just shy of pretty

Severe Weather Wednesday

August 20, 2009 at 1:23 am (Day to Day, Pictures, School News, Zoo) (Adventure, Animals, Attack, Balance, Calm, Chaos, Colorful, Crazy, Death, Dreams, Fail, Funny, Graduate, Hands, Healing, Humor, Kids, Kill, Life, Lightning, Lions, Metal, Nursing, People, Pictures, Playing, Power, Prince, Rain, Roof, School, SIckness, Stories, Storm, Sweet, Teachers, Thunder, Tornado, Wary, Weather, Wizard, Worry, Zero Effect, Zoo)

It’s all about tornado’s, fierce lightning strikes and those crackling, rumbling, low-in-the-throat, crashing, thunder rolls. And what’s worse is when the wind picks up out of nowhere, a leaf here and there, a branch on the roof, another branch…a limb…holy hell! And your BF’s friend is trying to do you a favor and fix your WW II, rooftop, chimney pipe that is crumbling to shit, but it’s pouring down rain and the clouds are moving fast across the sky looking like they are taking aim directly at the soaking wet guy kneeling on a high roof holding sheet metal pieces, a screwdriver and a drill. Not good. Pretty damn scary actually.

I appreciate the attempt, for real, but I can’t have him being killed in the effort. Rain is one thing, this was another.

And the day started out so…semi-sunny. Storms were predicted. I went to school. Got the final info before the real work begins. Have some assignments. Reading. The usual. I feel good though. It’s the same at school, semi-sunny then storms. (To definitely mix metaphors. See Zero Effect) Mind set is what they talked about today. (And by “they”, I mean all our teachers that we met today, the speeches, the handouts, and the rundown of the schedule and how the classes are actually coordinated. All the good stuff before you are bumping around in the halls looking lost and feeling like a failure. Graduation will never come.) “They” said, “Think of yourself as the nurse. In all future questions, studies, clinicals, tests…you will be referred to as the nurse. The program doesn’t ask what you will do in two years when you become a nurse, it asks what you will do right now as the nurse. That’s a tough mind game. But not as tough as this, also told in a story, (from my memory to the page):

“An evil wizard was always trying to get rid of the beloved prince. The wizard was always thinking of ways to outsmart the prince and show him for a fool to the rest of the kingdom. But the prince was smart and he knew the wizard was always tricking. One day the wizard had a plan that couldn’t fail. He would hold a bird in his hand and ask the prince if it was dead or alive. If the prince answered alive, the wizard would crush the bird to death and show the dead bird proving that the prince was wrong. And if the prince said dead, the wizard would let the bird fly away to prove his error. The plan could not fail. So the wizard, in front of all the kingdom, said, “Prince, is the bird in my hand dead or alive?” And the prince thought about it, knowing he was being tricked somehow, and answered the wizard finally, “It is what you make it.”

“This adventure, and it is an adventure, you are about to embark on, is only what you make it. You hold in your hand the power to make it anything you want. To give and take what you will from the next few years. How much effort or how little effort you devote to this goal. It’s all up to you. No one can force you to participate or not. You will have in your hands the power to care and to comfort, and the power to heal the sick. But you will also have the power to make someone even sicker and to possibly even kill them if you are not very careful.  Is it scary? It should be. But it is worth all the sweat, every drop of blood, and every shed tear”

So they say.

Truly.

I may not have it written word for word, but that was the basic story and summary. The woman who spoke it is very powerful, but quiet to listen to. She is very calming, while at the same time, managing to scare the poop out of you. But I feel that it’s all true. Why would they lie? It’s hard. But the reward is great. That’s what they say. That’s all and that should be enough. Everything else after is extra. I believe it. I worried about the whole life/death, mistake/error, kill the patient thing, and the teacher said that we should be worried. We should always be a tiny bit wary and prepared for what could happen, because anything can happen at any moment and at any place. Now isn’t that comforting? Luckily, amazingly, and more miraculously, it’s a wonder things don’t go bad more often than they do. It’s a fine line.

But I think that is enough for tonight. It’s late, and my kids have their first day of school, and I need to get up to be with them. My daughter is fine. Same school, same friends, same schedule. She’s the top class now! But my son is in Jr. High. New school, the bus (again), new classes, new schedules, new teachers, new students. Small fish in the big pond!

So, the weather is calm right now, the storm has passed for the next few hours. They say the morning might be rough, but then smooth sailing through all next week. Is this a weather report or a damn soul-searching, reflection-on-a-life-yet-lived, or what? I need to lighten it up with some kind of image. This is just the thing to restore your faith in my (ill-advised representation) sense of humor and shallow/callous self.

When we went to the zoo, so many days ago, (more pictures, I swear.) we got a few pictures of the lions. The animals were really animated that day. Like, ALL of them. It was weird. I have video of the apes and they were acting crazy. (You Tube soon, I swear.) Usually they just lay around looking like they all want to commit suicide, but for some reason, everyone was jacked up and pacing or jumping or chasing or playing…whatever the various species to do to get us humans close enough to attack. And the lion was working it! He was walking back and forth in front of this “viewing” window. Right against the glass. Stopping, looking, staring (evilly and maliciously) most likely devising some way to get from where he was to where we were. Well, not us, exactly. We were waa-aayyy in the back, trying to figure out what the lion was up to. The lady lion was trying to get a ball out of the water. But the man lion had something cooking. You could just tell. Stevie would barely let me take the pictures I took because she was sure that the lion was about to chuck it all, go for broke and try to bust out of that glass and kill us all.

At any rate, when you think about it like that, these pictures are kind of funny. The people are so colorfully dressed and so interested and amazed by the lion being so close, that I have no doubt, any one of them would say they were completely surprised and shocked that the nice little kitty would try to hurt them, even while he was chewing on one of their legs or ripping out their intestines. But you judge for yourself.

Curious animal/performer/vegetarian, aka, Alex from Madagascar OR bored/angry/ bloodthirsty, carnivorous lion, hell-bent for destruction?

Look into his eyes and then decide.

Oh!! Isn't he cute?!?!

All I see is: lunch, lunch and more lunch!

Won't all those colorful clothes, torn to shreds, covered in blood and scattered all over the ground, add that extra oomph! to the news story later when they pan the scene 50 times for our sick sense of viewing enjoyment??

Snack time! You know that lion is NOT posing for a picture. He's thinking, "I could get a head AND an arm."

The picture BELOW ↓,  was taken after he walked away from the window to go take the ball away from the lady lion, in between canvassing for people. She would get it out of the water and he would roll it back in. But not that last time. He finally quit that bitch and took the ball and rolled it right off the rock wall, into the protective moat that separates the people from the lions. Then he went and laid on a rock. Playtime was over. That’s when I took my picture.

Dumb-ass, crazy humans. I'll kill them all as soon as I get big enough.

Feel better? Me too!!

Sweet dreams! Goodnight! Don’t let the man-eating lion bite!

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