The whole new age thing...

Okay, maybe it isn't the whole new age thing...I am just thinking about all of the spiritual teachings that I have had that started with "I am grateful for..." everything from prosperity to unmentionables without holes. I have tried to be grateful for all that I have, and all that I am. I really try to thank Creator for all that He (or She) has given me, and allowed me to experience in this lifetime. That said...


I HATE MY JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It isn't that I am not grateful (there is that word again!) for having a steady source of income in these difficult economic times. It's just that in my current position, I feel like the only value I have to give to the work is my manual labor. I am pursuing an MBA, and I spend most of the time doing things that someone with a high school degree and a few weeks of training could do.

I must stop believing these people who promise me more than they can deliver.

Okay, I'm done now.

Willow, off to look for chocolate

"I have nothing clever to say."

Okay, so I am borrowing a line from "Dexter" for my title. And speaking of borrowing, I will take a virtual page from my friend Agatestone's book and try to be a little more positive in my posting tonight:

1. There were absolutely no badgers infiltrating the office today.
2. Both patients we sent to the ER are doing reasonably well.
3. There is some possibility that I will be able to spend a few days in Florida in February, when it is typically cold and quite unappealing in this area of the Mitten.
4. Some of the wildflowers that I sowed earlier in the year, and the folks I hired to cut my lawn accidentally cut down early in their lives, survived and grew to be very beautiful.
5. I am seeing some friends this weekend that I haven't seen in rather a long time.
6. I have discovered, once again (okay maybe I am a slow learner), that sometimes it helps to vent my frustrations instead of pretending everything is okay, and finally
7. I may have a chance to work in a brand new hospital in my area.

That's about it...oh, and I had an exterminator come out and send the yellow jackets inhabiting one of my walls to "yellow jacket heaven," after being assured that no, I could not tame them and make my own honey.

For some reason, even though I am not a strict vegetarian, and I realize that there are some instances in which I have to play "karmamistress" and send invading insects to their just reward, I still feel guilty about it. I still try to catch bugs in a box and put them outside, for instance. But the yellowjackets were way too numerous to deal with myself.

That's about it for tonight. Since I fell asleep during two of my favorite television shows (The Closer and Saving Grace) this week, I'm off to see if I can find them on the 'net.

The Possibilities

Is is possible that we all have some sort of destiny on this Earth that we can follow? Or are some of us destined to flounder around in this existence, always settling on "second best," or "it'll do for now?"

Honestly, I am tired of looking for joy in "the little things," and doing tired affirmations that my life is good and positive. I am stuck in a personal and professional rut, and I am sick to death of pretending otherwise.

I am not looking for pity, but it would be nice to know that someone has has listened to this shout into the universe.

I listen to the thunder in my small section of the world, and I welcome the sound.

Thanks for reading,

Willow

Not Spam

Well, I am back...I really didn't mean to take so much time off, but I haven't had much to say, or at least much that I wanted to share with random Internet users.

Anyway, I finally remembered my password, and got into my account, and went straight to "New Post." Just before the New Post screen popped up, I noticed a message on the main page: "You are not spam."

For some reason, I am inordinately relieved.

Maybe later I will post some pics of my Vision Quest. I got back late Saturday evening, and I am still appreciating the small conveniences of modern life like running water and refrigeration.

Oh, the irony! Homeowner's woes and other stuff

Okay, so I have had this really slowly-draining bathtub for a few weeks now. I started out by trying to plunge and snake out the drain with no success. Then I tried a variety of drain cleaners, starting out with an environmentally-friendly enzyme, and then trying a couple of more poisonous drain openers (with apologies to Mother Earth, I was desperate). No luck. So I finally called "Roto-Rooter" and this very nice man came out with his larger, electric snake thing that in my experience, usually clears even the worst clogs.

He went down into my basement to look at the pipes and said, "You have the worst trap setup imaginable." Oh, joy. He said that he had about 50% success in clearing this type of pipe but he'd give it a try. So he went in with his electric snake and, well, had absolutely no success.

The estimate for replacing the pipes wasn't as bad as I thought, but I can think of a million more entertaining things that I could do with that money.

The irony of it is that just a few days after putting an inordinate amount of money on my Visa card for the Robert Plant Alison Krauss concert, I will end up putting another huge bill on it for the new drain pipes.

As one of my friends who lives in a very large, beautiful, and high maintenance older home said, "It's never just a leaky faucet. You end up having to re-plumb the whole house."

On a more exciting note, I will be seeing the Dalai Lama tomorrow. Maybe afterward I'll actually have something interesting to say.

I am also doing very badly at both my accounting class and National Poetry Writing Month. It seems that both the logical and the creative parts of my mind decided to run off for a vacation somewhere. It's weird: usually I am either very creative, very logical (handy in an MBA program), or both. I don't normally hit a mental roadblock in both areas of my brain. This is exceedingly strange to me.

Forgive the shouting, but....

I AM FINALLY GOING TO THE ROBERT PLANT/ALLISON KRAUSE CONCERT!!!!!!!!!!!

I got another email from the website, offering more VIP packages, and by some miracle, I was able to get a ticket!! My apologies to those of you who I tried to bring along. The price of the ticket was such that no one but the most dedicated fan would pay for it, and with my lack of success in getting even one ticket in the past, I had to grab this one!!!

I am lucky: the concert venue is very close to where I work so I won't even need to battle traffic to get there.

Now, of course, is the Eternal Question: What do I wear to my first Robert Plant concert EVER!???????

Still hyperventilating,

Willow

Logic applied to Lord of the Rings

Okay, I wrote this last week, but since I am doing the same thing with "Star Wars" at the moment, I thought I'd post it now.

I stumbled upon "The Fellowship of the Ring" tonight and have been watching it on and off. I haven't seen it in quite awhile, which may account for some skeptical questions that popped into my head during different scenes:

Okay, if you were sitting on the porch in the evening, and some creature (Ringwraith) comes up to your door, looking like the Angel of Death, and scares your watchdog into the house, would you give him directions?

Why does it take Gandalf so long to figure out that The One Ring was really The One Ring? As far as I could see, Middle-Earth didn't have a huge inventory of rings that made people (hobbits, elves, whatever Gollum was, etc.) invisible. Unless I missed the scene with the Invisible Ring Emporium.

Finally, if you did finally figure out what the One Ring was, and you went to your boss (Saruman), and your boss looked like he hadn't slept in about three months, and his place looked like a Middle Earth version of a meth lab, wouldn't you think something was up??

Or am I just jaded??

Guess Who Wins...

Let's see: Sunday night, what should I do: Financial Accounting homework or watch "Return of the Jedi" for about the thousandth time?

Yep, I'm sitting in front of the television, posting on my blog. I promised myself that I would only watch that scene on Tatooine where Luke and friends escape from Jabba the Hutt, but suddenly I find myself Applying Logic to Star Wars:

Why is it that the bad guys are always ugly/slimy/look like they haven't washed??

How does a disembodied mouth evolve in the desert?

Why do the ugly bad guys take Luke's handcuffs off just before pushing him into the giant mouth, thus making it so much easier for Luke to grab the lightsaber that R2 threw to him?

What, um, did Jabba the Hutt (who as far as I could see has an anatomy akin to a giant slug) have in mind to do with Leia?? (if anyone has specific ideas about this, please keep them to yourselves. Heh.)

Is it my imagination or does Yoda look a bit like Gollum?

That's about it. I'd better shut this off and get back to accounting homework.

May the Force be with you!

Interesting personality quiz

What is Your World View? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Cultural Creative Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational. Cultural Creative 100% Idealist 94% Postmodernist 81% Romanticist 38% Existentialist 38% Modernist 31% Materialist 25% Fundamentalist 6%

"Dexter" revisited and Metallica whispering

Okay, I have now watched several episodes of "Dexter," and, I have to admit, am in the process of downloading the entire first season from Amazon.

Anyway, my initial fascination with this show has eroded somewhat, possibly because I had a really bad case of insomnia last night and began to apply logic to the ideas in the show. So I ask my occasional reader:

If you rescued a child from a crime scene, adopted him, and he began to display some, err, unusual traits even as a young child, would you a: get his butt into therapy or b: teach him how to stalk and kill. Apparently Dexter's foster father thought "b" was the more useful course of action.

Okay, Dexter is an admitted serial killer of other serial killers. He lives in Miami. The show has been on since 2006. Let's say Showtime does about 26 episodes/year, and Dexter offs one serial killer per episode, all in his immediate vicinity. That would equal about 52 serial killers for Miami that the police department hadn't either caught or suspected, as Dexter basically leaves no tracks. Either Miami is some sort of gathering place for serial killers or this show is seriously running on "Improbability Drive." I wonder what the Miami Tourist Bureau thinks of this show.

Finally, his foster sister, a homicide detective, is currently dating--you guessed it--a serial killer. Now, I have about as much training in investigation as a gnat, and the minute this guy came on screen and the audience was made aware of his profession (prosthetic/orthotic maker), I said to myself, yep, that's the serial killer they've been looking for. This is in addition to the serial killers that Dexter has been after, and Dexter himself, which brings the count up to about...54 serial killers in Miami, and I'm not even counting the ones that I may not have noticed or forgotten about.

I have to admit, this only partially diminishes my fascination with this show. I really love the psychology. I almost went to graduate school for psych, but I realized that there is a huge difference between my fascination with the collective and individual psyches that make up the human race and sitting in an office all day listening to people talk about their problems. Not that I am against therapy--I have certainly used it myself in many different situations. But I was an ER/ICU nurse and still am at heart: I don't have the patience to become a therapist. This, however, does not diminish one bit my fascination with why people do what they do.

But I digress. I still will watch "Dexter," especially the episodes that I paid for (heh). Certainly the scripting and acting (especially the acting of the man who plays Dexter--Michael C. Hall, if I am not mistaken, for some reason I keep forgetting his name), are still very compelling. And there is plenty of the kind of one-liner humor in this show that I love. My favorite lines out of the last couple of weeks:

Dexter's really naive girlfriend texts him: "What are you doing right now?" Dexter mutters to himself, "Breaking and entering."

And on a completely different note (heh), I have discovered a really strange talent: I know when a song by Metallica is going to be played on the radio, and can tune into a radio station right about the time the song starts. I have no idea why. I like Metallica, but I have never felt a huge passion for them the way I have for, say, Robert Plant or Peter Gabriel.

Hopefully one of these days my talent will evolve into "Lottery Number Whispering."

From serial killer humor to karma....

Besides being a place that is almost devoid of humor, my workplace has a number of very fundamentalist Christians--both patients and staff. So I keep my "Vision Quests," crystals, and sweatlodges to myself, needless to say.

Anyway, the other day I was talking with a very nice patient who gave me some information on her religion: Jehovah's Witness. It was (to me) a rather morbid treatise on whether or not we are living in the "Last Days." Rather than trying to explain that I follow my own spiritual practice, and am very happy with it, I accepted this pamphlet with thanks.

To make matters a bit more surreal, this patient thought I was Jewish, either in spirituality or by descent. Which is odd because the heritage I am aware of is as follows: Swedish, German, Norwegian, and possibly Irish (I do have some mystery in my background due to adoptions on both sides of my family, but I am going with what I know or can be reasonably sure of).

Which brought me to thinking about all of my friends and patients, and who they all said I looked like: Bette Midler (a long time ago), Frodo Baggins, Winona Ryder, Jodie Foster, and now someone of Jewish descent. But I digress...

The problem that I have been having is what to do with this pamphlet full of information that I do not want. Although it is not a part of my sacred teachings, it is sacred to someone, so I feel a bit uncomfortable just throwing it away. There it is, sitting on my kitchen counter, with the "Are We In The Last Days" cover staring up at me every time I pass it.

Is it bad karma to throw someone else's gift of their spirituality away, no matter whether I agree with it or not? Or am I just as usual over thinking a simple situation???

The best solution I have come up with so far is to recycle the pamphlet. That way, it will be going back to the Earth, and I will have at least done something constructive with it.

Does anyone else in my small circle of readers wonder about such things???

An unlikely "ally"

I am lying in the dark, posting to my blog as much by feel as by sight, and hoping the battery in my laptop lasts longer than my musings.

I was speaking to a co-worker today. We agreed there was a distinct lack of humor in the department in which I am working. To be more specific, there is a distinct lack of the kind of oddball, off-the-wall, ironic humor that I thrive on. I have delivered one-liners that would have my friends belly-laughing, only to meet with blank stares at work. If I make any kind of joke, only the most pedestrian and bland joke will go over with most of my co-workers (except the one who hired on at about the same time I did...she at least appreciates one-liners and the occasional "Far Side" cartoon).

Anyone who has wanted to make a comment about the "Ministry of Silly Walks," or "Put an SEP field around it" but knows that no one in their general vicinity is either familiar with Monty Python or the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" can understand my feeling of creative claustorphobia.

Enter my newest favorite show: Dexter. I'll be honest: I tuned into this show for the first time out of morbid curiosity about how the writers would handle a main character who was a serial killer. Anyone familiar with the show knows that Dexter is a serial killer...of bad guys.

I am completely hooked on this show. Not only does it have a fascinating psychological theme to it, it also has some very (possibly unintentionally) funny moments. Dexter, at one point thinking he was going to be caught, said of his girlfriend (yep he has one): "First she marries a drug dealer and then she finds out her boyfriend is a serial killer. At some point you have to start taking this kind of thing personally." May not be an exact quote, but you get the idea.

It's late and I am tired--and some idiot in my neighborhood is blasting music that the whole county can hear, so I am probably not really expressing myself very eloquently--although the warped part of my mind is wondering if it is worth the trouble to go disconnect the rude neighbor's electrical circuits.

But anyway, if there is anyone among my friends and readers (all two or three of you) who is into this show, I would love to hear from you. I have found it to be just the escapist remedy for my really boring, staid, middle of the road work situation.

Please stand by...

There is a dream in my life that I have been trying to ignore, but it keeps creeping, rather unwelcomed, back into my consciousness. As a supposedly mature businessperson going back to school to finish an MBA, it may seem like a crazy midlife folly sort of thing.

But a serious dream for one's life doesn't let go. I have avoided this particular dream for many years, thinking that I am not good enough, smart enough, etc. to manifest it. But one of the things that my experiences of the last couple of years have taught me is that I need to follow what I feel is my path in life, and let go of the outcome.

People may resent me, try to take advantage of me, attempt to hurt me, try to cause me to fail in my endeavors. This is an unfortunate fact of life. But I cannot make decisions based on fear of what people may think of me or do to me. I need to follow my spiritual guidance to wherever it takes me. Fear will only make me shrink from what my true dream is, and make all kinds of excuses as to why I cannot manifest that dream...

Anyone who is reading this and is a praying person, please pray that I am able to manifest the dream in my heart, that I believe is inspired by Creator. If you are not a praying person, please send whatever positive thoughts you can to me, in support of my dream.

Namaste, Willow

"I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay..."

With sincere apologies to Robert Plant...

Some of my friends know of my struggle to obtain tickets for the upcoming Robert Plant/Alison Krauss concert this summer. The friends who have known me for many years are probably very familiar with my sort of lifelong admiration of Robert Plant. When I was a teenager, and very much into Robert and Led Zeppelin, I acquired a small Queensland Umbrella Plant that I named, of course, Robert. Due to many circumstances, I have never seen Robert Plant in concert.

So when he and Alison Krauss released a CD together, I bought it without ever hearing any of the songs on it, and I still love it (I also really like Alison Krauss, but I don't have the history with her and her music that I have with Robert Plant...probably because she most likely wasn't even born when I was so crazy about Robert Plant--but I digress). I also signed up for email updates of their activities and, of course, announcements of their upcoming tour.

So the day finally arrived: I had a chance to buy tickets for the concert online before they went on sale. I was so excited, I emailed just about everyone I know in the area, and got a few folks together for the concert. When the day that I could order tickets came, I came home from work, raced to my computer, logged in, and found...no tickets. I logged on again and again but was never able to get tickets.

I went through a period of reliving teenage angst, and then I got a second email from the website: for more money, I could get premium tickets for the concert, plus one of a kind souvenirs. I figured, what's $300.00 for the chance of a lifetime??? I tried to order one ticket (none of my friends were this devoted to seeing the concert): Well, guess what--no tickets available.

Anyway, last night I must have fallen asleep wondering if it was worth it to quit my job and apply for a position at the concert venue, because I had the following Really Bizarre Dream:

Robert and Alison were on their very successful tour, and Robert and his manager (female) were staying with me. Robert and his manager had some sort of romantic connection, and I broke them up. I won't bore the reader with all the details as I suspect that no one but my bestest friends, and anyone who is similarly devoted to Robert Plant is still awake reading this. But at one point, my "good angel" said to me that I should stop my involvement with Robert because I was breaking his manager's heart, and my "bad angel" said basically, "all's fair in love and war, and besides, other women have done it to you." You can guess the decision I made in my dream. After all, I have a 20-something year old plant named after him.

A side note: Alison Krauss was staying in another hotel, because she couldn't stand the noise of Robert's incessant partying.

But here is the weird part: At some point in my dream, Robert and his manager were arguing over a bra that I thought was hers. But Robert admitted that the bra was his...and he confessed to certain "behaviors," such as wearing women's underthings.

So now my dream about Robert Plant is ruined, and somehow Monty Python invaded my unconscious: I have the song "I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay," going through my head. I don't remember much of the lyrics, but the melody is relentlessly stuck in my mind.

And I still don't have tickets to the concert!!!

Out of Hibernation

My Nordic ancestors took over this winter, and I spent a couple of months doing not much of anything other than going to work and sleeping. I did, however, manage to paint my living room and hallway, and only need to paint my dining room to get rid of that ugly beige color that I've been living with since I moved in here.

Some insane part of me decided to go back to school. Actually I don't think it was really insane, just practical. Once I got over all of the distressing things that happened at work over the last couple of years, I realized that I don't have to be the kind of incompetent manager that I have seen so often.

So I will be taking an accounting course starting March 31...and participating in National Poetry Writing Month starting April 1. Should be interesting...

Not much else to say here. I'm still pretty much in the process of "waking up" to springtime. Imagine a bear stumbling out of her cave, looking around, and wondering what to eat for breakfast after a two-month hibernation.

Anyway, how many higher level brain functions did I need to use yesterday at my job? None. While I am certainly grateful to have a job in this economy, I really would like a position that challenges me so that I don't have to spend 8 hours on autopilot and watching the clock to see how long before I can get OUT of there.

Is there a happy medium for me between "totally bored" and "totally stressed" in the medical field? I'm beginning to wonder. Anyway, that's about it. When I'm more awake, I should have more interesting things to say.

Chasing Tails

I just got home from a meeting and I am wide awake, despite the fact that I still have to get up early to go to work tomorrow. I will have to get up early enough to stop by my favorite bakery for a supercharged latte to get me through the day.

As I sit here surfing the Net and pondering my blog, my cat Rosie is chasing her tail. It's really strange--it's as if all of a sudden she discovers she has this thing at the back of her and doesn't know how to deal with it.

So the Eternal Question for my insomniac night: Why do animals chase their tails?

I thought maybe I should watch the news, and/or catch up on the latest political developments, but honestly, I think it's more interesting to watch my cat chase her tail.

One of my friends tonight said something like she would vote for "any Democrat with a pulse." My dilemma is that I think contenders in both parties are old enough to know better, and neither party is truly taking responsibility for really leading the country. It must be too much fun to point out the specks in the opponents' eyes.

Oh, heavens, I just climbed right up on that soapbox, didn't I? Insomnia and political discussion make for uncomfortable bedfellows (pun intended).

I think I want that drug for insomnia that has the advertisement with Abe Lincoln and a groundhog playing chess in some guy's kitchen.

Maybe I have just done the human equivalent of "chasing my tail."

Off to try to get some sleep....

Pummelo Revisited

My couple of readers may remember that I'd had a dream about a piece of fruit that I'd never seen before last year, and subsequently found out that the fruit I'd dreamed about was known as a "pummelo." I went through a bit of angst over whether or not to try the pummelo, wondering if I would affect the time-space continuum or end up in the underworld like Persephone, who ate seven pomegrante seeds and then had to stay in the underworld for seven months out of the year.

Well, I finally tried the pummelo. As far as I know, I haven't had any effect on the time-space continuum, and I'm not in the underworld. Only time will tell as to whether I added months onto the winter season in the Mitten.

But I have to say the thing was horrible. It was about the size of a grapefruit, and I thought it might have a similar taste. But once I battled with the very thick, tough skin and got to the fruit, it was terribly bitter. Quite icky, actually. I ended up throwing the rest of it away.

Okay I think I've talked about fruit enough.

This is your brain on...

Some of my friends know that I have been struggling with a horrendous case of asthma, almost since I got over the pneumonia. Well, the treatment of choice for uncontrollable asthma is prednisone--a form of steroid, to put it simply. I was on a fairly high dose of it in order to keep my breathing under control, and it comes with a lovely assortment of side effects: stomachaches, mood swings, weight gain, to name a few. It also acts as sort of a stimulant, which means that I had LOTS of energy for the last few weeks.

The good news is that I am finally able to breathe without wheezing, which means that I can decrease the prednisone (it has to be decreased slowly, because if it is stopped abruptly, it can mess with the adrenal glands and cause all sorts of problems). The bad news is that my body had gotten used to the stimulant effects of it, and now...I'm...moving...really...slowly.

Yesterday between naps, I considered calling Agatestone and asking her to come over and feed me chocolate bars like she mentioned that Starsky did for Hutch when he had been drugged, but I kept falling asleep. :)

I haven't been all that tempted in my life to try illicit drugs. I guess when I have to take a whole pharmacy's worth of meds just to keep breathing, adding more drugs doesn't sound like fun. But I can partly understand why athletes succumb to the temptation of taking steroids. Of course, I haven't run any 3 minute miles or lifted 500 pounds lately, but if a mild, legal version of what they take can have such an effect on my body, I suppose it would not be a strong temptation for an athlete to say, "Just this once before a competition." Certainly I am not condoning it, especially since the long-term effects from even the legal version of steroids are quite scary, but guess I can sort of understand the thinking that might lead someone to try steroids for performance enhancement.

Meanwhile, it is really nice to breathe without so much artificial assistance. And I think I may be able to get through the day with only a couple of naps.

Recess!

The other day at work, I heard an overhead page: "Anesthesia to Resuss Stat!" For the nonmedical folks, "resuss" is short for a "resuscitation room." The hospital where I work has a large ER, which has several resuscitation rooms. Those are where patients go if they are really in trouble, such as the severely injured or extremely ill. But the strange thing is, when I heard the overhead page, I thought the announcer had just called anesthesia to recess.

"Anesthesia to recess stat!" I pictured all of these normally serious medical people bursting out the front doors of the hospital and starting a snowball fight in the parking lot, or climbing up the lampposts. It occurred to me that "recess" is a great idea.

We used to have it in grade school: an hour or so where we either went outside and ran around, or stayed indoors and played games, depending on the weather. Somehow in the process of what we laughingly call "growing up," the idea of recess faded to a soft memory in my mind.

I think we should bring recess to the adult world. Oh, sure, we have government-mandated breaks and lunches, but how many of us actually have any fun time planned into the day? I can't remember the last time I threw a snowball, or walked in the woods in the wintertime. But even in my urban hospital setting, we could still take walks around the hospital, play tag in the parking lot, or even bring in board games. I think we would all be the better for it.

While I'm thinking about it, I also think our world would be a better place if we all were given blankets, milk, and vanilla wafers and told to lie down and rest for an hour in the middle of the day. Maybe after recess.