Fun with Rusty Nail Boards

Another picture!! The above is of a man with mild tetanus.

I just cleaned the garage for my mama with the help of my loving heavy-lifter sister Reine, which included moving half-full paint cans, sweeping dead leaves off of the floor, and tons of consolidating (my mother's favorite word), as well as moving a pile of nail-ridden, gives-you-tetanus-just-by-looking-at-it 2x4s. I had Reine do other things -- namely fetch water -- while I moved them.

I do not and will not have tetanus from moving these things, but it got me curious. What's tetanus anyway?

Also called "lock-jaw" (oooh, fun...) it's an infectious disease caused by open wounds (such as those caused by rusty nails and other kinds of great things that puncture your skin) getting contaminated by bacteria that live in soil. Symptoms include severe, painful muscle spasms, sweating, elevated temperature, and elevated blood-pressure. Spasms may occur frequently and last for several minutes with the body shaped into a characteristic form called opisthotonos (your entire body arches painfully, like in the painting by Sir Charles Bell). Spasms continue for up to 4 weeks, and complete recovery may take months.

There are different types as well: generalized, neonatal, local, and cephalic tetanus.

Yes, and apparently you cannot O.D. on tetanus shots, so when you go into the doctor's office and they ask when your last tetanus shot was and your response is "ummm....", chances are you'll soon know exactly when your last shot was.

Carolina Wren

It's a plump, brown little bird, and very small...but it is LOUD. Really, really loud. It has a distinctive call too --"Teakettle, Teakettle, Teakettle, Tea!"--so when I'm sitting up in my new bed, next to my bright, lacking-in-a-curtain window...I know. I know that it's that stupid little puff exacting it's revenge for the chicken I ate last Wednesday.

Here's one of the maniacal little devils for you to see. Vicious, no?

Jack Wesson

Jack, Jack, Jack...no matter the reincarnation, Jack is always strong, stubborn, and passionate - a willing martyr to whichever is his favored cause. He's a fun character to write, all angst-ridden and intense...Charlotte--the little sister he guards with his very soul (literally)--finds him to be irritatingly judgmental, having an open mind and a case-by-case mentality when confronting a specific problem herself. Jack assess a situation from the outside and assumes from his past experience that "this happens this way" and "that happens that way" without exception (and he is often correct since he never makes it far enough for something dramatic and unusual to happen). Even if life were to settle down for him (without killing him), he wouldn't start a family of his own, preferring instead to roam around and kill things well into his old age. He would make his own un-settled-down-ness.

Unfortunately, I usually have him die a heroic death as the push to get a story rolling, and so rob myself of his exciting, adrenaline-powered personality.

Follow Up

Okay, it's not really that hard, but what do I blog about? Blog about what I'm learning?

I'm learning to read the play before the part of the textbook that evaluates it, otherwise I fall asleep in the middle of reading...I'm learning that practice makes imperfect more obvious and that not practicing turns imperfection into a mess of strings and rosin...I'm learning that I don't actually like other highschoolers, just my friends (who are either intelligent, "strange", or a healthy mix of both)...and I'm learning that I love the people around me more than I realized.

Also, formspring.me is NOT a site for introverts. Not even ones that blog.

Posting Infrequently

Blogging is hard.