Well, Here’s Something June 9, 2009

Despite the dearth of posts over here I’m guest posting elsewhere today.

That’s right, I am the featured poster over at Mormon Women.

I was going to leave it at that because I  know that a lot of my readers also read Cheryl and Janelle so they know all about the Mormon Women site.  But it occurs to me that some of you actually don’t read those gals (although, why that would be I have no idea) so you might not know about it and you might be interested (I’m talking to you, Lisa (although you do read Annette so you may know about it after all and…) whatever).

Anyway, Mormon Women is a website put together by an amazing group of women who (oddly enough) all happen to be Mormon.  The point of the whole thing is to get the word out that we’re not all freaks and weirdos and crazies.  That there are a lot of LDS women out there who live their religion and love their religion and who are perfectly content.  Unfortunately contentment breeds complacency so a lot of us don’t really think about writing about the things that we’re perfectly happy about. (I know that for me a post is hardly a post if I haven’t gotten in at least one good complaint.) But that needs to change.  You need to write about your experiences, your thoughts, etc, and submit them over there.

The post of mine that’s up there today is actually a re-post, my faithful readers will recognize it from here a few months ago, but I have another original post that’s mostly formed in my head that I’ll be submitting soon so you’ll need to hang out over there if you want to see it.  And while you’re over there you can comment, and even submit something of your own.  We’ve been asked to take our religious discussions on-line, let’s make sure that the only folks doing so aren’t those with an ax to grind.

Incidentally Mormon May 22, 2009

I just finished reading a book called Zippedby Laura and Tom McNeal, it was pretty good, and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for fairly lightweight teen fiction, but that’s not the point.  (If that were all it was, I wouldn’t bother mentioning it.)  The reason that I bring it up is that there’s a Mormon character in the book.  It’s not LDS fiction, it’s set in New England somewhere (I imagine that it said specifically but it wasn’t crucial enough for me to retain) not Utah, and it’s just this one girl and her mother that are Mormon. 

And as soon it was mentioned that she was Mormon I was on alert.

Was this going to be anti?  Was she going to leave the church and realize that she had been brainwashed? (I have other objections to the whole “brainwashed” designation but that’s something for another post.)  Was she going to be some sort of wooden characeture rather than a fleshed out person?  Or some kind of holier than thou, miss priss?

And she was none of those things.  She was a real girl who liked and apparently believed in her religion.  She was slightly conflicted but she was a teenaged girl, as teenagers weren’t we all at least slightly conflicted?(Aren’t we still?)  She had a crush on a missionary, he had a crush on her, they chatted, even acknowledged the crush, she made him a plate of cookies, they even were as daring as to hug once.  It’s not the kind of behavior that is recommended in the mission handbook but it’s not going to get anyone ex-communicated either.  They wouldn’t even send him home for that.  (Transferred sure, but not sent home.)  And they didn’t.

The girl wasn’t the main character of the book, she was the girl that the main character liked.  So even the thing with the missionary was really just to add a little conflict.  End of story.  She didn’t leave the church, she didn’t even have a big crisis of faith.  She was just a girl.

I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve run into that in fiction, and the more I think about that the weirder it is.  I mean, there’s a lot of us, we’re all over the place.  You expect that in Utah of course.  I can’t imagine that anyone would write a book set in Utah in which there were not Mormon characters (but then I’ ve never read a book set in Utah that wasn’t Mormon fiction) but it’s not like there are only Mormons in Utah.  I grew up in Virginia.  I was one of maybe 20 Mormons in my high school, not an overwhelming majority by any stretch but I think it’s safe to say that everyone in the school knew a Mormon.  Probably most of the kids in the school would have counted at least one of us Mormons as a friend.  We were characters in their lives who just happened to be Mormon, not necessarily good, not necessarily bad.  We may have been having big religious crises but for the most part probably not, we were just going about our lives.

I don’t see that in the books that I read.

It turns out that at least one of the authors is probably Mormon.  She graduated from BYU anyway, I haven’t looked up her church records or anything so I’m just extrapolating here but it seems a reasonable assumption.  It’s harder to tell but my gut feeling is that her husband, the other author, is not.  (The girl’s father is not Mormon, and … I don’t know something about it just makes me think that that part is somewhat autobiographical.) But I digress.

The point is that it’s a little sad to me that as soon as I run across a character who is Mormon, I’m immediately afraid that somehow the book is going to say something negative about the church.  I was surprised and, I have to say, delighted, to read a book with a character who was just incidentally Mormon.

Tell Me What You See February 13, 2009

My kids have been sick all week.  I’ve had two of them puking and the other two have… had trouble at the other end.  But when I got up this morning I felt just fine.  I went to work, had breakfast, did my thing.  All was fine.

Unbeknownst to me, at about 8:00 this morning Katie* called in sick.  She was supposed to work form 11:00 am to 11:00 pm.

At about 9:45 this morning I was still ok.  And at 10:00 I thought I was going to puke.  I didn’t, but it was a close thing.

At 10:30ish I let the charge nurse, Jason, know that I wasn’t feeling well in the hopes that he could find something for me to do that I could do sitting down.  He couldn’t so I kept working.  I was sitting whenever possible and I was moving at about half speed.  But I was still moving so that was ok.  But I was feeling progressively worse.

At 2:00 I got my lunch.  I went and curled up in a chair and slept through the whole thing.

When I woke up and I headed back to the room I had been in the charge nurse, Jason, told me that he knew I wasn’t feeling well and that he was doing all that he could to get me out and hopefully send me home but I’d need to stay for a little while longer.  I thanked him for his efforts, went back to my room and finished up the case we were doing, at which point there wasn’t anything else for me to do immediately.  But I still couldn’t leave.

A little background:  The operating room is staffed 24/7 but the majority of the staff only work from 7am-5pm.  There are usually 6 or 7 techs and 6 or 7 nurses who stay until 7pm and then from 7pm – 11pm there are only two teams and after 11, only one.  In the event that there are more cases going on than we have staff for, beginning at 5:00pm there is someone on call.  In fact there are four people on call.  Any one of them can be called depending on the kind of cases going on but if they’re just “general” OR cases the call schedule goes like this: 1. general call (first call)  2. Liver call (second call) 3. Neuro call 4. Cardio-vascular (CV) call.

Today I was one of the 6 or 7 who was supposed to stay until 7pm so even though I didn’t have to be in a room at 3:00 I had to stick around because the way the day was going they were going to need me to be there at 5:00.  And it was only because Jason, the charge nurse, is a super nice guy and took pity on me that I didn’t have to go in a room at 3:00.  So I sat at the front desk hoping that things would work out so that I wouldn’ have to be there at 5:00 and getting progressively sicker, until about 4:00 when I hit the junkie, I’m so sick I can’t even stand to be in my own skin phase, when it became clear that I was not going to be going anywhere but to an OR at 5:00.  Oh and I was not going to be going anywhere at 7:00 either.

Remember how Katie called in sick?  Well, they couldn’t get anyone to cover her shift which means that the person on call has to cover it.  Pam was the girl on call.   But if Pam’s covering the shift who’s covering her call? Remember our list up there?  It’s liver call.  I was on liver call.  And there were going to be a lot of rooms still going at 7:00.

Realizing that I was stuck my first impulse was to see if I could get someone to cover my call.  I made one call and during the course of that call was reminded that everyone had already been called when they were trying to get the 11-11 shift covered.  I was not going to be successful.  So I went to plan B.  At 4:00, with an hour to go before I was going to have to scrub in I went and found one of my doctor friends and told him of my plight and he administered drugs. (Sometimes working in a hospital is fantastic.)  He gave me some Zofran (pretty heavy duty stuff) for the nausea and and IV to rehydrate me and take away the junkie twitchy feeling.  At that point I looked like I was going to be there until about 9:00 and the doctor assured me that I would be feeling fine soon and that the effects would last at least that long.

So I slept sat for an hour in a quiet room with the magical elixir dripping into my arm and at the end of the hour did I feel better?  NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT.  I still felt absolutely awful.  But there was nothing for it, I pulled out the IV, scrubbed my hands and went to work.  Very, slow quite ineffective work but work just the same.  As I finished the first case the doctor I was working with, who’s also a good friend of mine, commented on how bad I looked (I looked bad enough that that kind of comment was completely acceptable).  He even went and gave Jason a hard time, telling him to get me out of the hospital.

A little more background: I DO NOT TRY TO GO HOME SICK.  EVER. I do not complain about being sick at work.  I have been through two entire pregnancies since I got my current job and I didn’t make a peep.  Not one.  I worked straight through from conception to delivery twice and missed maybe maybe a total of 3 days.  Does that give you a little better concept of how I was feeling?  I also hate HATE hate to inconvenience people.  I will go a long long way out of my way to avoid getting in yours.  I regularly stay at work late so that they won’t have to call the call team in because I know that that is inconvenient.  I just really don’t want to be a bother.

Jason wanted to get me out, the problem was that he already had General call, Liver call and Neuro call there along with one or two people who weren’t on call but had agreed to stay and help out.  There were 5 rooms going.

Finally, after getting a hard time from my doctor, and there may have been some tears on my part (not directed at Jason, he was doing his best and really I felt bad for causing him more problems) because I just felt so awful, he called Richard who was the tech on call for CV.  As soon as they told that he was on his way I felt better, a lot better.  Not, “I’m going to hit the gym on my way home from work” better not even “I think I might eat again this week” better but definitely”if I had only felt this bad all along they wouldn’t have had to call anyone in for me” better.  I even felt a little guilty that Richard was coming in.  Not quite guilty enough to call him back (he was already on his way after all) but a little bit.

Unfortunately Richard is a little bit of a prima-donna and he was not happy about being called in to let me go home just because I wasn’t feeling well.  In fact, as soon as he got to the OR he was working on finding a way to not have to get me out, trying to shift people around, shake things up, and just generally work it out so that he wouldn’t have to work.  For ten minutes he did this.

And then all of a sudden they called out of room nine.  The case they were doing, the easiest, teensiest, nothingest case going in the whole OR had gone badly, really badly, this complication has never ever happened before kind of badly, and they needed to open the patient’s chest immediately.

That’s what CV does.  And only CV does it.

Richard wasted no time, he ran back to room nine and immediately started grabbing supplies and setting up for the case that they were now going to have to do.  And there wasn’t one other person in the OR who would have had any idea of what to do.

If I had felt any better, even the slightest bit better, I would not have cried and I would not have looked so awful that my doctor friends were offering to write me notes and Richard would not have been there.  If I had not felt as awful as I did, despite the drugs, rest and fluid that I had gotten, Richard wouldn’t have been there.  If I had found someone to cover my call or if they had found someone to cover the 11-11 shift, Richard wouldn’t have been there.

My religion teaches a lot about free will.  And I absolutely believe it, no one can make me do anything.  Including God.

But I wonder if sometimes He goes out of His way, maybe a long way out of His way, to make sure things turn out they way he wants them to.

Or maybe it was a coincidence.

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* All names have been changed.

Ayudame Por Favor February 4, 2009

Hey, I need some info about church courts.  It’s for a book I’m writing, nothing to worry about.  Anyway, if you know anything about how this stuff works and would be willing to help a girl out let me know in the comments or you can email me a h.alisonwonderland@gmail.com

Thanks for your support.

And for you who are selfish and unwilling to help me in my time of need can’t help me I’ll leave you with the annoying things I heard on the radio this morning in no particular order.

Commercials.

1. Announcer: Are you drowning in debt?  Are you unable to make the payments on your house? your car? or your credit cards? It’s not your fault!

Me: Um, yes, YES IT IS!

(No offence intended to those in debt.  Despite multiple warnings and exhortations to the contrary I am in debt myself (Although I  am perfectly able to make the payments.  So far.)  but I am also fully aware that it is MY OWN DARN FAULT!!!!)

2. Announcer: The average person gained 15 lbs over the holidays.

Me: 15 lbs?  No stinkin’ way.  The average person who stopped by your weight loss center?  Sure.  But there is now way that the average person went up 3 dress sizes over the course of November and December.  And that ’s just the average.  I only gaind 2 or 3 if any ( I don’t own a scale and if I did I wouldn’t use it) so to make up for me there’s someone out there who gained 28?  Nope.  Flat out, not true.

3. Announcer: ARE YOU DRIVING A CAR YOU DON’T LOVE?  ARE THE PAYMENTS HIGHER THAN YOU’D LIKE?  HERE AT PICK YOUR USED CAR DEALERSHIP WE CAN GET YOU INTO THE CAR OF YOUR DREAMS REGARDLESS OF YOU CREDIT HISTORY!

Me: I get that you’re just trying to make a living here, and I can respect that.  And while I may not like your methods or the fact that you prey on those who are perpetually irrespnsible with their money (see above note about my debt), I can get past that too.  But really WILL YOU JUST STOP YELLING AT ME?!!!

More Virtual Randomosity February 2, 2009

I’m thinking about pinching the Infantile Delinquent this morning just to see if he could possibly whine any more.  I’d be surprised.

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A conversation with the neighbor kid:

Neighbor Kid: “I didn’t ever went there.”

The Pea: “You didn’t ever go there.”

The Princess: “You need to learn your grammar.”

Probably both rude things to say but I still couldn’t have been prouder.

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Remember this post?  Oh and this one?  About how the elementary school is teaching my kids to buy on credit.

Well, I have this friend who we’ll call Keidi (hi Heidi) who got a bill from her daughter’s private school the other day.  For $181.00.  A HUNDRED AND EIGHTY ONE DOLLARS!!!!!!!!  It seems that Keidi’s six year old has chosen to not eat the lunch lovinly provided by her mother every day, all year.  And the school didn’t bother to let Keidi know until now.

The $1.40 that I owe periodically for my kids is one thing but there’s no way I would pay $200 that my child’s elementary school let my six year old charge.  NO WAY!!!!

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I met Cheryl and Annette the other day.

I invited them over for book club.  We read one of Annette’s books and she was our featured guest (and I wanted to meet Cheryl so I used that as an excuse) both ladies were absolutely delightful.

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One of my neighbors had a yard sale yesterday and I saw, as I drove home from church, that they had a big old table for sale.  I really want that table (since I’ve ruined my own) but I made the better choice and didn’t shop on the Sabbath.  All I’m saying is that I expect some blessings for that (like maybe them still having the table.  And the dressers they had out there. For really cheap.)

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Happy Monday Everyone!

A Sabbath Post January 11, 2009

I was in Sacrament meeting (the Mormon version of mass) last Sunday.  I had gone to my brother’s ward (congregation) because he was blessing his son. (Sort of like a Christening but without the baptism.  Or the godparents.  Or the-  actually, all wacky Mormon terms are described better here so if you’re the one non-Mormon who reads this blog, I’m delighted that you’re here, and you see something you don’t understand, try that.)

So the blessing was over and we had sung the Sacrament hymn and the priest up front starts saying the Sacrament prayer. He says the first line and then you hear this other voice, it’s sort of a disorganized sound, high and then unaccountably low, kind of like that of a pubescent boy but to the Nth degree.  The voice repeats the last word or two of what the priest said.  Then the priest says the next line and the voice again repeats most of the syllables, some recognizable as the words we just heard, some not.  And the prayer continues that way, the whole way through.

After we all said amen I looked up at the table where the Sacrament had been prepared and blessed and I see a very large, obviously mentally challenged individual stand up.  And next to him I see my oldest nephew, the priest who had helped him through the prayer.

And I thought I was as proud as I could be.

And then they started passing the Sacrament and I saw my next nephew walking around, not passing but helping another very large, obviously mentally challenged man pass the sacrament.

And there was another man doing the same for another not as large but just as obviously mentally challenged boy.

The deacons in this ward were not the most polished I’ve seen.  They were not all wearing white shirts and they were not all tucked in, but I learned more in those few minutes about loving and sharing the blessings of the gospel than I have in a long time.

Do They Teach This Stuff in the Discussions? October 30, 2008

I hosted book club at my house tonight at 7:30.  A few months ago some evil kind, well meaning sister who hosted book club made the mistake very kind gesture of serving refreshments at book club  because well, we’re Mormon and we can’t meet without refreshments (I’m pretty sure that’s in the Book of Mormon somewhere) and it’s best if its a baked good of some kind.  And because we’re Mormon women once one sister served refreshments now we all have to serve refreshments.  I was not going to serve refreshments.  It’s book club dangit!  We’re here to talk about books, we don’t need baked goods!

It’s not that I don’t want to serve a refreshment, it’s not even that I don’t like to bake.  Most of my problem was that I had no time.  I worked the last two nights and Sean was home with me this afternoon and we had sheetrock that desperately needed hanging, i had no time to prepare something.  But, I decided, I’d put out a bowl of that Halloween candy I bought, since I bought the good stuff and no one’s going to be here tomorrow night anyway.

Ok, that’s the plan, no real refreshments, but a bowl of Halloween candy, that’ll look ok right?  And I’m leaving the dishes that are in the sink, i do not have time to wash them.  What are the odds someone will be in the kitchen anyway?  Zero.

Ok so, Halloween candy for refreshments and dirty dishes in the sink.

It’ll be fine,  I can totally have women from my ward ove to my house and not serve them a baked good.  I can have multiple women form the ward in my house and have dirty dishes in the sink.  I’ll be fine.

At six o’clock I broke down and pulled out my recipe book and made cookies.  And then I did the dishes.

Whose Idea Was This Anyway? September 24, 2008

In my ward I’m the Relief Society, Home Family and Personal Enrichment committee chair person.  (For those of you who aren’t LDS, and even for some who are, that means I’m in charge of activities for the women.  I plan the quilting bees and the book club.)  Except that there is no committee.  (That’s the second problem.)  There’s just me.  (That’s the first.)

I’ve been trying to put together a meal exchange (each woman makes one main dish for each other woman and then we all exchange, So I come in with 4 lasagnas and leave with a pot pie and a chicken casserole and a enchilada and a pot roast [no, no one makes pot roast]).  Two weeks ago I promised the ladies that I would put the groups together and  contact them about times etc… by the next Sunday.  But I forgot to get the sign-up sheet.  The next Sunday was regional conference so we didn’t have regular church so I didn’t get the sign-up sheet.

So on Sunday I made this big announcement about how I was so sorry I was such a slacker and I was going to put the groups together this week and we were going to exchange on the first.  And I almost forgot to get the sign up sheet.  But I didn’t.  I got it.  And I took it right out of the book.  And I took it home.

And I lost it.

It gets better.

This is the second time I’ve lost a Relief Society sign-up.

Why do I have this job again?

In an Effort Not To Be a Hypocrite September 21, 2008

I had to got to speak in church today.

Given the content of the talk that I gave, and since I typed it all out anyway, I’ve felt compelled to post it here.

Mosiah 18:9 Exhorts those who are anxious to come into the fold of God to be “willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as a witness of God at all times and in all things and in all places that ye may be in even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God… that ye may have eternal life.” For any of us that have been through young womens’ the phrase that jumps out at us is of course, “stand as a witness of God at all times and in all things and in all places.”  I notice it every time but I don’t think about what it means nearly often enough.

I think often our mental picture of standing as a witness looks a lot like the story of Joseph F Smith.  Where we’re willing, proud even, to admit to someone who’s threatened to kill all Mormons that they come across, that we are in fact Mormon.  I think often we hear that story and tell ourselves that faced with that choice we would make the same decision. Of course, it’s quite easy to tell ourselves that when the chance that we will ever have to follow through is very nearly nonexistent.

And I can’t help but wonder how excited we would be to reenact that story if the villain had followed through on his threat.

I also think that that’s not really what’s being asked of us in that scripture.  Indeed in most scriptures referring to witnessing we are being asked not to be witnesses of the church but to witnesses of God.  Now certainly, we ought to be witnesses for the church as well.  And we need to be aware of the fact that much of what we do, will or at least may, be viewed in the context of the church.

But in today’s world where the terms “Jesus Freak” and “religious nut” are bandied about and where those who speak publicly of their faith or of the Lord are looked at with skepticism and derision, it is becoming increasingly important that we be willing to witness of the Lord.  Too often I think we’re like the Zoramites who attend church on Sunday and then they “returned to their homes, never speaking of their God again until they had assembled themselves together again to the holy stand to offer up their thanks after their manner.  (Alma 31:23).  We need to speak of the Lord in our daily lives, not just to the Lord through prayer, and not just of the church.

I grew up in Virginia, not far from Washington DC and while I was not the only Mormon in my high school, I was in the minority.  I found it easy through those often difficult years to explain why I didn’t drink or smoke or use drugs by throwing out the phrase “it’s against my religion.”

That, of course, was true but that was not the full explanation.  I didn’t do those things because I didn’t believe that the Lord wanted me to do them.

Living here I think that distinction becomes even more relevant.  Utah is not quite populated entirely by Mormons but “it’s against my religion” doesn’t really carry the same weight when the person you’re talking to is also a member.  I think it’s important for us to remember, and to point out, that we make the decisions that we do not because the church forbids it but because the Lord forbids it.

As I was thinking about this talk I happened to mention to a friend of mine that I was speaking in sacrament meeting on standing as a witness and I asked her if she had any thoughts.

Actually, I asked her if she would write my talk for me.

She didn’t.

But she did mention an email correspondence that she’s been involved in with an old friend from high school who is now a pastor at a non-denominational church.   He began asking her questions about things like the nature of the godhead and revelation and the purpose of life.  He even asked for a copy of the B of M.  She sent him one with her testimony inside.  Not because she thought that that would somehow convert him, she doesn’t think he will ever convert.  She told me that she did it because she “felt that (she) had a responsibility to share (her) beliefs”, regardless of the ultimate outcome.

So often we talk about sharing our testimonies with non members as a missionary tool, and it is one, certainly, but we ought to share our testimonies, our belief in the Savior and in his father, our witnesses, not with an eye to conversion to the church but because we have a responsibility to talk about Him.  To talk about what we believe rather than which church we attend.

I had an experience several years ago while on a walk in the neighborhood we lived in at the time.  I passed a church of another denomination, just as a group consisting of mostly teenagers, their equivalent of YM and YW, was coming out.  The adult with them called out to me and explained that she had been teaching the teens about witnessing and asked if it would be alright if they witnessed to me.

To begin with I was a little thrown off by the unfamiliar language since I’m more used the LDS terminology of bearing testimony but even when I realized what she was asking I declined.  I told her that I had a church that I was very happy with.  “No, we’re not trying to convert you,” she said.  “I just want to give them a chance to witness.”  I refused again, I’m not sure why.  Maybe I was just trying to get away from the Jesus freaks but before I even got home I knew I had made a mistake.

The part of Virginia I grew up in can hardly be considered deep south.  It just barely qualifies as south at all but it’s not entirely without a southern Baptist influence.  And one of the things that I greatly respect about followers of that faith is their willingness to talk about the Lord in general conversation.  He’s a presence in their discussions, not just in their inappropriate exclamations and Grammy acceptance speeches.

To this day I’m sorry that I didn’t give those kids a chance to follow Nephi’s advice and “talk of Christ… rejoice in Christ… preach of Christ… and prophesy of Christ”.  I can’t help but think it’s significant that “talk of Christ” appears first on that list.

Certainly, there are points of doctrine on which we will disagree with those to whom we are talking, even members of the church, but I don’t believe that talking about the Lord, bringing Him into our daily life, and conversation can ever be a bad thing.

For those of you not of my faith and/or with no interest in discussing religion, don’t worry this isn’t going to turn into a Bible (Book of Mormon) thumping blog.  But I just couldn’t give a talk about bringing religon into regular conversation without being willing to bring a little religon to the blog.

PS I’m not trying to hold myself up as an example of this.  I’m really really bad at it.  But I’m going to try to improve.

Follow Through July 21, 2008

I was supposed to go finish my visiting teaching yesterday (yeah, I know, it’s only the 21st.  What can I say?  I’m amazing.  And I will not mention that this will be my first month of VT this year.) but I didn’t end up going because Irish1 was acting something like this   Actually he wasn’t anywhere near that bad but I found that video on youtube and I thought it was really funny.  I also realized that there’s a lot of crap on youtube.  Not necessarily crap as in immoral, unholy stuff (although if the titles people are giving their videos are at all indicative of what they show then there’s a lot of that too.)  but crap as in why would you post a video of your child crying?  I can see a video of a really epic fit.  You know the one I’m talking about.  The fit that is so unbelievable, so out of proportion to the offense, real or imagined, that you get to the point that you just laugh at your child as he (or she) literally expends all his (or her) energy railing at the universe.  And then falls asleep where ever he (or she) landed.  But that’s not what I found as I searched for tantrums.  I found boring, run of the mill, the kids stopped crying as soon as they were handed their cup/doll/car stuff.  My kids do this on a daily if not hourly basis, this isn’t entertaining.  That would be like me blogging about what I had for breakfast on a daily basis.  Trust me you can only hear about so many bowls of Cheerios.

But back to my point.  I felt really badly about having to cancel but Irish1 really really needed a nap and even if he wasn’t going to do that (he did by the way) I wasn’t going to even try to take him into someone else’s home acting the way he was, and now I have guilt.

I was raised to do something I said that I would do.  I’m not good at excuses. I feel guilty calling in sick for work even when I literally can’t walk.  So to beg off of VT, especially when the appointments, the hard part, had been made, that was bad.

And the fact that I was composing a blog post about it in my head even as I was calling my companion… very bad.