Mensamom’s Musings

I got off work early last Saturday.  One of the local hospitals just completed a multi-million dollar, multi-year construction project, and was offering tours, so I decided it would be interesting to check things out.  I must admit, my motives were rather self-serving.  As a parent of a child with severe food allergies (he has a whole list of things that will cause anaphylactic shock), I wanted to see the new facilities designed specifically to hold the Children’s Hospital.  I hope I never have to see them again, but it is comforting knowing they are there.  I also took the three-year-old with me.  He has lived most of his life with “If you eat that, you will have to go to the hospital,” and I wanted him to have a familiarity with the facilities in a non-threatening situation.

The tour took a little over an hour, and we walked forever, but we saw some of the most amazing things!  All the patient areas where a child might be a patient are accessible only by a key card issued by the hospital, so no one can get in without pre-approval.  On the one hand, it might be a bit much.  I mean, the reason children being snatched from hospitals makes such big headlines is it almost never happens.  On the other hand, when it happens it makes big headlines, so I can understand the hospitals wanting to err on the side of caution.  Anyway, because of the key-card access limitations, once the new building goes into use, none of these spaces will ever be open to just look at again.

The tour started in the lobby, then went to the top patient floor and worked its way back down.  We did skip one floor – the second – which the hospital has left as an empty shell, in preparation for future expansion.  For the time being it will not be used.  And we did not get to see the roof with its two new heliports, but you can see it on the website.  (SPOILER ALERT – The audio was not properly synced with the video when I checked out the virtual tour last time, so you see stuff before you hear about it.  It is really annoying.)  The 6th floor will be General Pediatrics, kids who are hospitalized for this or that or the other thing.  When the three-year-old was in the hospital for the flu, General Peds is where we stayed.  All the rooms are private, so the kids have space to spread out, and there are empty picture frames on the walls that have openings in the top for kids to drop in their own artwork.   There are two Child Life Centers – AKA playrooms – on each children’s floor, one for teens and one more geared toward littler kids.  All of the Child Life Centers are designated as treatment-free, meaning that they will be a safe zone for the kids, away from needles, or medications, or vitals checks.  They also have classrooms where the kids can catch up on homework and assignments that they are missing while in the hospital.

The 5th floor is an adult cardiac unit.  In addition to all the things you would expect on a cardiac floor, the hospital has also installed an internet network that is accessible in every patient room, so that patients and their families can keep up with their online life.  This floor does not have the key-card requirements, like the child floors do, but there is a check-in area just outside the elevators where visitors will have one last stop before they see the patient.  On this floor, there is a difference in the ventilation system, as well.  On on the children’s floors, the air-flow in the rooms is designed to “blow” out through the door, so any germ in the room are moved away from the smaller patients, who may have compromised or not-fully-developed immune systems.  On the cardiac floor, the ventilation is reversed so the air “blows” INTO the room.  This helps keep any germs a patient may bring into the hospital with him or her, rather than spreading to other cardiac patients.

On the 4th floor Pediatric Critical Care Unit, each room has a movable pillar suspended from the ceiling.  In these pillars are all the connections you would normally find on the wall near the head of the bed.  The pillars allow for the rooms to be “rearranged” for kids who may be spending a longer visit in the hospital and would otherwise get bored with their rooms.  Special rooms for child cardiac patients and the St. Jude patients are also located here.

The 3rd floor is the new Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit.  The NICU is massive compared to the current facilities.  Where currently there are 6 incubators to a room, the new unit will have one incubator per room and a sofa bed for the parents if they want to sleep in the room with their baby.  They also have additional “bedrooms” for the parents just down the hall, in case they want to sleep for a while away from the machines, or if the parents want to “trade off” – one in the patient room while the other sleeps in the bedroom.  The NICU will be able to house up to 60 infants at a time in seven different “neighborhoods” that are color-coded to help parents and loved ones find the right room more quickly.

On the main floor will be admitting, outpatient testing, a gift shop, and a Family Life center – phones, computers, a kitchen and even laundry facilities for families of patients to carry out some of their normal, day-t0-day activities while staying close.  Downstairs is the cardiac and pediatric operating rooms.  I’ve never before seen the inside of an operating room, but these are really cool – or hot as the case may be.  The cardiac surgical suites can be cooled down to 60 degrees in a matter of minutes to help slow blood flow during surgery, while the pediatric suites can have their temperatures raised to 90 degrees to help premies and other infants maintain their body temperatures during surgery.  Additionally, all the electronics for all the equipment are now just outside the operating rooms, separated by a large plate glass window.  Having the electronic equipment out of the room helps keep the room temperature steady.

Overall, the most impressive thing about the tour was how well-behaved the three-year-old was throughout the whole thing, even not having a nap that day.  The guides kept us moving at a quick enough pace that he didn’t have time to get bored, and almost every time we stopped to get a dose of information, there were places for him to sit down, and lots and lots of play tables!  Several older ladies were in our group, and kept commenting on how good my little boy was being.  They just could not get over how polite and patient he was being.  When we got to the end of the tour and they gave us free t-shirts, he was so excited!  You would have thought it was a big batch of gummy bears.  All in all, if I ever have to be in the hospital again, I hope it is there.  Even if I don’t get a free t-shirt.

They are just turtles.  Fairly low maintenance, just keep them fed and keep their habitat clean.  For our pair of river sliders, that means an aquarium about 75% full of water and an area for them to crawl out of the water and relax under the basking lamp on occasion.  What they don’t tell you is that turtles will continue to grow until they outgrow  the size of their tank, meaning you will have to keep getting bigger and bigger tanks, until you need to remove all the furniture from the largest room in your home and install something like they have at Sea World for the whales.  Thankfully we haven’t gotten quite that large yet, but this week we did “upgrade”.

It all started when a cousin posted online that he had a tank to sell.  Now, this particular cousin has kept salt-water aquariums for several years, and just recently decided to increase to 150 gallons.  He no longer had any use for his 75 gallon tank or the stand for it or the high-powered filter or the water mover that went with it.  We are all friends of his on Facebook, so when his post about having a tank for sale showed up, my husband called the turtle-daddy into the room and said, “What do you think about this?”  Our would-be herpetologist’s eyes began glowing, he started to drool, and was entirely speechless for about 48 seconds before an enthusiastic “Oh, Yeah!” issued forth from his mouth.  After that, it was all the two of them could talk about – would that tank work, where would it go, how would he (translate: WE) pay for it, how would we get it here, would the cousin maybe take a little less for it – you get the idea.   Then it escalated.

This is the point in our little story where I can justifiably disdain technology.  If there were no computers, or cell phones, or communication devices of any kind, we would still be blissfully in the dark about our cousin’s extra tank.  Alas.  As it is,my husband took the opportunity to begin an IM session with said cousin to discuss the finer details of this pending transaction. When all was said and done, all that was left was a matter of making arrangements to get the van, remove the seats, get the manpower and go move this tank and stand.  This is also the point at which I got roped into this whole thing.  I was thrown into white slavery by my husband to become part of “the manpower”.

Most non-aquarium people have never given any thought to how a fish tank gets to where it is when they see it or what it takes to set up and maintain a large-scale aquarium.  The combined weight of the stand, the glass in the tank and the water (approximately 8 pounds per gallon) requires a fish tank to be somewhere that has good structural support underneath it.  The stand only weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 pounds, but being large and awkward, it still took two people to move it.  The tank, on the other hand, with its large panes of tempered glass, was more like 75 pounds.  And each piece was over four feet long, two feet wide, and two-to-three feet tall.  Three adults and a high school sophomore combined their efforts and managed to relocate the tank and stand the 10 miles from one house to the other.  It took two trips, but finally everything was here.  That’s when the fun REALLY began.

We had the stand, the canopy for the stand, the tank, the tank lids, the filter, the water-mover, but no hoses.  No hoses meant there was no way for the water in the tank to get to and from the filter.  My indentured servitude continued in the form of a trip to Menard’s to buy tubing.  I took a portion of the filter with me, but when I looked for the tubing size the cousin had told me to get, I could not get it to fit properly onto the part I had.  And the local pet store, that specializes in aquariums, was closed that day.  The next destination was a pet store in another town.  The three-year-old volunteered to go with me (he will go anywhere if it involves riding in a car), so we loaded up and off we went.  Of course, that store didn’t carry any of the accessory items to go with our brand of filter.  They recommended we try this pet store in our home town that specializes in aquariums, but they thought maybe they were closed that day . . ..  My husband suggested Lowe’s.

Went to Lowe’s, bought the tubing, brought it home, got the filter all set up with said tubing, and discovered we were missing an 0-ring for the filter and one of the clamps for one of the in-line quick-connect units.  Texted the cousin, he dug around his stuff, and came up with the missing pieces.  Got the missing pieces to our house, hooked everything up, and the hoses weren’t right.  On the phone with Menard’s – turns out I had been looking at the wrong thing the first time I was there.  Back to Menard’s to buy MORE tubing, and finally, 36 hours into this little endeavor, the system was up and running.  While I have never been able to “read” a turtle, they seem happy.  They have a lot more room to swim around and the new filter is doing a much better job than the old system.

Now my husband is drawing up plans for a sort of turtle loft that will sit on top of the new tank, to give them more basking area.  I wish him luck with that.  I’m out.

This whole change of seasons thing is really screwing me up.  I keep forgetting that, the closer we get to the end of June, the longer the days are getting, and as a result, I keep thinking it is earlier in the day than it really is.  Case in point, I did not even begin to think about fixing dinner last night until it started getting dark outside.  6:30, right?  Yeah, maybe four months ago . . .

I keep going back to Ironman.  It is times like these that I really do believe that life would be so much easier if I had a Jarvis.  I would have “someone” who could look things up on the internet for me while I am driving down the road and then report back.  I would never have to worry about texing while driving or any of that because I could do it all through voice commands.  Jarvis could read my texts to me and I could dictate to him.  He could also make my calls for me and remind me of appointments – like the haircut I missed this afternoon.

My point is, while I am expected to keep everyone else on track, I need an assistant to keep me on track.  A housekeeper to do the laundry and a cook would be nice, as well, but I don’t want to push it.  And if I am going to round out my list of household dream staff, it would have to include a gardener, a chauffeur, and a personal trainer and fitness coach to get me working out on a regular basis.  If I just didn’t have to worry about going to work, I would have loads more free time to get everything done.  I would finally get all the stuff that needs to go to charity out of the house.  Of course, my house would be empty then, and I would need to go shopping to get more stuff to fill it back up, but the point is I WOULD HAVE THE TIME.

At some point, my husband will be reading this, and I will know from the thunderous, echoing laughter coming from the vicinity of his workstation.  He looks at me, when I make these complaints in person, and just rolls his eyes and shakes his head.  The idea of me having an assistant (let alone a sentient computer designed to be able to anticipate all my needs and fulfill them) will be enough to make him fall off his chair laughing.  Of course, then I will be blamed for his sore ribs (from laughing) and his sore bottom (from falling).

But back to me and my (non-existent) free time.  It seems like there are more and more things in the world creating distractions for me.  And unfortunately, when it comes to distractions, I am weak.  I have no spine.  After all, it is way more fun to sit and watch TV or play a video game than it is to do housework, like the aforementioned laundry.  I am getting ready for a trip next week, and I am still trying to get all the laundry done and put away so that I can pack.  I also know that, no matter how much laundry I get done, someone is going to want something out of the one load I didn’t get done.  It just sort of works that way around here!

Someday, I know I will get caught up.  The laundry will all be done.  The dishes will all be washed and put away.  The living room will be dusted and vacuumed.  There will not be toys strewn all over the floor.  The boxes in the garage that haven’t been unpacked since our last move will be emptied and gone.  And all of these things will happen after the last child leaves home, and I have nothing else to do.  And that will be a sad day, indeed.  And it is coming way too soon.

I decided last week I was going to take the weekend off for Mother’s Day.  I was not going to worry about writing, just going to enjoy the weekend.  That was all well and good until Friday morning.  I was in the shower, getting ready for work, and I started thinking (always a dangerous prospect with me) and I began composing in my head.  And I remember thinking it was a really good idea for a writing topic.  It then segued into two topics that were somewhat related, with the closing of the first to be sort of an introduction for the second.  So, I decided, right there in the shower, that instead of taking the weekend off, as I had planned, I would write both topics after I got home from work.

So far, so good, except that on Saturday afternoon, we were hosting a family party for Mother’s Day.  Both sides of the family were coming to our house.  By the time I got home from work, the remainder of Friday afternoon went to straightening up the house and doing what I could to get ready for Saturday.  Still OK.  Put the toddler down for a nap, and I was ready to write.  I came in to my desk, sat down, and fired up my browser.  My home page links to my Gmail, and I saw that I had several new messages.  I went to Gmail, and found a couple of other online things I needed to take care of before I could write.  Still OK.  Should only take a few minutes.  Half-way through my short list of tasks, I started having trouble.  I called to my husband (who was at his own workstation, doing HIS thing) and asked him if he had done something to our WiFi that would interfere with my ability to access the internet.  It was about then that we realized that we had no outside phone, either (no internet, no internet phone).  Grabbed my cell phone and called our ISP.  We were part of a “known outage” that should be resolved in an hour or two.  Still OK.  I started going through my coupons, making my shopping list for the store.  By the time I got done food shopping, everything would be resolved and I could sit down and write.

The toddler woke from his nap and we headed out to the store.  When we finished our shopping, I called my husband to have the older boys ready to come out and unload the car.  He answered our house phone.  Great!  The outage had been resolved and I would hop on the web and write to my heart’s content as soon as the groceries were put away.  Still OK.  My topics were still floating around in my brain.  Maybe not as fully formed as they were in the shower that morning, but enough that I was going to have no trouble reconstructing them.  By the time I got home (five minutes later), our internet was out again.  I put the groceries away, fixed dinner, and fed the heathens.  Finished up the last of the dishes, got everything squared away for Saturday.  Still no internet.  On the phone again with the ISP.

This time I was not as nice as I had been.  I told “Cedric” (like that’s his real name) that we had been told six hours prior that we were part of a “known outage” and that the problem was supposed to be resolved five hours ago, but we still didn’t have internet.  “Cedric” said that the outage was resolved and we needed to reset our modem.  Done, but still no internet.  “Cedric” offered to have someone come out on Saturday.  I told him that was fine, as long as they could come and go before noon, as we were having our party at 1:00.  “Cedric” told me he could do this, but he had to have a phone number for the tech to call before his arrival.  I assured him someone would be home, although I would be at work.  I told “Cedric” the only phone number for the people who would be home on Saturday is our home phone, which wasn’t working BECAUSE WE HAD NO INTERNET.  The service tech could call my cell phone, but I would not answer because I would be at work.  “Cedric” said if the tech called and didn’t  get an answer, he would assume that no one is home and would cancel the service call.  Clearly, we were not getting anywhere.  My husband told me to hang up, and I told “Cedric” I would have to call him back.  The toddler and I went in and started getting ready for bed.  Still OK.  I had been reminding myself of my wonderful topics and I would be fully ready to get up in the morning and, at the very least, jot down some notes before I go to work.  I set my alarm for extra early, so that I had time to write.

Saturday morning and my alarm clock is going crazy.  I hit the snooze and went back to sleep.  Crazy buzzing again.  Time to haul my butt out of bed.  Jumped in the shower, reviewed what I was going to write about.  Got all ready for work, and, surprise, surprise, NO INTERNET.  Sigh.  Still OK.  I made a couple of notes on some scratch paper in the kitchen, and headed to work.  Once there, my boss and I had a short conversation about me leaving early to go home and get ready for the party.  That should be fine, she said, and that was the plan right up until the part where we did 1/3 of our expected business for a “normal” Saturday in an hour.  So much for leaving early.  I finally got home and set to the food preparations for lunch.  Everyone came, we ate too much, and then sat around and visited.  Still OK.  I figured I could write once everyone left.

The party was over, everything was cleaned up and I was too tired to think.  I sat down and watched some TV and veg for bit.  When I finally was ready to sit down to write, I began looking for the paper with my notes on it.  Still OK.  As long as I could find the paper, I would be able to write about whatever it was I had been thinking about in the shower on Friday morning . . . . except that I couldn’t find the paper.  I searched through all the piles on my desk.  No notes.  I kept looking, all the while racking my brains trying to figure out what it was that I had thought of in the shower.  I finally concluded that the scratch paper must have found its way into the garbage in the last-minute clean up for the party.  The most I was able to resurrect was the closing line of the first topic – the one that is the introduction to the second topic.  At this point, I will still be able to write the second one, but somehow, I feel that it will be diminished because of the missing lead in.  I had it at one point, but now it’s gone.  I am losing it.  Check that.  I have lost it.  And I will probably never get it back.

I bought a new CD recently of music of India.  As a rule, I am always open to new music, but generally I will not seek out anything beyond my realm of experience without some sort of push.  I happened to hear part of the CD one day when I was out and about, and liked what I heard enough to go ahead and buy it when I found it.  I have been listening to it in the car, and the more I listen, the more I realize I really like this CD.  Don’t worry, I am going to stop here on the gushing about the CD.  This is not a commercial and I am not endorsing that you need to go buy a copy for yourself.  Just wanted to give you the context.

Behind every great man, there is a great woman
But as Jasmine never blossoms in the shade,
So woman’s potential can be left to wither away,
Unfulfilled, when standing in the shadow of man
Still, women of the east have stood strong
and fought hard throughout time.
The determined intelligent strength of a woman,
emanating from the inside out.