run on sentences

This morning when I put my running shoes on, they felt all soft and lumpy. Taking off my right shoe, I smiled when I found some Seaside sand from our finish of the Hood To Coast Relay last weekend....the second one for me and also for Bruce, who drove the van both years - a hard job because he can't relax and he is a good sport about it. The Hood to Coast has about 1000 vans with 6 runners per van - that's a lot of vans and a lot of runners. The one picture here is me just before my first leg on a bike path in downtown Portland at 11 PM or so. The other is of our team at Mt. Hood, getting ready to send our first runner down the hill. What an experience! How lucky can you be, at 54 and almost 55, to be able to run 15+ miles in a 24 hour period with no sleep? And do 8.5 minute miles besides? Life is good for sure. I know it isn't all about luck cause I work hard to keep running. The luck part is probably in having my dad's good strong Finnish genes and a lot of SISU . I a...

I discovered my nurse face when I was a nurses aide in a small 22 bed hospital some 34 years ago. I first used it when I was asked to change a dressing on a woman who I knew...the mother in law of a lady I babysat for. She had had abdominal surgery and had an open wound that was oozing fecal material (poop, in plain English). It smelled horrible and none of the "real nurses" wanted to be bothered with it so they sent me, the lowly aide in nursing school, to do it. I remember looking at this woman who watched me carefully to see if I would show any revulsion. I decided then and there, to do whatever I had to do, but I would not gag or let her see any signs of how I was feeling (nauseated, horrified, and sorry for her all at the same time)- to allow her to keep her dignity and feel like a human being rather than a woman with poop coming out of her side. I don't know what we talked about but I cleaned it, redressed it, and cleaned her up. We sat and talked for a while and I ...

I think we should practice the art of simmering more often. Simmering is a rule I have about writing. A person should never, ever just write something up and consider it done after the first draft. It should simmer overnight, and maybe longer if, when you taste it, it needs more salt, or is still kind of tough. Don't let it boil or turn the heat up too much. Let it simmer. And if it needs to, let it simmer for several days. Ask someone else to taste it and then consider following their suggestions for making it tastier. Or....if it doesn't taste write (ha ha) just toss it and start it all over. This seems like good advice for life in general. We should let our emotions simmer before putting them on a nice plate and serving them up to the unsuspecting folks who are expected to clean their plates. Decisions should simmer too...what's the hurry anyway? We all eat too much and the portions are too large and we are getting fat with too many unexpressed and over expres...