friday night lights

i swear i'm having a harry potter movie marathon with homemade pizza and a good friend. [she isn't that kind of friend, either. i'll tell ya when she's here.]

and we're amuzing ourselves with the internets and i look up alix olson because she makes me tingle a little bit and i think to myself, all nurses should be like this. open. loving. willing to make some noise. willing to tell it like it is. willing to pack themselves in a stinky van with a coupla tatted hotties and hit the road to tell america like it is. ("she's a nurse?" my dear friend asks me. chuckle. "well, no. she just kicks ass." -- "oh, well then.") [well, we can't all be bohemian, can we?] okay okay, so we need the MICU and the PICU and the good ol' american stay put nurses. but imagine the CV/bio of your next inservice instructor looked a little more like this. you might feel more comfortable when your patient turns out to be trans [put it on your netflix list. you'll love this movie. if you didn't have respect for felicity huffman before, you will now.] or intersexed [this organization has an amazing mission, i am very pro this kind of mission.].

well then, harry potter has been paused long enough. Kenneth Branugh has been standing at the top of the staircase through pizza making, cooking, eating, wathcing mentos+diet coke=bad idea and other internet enetertainment. i think i'll let the man speak. you get to your linking and tell me if it's useful.

i'll be there.

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.

here goes... Mom sent me a link to Nurse Ratched's Place, specifically one about lusty busty women on the front of Pulp Fiction novels. you will hear me say it many times, my Mom is awesome.

from MJ's place i jumped to a whole slew of sites, mostly nursey sites as that is my future occupation [all hail the RN ~~ link list forthcoming] and decided there is room and need for the female-family nurse [read lesbian] voice on these internetted waves.

no promises. i'm an open minded kind of girl. not too ranty. tell me what you're thinking. i'll see what i think about it and we can enjoy the ride all the same.

i'm learning as i go. nothing too specific. nothing too identifiable. just a place and a space to make some noise. rock on, kids.