was thinking you might need some encouragement as to whether your residence could accommodate any of these homeless gadgets. Perhaps a little mood music would help. I realize that all the starring roles in the video went to doggies and kitty-cats, but surely there must be a place in it for – at least – a can opener. https://youtu.be/08SLFf7mrwQ

An observation among those who have to spend time in intensive care units – either as recent “guests” such as son Matthew – or their visitors – is that all of us are only here on earth on a temporary visa. An ICU (along with your health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, or other funding) can often extend your stay in the world but – yup! – sooner or later we each have a final expiration date to deal with.

Take me for example. At 91 years old, I know I’ve exceeded my shelf life. None of the patients I saw at the hospital- or, for that matter, any visitors – were as over-the-hill and decrepit as I am. I didn’t know whether to feel embarrassed, lucky, or, – of course, since I’m a Catholic – guilty! I’m still pondering it.

It occurred to me I better figure out some kind of future date I could latch onto so folks won’t think that the only way I’ll give up and cash out is with a wooden stake through the heart at nightfall. But somehow, such a crime scene – with a lot of kicking and screaming – doesn’t seem like desirable staging for making a dignified exit.

Thus it was that I stumbled on the website deathclock.com. All you have to do is enter a little intel about yourself, and it’ll give you the date of your upcoming demise. I will be glad to share that momentous information about my own death so you can Save the Date! on a post-it on your refrigerator.

According to deathclock.com, Octo-woman’s death will occur on Monday, July 8, 2030 at which time I’ll be 98 years, 10 months and 2 days old.

I’m pretty confident the predicted date must be accurate. After all, it appeared on the internet, so it must be true – at least according to experts such as George Santos or his friend and colleague, the Ethiopian prince. And just to prove that the best things in life are free, deathclock.com’s prediction is free too, unless, of course, you’re of the mind that the cost of your death itself might be a tad bit pricey.

As soon as I saw the predicted date of my death though, I knew I was in trouble. Of course, it will give me plenty of time to clean up my “affairs” (I love putting it that way though I never actually had any) and to try to do penance for my sins, etc., but the problem is that between now and July 8, 2030, there are 385 weeks. Since I post one of these blobs every Sunday, that means I HAVE TO WRITE 385 MORE BLOBS. Producing a blob is like laying an egg – it’s kind of an effort getting it out. But it’s the next best thing to communicating with you in person. especially when you pitch in with comments of your own.

One thing you won’t have to worry about is that it looks like these blobs may not be going away after I’m gone. I’ve been practicing with the new ChatGPT. Turns out, it’s not just student essays and marketing copy it’s good at. It’s going to replace bloggers. I’ve been checking it out and I’m pretty sure that in the distant future, OpenIO is fully prepared to capably take over the distinguished literary efforts of Octo-woman.

Thought I’d better test it out. Here’s some of my recent conversations with the chatbot. First, I posed the question as to why anyone would want to know the date of their death?

Well, okay, but I guess I was hoping for something a little less stuffy – more playful. So next, I tried to break it down and be more specific about what the bot should deliver.

The bot was figuring out a style I wanted as we went along. Note the more playful tone it was using by the time we got this far:

Well, regardless of your preferred literary style, or your current job requirements, it might be a good idea to start getting acquainted with our new “helper”. In case you haven’t already done so, you can take the plunge here:
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-use-openai-chatgpt-text-generation-chatbot/

Son Matthew is getting reacquainted with life on planet earth after his emergency re-admission to St. Joseph’s Hospital one week after his stay a week earlier. He’s home now, getting better, and glad to be alive. Deo gratias!

During the first days of both of the sieges at the hospital, he lost his ability to communicate, only able to make deep guttural sounds. He later told us that he believed the sounds he was making were completely intelligible. It must have been terrifying to have all communication shut off with his sister Susy and me, and with the medical teams surrounding him during both of the crises.

Knowing how fearful his communication predicament was, Susy and I tried to stay at his side in the hospital for nine hours a day so he wouldn’t be alone. We wouldn’t have needed to though.

During that time, we watched with amazement how the nurses and their aides still managed the impossible – somehow able to have a kind of communion with him. No matter how difficult or messy or tedious, his care was, it was administered with kindness, remarkable patience and good humor. It became increasingly clear to us and to Matthew that he had become a favored patient on each nursing unit he was in. They liked him and he understood that and appreciated it. I think it helped him recover.

Nurses are an impressive category of human beings. They know a lot of science; have mastered the techniques of caring for all kind of vulnerable patients; they soothe, tolerate and encourage the ones who are cranky, depressed, or seemingly unmanageable. They’re even able to lift or move the patients who far outweigh them. And some nurses are downright gifted in being able to coax a smile out of somebody who is very sick. That kind of medicine isn’t found in the pharmacy but it’s freely dispensed by good nurses.

A ways back, I posted the following in one of these blobs, and the story kept echoing in my head during Matt’s ordeal. A family friend posted it on his Facebook and it’s been echoing in my head ever since. This is it:

“Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones. But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. 

Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. 

A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said.

When watching all those “civilized” caregivers at St. Joseph’s Hospital, I was thinking about the professional nurses in our family. I could only think of the following list but please help me out with a comment if there’s others.

When I posted this blob last night, I had forgotten the most currently prominent nurse in our household today. How could I forget (but I did) – my little granddaughter-in-law Kristen – wife of grandson Ford – who, like Katie – is more than a nurse. Since I tend to forget stuff that’s the most obvious, she wasn’t in last night’s post. Kristin earned Bachelor’s degrees in Psychology, History and Nursing. Then she earned a doctorate in nursing and commenced her amazing career as a Midwife. Since then, she has introduced a few hundred babies into their brave new world. Please read what her mother-in-law Gretchen has to say about her in the comments below, and join me in standing in awe of this amazing young woman!

When I posted this blob last night, I had forgotten the most currently prominent nurse in our immediate family today. How could I forget (but I did) – my little granddaughter-in-law Kristen Covey- wife of grandson Ford – is more than a nurse. Since I tend to forget stuff that’s the most obvious, she wasn’t in last night’s post. Kristin earned Bachelor’s degrees in Psychology, History and Nursing. Then she earned a doctorate in nursing and commenced her amazing career as a Midwife. Since then, she has introduced a few hundred babies into their brave new world. Please read what her mother-in-law Gretchen has to say about her in the comments below, and join me in standing in awe of this amazing young woman!

Next that comes to mind is my own remarkable sister-in-law, Arlis Ford. She graduated from Mercy School of Nursing in Cedar Rapids, Iowa when I worked as a teenager at the hospital where she was in training. Her nursing career was put on hold during the years she was raising her family, but she later served as a volunteer nurse at a rehabilitation center in Cedar Rapids. When my husband Gene and I were raising our family, I never missed a chance to pick her brain for childcare nursing tips, or to observe how she was caring for her own six kids. You can read more about her in this earlier blob: https://goingon80.com/2011/07/23/320-arlis-and-andrew/

My grandniece Katie Fitzpatrick is a nurse in Cedar Rapids, but in a category that isn’t just “vanilla-flavored”. She’s a nurse practitioner who can serve many of the same responsibilities as a medical physician. Who would have guessed that that irresistible little urchin would turn to such a demanding and heroic career for her life’s work. Maybe her grandma Joan’s peanut butter toast helped! I wrote an earlier blob about Katie here: https://goingon80.com/2010/11/13/68-katie-fitzpatrick/

I never met the following three medically trained people on Katie’s side of the family but I learned about them when we produced the blob about our family’s military veterans.

I don’t have a photo of her, but Barbara Ann “Bonnie” Mieswinkel Fitzpatrick (wife of Michael Fitzpatrick) served as a general duty staff nurse for the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War. She attained the rank of Captain and served in California, Japan and Thailand.

Bonnie’s husband Michael Edward Fitzpatrick (son of Ed Fitzpatrick) also served in the U.S. Air Force during the Viet Nam War. A staff sergeant, he wasn’t a nurse but served as a highly trained professional medical service specialist.

Another of the family veterans we learned about: James Brennan Fitzpatrick (Leo Fitzpatrick’s son) served in the U.S. Army during the Viet Nam War as a combat medic. According to Wikipedia the medical work he was trained to do paralleled and may have surpassed that of a paramedic. Such trained specialists are considered valuable assets on medical teams in civilian hospitals, too. For years, my husband Gene was treated at our Group Health medical facility in Seattle by a combat medic – turned physician’s assistant – who also served in Viet Nam.

Of course, there’s lots of caregivers among us who don’t have degrees or nursing credentials but who know all there is to know about dedicated nursing care. The caregivers at home. Such as my niece Denise who cares for her little daughter Josie at home, or my daughter Susy who faithfully nurses my son Matthew. Margaret Mead would be proud of them and I am, too!

“To do what nobody else will do, in a way that nobody else can do, in spite of all we go through: that is to be a nurse.” Rawsi Williams

There are many kinds of lifts you might like to acquire. Such as an emotional lift, or a face lift, or an elevator lift to your penthouse apartment, or maybe a lift to town to collect your mega-lottery winnings. But there’s one you might wish you could avoid.

When son Matthew’s doctor was discussing his discharge from the hospital this week, and his current mobility issues, he said, “I’m ordering a hoyer lift to be delivered to your home on Monday”. Matt’s sister and caregiver Susy was not happy with this development, as I’ll explain in a minute.

The hoyer lift was invented by an American named Ted Hoyer in the 1940s. I found this description of him on medmartonline.com:

In September 1936 Ted Hoyer was a 16-year-old student-athlete who, because of a minor injury, had to sit out an away game. Wanting to cheer on his teammates, he got a ride from a friend to the game. Unfortunately, the two friends got into a car accident on the way and Ted suffered serious injuries, including a severed spinal cord. From that moment on, Ted was a quadriplegic. 

Despite his injuries, Ted went on to operate a magazine sales and subscription business and wrote for various publications. In 1949, Ted and his cousin, Victor Hildemann, built what would become the first Hoyer powered patient lift so that Ted could enjoy independence and mobility throughout his busy workday. Manufactured in Ted’s double garage, the lift was later described in the local newspaper, The Oshkosh Northwestern:
“The device, which gently and easily lifts the handicapped person from bed and lowers him into a wheelchair, is so versatile that it is also used to help the patient in and out of automobiles.”

But, at the moment, Susy is not impressed. She feels she can do Matthew’s transfers better herself, but he’s bigger than she is, and I have to say it is scary to behold her doing it. For the past several days of his hospitalization, Matt’s transfers were performed only by teams of two nurses all of whom depended on brute force alone to move him. Susy doesn’t do it that way though.

Thanks to her own reasoning, inventiveness, and whatever training she has gleaned from physical therapists, she tries to use Matt’s own strength to help her move him, and so far it has worked FAR better than the way two nurses together do it if they’re only using their own muscle.

The doctor is right though. It’s getting too risky for both Susy and Matt. Therefore, we shall behold the hoyer lift arriving in a blaze of glory to Kartar Ridge Ranch on Monday. And maybe Susy will learn to like it once she gets acquainted. After all, the hoyer lift is sometimes referred to as “The Steel Nurse”, and so is our own mighty Susy.

Of course, we don’t have any room for it. It’s going to have to take up residence in our living room – along with Matt’s bulky Nu-Step recumbent trainer, his power wheelchair, manual wheelchair with table, large recliner and various medical appliances and supplies.

We’ll be looking forward to a visit from you soon, but don’t be surprised if you’re greeted with, “C’mon right in! So glad you could come. Pull up a wheelchair and sit down!”

I’m writing today’s blob in a hospital room in Tacoma, Washington. Son Matthew was brought here by ambulance a few days ago with severe sepsis and aspiration pneumonia in one of his lungs. But since then, he’s doing well, his spirits are good and as soon as the doctors see some lab results they’re aiming for, he can be discharged, maybe in a couple of days.

Daughter Susy and I have been staying with him for many hours each day so we’ve had a chance to observe firsthand the delivery and effects of the sophisticated medical care he’s been receiving. It’s a humbling experience watching the smooth, seemingly effortless ease of the people who are delivering that care. I wish they knew how much we appreciate it.

One day, we were chatting with a nurse who mentioned that she had three children. I asked her, “Do you think any of them will follow in your footsteps and become a nurse?” I still feel sorry remembering her answer. “Well, actually, I hope not,” she said. “I’m encouraging them to look into other fields of work”. I asked her why, expecting her to complain about pay or work hours. Instead, she said, “No matter how hard they work – even during their 12 hour shifts – nurses no longer get the respect they once had. It’s becoming a really thankless job.”

Since then, I’ve been watching the busy activity in Matt’s room and outside at the nurses’ station, and it got me wondering. Everybody who works here is wearing scrubs, or T-shirts and casual pants, limp jackets or sweaters – the same kind of sad sack attire that I wear myself.

Most of us these days present ourselves to the world in comfortable, synthetic, machine washable, machine dryable, denim or shapeless fleece or jersey wearing apparel that was produced in sweatshops by underpaid, sometimes under-aged and under-appreciated seamstresses who probably dress themselves with more style than we do.

The clothes everybody has on here at the hospital is the same – comfortable, unremarkable —- and nondescript. You can’t identify the work of anyone by the clothes they’re wearing. Doctors, nurses, lab techs, aides, cleaners, therapists, technicians, dietitians – they’re all dressed similarly. In scrubs that resemble pajamas or the grunge-wear of the day.

It didn’t used to be that way. Whenever Susy and I arrive or are leaving the building Matt’s in, we walk past a display honoring the hospital’s nurses since the beginning of the century. One of the displays shows their wearing apparel – the starchy dress and apron, white shoes and stockings, and the classic crown of it all — the crisp white cap of each graduate with its black stripe that is the proud symbol of the Registered Nurse.

When I was in high school and first two years of college, I worked at a hospital that was associated with a nursing school. My future sister-in-law Arlis and her sister Lois were both student nurses there. To this day, I still clearly remember how they looked on duty and even when they left the building. They were dazzling. Dark-haired, they wore the crisp white uniforms, white shoes and stockings, caps, and when going outdoors, navy blue wool capes with red lining. They were drop-dead gorgeous!

It wasn’t just how they looked, though. They weren’t much older than I was, but I – and my friends – all seemed to be in awe when we saw Arlis or Lois or any of the other student nurses. They were different from us and they were being trained for an important mission. I wrote about it on a blob back in 2011: https://goingon80.com/2011/07/23/320-arlis-and-andrew/

It seems to me that in my youth, all nurses were considered with that kind of reverence. People who still appear in uniform often receive such respect and deference – the military, police, firefighters for instance. It’s like they are sending the message: “This is who I am. I have a mission to accomplish and don’t stand in my way”.

As an adult, I again worked in a hospital – Seattle Children’s Hospital. By that time, we were seeing very few conventional nursing uniforms on the patients floors. The trend to sartorial grunge was already underway. We had a nursing director named Karen Cummings. One year, when her birthday was nearing, she was asked what kind of birthday gift she would like to receive from her nursing staff. She said that what she would most appreciate on that day would be if every one of the nurses would wear the white nursing dress, stockings, shoes, and of course the white caps and gold pins of their nursing school.

It was glorious. Everybody seemed to be walking a little taller on Karen’s birthday. It was such a successful day for staff and patient morale, that it seemed to me it might become a habit. Alas, it didn’t. The very next day, all the nurses were back in their grungies.

But I have to wonder… As an experiment to find which kind of nursing wardrobe would fit Rodney Dangerfield’d “Don’t get no respect” category, consider what kind of awe and reverence nurses get wearing the “scrubs” that make them look like they came to work wearing their pajamas . . . . .

. . . As compared to how they might be viewed if they came to work dressed like this.

There might be more laundry, but there’s always perma-press fabric!

Whatdya think? Maybe, or maybe not?

The very first advice I suggested to you when this “blob” was launched in 2010, was titled “Sleep is for Sissies”. It’s entirely possible – this may shock you to the core – that Octo-woman may have been a tiny bit misinformed. (Feel free to take a moment to gasp in disbelief.)

At the time I wrote the blob, I was 79 years old and still skating through my misbegotten life on 5 hours-or-less of sleep per night. Except for my teenage years when my mother yelled herself hoarse to get me up for school, sleeping was never high on my list of desirable or recommended habits. In my infancy, I was probably considered to be The Baby from Hell Who Never Sleeps, but I, on the other hand, always considered staying awake to be one of my magical superpowers, equivalent to getting excused from jury duty or the “illegible” traffic citations issued by apparently drunken and nearsighted police officers.

And it definitely had an important fringe benefit. According to my well-known impeccable logic, my minimal sleeping habit had endowed me with an additional 8 years of life. As I explained at the time, it seemed perfectly clear to me when I wrote this . . . .

That’s what I wrote then, but recently, I have experienced an epiphany. I don’t know how it happened, but I don’t seem able to skate by on 5 hours of sleep anymore. Or even 8. I’m hibernating like a doped-up grizzly bear sometimes 9 or 10 hours at a stretch.

I don’t know how, but I certainly know WHEN the phenomenon occurred.

It was in July of 2020. That’s when we moved to Kartar Ridge Ranch. The creatures that live here are very busy all day operating tractors or other strange machines, cars, occasional delivery trucks, or they’re grazing, munching grass, braying, quacking, chirping, howling, humping, meowing, hooting, hee-hawing, pooping, barking, growling and persecuting the mailman. Until night falls.

As soon as it gets faintly dark, it’s like somebody muted the sound system. City-bred natives like my son Matthew and me had to adjust to a kind of supernatural silence. We had to “give up” Seattle’s all day, all night sound of the traffic, horns honking, sirens, street sounds, gunshots, the chatter of helicopters, the clatter of garbage cans and recycling bins, and the X-rated calls of randy tomcats.

The city’s audio system was replaced with the Big Quiet of farmland. If the TV isn’t on, all we can hear is the occasional hum of the furnace, or seasonal conversation among coyotes, owls, frogs, or crickets. Everybody else except Matthew and me seemed to believe it was time to sink into sleep. And it is very, very, very Q – U – I – E – T.

So you can guess what happened. Pretty soon, along with all the other wildlife here, Matthew and I got sedated by Mother Nature, too! And that’s how my life-long unblemished low-sleep schedule has been severely contaminated, and why Octo-woman is no longer “woke”! My magical superpower of avoiding sleep is lost forever. But maybe not entirely.

The reason I brought this subject up is because it’s now 11:30 pm on New Year’s Eve, and everybody else in the household is asleep. That’s in spite of the fact that it’s just like the noisy good old days in the city. The Muckelshoot gambling casino a few miles from here stages a showy hours-long fireworks show to invite in the new year every December 31st. At the moment it sounds like the cowboys and Indians are fighting it out at the O.K. Corral, and the gunshots and explosions are definitely keeping the farm animals awake. Whoopie! Hats ‘n horns!

Me, too. I just made myself a nice sandwich, poured myself a glass of wine, and as soon as I post this, I’m going to put my feet up and enjoy my perfect excuse to stay awake all night and binge on TV.

But first, I better recalculate the bottom line to the increase in my additional sleep hours. So here goes. As of today, I’ve been alive for 33,355 days. If I had slept 8 hours each day (266,840 hours) I would have squandered a little over 30 years of my life in the sack. But if I only slept 5 hours per day (166,775 hours), I’d have only frittered away 19 valuable years slumbering unconscious, when I could been watching TV or playing bridge, or scribbling blobs for posterity, or eating popcorn, or making the world safe for Democracy.

The fact is though, that I have come to realize if I could have got by on 5 hours sleep per day for my entire my life, and if I only counted the hours when I was actually conscious, instead of my calendar age, I would probably look like this unfortunate lady and would be locked up in a high security house of detention among other derelicts of good health.

So that’s it for now. I hope you have a happy, safe, blessed, happy new year. And get some sleep!

Wherever you are today, I hope you’re keeping warm with your feet up, sipping your coffee, cocoa, or hot toddy, or munching on a bowl of buttered popcorn or working the Sunday crossword puzzle. In other words — avoiding tangling with the snow and ice and Arctic weather.

That’s what we’re doing at Kartar Ridge Ranch today. Even the donkeys, horses, ducks and rabbits are staying in the barn trying to avoid the alien sheet of ice that’s covered what was formerly nice solid ground. We don’t have any snow right now, but neither do we have any ice skates.

If you’re not so lucky, and you’ve been traveling for Christmas and now you’re having trouble getting home, keep reading. You may find a better way to travel at the end of today’s blob.

The only creatures in Enumclaw, Washington that seem to be able to travel and enjoying the frigid air this week are just having a grand old time in the pasture right outside our kitchen window. It seems to be some kind of an orgy.

This grosbeak has just arrived and is checking out some apples still on the tree.

The birds have spread the news that this is definitely the place you go where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came, and where you can find all kinds of nice wormy fruit and berries still on the trees and ground. Fermented! And free! An offer they can’t refuse! It’s time to party!

Among our semi-drunken avian friends are various robins, grosbeaks, sparrows, chickadees, flickers, finches, Stellar’s jays, hummingbirds, and birds of unknown origin, all cavorting like it’s a frat party. That’s because the bullies – the crows and starlings – haven’t shown up yet to hog all the goodies. And the booze. For a chaser, our visitors are guzzling water from the heated horse troughs.

As far as the ice underfoot is concerned, the birds don’t seem to mind. And why would they? It’s nice having wings. No travel woes for them this Christmas. In case you can’t say the same consider the following.

The trouble with coming “home” for Christmas is making the return trip to your domicile. In case you’re stranded at the airport, or on an ice-packed freeway, or waiting hours for an Uber ride, think about how the birds do it, and then watch the following flash mob for some creative encouragement. It may be your only hope.

https://youtu.be/HCucos4qGQw

You just have to TRY harder! I know you can DO it. Maybe some apple cider would help.

Pick a card. Any card.

Consider this Christmas card from Gilded Age Greetings. It costs $495.00 per card!

Or how about this one – a bargain for $395.00 per card.

Some of the company’s “better” cards can cost up to $10,000 each. According to their website: “Gilded Age Greetings are handcrafted with rare and fine materials, encrusted with diamonds, rubies and 24k gold. A personal message can also be added and will be delivered in a black silk box with white gloves to ensure the gift is handled with care.” Swanky! I thought you’d want to know. . . in case you haven’t already mailed out those crummy old cards you were going to send.

Or, you can be creative (also known as cheap) and create your own handmade Christmas cards. Try it. If you’re too embarrassed with the result, you can still go ahead and mail them. Just don’t sign your name.

That’s the way my family did it for years. Every December, my husband Gene got busy on our rattletrap typewriter (we didn’t seem to change the ribbon on a regular basis) and typed our annual Christmas report to relatives and friends. He was assisted with the graphic design by our seven kids. My job was to address the envelopes, add a note, and mail the “cards” to the lucky recipients.

Some excerpts follow.

Later on, the readability of the typing improved but we would never know whether anyone was actually reading the stuff Gene and the kiddies were cranking out. It’s odd, though. I was reading through them myself today. I ought to be embarrassed with the cosmetics of our primitive Christmas messages, but I still like them, and it reawakens my memory of how we were in those long ago days.

And the same goes for similar annual letters people send us for the holiday. I not only read them, lots of them are permanently saved with our photos and memorabilia. Their real value though isn’t for the recipient. It’s for the family of the sender. I hope that anybody who writes and sends out such Christmas letters will have the fun – like I just had – of re-reading them again a half century later! It’s priceless!

Have a happy Christmas, everybody, and stay out of trouble.