Memories of Anna Maria

Images of Anna Maria!!

A pelican, these birds fascinated me with their kamikazi dives into the ocean and their voracious appetite for fish! So much so that one hooked itself on Aaron's fishing rod in pursuit of take-out dinner!
Sunrise on the island, amazing that i was up this early!

The little girls found a new friend and the neighbour dog found his niche, with an admiring fan club all set to smother him with love and feed him "cause he's hungry, mom!"Terns on the beach, looking a wee bit wind-blown, much as we did at the end of the day, with sand in every possible nook and crevice.

Apparently, there are some problems on the island! Heehee!

And some rowdy tourists got locked up in jail!

Oh, i am so itchy. Why am i so itchy? Perhaps i've got fleas, or maybe some sort of contagious skin disease... nope, i'm peeling. Yep, read it and weep. Peeling. From a sunburn. In March! I love it! Who gets a sunburn in March? I'll tell you. Someone who just returned from much warmer climes and has enjoyed an early kiss of the sun's burning rays. Albeit a very funny looking sunburn. Apparently i am incapable of applying sunscreen consistently and am now consequently left with big blotchy pieces of skin on my legs, alternating red and white. Perhaps i could hire myself out as a human barber pole, if i spin on the spot quick enough, and blur the colours, no one would know the difference, forgetting about the arms, legs and hair that might give me away that i am not a barber pole, but in fact a sunburned human girl.

In all seriousness, i truly enjoyed my time away. It was short and sweet. I left on Monday afternoon with Dad dropping me off in Buffalo and via Atlanta, arriving in sunny Sarasota... okay, maybe not sunny since it was about 10:30 at night but warm at least. Melissa and Fran picked me up at the airport and we drove the half hour drive to Anna Maria Island, which is where both of their families had rented vacation homes.

I spent three full days with Jeff, Melissa and their family, soaking up the sun, walking on the pier, unsuccessfully evenly tanning myself, unsuccessfully angling for fish (although Aaron did catch a pelican! That was pretty monumentous in our estimation, but apparently quite common on that pier, since there were posted instructions on how to retrieve a hook from a bird's mouth!), playing games, riling children up right before bedtime with "doctor, doctor, we're all tangled up" and "spoons" which turned out to be far too violent and had to be stopped. Some of my most vivid memories include:

- waking up early in the morning to go shell seeking on the beach

- feeling the warm, warm sun on my pale, cold skin and tasting the salty sea water on my lips

- playing in the ocean waves with the kids and feeling like a big kid myself

- not having my watch on

- doing some cross-border shopping with a grand total of 17 people! I'm sure the store owners were nearly having coronaries when they saw the mass invasion and later stared in disbelief at the chaos left behind in their dressing rooms!! Head count, anyone??

- a very rough landing in Newark on the way home; due to high winds playing havoc with the airplane, the pilots had a tough job to land that plane safely and received a warm round of applause from the passengers when they finally managed to wrestle the plane to the ground! The lady beside me nearly passed out and i wasn't too sure about the whole situation either! Aah, the joys of air travel.

- chatting with a very jet-lagged and frustrated Scottish fellow, with flaming red hair, who was having much difficulty with the multiple delays imposed on our travel schedule by the windiness of the day. I did my utmost to calm him down and help distract him from our woes and uncertainties and it sure helped pass the time!- shivering away in my bed at night due to my sunburn... feeling i would possibly never get warm again in my life and wondering if it was possible to die from shivering... also worrying whether it was possible to bite your tongue in two due to your jaw chattering so badly!

Some strange local wildlife was spotted!!!

Yet another unsuccessful fishing expedition, complete with about 9 children, all wanting to have a turn with a total of 3 fishing rods!! Mass chaos!

Leaving on a Jet Plane... again

Well... i'm finally off into the wild blue yonder.... yep, in only 11 hours, i will be basking in the Floridian warm and sunshine... well, okay, not really sunshine since it will be night time but you get my drift... it will be significantly warmer there than it is here... not that i mind at all the snow and cold - i don't really at all - but i am excited to have a few days away with friends, good friends in a different place, enjoying ocean breezes and warm water - azure blue water and white sand... yep, doesn't sound too hard to take. I am joining the mass of Canadians already hunkered down and hiding away in that most southern part of our American neighbour. At one point last week, before the big storm hit, i was certain that North America was likely to tip over to the south due to the massive amount of people influxing that state of warm bliss, Florida. I will confess it is not one of my "top ten" destinations, somewhere i've always, always wanted to be, i prefer some tropical location that is not quite as popular or doesn't have quite the reputation to be so "Canadian" in flavour - seeing as i heard rumors of people from our church having a church picnic down there, that is just a small token of how many people are down there! But i am happy to be going with Jeff and Melissa and spending time with them and their family, which i always, always enjoy! So i'll see you in a few days with a tan and feeling more relaxed!!

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Morning

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

by Robert Frost

Just because...

I was going to post something grand and glorious, an epic saga, an rhyming poem, a dazzling display of my intellect... however... i'm completely blank at the moment, like a little water bucket that has been drained of it's last drops and is parched and dry. My head feels tired. My body is cold... and i am mellow. Mellow is good mind you... but if i get too much more mellow then i will likely fall off my chair, hit my head, develop a concussion, need to be woken every hour to see if i'm still aware of who i am (even though i'm sometimes not aware of that at the best of times) and develop severe amnesia to the point where i am wandering the streets of Barcelona with no one to find me or save me. Will you come and rescue me from that fate? This is too weird... i think i'll betake my poor brain with me to bed... where i can dream of all the crazy storms to come.

RN musings

Hi there..

It's 9:04 pm and i am sitting on my couch, enjoying the fire, and eating a lovely, yummy lavash cracker to settle down my gnawing stomach and deciding to update the world on my state of mind and the run-down of my weekend... hence, who knows how long this posty thing will turn out to be? A whole lot of ramblings and thoughts jammed together onto one cyber page.

I just finished three day shifts... as a part timer, i usually don't do stints like that, i prefer the "two in a row" dealy but somehow got suckered and guilted into picking up today's shift as the ward was short on the weekend... so there i went. Thankfully, i had a lovely crew of patients, one of whom even gave me a hug before i left tonight and thanked me for making her weekend so enjoyable. Nice to be able to help someone out during a tough time in their lives.

But the weekend was full to bursting... saturday i worked a day shift - and it was busy but okay, a typical weekend day, a little more mellow than the weekdays and i made it out on time. I went to a birthday party in Beamsville for a friend of mine who turned 8. Well, okay, he was born February 29th so he's actually much older than that but technically, he's 8. I should have thought of that when i made up his card, but alas, my creativity had flown out of the window. Otherwise i would have bought him a kiddie card which would have been great funness.

An aside, my favorite little song ditty thing at the moment is "good things growoh in Ontario!!" I love the little off key way the guy has of singing it and the quirkiness of it... so i've been driving everyone nuts at work with my constant under my breath whisperings and renditions of that song. Cuteness!

So, the arrival time back to the homestead on Saturday eve was late... too late, much too late for anyone to remain sane and work a full day shift the next day... and stress about getting a mission trip organized and why wasn't there any drivers and why wasn't this and that organized yet and i only had myself to blame since i have the most horrible habit of procrastination and disorganization. And why i can't stick to my diet and seem to cheat all the time and then say "oh well, there's always tomorrow" instead of right then and there pulling up myself by the bootstrings and deciding to fight the urges to snack and indulge. Grrrrrr!!! There are days that i could cheerfully turf myself out the window, though that might be a little difficult since we live in a basement and it is difficult enough to get out of the window without turfing myself through it. So, okay, you get the meaning...

Back to the story, so bedtime was somewhere around the 1:00 am mark, far too short a night when the alarm is booked to ring at the grand and glorious hour of 5:21 am (craftily planned to allow one snooze session to fool my sleep deprived body into thinking it was receiving a wonderful treat of 9 extra minutes of snooze time!). I hauled my sorry body out of bed and back to the grindstone of work. The day again, wasn't too bad, until my patients all decided to have upset stomachs just before i was to leave at 7pm... Why do these things always happen at the end of a shift? Like admissions rolling up at 7:02 or patients asking for silly things like "can you move my curtain?" at 6:54. Nope, bad timing to be sure, to be sure. Wow, this is getting very random, perhaps i should stop, but then i would leave you, my faithful reader, in a quivering heap of humanity on the floor as the suspense kills you to find out what the rest of my weekend held.

Okay, well, okay, work was okay, except for the last-minute pain brigade... once i had my fair share of narcotics dispensed, i headed off to a meeting for the trip i'm helping organize... which was okay, but we seemed to miss a few team members which caused some frustrations and lack of efficiency. However, we will deal with that too...

I hit my wall big time at around 9pm and couldn't function anymore... so i betook myself to my abode, ranted for a little while to poor Carina about life and work and every other such problem that i could possibly think of at the moment and again betook myself to my little bed to rest my weary bones and to last for about 2.544 seconds reading my book before i fell asleep. I seem no longer to be able to stay up til all hours watching tv or reading books... much to my elderly frustration!

Today, my day shift was good, felt like a weekend day rather than a weekday which is always a good thing.

Anyhow, i'm done my rambles for now... perhaps again sometime we'll meet, don't know where, don't know when, but i know we'll meet again some sunny day!