nurse candy

At the very least I can say with almost full confidence that I have never forgotten to put pants on.

My mother has never been the Joan Cleaver type of mom I've always longed for. She never made cookies or even dinner that didn’t come in the form a combo meal straight from a drive-thru window. By the age of eight I was doing my own laundry and making my best attempts at peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. On occasion I wrote myself love notes to put into my lunches to make the other girls seep with jealousy that was barely containable within their plaid jumpers and knee socks. By then my penmanship was already at a 5th grade level and could certainly pass any handwriting analysis my classmates might employ.

Rather than ironing my socks with light starch or meticulously organizing my vast collection of nude and sometimes headless Barbie dolls, my mother was much more likely to wake us up at 6am for a game of Find the Bra. It was a regular occurrence for us to search the house and surrounding areas for the bra she was about to put on that morning and had somehow managed to misplace at some point in the time it took her to have her morning coffee and put on her makeup. On two separate occasions I found her bra in the freezer.

To describe my mother as unpredictable would be a gross understatement. In fact her eccentricities are so common it would be delusional to hope for any indication of the mundane. The problem is you just never know exactly what new adventure she has in store that day.

My mother has worked as a nurse in an assortment of pregnancy clinics, gyno offices, and breast treatment facilities and always carries with her an ample supply of inappropriate stories. But more importantly, her occupation in combination with her name has resulted in a witty yet descriptive nickname that my sister and I regularly exhaust: Nurse Candy.

Several weeks ago – against my better judgment – I invited a gentleman friend back home to experience all that is Buffalo, New York in February. Aside from the obvious excitement he had in venturing to a great cultural metropolis, he had little idea what to expect from Nurse Candy.

I gave her a solid four hour head start to primp herself and hide any of her penis and/or vagina diagrams she unapologetically leaves around the house before arriving. When we got there I’m not sure what was more embarrassing, the fact that she welcomed us into the house garbed in a bathrobe at 3pm or the fact that the bathrobe was untied exposing her bottomless nether region.

Unfazed by her appearance, Nurse Candy welcomed us into the house mid-robe fumble and with a hug.

the midwest

I recently started up a new project that has brought me to wholesome, God-fearing towns in Minnesota bearing colorful names like Shakopee and Minnehaha. Monday through Thursday I am trapped in Middle America hell. There are outdated hair styles, - my favorite of which belongs to Marjorie who proudly sports a bowl cut and makes no apologies for it - chain restaurants as far as the eye can see, and hallways filled with women exchanging their latest casserole recipes.

Two weeks ago I was on my way into the corporate headquarters of the world's largest agriculture producer and marketer. Because much of the mid-west operates on a farmer's schedule, I was forced to drag myself into the office well before sunrise, silently cursing the fact that I wasn't still in bed. As I walked into the lobby half-awake/half-dead, I approached what appeared to be a woman dressed in a gigantic red foam vagina. Immediately I perked up. Finally something to crack Minnesota's squeaky clean image! I had approximately ten steps of gleeful excitement that there just might be a protest or [gasp] that a meth addict had somehow stumbled into the lobby in a drug-induced rampage. I tingled anticipating the possibilities.

But just as soon as my hopes for a more thrilling Midwest were lifted, reality kicked back in. My dreams of a foam vagina were squashed as I realized she was actually dressed a tbone steak promoting a meat raffle to benefit the food kitchens for the larger Minneapolis area. I didn't end up winning the raffle, but I think I was actually more disappointed that something that had started with so many possibilities resulted in something so mundane.

Later that same day as I was making my sprint to the airport (by far my favorite activity each week), I was stuck behind a semi-truck transporting chickens on their way to slaughter. This reminded me of a discussion I had earlier about saving money by cramming more chickens into a space intended for one (let's set aside ethics on this one). But before I could get too lost in the calculations and the quality of life debate, I was jolted into a momentary panic. I was engulfed in feathers and speeding down a highway in near whiteout conditions. Windshield wipers are vital in situations like this.

That same day I decided that I am in fact a city girl.

consulting

I'm feeling like a total idiot lately and it's to the point where I almost don't even care anymore. I'm so uninterested in what I'm doing that I can't even pretend to care. I don't want to be here and I'm completely checked out. My only incentive right now is to keep my job so I don't end up homeless.

If I wasn't doing this, what would I be doing? I wish I knew the answer to that. I wish I was doing something where I felt like I was actually making a difference in someone's life or the world or a dust speck for that matter. I wish I was creating/destroying/changing something... anything!

Instead I sit in meetings for hours discussing such riveting topics as: how to submit a request form, a meeting to discuss making meetings more efficient, and what is meant by the term "complete."

[sigh]

I guess this is what consulting is supposed to be and why it's so difficult to define. Regardless, I think I'm over the hype.

the self hug

I don't talk a lot but I over think things... a lot... pretty much every second of the day. So much so I often get lost in my own head with little regard for what's happening around me.

I like to think about the drops of water left in the sink after washing my hands and wonder if they miss each other. Or what happens to the breath that exits one person's lungs and enters another and if it's innately altered afterward. Or if its some sort of cosmic balance that you laugh on the inhale and I snort when something is uncontrollably funny.

I have this habit that anyone who has spent more than a day with me has picked up on. I can't really explain why I do it, why I need to do it, why I breathe to do it. I'm horribly self-conscious about it and can't explain it in the slightest.

I tell people it's "the self-hug" and it is. It happens when I'm about to burst out of my body with happiness and I'm too embarrassed to say anything about it because I fear it's too strange to mention.

Would it be strange to tell you that your one gray hair makes me giddy? Or that watching a brewing pot of coffee makes me tingle in anticipation? Or that I rehearse you saying, "Give me your little paw," over and over in my head because I secretly love it?

I'm weird. I know.

[self hug]