My newest endeavor

Massage therapy classes have been keeping me busy after work! We do often get out of class a little early though and it's nice sometimes to get home from a thirteen hour day, versus a fourteen hour day :) I am actually enjoying both the material and getting to know my fourteen classmates better. It is surprisng how much I do remember from previous anatomy and physiology classes- both the RN level college courses taken and passed 11 years ago, and the LPN level vocational courses completed 10 years ago.

One night a week we have Anatomy and Physiology, and Pahtology for the Massage Therapist. One nights is Ethics. One night is Body Mechanics. The fourth is Massage Technique.

Though this is an entirely new healthcare modality for me I feel my partial leg up (and each of my classmates has his/her own) is being already familiar with one form of professional client/caregiver relationship, and generally comfortable with confidentiality laws, medical terminology, and medical charting.

There are so many MT specializations! Going into it, I am most excited about a possible future in massage for the cancer patient, or sports massage for athletes and dancers, or chair massage at office's. Does Boyfriend know how serious I am about campaigning to become his office's personal Chair Massage Therapist?
Therapists can specialize and work in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit)!

This is going to be fun :-)

P.S. Boyfriend is being incredibly, outstandingly acitvely supportive. He is amazing! He is amazing every day, but some times outshine the norm.

No. 2 pencils

This is my second week back in school, this time to become a Massage Therapist.

Oh no, not the dirty kind. Only one person is getting that kind, and he gets his for free;-) Well, unless you count the price of putting up with me.

It's the fifteen month, 750-hour, four nights a week course and I feel like I'm getting in on the beginning of something that is only going to grow. But more on that another day.

I am stalling on getting ready for work- isn't blogging in pajamas and eating stove-popped popcorn with coffee much more fun?

Teeny Testicles of Might

A short mouse story-

I once owned 23 (or was it 26) Fancy Mice.
I started with two, but was stupid that day (well, a lot but we'll just stick to this incidence for now) and forgot all about checking for balls, even though I had hamsters as a kid and as an adult. And rats. Pet rats.
So I bought the little black mouse who was hiding on the water bottle, and sibling.
Little black mouse was already pregnant when I got her, but not showing. Her sibling had a penis anyway and tried to help.
Black mouse was apparently a fertile Myrtle and had 13 babies, all of whom survived.
She was an excellent mother and she also became my best buddy. Who wouldn't need an outlet raising that kind of multiple birth?
At least twice a day during my many visits to the mouse-errarium she would climb up to hang on the mesh lid and crawl back and forth, or stand with her nose poking out until I took her out and let her crawl on me. Sometimes I tried to put her back too soon and she would race the other way back up my arm.

When the babies got to a certain age- the age when they started to practice nookie like a couple of awkward thirteen year olds in the basement. It was time to separate.
Did you know little boy mice can hide their balls? I mean really hide. Or maybe it's that some just descend later than others. After all, people have late bloomers.
I know about the differing distance between urethra and anus in male versus female, and differently shaped abdomens, but try to figure that out with bad eyes and a hellbent 1/3-inch worm shaped tube of squirm.
Picture a giant, furry Tylenol with big ears.
I learned to gently push on the lower abdomen and look for bulges and that helped loads, but inevitably down the road I'd see somemouse previously female humping or chasing somemouse else and darnit if those little boy nuggets didn't suck right back in as soon as I went after the pertpetrator. Not always soon enough.

Some litters didn't make it at all. Some mice were horrible mothers. One litter had been decimated down to two babies and I finally turned them over to the again newly delivered original Momma who adopted them and raised them with her own.

At final count I had 23 mice and possibly ten cages. All the females cohabitated, and each male had his own domicile.
My two favorites were Mommma, and Scruffy. Scruffy was missing patches of fur from the skin rash that broke out among the males while they were still young enough to share a cage- a skin rash I hand treated each day with peroxide and cortaid on q-tips. Scruffy's tail was bent at the distal end from the day he tried to climb back onto me and I accidentally dropped the lid. His ears were incomplete from sibling squabbles before the separation. Scruffy was gentle and also loved to come out and sit in my hand. He would often sleep (in his own, private cage) on top of his bullet shaped unclimbable water bottle with one hind foot wrapped around the wire hanger. Scruffy outlived almost every one.

Today

Last time we met we weren't much more than kids, and I wonder what you would think of the adult me, and I wonder what I'd think of the grown up you;
and maybe, just maybe, we'd be two half-grown kids with beautiful crow's feet and laugh lines and a couple of gray hairs and we'd stare and marvel for hours at how really no time elasped at all.

dreaming

In the wet of water's edge, at the fun place where water slides its coolness up my legs and pulls upon the ends of my rolled up pants only to tickle back down and slip away again sucking on my feet and challenging my balance, I understand the Mermaids and urge the ocean to take me safely too; tempt it by wishing with every step further out to sea. And isn't the moon trail of glitters and sparkles but a beckon, a path to follow all the way? As if in that one place it is safe to walk on water.

I stood under the New Jersey stars missing the Maine stars with tears crowding my eyes and wondering how a place left behind could break my heart so in the very being away from it. But then I also wondered once how it was I fell in love with a state.




Unrelated P.S.

Playing, Where's Katie??? with a small child who's head is lost mid-dress in a sweatshirt is fun and cute.
Playing Where's Karen??? with my self, when my own head is lost in a sweat-shirt mid-dress, is kind of sad.

to the sea, to the sea...

I need to go look at the fluffies in the sky and feel the Fall on my face and think for a little while about where I am now and where I'm coming from and where I want to go and how I'll get there. It's been an emotionally busy week.
The waves coming in and out always take me home.

So you think you can run

So last week the fear of my own body's rapidly creeping girth and fluidity escalated and I decided the time had come for some wickedly serious dieting. It was time for some purposeful calorie reduction and getting this body moving.

As far back as I can remember I've been captivated by the strength, speed, and agility of runners, the power of the human body. All my life I've secretly wished for the legs of a giraffe or a horse- dreamed of four legs whisking me gracefully across the landscape. In my sleep I sometimes dream I'm running effortlessly and wake wanting to go.

I've gone through periods of running, the most successful being last spring and summer when I trained myself on the local (to Farmington, ME) half mile college gym track. I've never been a graceful runner and my lungs often give out before my legs. And I often give up when the knee pain or the inclement weather kick in.

I blame it mostly on the waxing moon but last week my legs felt surprisingly powerful and telling myself how the other guy doesn't matter, it's only about my body and my satisfaction, I let myself go as far as I could again and again.

No great accomplishment there. Not to anyone but me.

I don't know who the hell I am thinking I can run when the practiced runners are gliding by my plodding self, but I know we all have to start somewhere and I know I feel best when my body is lean and strong, and I know I am going to get my skinny back!

I also know there's little better than flying down the boardwalk or the road with the full moon over head and the breath in my lungs and the wind on my sweaty face.

Does anyone have any beginner's running tips or thoughts to share? Is anyone else trying to start a running program?

A link for the animals

I found the home page to this link last night, on http://2carolinacats.blogspot.com/

It is a tear jerker.

Busy Weekend

Interior painting is one of my favorite learned skills. How easy it is to make a room or a home I don't enjoy very much into a place that makes me smile every time I see it; into a place I want to linger.

My back is letting me know it isn't completely happy with me right now; warning me I'd best watch my step- and there are still books to return to the book shelf (at least 100 of them) and knick-knacks to replace and arrange.

It is mostly done though, and I can't wait to wake up to it all in the morning :-)


P.S.
I'm pretty new at this uploading photos business and they are backwards, ending with the photo of the happy painter pre-work (sideways as I forgot to edit first) and beginning with the finished product ;)

P.P.S.
Actually, they are all screwed up. But you are smart! and I know you get the idea:)

Little wonderment

My cousin's baby, now four months old.

How do they do it?

How do they go so quickly from being warm sleepy bundles of cuddly lump, to being interactiving, animated people?

More than anything else, the hope of this is why I wanted to move back from Maine.

My link,

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

... and share I will. I can't remember any more whose blog linked me to PostSecret, but I've grown addicted and check almost first thing every Sunday. Reading it makes me poignantly feel how very close and how much alike we all are, and yet how very alone and different too; how there is a place inside of all of us known only by ourselves, and the conjoined beauty and danger of that place.

sinking in

Have you ever eaten a mango? Sunk your face in deep til yours cheeks are wet and sticky and the threads of fruit are slicing between your teeth? Held it up to your face to tight you have to close your eyes and hang over the sink, syrup juice freckled with flesh dripping from the tips of your tightly flexed elbows?
Have you peeled off the skin to drag your teeth all the down sucking the meat off with your tongue and swallowing it in sweet gulps?

Who are the big cheeses around here?

Boyfriend gave me his previous digital camera with all the hardware for uploading to the computer and the television; with the battery recharger, the batteries, the bag- he really set me up! Of course, so far it's all nothin' but cats!!

The teeny silver tabby is Sylvia, one of my two kitties. She is 8 or 9. Honestly, I keep myself in denial that she is aging at all.

At 1 1/2 years old she became a rescue from behind a restaurant in Asbury Park, NJ. Two days after she was 'rescued', I impulsively walked into the pet store in Sea Girt, perused the cages, came to a little gray kitty who rubbed my hand and wanted to snuggle- brought my then-live in boyfriend (who is still a good friend) back to see her, and adopted her the very next day.

At first she did not know what to do with a full-time Human. If I got down to play with her, she took it as an attack and swatted my face. No holding, no snuggling, definitely no cuddling up to me in bed. We took it slow, and worked on the trust.

She became my best buddy and once you are accepted by her she'll cuddle on your lap, sleep up against you all night, stand on your shoulders. She barely weighs seven pounds. Never bites, never scratches, never hisses. Even if I am doing something she hates- like clipping her nails or cleaning a wound- she will lie in my lap and growl, but let me do what needs doing.

The little ball of black is Fuzz; or, as Boyfriend calls her, E.L. Fuzz, for everybody loves Fuzz- because they do :) She belongs to my sister, who does not know I'm pimping out her kitty as she sleeps. Fuzz is like a tube of fur covered cartilage. Fuzz is a nut. My sister tells her all the time- "Fuzz, you're crazy."

boring adult's Friday night

Two nights in a row, as the body unwilling to store rest and grow unweary dropped the window blinds on a shortening darkness, the moon struck my chest with its need to be noticed and I nearly hopped in my car and raced my barefooted self to the beach, Peanuts pajama set and all. (Yeah, this mama wants to be sexy, but cozy is my leader.)

The corn shall be mine, all mine!!!!
All five ears I have eaten- I have eaten all five. How can I not when the kernels glide off between my teeth to dissolve meaty and sweet on my tongue?

Random thoughts

These things catch my eye from the side and I turn, always turn, to see the toddler in a stroller smiling and grabbing at things, or the infant laid back half sleeping in a hand carried package.

In Barnes and Noble today, at my corner a metal edge that might have been a satchel of child somehow but proved only to be a hand-pulled cart;
Let the babies go, I told myself. They aren't going to be yours. You haven't led the kind of life that leads to babies.


Tonight I realized my there is such a thing as too much ice cream, two nights of little sleep with a concert in between knocks me flat on my ass, and I don't want the bed all to myself anymore.

Happy Vacuum Day to me

I wasn't sure what you get when you think you are thirty-four, but find out you are still thirty-two, and your birthday comes along. Apparently in this situation, you get thirty-three with the sensation of receiving the life-long gift of two retroactive years. So I am officially thirty-three years old as of 5:35PM today, but feel like I'm thirty-five and getting away with the mother of all youth-fountain tricks. Ponce de Leon, take that!!

What I firmly believe is that March 2006 through late December 2006 was so harrowingly stressful and full of depression and warped changes I emotionally aged two years. At some point during those nine roller coaster months, I began to mentally feel two years older.


I've never had as much fun in a doctor's office (umm, never had fun in a doctor's office ever) like I had this morning with Boyfriend. Needing someone to drive him, he let me be the one. Granted, up until we heard his doctor yell in reference to the facility that still hadn't sent over Boyfriend's MRI results, "I want to talk to their manager! They (meaning us) have been in there (the exam room) since eight o' clock this morning!" -
up until this point there were times we thought me might die forgotten in there and at one point I got slaphappy (neither of us slept well the night before) and started to laugh the kind of laughter that always leads Boyfriend to say, "Will you stop that? You're freaking me out!" (only today he let me go :)
...that kind of laughter that comes for no reason obvious to the non-laughing, but goes on and on and on... . the kind I love to laugh and will lead myself back into if it starts to go away, simply because it's free laughter and feels glue-sniffing good :)

-and at one point I said, "Why don't I take my pants off or give you a blow job because then someone will definitely come in - you never get away with those kinds of things!"

-and at one point we thought about playing darts with the used syringes from the Sharps container on the wall, but neither of us wanted to be the dartboard first.

Several times he apologized for making me sit in a doctor's office on my birthday, and thanked me more often for taking him; but frankly, I had a very good time.

All day I had a very good time.

Thank you Boyfriend; for all you do for me and with me every single day, for loving me so much and so well and wanting my love so much in return, for loving to get my massages because I truly love to give them, for wanting to talk to me and to hear from me each morning and night, for the hugs and the kisses and the snuggles and almost seven months of better life and fabulous days since the moment we met.

I love you ;)

joining the village

It struck me oddly to hear myself calling teenagers 'kids'.
It struck me very strangely when traditional college students became 'kids' to me.

Now when I look at children the residual trauma at the hands of my classmates is gone, and I see small people who will one day be adult men and women, people who need structure and great role models now so they can be their best and their strongest all life long.

And I find myself stepping out instinctually to guide and protect, to stop rolling balls, to keep them from traffic, to save them from waves or other strangers if need be.

We've all heard, "It takes a village to raise a child." Most of us have heard that doesn't happen any more. But I think it does. Maybe not as overtly with neighbor women calling mothers and hanging out the window, but I know I'm not the only non-parent watching out for the younger ones.

Born Again

Sometimes all I need to remember who I am and to get my head screwed back straight is to be beaten by the ocean for a while and watch my sweatpants float around my legs.

Today was one of those days when my head turned my world inside out and by 7PM I was certain Boyfriend and I were doomed to ruin one another's life, and I wanted the world and every stranger in it to go away. Not knowing what awaited me but certain the fix was lying in wait, I headed to the inlet- my old haven where down among the rocks and wave-bathing barnacles I could be a mermaid in paradise and solitude, just another piece of the sea.
I climbed out once last year but my 30-ish self was unsure and afraid of climbing. Tonight though, the fearless climber was back. So, however, was everyone else- and more graffiti than ever; and a teenaged couple making out in the daylight. The castle had been over-run.
Having climbed back to the surf line I stomped through the sand knowing I'll never return to Maine and leave my family behind again, but wishing and dreaming my self the Hell out of here all the same- houses on my left, people talking behind, and no where truly to run and hide.
Shortly I sunk my hind end into the sand and my back followed quickly, arms crossed beneath my head. If there's one thing I excel at, it's getting sand into every crevice even when fully clothed on a windless day. An ex, and later friend, of mine was convinced my body made sand. He'd find the stuff left behind in his sheets when I hadn't been near the beach for days.
This water has its way and the pools of gathering high tide collecting between rocks lured me out-I didn't mind my tushie getting wet if I sat to dangle my feet, but wouldn't it be more fun to stand in the water pits, and Remember when I used to jump in on a whim fully clothed?- Ah, now where might this be headed?
I grew up at the sea, and I know with my ears when to get away from an incoming wave, and I know how to turn my body to minimize the knock and the splash- and I know damn well how to get soaking wet only in up to my knees.
I could feel the smile on my face, and in my head, walking back to the car, sopping sweat pants sliding down my ass, sand gold and black stuck to my feet and calves.
And then the voicemail came from Boyfriend who hurt his knee playing softball and was in the ER, "Don't panic."-
and all that mattered was that he was okay, and I am so glad to be his Woman, and I can not wait to go spoil him on Thursday- the visit I almost canceled earlier, so blindly certain I was becoming his ball and chain.
Over my bed is a greeting card I bought myself, and framed and matted, of a young girl leaving her roof in flight, jacketed arms outstretched, to join the birds. I stuck a seagull feather under the nail in the wall, and every so often I look at her and quietly fly away myself.

So nice to go

Oh but you're right I am elsewhere daydreaming here only in body paying no attention....

Walking barelegged, August sun hot and dry on my head, feet kicking up grasshoppers with every shake of the dark green-sharp, brown-crunchy grass...
sawmill on my right closed for Sunday, or doors open, men yelling, pickups parked by the dozen...
and a quick run for balance and stability over the uphill roots on the 4-wheeler trail of Day Mountain, shade falling suddenly cold on my cheeks.

bedtime blathering

I'm not sure how I expect to start a blog just before midnight and have the energy to get up at 6AM tomorrow for my healthy breakfast over an educational magazine succeeded by weight lifting and calisthenics with steam left over to carry me through the work day.
It may be a morning of hitting the snooze button, not shaving to shorten shower time, and carrying my toast out the door to eat on the drive to work, where I will be out of steam by 1PM.
Which reminds me how I feel like karma gave me a freebie when my toast falls peanut butter side UP. Sweet:)

These days I feel like I could be something more. I see potential in myself and in my future. Flotsam and jetsam of hope and optimism, old friends; not sure who left whom by the roadside, but what a crazy reunion it could be.