Franklin Pumpkinfest 2008

Spiderman's alter ego seems to have another alter ego. Wonder what Batgirl is thinking...

Celebrities walking the square--guess who?

Balloon animals gone wild

sepsis of the profession

I recently discovered this fascinating line in The Emerald, a short story by Donald Barthelme. Being a critical care nurse, I could not help but be drawn to it.

For those of you not in the medical field, sepsis is a life-threatening full body reaction to an infection in the blood. That's a very simplified definition.

The dialogue contains a journalist, Lily, who is filled with disbelief at the sight of a 7,035 carat emerald speaking to her. She is told that disbelief is the sepsis of her profession. It hampers inquisitiveness. It kills the news story.

Indifference is the sepsis that plagues the nursing profession. How many times have I heard "I'm just here for the paycheck," or "I just do my 12 hours and go home?"

I guess it's because so many nurses have let go of the polished-white nursing shoe attitude that causes them to spring out of school proclaiming "I'm going to help someone!"

After several occasions of being threatened with a full airborne urinal, one can only muster so much patience and good-natured caring attitudes.

Maybe it is indifference that enables us to carry on with the job, though. To learn to not care about so many insignificant little things, to not take so many words to heart, to let them go in one ear and out the other. To be able to go home, sit down with a bowl of ice cream in front of the TV, open a book, read about someone else's life, and forget about the day where you successfully fended off an old lady who simultaneously wanted to bite you and get her pants off so that she could play tug of war with her foley catheter.

on the road with history

Sometimes I wonder if I am being too hypervigilant when it comes to Tennessee drivers. But the other day I spotted an unusual sight that deserved mention. The strangest thing about the scene was that nobody else seemed to think it was strange.

A woman pulls out of a fast food restaurant in a red sedan, maybe a Honda or Toyota. She was black, but I will give her the benefit of the doubt that she wasn't from this country.

Why will I do that? Because she had a Confederate flag plate on the front of her car!

It was almost like I had entered some alternate universe.

Perhaps she is not a student of history. Could it be that she is trying to fit into her new homeland by using a symbol that she has frequently seen? Maybe she thinks the Confederate flag is trendy.

That's almost as bad as what I have been up to lately--a Northerner, innocently carpooling to work with a guy who sports a "Sons of Confederate Veterans" license plate. Hypocrite am I? No. Broke from gas prices? You betcha.

Sometimes you just gotta sell out to survive.

Chattanooga doo doo

The "trained naturalist." He is probably thinking "Why do they keep letting little kids on this boat? Are we that strapped for cash?"

Daddy and the girl face eachother down

Dark green kudzu grows unchecked near the shore of the Tennessee river. It seems impervious to the cold temperatures.

An oxymoron

Development on the banks of the river

The Tennessee aquarium in Chattanooga

The woman in the above photo is not a drug overdose. She is still breathing, but barely. This poor tired soul is the personification of the boat ride we took yesterday down the Tennessee River gorge in Chattanooga.

The worst part about taking a trip is waiting for it to start. Finally, after 15 minutes of holding down, cajoling, and bribing the 2-year-old, we were on our way.

Our first stop was to the sewage unloading dock, where the trained naturalist who narrated our cruise explained that the previous passengers had unloaded a bit too much themselves.

Ten more minutes of painful waiting, this time worrying that the little girl would make a break for the rear (no pun intended) of the boat and get caught up in the pumping hose while the toilets were being emptied.

Finally, we were on our way. We cruised for about 10 minutes, came to an abrupt stop, and tarried along for the next 2 hours looking at trees and hills.

Now, for those of you who follow or who have even taken a cursory glance at my blog, you know how much I am enamored by trees. However, the two-year-old does not yet share my views on nature.

The trained naturalist was quite well-informed. Unfortunately, I didn't catch a single sentence of the spiel, and he spoke for the entire 2 hours. Every so often I would hear "eagle," "old tale," "mermaid," or something along the lines of what you would expect to hear on a cruise like that.

Caught a few good photos in-between struggling with the girl to keep her from flinging herself overboard.

This is what family memories are made of.