Clearly I Didn't Run Fast Enough

Because Leppardfreak and Miss both tagged me for one of those lovely "tell us random crap about you" type memes. Quite honestly, I'm running out of random crap. So here are some random pictures of the place I live.

This is the only monument dedicated to the Buffalo Soldier's Calvary located on the Army fort adjacent to the town.



Welcome to The Big House. My area plays host to no less than FOUR prisons. One state, one military, one federal holding facility, and this, the Federal Pen. Which someone somewhere decided should look like the capitol building. (Insert your own political joke here)


This is a shot of the VA National Cemetery, breathtaking in it's beauty and sadness. There are markers here dating from the Civil War Era to present day.



I have no idea what building this is, there are several abandoned buildings on the VA campus. Most of them were beautiful and stately in their day.



There are rows of these abandoned dormitory buildings, it seems like such a shame to let them sit and rot.


The church where Mr. Honeybell and I were married. It's a bizarre chapel, as the top part you see here is the Protestant half. The basement of the building is open on the back, and serves as the Catholic half of the chapel.




Finally, this is my workplace:

















What? You see nothing there? That's cause I QUIT!!!! Let there be rejoicing! I am now one of the unwashed, unemployed masses. (actually I showered recently, but still)

The kids, the house, school and work were are getting to be too much. In addition it has become nearly impossible to find childcare. Our babysitter has become completely unreliable (YES ABBY- I MEAN YOU), and we can hardly expect the grandparents to sit every other weekend, they have their own stuff. So after this weekend, I am a free woman! Poverty stricken, but free! This is the first time since I was 17 years old that I have been unemployed on purpose. I am totally not going to know what to do with myself.

Life As A Nurse: Things My Patients Have Taught Me

I spend a lot of time educating patients about medicines, breast feeding, and home care. What isn't as obvious are the numerous lessons I learn in return:

• Old people hit harder than you would think.
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• New moms shouldn’t sleep in the hospital bed with their new baby *or* Babies don’t bounce. (Baby was surprisingly, thankfully, not hurt)
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• It’s ok to pray with your patient.
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• As a nurse, if a patient tells you there is a rat in her room, you shouldn’t back out of the room exclaiming “Holy Shit! Where?!”
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• A superhero cape is no substitute for a good parachute.
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• If you are bitten by a copperhead snake you should bring it with you to the hospital. But you should definitely kill it first.
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• If your pet monkey dies, it’s time to wash the monkey shit out of your hair. Especially if you tell us the monkey has been dead for more than a year.
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• 3 year olds with cancer know more than I do.
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• Sometimes you can actually use the Spanish you learn on Dora the Explorer.
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• If you get fall down drunk with your cousin, and he suggests Russian roulette . . . . say no.
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• Just because the Tylenol is generic does NOT mean you should take six.
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• If someone looks like they are going to spit on you, they probably will.
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• Drunken people like to visit other patients in their rooms. At 2 am.
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• No one will believe that you fell in the shower and that shampoo bottle put itself up your ass.
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• Flashlights don’t belong up your ass either. Sometimes they get stuck.
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• Pretty much just don’t stick things up your ass.
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• Do not grab a piece of gravel out of your driveway and then claim that it’s a kidney stone you just passed.
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• You should not crush up your oral meds, mix them with water and then use a needle you stole out of the sharps box to inject the whole mess into your IV.
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• You should not allow the boyfriend you know is a child sexual offender to sleep in the same bed with your daughter.
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• You will be sorely disappointed if you call your doctor a “fucking asshole” and then demand narcotics.
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• Maggots really do clean open wounds. But the nurses will talk about you for years to come.
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• Toddlers will eat crack when you leave it on the coffee table.
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• Put the safety on your gun when you put it in your pocket *or* never play pocket pool with firearms in said pocket.
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• If you stab your boyfriend with a butcher knife, don’t tell the medical staff he fell off the deck onto the knife that was mysteriously buried blade side up.
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• If you take your own recreational drugs on top of Demerol, you will end up completely confused, masturbating under an old woman’s bedside table. She will think you are hilarious.
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• Sometimes death isn’t the worst thing.
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• If you sleep with someone else’s wife, sometimes they will come to your home, staple gun your balls to the floor, leaving you stuck there for hours.

Any questions?

I Am Honeybell's Wounded Va-Jay-Jay

So you may have read about my intention to start waxing, and that was the plan, really it was. But then I started running out of excuses to give the police as to why my screaming kept disturbing the neighbors. So it’s back to the razor.

I’m in the tub. Legs? Check. Pits? Check. Got myself contorted into positions only a porn star could appreciate? Check. I’m cheerfully shaving away when:

Holy Mary Mother Of God . . . the pain!!

I see a spreading shade of pink in the water; I glance at the Venus flytrap razor and note an unnaturally long folded ribbon of skin embedded in the implement of genital mutilation tri-blades. I’m certain I’ve just given myself an episiotomy.

After hurriedly rinsing the conditioner from my hair, I stood dripping wet, next to the bathtub, one leg on the side (see any tampon box for visual aid) trying to staunch the flow of blood with a wad of toilet paper. My six year old begins knocking on the door “Honey? What was that yelling?”

At this point skin is not yet ready to meet skin. I hop with one leg raised over to the door and lock it. I’ve not yet saved enough for his future therapy to see this. “I’m fine sweetpea, just fell, or something.” I grab the tube of Neosporin, hoping it will slow the bleeding. Then the terrible thought occurs to me, what if I need stitches?? It feels like a pretty deep cut down there, and the bleeding hasn’t stopped . . . .

“Mr. Honeybell? Could you look at something for me?” I’m certain my situation is NOT what he envisioned when I came hobbling into the bedroom wearing nothing but a towel. “I think I cut myself”

He’s laughing, “What, are you all emo now? Are you a cutter?” I have to explain that no, I personally am not emo, but apparently my perineum has some dark issues. He takes a look. “Wow. That’s bad. Does this mean we won’t be getting freaky?”

No. We will not. Ever, ever, ever, again.

As I sit here on my doughnut air pillow, I wonder what I will do now regarding the general care of “the lawn”. Can’t wax, can’t shave, my pubic hair scoffs at depilatory creams in a snooty English accent.

So here’s my next plan, Au Naturale. It’s perfect, I’ll change my name to Moonbeam, start wearing flowing all organic cottons, imbibe large amounts of mind altering drugs, and I’ll grow hair like there’s no tomorrow. I can’t wait.

The Middle Aged Woman's Guide to Community College

So I've finished my second semester of school. I've learned quite a bit about being a middle aged wife and mother returning to college, and I'm now prepared to share this information with you! Welcome to Honeybell's guide to being a non-traditional student while working and caring for four little boys:

First of all, it is important to note that most of your fellow students will look like this:






While you might show up everyday looking like this:







With the children, things are going to be even worse. It is very likely that they may wander around looking like this:





And while they're looking like that, they'll probably be doing plenty of this:






But the older children will just do this:





Meanwhile, your house could end up looking like this:





While you read textbooks and make this for Sunday dinner:






But you think it's all good, because this is all you have consumed ALL DAY:




Lastly, I should give you a warning. If you SHOULD actually clean your house, bathe, clothe, and pay attention to your children, then actually bother to have sex with your husband . . . well, you will likely get papers back that look like this:







*sigh*


Can you believe I'm taking summer classes?

The Job I Leave Off My Resume: Chapter 4

This is a 4 part series (yes, I know at first I said 5 part . . . I have paragraph counting issues apparently) about a job I once had as a nurse in an abortion clinic. This is not meant to be a political statement or a forum for debate, only a recording of my experiences. Of course this is a sensitive subject, and I respect everyone's views.

As I got into the routine of working at the clinic I was actually proud of the job I did. I was making a difference in what kind of experience these women had, and helping them through it. There will always be termination of pregnancy, legally and safely . . . or not. There is no reason for it to be more of a terrifying painful experience than necessary. I discovered though that I needed to let go of my own preconceptions about women who have abortions. At first certain circumstances were exempt from my critical judgment, while others were not.

My heart wept for the couple who discovered that the baby they had been trying for was developing with only a brain stem due to a genetic anomaly. For the 11 year old who underwent her procedure as the police waited outside the room to collect the "evidence" for DNA purposes, in order to assist in the prosecution of her father. For the college freshman who still bore the healing knife wounds and fading yellow bruises to her inner thighs and vulva from her violent attackers. These women were the exception though, not the rule. They are able to lie in bed at night taking the smallest of comforts in the socially acceptable reasons for their abortion.

Yet I found that these women were no more broken hearted than those that came to us for an abortion because they had made a mistake. These were the women that got caught up in the moment, they missed a pill, or maybe a condom broke. No matter what the cause of conception was, I saw the grief and anguish that led them to this decision. After meeting and speaking with these women, I learned who they were, I learned each specific reason why they felt carrying a pregnancy term was impossible for them. They were no better or worse than any other woman, including myself.

So my heart also wept for the teen girl that had been too afraid to ask her parents about birth control. The wife and mother that didn't understand how this happened, but she just couldn't handle the expense and care of another child. The menopausal woman who didn't think she could conceive again. There were numerous stories I listened to, not one of them had come to this choice lightly. They made this decision knowing that abortion would very likely leave a scar, hidden in the depths of their being. To each individual woman, for her own reasons, it hardly seemed a choice.

Several months later, as young women who move in with their boyfriends often do, I discovered that my boyfriend was a self absorbed ass. I wasn't happy in this new city, I had no close friends, I was lonely and miserable. Looking back, I have to wonder if one reason I made no friends outside of work acquaintances was due to working at the clinic. After that first episode of humiliation, I never wanted to talk to anyone in any depth. I kept most people at a distance so as not to even have the discussion of employment. Mostly though, I wanted to go home. I missed my friends, my family, my Acute Care Unit at the hospital.

I quit my job, dumped the jerk boyfriend, and moved back home. When people asked me where I'd been working I told them about the part time rehab hospital job. I left the clinic off my resume, and to this day I've never listed it as a past employer. I don't discuss it with people I don't know well. I will always be conflicted about the morality of abortion, and of working at the abortion clinic. That I wasn't candid about working there disturbs me still. Is it a failing? A good idea? I don't know. I do know that at that time in my life, I had the opportunity to help women at a most traumatic time in their life. I did that job, and I did it well.

I have no internal struggle with that.