Trying to hang on to the glow...

finally home after covering the night shift for a sick colleague...

Glad I had a GREAT day yesterday to balance it out!


We all can forget...

My antidote?
Spending time with my kids on a walk this weekend in Loose Park in Kansas City .

My visits with Art Boy and GI Joe together are never long enough but, at least, we had lunch and a walk on a beautiful day before Thanksgiving.


SO much fun to have all my 'kids' in one place.
The dogs were in heaven to have both their boys with them!



Which word do you see?
I have troubles or triumphs of my own?


I've had my share of both...and love that both get recognized in this painting - one of several currently on exhibit at the Dolphin in Kansas City - the gallery where Art Boy works and lives.

More to come...but I have to get to sleep so I can get up tomorrow -at some point - and go back in to do it all again!

Upset the Fruit Basket

Y'all would have loved it!
Cracked me the fuck up!
It was quite the scene.


A gunshot wound to the chest - and the driver - the victims 'friend' - who was so 'upset' he couldn't tell OUR ER from the adult hospitals ER right next door!

Poor guy was really planning on a 'dump 'n dash' but as he was unloading the victim from the front passenger seat, one of our nurses, no doubt trying to be helpful and exhibit the healing presence of Christ, took his car and valet parked it in an undisclosed location on the parking lot, leaving the 'friend' stranded on the sidewalk, having to talk to the ER Social Worker - that would be MOI!

Not only that, but as said SW was walking to talk to him, she called 911 from her mobile work phone and had police respond before he could retrieve his keys, locate the car and get the hell out of Dodge.

It was priceless!

When family and police showed up and we confirmed that our patient was an adult, a felon and had probably just been wounded in the commission of a crime - a shoot out a few blocks away in which another 'victim' had been shot too - I was the one elected to ask his mom some of the tough questions.

Such as - does your son have a history of being a sexual deviant, as well as a drug dealer, since he has the word RAPE tattooed across his knuckles?

Mom's response: Oh no, you misread it. That's his gang tatoo; it says GRAPES. He's been in it since he was a kid.
RIGHT!

The Crips, the Bloods, the Jets, the Sharks and the GRAPES!

PLZ, woman!
I know I'm just a middle aged white tool of the system but no way in hell does your boy belong to the Raisinets!


(Plus I'm a REAL good reader!)

She DID redeem herself in my eyes when her son came out of his drugged state long enough to be pissy and demand that I call his 'wife'.

When I had the nerve to do a reality check with his mom and discover he had no wife, he then informed me she was his girlfriend and his baby's mama.

To which his mom responded, "She might be two minutes pregnant but I don't know nothin' about it and they're not callin' your bitch; You're on VOV lock down - again!"

Mama knows best.

So do the docs who stabilized and then transferred his sorry ass to the adult side - under arrest - while they took his pal to jail too!

All in all, a good afternoon!
Definitely worth the half dozen pieces of candy the Detectives scarfed down in my office!

Note from the monastery

We were down to fewer than 500 nesting pairs of our fierce national bird when it went on the Endangered Species List in 1967.
The list was turned into a comprehensive law protecting its members in 1973.

Say what you will about the man - and I could say plenty; he's why I have an FBI file - but let it be remembered that this was ONE good thing Richard Nixon did.

The protection worked; today there are more than 10,000 nesting pairs of Bald Eagles in the Continental United States.
You can see them in South Dakota, along the Mississippi River and along the Hudson River on the way to upstate New York.

Rivers are a gold mine for them, and they patrol it from high in the sky, swooping down in an attack that must leave a fish not knowing what hit it.

The Bald Eagle has been removed from the list, something that doesn't happen to most animals on it; most of them continue their march toward extinction and, on one disconsolate day when nobody is around, the last one crawls under a bush to die.

What must it be like to be the last one?

To find no one else in the world who knows what you know; no one else who sees things as you do?

What must it be like to call and call for a mate and hear no answering call?

Human beings know something about that last one: many of us have called and called for love, to no avail.

Wondered where to go to meet someone wonderful.

Wondered if there is something repellent about us: What is it: Am I not thin enough? beautiful enough? rich enough? too snarky? too funny?

Many of us have longed to speak first and been too shy, and so nobody spoke and the chance was lost.

But we are endowed with a quality that other species would envy: we can expand our passionate search for love and companionship beyond the hope of being part of a pair.

Our capacity for love can be poured into many things: into a posse of friends, or one best friend; into art that satisfies the soul; into nurturing plants and creating our own gardens of Eden and always, of course, into the experience of God and being part of a servant community comprised of those who have dedicated their lives to serving and loving ALL rather than the exclusivity of loving ONE.

Eventually, every living individual passes from the scene, taking our feathers and our fur with us into the fecund earth.But we don't take our love with us.
That stays here.