I Am Learning

It finally happened, I landed a job in my chosen profession as a registered nurse. I had to stand back and take a deep breath when I was still in the bathroom but handed my cup with urine in it through the crack to the person checking it for drugs said, "Congratulations, you're hired!" through the door. It wasn't like all the hoops I had to jump through after accepting an offer at a local hospital that fell through after an unannounced hiring freeze. I smiled so big, I thought my cheeks would fall off. I had to compose myself before I came back out, but not before I jumped up and down, did a few fist pumps and washed my hands. I come home every day with a sore face because I smile so much. I love my job!

I thought I'd go to work in a local hospital immediately after graduation but for some reason or another, it didn't happen for me. My job became to sit in this office chair at my kitchen table and apply for jobs in area hospitals. I did it for hours every day. It was a soul sucking job. Then, I decided to find another volunteer job that could use my skills. I've been a volunteer at Women of W.O.R.T.H. for nearly three years because I believe in their mission of providing low-cost reproductive health care for under served women in our community. Then I went to the Free Clinic of Rome to draw blood on Thursday mornings so I could keep my sticking skills up. If you can stick and draw blood out of a patient, you can place an IV and put things in.

I'm working in a long term care facility, a nursing home. It's not where I thought I'd be. Surprisingly, it's exactly the perfect job for me. I love the geriatric residents and yes, some are not geriatric but so disabled they can't be cared for at home. I love on the patients, I tell them so every day. I hug and kiss most of them. I tell them their room numbers over and over because they can't remember them for 5 minutes. I answer one patient's, "What's your name? Where are you from?" many, many times a day, always with a smile on my face.

I was asked to do a blood draw on a patient when I was recommended by one of the floor nurses. I got flash-back but couldn't get the blood. I hated to stick that old sweetheart but I was not tentative, I did what I had to do. Then I was asked to place an IV in a dear, sweet man who was dehydrated. I found the vein, not much bigger than a hair and got in, first stick. He didn't complain with how much it hurt, he said that he loved the feel of my warm hands and my tender touch. I sat with him about ten minutes and he knew I loved him but had many other patients to see too. He passed away a couple of days later. I loved him, I'll always remember him.

I learned the value of the LPN's who are the backbone of the long-term care facility. They were so patient with me. The first weeks, they pulled medications and I delivered them to the patients. They are lightening fast when they go through each patient's medications! The next few weeks, I pulled medications and they delivered them to the patients. Then one day, I was told I would run a cart by myself! Horrors! I got so far behind. There is a computer that has each patient's list of drugs and times it is to be given. I was on 9:00 AM patients at 1:30 PM. When you are late, it's almost impossible to catch up because you have to sign-off on each drug then another box pops up and wants to know why. Then another box pops up and you have to type a reason. Thankfully, it has a place in the box that reads, "Use Last Reason." Then one day, you are on time. There's no describing the feeling of accomplishment! I'm learning that the LPN's that have taken the time to train me can be my best friends and nurture me in my profession. The LPN's are darlings and we should all worship them. I am learning.

For the last few weeks, I've been working with the Treatment Nurse. They are the ones that work on cuts, skin tears, bed sores, rashes, etc...I love it. It reminds me of being in the OR years ago. I can wrap Kerlix gauze with the best of them. I've done so well, that when the Treatment Nurse went on vacation, I was the one to do all the treatments in her place. People may think this job is easy, you aren't on the floor as much as the floor nurses, but, "Oh, MY!" there's so much paperwork. So much that I didn't get off the other night until 7:20 when I usually get off at 4:00. But, I'm learning. I'm also learning that even though I'm a very good treatment nurse and I love to write, I'm not a very good charter. I will learn that better too. I am learning.

I am learning that the Certified Nursing Assistants can be your right hand. They wash, dry, dress, toilet, change briefs, put powders where ever powders are needed on the residents. They are tasked with the every day activities of daily living for their assigned patients. They also assist the nurse when she is delivering unwanted  but necessary treatments to a recalcitrant resident. They have your back. It is wise to appreciate them and thank them every time they do you a favor. They are extraordinarily hard working people. They have taught me so much. I am learning.

I've learned that some patients have visitors and family that care for them deeply and come often to see them and about them. I've learned that some have out-lived all their family and they have no one and it's up to me and the other staff to give them all the love and care they receive. I've learned that some have family and for some reason or another, they never come see about them and they are the saddest of all to me. I am learning that even though you are old, you have value. I am learning.

I've learned so much and I'm sure I'll be learning more and more as time goes by. I will be working on the new ventilator patient wing when it opens. I'll work Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. That will take some getting used to. It will be a different pace than the busy day-time on the halls when all the support staff is there and patients are gone to meals, activities, and rehabilitation. When it is quiet in the hallways. It will be different, but I will learn. I am learning!

The Tornado

I always thought that our house was protected from tornadoes because of it's surrounding geography, on February 22, I learned it was not. As we sat at our computers, me in the kitchen, Freddy at his in the dining room, and Nicole in her room, we heard a mighty rushing wind headed straight for us.

Freddy had just told me that he was looking at the National Weather Service radar and saw a storm near Cedar Bluff with a red hook in it. Then the sound came. It was a low rumble and we ran for the hallway our dog and cat following us. We had no time for anything else, there was no warning, only that low rumble that said something we couldn't see in the dark of night was on a direct path to us.

We laid on the floor for less than a minute as the roar grew louder and changed in pitch from a bass note to the highest pitch I'd ever heard and never hope to again. It screamed as it passed our home and our house's natural resonance caused it to sing with the storm. The storm and our home was on the same frequency that is one of the most interesting things I learned about in physics. A forcing function that is variable becomes the same frequency as the structure, there is oscillation that occurs. That is what happened at our house. Within just a few seconds, the house had cracks that appeared in all the walls and the ceilings. I shudder to think what would have happened had the tornado been stronger than an EF-1.

I called 911 and told the operator that we had been hit by a tornado. "No," she said, "It was straight-line winds. The National Weather Service will be out tomorrow to access the damage." I told her she was wrong, I knew we had been hit by a tornado and so did Freddy and Nicole. There was no mistaking what we had heard and felt for anything else. I told her that the storm had blocked our ears, sucked the air out of our lungs and the house, and we had damage that was not straight-line wind damage. The trees were sucked in to us from more than one direction and not laying one way. The next day the NWS confirmed a tornado that was only 75 yards wide and 3.2 miles long. We also found out that radar cannot pick up storms that are under 5000 feet in altitude as this storm was. You can see in Maplewood, the neighborhood just west of us exactly where it began.

By the time we would have really been scared, the tornado had come and gone. Nicole and I started out the backdoor and we couldn't go anywhere because the beautiful sycamore tree that had shaded our driveway for more than a 100 years was laying in our path and the downspout lay across the steps. The downspout was easy to move, the tree had fallen more than a 100 feet and pushed in the window on the glass porch, broken the window in the dining room, and crushed Freddy's truck and very nearly destroyed Nicole's car.

The front was no better. The post oak that we loved and shaded the front porch for between 100-150 years was laying on the ground too. Luckily for us, both trees had fallen parallel to the house or much more damage would have been done. The post oak was a beautiful tree too. It's huge root ball was pulled up from the ground and still lays exposed in the yard.

On the north side of our house, along the property line was a group of white pines that must have been planted in the 30's when our home was built. We lost two to Hurricane Fran hit in 1996 we found them on the ground the next morning after an anxious night where I stayed up and wrote letters to relatives and friends because I couldn't sleep as the barometer dropped and dropped. These old trees were over a 100 feet tall and seeing the rest of them down really shook me to my core.

I have always called our home Twin Magnolias. In those few brief seconds the north magnolia was stripped of limbs on the north side. We had become Magnolia and a Half. The next day when Brad Prater and his crew of volunteers from the Church at Northpoint came walking into our yard asking if we needed help we were amazed and delighted that God had sent an old friend to us. His crew cut the remaining half of the magnolia down and we became Mono-a-Magnolia. Our remaining magnolia in the front yard is huge and one of the largest in the area. It has some small damage to the east side, but it will recover. It has been our pride and joy for 28 years and I'm hoping for the rest of our lives.

 Many churches worked in our yard all weekend, Northpoint, Spring Creek Baptist, Pleasant Valley South Baptist, and Trinity are ones that I remember. They cut and hauled trees with a bobcat and a tractor. Brad said they'd return to finish and I don't doubt him. Someone left a John Deer tractor and trailer in our yard and I'm fairly certain they are not giving them to us.

We lost about 9-10 trees that were ours. The shock was all the trees that came from the property lines of our neighbor's on the north and south side. With ours and theirs all on our property, trees covered both sides of yard, around the house, and at the road. I have counted around 50 on the ground but there are more that are still covered with so many limbs and debris that we can't see their bases and they are just mixed up in the fray.

At some point in time in the future, things will return to normal, well, the "new" normal. Our house and roof will be repaired, the yard will be pretty again. Life continues on and Mono-a-Magnolia still stands. We were lucky. We were able to survive with no injuries, things and belongings will be replaced. We will cry over trees lost that were like old friends. We will though, never forget the night of February 22, 2012.

Lillah Nicole Boyd's 27th Birthday

When Freddy and I got married on November 27, 1981 I immediately made an appointment with the fertility doctor in Birmingham. I was finally covered by insurance and back then, insurance covered fertility treatments. I began my trek back and forth that 100 miles often.

Over the course of nearly three years, I had six surgeries, countless tests, and fertility drugs which have a special circle in Hell all their own I'm sure. I had hot flashes, night sweats, and MOOD swings. Then we moved to Rome in December of 1983 and I took a break. I called Dr. Younger's office at UAB and they said I deserved one. Then, in January...I was pregnant! It took, and on October 30, 1984 we had the prettiest little baby girl you ever saw.

Nicole was 5lbs-4oz. Such a tiny little thing. By the time she got here after 19 hours of hard labor, I was so glad to see her. Freddy had tears in his eyes and under the delivery room lights, they looked like diamonds. I was shaking so hard from the epidural, I couldn't hold Nicole. Between my shoulder blades, it felt like someone had hit me with a baseball bat! So...they handed her to her daddy and she quit crying immediately.

Nicole never cried the five days (Yes, five days! They didn't send you home then like they do now.) we were in the hospital. I was nursing and every time we would fall asleep, together. The nurse would come and get her and say that I was going to drop my baby. I never did. I would never do that! In Fort Payne at Baptist Medical Center DeKalb, they didn't have rooming in then. They would bring her to see us and then come and whisk her away.

When my cousin, Tim, came to see her, she was in the nursery with two other babies. He said, "Look, fun size, regular size, and field hand size!" Nicole was tiny, a little baby boy was about 7-8 lbs, and the next baby was around 12 pounds! It really was funny.

Freddy's mother and sister brought Freddy's boys to see their little sister. He took them to the Spook House at the fairgrounds. Scotty was a little skinny 13 year old and Wayne was a good sized 15 year old. Scotty was behind Freddy and somebody came after them with a chain saw. He climbed right up Freddy's back and over his shoulders! They came back laughing and laughing! Oh how birthdays bring back memories.

Nicole was a crier when we got home on Friday. We were lost. We went to the emergency room at Floyd on Sunday morning because she cried all the time. I was nursing every three hours. Dr. Ruel McMillian came to the hospital and he gave her a bottle of formula. Then he called the hospital in Fort Payne. They had been giving her supplemental feedings because she was so small! You'd think that would be sort of important to a new mom and dad.

Happy Birthday, my love! You were a beautiful baby and you are beautiful now. I always wanted a little girl. You are my dream come true.

My Kitchen and Me

I wrote this essay for Inviting Writing in the Smithsonian Magazine food blog. It was rejected because there were so many submissions. I also received the nicest rejection letter I've ever received:

"Thanks very much for this essay for Food & Think. It's delightful


-- very thoughtful and full of inviting details. Unfortunately, we

had so many submissions that closely fit the "kitchen" theme that we

weren't able to publish this one. We hope you'll consider sending a

version of this story or a new essay in for a future Inviting Writing

series. You have a great voice."



Best,

Laura




I love my kitchen, well sort of. It’s a 1939 kitchen and not glitzy by today’s standards. I don’t have enough cabinets or pantry space to keep all the things that I feel are required to turn out some of my amazing meals. I keep cake plates, big casserole dishes and my salad spinner on the glassed-in back porch. My big stand mixer is kept in the spare bedroom. I move things around on my one kitchen counter when I bake bread.




I dream of a kitchen with miles of counter space and cabinets with little crooks and crannies to store all my equipment. Those things are wonderful, but they are not what turns out good meals and sometimes even great ones.



After the tornado ripped through Rainsville, Alabama (my home town), I stayed in my grandmother’s house for several weeks. Her kitchen had a sink, a stove and a refrigerator. She raised the last four of her 11 children in that house. She cooked meals in it until she broke her leg in her 80’s.



Up on the hill, my mother built a house when I was 12. It had a little U-Shaped kitchen that only had room for two people at the most in it. The last thing she cooked when I was 19 was an apple cobbler for one of my cousins. Her little kitchen became mine and I cooked in it happily until my husband and I moved to a new town in 1983. Our house that my brother still lived in was destroyed by the tornado. I can still close my eyes though and remember my mother cooking chicken and dumplings at that old stove.



I didn’t really know how to cook. I could read what was on the back of the box and cook that and then I ordered the two-volume set of The Doubleday Cookbook by Jean Anderson and Elaine Hanna© 1975. I learned to cook anything and everything from those two books. They still hold pride of place in my kitchen and they look every one of their years. They are yellowed and stained and well used. They told me how and sometimes, more importantly, why one needs to follow an order when cooking.



When we moved to Rome, Georgia, I spent weeks looking for a house that we could live in and be happy, one that wasn’t too close to its neighbors, one we would feel content in. We were only leasing a house, we wouldn’t be there forever. The kitchen is a large room and it didn’t seem like it would be that important. I learned to really cook in this house. We also bought this house, paid for it, and it will be our home for the rest of our lives.



All that’s really required to be able to be an excellent cook, is a stove, a refrigerator, and little bit of counter space. All the glitz in the world won’t do any good if you don’t have the skills to turn out the meals. The other thing that is required for great meals and wonderful food is love. I love my old house and I love to cook in it. I learned to cook well enough to begin the Community Kitchen here in Rome. I was the director of the kitchen for 7 years. It still continues to operate to this day. My philosophy for the kitchen was to cook only meals for our clients that I would serve my family. Everyone who came received a “meat and two” from the kitchen and became like family over the years. They also received a plate of love that I and my volunteers prepared for them.



Someday, maybe, I’ll have a glitzy kitchen. If I don’t, it won’t really matter though, because… I will be cooking in my kitchen. I’ll cook sometimes just to put food in our bodies, sometimes grand meals for big crowds, but all of the time I’ll be cooking with love.

Fried Peach Pies

I put this in my notes on Facebook last year. There are pictures on that side, but this site didn't post them with the note. Oh well! I was reading Gourmet Magazine's blog this morning and a lady from Philadelphia came to Georgia to learn to make Fried Pies. It's wonderful to share our food heritage with others!

Monday, April 26, 2010 at 7:21am.This is at least a two day project. I keep all my peach peelings from all the peaches that I cut through the year...You could use fresh peaches and just chunk them up with the peelings on. The peach peeling is what has all the flavor in it. If you use only peelings these pies will have the most concentrated peach flavor you have ever tasted. Of course, it takes me over a year to get that many peelings. I just keep them in a zipper style freezer bag and add to them through the year.



1/2 Gallon of peach peelings or fresh peaches with their skins left on

3 cups Sugar

2 Tablespoons White Vinegar

2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice

1 teaspoon Vanilla



Place everything in a heavy bottomed pot. Bring to a boil then reduce to very low and simmer until peaches are a deep golden brown and thickens up. This will take quite some time, maybe an hour or so. Low and slow is the way to go. After peaches thicken up, cool slightly, place in storage bowl or zipper bag and put in the refrigerator at least over night. You cannot place hot filling in the dough or you will have a mess on your hands and no pies in the end!



Bisquits



2 1/2 cup self-rising flour or plain flour with 1 tsp. salt and 1 Tablespoon baking soda added to it.

2/3 cup of Butter

1 cup Buttermilk (If you don't have buttermilk, clabber your own milk by putting either 1 teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice in the bottom of the measuring cup and wait just a few minutes, the milk will thicken up and have the same taste of buttermilk.)



Put flour in a bowl and cut the butter in with a pastry blender until it resembles English Pea size. Add milk all at once and mix with a fork until dough forms a ball. Dust counter with flour an kneed until dough becomes a nice round ball. Pat out until dough is about 1/2" thick. Cut with a two inch biscuit cutter. Take scraps and roll into a log, pat out and you can get two or three more biscuits. At this point you could put the biscuits on a pan and bake at 450 degrees until golden and have biscuits!



Place biscuits, one at a time into the flour cannister, take out and roll out to about 1/8" thick on the counter. Place 1-1/2 Tablespoons of the chilled peach filling in the center of the dough. Wet around half the circle of dough with water. Fold dough over and seal shut with your fingers. Then take a fork and go back around the edges. With a sharp paring knife, trip excess edges off. A 1/2 inch edge is enough.

Place pies on a plate covered with parchment paper. If you have more than one layer, place parchment paper between the layers to prevent sticking. Put finished pies in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.



Heat a heavy bottomed skillet over medium heat for at least 5 minutes, spray with Pam and add just a little butter. Put two or three pies in the skillet and cook until you can see that the bottom of the pies is golden brown. Turn and cook the other side. Place on a platter and keep in a warm oven while the others cook. Enjoy! This recipe makes about 12-14 pies. Check out the photos below!Multimedia messageMultimedia messageMultimedia messageMultimedia messageMultimedia messageMultimedia message

Best Ever Potato Salad

I love potato salad, but just not any potato salad. I want some kick to it. I want some bite! I have this love, love relationship with vinegar...I love the bite it give most anything. The secret to this potato salad is the vinegar and the order it's put in it. Don't mess this up!  You have to use russet potatoes. New red potatoes are too waxy to take up the vinegar and gold potatoes don't get soft enough either.

Best Ever Potato Salad

2 pounds russet potatoess, peeled and cut into 3/4" cubes
Table Salt
4 TBL. Vinegar

Place the potatoes in a large pan and cover with water by 1". Bring to boil over medium-high heat. Add 1 TBL. salt, reduce heat to medium and simmer until potatoes are tender, just about 8 minutes.

Drain potatoes and transfer to a large bowl. AND HERE'S THE SECRET! ADD THE VINEGAR TO THE HOT POTATOES. Use a spatula and toss potatoes and vinegar. Let stand until the potatoes are just warm.

Dressing

2 ribs of celery chopped into 1/8" pieces
1/2 red onion, but if I'm out, I use a whole small yellow onion
4 TBL. sweet pickle relish
1/2 cup mayonnaise (you can add more to the salad if it's too dry for you.)
1 tsp. dry mustard
1 tsp. celery seed
2 TBL. minced fresh parsley
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
1/2 tsp. salt
2 large hard-cooked eggs, peeled and cut into cubes (optional)
1 large apple, cut in cubes (optional and I like Gala, Fuji, or Granny Smith apples)

Mix all the dressing ingredients in a medium bowl, stirring well. Using a spatula, fold dressing into warm potatoes. I love my potato salad warm, but it really tastes better the next day! Enjoy!

A Southern Girl Cooking

In 2004, Freddy and I moved to Canandaigua, New York for nearly a year. He worked in a Fleischer's Bagels in Macedon and we lived in our brand new motor home in the Canandaigua KOA. I was the office manager. We both loved the area and the people. We were embraced by the community there. We went to Canandaigua UMC. It looked like one of my Snow Village churches from Department 56.

There were a few things that we missed eating when we lived there from home, but not much. I missed Bojangle's Biscuits on Saturday mornings and would have given my eye teeth for a Zero Candy Bar sometimes! The growing season there is much shorter than ours here in NW Georgia and NE Alabama, but they had some of the most beautiful farms you've ever seen there. There were more than 100 barns in Ontario County over 100 years old that were so beautiful.

Almost every farm had a farmstand. You could pull up to the stand, and there was rarely ever anyone there. They would lay out their fruits and vegetables with a metal box locked and bolted to the stand. They would have a price list and you dropped your money into the box. Every now and then you would catch the farmer or their wife or children there replacing the stock. I loved to talk with them and talk about the difference in the varieties they grew than what we grew down here in the South. They were always friendly. Sometimes, they had a hard time understanding my deep Southern accent.

One of our favorite things to eat that we discovered in New York was Salt Potatoes. Since we moved back home, I learned through research that Salt Potatoes is a regional recipe from Syracuse. Syracuse is at the "foot" of one of the most Eastern Finger Lakes scooped out by the ice age. If you look at a map of the Finger Lakes, it looks like a bear claw. It is also home of Cornell University. Freddy and I always drove through Syracuse on our way South and back North.

Salt Potatoes sounds really strange. You put two quarts of water in a big pot and bring the water to a boil. Then, you add 1 1/2 cups of SALT to the pot. Then you add 1-2 pounds of new potatoes to the pot and boil them until the potatoes are tender. You pour the potatoes into a colander and let them dry and a crust of salt will form on the potatoes. Melt butter in a bowl, add a lot of pepper and fresh chives. You put the potatoes on your plate and either cut them in two or smash them with your fork and drizzle the butter mixture on top.

Another regional dish we loved was Spiedies. Spiedies is a marinated chicken that you grilled on a stick and then put in a sub roll. I like the really soft ones. It is a regional dish from Binghamton, New York. People cooked different versions of it in the campground all summer long. The smell of spiedies cooking on the grill would make my mouth water. I was invited to eat with many of the friends I made in the campground throughout the summer.

Spiedie Chicken Sandwiches

2-3 chicken breasts
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice (fresh is best)
1/4 cup white vinegar
2 garlic cloves (finely chopped or pressed)
1 TBL dried parsley
1 TBL dried basil
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 tsp. garlic salt
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cracked black pepper
3-4 sub rolls

Cut chicken into 1" cubes. Whisk all other ingredients together to form a marinade. Set some aside for basting or sauce. Add marinade to chicken in a large zipper style bag and refrigerate overnight, turning occasionally.  Thread 5 or so cubes onto metal or soaked bamboo skewers. Grill or broil in oven until chiken is lightly browned. It has already partially cooked from the marinade. Place the skewer in the roll and pull off the meat. Add reduced sauce if you wish.