Cute Nut and Pennies Envy

I walk home from the hospital every day, and there’s this one part of the sidewalk that is covered with little green heads with fuzzy green knitted caps with fringes. Today I picked up one of these heads, and it had an arrow that went through the top of his hat.

Isn’t he cute???



Here he is posing again.



And for scale, here he is posing with 3 American quarters and a New Zealand 50-cent piece.



What does this have to do with sailing? (All my posts should have something to do with sailing.)

Well, if you look closely (because my camera doesn’t do closeups very well), the US quarters all have little sailboats on them. Well, the Virginia coin in the lower right has 3 sailboats, actually — perhaps the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria which were sailed by Columbus when he “discovered” the New World. Maine in the upper left has a lighthouse and a large clipper ship offshore. The Rhode Island coin in the lower left has an interesting gaff-rigged sailboat taking up most of the back of the quarter. And in the top right is a New Zealand 50-cent piece with the ship called The Endeavor on it, which was sailed by Captain Cook. That’s Captain Cook, not Captain Hook. I really don’t know why I have a New Zealand 50-cent piece. I’ve never been to New Zealand. It’s amazing what you can find when you clean out your glove compartment, eh? (And I bought my car new.)

While I was outside in the driveway taking pictures of my nut, the postal lady came by and asked me what I was taking pictures of. I showed her my nut, and she goes, “Oh! It’s an acorn.” And then I told her I was also taking pictures of the 4 coins she was standing on. She moved her foot and saw them, and then she apologized. I imagine that walking as much as she does every day, her feet are tough enough not to notice what she’s stepping on.

She told me she found a World War II penny the other day. The interesting thing about WW II pennies, she says, is that they have absolutely no copper in them. They were completely made from silver, because at the time, all the copper was being used for military equipment. And then she handed me my package from Bunches of Books which includes A Manual for Laboratory and Diagnostic Tests. I highly recommend this book as it explains very succinctly the purpose and diagnostic utility of certain kinds of medical tests, in particular, those dealing with blood.

Regarding Raisins

I don’t know who wrote this Denver Developmental Scale, but they must have some kind of thing for raisins. Did you know that 90% of babies begin to “regard raisins” at 5 months old? I’m impressed. *I* don’t even know how to regard raisins! It just wasn’t in the Emily Post my mom bought me. At 7 months, you can expect 90% of babies can “rake raisins.” Somehow I don’t think that means you can start assigning your 7-month-old to do yardwork chores. At 19 months, 90% of them can “dump raisins.” I don’t know exactly what that means but the imagery in my head is enough, thank you.

Blonde_Bombshell posted the following last month:

A couple goes on vacation to a fishing resort in northern Minnesota. The husband likes to fish at the crack of dawn. The wife likes to read. One morning the husband returns after several hours of fishing and decides to take a nap. Although not familiar with the lake, the wife decides to take the boat out. She motors out a short distance, anchors, and continues to read her book. Along comes a game warden in his boat. He pulls up alongside the woman and says, “Good morning Ma’am. What are you doing?” “Reading a book,” she replies, (thinking “isn’t that obvious?”) “You’re in a restricted fishing area,” he informs her. “I’m sorry officer, but I’m not fishing, I’m reading.” Yes, but you have all the equipment. For all I know you could start at any moment. I’ll have to take you in and write you up.” “If you do that, I’ll have to charge you with sexual assault,” says the woman. “But I haven’t even touched you,” says the game warden. “That’s true, but you have all the equipment. For all I know you could start at any moment.” MORAL: Never argue with a woman who reads. It’s likely she can also think.

Do you believe in fate? Matt and I do. Even if you don’t believe in fate, sometimes it can be helpful, I think, to find humor in the irony of the things that happen to you. For example, if I hadn’t met one of my wonderfully crappy ex-boyfriends, I wouldn’t have been introduced to sailing.

Then there’s also the time one abusive boyfriend taught me to change the pins in a lock to re-key it. I used that knowledge later to lock him out of my house.

Sailing Solo

Sometime in the middle of the summer of 2000, I was quite angry with the way my relationships had gone. Most of my friends were engaged and/or married, and were having children or had stable well-paying jobs. I was angry that, even though I had done everything right — no drugs, no alchohol, no teenage pregnancies — I was still stuck in the rut that is called loneliness. I know perhaps my cousins won’t appreciate this until they’re older, but those close friendships you cherish in high school and college. . . they dissipate with time, as people change. You may still send a card or two, or visit every now and then, but when babies start happening, and the job market changes, people get very busy, and the bond may be broken temporarily. Claire and I still talk on the phone and write to each other. But she is so different from me. (Remember Claire, Daniel? She was the one who laughed at all your weird jokes when you were little.)

Anyway, sometime in the midst of the summer, quite pissed at all my so-called friends, I promised myself that if I couldn’t have a man, dammit, I wanted a boat.

And sometime during that summer, I also told myself that one day I’d go sailing solo. And in the middle of the lake, I’d read Cosmopolitan while sucking down a Coke and blaring my favorite band at top volume.

I did that yesterday.

And now I can die happy.

Thanks to Matt for bringing me the rudder that I forgot, AGAIN!

Calm day, < 3 knots of wind
Good day for reading Cosmo in your sailboat and testing perfume samplers!

Hitchless in Seattle

Packs up into something like 4-inches wide is the Porta-Bote!

Do you know what “boy brownies” are? [Answer: + nuts] I just learned about them yesterday. It’s amazing what people talk about during routine surgery.

cynter wrote a lovely poem about life and hope.

Laughter is the Best Medicine

So I’m on my pediatrics rotation right now. I absolutely love it. Children are amazingly wonderful people to be around, even when they’re sick as hell. They are so hopeful, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who has witnessed how amazingly nonjudgmental they are. They rarely jump to conclusions, and as a result, I think they tend to be much happier. There are some children who, through no fault of their own, are forced to learn to jump to conclusions at an early age. They are the “frequent flyers” of the hospital, and many of them (not all) need social workers’ intervention.

One of my patients jumped to the conclusion that he can leap from a table to a sofa as easily as Spiderman could. He came out of surgery yesterday, and is doing fine.

There are so many people who get mad easily in the world. (I am one of them.)

Typical Gaff Main Sail
from John Leather’s
Gaff Rig Handbook

Matt tells me it’s because those people have “no sense of humor.” Perhaps that is true.

People jump to conclusions all the time. It’s one way that we survive. If something injures us, we avoid it in the future. Sometimes people carry it further and avoid or condemn things that merely resemble something that injured them.

I wonder how many people jumped to the conclusion that I agree with all of the “Native American” 10 commandments my last post. I don’t, by the way. But I still liked some of them enough to post all of them. I don’t always feel the need to post my opinion about things. But it’s funny how people fill in the blanks for themselves.

I wonder how many people jump to the conclusion that anyone who has an abortion is a bad person. I wonder how many people jump to the conclusion that anyone who isn’t Christian is a bad person. I wonder how many people jump to the conclusion that anyone who is Christian is a bad person. I wonder how many people jump to the conclusion that if you didn’t pass your driver’s test the first time you will probably be involved in an car accident within a year of finally passing the test. I wonder how many people jump to the conclusion that if you have cancer, your children will also develop cancer within their lifetime. I wonder if the policemen who apprehended that pizza delivery man with the bomb strapped to him jumped to the conclusion that it was a fake bomb. I wonder if the surgeon who removed that man’s metastatic bladder cancer jumped to the conclusion that it had spread to his penis.

I wonder how many people jump to the conclusion that a 21 week-old fetus cannot survive outside the womb. I wonder how many people jump to the conclusion that a 21 week-old fetus is better off not surviving outside the womb.

I wonder how many conclusions I jump to in a day. How many hurt me? How many save me? How many hurt others? How many save others?

Michael Kasten’s Modern gaff schooner, Redpath

Maisie97 left a very insightful comment on my last post, and I agree with her wholeheartedly. She also posted a beautiful sailing poem.

I visited her site, and found some comments to the effect that she was blocking phk975 from using her site because she thought he was stalking her.

It turns out, he was using the xxreaderxx tag. Maybe you have seen xxreaderxx used. With a bit of HTML tweaking, it replaces xxreaderxx with the user-name of whomever is reading your post. It’s kind of creepy. I saw it first on Queen_Asia’s site, and I had to laugh, because it took me a while to figure out what was going on. Viewing the page source helps the confusion, but seanmeister actually has a webpage that explains how it is done, if you didn’t figure out on your own.

Is it unethical to use xxreaderxx? Is it unethical for Xanga to have advertisements that cater to the subject matter in your posts? Is it unethical for County Market to print coupons on your receipts that are for products you just purchased?

Marlin style lacing. One method of attaching the sail to the boom.

Is it unethical for me to memorize a patient’s name on their chart so that when she comes into the clinic next time, I don’t have to ask a second time? I’m sure if HIPAA had anything to say about it, we should forget everything we learned every day we work in the hospital.

I would love to go sailing today, but it’s raining.

Roger C. Taylor’s “Forth and Back” lacing for small boat main sails, as found in Knowing the Ropes, p. 87.