A Bad Nurse

Last week, I was opening a package of Goldfish (the cracker, not the animal) and got a massive papercut from the foil-backed paper bag that the fish are in. This papercut was not your average papercut. It was so deep and so large that it bled… a lot. Enough that I had to get a piece of paper towel and apply pressure. And then it didn’t stop, it just stopped dripping. At this point, I decided to get a band-aid, only to realize that I have no band-aids in my home. I am a nurse without a basic nursing supply. And that’s not the only basic health care supply that I am lacking. I also noticed that I don’t have any tylenol, motrin, bandages of any kind. If someone got injured and thought, I know, I’ll go visit my nurse friend Brianne, that person would be sadly disappointed that I would only be able to help them if their injury could be fixed with paper towel and a Flintstone vitamin.

After being shamed by my lack of nursing supplies, I decided to stock up and I did it big time. In addition to buying acetaminophen and ibuprofen (that’s right, generic all the way), I purchased the mother of all first aid kit’s. It’s a thing of beauty. It was only $20 and it has everything. Think of all the things that you might need for a small home injury and then add to it these awesome things: finger splints, eye patches, burn cream, and a full size emergency blanket. How cool is that? Now I’m ready for anything and have the tools to fix any problem. I am real nurse again!

Papercut update: This bad boy was so deep that the next day it started bleeding again twice. Once when the soap got it in the shower and once when I was doing the dishes. Take home lesson for the readers-a bag of goldfish is dangerous-be careful!

 

Trees

I love trees. Love them. Could be called obsessed with them if you wanted to call it that. I have trees everywhere in my life.

New shower curtain: trees

artwork over bed: trees

necklace i wear everyday: irish tree of life

favorite quarter: the connecticut quarter with the tree on it

I love love love trees and was taking some pictures in the park recently and thought I’d show you some of the better ones. (As if there could be a bad tree photo!)

I love these kind of trees that look like they are wearing camos and trying to blend in better.

The above photo makes me want to live in this building and look at this tree everyday. And since the building is on Central Park West, I don’t think it would be the worst place to live.

I ask you: what’s prettier in the world than a tree? I don’t think you can come up with an answer to this question because there isn’t anything.

Today’s blog is in response to Maren’s request that I not blog about rape or aggression. So take this time to enjoy this lovely blog with its beautiful photos and think happy thoughts.

 

Violence Against Women

I know, the title makes this sound like a real upper, and I tell you, it surely is. As part of a class assignment on aggression across cultures, I was doing some research on violence against women and was shocked to learn that approx. 1100 women were killed by intimate partners in the US in 2005. This is an average of 3 per day. Three per day! I must say that I was shocked by this number. That’s a lot of women. Some more shocking statistics include:

1. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, which includes crimes that were not reported to the police, 232,960 women in the U.S. were raped or sexually assaulted in 2006. That’s more than 600 women every day.

2. Young women, low-income women and some minorities are disproportionately victims of domestic violence and rape. Women ages 20-24 are at greatest risk of nonfatal domestic violence, and women age 24 and under suffer from the highest rates of rape.

3. The Justice Department estimates that one in five women will experience rape or attempted rape during their college years, and that less than five percent of these rapes will be reported.

4. When we consider race, we see that African-American women face higher rates of domestic violence than white women, and American-Indian women are victimized at a rate more than double that of women of other races.

5. According to the Family Violence Prevention Fund, “growing up in a violent home may be a terrifying and traumatic experience that can affect every aspect of a child’s life, growth and development. . . . children who have been exposed to family violence suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, such as bed-wetting or nightmares, and were at greater risk than their peers of having allergies, asthma, gastrointestinal problems, headaches and flu.” In addition, women who experience physical abuse as children are at a greater risk of victimization as adults, and men have a far greater (more than double) likelihood of perpetrating abuse.

6. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that the cost of domestic violence in 2003 was more than over $8.3 billion. This cost includes medical care, mental health services, and lost productivity.

I know this isn’t exactly a chipper blog post, but I found after reading these numbers that I thought violence against women had decreased and find that I am wrong. In reading about cultural psychology for my class, I think it’s interesting to think about the kind of culture we have in American where so much violence against women occurs. If it was less culturally acceptable across the board, then one would think there would be a lot less of it. In many cultures across the globe and in many smaller pockets of the US, violence against women and the control aggressive men exert over women is seen as a sign of prowess, masculinity and stature in society. Unfortunate for the rest of us who have to live in fear of them.

In case you are wondering where I got my numbers and information, it all came from the National Organization for Women website found here: http://www.now.org/issues/violence/stats.html.

 

 

 

Cultural Psychology

hello friends, below please enjoy this paragraph from my cultural psychology textbook that i found particularly interesting. Although, I am aware that there is a good chance that only Erica will agree. So to the rest of you, you are welcome for expanding your education and I apologize for the boredom.

“One construct that has been shown to be very important in understanding aggression across cultures concerns honor. Honor refers to respect, esteem, or admiration, and some cultures can be characterized as cultures of honor, in which norms place a strong emphasis on status and reputation. In these cultures, insults, threats, and sexual infidelity can especially threaten one’s honor, often resulting in anger, which leads to violence and aggression. Higher rates of violent crimes and other acts in the US South, for instance, have been linked to a ’southern culture of honor’. In one study, for example, participants were purposefully bumped by a research confederate and called an “asshole”. Individuals born in the northern United States were relatively unaffected by the insult; those from the South, however, were more likely to believe that their masculinity was threatened, were more upset, more physiologically an cognitively primed for aggression, and were more likely to actually engage in aggressive behavior. These acts were interpreted as attempts to restore lost honor. Cortisol and testosterone levels were measured, and both were found to be elevated in the Southern sample.”

I found this paragraph on aggression particularly interesting, being from an area of the country that behaves in this southern-aggressive way. I also then began to ponder the fact that a large percentage of the people who like to own guns are also those that belong to this “honor culture” of the south and how disconcerting the idea is that they have elevated testosterone and cortisol levels when they get bumped and insulted by a stranger. Something delightful for us all to ponder…

 

Phonetastrophe!

Tuesday night, I made a pumpkin pie for Zak since he had to miss Canadian Thanksgiving and loves pumpkin pie the most. I decided to take my iphone into the kitchen to listen to some music while I was baking. What happened next is both tragic and funny. I went to pour the pie mixture into the pie crust and some of it poured onto my iphone, slid down the side and into the bottom speakers and area where the charger plugs in. Since then the maximum volume on the phone is about 10% of what it used to be. The volume is so slight that when the phone is right next to me, I only notice it ringing if I look up and see that the screen is lit up. This is not good! And when I told Maren and Zak my sad story, they were both unsympathetic and implied that one shouldn’t bring expensive phones into the kitchen. Rude! Sometimes all a girl is looking for is “sucks to your asmar” and she gets attitude! Moral of the story: pumpkin pie is bad for cell phones.

 

Recent Random Info

1. As much as fifty gallons of maple sap are used to make a single gallon of maple syrup.

2. A cockroach’s favorite food is the glue on the back of stamps.

3. Male monkeys lose the hair on their heads in the same manner human males do.

4. Professional hockey players skate at average speeds of twenty to twenty-five miles per hour.

5. A scallop has a total of thirty-five eyes, all of which are blue.

6. A tea in China called white tea is simply boiled water.

 

 

Where’s Zak?

(Sorry for the few days of blogging absense. I thought I had blogged for a couple of days longer than I actually had and was unhappy to discover that you were all yearning for my ramblings and weren’t getting them.)

Maren and I were shocked to discover the other day that we haven’t seen Zak in the month of October and it’s nearly over. Due to some extra shifts on Zak’s part, we kept missing eachother all month. So, last night we rectified that situation everyone style, with dinner, drinks and game play. When Meghan left and I had to re-stock the game closet, I bought us some unexpected games like Trouble and Chutes and Ladders. Last night we opted for our first game of Trouble in about 2 decades. It was quite the barn burner with this Genow emerging victorious after a heated battle between the rest of everyone. I’m telling you, if you see this game as an option, get it and play it. I promise you’ll have fun.

If you’re wondering why we played this game on my bed it’s because we didn’t feel like sitting on the floor and we still don’t have dining room chairs. Baby steps to adult living, baby steps. In the photo below, I asked Maren and Zak to look at me and smile and this is what I got.

After our rousing game of trouble, we played Jungle Uno which is just a spiced up and more fun version of Uno. I started out dominating and then somehow lost to Maren. I’m still not sure what happened. Although I think she may have pretended to be bad to lull us into a coma and then kicked our asses. This is however, just a theory. We then tried several times to have Zak stretch out his arm and take a group photo before remembering that cameras come with timer features. And aren’t we all glad? For how else would we have gotten this lovely three-man-prom-pose picture? Credit for this photo goes to Meghan who did not take it but discovered that Brianne and Maren together photograph best when in the prom pose.

P.S. Isn’t it a bummer that Zak didn’t get the memo on wearing stripes?

 

Back-up Book

Confession: In addition to carrying around one book with me wherever I go, I ususally carry a second, back-up book. There are a few rules of the back-up book:

1. It can’t be overly dramatic or sad. It needs to be of a genre that can be read in five minute increments without me having to be too focused.

2. It has to be small and light so as to not weigh down my bag.

3. It has to have short chapters so that I can read an entire one in a short amount of time.

4. The characters and story have to be interesting enough for me to remember them while reading another book and since this book doesn’t get read everyday.

I find it particularly helpful if the safety book is a short story book. That way I can read a story or two while waiting for the day nurse to arrive in the morning at work or while on the subway or while waiting to meet someone for an outing. My current back-up book is the O Henry Prize winning stories of 2008. I must say, each story I have read so far has been really really good. What I like about this collection is how different each story is from the one before. The first story about a man and a bird is light and funny and a little sweet. And the next story is about a woman with an infant who was suddenly widowed when her husband was hit by a car. This was decidedly not light or funny. I appreciate the switching of moods and feelings and themes that comes with the stories in this book. It meets all of the requirements of the back-up book and is serving me quite well.

Confession within a confession: I used to hate short story collections. If I picked up a book and saw that it was a short story collection, I’d put it back down. I used to hate getting attached to and interested in the characters of the story only to have their story end and new characters and stories thrown at me. I used to really really resent this. Until Erica made me read Interpreter of Maladies (Pulitzer winning short story collection by Jhumpa Lahira-who wrote The Namesake) and I loved it. Perhaps I had matured enough to get over my short story resentment. Whatever the reason, I now love short story collections. And I love them now for the same reason I hated them then. I like the new people. I like that I just get a snippet of someones story or life and then it ends suddenly and I get to move on. I find that interesting.

Hmm…thinking about this change in literary opinion makes me wonder if I should re-read To Kill a Mockingbird or any of the other books that I hated in the past. Nope, not ready to be that big of a person.

 

Age

The random information fact for today is that “In ancient Rome, women counted their age from the year they were married.”

What?! Who came up with this? I do not like it. Although, in that society, I would be extremely young, never planning to marry. And with each passing year that Maren is married, I could mock her for her old age. Although, I ‘m sure in ancient Rome single women over the age of 22 were probably stoned to death or forced into prostitution or buried alive or some other less than awesome fate.

 

Solo Weekend

Let me tell you about my awesome weekend. Maren was in Canada, so I had the house all to myself for the first time in a very very long time. Needless to say, I was pumped. I could have gone to Canada with Maren since I didn’t work all weekend, but opted to stay home instead. Let me tell you all about the nothing I did this weekend:

1. homework-okay this wan’t enjoyable, but it had to be done and I rocked it. i don’t want to jinx myself, but I’ve now had to 80% in a row on my quizzes. a far cry from the unfortunate 50% of my early classwork.

2. general hospital-that’s right, me, the big tv and my soap-this is living.

3. sports-i watched some Yankee games and lots of football. additionally, michigan won, ou lost and ohio state lost. what a great weekend for sport!

4. reading-i read a magazine and made a lot of progress in my current pulitzer winner which is really good and I can’t wait to finish and tell you about it.

5. cleaning-i know this may not sound like fun, but I actually like a nice cleaning. I cleaned my room, did my laundry, got a new rug for the kitchen, cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom. it was surprisingly awesome!

6. cat war-yes, the cat war continued. she wasn’t allowed in my room and she was fed sparingly to avoid her frequent vomiting. at one point i thought we might be able to call a truce but she clawed me badly enough to draw blood-on my abdomen!

7. turtle bath-i also changed the water in the turtle’s tank which hasn’t been done in a long time

8. pumpkin latte-i don’t like starbucks actual coffee, but they make a great chai tea which i drink reguarly and they make great flavored drinks for holidays and this was my first pumpkin latte of the pumpkin season. it was excellent.

9. no call zone-this weekend I screened calls, didn’t make any calls and didn’t answer any e-mails. aside from the blog, I shut down all communication with the outside world and found the silence spectacular.

See, I did pretty much nothing (on purpose) and loved every minute of my solo weekend. I hope you all had an equally great weekend.