Ode to St. Patrick's Day

I may be the Irish-est non-Irish person out there. Although every last one of my ancestors was a Scandinavian (save a few Dutch ones, I guess), my name is Erinn (apparently spelled in the old Irish way) and my birthstone is the emerald. Really, can you get any closer? Since I'm practically Irish, it was I who was given the assignment of writing limericks for our St. Patrick's Day party at work today. Just for fun, I thought I'd share them with y'all.....



Although March as a whole can be dreary
Since of snow and of cold we've grown weary
There is one day each year
We can all drink green beer
And St. Patrick will make us all cheery!


There is one day all lassies and laddies
Have the luck O' the Irish--St Patty's!
You're not Irish, you say?
Well, for just this one day
Try pretending O'Someone's your daddy!


You might wonder how I am so darin'
To be donning the shirt that I'm wearin'!**
For although I'm Norwegian
My name's is misleadin'
The Emerald Isle and I are both Erinn!

**I own and operate my very own "Everyone loves an Irish girl" T-shirt, which I was wearing at the time of the dramatic reading**

I hope that you all have a wonderful time celebrating St. Patrick's Day! May the luck o' the Irish be with you all! :-) (I could practically hear the Lutherans out there answering, "And also with you!")

Lions and Tigers and Bears

I am not, and have never been, what you would call an "animal person." The late Patches and Hallie Sue Pigglesworth were as close to having a pet as I have ever come, and really, both guinea pigs lived quite happily in my sister's room. It's not that I wish harm upon animals, or believe that they should be used only for testing shampoo, that is not the case at all. I simply am not comfortable around them, and I don't enjoy being slobbered on by a dog having a cat rub its white fur all over my black pants. My apologies to all of you animal lovers out there.

I've been told by a number of people that my tendency to dislike animals is quite inconsistent with the rest of my personality. I somewhat agree with this, and have in fact been trying to figure it out myself. I believe it may stem back to an incident that occurred at the young age of 14 months old. Much as I loved to talk, even at that early age, I loved my pacifier even more. My parents thought it was time for this habit to go, and informed me that once my last "passa" was gone, they would buy me no more. It turned out that the ultimate demise of passa was my grandmother's jealous dog, Mac, and I've been told that I have never been fond of animals since then. Hmm.

Anyway, the point of all this is not to rant against animals, but instead to raise the curious issue of why it seems that animals are slowly taking over my life, or at least, all my places of work! It started out in a small way, to be sure, but if I am not careful, I'm afraid that my next place of employment will be the Como Zoo. First, the kids that I took care of for three summers in a row had one dog. I wasn't fond of it, but I wasn't really responsible for it, and little old Pokey and I stayed out of each other's ways quite well. Then, the next summer, they sprung the news on me that they were getting a puppy. (Oh boy!) Well, puppies are much more difficult to avoid, and this particular one seemed to be quite a little escape artist. Anytime Lucy scampered out the door, the kids were quick to tell me that I was the one who needed to run after her. Although I tried protesting that I didn't actually want the dog to come back, I also didn't want to have to explain a lost canine to their parents. Needless to say, it was I who could be seen chasing Lucy around the neighborhood every time the UPS man delivered a package.

Next, I got my job at Sunrise. Sunrise was home to Romeo, the largest cat I had ever seen, Ginger, a cute but overfed golden retriever, and Mickey, a basset hound with quite possibly the most annoying bark in the world. I was responsible for feeding the dogs, letting them out, and occasionally cleaning up after them when they decided that the living room was a much more prudent place to take care of business than the great outdoors. I also chased them around the neighborhood a fair number of times. I always said that the animals caused me far more stress than any of the people who lived there!

My current job has taken it up yet another notch! I now have fish to feed, an entire aviary's worth of birds to take care of, and two cats to clean up after. (For the record, I am terrified of birds, but I've gotten the opening up the cage, throwing the food in, and locking the door back up again down to a science.) This morning, it came to my attention that one of the cats was acting really strange. Another member of the staff took the darn thing to the vet, and sure enough, Rusty the Cat has a bladder infection. Guess who is responsible for giving the cat precisely one and a half pills wrapped up in a salmon-flavored pill pocket twice every day for the next three weeks? That's right, it's yours truly! (I sincerely hope that cats are not protected under HIPAA rules, because if they are, I am in clear violation! :-)) What's next, a therapeutic llama that I have to take home with me each night? Good grief.

I have always (somewhat jokingly) said that all I ever wanted in a man was a Christian musician without a dog. At this point, I am almost certain that whomever I fall in love with will have not one dog, but six; and he will probably insist that they all sleep on the bed while I sleep on the floor on a blow-up air mattress. Then, when the whole lot of them wakes up wanting to go out at 4:12 am, I will have to take them out, since I'm the one whose face they will be jumping on. I'm certain all these pets at work are just a foretaste of the feast to come. However I'm still drawing the line at birds, ferrets, lizards, or tarantulas! Absolutely. I'm NOT budging on that one. :-)

TIHL #17 How to Use a Microwave (apparently...)

I suppose it could be considered fate that I pulled what will probably go down in history as a "classic Erinn move" on this, the day of my blogging anniversary. I don't call my blog "The Things I Haven't Learned" because of my extreme grace and overall adeptness at life, let me tell you. It's not an exaggeration to say that I have been having somewhat of a tough week. Although my job is going well, I must admit I was not quite prepared for a lot of the stressors that go along with working on an Alzheimer's unit full-time. (Not the least of which is our cats' self-regulating water dish, which I manage to spill all over the floor every single day as I try to quickly flip it over and stick it into the kennel!) I figure that with practice, I will begin to overcome this and other difficulties.

Today was going well. I had met some people on the unit who I hadn't previously encountered, I had led several successful groups, and I had even made it to work early, despite the beginnings of a major winter storm challenging my timely arrival. It was 4:15, and all I had left to do was co-facilitate a drum circle group that is nearly always successful and a lot of fun. Since there were three other music therapists (one of whom was my boss) and interns getting the group started, I thought nothing of running downstairs to the vending machine when a resident asked if I could buy her a bag of microwave popcorn. I ran back up the three flights, threw the popcorn bag in the microwave for what I thought was the recommended two minutes and thirty seconds, and was immediately distracted by one of our more difficultly-behaving resident's entry into the room. To my surprise (more like shock, actually), he seemed amenable to the idea of dancing with me, so I decided to take advantage of this rare opportunity. Everything was going swimmingly until I saw the look of horror on my boss's face and his wild gestures toward something on the wall opposite to me. After a moment of initial confusion, I turned around to see a grand amount of smoke veritably POURING out of the microwave. I'm not sure what happened next, but I know it involved someone pulling the bag out of the microwave, water being turned on, smoke alarms sounding, and doors closing. We quickly evacuated everyone from the smoky room, and started fanning the air by the smoke detector. In light of the stress of the whole week, I burst into tears because not only had I nearly burned the building down, but I had ruined drum circle. Everyone assured me that it would be ok, and that this had happened to many others before me. I was just starting to feel a little bit better when I heard the sound of sirens wailing in the distance. Oh yes, naturally my innocent popcorn oversight had been grave enough for the fire department to send one lone firefighter up to our floor to investigate. I then had to explain to him that it had been my fault, I was the ditz who had forgotten that she was popping corn in the microwave. Feeling somewhat dejected, I went back downstairs to buy the resident a new bag of popcorn. At this point, it was time to call it a day. I grabbed a few things out of my office and started for the stairs. "Goodbye, see you tomorrow!" I called to one resident (NOT the one whose popcorn I had destroyed, incidentally), cheerfully as I could muster, as I opened the door. "F&%$ you, woman!" came the angry reply. Naturally.

I wish that this tale had a redeeming ending, like the firefighter dispatched to my aid being young and handsome, and the two of us falling madly in love. Now that, that is the stuff that Lifetime movies are made of. But alas, this was of course not to be. The fireman was kinda old, and besides, I don't think firefighters dig chicks who are pyro-morons. The way the story acutally ended was that I then spent 15 minutes digging my car out of its street parking spot, during which time I fell into a snowbank, got soaking wet, and got stuck multiple times. (Actually, a couple of young men who were outside building a snow fort in the condos across the street did come and give me a push out of my parking spot...) As the closing credits rolled, the cameras panned shots of me driving home in the biggest blizzard in 5 years. I don't think that one will ever make it to the big screen. Happy March, everyone. ;-)