oh what a night

ah.... it's always nice to find the right buttons.

i like it when things are centered from time to time.

and then, i like to make them a little bit different.

what a weekend.

friday i had a male patient offer to turn me straight.

sunday i had a male patient ask to feel me up.

monday and tuesday i had male patients ask for my phone number.

...it ain't happenin' folks.

maybe this isn't something straight women encounter.

i just don't get it.

i'm a homo.

sure, men are great. and i have no problem talking to a man.

hell, i'll even kiss you.

but when we hit that belt line, baby, there's a reason i lay back.

i don't do dick.

really.

and don't tell me about how all i need is one night in bed with you.

don't get me wrong:

better men have tried.

really.

but when it all falls apart and i'm the one lying in that hospital bed waiting for someone to come clean the poop that is spreading from under my red behind, i want the woman i've devoted my life to sitting next to me. her soft, deflated breasts that have held the heads and hands of the children we've raised together rising and falling gently with her breath as she holds my hand.

"just another minute, love, someone's coming."

and when it's me sitting in that chair in the ICU until my ass goes numb drinking horribly thick coffee that some kind and loving nurse assistant keeps bringing me while i'm waiting for my children to call i want them to say

"how's mom doing, mom?"

so thank you, honey, i don't want your number and you can't have mine.

i'm sure you're a good time in bed.

i'd call you out for beers if i trusted you weren't trying to get into my panties.

hell, i'd even let you into my panties if i trusted you weren't expecting me to get into yours.

if cock is so fantastic, you try it first.

that's right.

i said it.

if cock is so great

you

take

it

first.

i'll be here waiting for the details.

every last dripping,

sweating,

pusling,

gagging,

throbbing,

spurting,

toe-curling

last one of 'em.

do you get it, yet?

i don't ask my straight girl friends to go down on me.

what else can i say?

i told you, i'm gay.

like this?

1. What time did you get up this morning? i forgot to turn off the alarm. so i heard the Drive play at 8 am. but i didn't get out of bed until almost 12:30. i only had to go to one job today, so i got to sleep in.
2. Diamonds or Pearls? pearls. not that i wear much jewelry. but i am waiting for a necklace with a white and onix pearl in it. stunning. i suppose that's the kind of ring i'd like, too. did you ever read the pearl by Steinbeck? i think it changed my young life.
3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Little Miss Sunshine. Well worth the trip.
4. What is your favorite TV show? i am currently making my way through the the West Wing on DVD. on my nights off i used to crash on the couch and watch the Simpsons, King of the Hill, That 70's show. i will probably track down the DVD set for Boston Legal as James Spader makes me want to do naughty things and William Shatner actually *is* a talented actor. And i adore cop/hospital drama and spoof: ER, NYPD Blue, Scrubs, Grey's Anatomy. ... and i thought i didn't watch that much TV...
5. What did you have for breakfast? i had the last of the banana chocolate chip bread. i should have had eggs.
6. What is your middle name? it comes from a Simon and Garfunkel song. i'm a twin. my parents had four names, two for boys, two for girls, but i didn't have a middle name until my mom was in labor and they drove over the Rhine River while this song played. .... kind of a nice story.
7. What is your favorite cuisine? i'm a sucker for maki and sushi, will roll over for indian and love making anything over open fire outside.
8. What foods do you dislike? there are very few things i don't like. my mom raised me that way, although i never really cared for the texture of lima beans. mom didn't like them either, so i never had to eat them growing up. oh, and tuna. i was burnt out on tuna as a young child. we ate it every tuesday night on our weekly budget meal plan. monday: meatloaf [which i still love]; tuesday: tuna; wednesday: chicken; thursday: leftovers; friday: pizza. weekends were up in the air and usually involved making something chocolate with and for dad from scratch.
9. Your favorite Potato chip?

Jay's. Hands down. Although there is a company that makes kettle salt and vinigar chips i woud eat all of the time if i allowed that kind of thing in my house. doritoes are perfect for putting on PB&J. but i don't eat that stuff any more.
10. What cd have you been listening to lately? Friend's have been playing a lot of Tori Amos in the house. Portishead was on the other night. i do love me some Portishead.
11. What kind of car do you drive? whatever my friends drive. i don't own a motor vehicle, and i kind of like it that way, for now. in highschool i drove a Volvo. boxy, grey, and beaterish. it was perfect.
12. Favorite sandwich? jimmy john's Vito, or a fresh Rueben, turkey or corned beef.
13. What characteristics do you despise? stupidity, intolerance, bigotry, small mindedness.
14. What are your favorite clothes? sweats and hoodies that i can't wear in public at night around the house. to go out, usually jeans and a tight t or nicer hoodie. i love working in scrubs.
15. If you would go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go? right now i would go to guatemala to see one of my most favored tree-hugging, globe trotting companions. there or NYC.
16. Favorite brand of clothing? GAP for men's jeans, shirts, girls undies, bras and and boy panties [they make excellent boxer briefs. champion for sweats and sports bras and bathing suits. prana for yoga clothes. thrift stores for anything but socks and undies.
17. Where would you want to retire? The world is at my feet so the road may be home.
18. Favorite time of day? close tie between the quiet moments in bed when the sun is up and i can just stretch and be grateful and the moments when my house is full of boisterous chaos and i'm cooking or cleaning around it all.
19. Where were you born? germany
20. What is your favorite sport to watch? anyone where someone i know is competing. otherwise most of them, but i've been officially turned on to futball [i can't wait for the next World Cup]
21. Who do you think will not send this back? i didn't do it for people to answer back.
22. Person you expect to send it back first? see above
23. Pepsi or Coke? nothing beats a tastey diet Coke
24. Beavers or Ducks? i can't say as i ever considered it. i have an affinity for ducks, but given my sense of humor, i can not pass up the opportunity to say i am pro-beaver.
25. Are you a morning person or night owl? hoot. hoot.
26. Pedicure or Manicure? whichever one you feel like administering to me or paying for me to get.
27. Any new and exciting news you’d like to share? i wish.
28. What did you want to be when you were little? invisible.
29. What is your best childhood memory? giggling. trying to keep up with my big sister on my bike. i think she was trying to run away. we got really far and then she stopped to see if i was okay. she told me she wasn't tired until she stopped and then it all hit her. i think i was six. she was eleven. we were still allowed carte blanche of the neighborhood back then. not too many creepy people stealing kids and doing bad things with them. at least it wasn't something our parents were paranoid about. i have a lot of good childhood memories, like Christmas with my extended family in Cleveland and how my auntie's living room seemed absolutely huge because i was so small...
30. Ever been toilet papering? yes. i was sister of a band geek and then i was in the color guard while my twin marched the trumpet. it was a right of passage.
31. Been in a car accident? yes. i was with my dad, in the passenger seat of our keely green 1978 Volvo. i was sitting sideways and talking to him about Lord knows what. we rear-ended someone. it was just before air bags and no one got hurt. in the grand scheme of things, not too hairy.
32. Favorite restaurant? oysy [oh-ee-she] and New Tokyo for sushi. raj baran[?] and hewa's kitchen for indian. andrea's in NYC for italian.
33. Favorite flower? whatever my mom grows in her garden and the african violets i got from my dad's mom when she passed away that bloom all the time because i have angels watching over me. that and orchids. i love me some orchids. and anything else you want to bring me.
34. Favorite ice cream? i currently have a pint of Half Baked and a pint of Heath Bar Crunch i'm working on.
35. Favorite fast food restaurant? chipotle, subway and jimmy john's
36. How many times did you fail your drivers test? people fail their driver's test?
37. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Uncle Dan's [hiking store]
38. Who are you most curious about their responses to this? anyone at this point. i'm known to be a curious kind of girl.
39. Last person you went to dinner with? went out to dinner with the House Mate and my Sister when she was in town last weekend. sushi. shocking, no?
40. How many tattoos do you have? none, yet.
41. How many people are you sending this to? how many people are reading this blog?
42. What time did you finish this e-mail? it isn't an email and i'm not done with it, although i did save it and leave work to return home and finish it after a shower while the HM is laying on the floor with her newly died shoe polish black hair listening to emo. music she knows little to nothing about. she needed a change. her running theory is that the black die kills your brain cells and allows one to be sullen and morose without hesitation. she's a keeper.
43. Favorite magazine? details for men, the new yorker, time, newsweek. i miss picking up zines from little coffee shops in the Twin Cities. those were romantically morose times.
44. If you could meet any famous person, who would it be? at the moment i'd love to be in a room with emilou harris, melissa etheridge, ellen degeneres, rosie o', Leslie Feinberg ... and it has been a long standing dream of mine to be in the Late Show with David Letterman.
46. If you could change your profession right now, what would you be doing? i'm working in the profession i want to be working in: healthcare. i'd love to be practicing nursing under my own legal license, like i'm supposed to be right now, but i'll accept the learning curve, enjoy the adventure and keep on keeping on. i honestly can't imagine being a fifteenth as happy as i am right now in any other field. really.

okay. now you.

she looks great

i went to see my friend in the hospital the other night to bring her gifts of love and distraction. my House Mate went with me [read: not my partner, kimmyk. :?J ] and proved once again that i am the luckiest girl in the whole world.

my friend, BK, was transferred to another hospital where a surgeon who "knows his shit" was willing and able to perform a really fantastic bowel reconstruction. a lot of small intestine was removed and then reconnected to her colon above the tumor on the right hand side. unfortunately the little fucker was also having it's way with her rectum, so she has a lower left side colostomy [did not get into the finer points of whether it was a sigmoid or not.... but soon, my pets, soon]. still on "cookies and milk," as her nurse appropriately named BK's TPN, my friend looks the best i have seen her in a long time. i have never seen her smile with an NG tube in before. her skin looks incredible. only dry from the air, not the dehydration of constant shitting of water and the sometimes vomiting. [which i have never seen someone do with such ease, either. the girl would be mid sentence, pause, ask for the emesis bag *which far exceeds the kidney or wash basin,* vomit, wipe her mouth, take a breath to assess if she was done, hand you the bag and complete her sentence. holy shit, batman.]

and here is my one highlight: .... i love stomas. i do. i'll explain it another day. they just simply fascinate me. and this makes BK feel a tiny bit better than there is one friend [one damn good friend] who is remotely excited about the fact that her best friend will be shitting in a bag!! how wicked!!

she was feeling a little down. and normally i am the one to give her permission to feel like poo, but she specifically asked to be cheered up. when i ran out of humorous tales about the random dumb asses i interacted with that week, House Mate jumped right in with stories about her retreat working with youth from her church back in suburbia, apparently on a tour of a burbanite prison, she and the other two leaders locked themselves in an interrogation chamber dilly dallying behind the guided tour. yeah, that one looks good over dinner with Pastor... ah. lucky me. i have excellent friends. friends who don't at an eyelash when i take them to see my loved ones sick in beds with more tubes than you can fathom being comfortable. and HM made BK laugh while i went to get the nurse for more pain meds. sigh me.

somberly, BK told me more news. her primary onc doc may be bowing out. he is affiliated with a little clinic. an excellent clinic, but too small to be participating in drug trials. the hospital where she is now, on the south side of the city, is bigger and has some of those trials readily available for her to enter. that was a hard blow. we like her primary onc doc. he's a Good Guy and a Kind Doctor.

more somberly, the docs aren't sure how much they can do for a tumor that won't give up the ghost. the gut doc said he wasn't going to mess with the tumor once he got in there and saw what was going on [which really makes me want to see what was going on...] and did his kick ass job of making her gut functional. we've gone from months to years.

but she said maybe a handful.

she doesn't want the rest of her life to be chemo.

she mentioned that she wants to be cremated and have her urn buried with loved ones and a small stone.

i told her she could have whatever she wanted.

there was a peace about the conversation i can't explain.

i was grateful that she brought it up. it's something i want to be a part of. knowing what she wants. and what she doesn't want. and making sure that her wishes are carried out.

she's an amazing friend.

sitting there in her hospital bed with an NG tube and a flight deck worth of dials, pumps and fluids asking me about my family [my mom's dad passed on the 1st. it was mostly expected, and quick to pass in dignity and free of pain. i flew to cleveland for the funeral.] and becoming emotionally moved to the point of tears when telling a story about a gay male friend from high school who's family disowned him when he came out [she asked how my date went that afternoon with a new girl, it went very well], and also her anger and frustration at the county hospital's cuts of 17% from the neediest of the needy while she lay in a private room with incredible nursing response and a DVD player. ....

and i bit my tongue at the injustice of someone so giving and loving of others at a time like this might be taken from me before the children we have not yet imagined nor born can laugh at her faces.

not yet, i told my Granpa when we left him at the cemetary. she can't leave me. not yet. she looks too good to leave us now.

glad to be where i am

...i started this post on the 25th.... it is now 4 days later.

so, kimmyk asked who HM was. sorry... i learned to blog from my mother, who referred to my father as DH [dear hubby, or some such nonsense] and didn't elaborate.

HM is my house mate. a friend from college who fishes in another pond [she ain't gay] but we get along real well. well enough that when i got wind she was moving back into the city from out of state i called and said "i need to move back north. what say we get an apartment before Christmas and you freak out your parents (she's 30...) by moving into the big city without a job." we did. she did. they did. and we're all okay.

i'm single, and a homo, so sometimes i feel like i have to be careful when identifying key players in my life. we [the royal we, also those who know and love me well enough to keep me humble] joke about my having an estranged straight husband, an ex gay boyfriend [always gay, not an exodusite, scary, no?], a misstress [now, that is just fun], a straight girl friend and i even had a request for a baby mama to join the group and give me beautiful indian babies. so it comes as no shocker that HM has been jocularly referred to as "the wife."

but i am a single, healthy, intelligent, drama-rama-free lesbian who is currently looking for that special dyke [while i'm open, i have deep moments of weakness for those who bend gender harder and further than i...] to fill another position all together: preferrably 50 or 60 of them .... so one must be careful with descriptions.

so why this blog?

because there is a discrepancy in nursing about lesbians, specifically lesbian nurses. let me assure you: we are out there, and we are fabulous, but noone talks about us. we're not like gay male nurses. people know what to do with gay men. [they are still learning, i'll grant you, but they have ideas.] i'll blanketly attribute this to the media [and i'll get some lovely comments for it i'm sure]. and there is power in that message. come on, folks, if it weren't for queer eye having five fab fags redo your dad's duds wouldn't be hip. there is a part of me that totally enjoys watching Jack bump bellies with a pill-popping Karen.

but what about the lesbians? what do we do with them?

i think we're still getting there. really. the L word was fun for five minutes, but how did it improve life for lesbians? how did it make it easier for me, as a nursing student, to sit in a room full of "straight" women [dear Lordisa, if one more classmate tells me about her girl-on-girl college experience after a night at the bar i'm going to scream, and not in that toe-curling, thigh crunching, thank-your-maker kind of way] before we change into something that is supposed to pass for gym shorts and palpate for femoral pulses. no. that isn't awkward, no. not at all.

and this is why my respect and adoration for these two women grows every day. Really. [there are supposed to be photos here, but i'm not that kind of lesbian (read: the technically/electronically/internet savvy-kind-of-lesbian). i'm more the handy-dyke type. [you figure it out.]

Rosie and Ellen make it easier to just be a lesbian.

but we've got leagues and bounds to go in nursing. we have no role models. we do have organizations and connections, but not role models.

there is a difference. and there in also lies the rub. [i'll see if i can't gank that article off the web from school and post it later this week.]

i have a meeting in the morning and a letter i have to write before i get there.

until then, folks.

Today is brought to you by the letter "Learning"

Wow. Learning kicks my back side.

To those who know me, this may sound completely odd. I love to learn. I love to meet new people, learn about their passions, their lives, their needs [I am a nurse-to-be, afterall]. I even love learning practical things: how to fix stuff, make stuff, knowing how things work. And I'm good at learning. (parenthetical note [obviously]: a particular friend of mine would Capitalize that phrase, so as to make it Obviously Important. I'm opting for italics. I like the slant it brings to things.) But Life Lesson Learning (oops, so much for slanty) sucks.

it makes me feel like i'm not as good at things as i once thought i was, or should be. maybe that was the point.

oh.

At any rate.... we have fantastic things to promote!

In keeping with my desire to not only expand my education, but to educate others, we begin with Gender.

Leslie Feinberg is an amazing witness to the possibilities of educating the public about gender and identify. Here is a gentle introduction from curve magazine into the wonderous and intricate world of wholeness. There is a link at the bottom of the article to Leslie's Web site. I'll leave it to you to peruse further.

I am short on time and must attend to things that are not in the internet [imagine!]. More in store for you soon.