Plethora

Tomorrow is my last day of in class study. I passed my math test which was a "do or don't graduate" thing today. I passed at 85%. And that doesn't suck. Externship starts next monday. I will volunteer (work) 240 hours in a hospital for 6 weeks. I will graduate in Sept with an A.S. in Pharmacy Technology and once I pass my National Certification I will have my CphT. I did it. I can't believe it. I want to cry. I will cry.

August 6th, my 17 year old daughter is finally going to be allowed to come visit me and her sisters for the first time in.... it seems forever. I have no words in which to describe my excitement.

You can find my recent AWOP article here:

PLEASE HELP FIND THIS LITTLE BOY!

A Night Out in Boise

I walked only a block or two last night before becoming overwhelmed by the hunger and homelessness happening at my feet. Rebecca Scott and the Lovely and Talented Debbie Sager, did in fact, NOT SUCK, just as they had promised. Down the street, Blaze and Kelly were having an interesting evening but had enough time put aside to share warm fuzzies and funny observations. Thanks to all of you for the music. But overall, last night, I felt an overall sense of desperation, sadness and angst of which I am unaccustom to feeling on the warm streets of Boise.

Things I Accidentally Say in Church

this is the title to a private blog I keep that holds all my Call to Worship material which I have for church.

When I was asked to do the Call to Worship the first time I was delighted. After all, I had conquered my fear of public speaking and wanted real life experience. It meant a lot to me be asked in a new church, from people who barely knew me, to participate in their service.

The first time I approached the podium I was overcome with a feeling that I was supposed to say more than just the words written on the page. And so it began... each week... I would ponder the Call to Worship and I would write a little something before I would start the actual text. Sometimes, its a piece of my poetry, sometimes a quote and a thought. Whatever comes to me over the course of the week that is connected to the actual Call to Worship. I have grown to love that time of church.

I don't have my notes public, its just a place for me to reflect and perhaps find more meaning in both the words given to me and the words I choose. But because one sunday, a story bubbled up from my memory of my daughter Nicole, I decided I wanted to share it with you. She was such a cute little bug. And I love her so very much.


Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite

When my 17 year old daughter was a toddler, we had a nightly routine. I would sing, "You Are My Sunshine" to her as I tucked her and all her favorite stuffed animals down into her bed.

As I would leave the room I would say, “Good night” and she would answer back, “good night”. I would say, “See you in the morning” and she would answer back, “See you in the morning”. “Sweet dreams”, “sweet dreams” she would say. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” and finally “God bless” as I would turn off the light.

We did this every night.

One night as we started our routine. She stopped me and asked what did it all mean? Why do we say this every night? I thought about it a minute and said, “well we have been doing it every night for so long that I haven’t thought about it”.

I sat down on her bed and said, “I say, “Good Night” because I really want you to have a peaceful, comfortable night’s sleep” I say, “see you in the morning” because I will really be happy to see you in the morning so we can start our day. I say, “Sweet Dreams” because good dreams are always the best and I want you to have them. I say, “don’t let the bed bugs bite because… well because that’s what my mother used to tell me.” She panicked at this point and made me prove that there weren’t really bugs in her bed. Once convinced she asked, “when you were little, did you have bugs in your bed?” I said, “No, I didn’t either.” “Well,” she said, “Maybe when you say “God Bless” it scares them away!”

Please join me in the call to worship.


Call to Worship

Here is an ordinary table,

Familiar and worn with use,
Come, look beyond the grains of wood
And sense the power it holds
To feed, unite, and create a holy communing.

May we glimpse godly wisdom that is beyond ordinary sight.

(light a candle)

Here is a pulpit, holding stories of faith,
Perhaps grown ordinary with repetition.
Come, hear anew the sacred words
And listen between the lines.
For the calling and sending, teaching and healing.

(light a candle)

May we glimpse godly wisdom that is beyond ordinary sight.

Here is our ordinary community
Made of eccentrisities and imperfections.
Come, draw near to one another in spirit
And recognize the holy presence that makes
Us an extraordinary people
People of justice and love and good work.

(light a candle)

May we glimpse godly wisdom that is beyond ordinary sight.

Boise UCC LGBTQ First Annual Retreat at Pilgrim's Cove

Gina and I took our girls to our church retreat this weekend. We weren't able to be there the entire time because of work, school and custody commitments but what we lacked in time we well made up for in fun.

Rainbow Camp

My favorite memory of the trip was when we all tried to settle down to sleep. I suffer from "Sleep Fright" its when you are laying awake while everyone around you drifts off happily leaving you alone in the dark with your thoughts and the in ability to stay still. I discovered this weekend that my daughter Hannah suffers from the same thing. We both laid there in our discomfort and finally I whispered, "Do you want to take a walk?" and she was out of her bunk before my feet hit the floor. We bundled up, found the flash light and walked down to the dock. We walked out to the end and laid down on our backs and watched the stars and the moon sparkle off the water. We listened to the silence and the crickets. We listened to the dock creaking as the water rose up and down dancing with the pull of the almost full moon. We laid there until about 2am. Finally, we succumbed to the shivering and found our way back to the cabin. We were asleep in minutes. I didn't take my camera in our little excursion but perhaps it is one of those memories which will be burned perfectly and forever into our hearts and minds much clearer than a 4x6 ever could.

Better Living Through Pharmaceuticals

I suppose that the first medical law came into existence when the cave Medicine Man handed your cave mate a cup of something to help him feel better and then said, "oops!" (or whatever they said back then) as your friend keeled over and died.

Everyone must remember, because I am sure everyone is as old as I am, about the episode on the Andy Griffith show and Aunt Bee...



Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906- Created to prohibit the interstate transportation of sale of adulterated and misbranded food and drugs. It didn't require that drugs be labeled, only that the labels not contain false information about the drugs strength and purity. Perhaps our first "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law. It also proved to be tragically deadly when the medical industry, all in a tizzy with the invention of new sulpha drugs needed it put in a suspension. They went to a chemist and asked him to do this for them. The chemist, made a suspension of diethylene glycol, what we know as antifreeze. "oops!" 107 people keeled over from sulpha and antifreeze. The chemist later committed suicide.

Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938- This is considered the most important piece of legistation in pharmaceutical history. It created the FDA and required manufacturers to file a new drug application (NDA) with each new drug before marketing. They had to prove it was safe for use by humans

Durham-Humphrey Amendment of 1951- established legend or prescription drugs and OTC drugs. This is where we got "Caution: Federal Law Prohibits Dispensing Without Prescription" warnings. We all love those!

Kefauver-Harris Amendment of 1962- was passed because of the horrific occurance of infants being born with severe congenital abnormalities because their mothers were prescribed thalidomide during pregnancy. This extended the 1938 Act to require drugs to be proven not only be safe for humans but also effective. See in 1938 drugs only had to be "safe". Kefauver-Harris now said it had to be "safe AND effective". uh huh

Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970- Began classifing drugs into 5 schedules and made the DEA responsible for enforcement. Schedule 1 drugs are considered street drugs with no medicinal value. However, by that definition nicotine should be a schedule 1 and marijuana should be a schedule 2. But don't get me started...

Poison Prevention Packaging Act of 1970- - 90% of adults and only 20% of children under 5 are statistically able to open these suckers. Unfortunately, we were short sighted on making medications tamper proof, who would have thought that in 1982, 7 people died from taking poisoned Tylenol capsules. oops.

Drug Listing Act of 1972- NDC codes are created. It helps in recalls, and double checking proper packaging of drugs. And are a pain in the ass when having to type them into the system really fast.

Orphan Drug Act of 1983- This provides tax incentives for manufacturers to continue product and research on extremely rare disease medications. There are currently over 250 orphan drugs on the approved FDA list for marketing.

Drug Price Competition and Patent-Term Restoration Act of 1984- Basically can extend a patent license for a drug company/researchers to recoup developement costs, as well as to provide an incentive to research new drugs for the marketplace. (read bribe)

Prescription Drug Marketing Act of 1987- This turned Senior Citizens into felons if they go to Canada to buy a drug cheaper that happened to be manufactured in the US. oops!

Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990- Made pharmacists responsible to do a (DUR) drug use review, for each new prescription filled. This tripled the work load of pharmacists and created an opening for pharmacy techs like me (thanks President Reagan!).

Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994- The FDA has very little oversight with these. They can only ding you if you use "false claims". Or if a drug is responsible for unsafe, for example ephedra or ma huang, which used to make Dexatrim ROCK. So what if some people fell over and died from strokes and junk, I bet they were thin and beautiful. Or if you lose your sense of smell from using Zicam. oops!

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996- HIPAA nuff said?

Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act- It changed products labeled "legend" to read "RX Only". Our tax dollars at work.

Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003- Medicare part D as in dounut hole? at least Obama has cut it in half and the drug companies are paying the difference. Wonder how he did that? Thanks Mr. President.

Growing Up Without Communion

Growing up in the LDS church it was called Sacrament.

Growing up in the LDS church I was one of those children whose parents didn't go to church but sent me with my friends, smelling like cigarette smoke, dirty clothing and unwashed hair. Growing up in the LDS church I was looked at with pity and disappointment, I suppose, by those clean and polished Elders and their clean and polished wives and children.

Growing up in the 1970's there was no discernment made between sexual activities of young people. You didn't do it or you were "one of those girls". Regardless of whether or not that girl was barely 11 and the male was closing in on 17 and violent.

Growing up in the present, it would be called rape and child molestation.

Growing up in the 1970's she was called a whore and nothing was said about the boy. Which then gave license to the boy to continue his circle of violence and forced silence of the girl because it was after all, her shame she was hiding.

Growing up in the LDS church after rumors began about me, timed with my upcoming graduation into Mutual from Primary. I had to have an interview with the Bishop. There I was sitting across the desk from a scary authority figure in his scary office with pictures of LDS Presidents and Joseph Smith staring down upon me. He asked me many questions about my faith and such and then he asked me point blank if I was a virgin, or did he say "clean"? I remember looking at his eyes for a moment and then looking down at my hands horrified about the topic and what I was about to do. He had heard the rumors, I knew he knew. I looked at him and lied.

Growing up, at 11, I didn't know what else to do.

At graduation we each were given an article of faith to memorize and recite during the ceremony. I did the best I could and got through it. When it was over, I bolted to the door and ran into the closest bathroom, threw up and began weeping uncontrollably over the double life I was leading. I lied just to graduate with the girls I had gone to primary with. I didn't belong to this group of pure, "clean" girls. I hated myself. I blamed myself. I was scared.

As rumors got harsher and lengthier and more easily proven that I did, indeed, have a boyfriend, I began to get the snickers and the nasty remarks from my peers that I really shouldn't be allowed to take sacrament because I was "that kind" of a girl. And then finally, the Bishop himself, asked me if perhaps I should study a little more about what the sacrament meant and the promises I am making to God each week and decide if I was really worthy right then to be continuing to take the sacrament. I wasn't living the gospel.

I never took sacrament again. I never went to church again.

Growing up, there was no one to save me during all this turmoil, no one, not God, not one grown up, parental or otherwise, stood up and said, "There is something bad happening here to this poor little girl." No one. I couldn't do it. To do it would reveal my lie, my sin and my shame. I couldn't save myself.

Growing up, I fell between the cracks of the LDS platform from the beginning. I, convinced that I had forever lost my way back to God, gave up, gave in, and became to know myself as the person they said I was. And they, in turn, told themselves and their children, "I told you so." and "I don't want you playing with her at school or around the neighborhood." And then they must have felt safer that they had weeded out another bad moral influence that may have threatened the lives of all the righteous.

Growing up, cut me off from God. Growing up cut me off from normal social events with friends. Growing up I lost my way back to ever understanding the meaning of worthiness in the eyes of the Lord. Now I walk a path I don't entirely trust or understand.