Step-Parenting

I think the hardest job on Earth is step-parenting. 

This is not exactly breaking news.  The authors of Snow White and Cinderella knew it centuries ago. 

Part of the difficulty of step-parenting lies in the vagueness of the job description.  Are you supposed to be a parent?  Or just a friend?  An adult friend?  (What is an adult friend, exactly?)  Should you try to be a pal, like a popularity contest?  Or more like a teacher?  How much--if any--authority do you have?  

I love my step-daughters and we get along well.  But, nine years ago we adopted two eight-year-old girls from an orphanage in Russia.  They were from the opposite side of the planet from us.  If you get a globe and put one finger on their hometown and one on mine, you can suspend the globe in the air.

They spoke no English and had experienced massive loss, BUT--parenting them has been a stroll through a flower garden in May compared to parenting step-children.

Why should this be true?

Most relationships go like this:  Boy meets Girl

Let's call them, "Tom" and, "Sylvia"...

What's important in this relationship dynamic?  

It's how Tom feels about Sylvia...

And how Sylvia feels about Tom.

This is love in it's simplest, easiest form

Relationships are tough, though.  Think how many fail.  All relationships face daunting odds.

But, if both Tom and Sylvia have children...

The relationship dynamic looks more like this:

How Susie feels about Kate

And how Anna feels about Tom.

How Anna feels about Kate and how Kate feels about Tom...

How Tom feels about Anna and how Anna feels about Susie and how Susie feels about Sylvia and how Kate feels about Erin and how Susie feels about Anna and how Erin feels about Susie and how Kate feels about Tom and how Erin feels about Anna and how Sylvia feels about Kate and how Erin feels about Anna...

All these arrows lead to stress...

Mayhem ensues...

It's tough being a step-parent.

(I didn't draw the arrows that go out to Tom's and Sylvia's parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends or the children's other parents.  I wanted to, but Google doesn't allow that large of a post in one blog)

The Plav-Ex Man

I've learned that anything can be delivered these days.  I knew that groceries, horse wormer paste and furniture could be delivered right to your door...but, did you know that you can also have prescription drugs delivered?  Now you don't have to worry with those little pill boxes that say, Mon Tues Wed on their flip tops.

 Every day, your front doorbell rings, and Viola!  The Plav-Ex man is there!

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Consenting Adults

Lots of nurses get consent forms signed for open heart surgery and other procedures.  

I have heard it argued, "Just ask the patient if the doctor has explained everything to them and then get their signature.  You are only witnessing that it's their signature."

That is a legal nightmare.  Patients are frequently under the influence of many mind-altering drugs.   They often report later that they can't remember anything anyone told them.   If I wasn't present when the doctor talked to the patient, how can I say that the patient understands?  I was at home in bed! 

I'm supposed to ask a drugged, very sick person to sign that they are okay to have a complicated surgery (which I probably don't understand) and then put my name by that?   A lawyer would destroy me in court.  

If I had been to school as long as the average surgeon, I think I might be able to remember to take a consent form in the room with me when I talked to the patient. 

Blackmailers VS Child Molesters

We had a young lady from Thailand live with us for a year through the AFS program.  She was bright and eager, and I learned a lot from her.  Living with people from other countries lets you glimpse your culture through their eyes.  Sometimes the results are--unexpected.

When I took her to our high school to register, she paused in the entryway.  She stared open-mouthed at the imposing pirate statue  that guards the entrance.  The statue is every stereotype of a pirate--black hat with the Jolly Roger, peg leg, eye patch. 

The young lady turned to me, swallowed hard and asked, "What is that?"

I explained that it was our mascot.  Did she understand what a mascot is?  It's a symbol to fight or rally under.  Our school's mascot is the pirate.   Did she know what a pirate was?

This young woman--born and raised in Thailand--answered quietly, "Yes.  A murderer on the sea."

So, she really DID know what a pirate was.

Sex Education

Let's talk about sex.

First, can we just admit that sex is a weird thing to do?

No?  

Imagine someone came up and poked their finger in your ear.  Would you say, "Ohhhh, yes! YES!!  MORE!! MORE!!" ?

Or would you yell, "Get your finger out of my ear!" ?

Another person shoving a portion of their body into one of your orifices is bizarre.  What kind of evolutionary sleight of hand caused us to do this?

And what kind of sick pervert WANTS to stick their finger into someone's ear?  There's dirt and skin flakes and orange wax in there!  Why would anyone do it? 

Why would anyone PAY to do it?

But, wait!  It gets worse!  Sex has many bad outcomes associated with it. 

Here are some of them:

 Nasty smelling pus dripping from unmentionable parts

Painful warts, blisters and growths cropping up on other parts

Your body insane with hormones, swelling, distorted and mapped with stretch marks

After nine months of waddling around, an additional eighteen years of discomfort

And, the ultimate bad outcome...

You wouldn't think that sex would be a difficult thing to give up.  

 

Love and Pain

What is love?

Ahh--the eternal question.  Is it fate?  Or just chemistry?  Is it our destiny to bond with one special person, or are there many possible mates out there for each of us?

Who do we fall in love with?  We fall in love with the people around us.  It's not romantic; no one's going to write a sonnet or make an epic movie about that, but it's true.  The twin to your soul may be milking goats right now in Kazakhstan, chopping soybeans in Uruguay or weaving mats in Angola, but if your paths never cross, that potential will never be actualized. 

We fall in love with the people we see.  The cashier in the supermarket.  The guy down the street.  The girl across the hall.  Why?  Because THOSE ARE OUR OPTIONS.

If a 13 year old girl protested to her annoyed mom, "But I love him!", her mom would probably say something like, "You don't know what love is!"

But, fourteen year olds have very strong emotions.  Watch the news; people steal and kill in the name of love.  And not just teenagers.  Adults leave their homes, families, countries and children.  Kingships have been abdicated.

I think that love is like pain.  Nurses are taught, "Pain is what the patient says it is".  Since it is impossible to know, we have to take their word for it.


We have been fed a steady diet by the media of how love should look and feel.  Those are fairytales.  They are misleading and unrealistic and provide a very distorted idea about what a relationship is.

Love doesn't look like this:

Arranged marriages have a high success rate for a reason.  Emotion doesn't cloud the issue.  Two sets of parents--who presumably know their children well--negotiate for the best bargain.  

That's what relationships are:  negotiations for the best bargain.  You must be willing to accept someone who is less than perfect, because--guess what?  YOU are less than perfect.

Rather than staking your future on a labile emotion, use some logic. Your mate needs to be three things:  a partner, a lover and a friend. 

The partner is someone who you might go into business with.  They are willing to work and don't squander money.

The lover is someone you are physically attracted to and enjoy having sex with.

The friend is someone you want to be with and talk to.   

Our feelings are not constant enough to base big decisions on them.  Fireworks always burn out.   Find someone who can be your partner, lover and friend.  And consider yourself the second luckiest person in the world!

The first luckiest being me.

2 L

Riddle Revelations

1.  The woman has given birth











2.  The girls are two of a set of triplets










3.  The surgeon is the boy's mother








4.  It is day in the Little Town of Night







5.  Jim is a cat, Susan is a goldfish







6.  Six





7.  He was playing baseball.






8.  To see if the man will come back.  (He obviously has some connection to the family.)





9.  She is his sister







10.  There is one dead rabbit left in the field--a dead rabbit.  The others hopped off after the gunshot.






11.  Since you only have one question to ask and you aren't sure about either the door or the parrot, you have to ask a question that will solve both unknowns.  You have to ask one parrot about the other parrot.  "Will the other parrot tell me that this door (point to a door) leads to safety?"  If you are pointing to the door to safety, the lying parrot will say, "No" (the lying parrot only tells lies, and since he knows that the truth-telling parrot will tell you that this IS the right door, he will say the opposite).  If you are pointing to the door that leads to safety and you ask that same question of the truth-telling parrot, you will get the same answer, "No."

If you point to the door to danger and ask, both parrots will say, "Yes."  So, this is the way to get the same answer from both birds.  Ask one parrot one question.  If you get a "No," take that door.  If you get a "Yes," take the opposite door.







12.  White.  They started at the North Pole.








13.  "Switch horses."









14.  The Jester pulled out a slip of paper and started laughing and leaping about, kissing the paper and cartwheeling and finally--swallowed it.  When the king, furious, said, "You didn't show us the paper!" the Jester answered, "Oh, sorry.  I got too excited.  Well, let's just pull out the OTHER slip of paper and it will prove that my paper was not the one with the X on it."  In front of the whole court, what can the king do?





15.  This seems impossible, but it is actually very common to see something that no one has ever seen before.  Every time you crack open an egg, a nut or slice open an apple or a peach, you are seeing something no one has ever seen before.  They've never seen the inside of THAT apple.







16.  They died in an plane crash.  It is the cabin of an airplane.







17.  She saw the world outside the cellar.  She had been locked up in the cellar all her life.







18.  The barber is a woman.







19.  They're talking about the night she was born.







20.  It's his son.






21.   You turn on the first switch and leave it on for five minutes.  Then you turn it off and turn on the second switch.  You hurry up the stairs and look at the light.  If the light is on, it's the second switch.  If the light is off, you touch it and if it's warm, it was the first switch.  If it's off and cold, it's the third switch.

22. The President is living there in the White House

23.  Coffin

24.  Ring

25.  They are a group of musicians

26.  It's a deck of cards

27.  All the children are boys

28.  She's a justice of the peace

29.  The letter E

30.  nothing

31. "I want to die of old age."

32.  Dr. Taft removed the appendix from Jed's first wife.   Jed has remarried.

33.  It makes him more money to cut two people's hair.

IMPORTANT PEOPLE

Sometimes it's difficult to tell who the IMPORTANT PEOPLE are.   It is crucial to be able to spot  IMPORTANT PEOPLE, so you can spit out your gum, sit up straight, smooth your hair and stash your National Enquirer when they stride by.

Here are three key characteristics of IMPORTANT PEOPLE: 

First--IMPORTANT PEOPLE are always in a hurry.  Their time is valuable, so they can't waste it standing in line, holding doors or talking to unimportant people.  They aren't rude; they're IMPORTANT!

Second--IMPORTANT PEOPLE are always holding a clipboard.  I'm not sure what is on it--maybe the phone number of the local Dunkin DoNuts?




 

Third--IMPORTANT PEOPLE carry pagers.  They need to be accessible all the time, so they carry multiple pagers with duplicating functions.  The more pagers they carry, the more IMPORTANT a person is!  If your pants sag indecently from the weight of all your pagers, you are VERY IMPORTANT!  

Santa Incarnate

Sometimes I wonder--what if Santa's life had turned out differently?  What if, instead of being Jolly Old Saint Nick who brings toys on Christmas Eve, Santa had taken a different path entirely?



Hippie Santa

Wall Street Santa

PLUMBER SANTA

Farmer Santa

ARMY SANTA

Stripper Santa

Evangelist Santa

RaPpeR SaNtA

It makes you wonder what other possibilities your own life might have held...

Doggone Humans

Many people think dog behavior is strange.  But human behavior would probably seem strange to a dog.  To illustrate this, let's transpose some common human and dog behaviors:

Meet and Greet 

Establishing Dominance
 

Marking Territory

Maybe dog behavior is not so strange after all.

Holiday Hints

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Hospital Fairies

Hospitals are inhabited by many fairies.  Here are some of the more common ones:

Cleaning Fairy

Whenever equipment gets thrown into the Soiled Utility Room, the Cleaning Fairy appears.  Everything is magically cleaned and put back into its proper place! 

Trash Fairy and Dirty Linen Fairy

 

These two fairies are often seen together.  When the trash is overflowing and the linen bags are exploding, the Trash Fairy and Dirty Linen Fairy appear!  Poof!! The room looks presentable again!

Label Fairy

When nurses don't understand that the backing on the green  IV tubing labels is supposed to be PEELED OFF before it is wrapped around the IV tubing, the Label Fairy appears.  You will find her squashed underfoot on the floor near the IV pole.

Poopee Fairy

There is a special incantation that brings about the Poopee Fairy.  If the offgoing nurse says, "Well, they were clean the last time I checked them," the Poopee Fairy swoops in! 

ICU Centerfold

The public has a lot of misconceptions about healthcare.  I've decided the best way to educate people about what "doing everything" really means is for me to start my own magazine.  It will be stocked in the supermarket checkout line next to the glossy covers announcing sex scandals and pregnancy rumors. 

My magazine will have articles, graphs, statistics and data that no one ever reads--BUT, it will also have a centerfold!  Just like Playboy and Penthouse!

 Except my centerfold will have to fold out the other way...

America loves pictures!  Maybe it will make someone think twice...

Or, maybe not.  The human capacity for denial is amazing.

Relationship Timeline

Men and women view relationships differently.  I asked a male co-worker recently if he was in a serious relationship.  

He said, "Define serious."  

It is pretty tough to define. 

After much deliberation, I came up with timelines to show how relationships progress from first meeting to total intimacy. 

Nurse's Note: Each sex has its own timeline.  Sometimes the timelines converge, sometimes they part abruptly.

Day 0

Day 3

Around this point, the timelines diverge...

They continue to run separately...

...merging occasionally. 

The timeline splits again...

...but rejoins at the toilet. 

That's the answer.  If you can use the toilet in front of someone, it's definitely a serious relationship. 

Ballot Ballad

Politics are a divisive topic.  People argue as if anyone who disagrees with their position must have extensive brain damage.  But, the choices are not that clear.  That's why there are two parties and so much campaigning.  Rarely is either candidate completely illiterate, a nudist or a bank robber.  They are usually toilet-trained, have had their shots and can add some double-digit numbers. 

It is unlikely that you will see the following ballot: