LOA

Will be back soon... busy being sweet...

(Roaring evil laugh)

Wordle

This meme comes to you thanks to my chum from anutha mom, CrazyCath across the ocean. Do drop by her site and say hi -- she is an amazing photographer as well as having a soft heart and a good cat lady starter kit happening.

Wordle "is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text
that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to
words that appear more frequently in the source text.
You can tweak your clouds with different fonts,
layouts, and color schemes.

The images you create with Wordle are yours to use
however you like. You can print them out, or save them
to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends."

Here is my Wordle, based on my Profile:

LOL. I appear to be a "Bearded Mother" and an "Attached Lop-Eared Single". Hehe.

Here is one generated from my foot care post. I like this one especially; it's busy like I am and describes me well:

It's fun to throw the text from different blog posts
in there and see what comes up.
Or you could just dump text in from your blog friends
and see what weirdoes they are (be like
Diane... shrink your friends!)

I did my pictures as screenshots, but Wordle has a
little link that you can paste into your blog from
any saved word clouds.

I'm tagging:

- Diane of StellarLife

- Carolyn of Laughing Alone in the Dark

- Shauna, aka The Insect Whisperer of
Bugs, Bikes, and Brains

- My BearNaked friend. Edit: Dingadangit I see you've
already got wordle posted on your site!! Missed you
by THAT MUCH!

Link back to me and let me know what you come up with!

Link to Wordle

Out out dang spots!!

Thank you to everyone who sent hugs and advice. So what am I doing on my self-imposed days off?
Pulling up carpet from my hallway. It's about 15 years old and so stained underneath that the fibers have dissolved in places. The foam underlay crumbles when it's pulled.

No wonder I couldn't convince it to get clean!!!

YUCK

Life's a Beach...

...and I'm caught in a Rip Current...

Nature is fickle, and she has a way of sweeping us off our proverbial feet. Take the rip current, for example. Far out to sea, strong winds and storm forces create ocean swells. These swells travel to land, and strike the coastline with powerful, breaking waves.

These breaking waves form the shoreline, creating an irregular sea floor with channels, holes, and varying sand formations. When angled waves meet these sand formations, the flow of water is diverted out to sea, in a swift and powerful rip current.

See example below. Note that I am smiling, and also skinny-dipping.

Playing on Life's Beach is Dangerous, and MS throws unpredictable waves and currents into the picture. Forget to pay attention for one moment and WHOOOOP! Swept away in a relapse.

When you notice you are moving away from the shore and making no progress when trying to swim in, then you have likely been caught in a rip current (Welcome to my Day!).

Fighting a Rip Current will cause distress, fatigue, and likely drowning. To get back to the beach, swim parallel to shore until you are out of the seaward current, then swim into shore. If you are having trouble, just relax and wave for help (hence me waving above... Need HELP!!).

Remember: Rip currents pull you out to sea, not underwater.

Hang tight... It all comes back around...

I'm not sure whether I am in a pseudo-relapse or a realapse right now. It's HOT, and I don't do hot well (although I am getting by with a little help from my friends!! See here.)

While swimming yesterday, my right leg cramped up and sent me running for the hot tub. Hot tub was sweeping me rapidly toward unconsciousness, so out I hobbled from there and limped my way to the cool showers. My right let continued the game, playing "Dancing Feet" all night last night. I couldn't sleep, felt all wrong, couldn't stop twitching and wiggling. Bladder kaput. Digestion a mess.

Today, I went to the funeral of one of my patients, and ended up out in the sun too long. On the way home, I told my right foot to move to the brake pedal for upcoming red light.

BETRAYED! My leg disobeyed, deciding instead to cramp firmly from thigh to toes. Lucky, lucky, lucky -- there were no cars going through the other way.

Heart pounding, I realized that I can handle the gas and brake with my left foot. It was a long drive home!

I am exhausted, and had to phone in and cancel tonight's shift at work. I think that the red light was some sort of cosmic sign.

Stop, Rest, Wave to some Friends, or Drown Trying too Hard!

Info on rip currents pinched from here.

Feeling Licked

"A new study shows that licking the sweat off a frog can cure depression. The down side is, the minute you stop licking, the frog gets depressed again."
- Jay Leno

It's HOT, I'm twitchy and exhausted, and my kids have gone away to their dad's for the month of July.

BUT, I am happy. Today was nice.
- I bought new shoes (Birkenstocks!!! ouch$$$) for work at the recommendation of colleagues. I have to replace my nursing shoes every 6 months or I get such cramps in my feet and legs. How often do others of you have to replace your work shoes? And what do you wear?

- I got my hair cut. Short. Ahhhhhhh

- I found a sale at the Children's Place and got each of the kids (4 of them!) 2 new pants and 3 shirts for school for $160. A head start!

- I had a lemonade and read more of the captivating "Judas Strain" at Starbucks.

- Ate green beans with chili and coconut rice for summer. YUMMMMY

How do you all manage to keep your body temperature down? I need suggestions for this heat!!

Like a bonsai tree...

As a lover of all things haiku, the following caught my attention:

Like a Bonsai Tree
Your terrible posture at
My dinner table

Stolen from here. Click to read the brief but excellent blog article by Dr. Bookspan: "Is Your Drinking Hurting Your Neck?

Just one little thing that we can do to help avoid the neck pain that plagues more than a few of us! Or you can try this:

Happy Feet

I want to tell you about one of my passions...

Yuppers, I like feet. Have always liked them. There's just something wonderful about a perfect pair of feet with all the little pinkies.

Then there's the not so perfect ones... But I can't help but care for them, too. How else to care for a person's soul (pun intended :) than to wash the feet that carry them through the troubles and joys of life?

I used to sit up late and do foot care for my dad while we watched the Irish Rovers on TV. Those are some of my best memories.

A couple of years ago, the unit where I was working offered a VON FootCare Advanced Training Course for the RN's. Only a handful of us were interested (surprisingly? LOL), but those of us who did had a blast practicing on each other.

Now that I work in End-of-Life Care, I'm finding this skill to be invaluable. My favorite part of care is when I'm able to get my kit out and spend an hour cleaning, massaging, cutting nails, and filing. I hear every story in the book while I'm working. I get a much bigger picture and assessment of my patients when they feel relaxed in a non-threatening therapeutic moment. It's a blessing for us both, and for the families as well. I get more thanks for this simple care than for all the challenging, mind-numbing skills and decisions that I perform each shift.

The picture below is not for the faint-of-heart. I didn't take it.
But, yes, I do cut nails like this, and often! Can you imagine walking on these feet? Or trying to pull up socks or blankets without snagging?!

These are the tools of my trade. I feel like part dentist, part woodsman :)

And here is the finished result:

HAH! Just kidding.

Any volunteers? I promise not to tickle!