A Lot to Say

It's clear and windy today and there's snow predicted for later this week.

I started writing a blog post at work the other night on my new computer (never on a work computer, that would be job suicide), but now I don't feel like dealing with moving it from there to here, so I'm just starting a fresh entry.

Thursday was a busy night but doable. It was foggy (!) on Friday morning as I left the hospital. The fog had actually started sometime in the night and I went out a couple of times to walk around in the fog and pretend that I was in London. (I was telling one of the techs about it and she shuddered and said that she found the fog to be creepy. It is, I guess, which is kind of why I like it.) Saturday was ridiculous. Two patients kicked off at the same time, which is never a good thing. But they--and I--made it through the night. Success.

Toward the end of the night, I stopped by to talk to a coworker. (I've mentioned her before; She's a friend of my mother's.) We started talking about another coworker who we both dislike. I've talked about him before--compared him to Yogi Bear. He's a 40-something, loud-mouthed white guy, conservative christian (of course), who is condescending to the patients, homophobic, racist, and misogynist. Of course he thinks he's the best thing to ever hit the place. The Texans would say he's all hat and no cattle. (Reminds me a lot of my former stepfather.) Anyway, turns out he has four kids, all home-schooled (of course). My mother's friend said, "I wonder what his wife looks like." I said, "She probably looks like him in a dress." We both laughed. I said, "See if he's on Facebook. You know there's pictures on there if he is." I'm not on Facebook and she couldn't sign onto Facebook on her phone. And neither of us is stupid enough to sign onto Facebook or do a google search like that on a work computer. So we just went on to other subjects.

But The Brain never likes to let anything go. So when I got home (safely onto my home network), I googled him on my phone. He doesn't have a Facebook that I could see, but a twitter account came up when I googled his nickname. The account was last used two years ago, but there was a link in the profile to a blog, so I followed the link. And his blog? Was all about his former pornography addiction.

I didn't read it, but it bugged me. Something about that bugged me. I thought: We work with children, many of whom have been sexually traumatized, raped, and abused by men in authority over them. If I had a daughter and she had been raped or sexually abused and, as a result, she was suicidal enough to be hospitalized and I found out that one of the people who was supposed to be there to treat her was a former pornography addict, how would I feel about that? So much pornography focuses on young women (and my disliked coworker says he is triggered by seeing naked women and by women kissing).

I texted my ethical friend (yes, I have one) about it. She looked over the blog (which I still couldn't bring myself to do), and pointed out the above. I still don't know if I'll report him or not, but I am definitely going to talk it over with my other coworker, my mom's friend. I'm curious to see what her opinion is.

So that has all been eating away at The Brain for the last couple of days.

Got to distract The Brain, so:

I've also been working on a new quilt, and I'm probably two-thirds of the way finished with it. It's still in sections, but I've added the border to the edge sections (and I added them in such a way that I won't have to bind it--or at least not the long edges). I have yet to join the three sections and after that I'll have to add a top and bottom border to lengthen it. (It's probably about 65 inches long, which is too short by about ten inches, I think.) I don't much like this quilt for some reason. (I had a different vision in my head for it and there have been more mistakes without useful lessons attached to it than with other quilts I've made so far.) I was showing the bits to Dave and he said, "I think I like it more than you do." There's no doubt in my mind about that.

After this quilt, I think I'm going to make some Christmas presents. Then I'm going to start another quilt with raw edged appliqued circles on it, kind of a poor (wo)man's Drunkard's Path quilt. Since I quilt in sections, maybe I can put them in blocks of four to quilt them. I'll call it "Four Square" or "Drunken Four Square." Hm. Maybe "Drunk and Disorderly"? Lol. Yeah, that's the one. I have the name. Now all I need to do is make the quilt. So easy!

I have enough fabric. And yesterday I bought more, of course. We went down to the local quilt shop and I picked up some more solids colors (pink, lavender, pale yellow, lime green, and some more orange--I seem to use a lot of orange when I sew, which is strange to me because it is far, far from my favorite color). I also picked up a gorgeous Japanese fabric of gold leaves on a dark green background. I rarely fall for patterned fabric like that, but it was too beautiful to pass up and I bought two yards of it just to have.

Yesterday I also succumbed to the siren's call of the American Quilter's Society video tutorial sale and bought a new online class by a quilter named Weeks Ringle. (Doesn't that name sound like it should be attached to an online scammer email? Someone trying to sell you a pill to cure erectile dysfunction or increase breast size?) The class is called Solids Revolution and it's got a few quilting techniques that I haven't seen before, things like inset circles and compound triangles. (I bought a 60° triangle ruler recently, but out some triangles, pieced together, like, a dozen of them, and then put the whole mess away. I don't think I'm cut out for triangles, unless they're half-square triangles, which are square blocks made from two right triangles.) I don't do precision piecing at all--at all--and ol' Weeks does, but I'm curious to see if I can adapt some of her techniques to my way of working.

And Thanksgiving is this week, in two days actually. I have to work on Thanksgiving (and on Christmas Day, too), so we're having Thanksgiving a day early.  We'll go for Italian food. (I don't eat turkey and the only thing I'll miss is mashed potatoes.)

Speaking of which: My blood tests came back nearly perfect. My A1c is still high at 5.8% (the best range is from about 4.5% to 5.6%), but it's come down from 6.1%, which is the result of limiting a lot of junky carb (like mashed potatoes--sob) and getting a skosh more exercise. (I could stand to get more, of course.) But that was good.

In other news, I finished the first season of Hello, My Twenties on Netflix. I have been interspersing the hour-long episodes of that show with twenty-four minute episodes from the second season of Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories. It's a good mix to watch while awake. (While I sleep, I listen to episodes of The Golden Girls, 30 Rock, or, recently (again) The Dick VanDyke Show. Some parts of The Brain like to chew on something while the rest of The Brain slumbers.)

Okay. That's it, I guess. I just got out of the shower and need to get dressed. After all it's almost 1:15 in the afternoon.

I had a lot to say today!