Fall Here

Long time no blog. Summer is almost spent- doesn't really seem like summer winding down what with no classes to return to, no state fair to attend, no autumn weather to ease into.

Milder weather here on the West Coast, different subtler seasons. Summer starts heating up come August, September can still swelter. Fire season and Santa Anas brewing and building. The air so dry you can hardly swallow, skin crawling with electricity. Waiting for the news of the careless spark that hits the crackling, thirsty underbrush in the hills. Heavy brown ash choking out the blue sky. Sig alerts choking the freeway.

But for now July has lazed on into August. Breeze from the Pacific lazy over the coastal cities. Laying in wait for what fall brings to Southern California.

RN

I've been reading sad stories lately.
About dead moms and dying children.
Carrying these tragic tales with me
as I walk the hospital halls in my scrubs
my badge hanging next to my stethoscope
identifying me as "RN."

Perhaps it's only an attempt
to make these sick kids seem normal-
like everyone has a central line
taped to their chest
puncturing their subclavian
and a white blood cell count of one

or a CRP of fifty

But the need for IV ceftriaxone and clindamycin,
like clubbing of the fingernails or circumoral cyanosis,
is not normal.
Not everyone's tale is this tearful

not everyone is held together

with steri-strips and sutures.

Remembering Moving Day.

Now that Orange County has begun to feel like home. Understanding the lay of the land from Seal Beach to South County. Having driven from San Diego and San Clemente up the coast through Ventura and on to Santa Barbara. Having seen the hot bodies at Malibu and the surfers at Huntington Beach. Drinking Fat Tire on the Newport pier as we watch the seals and dolphins in the waves offshore. Now that the West Coast has replaced the midwest as my home I can think back on moving day...

Goodness, now that I've left.

It was hard to leave my parents- standing in that gravel driveway that gave me so many skinned knees growing up.

And now I've grown. Driving along the clear, cold, rushing streams of the Rockies as we head up to the pass and then down the Western side. Farther and further away now. Farther as in physical distance away from. Further as in advancement, to a greater degree.

I've driven these mountain passes before, seen the San Juans in morning and twilight. Seen the Rockies ragged edges level off into the Colorado Plateau, invert into Utah's Canyonlands.

I've driven these distances but never before as a resident of nowhere but here. All my belongings behind me, packed in the back of this rented moving truck.

I have fulfilled this odd dream of moving out of Minnesota. I've left. You won't find me on afternoon runs along the Mississippi or at any of my old haunts. I won't be walking the Washington Avenue bridge between classes or cruising the 16 to my Midway apartment. Leaving friends behind with a lump in my throat knowing that we'll grow apart. I am on my way to palm tree dotted Southern California. Dive bars yet to be discovered, runs on the beach yet to be mapped out, friendships yet to be realized.

So for now I am a resident of this UHaul 14' Thrifty Mover. A resident of four states in three days. I've seen the beautiful July rain and traffic snarls of summer road work in my Midwestern home state. I've heard the thunder rumble across the magnificently clouded sky above the Iowa plains. Trees dipping their roots into rivers like children touching their toes to cold creek beds. I've seen lightning bugs swirl and sparkle along the highway at dusk, misty morning lifting over barns and cornfields. The beauty of a summer sunrise in the middle west.

We've hurried through Nebraska and Eastern Colorado where the only radio stations are Christian country and herds of cows huddle in the shade of one lone tree. Where the interstate cuts through towns of $39 dollar a night motels and bars with only budweiser on tap. And now we are next to these streams after taking a wrong turn outside of Boulder. We will drive through Moab and Monument Valley, see Vegas rise from the desert in a flurry of sand and neon and billboards for adult superstores and Cirque du Soleil.

South through San Bernardino and into the mingle of smog and ocean air that forms the atmosphere over LA and Orange counties.

talking undergarment

To the lady talking to the bras at Target...they neither speak nor understand English so your breath is wasted on them.

Also, you're creeping me out. 

In other news I've exercised TWICE this week. But pretty much think that any good I've done for myself has been undone by the amount of thin mints I've consumed in the past couple days. Each box is two individually wrapped servings, right? A tube for me, a tube for you.

One day I'll write about those girl scout days. But for now, I'll keep those childhood stories to myself. 

hard times for writers

Kurt Vonnegut in April 07. David Foster Wallace in September 08.

And now John Updike too? ugh.

the edge

"The edge- there is no honest way to explain it, because the only ones who know where it is are the ones who have gone over." Hunter S. Thompson

I've been thinking about the edge lately. Thinking about where it is within myself. For so long I was "about to be." About to be a nurse, about to be done with school, about to be a wife, about to own a dog, about to live in California.

Well...now I'm a married, working as a nurse in CA, no longer going to school and owning the hell out of one lucky pup. I'm not about to be anything (that I know of). I just am.

Wondering what the next edge will be. Will it be something within me? Will it be somewhere I go, somewhere I end up? Am I far from home or is home far from me? Running away or towards? I had all these big plans regarding traveling, working, volunteering abroad. And now here I am...thinking about trying to belong, thinking about making a home, thinking about what I thought I would've done.

All the while I try to be productive in my days off and do anything besides go to Disneyland, pet my dog, take baths, and go to work once in a while. Yoga, books, walks on the beach those are the goals. Starting with the yoga practice last night and those three pages per day of Infinite Jest (it will come as no surprise that I am already behind on that).

sittin' in the drafts pile...

So today is the first full day of a democratic president since I've been out of my teens, since I've been able to vote. Goodness.

So now that we've got our guy in office what are we gonna do now??

1. Move all the terrorists in and make 'em comfy.
2. Take all the guns away from hard workin' Americans.
3. Abort all babies -mostly for sport (except for the ones we give to newly wedded gay couples)
4. Let all the crazy Mexicans take all our jobs (err, the ones that are left, that is....)
5. SOCIALIZED medicine...OH GOD NOOOOOOOO!!!!!
6. Stem cell research on our newly created army of fetuses.

Given that last one may be in bad taste.