Blogging Away from Home OR What I Learned in the Last Month

Disclaimers: No illustrations today because I do not have my handy, dandy bamboo pad.  Purple kool-aid causes your poop to turn green.  I have proof.  This blog may cause you to gasp in amazement/alarm/consternation.  Elvis Presley was a crappy actor.  Sorry but it had to be said.

Ah, it's Sunday in Spokane and the active volcanoes of the Cascades are not erupting at the moment.  Life isn't so bad.  My sister, who had been very ill, is getting better, and I may be able to go home soon.  (Just in time for Easter.  HIM was boiling eggs today and I fear for the safety of our house and kitchen in particular.  Howvever. I figure the kid will run outside as soon as she sees the flames shooting out of the pot of water.)

But here I am on a mild afternoon and I'm pondering the lessons of the past month.  There are a few but they are significant.

1.  They have graupel here in Spokane.  I did not know what graupel was before.  (It's snow/hail or a mix of the two.)  I would have called it hail and ignored it but the folks here have a special word for it, or maybe just a word I have not heard before and therefore, I have discovered a need to make fun of it.  Graupel.  (Say it ten times in a row and it sounds really bizarre.)  I did not make that up.  Look, it's got its own entry in Wikipedia.  Here.

2.  My sister's truck, which is a Toyota Tacoma has an engine that I suspect came from a lawn mower.  For those of you who are uneducated about Spokane, there are hills here.  I have to drive up one stupid hill every day to visit my sister in the hospital.  The truck, (Minitruck, actually.  It wants to be a big truck when it grows up.) goes from 30 miles an hour to 15 miles an hour on these hills and it isn't because I'm not pressing the gas pedal down.  I am but you have to lean forward to get the truck to go up the hill.  Large men from the WWE pushing the back of the truck help, too.

3.  There are turkeys in the parks here.  I saw them and I will say that local law enforcement officials frown upon short, fat women chasing the local fauna down to get a photograph.  (Which is the real reason why I don't have photographic proof.  Well, that and the fact that the hills in that particular park wore me down kind of like my sister's truck.)  There are also quail/partridges here.  I can't tell the difference but I'm basing my guess on watching the opening sequence of The Partridge Family from the sixties.  All you baby boomers know what I'm talking about.  You do.  Admit it.  You had a crush on David Cassidy.

4.  They have Bank of America branches in Spokane.  They do not have them in Alabama.  (So I guess I'm slamming one state.  Guess which one.)  BofA, please open a branch in Huntsville.  I need notary public service and change, also sometimes I like to go in to be called, "Ma'am" in the way that only bank tellers can do.

5.  Finally, I now know what a wound vac is.  My medically-occupied fans will know, but I did not know.  (I kind of wish I could un-know it.)  Basically they (the nurses, doctors, medical professionals) put a vacuum cleaner on your open surgery parts to suck up the icky juicy parts.  (TMI?)  The last time my sister had an emergency operation (1992 and she's making a dreadful habit of this, isn't she?) I learned what a colostomy bag was.  Prior to 1992 I was blissfully oblivious.  My sister said I drew faces on the colostomy bag with a sharpie.  Hmm.  Who would do something like that?

Anyway, please have patience with me.  I'll be back in blogging/writing/snarking action soon.  I seem to have missed almost the entire month of March.  April will be better.