Ten things

Vivian is all set up. Not sure what she's working so hard on, though.

Mazie reading Moorchild.

Mazie's favorite thing today: learning about Hurricane Isaac via science lesson and news report.
Vivian's favorite thing today:  finishing work on a secret item that she would not tell us about. 
Richie's favorite thing today (at work): getting to solve a difficult problem that others couldn't solve.
My favorite thing today (at work): laughing at someone's story of an exploding toilet.

I thought I'd go back to what if I only had X things.  10 things.

Circumstance: 
I can have only ten items that fit in a backpack and I will be in the woods in Eastern North America and I need to survive for a month.  I don't know if there's water nearby.  Thank goodness it's summer, I just had a huge breakfast, and I am already wearing clothes and shoes.  (I haven't looked this up and I haven't thought about it for a long time, so I'm liable to say something dumb.)

Big sheet of plastic with mylar reflector on the inside
wide-mouth jug
Metal vessel, preferably with handle
Large simple multi-tool
Snare wire
Fishing line
Hook
Fire Striker or Fire steel (could find stone or flint)
Small bottle of chlorine bleach
Edible wild plants book

It's all this snakebite and edible versus toxic plants talk.  Also, I am First Aid Kit Mom for Vivian's Troop's upcoming camping trip. 

HSV-1 has ahold of me.  Sad times for my sore mouth.  Pooooor kitty.  Poor, poor kitty.

Why toxicology is awesome - see for yourself!

Toxicologists make awesome quizzes...

Although they can't spell.

I have been drooling over this book...then the author came to lecture us on Tuesday.  Sorry, no picture of that!  But what good fortune!

Annnnd...the Georgia Poison Control Center has a fish tank...with toxic fish!  And a rockin' reflection.

Finally, you get to try new stuff in toxicology.

Activated charcoal, for instance.  Thanks, Professor Dayne!

Olfactory Bunny

What I grew up calling an Eskimo Kiss is actually a bastardization of the "Kunik."  It's an Inuit greeting that involves pressing one's nose close to another's cheek and inhaling their scent.  It's a greeting exchanged by people already familiar to one another - like a kiss.  Kunik cousins. 

I call my kids bunnies.  They are positively lapine.  Little soft animals with sensitive noses and big eyes.  Sometimes they just sit in the grass; other times they cavort.  Like bunnies.

If Vivian had a superpower, it would be her sense of smell.  Every night when I tuck her in, she tells me what I smell like.  Sometimes it's really elaborate:  Mama, you smell like a sweet potato with butter on it.  Sometimes I don't smell so good:  Ew, Mama, you smell like old garlic.  Tonight it was: Mama, your cheek smells like face soap, but your breath smells like what we had for dinner.  That would be leftover split pea soup, quinoa, and garden tomato.  Mmmm.

Smells figure prominently in my memory.  When we took a road trip to West Virginia, my mom would roll down the windows and crow about smelling "West Virginia."  West Virginia is the smell of freshly cut grass, dank hollows, and sweet rolling evening mists.  Also, when we drove over the marsh:  "Smell that?  That's the marsh!  Mmmmm...I love it."  The marsh smells thick and dense and salty - both living and dead all at the same time.  My dad had a very sensitive sense of smell - he could smell gum from a mile away and hate it from that distance.  But he loved the Lake Okeechobee smell of sweet rotting citrus mixed with fresh pines.  That was a good one.  My dad wore Drakkar Noir...and Old Spice.  My mom wore Charlie.  I passed a whiff of "Charlie" in Sears one day when I was a fledged adult and nearly fell over.  That singular smell was coming from a table full of different half-off perfumes, and I smelled them all until I found hers.  Wow - there it was, like a freight train of memory.  I still find it amusing that my mom's smell could have a name - an 80's Designer name: "Charlie." 

I hold dear the smell of beer on Pop-pop's kind breath when he hugged me goodnight with his bristle face.  And Mimi's martini lingering on hers.

Ah, smells: the smell of dirt, the smell of hot beach sand, the smell of an old conch, the smell of an oven-hot car on a 105-degree day.  Lunchroom smells, the smell in the parking lot beside MacDonalds.  The warm feral smell of my cat's meticulously clean fur.  The bready smell of my sweaty babies.

My sweaty babies are still my sweaty babies - in summer when we're skimping on the A/C.  When I lean in to smell their cheeks, the crowns of their heads at night, they still smell utterly distinct, utterly like themselves.  Flopsy and Mopsy after a meal of cream and blackberries.  Saturating the air within 10 millimeters of their skin with utter sweetness.

Mazie, absorbed in play.

Sweet Reprimand for Vivian. If my kid whistles in the halls, I really can't complain.

Vivian, reading.

50 things.

I dreamed last night about the taste of wild strawberries that we picked one year on South Manitou Island.  Worthy of their own cross-island expedition, they were tiny but concentrated and as sweet and strawberry-y as I can imagine.  They were shockingly delicious, an entirely different experience from the store-bought giants I had been used to.  I woke up feeling sad and forlorn, but I didn't remember the dream, so I wasn't sure why I felt so bereft. 

Later in the day I went grocery shopping.  I spied a merry plastic bag containing dried strawberries and being sold for about five dollars, which I picked up and bought.  It wasn't until I was putting them away in a cabinet at home that I remembered my dream and realized why I had bought the overpriced strawberries.  It got me thinking about that day and that flavor.  We picked a long time and had barely half a jar to show by the time we got back to the cabin.  Those were the simplest, emptiest, fullest days.  Sweet days.

Okay, now everyone might think I'm really weird.  But I go through this mental exercise all the time, and it's related to that simple feeling I had as a kid.  I think, what if I had to get rid of all but a certain number of things...50? 20? 10? Which ones would they be?  Do we include essentials in the things, like clothing items and soap?  Or are those gimmes?  Does a tub of photos count as 1000 things or one thing?  Is a pair of shoes two things or one thing?  And my books...I'd have to only choose the ones whose actual bodies I loved; others I'd have to jettison and resolve to check out later if need be.  Am I in a survival situation?  Or do I have to go about my normal life?

Here are my 50 for normal life in no particular order.  Since it's normal life I'll give myself leeway in all of the grouping issues above, but I'm not allowed to just go out and buy a bunch of stuff.  I'll say this has to hold me for one year except food, drink, and other random expendables.  The rest has to go.

All purpose soap, toothbrush, towel, leatherman tool, wedding band, U.S. Navy spoon that was Pop-pop's special soup spoon, Mom's necklace, hiking boots, black Danskos, Blue Adidas running shoes, pink Keen sandals, Giraffe water bottle, Bible given by Richie, dolphin Pete carved for me, One backpack, one tote bag, phone (w charger), computer (w charger), driver's license (optional), hair twistie.  That's 20. Tee shirt, long sleeve button-down, two pairs of socks, good jacket, thermal underwear set.  One work dress and one fancy dress.  Running shorts.  My white coat.  Watch.  Strong small flashlight.  Stethoscope.  Small bag of unmentionables.  That tub of photos in all forms: digital, negative, prints.  Now I'm up to 34 or thousands depending on how you look at it.

Just 16 more...and I could quibble about these a great deal.  We're planning for normal life?  Large bowl, glass Atlas Jar.  Boonie hat bought by Pop-pop.  Favorite flowers Richie drew for me.  A certain bridesmaid's gift.  (Gigi, Flau-flau, and Blue blue would be on this list, but they're on M and V's). Bike (with rack).  A coin I'm sentimental about, another button-down shirt, a skirt, another work dress, pillow, sleeping bag, cooking pot, new number two pencil, pen.  Good Poems edited by Garrison Keillor, given to me by Richie.

Wow, this list would be very different if it were a survival situation.  Or if I could buy other stuff.  But what if this was all I had?  How much more could I remember the taste of wild strawberries on South Manitou Island?  How much more time could I spend looking into my family's eyes when they speak to me?  How much more skilled would I become at mending, for instance? 

If there is one interferes disproportionately with the memory of the taste of wild strawberries, it's this computer that I am interacting with now.

What are your fifty?

Machetes. Plural.

I'm terribly sorry for being out of the blogging loop, but I'm just really, really busy. I'm not on Facebook, not because I'm a psychopath, but because I like others' photos too much to have access to them at all times. But here I go with some web talk.

I have just begun a new rotation - toxicology. It promises to be really cool - learning, learning, learning. Toxicologists are the best for nerding out about fascinating effects of different toxins. Our case load includes lots of OD's - intentional or unintentional. Lots of accidental pediatric poisonings. Some mysteries, too. Yesterday there was a mysterious case that I was assigned a chapter of reading for in a book so thick that everyone has to read a chapter then share what they know because the knowledge base on this stuff is so expansive that you can't possibly hold it all in your head. So I was being called the resident expert on Copper poisoning - although I'm pretty sure they were just being nice to me.

So today for toxicology, we had a meeting at the CDC. We drove over separately, me in my family's beloved green station wagon with no A/C. The green station wagon has become a bit of a surrogate barn, and it's a real mess. There are lots of things in it - random things - whose company I am not thrilled to be driving around with. A brief list, just off the top of my head: two bowls with dried remains of yogurt/flaxseed breakfasts, three spoons, one coffee mug, a giant steel ring, Puppy Rug, stuffed Unicorn, several back-packs, wayward girlies' art...etc. Therefore I felt embarrassed when I arrived at the CDC and had to submit to a car search. I ride around with my items knowing that most people cannot see IN my car, and so it's okay. But Maxim, the guard, asked me to pull over, so he could look through my car.

So I'm opening doors, popping the trunk (which has to be propped with a length of bamboo because its hydraulics broke), and making small talk.

 Maxim: "We just have to check out all vehicles to make sure you don't have any weapons."
Me: Ha ha no weapons here! Just a huge mess!
Maxim: Hey, that's a sensible bumper sticker. "I brake for trains." It'd be a shame if you didn't brake for trains, right?
Me: Ha ha. Yeah. My husband works at a steel yard that does rail work. Maxim: Oh, really? (Leaning into trunk now) My dad worked for CSX for yea- Ma'am I'm not going to be able to allow you to enter the CDC in this vehicle.
Me: Ha ha. What?
Maxim: You have machetes. You can't go in with these.
Me: Ohhhh. (walking around to the trunk area). Oh, yeah. Machetes. (Indeed, there they are, beside a cast iron pot and the stuffed unicorn - two machetes.) Those are my husband's. He's a little lost without a barn, so he stores some of the would-be barn stuff in the car. Sorry about that - didn't mean any harm.
Maxim: Well, I'm sorry, I can't let you in. In fact, I'm going to have to write up this incident because you attempted to go onto CDC property with two machetes. (His tone is serious.)
Me: (voice rising uncontrollably) Um - will I get a...a ticket? Or something?
Maxim: No, I just have to write it up. After that, I don't care what you do, you can even go drop off your machetes and then come back.

 So that's what I did. Maxim wrote me up, I took the machetes (and a hatchet and a hack saw that he didn't get far enough into the tangle to see) 1/4 mile up the road and stashed them in some thick kudzu, then came back to the CDC with my same messy car, sans cutting implements. Maxim laughed genuinely when I drove up, checked my car double-safe, then let me in to go to journal club.

Also today, I got to see presentations on relief work in Haiti, on marine envenomations, on the inception of Super Fund, and participate in a discussion about an article about Toxic Shock Syndrome and tampon use. I think I'm in the right place. It was a good day.

Here are the tools when I went to pick them up: