Liars

I was recently listening to a radio program about lies; people had stories about people they had known in their life who had told them some crazy lies. It was interesting to hear how the people in the story felt about the lies they had been told. It seems that when the lies are believable and it's someone we trust, that's when we're hurt or angry but when the lies are so out there that we know they are lies, they become more entertaining then anything else.

After I had Joe I struggled with postpartum depression, in part because I didn't have any real friends when I lived in England, where he was born, and I was lonely. Part of my postpartum care over there was nurse visits to our home to see how Joe and I were doing (I know, isn't public health so incredibly bad.) On one visit when we had just moved to a different part of the country, I was telling the nurse (who happened to be from another country too) how lonely I was and how I was having a hard time making friends with English girls, who would often stop talking to me when they figured out I was American. She told me she knew another American girl in the village who had a daughter the same age as Joe and gave me her number.

I called this girl up and she was indeed very very friendly, we arranged a 'playdate' for the kids... but really for me. She was super smart and easy to talk to but it didn't take me very long to figure out that she was a total liar. She told me that she had a sister who was born retarded but that both of her parents were psychiatrists and that they had worked with the retarded sister so diligently that she ended up being a total genius - she even included the fact that her sister's first word, at age 1, was medulla oblongata. Of course I knew that story was a lie but I continued to be friends with her for a while longer.

On another occasion she told me that her mom hated her because her twin was born with her cord around his neck (which is unlikely due to the fact that they couldn't have shared an amniotic sack, a lie I didn't know about at the time.) She was kidnapped in the hospital by one of the nurses who carried her around in the first ever baby carrier, which he had invented and wore under his scrubs (and no one noticed that he had a baby under his scrubs.) He had been bringing her brother to her mom to be fed and somehow her parents thought it was her sometimes. But no charges were pressed because, as it turns out, he only meant well, she needed special care that her parents weren't capable of providing so he carried her around. She also told me that she was born in the car with the car teetering on the edge of a cliff because her dad lost control of their car as he drove the mountainous terrain of Tennessee to get to the hospital from their remote mountain ranch home.

She went out of town once and asked me to dog-sit for her. She had a Newfoundland, which is absolutely HUGE and a chihuahua. The Newfoundland attacked me from above while the chihuahua attacked me from below. When she got back from their vacation she told me all about how she had seen a dead body on the side of the road while she was driving, she had called the police to come check it out but they didn't believe her.... can you believe it?

In the end I stopped being her friend, but in reality it was probably her dogs more than her lying that made it so I didn't think we could be friends. I don't even know if she was really American... the funniest thing about her is that I think she believed are her lies herself.

The weird thing is that I never called her on it, I still don't call people on things even when I know they are lying. It's like I don't want to offend them by calling them dishonest when they are being totally offensive by being dishonest.

I was recently talking to someone about a lie I had been told that was pretty hurtful to me, I had a really hard time dealing with it and I was expressing my concern about not wanting to be lied to again in this way. This person asked me why. 

What do you mean why? Because no one likes to be lied to.

Why not?

Because it made me feel like a total idiot, like they must think I'm an idiot not worth their respect enough to tell the truth.

So really you don't like to be wrong, you didn't like it because it meant you were wrong.

Indeed, I don't like to be wrong.

More about my eyes

I financed my LASIK because I don't have $4,400 laying around. I did it through a company that works with the doctor who performed the procedure and lucky for me it's interest free. I had to apply for it all before I went in and when I called to find out if I just cancel the loan if I didn't end up being a candidate, the lady at the credit company told me that I could still use the money on any other medical procedure. When I informed her that I didn't need anything else done she seemed unconvinced.

Ever since my procedure I keep getting emails from the credit company. They want me to borrow more money to have more things done. One email was all about plastic for Christmas. I'm pretty sure they figure that now that I can see I have probably noticed things about myself that I'd like to change. While this may actually be true, I'm too cheap to pay to change them. The only reason I even had LASIK is that it will save me money in the long run.

Since I had the procedure I've had to go in for follow up visits to the regular eye doctor to make sure my eyes are healing. I really really like the doctor, which is surprising because he's a male doctor and normally I only like female doctors, but he's smart and nice and funny. The ladies in the office somewhat annoy me sometimes though. For example, they clean the equipment with an alcohol pad and then immediately dry it with a tissue, all right before you use the equipment. I want to tell them that they need to wipe with an alcohol (or caviwipe) after each patient and then let it air dry for it to do any good. But I've noticed that people don't like it when I educate them so I just sit in silence. I'm sure they can sense from my face that something is bothering me though because I'm not good at hiding my feelings.

Today I totally had a disagreement of sorts with the lady who does the cursed glaucoma test. I was already unhappy because of the already discussed alcohol pad situation and then she didn't adjust the height correctly so the evil eye blower bumped my forehead. After that I had an even more difficult time than normal convincing my eye to stay open because it had previously believed that even though the blower seemed like it was close to it, it would never actually touch it. My eye now knew differently and could not be convinced to stay open more than a flutter. She was all arms crossedy and I was all "I can't!" and she was all "FINE! The doctor is just going to make you after you see him."

He didn't! HA!

Like I somehow developed glaucoma in 2 weeks. The doctor knew that, which is why he didn't make me.

I hate that I blower.

I once was blind

Not many people know this but I have been pretty blind for a good many years... okay so maybe lots of people know that, but maybe they didn't know just how bad it was. That 20/20 vision measurement that they have, it goes up to 20/400 and my vision was worse than that... off the chart. Basically that big E... if I didn't know it was an E then I wouldn't be able to tell what it was.

I was pretty content to wear contacts most of the time and glasses when I was at home - although it was always annoying to have to pick my head up off the pillow and hang half way out of bed to be able to see the alarm clock at night. And then I started working nights at a hospital with dry dry air. My eyes wanted to kick my contacts out at about 3 in the morning. So I started wearing my glasses - except that they give me a headache from pushing on my ears and nose and I was always worried that they'd fall off my peanut head at an inopportune moment :(

So I decided to get LASIK. I'm not the best at doing lots of research about things but I am good at picking the right people to get advise from so I asked my sister-in-law, who is the researchy type who she went to and picked that guy... it turns out that he is the best in Houston... so they say, and I'd have to agree.

I'm pretty grossed out by eyeballs - I can't even stand to see conjunctiva. When I had to put eye drops in people's eyes when I was in nursing school it grossed me right out. Poop, blood, vomit, open abdominal cavities, all the stuff that comes out when a person gives birth - none of it grosses me out in the slightest but eyeballs - yish. I think it stems from an experience I had when I was 12. We had to dissect a cow's eyeball in science class. We had to make an incision and then "gently" squeeze the eyeball until the lens came out. When I squeezed the eye the lens totally popped out and it looked like a jelly bean that had the sugary colored coating sucked off - and then the eye was all wrong with goo and liquid and wrongness. Probably if we'd been able to wear latex gloves I'd have been OK but they didn't do stuff like latex gloves for stuff like that back then so I was forever traumatized by the whole thing.

When I asked people who had the surgery about it they all pretty much said "you don't feel anything." I was foolish and believed this. While it's true that painful isn't the word I would use to describe the experience, I would say that it was SUUUUUPPPPPPERRRRRRR UNCOMFORTABLE. First of all, they keep your eye open with a Clock Work Orange type contraption

That's not comfortable, no, not at all. Then they put a suction cup thing on your eye, also uncomfortable. After that you can't see anything, and to be fair, that makes things get better. However, the surgeon would say "look up" "look down" or whatever and I wanted to say "dude, I can't see anything to look at anything" but I was too busy fighting off a panic attack due to the fact that they gave me my Valium 5 minutes before the procedure... I'm thinking I could've used it like 20-30 minutes beforehand but you know - at least I slept most awesomely on the way home and for several hours when I got home. Valium plus no sleep the night before = super duper sleepy.

So today my eyes look like this

When my kids saw me they were like "um, mom, are your eyes going to stay like that?"

I wore my sunglasses all around the grocery store because I didn't want to freak people out. I still got weird looks from wearing my sunglasses inside but I took comfort in the fact that I wasn't the only one. Also, I'm not allowed to wear make-up for a week so nobody better ask me if I'm feeling ok!

So the verdict - it was totally worth it. I can already see well enough to drive and watch TV without glasses and that is such a huge improvement I can't even tell you how happy I am. They told me it will take 3-4 months before my eyes settle into what they will be.

Endurance and Enduring it Well

One quality I have is endurance. Is it a quality? An ability? A personality trait? A choice maybe? I don't think it's something I have over anyone else - meaning, I think anyone could have the level of endurance I have if they chose to. This "ability" (we'll call it that) is what makes me a successful distance runner and what made me a successful student.

Deiter F. Uchtdorf, one of the leaders in my religion, recently recounted this story in a speech he gave

"In the 1960s, a professor at Stanford University began a modest experiment testing the willpower of four-year-old children. He placed before them a large marshmallow and then told them they could eat it right away or, if they waited for 15 minutes, they could have two marshmallows.

He then left the children alone and watched what happened behind a two-way mirror. Some of the children ate the marshmallow immediately; some could wait only a few minutes before giving in to temptation. Only 30 percent were able to wait.

It was a mildly interesting experiment, and the professor moved on to other areas of research, for, in his own words, “there are only so many things you can do with kids trying not to eat marshmallows.” But as time went on, he kept track of the children and began to notice an interesting correlation: the children who could not wait struggled later in life and had more behavioral problems, while those who waited tended to be more positive and better motivated, have higher grades and incomes, and have healthier relationships.

What started as a simple experiment with children and marshmallows became a landmark study suggesting that the ability to wait—to be patient—was a key character trait that might predict later success in life."

The interesting thing here is that while I do have a good deal of endurance I think that I am someone lacking in the patience department. I would have no problem with any number of challenges such as this one in which I knew when I would be done with the stress/struggle/work. School had an end in sight just as a marathon does. It's not so hard to keep going when you know that every step you take places you one step closer to your goal and you know exactly when the end/prize will be.

Here's what difficult. When we go through a difficult time and we don't know when the end will be or if it will turn out well no matter how hard we work and how much we give our best. That's where faith comes in. I feel like God knows me well enough to know that if I'm going through a hard time and I ask him when it will end and what the outcome will be - for sure he could tell me and He knows I would work hard and do what I need to do to get there.

My friend posted this quote as her facebook status the other day "there is no growth in a comfort zone and not comfort in a growth zone." God also knows that I won't grow when I have the end in sight. For me the answer is to just put my hand in His, keep pace and try to enjoy the race while I go.

flesh eating bacteria

Pretty much ever since I took microbiology life has never been the same. I am not a total freak about stuff but I seem to have picked my choice fears of bacterias that I am acutely aware of and try to avoid. This wasn't helped by going to nursing school and becoming a nurse.

Let me paint a picture here by also adding to this fear and awareness of bacteria the fact that I now work nights.... which means I am often sleep deprived. You may not know I'm sleep deprived if you come across me in this state, you may just think that I've gone a little crazy or maybe that I took up drugs or alcohol recently. So sometimes I get ideas that a rational person would dismiss quickly.

Have you ever had an idea in your sleep/dream or thought up a joke or a solution to a problem and it seemed genius and you think "I MUST remember this when I wake up!" And then when you wake up you think "hmmmm, that wasn't so genius after all."

The other day after I had showered following the last of several shifts in a row I felt an itch on the back of my leg and looked down to see what appeared to be a patch of pimples.

"OH NO! MRSA!" I thought "Now what, do I go see my doctor? Can I work if I have MRSA? Should I call the Occ health nurse."

But a small part of me had the sense to know that I might not be in my most logical condition after having had less than optimal sleep for the past week. At first I tried to call my nursing school friend but she didn't answer.... next choice, husband. It didn't matter that he had absolutely no medical training, I needed a voice of reason.

His wise words were to go ahead and sleep a couple of hours and then look at it.

Of course when I woke up there we nothing there because it had just been goose bumps that I had irritated by shaving them off. I sure am glad that I didn't show up at the occ health nurse.... they maybe would have questioned how I passed NCLEX.

change is good right

So after having my other blog for years I've changed to this one. People who check facebook are the only ones who will know about this though. As you may know, if you caught my facebook status the day I posted it, I took that blog down because if you typed my first and last name into google my blog came up and it had pictures of my kids and other information that I decided I didn't want linked with my last name... especially since only one other person in the country has my exact name and she lives in another state. And since my address comes up with my first and last name and since my first and last name are on my badge at work (I need to see if I can get one with just my first name.)

Any way, so if you decide to put a link to my blog on your blog, please don't put my last name on there. I already live next to a couple of crazy people I don't want to deal with more than that at my home.

It was really hard to come up with a blog address by the way, all the ones I thought of at first were taken by someone else. One of them my husband suggested "daddy long legs" was taken by some dude who hasn't posted since 2006, butt-hole.

So sorry if what I picked is long or whatever but it's all I could think of.

Also, previously my postings have slowed right on down because I worry about offending various groups of people. But I'm going to try to not worry so much about that anymore.... so try to not be offended and then we'll all be happy.

ok good.