Sunday, November 16, 2008

Random Bullets of Sunday Puttering

*I've been reading all the updates and posts and photo streams from all over I can find about yesterday's protests and wishing I'd been there, but being glad that there's so much information available. The last political action or movement that I remember feeling anything like so energized about was the anti-WTO protest back in 1999, and the Internet was much less developed back then.

*Also I find myself feeling much more relaxed about all the brouhaha and infighting since I thought of that analogy to the women's suffrage movement. I guess nothing makes an old English major happy like an analogy.

*The Renaissance Woman has been putting up hooks and coat racks all over the place, so our house is no longer dotted with random piles of clothes. It's looking better.

*Did you know that the Heimleich Maneuver is no longer called the Heimleich Maneuver? According to our CPR/First Aid instructor yesterday, Mr. Heimleich wanted money for it, so now it's called the J-Thrust.

*The First Aid guy was a fireman, and he was full of offhand sarcastic quips and stories. He also made fun of the library's First Aid kit. And he encouraged us to make fun of our (absent) boss, and swore a lot in a genial way, which always goes over well.

*After the class, I was helping one of my co-workers with her Facebook page, and noticed that she'd put in her status update that she was taking a First Aid class and it wasn't bad and "the instructor is a fireman!" I guess he was pretty easy on the eyes.

*He also made us practice everything over and over, on each other and on those weird limbless rubber dolls. I think I finally basically know what to do if someone should keel over in front of me. I had a similar class every two years at my old job but never really felt like I would know how to handle it in real life.

*The possibility of someone keeling over in front of me feels much less remote ever since a few months ago, when a guy had a heart attack at a small library branch where RW was the Librarian in Charge for the evening.

*She called 911, and found a patron who knew CPR, and the guy lived.

*But she said the ten minutes while she was waiting for the ambulance were the longest ten minutes of her life.

*The Mermaid Girl made chocolate chip pancakes this morning, mostly on her own, with only logistical and moral support and the smallest bit of just-to-make-sure stirring from me.

*It did take about an hour and a half, because she kept getting distracted by various things, at which point I'd go off and work on the computer, but it was her thing and she took charge of it and she did a good job.

*She even remembered to substitute protein powder for some of the flour, and did the math for that so it worked out.

*And the pancakes were yummy, too.

*MG has a test tomorrow, on all the provinces and territories and Great Lakes of Canada. She knows them all, which is more than I can say.

*She is growing up in a different time and circumstance from how I did, all right.

*Me, to my brother on the phone today: "Whenever I feel low, or sloggy, you know, November is so depressing and dark up here, I just think about Barack Obama, and I feel better. It's like...he's like the Bunny Planet of Presidents."

4 Comments:

Blogger parodie said...

Having chatted with friends who were raised in the US, I think I got off easy with provinces & territories & Great Lakes (there were fewer territories back then, too). Y'all have an awful lot of states...

8:21 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

When I first became an EMT, our service was very understaffed. I ended up on a shift with a guy from my class and another EMT with six months of experience. So we were it. Of course, we got a call for chest pain with cardiac history. We all kind of looked at each other, saying, "Someone should call 911. Oh shit, WE'RE 911." The 10 minutes we waited on scene for the ALS (advanced life support--the paramedics), were some of the longest of my life too (the guy was really having a bad heart attack). Everything turned out ok, though, and we didn't screw anything up, at least according to the very large firemen who showed up. It sure made me appreciate the endless repetition of those skills, though (every two months).

2:10 AM  
Blogger Liz Miller said...

Far beyond the moon and stars, twenty lightyears south of Mars, spins the gentle bunny planet.

The Bunny President is definitely Obama.

10:08 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

How much do I love the Bunny Planet? Can you imagine Barack reading it to his girls? Oooh, warm heart!

6:20 AM  

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