Farmer Gene

I grew up on a farm.

Surrounded by farmers.

Autumn was a time of much activity. Corn and beans were picked, with combines and grain trucks running late into the evening. The slightly musty smell of dusty cornstalks and freshly tilled earth filled the air and settled on all the furniture. The grain bin fan was my lullaby.

Consequently, even though my 'farm' consists of four raised beds no larger than 6x8 each, when November rolls around, I have the uncontrollable urge to put up 'crops' and put the farm to bed.

I manage to refrain from the desire to run out and buy a pair of overalls...

Our garden was pretty sad this year. I got a passable crop of lettuce and radishes. I think we managed to find about 8 grape tomatoes. But where Miracle Grow dirt failed at zucchini and peppers, it excelled at carrots.

Weird, toe-shaped carrots.

But no matter their anatomical shape, they remain sweet and crisp.

Which is why I am roasting them for dinner.

I am just not sure how much longer I can open the crisper drawer and see that zipper bag full of orange tarsals.

 Roasted Carrots

as many carrots as will fit on a baking sheet

toss with enough olive oil to coat

sprinkle with salt, pepper and around 1-2 Tbs of fresh, crushed thyme and rosemary

roast at 400 for 20 minutes or until of desired doneness.

Drizzle with balsamic vinegar reduction

I had better luck with my herbs.

If you have never gardened and have the tiniest desire to give it a try, I highly recommend herbs. They are forgiving of most transgressions – failure to water, feed, weed, water... And there is nothing better than adding a fresh picked handful of basil to spaghetti sauce or lording it over a co-worker that you have fresh tarragon on the sauteed mushroom...

I mean adding some freshly picked rosemary to homemade bread.

As it was, I nearly missed getting the last of my basil picked.

Thank you 39 degree day last week.

But the basil stood strong with only a few brown leaves. And once it was picked and cleaned there was just enough for one last batch of pesto. 

 Pesto

1- 2 cups fresh basil

1-3 cloves of garlic

1/4 or so cups of pine nuts

drizzles of olive oil

blend to a paste

Add to pasta sauce, salad dressing, or use as a topping on toast when the hipsters have nabbed all the avocados.

(As you can tell, pesto is not an exact science. But, it tastes wonderful and smells even better. You can keep it in the fridge for around a week or bag it in small zip lock baggies and freeze for later use. Preferable in the dead of winter when the scent of fresh basil makes you forget the fact that you haven't seen the yard flamingo in 3 weeks as its buried under twelve feet of snow.)

Rosemary also outperformed this year. 

Sadly, rosemary does not over-winter on this Coast. I have tried repotting and bringing it inside but I just can't bear to watch as those beautiful fragrant leaves pine for the great wide open and slowly shrivel and die.

This year I cut the plant back to about 6 inches in height, mulched it with half a ton of leaves (leaving only 17.5 tons on the grass to be mulched) and brought the remaining stalks in to dry. Where I can watch it shrivel and turn brown but without the guilt of seeing the entire plant fade to a pitiful twig.

I have only recently arrived at a love of rosemary. But I am making up for lost time. I love adding it to roasted veggies (see carrots above) and homemade breads.

Or if you are short on the homemade bread department, you can add it to softened butter and spread it on whatever bread type product you have.

Plus it just looks so homey hanging in the window. 

I managed to finish up my tiny harvest just in time to watch as the storms began to blow in.

See all those leaves on those trees?

Tomorrow morning they will all be in our back yard.

Even though they are on the neighbor's trees.

Across the street.

And I will enjoy watching Rob push the mulching mower over them as I eat pesto toast for breakfast and prepare to clean all the furniture which is coated with leaf dust.

Its not grain bins and combines, but it will do.

Haunting

The house was quiet, save for the muffled thud of clothes in the dryer. Outside autumn blustered its way in with gusting breezes which sent falling leaves into a frenzied swirl. The kitchen was warm and smelled slightly of pumpkin as soup simmered on the stove.

All in all a pleasant morning.

But the woman was restless. She drank her coffee and glanced cautiously at the phone. It lay on the table in a mocking silence. The minutes passed. The phone remained still. The woman grew nervous, afraid to consider the consequences.

Still the phone refused to ring....

Welcome to my morning.

I am off but on-call.

Every hospital workers' nightmare.

On-call is a mixed bag.

Get called in – it's time and a half. And sometimes a bonus on top.

But

Get called in – and it's no longer a day off.

Do you know how many things I can think to do on my on-call day?

Five. Just off the top of my head.

Get called in and you know how many things get done?

ZERO.

But so far, it is 1050 and that phone remains silent.

I started a load of wash.

I put a pot of soup on.

I messaged our son to stop by for dinner.

Contingent on the silence of the Phone....

Now I am flying in the face of all that is evil and work related and have started a new blog post...

It's nearly Halloween. According to every scary movie I have ever watched, no good can come of this. 

This is NOT my house. Because there is clearly a little girl ghost in that attic window...and I draw the line a little girl ghosts...

Why oh why is it so fun to be scared?

Not real life scared: Will the kids get home safe? Just what will that biopsy show? Which line will our political leaders cross today?

Oh no. I am not talking that sort of scared.

I'm talking that reading a Stephen King book right before bedtime after watching the Walking Dead sort of scared.

Scary movies are on a continuous loop around here in October if I am in charge of the remote.

My husband hates them. Too much shrieking and silliness.

Thankfully my son loves them. Together we watched that poor woman get sucked down the well in The Ring. We discovered that daylight is the best time to watch a bootleg version of Paranormal Activity. And covering your EARS is way better than covering your eyes when watching The Grudge.

(Although it is still possible to scare the beejeezus out of each other by making that ehehehehe sound as you creep down the dark hallway.)

I am fairly certain my first truly scary movie was The Legend of Hell House circa 1973. I would have been 12. I remember sitting in my Grandma's living room, mesmerized by a handsome Roddy McDowell. I have no idea why I was watching this movie in my grandparent's living room. We rarely watched TV at their house and we certainly wouldn't have been allowed to watch something with HELL in the title. I don't know where my siblings were. Or my parents. I do recall it was night time.

The movie was scary and awesome and I have been hooked ever since.

Keep in mind, I am talking scary. Not slashery.

I have no use for torture and murder.

Give me good ghost story any day.

Which makes a lot of sense.

St. Louis has a rich history of hauntings: The Lemp Mansion, The Bissel Mansion, the library at UMSL, Alexian Brothers Hospital... This is just the beginning.

I have had dinner at the Lemp Mansion – the former home of the Lemp family of brewers in the 1800s. Several family members killed themselves in the house, it was rumored that a 'monkey boy' was housed in the attic, a sister was certified insane and there may have been a murder...

The place was creepy from the start. Lights flickered and the hair literally stood up on the back of my neck when I walked into the ladies room. You can stay at the Lemp, IF YOU ARE INSANE!

I worked at Alexian Brothers Hospital for nearly 15 years. The current building sits on the grounds where the original hospital was built and where part of the exorcism in the movie The Exorcist occurred. Several of the brothers who were involved in that event still lived and worked on the grounds. We were told in orientation to NEVER ask about the exorcism. So I didn't. But I can tell you that many evenings, while working in the OR suites with one other nurse, there were mysterious doors slamming and footsteps where there were no people.

We live in a haunted house. Mrs. Durbin passed in our kitchen and she stops by every now and then to open a cupboard door or have a smoke in the basement. No one would support my opinion on this guest until the evening my husband and I both felt the cat walk across the back of the sofa. The cat who was asleep in his box on the opposite side of the room....

This was in the rafters of our basement. Wisely, Rob made it into a tray, coated it with many layers of mod-podge to seal in the evil and then we gave it to our daughter's boyfriend's parents. I think that makes us ecto-plamically related now...

But its okay.

Maybe it's because I have spent most of my life in hospitals where the line between life and death is all to clear.

I have heard that these 'hauntings' are just the energy left over from previous lives. In a weird way I find this comforting. I like the idea that some energy is strong enough to remain behind and touch the future.

Some would argue that not all that strong energy is 'good'. True, there is a lot of bad energy in the world. I want to believe that bad energy burns itself out over time, provided it is not allowed to gain momentum.

Which is all the more reason to put only GOOD energy out there. Embrace that energy from previous lives and roll it into one big monumentous wave.

And think how wonderful it would be to be described as haunting...

Random Thoughts, A Food Truck and Meet Monty

A word of warning for all you guys who read this blog: This post begins with many lady-words. Grab a beer, put your hand down your pants and skim down to the photos if you wish. However, the photos DO NOT have anything to do with lady-words.

So just settle down.

I have been wanting to update the Coast for quite some time. I have numerous ideas and photos but as it turns out, the link between my brain and the actual words has been disconnected.

My brain has turned to mush.

You see, I stopped my hormone replacement therapy (HRT) about 10 weeks ago. I was having headaches and discovered the one constant was the medication I was taking at bedtime. Stopped the med and the headaches stopped. Instantly!

DISCLAIMER: HRT is a personal choice and starting as well as stopping should be down after discussion with your MD. Which I have done extensively for my own personal issues.

Anyway, once I had no more headaches I felt great.

For about six weeks.

And then the hot flashes restarted. But this time they are accompanied by insomnia and freeze flashes.

SERIOUSLY?

It seems my hypothalamus has decided to play thermo-roulette.

Add to that the ten thousand degree humidity here on the Coast of Illinois and I can go from zero to five thousand degrees in 2.2 seconds then just as quickly spiral downward to negative thirty-two. This sudden freeze is new to me. I have always been a pretty thermo-neutral person.

It does me no good to put on a sweater – the freeze doesn't last that long. And as to rolling up my shirt to air out...well, that is STILL socially unacceptable in most situations.

Consequently, I have been on the AttentionDeficit Express.

My sweet husband, in an attempt to settle me down, surprised me with an overnight stay in Grafton, Illinois-(more on that in an upcoming post)- and while it was wonderful and relaxing and delicious, all I could think of as I sat on the hotel deck on Sunday morning, sipping my coffee and watching the barge boats, was this: Just how many people have used this hotel coffee maker to wash their underwear?

You know what? I don't care! Underwear coffee is delish. Especially when sitting outside watching the actual working Coast of Illinois.

A thought put in my head by a discussion with my so-called friends regarding just how clean hotel rooms really are.

Why? Why do you people do this to me?

Back to reality, and work, I found that taking melatonin does help me feel sleepy. However feeling sleepy and actually sleeping are two different things. On night six of barely sleeping I was so tired I honestly couldn't open my eyes yet I couldn't fall asleep. (I highly suggest this torture as a way to truly weed out our presidential candidates.)

I spoke with the nurse at my doctor's office, and after she finished laughing at my discovery that stopping HRT causes a return of hot flashes and insomnia, she offered to send me out a sleep aid.

I am terrified of these pills.

I feel I would be entirely too susceptible to sleep eating, sleep driving and sleep gambling – which I can only assume I would be just as bad at as awake gambling.

Being the health-care professional that I am, I did what most people do. I ignored the doctor's advice and after working three 10-hour shifts in a major trauma center when the 1000 beds available were all full yet people continue to shoot, run-over and fail to take actual care of themselves, I returned home, changed the sheets, bathed in a lavender 'sleep' bath, sprayed the new sheets with lavender 'sleep' spray. I ignored the news, Facebook and all other social media, opened the window – as our AC was out due to a Wizard of Oz worthy storm – and passed out.

It is amazing what an actual good night sleep will do.

I am still not quite back to normal.

There are some who would argue that I have never been there.

But I am beginning to feel a little more like myself.

I have continued to limit my exposure to the hyper-insane news.

I am hiding everyone who posts ridiculous, poorly researched news items on Facebook.

I have started exercising again.

And I am making myself sit down and write.

I apologize if this post is not quite up to my usual silliness.

Let me make it up to you with this pictorial.

I call it:

My 70-Something Parents Meet Their First Food Truck!

This is the General Sherman Hot Dog Truck. It stopped at our local grocery store.

This is Dad. He is ordering two hot dogs. And a water. And a root beer. He is fuzzy because it is ONE MILLION DEGREES OUTSIDE.

This is Mom. This outing was part of her birthday celebration. She and I decided to split a dog.  Nothing but the best for Mom!

It seems the mustard was a little more difficult than anticipated. You can do it Mom!

While the folks wanted to take their hot dogs home to dine in the comfort of air conditioning, I made them eat outside, standing up like proper food truck hipsters. The dogs were delish.

And then we went in to grocery shop and LOOK! An ice cream sundae bar set up just for us! Don't you love when the world works in your favor!

Stay cool everyone! This is the time of year when we must remember – Come January temps in the zeros we will be praying for July again!!

 

Say hello to Monty! He has finally made his way to his station outside our front door. 

 Welcome to the Coast of Illinois!

Accentuate the Positive

It is early Sunday morning.

The cat has taken up his morning spot on one of the deck chair cushions, placed specifically for him. A squirrel is cursing me for interrupting his breakfast by moving a finch feeder. The One Million cicadas in the back yard have brought the decibels down to intermission levels.

I am sitting at the patio table, a cup of coffee cooling beside me – which is pretty impressive considering the 100% humidity.

I am looking forward at a pool party, a family bbq and two more days of downtime.

Labor Day Weekend on the Coast of Illinois.

But, across the river, in a very big hospital is a tiny little girl, the daughter of a co-worker.I have only met this cutie a couple of times but she is the person I have been thinking the most of the past few days.

She is facing a very big test. It is not the sort of test which Dora the Explorer or the Bubble Guppies could begin to help her prepare for.

Nor is it the sort of test that falls in the miscellaneous category at the back of parenting books.

There is very little grading curve. But she is one tough little cookie.

Positive is the word of the day.

As a rule, I try to use this forum for happy, silly thoughts. I don't want to compromise anyone else with my ramblings. And I certainly don't want to be that person who seeks to gain from another's difficulty.

But as a nurse, I know how important positive thinking is.

Which is why today, I am challenging you.

From this point on – for the next 24 hours – I challenge you to think and speak only positive thoughts.

No complaints.

No excuses.

And NO WHINING.

Let there be a tidal wave of positive thoughts, prayers and energy crash onto the Coast.

Have a safe and happy holiday weekend.

Laura.
(9-1-14 UPDATE - Little Girl passed her first big test and is moving forward  to be placed on the heart transplant list. Not an easy thing to do for a tiny 4 year old. Keep those positive vibes coming!)

"Accentuate The Positive"

You've got to accentuate the positive
eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
But don't mess with mister inbetween

You've got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
have faith, a pandemonium
Libel to walk up on the scene

To illustrate my last remark
Jonah in the Whale, Noah in the ark
What did they do
just when everything looked so dark

They said we better
accentuate the positive
eliminate the negative
latch on to the affirmative
But don't mess with mister inbetween

(Sam Cooke)

http://youtu.be/fZUmAbi0Vm4

Well That can't be Good for Anyone...

Still under the Changing Season - Can't Focus disease. But wanted to stop off and say HI from the Coast.
Saw this sign pasted to an I-beam under the oldest bridge to cross the Mississippi.
So, leaving you to ponder:

I can only imagine the ER visit...

A Slight Deviation from Normal

I have been needing/wanting to update the Coast of Illinois for a week now. However, everything in my life has taken a back seat to the revolt occurring under my far back molar. I find no humor in dental work. Although hearing the dentist assistant describe the fact that my teeth have extra roots as a 'slight deviation from normal' would have been sort of funny it I didn't have flatware for eight sticking out of my mouth at the time. 

But, it has been four days, six Vicodin, eighty Advil and a small duodenal ulcer since then. It is Friday and 70 degrees outside and the Sunday before the this whole oral assault happened I spent a fabulous afternoon at a winery on the Coast of Illinois and I wanted to share some photos from our coast. 

Eat your vegan hearts out Malibu!

We were at Grafton Winery and Brewhouse. It was one of those rare pre-spring afternoons when the temp is really only 50 degrees but everyone is so excited to see the sun that we are willing to brave a semi-blustery breeze to sit outside and get a pre-summer sunburn. 

Oh sure, it's not a Carnival Cruise ship, but then again, there is no random gastrointestinal attacks going on.

We watched barges moving up and down the Mississippi as Terry Beck played tunes. There was wine and olives and salami and cheeses and enormous chocolate chip cookies and the company of three good friends plus one more who insisted on buying everyone a cigar. 
I do not smoke cigars.
Anymore. 

Seriously, even without the ocean breeze this is beautiful.

And on the ride home we saw the full moon peaking out from behind pink and purple clouds. 
This is the Coast of Illinois.

@OverExaggeratedCommuterProblems

I commute to work. During rush hour it is a 50 minute, 17 mile drive. Or a 35 minute train ride.

Unless there is a Windnato.

(Windnato is a real word. Windnato: from the meteorologic To Be Freakin'Windy and not in a Tornado way but in a Big Bad Wolf – That's Right, I AM Going to Blow Your House to Oz. You, your half brick house, your train and Your Little Dog TOO! Due to poor organizational skills, Windnato does not get the respect that Tornado gets. It should really try harder.)

On the day that Windnato hit I got out of work about an hour early. (This will be important later during the math portion of this post.) It was my next to last day of work. Bart, who had been gone overnight, would be home. As I walked down the fifty stairs to the platform the wonky alarm was sounding.

Nothing good ever comes after the wonky alarm. Wonky Alarm sound something like this: "Looo-ser...Looo-ser....You're Screwed....Looo-ser..."

It seems, Windnato had taken out one third of the train route with a flying cow or house or something. Consequently, we Eastbounders would be... (scary, dramatic pause where you see the shadowy figure with an ax lurking just behind you) Bus Bridged.

Until this day, I have managed to avoid the Bus Bridge. I assumed it was something in the universe that prevented all manner of bad things happening to me. Turns out, it was just dumb luck.

I dutifully walked, with the rest of the Eastbounders, towards the bus depot where we were semi-assembled on the grassy knoll alongside Taylor Ave. Taylor is one of those oldish city streets which is fed by no less than two side streets, two parking lots and the aforementioned bus depot. It is also crossed by the now FEMA certified train tracks.

Instruction was minimal. Mostly 'The buses are on their way' and 'Please stay out of the street. We are already having a bad enough day and don't really won't to have to scrape you off the pavement.'

The first bus arrived to cheers only to be soundly booed when it was noted to be (ONE) packed and (TWO) Westbound.

Four packed buses later, I crammed onto the back of an Eastbounder. Where I was promptly offered a swig of Strawberry/Kiwi wine. People were laughing and comparing Bus Bridge horror stories. Camaraderie was high.

For one block.

It really got ugly as we circled the block where we were first picked up. There was discussion of the right on red capabilities of the bus company and the IQ of the driver. Also his genetic legitimacy.

Then it began to smell.

Bad.

Really bad.

And then it got quiet.

Quiet is never good.

One hour later we arrived at the first working station for the Eastbound train. It was one stop east of where we started, maybe two miles away. Let me state this again.

ONE HOUR LATER.

We piled off the bus and towards the platform where we were greeted by a train on our Eastbound track. However, the train was heading West. In train lingo this is known as Single Tracking.

It is exactly what it sounds like and it is terrifying. You are essentially riding a train into on-coming traffic with only those pretend train track traffic lights to protect you.

There were a half dozen smug westbound riders pressing their faces upon the glass of the windows staring out of their warm cars as we Bus Bridge refugees stood huddled under the fluorescent heat lamps as Windnato continued to blast us with Arctic Vortex furry. Clouds sped past at nearly 45 miles an hour.

Which is much faster than any mode of transport had moved thus far tonight.

I was beginning to curse the fact that I had been lured by the unseasonably warm 60 degree forecast and left my hat at home. My coat was warm but as discussed in other posts, scrub pants are little more than glorified bed sheet pajamas. My legs were morphing into Otter Pops and then it happened.

The Wonky Alarm sounded.

And the train conductor announced, "This train in out of service. It will resume service Eastbound".

Confetti fell from the sky and someone sprayed champagne as a cheer went up from the platform. (or it may have been a two liter soda and some shredded newspaper caught up in Windnato's fury. But the cheer was sincere.)

A toxic cloud of curses boiled from the train cars as the doors open to expell those smug Westbounders who were now being directed to the ...BUS BRIDGE!

Forty minutes later - at the time I would normally have gotten home if I had left work at the regular time - I arrived at my home platform.

It was pitch black. As was my house.

It seems Windnato has NO respect for Thursday night television.

I swore I would never ride the train again.

I drove in on Friday. I had plans to meet some friends later and once again the work Gods were with me and I was released 40 minutes early. Perfect. I would meet the girls at about the time I would have been leaving work.

Except...

The van refused to start.

I have come to the conclusion that either I am not allowed to leave work early or I am never going to work again.

Since the later is not a possibility I am researching sacrificial items to offer up to the Gods of Mass Transit and the Goddess of 2002 Venture Van Fuel Pumps.

Because nothing is sweeter than arriving home before you should have clocked out.

*I have calmed down a little from this harrowing episode. Although there were several fiery phone calls home during this entire ordeal. I tend to start off taking delays in my routine very personally and expect Bart to fix them, immediately. He offered to rescue me numerous times but I was feeling martyr-ey. Once I calmed down I started playing a game of It Could Always Be Worse and realized that I am lucky to have people who offered to rescue me at any given time, I didn't have small children waiting extra hours in daycare for me to finally arrive and I had a coat.

**Windnato was a nightmare. Winds were clocked at 40-45 miles an hour and took out power over apx 1/3^rd of the Coast of Illinois area. It also appears to hate train track cross bars as I counted about fifteen broken ones on that final ride home.

***In an effort to make driving better, the Coast of Illinois has opened a new bridge. It is beautiful and named after Stan Musial. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce Stan, the Span: 

Stan is gorgeous with suspensions that mimic the Arch. Thanks to my friend Julie for the pic. When I tried to take one all I got was rearview mirror and car sick.