Kid fights and spider bites

Aside from saying goodbye to my best friend, Cozette, and her family, there were two aspects of our trip to Washington that were not a whole lot of fun when compared to the rest of the trip which included mountains, nights on the town, and a bit too much to eat.

The first downer was the fact that we all rode together everywhere in Cozette’s huge SUV. This saved on a car rental and allowed the incredibly witty adults to freely converse, but it also placed the four children in our space every time we wanted to go anywhere.

My two are bad enough in the car. She is 7 and he is 12 so they don’t like each other. Cozette’s daughter is 5 and son is 10. The even spacing of ages is almost adorable.

Female 5 was the whiner and cried about everything which is what 5 year old girls do. My female 7 was the tattle-tale, but she also liked to throw colossal fits which would be embarrassing if they weren’t incredibly funny. She became very angry when I laughed at her for falling off a log. I wouldn’t have laughed if I didn’t know she was okay. I’m not a monster!

Male 10 sang and made random noises all the time. He was the background music to the continuous insanity playing out around him. Also, he was the frequent victim of his 5 year old sister’s attacks and the one I always lost.

It is a good thing I only had two children because one more is just too much for me to keep track of.

Male 12 wanted to interject himself into every conversation because he believes life is and should be all about him. He felt Washington was his state since he was born there and he would not shut up about Big Foot even though his sister, female 7, was terrified of the creature. After we came home, she was still crying before bed, hung up on Big Foot! Thanks big brother!

What we needed at the time was a trailer to pull behind the SUV; something like a horse trailer with individual “kid stalls,” but with glass windows so they stayed dry. They would’ve been fine.

The second aspect of our trip which turned nasty was my spider bite. I say it was a spider bite, but in reality I don’t know what happened to my right elbow pit (the anticubital area to be technical).

I had a little pimple-looking thing which I popped because that’s what I do, even though I know I shouldn’t. The pimple then grew quite large. I didn’t mess with it anymore until I got home.

It was very painful when I went to work and showed the doctors in the ER. In fact, my arm was getting red above it and I had a hard nodule under my skin near my shoulder.

It turns out a lymph node near my armpit swelled to the size of a golf ball and I had to check in as a patient for 4 days to receive IV antibiotics, which was miserable to say the least. I don’t think many nurses make good patients. I felt like I was in prison and at work, but not really working.

Was it a spider? I’ll never know. It was probably my daughter seeking revenge for laughing at her.

Either way, we are back to two kids in our vehicle and a mostly healed arm; almost normal.

Alternative transport includes walking

My family had to go to Washington State this summer and we had to do it on as much of a budget as we could. We had to go because my best friend, Cozette, and her family will be moving to Minnesota next year. She is my big draw to visit.

The budget is obvious because plane tickets for a family of four was enough to make our brains hurt. One way we saved money was by not renting a car.

This sounded fabulous until the first night we arrived at Sea-Tac Airport. We wanted to spend 2 nights in Seattle before travelling to the Olympia area where we’d be staying with my bestie and her family. They were meeting us in Seattle, but not until the next day.

My reasonable husband said we should spend the first night near Sea-Tac since we didn’t have transportation, but I decided we should be in Seattle so we could wake up and begin exploring immediately. Besides, Sea-Tac has that light rail system that takes you right into Seattle!

Carting all of our belongings through a parking garage to the light rail terminal was tedious at best, but when my daughter wasn’t able to roll her own luggage anymore due to the sudden dysfunction of her arms, it was intolerable.

It became clear where luggage got its name; because you have to lug it around! I felt like Quasimodo going up the Cathedral steps only I was on flat ground.

Once we got to the light rail station at Sea-Tac, we realized that, having followed the signs pointing the way, we had gone almost in a complete circle from the point at which we had entered the garage. Why? Because the gap in between was the point where the cars drove in. Had we known, we would’ve risked it for the short-cut.

Riding the rail was fun mostly because it was free. That’s right, we somehow escaped being charged. I’m not sure how we managed that one.

When we hit Seattle, we had to change over to the monorail that would take us to the Space Needle.

Keep in mind during this entire journey, my children were burning my insides with a level of annoyance so great and powerful, I think they must have been taking private lessons in their free time. I kept promising myself things I would do to them if they kept whining. Maybe I was just being a bit short tempered, but my husband was a real trooper.

We rode the monorail and got off at the final and only stop. The kids were excited and happy. Now we just had to walk to the hotel.

There was a cab. “Honey. Let’s take the cab! It will be so cheap to hop in and take it! It has to be close!” I plead with my hubby, perhaps sounding a little whiny myself.

“Okay, honey. Hey! We are going to the Travelodge!”

The cab driver laughed. “Why would you get in just to get out again? It is just behind that building over there!”

My world collapsed because I saw that “over there” was like a block and a half. I was wearing flip flops because I’m from Florida and I never learn.

We trudged down the sidewalk with me bringing up the rear, almost in tears. The sidewalk was bumpy and a vagrant looked somewhat interested in our things, but we made it.

Never again, I thought. Mark my words: I will listen to him next time. I swear!

Just plane frustrating

I am relieved that my family and I have, for the most part, safely returned in one piece from our incredible journey to Washington State where we visited my best friend and her family. I would say we all have “completely” safely returned if I weren’t in the hospital right now suffering from the effects of an unknown arachnid or other tiny critter bite to my arm, but there will be more on that in the near future.

For now, let me attempt to take you all on a journey to discover why my husband, my children and I cannot seem to comfortably make it to an airport on time.

Tuesday, June 25^th was our departure day and the flight was set to leave at 1:55 pm. Never pick a flight that late because it gives you a false sense of security that you can do things like cook breakfast, sit around and drink coffee, or play Candy Crush Saga before you wake up the kids who stayed up way too late the night before.

Before we knew it, the time was closer to 10:30 than 9:30 and we weren’t exactly where we thought we’d be at that point in the day. Things became a bit hectic real fast. Weren’t we already supposed to be driving?

Figurative fires were lit beneath undeserving bottoms and there may have been a little whining over having to get moving so soon after waking up which was met with apathy and unsympathetic remarks.

It was 11:35 when we all piled in the truck to make our way to the reduced fare parking five minutes from the Orlando International with vans running to the airport every 15 minutes. The map application on our phones reported that we’d reach our destination at 1:25 pm.

This was not looking good at all.

I told my husband to floor it in the safest manner possible. My daughter was delighted.

Every time a red light was missed by catching a green, we cheered. Every pack of cars we passed, my heart skipped a beat. I saw us gaining time each MPH he went over the speed limit, but we weren’t gaining enough.

I frantically called the parking company and told them our dilemma once we hit I-4 at 12:50. They said they would meet us directly at the airport and take our truck to their parking for us. I fell in love. I didn’t care who they were or if they sold the truck later, we may actually catch that flight.

We got out at the Air Tran drop-off. I checked our bags curbside while my husband gave a big tip to the parking guys. Air Tran said our bags might make it, but we needed to get going fast.

Security was fairly quick, thank goodness, and we were almost running to the gate. They were calling for final boarding. When they saw us, the boarding agent said, “You must be the Hutchins family.” Guilty!

I wish I could say the way home was better and I really thought it would be. We had an hour and a half when we were dropped off at Sea-Tac Airport on July 5th, but their lines were out-of-this-world! I could not believe how long the wait was for everything. When my daughter had to take an extended stay in the bathroom, I almost lost my mind!

Like before, final boarding was being called when we got to the plane. “You must be the Hutchins family.”

Yes! Guilty again!

Forced outside their comfort zone

“I don’t want to try on any more of these pants and I don’t want to go anywhere!”

There was a power struggle going on in my house between the kids and us. We were going to win in the end, but they were making the path to victory incredibly annoying.

By the time this article is printed, God willing, my family will have traveled to Washington State and back. We are going to visit my best friend and her family, look at mountains up close and experience the packed-in city life of Seattle and laid-back Olympia.

The children are currently unhappy that we are leaving at all.

My kids are strange to me in the way that they never want to do anything. Don’t get me wrong, my daughter really wanted to go to Disney World, but my son had no interest in it until we got there; even then, he didn’t smile very often.

Concerning this major outing, my little girl is afraid of the plane not functioning properly. Last week she said, “Mommy, if the plane falls out of the sky, we’ll all die.”

I said, “At least we’ll all be together.”

I don’t like to feed into these kinds of fears very much, but when she kept mentioning it over and over, I couldn’t help but dig deeper to the base of this anxiety.

“What’s up with you and planes? You love roller coasters. We’re just going to roll down the runway and lift off into the sky. It’s fun.”

“Because, mommy, I never see the planes land. They never land on the ground!”

I thought about that for a while. I guess she never has seen a plane land on the ground. I also thought about the exposure she has had and pictured my son watching those airplane disaster shows. Ah ha!

Even with some education, she hasn’t budged on her opinion.

Speaking of my son’s television choices, he happened to catch something on Big Foot that scared the tar out of him which brought us great joy being the horrible parents we are. Of course, he’s 12 and my daughter is 7 so he’s fair game.

He began asking his dad about the infamous creature and a tale was instantly spun by my husband about a creepy night spent camping with the boy scouts with unusual smells present and being hit with a rock thrown by an unknown being. Then another story was told about a woman innocently washing dishes then suddenly looking through the window into the eyes of the beast himself.

My son nervously looked at the window above the kitchen sink which had the shades pulled all the way to the top and, when he could take it no longer, he slipped across the room to quietly and quickly lower them.

There’s been so much talk about Big Foot and planes lately, I almost feel bad for my kids that we are packing them on a plane and forcing them to go to the Pacific Northwest, home of the Sasquatch.

Apart from their fears, my daughter doesn’t want to leave her Baby Butterscotch, a mechanical horse it would be a pain to pack, and my son doesn’t want to leave his social life, but he is taking some cards with his phone number printed on them. There’s no sense in missing out on broadening his girlfriend base.

We just hope we don’t run out of money. Now that is truly terrifying!

Let's talk about food

Humans have come a long way from poking an animal with a pointed stick and roasting it over a fire pit long enough to kill the bacteria then devouring it solely for the purpose of survival. Just as we have developed our technology, we have cultivated our pallets and altered our dinner plates over the course of time.

Since I’m a Southern girl at heart, there is nothing I like more than a home cooked meal that includes mashed potatoes, fried corn bread, collard greens, and whatever meat is on the menu for the day, but it has to fall apart in my mouth or be drenched in enough gravy to drown a rodent.

My sweet tooth is bad also. A coworker, Danae, was talking about making a cake and drizzling condensed milk over the top.

“You mean sweetened condensed milk?” I asked. “I find a reason to open a can, like if I run out of coffee creamer.”

She said, “Mix it with ground coffee and eat it like that. It is so good! People in the islands use it for everything. That’s why so many have diabetes.”

I actually don’t get to eat like this all the time because my Granny Respress passed away many years ago and my Granny Nobles doesn’t eat like this anymore because of her health. My mother only cooks this way when the family gets together and she comes up every other weekend which, right now, happens to be the weekends I work. I did not inherit this cooking gene.

When my family went to the Orlando area, I was able to loosen my belt at a few notches, literally.

One place we ate was Chevy’s. It is a “Fresh Mex” establishment which means they only serve freshly cooked Mexican food. They make their tortillas in house as well as their salsa and chips.

We eat there every time we go to Orlando and I always get the fajitas because they never disappoint. I made moaning noises and said “Oh yeah! This is SO good!” I think the kids worried about me, but I left full and happy if not a little sore from the gluttony.

The Crystal Palace in Disney World is a buffet. That’s right, it is a buffet. We erroneously thought it cost less to eat there, but were surprised to discover that a Ben Franklin was insufficient to cover all four of us.

Before the bill arrived, I ate to my heart’s content. I love buffet macaroni and cheese. There is just something about the way it’s cooked. I load it next to mashed potatoes and then let them mix together “accidentally.” It’s a game I play, but I really do it on purpose because I want that cheesy starch-on-starch flavor.

The characters from Winnie the Pooh came around and hugged my daughter. Our waiter, Kip, was from Australia. He was awesome and attentive. Was it worth the price? It was a buffet.

Finally, we had breakfast one day at the Whispering Canyon Café in Disney’s Wilderness Lodge. This is the best and most expensive breakfast I’ve ever had. We ordered the Bottomless Breakfast Skillet which had Mickey-shaped waffles, biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage, but the home fries were my favorite. They kept bringing more till we said “Stop!”

It was nice to eat delicious food that someone else cooked, but we can’t afford to eat out all the time. Besides, I’d be as big as my car if I did.

Hard to believe the dream is real

I’ve been working as a Registered Nurse for almost a year now. That doesn’t mean I’ve been on my own for that long, just that I’ve been exposed to full 12 hour shifts and non-filtered work environments.

It is a scary thing to think about going into this field. You hear horror stories about lateral violence and how other, more experienced nurses will destroy a “baby” nurse, reducing her self-worth and pushing her out of a unit based on sheer nastiness and pettiness.

I was prepared to go into a wrestling ring; thinking there was no way that I had come to this point in my life only to allow some creepy woman or man with a grudge on their shoulder the chance to block my forward progress. This would be a challenge considering I have a tendency to stumble on flat surfaces and I openly admit when I’m being stupid. I believe it is far more dangerous to act like you know what you’re doing when, in reality, you absolutely do not.

Then something amazing happened: NOTHING! That’s right, nothing.

I went to work and people helped me. I asked questions and they answered. I thought it was an elaborate trap, but it wasn’t. I was just one of those lucky people who landed a job in a place I didn’t have to fight an uphill battle to learn and grow and it makes me feel like I’m in a dream.

Okay, working in an emergency room isn’t always a dream. There is a spectrum of possibilities when you walk into that door every shift. There are a lot of kidney stones! Seriously, there are a lot of them! You poor people who have suffered from stones, kidney and gall bladder, I feel for you and I hope I never become one of you.

The worst days involve children and anything negative that happens with them or to them.

A friend of mine actually said that he was surprised I could work there because I was always such a cry baby. He said it nicer than that (thanks, Earl), but when bad things happen, we all cry. You can’t help it. We all have families and it is hard to separate how we’d feel in the same situation. Believe me, we care.

The whole ER is like a family from our housekeeping department to the nurses to lab to the doctors. We laugh and joke because it relieves tension, but when things get serious, you can feel the gears shift. It’s amazing, really.

Two of my classmates, Tonya and Candy, went to night shift right away. I only get to see them in passing, but at least I see them fairly often. Other classmates keep in touch on Facebook, but everyone has gone so many different directions. It seems like they are doing well. Still, I miss some of them horribly.

As for my new work family who has so graciously accepted me as one of them, I can’t say enough how thankful I am: Patty, Tinna, Andrea, Reese, Daisy, Chelsea, Elizabeth, Susan, Brandon, Tony, Kelly D., Lori and several doctors. There were also two amazing nurses who have moved on, Shannon and Kelly A. These are just the people who work with me every day, but the other shift is also special.

Highlands County, try to stay safe out there. Also, drink plenty of water. You may be able to avoid kidney stones if you stay hydrated. You can thank me later.

Not whacky about weeding

I hate weeding! I know, “hate” is a strong word, right? Well then, I really loathe weeding to the depth of my very soul.

Growing up, I’d visit my mom and stepdad on a ranch in Avon Park and, when my brother and I weren’t finding better things to do like torture bugs or each other, we’d get put to work. They called it chores, but we called it cruel and unusual punishment.

Pulling prickly pears was my least favorite. If you’ve never done it, go to a cow pasture with a crow bar and a pair of work gloves and sweep the hook down to the root of that Florida cactus then yank it up with all you’ve got and hope you don’t get stuck. The big barbs aren’t the bad ones because you can easily pull those out; it’s the tiny ones around the base of the big ones that hide in your skin and drive you insane. Never touch those.

The weeding I did last weekend was nothing like pulling prickly pears on the ranch and I reminded myself of that fact as I knelt on my “almost” 40-year old knees with my rear end facing the road.

I fantasized about spraying Round Up on my whole yard and having concrete filled in the area then painting it green so I could park on it and never have to mow. I’m not sure if the neighbors would like me better or worse. We aren’t real close as it is now. Of course, when you are the person who weeds your yard once a year, why would anyone get that close to you?

My husband bought mulch and I felt the two planters by the front steps could use a fresh look so I picked out some nice, self-sufficient-looking plants that could occupy those spaces along with potting soil to give them the best possible start before I ignore them forever. I also got new gloves (my old ones had literally disintegrated) and the cheapest gardening hand tools I thought I might need.

When I first arrived home from the store and unloaded, I couldn’t find the bag with the gloves and tools. I looked on the receipt and saw I had paid for them. I checked my pile and spied only the soil and plants.

Then I threw a hissy fit.

There was no way I was going back to the store. I was already sprayed in suntan oil and in my bathing suit (with shorts on the bottom, I don’t want to embarrass my children too much).

I began digging with my bare hands and pouring soil. When I emptied the last plant, there was the bag with my other purchases that had been lying underneath everything else! Didn’t I feel silly?

As I pulled the white flowered weeds, they loosed their barb-like seeds onto my clothing. I felt like a fertilization transport device for this invasive organism. “Not on my watch!” I thought to myself as I plucked each barb off my bathing suit.

I did find a lone survivor, something I had planted several years ago, attempting to grow again. I was impressed. I was going to save it, but I became lost in thought as my hands were grazing along, pulling the multitude of weeds, like a cow chomping on grass, and I accidentally yanked that poor plant right out of the ground.

Sorry, little guy. If I see you next year, I’ll try to be more careful.