Chrissy's Blog

Our darling Chaucer has been having an issue with strange little warts. We ignored it until this weekend when he started licking one ferociously. He went in to the vet today to have 11 growths removed. He has to wear the cone for two weeks, and he has the saddest face I have ever seen. All he wants is to be petted, but he is covered with long jagged stitches where the growths were removed. Poor baby!

The Power of Plants.

My wonderful, smart, funny, charming, and always surprising Grandpa. One of the best parts about living in Reno for the last year was that I got to spend a lot more time with him. He has dementia. Some days are definitely better than others. Somehow though, one good day with him makes all the other bad days okay. My parents and I went to his retirement community to have lunch with him and his girlfriend today. He is quiet nowadays, usually only adding an old story or two, and it usually takes prompting from my mother. As we were getting up to leave, I asked him if I could take a picture of him for my Project 365. He lit up, as you can see, and got himself all posed. In a way, I think he was honored. Whenever I spend time with him I always feel guilty that I don’t do it more and sometimes feel a little selfish that I’d rather go out with my friends than sit and have dinner with him. I love him, and I wish I had the energy to show it to him more.

ANGIE! She is like a sister to me. Cliche I know, but there is no other way to put it. I think of her as family. Sometimes we won’t have the time to talk or hang out, but whenever I need someone to talk to, I know she is there, and I know that nothing I say could ever shock her. She always has my back, and I will always have hers. She is also one of the most unique people I have ever met in the sense that she will never beat around the bush or sugarcoat things for you. Something I wholeheartedly adore and need in my life. She is also one of the most successful people I know at my age. She inspires me to work harder and to continually work on improving myself, my life, and the world around me.

On Saturday we walked around downtown for a while, just talking. I asked her if I could take her picture for the project, since she was the most exciting part of my day. “Chrissy, is this going to be on the internet?”

She let me take her lovely picture though by a fountain close to the river.

A last minute photo before I went to bed. My mother had taken me to get a manicure two days prior, and this is the disappointing result. I don’t know why I can’t have nice nails. I just can’t. They were so pretty and french, and this just happened. It all chipped off.  How on Earth to women keep their fingernails from chipping and breaking. After all, don’t you need your hands to do things and don’t nails get broken in the process? Is it just me?

I bought this little guy in Prague at a puppet shop. The woman who ran the store did not speak any English. When she saw I was interested in this fellow, she showed me how to move him and made a noise, something like “Teek Teek Teek Teek.” SOLD. He hung on my mirror until this morning when I put him in a box destined for New York. He’s been all over the world and still doesn’t have a name.

Patients are constantly complaining to me how the hospital is too labyrinthine and that they can hardly find their way around. My opinion is that is just how hospitals are. They can’t be as simple as a shopping mall. The first floor is fairly easy to navigate, and the hospital only has three towers. However, the ground floor is chaos. There are no signs, hallways zigzag up down sideways. Nothing makes sense in the underbelly of the beast.

I had to take a software training class on the ground floor, and I left my house ten minutes early anticipating not being able to find the classroom. I wandered around trying to remember how to get there. I had taken a training class back in September. At some point, the linoleum floors end and it becomes muggy and dark as you enter the land of primeval nurses. This cave art, in my advanced historical opinion, shows a nurse getting ready to attack a patient. Notice the way she idly creeps toward the otherwise oblivious and happy individual. Needle aloft with a readiness to wipe that lolly-gagging-tongue-stupid-happy look off that patient’s face.

I came home from work and grabbed my mail off of the kitchen counter and headed up to my room to get ready to leave again. I tossed the mail onto my bed, but as I grabbed my purse to go, I found the natural juxtaposition of two items of mail entertaining.

Sunday was an unproductive day, and I did not feel well to say the least. The thing that always makes me feel a thousand times better, though, is a Del Taco burrito. I have been ordering the Veggie Works for seven years now, and it never fails to be perfect. I paired it with Disc 2 of Season 3 of “Mad Men,” and it became the perfect cure to a rough day.