the "stand-in"

i was hired at utah valley pediatrics 2 years ago as the "after-hours nurse." there are 7 drs in the on-call group, 4 of which are from the office i am employed at. so when any of those 4 are on-call, i work the clinic shift with them. during the day, each dr normally has 2 nurses that work with him or her. i was offered a full-time position over the summer to work with a dr. who only had one nurse. so i rearranged my school schedule so i could work full-time. about 4 wks ago, the office announced they were going to a 1.5nurse/dr. ratio...they wanted to have me be the "stand-in" for the main nurse if she went on vacation, got sick, etc.

the result: i've had a lot of time at home the past couple of weeks. i've been a little nostalgic and i've been going through all my journals and old high school things my mom mailed out to me. high school was such an odd time--i am sure everyone will agree with me. "stand-ins" in high school were not allowed...can you picture a cheerleader saying, "omg, ashley's sick! like, michal, can you stand in for her today and like, um, hang out with us?" i don't think so. things were so very defined and labeled! you had to belong somewhere and belong there with intensity!

so, in looking back over my journals and high school memories...i was a heavy-duty aesthetic artist wanna-be!! one side of me is looking back and laughing at how emotionally intense i believed everything to be. the other side of me feels a little...the word is better put in portuguese--saudade (pronounced sow-dah-gee). the best translation would be nostalgia, but the word in english doesn't quite give the whole gut feeling of the word in portuguese. anyway, the older i've gotten, and the more concrete i've become in myself, the more logistic and analytical i've become...somewhat utilitarian, grounded. i sort of miss that side of me that was so intensely dedicated to reserving one day a week as my "art day," or carrying a spare notebook in my back pocket to write poetry, or drinking in a post-impressionist painting and feeling its influence in my own work. i am much more interested in non-fiction, health issues, and life maps. so are we just stand-ins during different points in our own lives, until we are (as my mom calls it) crystallized?
(from a poetry notebook my senior year):

what if i were a van gogh

what if i were a van gogh
and
had a million different
repetitions lines staccato blanks
and
shreds pieces patches
quilted, intertwined sewn
and
expanded stretched taut sallied
from
ingenious strokes laid
without much thought
fitting defining resting
without much foe
a million different
shades and stains and
stains and sallows and
sallows and shards
charcoaled and unbelievably
stark

girls and cats in the lap lane

i really don't understand why girls have to get so defensive and personal when it comes to sports. david and i went to the rec center to swim some laps for our tri training. we started out swimming in the same lane until a girl joined us, then david went to another lane (he isn't fast enough yet to swim with 3+ people in the lane, although he has come a very long way in the 4-5 wks he's been swimming!!) so i'm swimming along, doing my freestyle 1200m, and the girl who joined our lane was doing freestyle with her arms but breaststroke with her legs...i'd never seen this before, and she was going pretty slow.

ok, just to quickly go over the courtesy rules for lane swimming with 2+ swimmers: you always stay on the right side of the blue tile line on the bottom of the pool. you swim down the right side of the lane, and when you reach the wall and turn around, you swim down the other right side of the lane, so you're swimming in sort of a circle. if someone is swimming at a faster pace than you, and you feel then touch your toe while swimming, that's usually a polite indication to a. slow down your pace even more so that person can easily pass you, or b. when you reach the wall, wait a few seconds so the faster person can pass you at the wall. this gets real fun when there are 4+ people in the lane. i've had a few head-on collisions. so anyway, this is nothing against any other swimmer, saying they aren't good enough or aren't fast enough--it's not personal, it's just common lap lane etiquette.

so this girl was doing a cross between two stroke styles, and her pace was slower than mine. there were a few times i tagged her foot and attempted to pass her. every time i sped up to pass, she sped up, too. she would match her speed with mine, make her legs swing out bigger so they were nearly kicking me, and her hands were getting close enough to my face to rip off my goggles. so i would get right back behind her, slow my pace, and just try to pass her at the wall. there was even one time i sat at the wall until she was 1/3 of the way down the lane, then i kicked off and started swimming again...this was not even enough of a time lapse to keep her in front of me. i still tagged her foot to let me pass. she wouldn't have it. then another lady joined our lane. so in addition to trying to pass this cat of a girl, i now would have to watch out for oncoming traffic as i was trying to pass. i finally sprinted my last full lap, swam side by side with the cat for probably 25m, we both reached the wall at the same time, she looked over at me with a look of death, and i kicked off like there was no tomorrow to make sure i would keep her behind me. when i finished david asked what was going on--why couldn't i pass her? he could see i was keeping a faster pace than her, and every time i tried to pass, i just didn't. i explained the whole thing, which he thought was crazy. he told me while he was resting in between laps he saw she was behind me and must have hit my foot, so she stood up in the lane, threw her arms out, and looked around as if to say, "what's going on here?!" i don't know what was going on.

needless to say, i got a great workout. i really hope we have all boys--i can't handle catty girls who take things personally...

a week in the life of rats with wings

7 days ago you would have found david and me looking at each other in disbelief as we named each ruined item that made it look like we owned rats instead of sweet little parrots. after we got to a fairly pricey #5 on the list, we decided it was time to sell our birds. they were very loving, but also destructive. we couldn't take it anymore--the poop, chewing, throwing tantrums and squawking for an hour straight--it was time to sell them. this was a hard decision to come to--these little guys are just over a year old, we got both of them 3 or 4 months after they'd hatched at the breeder's, so we were essentially the only family they knew. parrots live to be 30+ years old, and a move can be traumatic for them, causing them to "pluck"--they will literally tear our every feather they can reach with their beaks due to the stress and depression. we thought if we could sell them together, some of that stress would be reduced. when we went out of town last summer we had them stay with a friend of mine for a week. they were certainly glad to see us, but they didn't pluck any feathers. good sign.
5days ago you would have found a posting for "two conures with cage" on ksl.com. we attached great photos and listed their "special skills"--tumnus will wave for a peanut, and lucy imitates whistles. we had a lot of viewers, but no buyers.
3 days ago you would have heard parrots squawking like cats as their wings were getting clipped by the vet. i took them to see dr. yeoma because a. we had to get their wings clipped before selling them, and b. we wanted to make sure everything was ok to sell them. she first asked me what type of diet they are on, water, bathing, toys, etc. i told her their main diet is the zupreem conure pellets, but whenever we have fresh fruit we always slice some up for them, and they love yogurt, cottage cheese, cheddar cheese. she said it's ok to give them plain rice, pasta, beans, and steamed veggies, too. i told her we take apart their cage once a month to clean in out, and we rotate their toys once a month, so they don't get bored. despite this, they chew on everything--our clothes, the screens, books, frames, etc. she smiled and said there really wasn't anything we could do about that, that's just how parrots interact with their environment. but the wing clipping should help. i also told her we'd "potty trained" our birds to an extent--when we got them out of their cage in the morning, when we got home from work, and before bed, we hold them over the trash can and say, "spit spot," and they know to do their business. but all the in between time, they fly all over and poop all over, and we were tired of living with bird poop every where. she was amazed we had trained them that far and said there really isn't anything to do about that, either. but the wing clipping should help. so then came the wing clipping...it's just like getting your hair cut--it doesn't hurt the birds at all. but the way lucy screeched, you would have thought we were cutting her head off. it made feel like the moms do when i give their babies vaccinations. tumnus took it pretty well. when we got them, tumnus's wings were fully clipped, it took a full 9-10 months for his wings to grow out where he could race lucy up and down the house hallways. but lucy's wings had never been properly clipped, she'd always been able to fly. so this was a pretty dramatic change. i told the vet we were planning on selling them, together, and asked if she had any advice we could implement to help them avoid stressors. she said. "oh, i would be so sad to see these birds leave your home! you take such good care of them! but if you sell them together, they should be fine." all these "what-if" scenarios ran through my mind--what if the new owners don't take them out of their cage enough? what if the new owners don't cuddle under the covers with them? who else knows lucy's special scratching spot under her wings? who else other than david would talk to tumnus at the end of the day? who else would let the birds bathe in their sink, feed them leftover yogurt on a spoon, or leftover mac&cheese out of the pot?



so, 3 days ago, you would have found me scrubbing every inch of our house so we could gauge the location and frequency of bird poop with two birds who now had their wings clipped. you would also have found two very sedate birds after their visit to the vet. they didn't chew on anything, didn't squawk unnecessarily, no pooping in all the wrong places. they sat on the perch we put them on and stayed there until we moved them to another perch. lucy didn't respond to the special whistle we do with her, and tumnus didn't demand to get in the sink for a bath when i was doing dishes. i was starting to feel like we had clipped their souls, not just their wings! the difference was night and day--we had good birds again! they knew right away they couldn't fly. they tried a few times, but then gave up. it was like their wings had given them special powers--they could fly anywhere, poop anywhere, and chew on anything, simply because they had wings. once those were gone, their special powers disappeared, too. i went and got them new toys and treats because i thought they were stressed out.
2 days ago you would have found our birds still very docile, but starting to chirp again, and wanting to bathe in the sink again. but their special powers were still missing. they were very good little parrots. david called to ask how they were doing. he suggested we take them off ksl. and so we did. tumnus and lucy are still ours, and as long as we can keep their wings clipped, we think things will work out. so, when we have visitors, there will be no more flying to the door to scare them, no more flying over the visitor's head to see how close they can get, there will be no more chewing on anything other than a toy, and no more pooping on anything other than a paper towel. visitors, you are once again welcome without fear!!