. Spinning .

As a onetime volunteer ambulance driver and EMT, I can’t tell you how happy I am to have come across this article about using USB drives just as Medic Alert bracelets giving medical information. 

Once in charge of a blood pressure clinic regularly taken at the local Sundowners Club for the town’s elderly, I not only pushed the folks into filling out short medical forms of pertinent information and storing them in their home refrigerators in bright colored vials where we were trained to check for them, but had made up a book that was carried in the ambulance at all times containing the blood pressure stats on those of my elderly folks who agreed to allow it.  I realized that while I was used to the peculiarities of each of their readings, other medical personal on duty would not be as familiar and might mistake a particularly high reading as a danger sign whereas I knew that it was normal and controlled by medication, or worse, a low pressure reading as normal when it in fact might be a serious sign.

The USB drive can obviously give more detailed information about patient meds, history, doctors, etc. and I can see it as becoming essential on ambulances and in the ERs.

God bless whoever thought of using technology to this end, and I don’t care if he makes a ton of money from the idea.

As I put away all the things of Christmas, and of the year past as well, I come across two little figures of a snowman and snowwoman, smiling, dressed in gay green and red scarves and little more.  This is part of my own tradition, started when we first were married fourteen years ago; a matching ornament couple for every year–how could I not have trimmed the tree?

But the year had been a hard one, filled with loss and grief–but joy as well; for even as I lost two dearly loved ones, there were five more that came too close that I am grateful for escaping tragedy.  Job and school and money worries now seem trivial; whatever happens is surely survivable, and if not, then faith alone is what carries one forth from there.

And while the winter is a cold and bitter time, the softly falling feathers make up a bed of snow that sparkles when I turn the back porch light on in the night, and the tracks of something that skittered across the patio in passing, do lead somewhere, don’t they, after all?

Time to admit I have a problem.  I live for my computer.

While my winters are usually spent in a semi-hibernative mode, rousing when driven by need before snuggling back into a stupor on the couch at all odd hours (tonight, slept from somewheres after seven to after ten, but usually wake at around two in the morning), I’m finding that the first thing I reach for when I awake is my laptop.

Yeah, yeah, I can justify the use by necessary classwork, writing whims, creative impulse, etc., but it seems that wherever I sit, Del’s there with me.  I’m actually surprised my computers last as long as they do since they’re on 24/7, and only get a rest via their slumber function to take advantage of my own internal time clock for a catnap between duties.

Actually, this realization of my own dependency makes me realize the necessity of getting back to fixing the computer (my dad’s) that we gave to a five-year old whose family couldn’t afford one, but the little boy (at the daycare in Bridgeport where my sister works) was so hot on computers that we wanted to make sure he had one.  I’m severely traumatizing him, I’m sure, by not getting it back to him within a couple weeks.  But then again, it looks to me like he or his mom wiped out the hard drive.  I’ve got to look into it first thing in the morning.

Tried to recapture that old creative feeling in the shower this a.m., where thoughts, it seems, are caught within each droplet joining into wet sheets of warmth that run from head to toe and spark up all the senses.

My first thought was of an orange–well, a clemantine, exactly–and how such a small common ball of fruit is fruitful in its feeding all the senses.  Bright, brighter, brightest of the secondary colors. The textures–orange peel of course, the first one thought of; yet the soft, felt-like feel of the protection of that cream-white inner surface.  And the plump yet giving segments, each in its own resistent veil that pierced discloses tiny sacs of pulp with all their sweet juices within.  The aroma of the fruit starts with the peeling, and changes as the layers are attacked and won.  And finally, the prize of taste.

Then just when I began to feel that this was a forced creative exercise, the water running off my head created a curtain of my hair over my ears, and for a while I was in another world.  Outside sounds cut off, yet water pounding somewhere from the top an seemingly inside my head, produced such a feeling of detachment from the world.  Heavenly, eyes closed, a space in which I found such peace and solitude yet felt as one with all the time of present, past and future.  I don’t really know just how long I stood there, but broke the spell before I drifted into a self-induced hypnotic trance.  It was awesome, and I never could, with some attempt, repeat the completely perfect position that brought me there again.

This thought has been swimming in my brain a while, put off for seeking eloquence, a better way of saying it, and yet if this be my last year (or the next one, or the next), time is of the essence then and bold or silly, let the words come out.

Suck the stick.

The sweet iciness of a popsicle–think about it now; the fulfillment of the senses, answering to heat and appetite and its prettiness of color, its smoothness running through your lips, and though my favorite is the blue, the scent of cherries that halos around the pink.  It freezes the tongue that lovingly wraps around its twin obelisks even as it feeds the need for cold and flavorful pleasures.  If one is quick enough, no melting will occur but in the mouth, no droplets wasted on the sidewalk or in the case of caution, in a napkin wrapped around the wooden sticks like mother taught to do.

Taste its  flavor, feel its satisfying and refreshing coolness, risk the brain-freeze and the pain for what its worth.

And while the idea wrinkles noses, experience the core of it as well, for it is just a different flavor and without it there could be no enjoyment of the icy goodness either; go ahead and suck the flavor from the wooden stick.

My mood has improved with the discovery of a key that got me finally off the streets of Silent Hill and into a new area to explore, and a prime rib roast dinner with Yorkshire Pudding I made tonight.

Ah, life is good again.