Feminists are crazy

With Isaac living in Chicago for the summer and a sad Camber alone at home, our car decided this would be an opportune time to burn out a bunch of blinkers.

So I changed the blinkers. It was just me, the owner's manual, and the tool set. While I was at it, I changed the light bulbs over our license plate, because they've been out for almost a year.

Here's what the rest of this post should sound like: I'm amazing, girls can do anything, who needs boys, I feel so empowered, doing manly repairs is awesome and fun, etc.

That's a post for someone else to write. Sure, I can do it, and I did feel a twinge of satisfaction when I turned left at a light and heard the satisfying "click-click" of my healthy blinker, but I still want my husband around.

During the course of my car repairs, I managed to:

-Break an old lightbulb and waste 15 minutes trying to pry out the broken shards of glass from the unyielding clenches of its holder

-Get shards of the afore-mentioned glass all over the parking lot and my kitchen floor

-Drop a wrench into the bowels of the car's interior and stick my poor pristine hand into the greasy interior to fish it out of an impossibly obscure location--please note the damage

-Lose the light bulbs and waste 5 minutes looking for them

-Get mud on my jeans

-Lose an hour I could have spent in my wind-proof, 75-degree apartment to instead stand in 35 mph wind gusts at 55 degrees

Who are these stupid girls that want to do all this instead of delegating it to their husbands? Of course women need men around! Sure, I got the job done, but I would enjoy my blinker's satisfying "click-click" just fine if Isaac had done it all. And I would have an hour of my day back, spent reading on the couch in climate-controlled bliss.

Feminists are crazy.

Being on the Other Side

I have been quite healthy most of my life. I have never spent the night in the hospital, never broken a bone, and until just last year, never even had an IV started on me (except for new nurses to practice).

I think I'm a good nurse, but deep down sick people have always bewildered me. Why are they so needy? Why are these family members constantly panicking even when grandma is fine? Where do these people get off being so sick?

Well, even without being truly "sick" per se, Isaac and I together have spent a lot of time being patients this last month for various surgeries, tests, and procedures. I have had a month off of work for a weight-lifting restriction. I spent an afternoon on bedrest and wanted to shoot myself. I have woken up loopy and irrational from sedation and been too woozy to walk on my own. I have been dependent on nurses for pain and nausea medicine, for warm blankets and sips of water. I have subjected myself to embarrassing procedures and those "one size fits no one" hospital gowns. I have even experienced the eternal thirst that accompanies a fluid restriction, thinking with new sympathy about all my dialysis patients.

Isaac the Patient

Worst of all, I have been the overly-anxious family member. When Isaac is involved, all semblance of rational thought flees my mind. When he had a fever of 100.0 and some chills? I just knew he was going into septic shock, probably from an overwhelming staph infection, and would be dead by morning. I could see the whole funeral playing out in my mind and thought tearfully about my upcoming life as a widow.

He was fine.

But best of all, every one of our nurses rose to the occasion. They were attentive, compassionate, patient, and just the right amount of motherly. Yes, the doctors were there too--for about 2 seconds--and did their jobs well, but they didn't bring me morphine or give me a hug when I left or feed Isaac homemade cranberry bread.

Through it all, I've found new meaning in my job and new-found compassion for how helpless my patients must feel. Now I've walked in their shoes a little.

"Sinister"

Warning: This blog post is not for the weak at heart. Read on at your own risk!

I have my own evil eye.

I had an eye injury 16 years ago and ever since then my left eye won't constrict as much as the other. So the pupil is forever a little bigger than it should be.

Most people don't notice. But sometimes, when I want to experience that delicious thrill of being just a little scared, I step close to the mirror. All alone in the bathroom, I take a good look at that big pupil, and a wonderful little shudder runs through my spine.

Furthering the weirdness, the medical term for the left eye is "oculus sinister". Sinister! My eye is so aptly named that that creeps me out too.

A few days ago, I had surgery on old Sinister, and my eye was accordingly dilated beyond imagination. For two days I had one blue eye and one very literally black eye.

I have banned myself from the bathroom.

On the plus side, surgery wasn't that bad. Is my hat sexy or what?

They didn't let me keep it.

Talkers

I tend to group the people of this world into two categories: talkers and non-talkers.

These are gross generalizations, but here's the basic break-down. Talkers are the people that would rather be talking than silent. They think out loud with their mouths. Non-talkers are not necessarily shy or backwards, but sometimes forget to say out loud what is going through their brains. They would rather listen than talk.

Here's what I love: so many talkers marry non-talkers! I can think of dozens of couples that are like this, Isaac and Camber included. Yes, guess who's who.

I'll go ahead and tell you that Isaac is a talker and I am a non-talker. In fact, one of Isaac's classmates recently told him, "Isaac, whatever you do in life, it better be something where you talk a lot."

We laughed at that. Because it's true.

I say this not to censure but to commend. Isaac's talkativeness is one of the first things I found attractive about him. The beauty of this arrangement is that it takes the pressure off of me to fill the silence, and Isaac has someone who loves listening to him talk.

The other night we stood chatting in the kitchen, and he began recounting some exploit or other from high school.

"Yes, I remember the story," I said.

"I know, but can I tell it to you again?"

Which he did.

And almost five years after meeting him, I'm still never bored by my talker.

Beverage night...Mormon style

Some people may wonder how we get along without alcohol.

Here's one way.



Stairwell beverage night.

6 people. 6 mugs. Cherry apple cider. Some weird hats, scarves, and pajamas. Some high-brow poetry reading.

No hangover.

My moment of silence

Most of us have times when words fail and silence ensues. There are awkward silences and content silences and angry silences. And Camber silences.

My silences happen when too much goes through my brain for my mouth to convert into coherent English expression.

Like when a patient asks me how long I've been married.

Four years.

Kids?

Not yet.

You guys are so smart to wait to have children until you have more money and have your career established.

Silence.

What I want to say is, actually, you're wrong, we're not waiting at all. This may surprise you, but 20-25% of all couples will have problems at some point in bringing the old stork around to visit. We are one of them. I want to explain about how yes, we've been to the doctors, and no, I'm not exactly interested in hearing that so-and-so adopted and that made them get pregnant right away or that so-and-so just stopped stressing about getting pregnant and then got pregnant, or that I should just be glad to have time to myself for now before I have kids and it ruins my life and my marriage. I want to tell you all about the agony of hoping each month, of knowing that this month it's really going to happen and then learning that it's not. I want you to understand but I don't want you to drown me in sympathy, nor tell me last when someone you know gets pregnant. I want you to tell me that having kids is wonderful, and that it's worth it--all of it. I want to tell you everything so we can understand each other. So you please, please won't think that I'm a selfish person who hates babies.

I think all this in my brain, but by the time it reaches my mouth it's turned into "Ummmm..."

And a little more silence while I scramble to change the subject to painkillers.

The Great Blizzard of 2011

We survived our first Iowa blizzard.

Our Parking Lot

Our Car

Clearing Our Walkway

Moving here, I thought snowstorms like this one were par for the course--I expected a couple giant storms a year. Turns out, this one was kind of a big deal.

Here's the problem: nurses don't get snow days. I thought about bemoaning that fact, but the truth is some great things came of the day:

I woke up to our parking lot deep with snow and the buses cancelled indefinitely. Now, there are a finite number of ways to transport myself from my apartment to the hospital 2.2 miles away. In fact, there are four: drive, bike, bus, or walk. The first three were effectively annihilated by the unreasonably high mounds of snow. I therefore, burdened with the guilt of sick patients and stranded coworkers, was motivated into employing method #4 of getting to work: walking through some rather deep snow. 2.2 miles of it. A blessing: some poor soul had walked most of the path before me, making the going much easier for yours truly. Thanks, whoever you are.

0.2 miles from the hospital, some good samaritans in an SUV gave me a ride the rest of the way. Thanks, mother of a baby in the NICU.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I'd forgotten my shoes. The only footwear I had available to me were Isaac's snow boots, two sizes too big.

Oops.

A coworker lent me her shoes, just my size. Thanks, Becky.

That night, Isaac shoveled the car out to come get me so I didn't have to walk back home. Thanks, dear.

I came home to find our parking lot plowed and all the sidewalks shoveled. Meaning someone else out there also had to work on a snow day. Thanks, shovel man.

I'm positive that I'd rather be a nurse than the shovel man.

My love/hate relationship

Sometimes, I hate work.

It's hard to wake up early and get home late. To never see daylight on those days. To deal with confused old people or people that can't do anything for themselves that also happen to be on isolation. Being on isolation means we gown and glove up before going in the room. To make that person feel like a living biohazard. And also to bring out the color of my eyes. I struggle with the barrage of foul language that assaults my ears, the rude doctors, and that always, always present feeling of having more to do than my merely mortal body can accomplish. It nags at me like a sticker in my sock that I can't find to pull out.

I'll admit, after work one day this week, I confessed to Isaac that I don't think I can do this job anymore. We talked about options.

And then I went back. And I had, yes, a needy old lady on isolation. And in another room, a confused old lady who swore at me and told me to leave. I started dreaming about a long-overdue career change. And then, moments later, she apologized profusely and begged my forgiveness. I gave it. And my other patient said, "I'm so glad you were my nurse today. You made this day so much better." And I took my third patient for a walk in her leopard-print slippers and listened to stories about her grandchildren.

She was adorable.

My career change is back on hold.

Appendix A: Tribute to Freda

For fun, I am going to include the Reader's Digest version of our courtship.

It was summertime, and I had just returned from a study abroad during spring term. I needed somewhere to live for about 8 weeks. So I moved to the apartments where my dear friend and long-time roommate Freda was living.

Short on time to make friends, I hung out with her friends. I joined her dinner-group. And I met Isaac, her running buddy that she talked about constantly. When I asked her about guys that might pose potential interest, Isaac was one of the first mentioned--because they were already good friends.

One weekend I felt bummed because a planned trip to Arizona had fallen through, and so consented to go on a camping trip with, among others, Freda and Isaac. Freda and Isaac talked the whole time, another couple flirted the whole time, and the remaining other boy and I looked awkwardly at each other in silence. Not my favorite camping trip.

The next night, Freda and Isaac talked me into a late-night hike to a nearby summit to watch Fourth of July fireworks. I was a little worried about again being the awkward third wheel. Rather, Isaac and I started talking and kept finding things in common. I had never talked to him before (I thought of him as Freda's friend) but we had a great conversation. That night, as Freda and I had a final, half-asleep conversation before drifting off, she said, "Camber, if you ever want to go for Isaac, you can." Whatever, I thought. He's not my type.

The next week, four of us planned to fly kites together in the evening. One guy bailed, and Freda decided, last-minute, to go to California. That left Isaac and I alone to fly kites. There wasn't any breeze. So we talked instead. And talked. And talked. Until 2 AM. By the time Freda got back, only 4 nights later, we were dating. And the rest, as they say, was history. We married 5 1/2 months later.

How did Freda react? She was true to her word. She stepped aside, expressed sincere happiness for me, and never once even hinted that she was mad at me for stealing away a potential interest. We remain good friends to this day.

After 4 very happy years of marriage, I still give Freda credit every time I tell our story. I am positive I would not have my wonderful husband now if not for our mutual friendship with Freda. And I still marvel that today I have her friendship instead of a grudge.

Thanks, Freda.

--A note to readers: Freda later married a great guy and now has an adorable baby. So maybe her husband should also be thanking me?...

A perfect Cooper Christmas

Shotguns, skeets, and the sexy smell of gun powder.

The only thing that could make it more perfect would be if we were in Arizona and it was a balmy 65 degrees.

Oh wait, we were, and it was.

Merry Christmas!