Another resident.

Maybe she doesn't know what "incredibly" means.

"... as well as a history of polio when she was incredibly young."

This resident is DRIVING ME CRAZY.

She has a strange speech habit (maybe she cannot help it) where she never says the combination of the K and S sound. So, like every time she says the number 6, it's "sits." And I never noticed how many times the number 6 can show up in a discharge summary. "Infection" is "infetsin." "Antibiotics" are "antibiotits." Grrr.

I just want to SHAKE HER.

Edited: Hmmm. She seems to have trouble with the K and T sounds together as well. I never noticed that before. "Multifactorial" is "multifattorial."

New Term of the Day: Feline esophagus

And it's on people!

http://www.ajronline.org/cgi/reprint/164/4/900.pdf

"Fine, transverse folds crossing the entire lumen of the esophagus have been termed the “feline esophagus” because their radiographic appearance mimics the appearance of folds in the distal esophagus of the cat."

My new term for today: Karl Storz SUPRALOOP for supracervical hysterectomy.

An interesting tool used laparoscopically to cauterize the cervicovaginal junction, allowing in vivo morcellation of the ligated uterus for removal.

http://www.karlstorz.com/cps/rde/xchg/SID-9600EFBD-18E80791/karlstorz-en/hs.xsl/7537.htm

If turtles go extinct, you can blame us

Stolen photo from a turtle center

Barry was digging in the back yard a few minutes ago, and realized too late that he had just taken out a turtle nest with a swipe of his shovel. Poor mama turtle walked so far to lay her eggs, and now they are ruined (all but one that did not get broken which I grabbed away and reburied elsewhere). He grumbled, "It's probably a snapper anyway." Britta said, "He'll be just like Nemo!"

The turtles come marching up into town at this time of year and dig out shallow nests in sandy dirt, lay their eggs, and scoop the dirt back over top of them. A few days later, the little turtlets hatch out, dig their way free, and are immediately 1) eaten by predators, 2) smashed flat by a car on the road or 3) caught in a lawnmower. Only a tiny number make it to the river wetlands where who knows what happens.

Walk on the Army Road

The "Army Road" is a gravel road built and maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers that runs out from town about 2 miles through marshlands and water meadows to a place to launch boats or go fishing. I forget it's there most of the time, which is really sad, because it's such a beautiful part of our area.

Britta worked 2nd shift at the nursing home, and then, when someone called in sick, stayed and did the night shift, too, and I picked her up at 6 this morning. That's when I usually get up, so it meant I had to be awake and alert enough to drive a little early this morning. But what a gift that early morning turned out to be. A 12-mile drive along the river road to Lansing, with mist on the marshes and birdsong everywhere, sparkling water, mama turtles hiking across the highway to find places to lay eggs, and deer. When we got home, I grabbed Bo's leash and we walked down to the Army Road and walked down it maybe a quarter mile, not far because Bo is old and tires easily *, but it was great. I am going to do it again and bring my camera this time. We saw many, many birds, heard lots of birds and frogs, and saw a muskrat swimming very close to the road. Bo learned lots of things by smelling everywhere. He's very tired now and ready for a nap.

Bo is our Keeshond whom we adopted from TurboKees Keeshond Rescue. He's 10-1/2 years old now and had neurological issues where he has lost proprioception in his back legs and feet, but he still loves a good walk.

* Yes, I know what you're thinking, that I am the one who is old and tires easily. Okay, we both do.

The time frame of your raising, and how it makes you who you are

I wrote this on a preparedness/survival message board in response to a question about how the time frame of one's raising might affect one's interest in preparedness. And now in rereading my answer, I see that I didn't do a very good job of answering the question. but I thought I'd share it here anyway.

I was born in 1962 to a schoolteacher mother who grew up on a small Kansas farm, and a physicist father who was helping design weapons guidance systems to fight the Cold War. Both were kids in the Great Depression and had a lot of thrifty habits that came out of that.

They went through a back-to-the-land thing when I was young, like through my mid teen years. They wanted to try organic gardening, buying milk from a farmer, buying organically raised beef on the hoof and having it butchered to order, and keeping us eating as few refined foods as possible. We rebelled and sabotaged their efforts at every turn, but some of it did soak in; I bake my own bread because my father baked the bread for the family for a couple of years, and I garden because they did, and I can sew because she could, and I am thrifty because they knew how to be. They also taught me important lessons such as a personal faith, being a member of a church, making giving a habit just like paying the mortgage, paying my debts, and sobriety. I owe all I am to their raising; however, I will not let anybody blame them for my faults.

Dehydrator

My dry-mesh open-air dehydrator is really working out well. It takes longer to dehydrate in it than it would in an electric one, at least in our climate (in the desert, it probably would not be much longer, if any), but it uses free solar and wind energy. So far we have dehydrated morel mushrooms, fresh parsley (I got it on clearance at the market), rhubarb, a lot of peaches, and now I have spinach leaves in it. I read an interesting piece on line about dehydrating spinach. You wash it, take the stems off, and dry the leaves until they are thoroughly crunchy-dry, then run them through the blender to make spinach flour, which you can then easily incorporate into soups and sauces or (and this is my favorite idea) into pasta dough to make spinach pastas.

Yesterday morning I picked through our row of spinach, taking every leaf big enough to pick, and it was decimated. All that went into the dehydrator. Lil Miss A commented that she wished she could have had one more spinach meal before I did that. I figured it was done for the year, because I was pretty brutal with my picking. But by evening time, the row had grown a whole bunch more spinach and it's ready to pick again. Amazing. And now Lil Miss A can have more fresh spinach for lunch.

The peach slices, by the way, are so delicious. The peaches when fresh were a little disappointing, picked early for shipment and so not very sweet when they finally did ripen. But when we (the girls and I) sliced them thin, dipped them in vinegar water anti-browning solution, then dehydrated them in the open air, all the sugar they contained was concentrated, and they are irresistible. I ate way more than I should straight out of the dehydrator.

Getting ready for church this morning... Today our family is providing the meal for fellowship hour after services. This year I made (surprise!) peach pies, 5 of them, to serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I panicked when I got the pies ready, thinking there might not be enough for everybody. You just never know what attendance will be like in the summertime. So I quickly made a big pan of strawberry rhubarb crisp to keep as a backup. If we don't need it, we can bring it home.

Lil Miss A leaves this afternoon for her week at Village Creek Bible Camp. She is very excited.

UPDATE: We didn't even touch one of the pies. :) We will be eating pie and crisp for a week.