Leave it to Paul ...

Dance around to get warm and then


hug your hounds

Catch Up

Not possible.

I'm too far behind. (A warning: this is one of those self-indulgent, not entertaining, unamusing introspective posts. Do move on to your next blog, without a second thought, and with my blessing.)

First, happy new year, happy new decade to you all. I have never been so happy to leave a decade in the dust of the past. That sounds short-sighted, I suppose. Certainly good things happened, and I built a lot of character from the bad.

The worst times help my writing: characters acquire depth; scenes fly from life into fiction; dialog becomes believable.

So, yeah, I'm grateful for everything that has happened in the last ten years. But. BYE!!! SEE YA!!! TOODLE LOOO!!!!

My goal for the next decade is to have more influence on my own life. (Oh boy, I said it out loud.) I watch my husband direct his life. I watch in awe. Stupefied. Dang. All the while I let my own self be buffeted by events that blow around me. I feel impotent. I'm an expert at feeling "done to". Not so good at feeling "hey, I'm in charge here."

That - allowing life to direct me, instead of vice versa - can lead one into the most unattractive role. The role of [ick] victim. "Poor me," she wailed. "Look at what life has done to me!" [Puke.]

Nope. This is the decade where I take charge. It dawned on me that my dogs can't finish their championships unless I show them. I can't get my novel published unless I finish it.

Goodbye to the ought decade. You know, two thousand ought nine. I ought to blah blah blah. I had made some take charge decisions already. I decided to go back to hospital nursing. At first I was confused. It felt a little like life did that to me. And it has been, without exception, the absolute hardest thing I have done in my life. As in most difficult. As in for a while there, swallowing all the pills in the medicine cabinet looked like a better plan. Much better. It would be a kindness to Bill, the dogs, everyone. (I got hung up on Laurie and Heather, and my sister Martha.)

The Bad Voices can sing so loud.

I drowned them though. I drowned them by singing Hallelujah with four guys from Norway at the top of my lungs. I drowned them by going back to the hospital the next morning, when I thought the amount I had to learn was impossible. By asking my little saint of a preceptor to show me one more time, and by trying to believe her when she said really, you are doing fine. By saying you're welcome to the patient who looked into me and said thank you. By deciding not to run for re-election to the Board of the American Whippet Club. That was hard. But when the contents of your medicine cabinet tell you that you have too much on your plate, hey, maybe it's time to scrape something off.

By deciding to stop being a ninny.

It feels pretty good. I like life in the non-ninny lane so far. I'm looking forward to it.

hug your hounds

Paint by Number Whippets

Giacomino

I missed the actual opening because I was working.

But we remedied that. Bill and Deb and I went for a private showing night before last.

Okay, I'm ahead of myself. A dear friend, and fellow Lowertown artist, Deb Lyons, had a fun idea in early 2009. She wanted to do abstract paintings of my dogs, and I was all for that, of course. She brought a bright lamp and a blank canvas. I held Giacomino between the light and the canvas and Deb traced line after line of the shadows created, turning the canvas and moving the dog and the light. The result was a patchwork of lines. Deb then asked me what colors Giacomino gave - his aura.
She repeated this process for the other dogs. And here are the magical results:

Artist Deb Lyons and her painting Delia

Mama Pajama

Swede William

Lindy Loo

Luciano

Sam I Am

Giacomino's painting will be hanging in our bedroom as soon as the show comes down.

Thanks, Deb! What a treasure!

hug your hounds

A White Tiger Rug

As y'all know, I've gone back to work. The last time I worked on a medical/surgical floor in a hospital was 1985. (Since then, I've worked in the Operation Room, PACU, and in Primary Care, but I hadn't worked in nursing at all since 2002.)

Things have changed since 1985. Just a bit.

(Oh, I'm 55 years old.)

The hospital is wonderful. I'm so impressed with the nursing staff. They are orienting me as though I were a new grad (GOOD IDEA!), and at the halfway point, I'm now taking my own patient load, under the watchful supervision of my (SAINT of a) preceptor. She is a sweet, beautiful soul, three years out of nursing school. She is a very good nurse.

(Yes, I am 55.)

While I'm in orientation, I work my preceptor's schedule. We worked Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I will be honest with you: I was very worried about my physical capability of working three twelve hour shifts in a row. The young nurses at work said that it's really hard.

(I am 55.)

I was worried about the dogs. Okay, that's not the whole truth. Bill has been doing great with the dogs. I was worried about me missing them. You know. There is a big ol' chunk of my heart that doesn't beat quite right when I'm away from them for too long. It beats, but that big ol' chunk is not quite in rhythm, so it sounds like, 'lub-dubb, oh thunk, lub-dubb, hmmmm thunk, lub-dubb, sigh thunk.'

(My heart is 55, too.)

Well, it turns out, that I was worried for nothing. I am a Tiger! A fifty-freaking-five-year-old White Tiger*! Three twelves in a row was a cinch.

See? Here I am arriving home on Monday night:


Note the victorious thumbs up!



The dogs rush to greet me.



Sammy -- don't forget he is a Therapy Dog -- astutely checks for a pulse, and immediately calls
a CODE D.E.D.



Swede William says, "Whew Lordy!! You can say that again!!!" Easy can't look.

Mama Pajama to the rescue!



A sweet Mama Pajama kiss can revive the weariest of souls. It can make a 55-year-old soul feel brand new. A Mama Pajama kiss can make a heart that was going kerthunk-plop just race along lubby-dubby, lubby-dubby, lubby-dubby-doo!

I am the luckiest older than dirt nurse alive.

hug your hounds

* Thanks to Sue for the White Tiger reference!

Friday My Town Shoot Out - Dressed for Christmas

Here is the sum total of the Christmas decorations at the Casa Renzulli so far:

Bill plugged in the string of lights that's been hanging around the gallery door since last Christmas. Or the one before.

But the town of Paducah is a different story. It is lit.

The charming Texaco Station (now an information booth in the Arts District)

The Hotel Irvin Cobb - a classic from the past, where Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday, The Tommy Dorsey Band, and more entertained Paducans - now hosts a lovely florist shop, and housing for the elderly and disabled.

The costume store is in the spirit. (Click on that to see the look the 'Car Freshener Baby' is giving his less than thrilled Christmas Tree Mother.)

Downtown.

The downtown gazebo, where you can catch a horse-drawn carriage ride.

The downtown directory, reflecting the snowflake street decorations.

Back in the Arts District, The Colonial. Isn't she graceful?

I hope to write a story tomorrow. One is tickling my brain. I'm back to work on Saturday. I get to see how I do with my first "three twelves in a row." I work Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I'm afraid they might have to call a code on me by Monday. Not a code blue; it will be too late for that. Just a code D.E.D. (It's spelled D-E-D, but it's pronounced dayedd. There is no such thing; I made it up.)

"Code D.E.D. in the hall, 3C. Code D.E.D."
If you hear one, that will be me.

Nah, I'll be fine. But as much as I can, today and tomorrow, I'm hugging me some hounds, while the hugging is good.

You could hug some, too.

Friday Shoot Out on Saturday and Stuff

In the words of someone, I'm late I'm late for a very important date.
This week's My Town theme is from Emma in Arizona, who said:

When I think of trying to photograph weather, I think about [...] any type of clouds, the sunset, a beautiful snowfall...should the weather cooperate for us, I thought it would be a fun topic to catch on film!

I haven't been out in the weather much. Heck, I haven't even been out in the daylight much. So here are some photos of last winter's once-in-a-hundred-years ice storm, just to make you feel warm and snugly where ever you are. Except Minnesoooooota. And Norway.

It was beautiful.

From indoors.

It will be another hundred years before the trees recover, and I will never forget the sound of all of those huge branches cracking and crashing. Some people in neighboring counties were without power for 32 days.

Enough of weather. (I am not such a big fan of winter and it's been dismal cold and gray.)

On to stuff.

We are hanging in here. Bill and the whippets are getting along just fine without me. Bill loves to cook, and now he has a couple of hours to kill after the gallery closes until I drag my weary bones in the front door. He fills that time by piddlin' in the kitchen. On Thursday, I opened the door to the sound of manic whippet woo-woo-woos and to the smell of Italian heaven.

I had had a Fairly Hard Time of It, and spent some part of dinner sobbing into my linguine with sweet Italian sausage marinara, Sammy's worried face resting on one thigh, Swede William's on the other, Easy and Fat Charlie lying like twin Sphinxes waiting for plates to lick. Between those pathetic tremulous gasps that possess your throat when you've fought tears all day, and moments when I almost fell sound asleep face first in my plate, a little bell went off in my brain. Tinkle! Hey! You! This pasta that you are crying into is really good!

And then I wasn't crying any more.

I spoke to my Nursing Director yesterday. I said, "Um. I feel like the learning curve I'm facing is as though I'm driving the Le Mans, in a Gremlin, and they're holding it on Mt. Everest." I asked her to please be honest with me, and to let me know if she had any doubts that I was up to this task. She cocked her head at me and said, "Patience, you've only been on the unit for two weeks. I think you are being a little hard on yourself. I knew when we hired you that you would need extensive orientation. Actually, I've heard that you're doing really well." She went on to say kind things.

(Thing is, I'm used to being more than competent. I'm used to being the one who people come to with questions. I'm accustomed to having solutions. Whoa Lordy!!! Now? I'm checking everything with my SAINT of a preceptor. Even stuff that I know I know, I check with this dear soul first. Twice. Once more for good measure. And when you read this, please be sure to give those italicized words sufficient punch.)

So last night when I got home, after doing fairly okay and getting the nice pep talk from the Director, I was feeling a little more rosy. The whippets picked up on this and gave me their best Excessive Greeting Disorder Welcome Home ever. There was crazy chaos and folderol. Mad, wild, loud bedlam. Luciano stood halfway down the stairs with his nose pointed to the heavens and his lips in a perfect O, just a'howling to beat the band. Sammy ran silly little mini zoomies around the dining room table. Easy barked his head off and jumped up to give kisses. Delia ran between Bill and me, screaming the entire time. William and Lindy wooed and wrestled for good measure, William throwing in a hump or two while Lindy was distracted. Mama Pajama and Fat Charlie wagged and danced and smiled right into my heart.

And Bill said, "I've made something I've never made before. You are going to love it." There was a Bon Appetite magazine on the cooking island. "It's penne with root vegetables," he beamed.

It smelled wonderful.

The recipe called for golden beets, which were not to be found in Paducah, so Bill substituted regular beets. They made the dish a lovely, bright rose-fuchsia color. Just perfect for my new outlook.

The dogs all had precious pink lips after they licked the plates.

I was still smiling when I fell into bed.

Life, even when you feel not quite up to the challenge, is good with eight whippets and the world's best husband.

hug your hounds

Here we are!

Emmett

Playing catch up.

I've got some orders to get out: thank you wonderful people who are buying my book! You know how in that James Stewart Christmas classic movie every time a bell rings an angel gets wings? Well, for me, every time a book sells, I feel like I can fly. Just for a second.

But it feels great, so thank you.

We went to a dog show on Sunday and had a blast. All three dogs showed like pros! Emmett went first, and did better than I imagined he would. His Heather was home - baby Ben's little brother is due in four weeks, but that wasn't why. Ben's daddy had to work, so Heather had a day with Ben, just the two of them. My great and generous friend Dee (of Lee and Dee fame) went with me, packing a yummy lunch to eat on the way, to hold dogs ringside and be excellent company on the SIX hours - three up, three back - of fascinating southern Illinois Interstate.

So Emmett had to go first, and didn't have his Heather to cheer him on, but he was a brave and happy and wonderful boy. No stage fright for him! Then it was Swede William's turn and he gave me goosebumps. Not so much the judge, though, who apparently got indigestion from William's glorious Swedish color. Dee reported hearing collective ooooh's and aaaaah's from the whippet folks ringside, which is gratifying.

Lindy Loo, who is the worst little fussbudget when we practice, was showier than a Rockette! She stood like a statue, arched her neck, cocked her head at the judge and moved like a dream. I couldn't help smiling - okay, beaming - at her. She had a blast.

These three dogs just love to show, and that makes it so much fun for me. Plus I got to see some friends who I haven't seen forever. Dee and I got home to Bill and Lee enjoying wine and cheese in our kitchen while Bill made a signature pasta dish - oooooh sun dried tomatoes artichoke hearts shrimp wine and cream sauce ohhhhhh ahhhhhh. It was just a great day. I was asleep under a pile of whippets by 8:30.

Work is going fine. (Although you've noticed it cuts into my blog time something fierce.) Bill is doing a heroic job of being primary dog servant. I am so enjoying giving patient care again: it is such a special privilege. I don't have the time to devote right this minute, but in another post I'll talk about that. The gift of caring for people.

And I'm having a blast getting to know the staff of the floor where I'm working. It's a delightful, fun, energetic, responsible, cooperative group of people. They help each other, and they put their patients first. That makes for a rewarding work environment. My preceptor is a very good nurse. So young! More on that in another post, too.

It's a busy day. The Paducah Kennel Club Christmas Party is tonight. No rest for the weary!



Hug your hounds - it's good to 'see' you!