Probably More Than You Wanted to Know

Catherine tagged me to post seven things no one knows about me on my blog. I am flattered. I've never been tagged for anything before. So here goes:

1. When I was in college, my dad was commanding officer of the Coast Guard base in Southwest Harbor, Maine. The first summer that I went home to Maine, I worked at the local fish factory, packing sardines. The tools of my trade were sharp scissors for cutting off the heads and tails, and adhesive tape for wrapping around the fingers of my left hand – so I wouldn’t accidentally chop them off along with the heads and tails. There was a factory bus. When a boat came in with a load of fish, the factory whistle would blow. It could be heard for a couple of miles. The whistle was the signal to get ready for the bus to pick you up. The bus was a good thing, since after packing for a few hours, you generally smelled rather strongly of fish and wouldn’t want to stink up your own car. Most of the packers were older ladies who had done it for years. The second summer, I worked as a waitress at a lobster restaurant in Bar Harbor.

2. Since I started my job with the DISD in August, I have kept a log of what I wear every day. It is a Word document titled “What I Wore”. You see I work at three different schools, and I was afraid I would wear the same thing every Friday. Since I only see the people at that school once a week, that would be weird. Of course, they’d probably think I was weird for keeping the log if they knew.

3. Our family has hosted 5 foreign exchange students. Our first was Shinya Fukumori from Osaka, Japan. He played the drums and went to the Arts Magnet with Stephen and Emma in the 01/02 school year. I actually ran into Shinya a few months ago, playing with a small jazz ensemble at Northpark Mall! The second was Barbara Klonk from Hofheim, Germany. She played the trombone at Arts and was with us for the 02/03 school year. We skipped a year and then hosted Laerke Buch from Odense, Denmark. That was Emma’s senior year at Arts – 04/05. She played the bassoon! We skipped another year during which I had a bad case of empty nest syndrome, so last year, 06/07, we hosted 2 boys who went to North Dallas HS. They were SeWon Ha from Seoul, Korea and Rene Galuba from Gera, Germany. They were all great kids! And all of their pictures, except Shinya’s are posted on this blog somewhere.

4. I once worked for Northeast Airlines in Boston. It was my first “real” job after graduating from college. What?? Never heard of them. Maybe that’s because they were bought out by Delta in 1972. In the fall of 1971, I interviewed for a stewardess job (that’s what they called it then). I didn’t get it but was called back and hired as a reservationist. An interesting aside to this story is that I really tried to dress the part for the first interview. I thought I looked pretty good – and so did a guy from my student Ward in Cambridge. I was walking toward him in Harvard Square and could see him looking me over appreciatively. When he got to my face, he became flustered and said – “Oh hi Mary, I didn’t realize it was you!”

5. Bill and I have had season tickets to the Dallas Opera for many years. We took a 2-year sabbatical while I was in nursing school, but have re-subscribed this year.

6. Rebecca Nurse is my eighth great grandmother. She was hanged for witchcraft in 1692 in Salem. I discovered this at BYU when I was simultaneously reading “The Crucible” for a class and working on my genealogy. When I read that Arthur Miller had used the real names of the people involved in the witchcraft hysteria for his play, I remembered that I had recently traced some ancestors back to Salem in the 1600’s. So I checked, and there they were – Francis Nurse married to Rebecca Towne!

7 When I was laid off from Sabre, I was walked out of the building. This was almost exactly 4 years ago. I was a programmer and my job probably went to India.

Seven other things you may already know: 1) I am a school nurse, 2) I am a lot older than my seven or so readers, 3) I served a mission in England from October of '75 to April of '77, 4) I was born in Massachusetts, 5) Bill and I are temple workers, 6) I rarely wear makeup, 7) I have 1 cat and 2 tortoises.

Major Trauma

Most clinic traffic in the elementary school falls under the headings of illness or minor trauma. Our daily report doesn't have a heading for "Teacher wanted to get rid of me" or "I wanted to visit the nurse and kill some time" or "Let's see what a good actor I am". There are usually a lot of headaches, tummy aches, scrapes and scratches. There are the "my mommy gave me Tylenol this morning so she could go to work/play but it wore off and now I have a fever" visits. Then there are the "if you look at it really hard with a magnifying glass maybe you will see something and give me a bandaid" visits. And of course there are the medication visits - for the Ridalin, blood sugar checks and such. And then there is MAJOR TRAUMA. I got to experience Major Trauma while I was on my own today. It wasn't life-threatening major but it was a broken bone major. Actually I did have help. The playground aide who brought the child to me stayed to help. Of course it happened at lunch time when clinic traffic is at its highest. The mom came within about half an hour. The child was in a lot of pain and all I could do was stabilize the arm and apply ice. He was only 5 and thought he was going to die - literally. He asked me through his tears, "Am I going to die?" So I reassured him and tried to distract him and called my sick #1 nurse at home and finally mom came to take him to the ER. What a day!!

On My Own

At my Wednesday/Thursday school, the nurse I work with stayed home sick on Monday and Tuesday. The principal actually had to be the nurse yesterday, because the office worker who normally fills in was also absent! R came back today and it was a fairly typical day. She left a little early and I finished up the day. She just called me at home to say that she would be staying home tomorrow. So I get to handle the clinic on my own tomorrow!!

Stories

My kids love to hear stories about themselves when they were little. So here are a few memories:

Sarah: Sarah has always been petite. As a baby, it seemed that she was the only one I knew of that wore 3 month clothes at 3 months and 6 month clothes at 6 months etc. She was also an early walker. She walked at 9 months and ran at 10. People would look at her in amazement and ask how old she was. She just seemed too little to be running around like she did.

James: When James was 3 or 4 he saw a mouse in our house. He came to me a few moments later with a long sad face and said, "Mommy, I saw a little mousie and I wanted to be his friend, but he ran away!" So sad.

Stephen did and said some pretty funny things. I don't think I can remember them all. Once, sometime after he was potty trained so he must have been 3-ish, I was standing at our front door talking with someone. Suddenly Stephen comes running down the hall to me, very excited -

Steve: "Mom can I go!? Can I go??"
Me: "Where do you want to go, Stephen?"
Steve: "To the bathroom!"
Me: "Of course you can go to the bathroom!"
Steve: {While running back down the hallway to the bathroom} "YIPEEE!!!"

Emma gets frustrated because I can't remember as many stories about her. Let me just say tonight that when I saw Ella and Brooke at choir practice on Sunday evening and remembered how Emma and I used to go to choir practice together, it made me miss her terribly.

Some Veggie Cartoons

With thanks to Walt Handelsman, Dan Piraro and Mike Peters.

Another Day, Another Target

My route to my Friday school takes me by yet another Target. I stopped and found a few more bargains. Their dollar stuff was at 75% off so I got six packs of playing cards shaped like lions and tigers, 2 glasses cleaning kits, a set of 4 cheater chopsticks and a few other items, all for 25 cents each! I didn't have time to search for any other bargains...

I tried to convince the guy at Subway today that my veggie sandwich was a tuna sandwich without the tuna and he should charge me the price for the daily special. I have no shame! He was a grinch and I ended up paying the extra 30 cents.

And Stephen finally got on a plane to SLC today. He caught a shuttle to Rexburg and arrived in time to go to the campus Japanese club with Emma this evening. He will be staying overnight in Idaho Falls with James and Melissa for a few days. I think he will enjoy hanging out with his brother and sister and friends after such a long stretch of hanging out at home with his 50-something parents and Polo (the cat).

Going Gray... or White?

I have wanted to grow out my hair for years. I was an older mother and thought I needed to dye my hair so I wouldn't look like the grandma instead of the mother. You get into a rut. I told myself that I'd let it grow out when Emma graduated from high school. Then I postponed it until I graduated from nursing school. Then I decided to wait a few more months until I got a job. So now I have the empty nest, the degree and the job and it is time. It has been about 2 1/2 months and I have a little over an inch of natural color. I am beginning to see that I still have some streaks of brown mingled with white rather than gray. And it looks like I have more white at my center part line than lower down. I am getting anxious to cut it, but I have never liked to wear my hair short.. and I don't like the two toned look, but what can I do?? I found a link to this article that I thought was good. So please don't look at me and wonder why I am letting myself go. It's an ongoing project to uncover the real me!