July 29, A Pommern Monday. Part 3.

Not written in my journal, but a couple quick stories. First, stool samples. Meggie and I did not witness one. We saw the slides, and we saw the specimens. They keep a couple formaldehyde jars of examples, either to impress visitors or to illustrate to parents the importance of treatment - or both.

Also, when urinalysis was ordered by the doctor, the man or woman had to give a sample. And what are you given to collect your urine in? A now-empty insulin jar. As pictured above (small ones on the left) with worms in it. Think of the size of the opening on those little jars. Have fun peeing in that! Oh and I'm sure hands get washed...

Also during our day, one of our cases negative for malaria, negative for typhoid fever, was an old woman - oh, probably about 300 years old. To my eyes. Her grandson was with her and he was in his late teens, so that would make her in her 70s at the oldest - if he were the youngest child of her youngest child.

The woman was asked to give a stool sample and when she left, Patricia engaged in a long conversation with her grandson. As an observer with no language, I relied on body language and tone of voice. It appeared like she was lecturing him. He didn't want to argue with her, he maybe even knew she was right, and he felt ashamed, but stuck. She showed him a Bible passage. Once he left the room, she explained to me. "He has completed his secondary school and it is time for him to go teach. To go away to a new place and to have a job. But every time he has made plans and found somewhere to work, she gets very sick. But no tests come back. Sick with what? Sick to keep him home? I tell him he needs to go; he cannot cancel again his plans and his life. Again and again."

Nurse Patricia:

The rules:

July 29, A Pommern Monday. Part 2.

(As written in my journal that day; grammar and minor edits only. Italicized portions are additions written after the trip.)

After cleaning, I move into the pharmacy with Patricia. The "pharmacy" consists of a rickety, mostly-empty shelf of cough syrup, OTC pain meds and antibiotics.

After seeing Dr. Elton, patients bring a scrap of notebook paper to the dispensary window - most today were for tooth pain or an abscess (some oral, some not); 18 aspirin and 30 cipro is the common scrip.

Patricia tells me we're to make "a Chinese envelope" out of old homework paper for each pill type - because there are no envelopes, plastic or paper, in which to give you your pills. She explains, "We say things are Chinese when they are badly made," and I lean in and tell her, "We say that in America too." She laughs and laughs, and she loves that my mother's name is Patricia too - she calls me her mtoto, her child, for this week, and tells the other nurses they can call her Mamaemmy. (I've shortened my introduced name to Emmy, with an exaggerated pronunciation like Ay-Me, as Emily is just too hard to wrap around for Swahili mouths.) The other nurses laugh at her.

Finally we move into the lab, as tests have started being ordered. It seems like people are tested for one or more of: malaria, typhoid fever, HIV/AIDS, a baseline urinalysis, a stool sample. No other possible diagnoses are discussed. We don't see any malaria; we see one typhoid fever. The tests are all prepackaged single-use, but the procedure is, simply observed and without frustration or surprise to me, just totally horrifying.

Sometimes alcohol swabs are used to clean the inner elbow site where blood is drawn - sometimes not. A new prepackaged syringe and needle is used to draw blood each time but there's no hand washing in between (there's no sink with running water in the lab, only the common one just outside the door in the public waiting room), and the drawing of blood is probably done with a skill level that I'd have after a few weeks of training. 2, 3, maybe 5 stabs with the needle into each patients arm. A little digging around to find the vein. The blood comes out slowly, thickly.

A glove serves as the tourniquet first, and then as the sterile surface to place the test and blood-filled syringe on (see the background of the above photo). Sometimes multiple blood draws are taken, put on their glove, and only then is each test run. No tests got switched around - I think - but you can imagine the potential for a blood vial to get moved, and then recorded in the little blue-book-like health record of the wrong patient. Oh, those blue books. Talk about taking charge of your health care!

It's a little terrifying to be allowed to help with this, though all I'm doing is dropping blood into a small plastic hole and adding the right solution to start the test...

Meggie wears gloves. She is smarter than me. 

This is a close-up of a malaria test, sitting on top of the blue-book health record. If that was your health record, you'd keep it with you for each doctor visit. The "back up" record kept at the clinic is a giant bound book with lists of patient names, estimated ages, date of the test and results. So unless you know what day you came for a test, there's no way the clinic records are going to be helpful. Lesson? Don't lose your blue book! 

Drop-drop-drop the solution on top of the blood sample.

Multiple tests to get going; we wait two minutes by Patricia's watch for results. Who has malaria? Who has typhoid fever? I keep thinking, what if you have cancer? What if you're depressed? What if it's Chrone's Disease or fibromyalgia? What if you've developed an allergy or esophageal damaging reflux or a urinary tract infection? 

Basically if it doesn't show up on these few tests and it's not enough describable pain for a knock-ya-out course of Ciproflaxin, then it's probably not a disease recognized in Africa. Or not in Pommern, at any rate.

The four tests we take sit out, on the gloves, on a table also strewn with empty packaging, dried alcohol swabs, partial bottles of the processing solution. The disorganization, the mess - these are not too shocking. The trash can, however, is. I don't think they've heard of sharps containers.

It all goes into the same place - blood, needles, you name it.

Then a young man, who says he is 27 and has only a primary school education recorded in his blue book, has a malaria test come back negative. He's been feeling unwell for a little over a year and was referred here by another clinic in the nearby village for this set of tests. The AIDS set of tests. With fascination and horror, Meggie and I watch Patricia get a first-test positive. SOmetimes these aer wrong though, so she puts the rest of his blood in to the second one. Count down two minutes, and watch the lines appear. Positive.

Normally the doctor delivers this news but if he is really busy, Patricia does. Which, HIPAA concepts be damned, she does with Meggie and me in the room. 

I have the same reaction as when the students were being beaten - I try to become physically small, I look at the floor and refuse to make eye contact or be seen as a voyeur; I won't watch. I breathe quietly. I think, I want him to forget I'm here. Patricia speaks calmly in Swahili. She sounds straightforward and unemotional; she doesn't touch him or appear to give words of comfort. Just the facts, ma'am. She asks often, "Sawa? Sawa?" which is, "OK? OK?". He nearly whispers in response. Sawa." She gives him a CTC information notice; that's the once-a-week AIDS clinic on Thursdays here. I think, there's no way this guy is showing up again later in the week. 

Blood draws. Single use test kits. Recording the results in patient blue books, and again in the clinic ledger. Using our own pens - no one at the clinic can ever seem to find one. Rinse and repeat. How long would this relatively simple work take Patricia if we weren't here helping? At her pace, it seems like we're cutting the time by half, helping the patients move twice as fast through the line. And it finally feels like I am being useful. I'm supporting existing work and not supplanting existing knowledge. Just a pair o' hands here. And this is exactly what I wanted to do in Africa: pitch in, not harm, experience life as it is before I was here and will be after I go, among the poorest on the planet, as one of the richest.

July 29, A Pommern Monday. Part 1.

(As written in my journal that day; grammar and minor edits only. Italicized portions are additions written after the trip.)

If there was only one day to journal about in Africa, this would be it, hands down. I'm writing late on the 30th and you'll see why. This is going to stretch over a few blog posts, partly to prevent an epically long post that only my parents would fully read! Meggie and I were assigned to the clinic today - the first volunteers, yet again, to take on an assignment. Somebody sure trusts us.

After Dr. Elton, a dentist and also the presiding medical officer in the village (actually, in the whole area - this clinic serves seven villages and he's in charge) introduced us to the three nurses - Nema, Patricia and Farajah - I learned from my past eagerness in the secondary school, and instead sat on the bench to wait for an assignment. When Patricia began to mop, Meggie and I jumped up to do it for her. Something we can do!

I mopped the laboratory, the children's ward, the IUD insertion and sterilization room, and the delivery room. (Sterilizing of materials, not people. As far as I could tell.) It was amazing that last week, on our first day, during the brief clinic tour as part of village orientation, I was horrified at the filthy conditions. Too-small sheets on rusted frame beds with mattresses about 2 inches thick. Peeling paint. Pitted cement floors, windows so covered in red Pommern dust you can't see outside. A stained, torn and dirty curtain over the window, if you're lucky. Chipped metal bedpans back from well into the last century. Side tables with the tops smashed in but nothing to replace them, chairs missing armrests. But then...

This is where your baby is weighed and checked, immediately after delivery:

Ladies room...

'

Inside the men's ward...

Need an IUD? There are instructions on the wall, so don't worry. And this is the room speculums are sterilized in too (in something that looks a lot like the cooking pots, to be honest). But it smells like the Piniest Pine Sol ever.

For the gents...

This pretty room is the maternity ward, where you'll labor and recover (though to deliver, you'll be moved - only two beds, not four, in there.

Ladies' ward...

Meggie making beds.

... after I straightened everything to my beloved right angles, and tucked in corners, and mopped it carefully with the most intense-smelling disinfectant yet (and that's saying something!), I look around and think, hey! This is pretty clean! It looks decent! Ah, satisfaction.

Just like coming through Iringa Town the second time yesterday, after being in mud-hut rural villages, I thought, yeah, this is pretty modern. Fairly organized. I'd rather live here than in a hut, I see why people come to live in towns and cities. I would too.

If in only a week my perspective can shift that much, what will a second week bring? And how those Peace Corps or State Department folks must feel after two or three years away? Unimaginable. Though I can try. What else is being a writer about?

July 25/26, Before the break, Part 1.

Before our two nights away, this is part one of my last evening of journaling in Pommern - after the first full week. I may be repeating myself a bit here, but it's as-written, knowing the next day I'd work a half day on the septic and then go... on a safari! 

I find that having secure shelter, safe food, clean water and English speaking friends means I can remain in a heightened state of observation more often than not. There's nothing rote here; there's no single unconscious action, from food to sleep.

Also: the showers that Joe and Marie and their family brought might be the greatest possession ever and I vaguely feel like I OUGHT to be ashamed of the daily 3 minutes of waist-height better-than-lukewarm water. But it's one thing I'm not embarrassed about. it's too powerfully restorative to feel guilty.

So during my peek into Lutheran choir practice today, and then hearing "Hey Ho" on Mamatony's battery-powered tinny kitchen radio - both bring me to tears. It's that heightened state, and I write this after working, after showering, feeling reborn. The tears come for scope of Africa's problems that I can't help - like how these women, their girls, and their girls' girls will live almost this exact life. I know I won't be able to fix anything of consequence for them, the ones right in front of me, even. Tears for the health, their hopes, for how they get smitten and fall in love but it probably does not make life much better. Again and again the beauty continues to pain me - more literally at times when I see this gorgeous place, with vibrant life humming in the very air, as also the source of their pain - geographically isolated from the power, but rich in natural resources ripe for the thieving.

And it becomes, over these days, apparent how we'll each divvy up the personal resources when they get scarce. Fellow volunteer Joe is wildly generous - having brought not just the sun showers for us all to use, but thousand (truly) of dollars in medical supplies. But when they are sorted and divided to take half to the clinic near us, and half to the Roman Catholic clinic across the village, he comes back harshly certain it was not only done wrong - ah, our attachment to literally giving the gift, to seeing the joy or appreciation or the reverence for the plenty we bring, the plenty we think we innately are - but that even more importantly, his personal medications were accidentally given away.

Now, look, I don't want to lose my Ciproflaxin either! But the pure possessiveness is both funny and part of the constant state of high alert I'm in, this constant open wound I am.

I see suddenly, my God, exactly what you would do with two servings of porridge and three kids.

And perhaps, at some point, what you would do with those two servings when one child becomes ill. And then gravely ill.

How Joe - and all of us - love our little things, things, things - and how our fresh-showered good humor and ability to poke fun at ourselves is there - until a very genuine threat arises. Someone gave away my pills, vitamins, medications. Then the entitlement to OUR items flares like Bilbo Baggins clutching after his ring, baring his fangs at a dear nephew.

And with that - Mamatony says dinner is served. I peel myself off the back deck and away from my rumination, away from my imagining of scarce, scarce food and what it would do - to me.

July 25: The Best Laid Plans

(As written in my journal that day; grammar and minor edits only. Italicized portions are additions written after the trip.)

Before Edward excused himself last night to go home, he warned Meggie and I that tomorrow, the headmaster would be gone from the secondary school.

"Things may not be as well there tomorrow. When he is gone, Madame Sbarra is in charge, and she can like to hide. She pretends not to see things, her head in the sand, like the ostrich bird. So just be aware of this. And when teatime comes, do not have tea with the teachers. Come back here to the mission house. It won't be good there, and you shouldn't be there at that time. Have some tea and toast here, and then you go back for your next assignments with Onalina in the secretary's office and Adrian for planning the physical exercise."

We walk down early, for a 7:30 AM class of different English students (one 50-minute period, not a double period this time!).

And? Mr. Msugu is out - but his substitute sure is ready for us to take over. And this is in fact the same class of students as yesterday (we were assured it would not be).

!!!

I freak out - inside. I get wide eyed and silent; the sub does not know what lesson we taught yesterday or where this English class is in their curriculum. I think he said he's been teaching for about five months?

But Meggie steps up. She sets the expectation - no, sorry, our plan is to observe and observe only, and here is what we taught in the Standard 3 book yesterday. He says, "Oh, ok, yeah, and then you'll teach the next lesson?" She is firm and says we'll be sitting by, but we can mark the papers - if the homework was indeed done.

It was extremely unclear at the end of yesterday's class whether any homework was assigned. The pat little lesson about Mr. Tortoise included a homework assignment. If you recall, the tale of Mr. Tortoise was a fable about how he ended up with a bumpy and cracked-looking shell. The homework assignment was to write a creative and original story that ends, "And that's why the snake has no ears." 

No small task in your first language, if you ask me - much less your third! However, homework was a vague concept to us - sometimes done at home, sometimes done in class, but always corrected/marked during class time. The sub wanted to know if homework was assigned and we shrugged. It was explained (sort of) while the bell was ringing yesterday; did the students take that to be an assignment due today, or a suggestion? I guess we'll find out - and the sub doesn't seem overly worried about it. 


Teachers are dressed down. The bell rings. Students are slipping in, late to class.

"Good morning teachers!" That rigamarole.

And of yesterday's two star pupils (the two that understood), just one, the boy, has done the homework. The rest of the class just blinks back at us. And his story is wonderful - the Frog convinced the Snake to trade over his ears so that all animals could see and hear equally well, but then took the ears and hopped away quick - not trading in his own eyes to the pile of senses. (Never mind that frogs don't have ears either; the basic concept of his story is there and has enough logic to stand.)

The sub asks who understood the story (it was read by the boy in English, of course). No hands go up. No nods. No eye contact.

The sub has been switching between Swahili and English and now says to the students, "I want to understand why the assignment was not done - what part did you misunderstand? Is it not understanding what creative writing IS or did you not understand what this one assignment was asking, about the snake and the ears?"

So at the sub's direction, our start pupil reads his story again in English, and then paraphrases it in Swahili. I'm soaring, watching eyes light up around the room with comprehension of this specific story and what the assignment was - and perhaps even the very basic concept of creative writing - making up a story from your own mind! - and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, we can explain the 5 W's now, using HIS story! This could be a tiny piece of helpfulness; heck, even writers and journalists in America can use a brush up on the 5 W's from time to time.

And literally as he finishes the Swahili recap, and heads for his seat in the back row among the tallest boys, two young women come in, with tall bamboo sticks. With a swagger. Swinging the sticks. I realize they're teachers, and though dressed very informally they're impressive and intimidating, and I say later to Meggie I thought right away, "They do a very good SS officer impression."

Then they ask all the boys in the back to stand up, shouting at them. Meggie and I are seated in the front and between us is a woman teacher who had a prep period, and rather than work in an office, asked to observe this class so she could, as she whispered to me at the start of the class, "get all the wisdom from you." She whispers to us what they yelling is about.

"The headmaster is gone, and they did not clean their rooms, you know, their dorm areas, this morning, so they have to be punished."

The women begin beating the kids with bamboo sticks. It's not fair to call them sticks; but neither are they quite bamboo poles. Somewhere in between.

They hit them - hard. Full, lean-back and put your back into it, get-a-good-grip and a fulcrum point hitting. Go-all-out beating. A beating that breaks the bamboo sticks eventually - in a few pieces, leaving shards behind and leaving students crying in their wake.

I look away pretty quickly and take in only the sounds - sticks hitting, kids screaming, other kids laughing, some gasping. The women teachers yelling. Ostensibly, it looks like corporal punishment is normally doled out on the palms - but those who don't volunteer their palms up at about head height are beat about the shoulders, back, head.

I look up as the women leave the room, sticks fairly demolished, and many of the children are pointing at each other and laughing, even with tear-stained faces of their own. A couple are quietly crying; many are blowing on their palms to take the sting out. I had to look down as the beating worked toward the crescendo - to not cry, and also because I didn't want to appear to condone it. I ask the teacher sitting with us, "Is this common, is this a regular thing?" and she says it is, but these women are wrong to do it without asking the presiding teacher's permission.

I think I can make it through the rest of class. I haven't looked at Meggie yet.

But then the sub asks us to go. "The students... the students they have a fever now. From this. They cannot learn well now. You go, and you come back another time." I'm a little confused and affirm with him - we should leave? Now? I point outside. Out the front door of the classroom? I point at our own chests. Us? Now? He nods.

We don't make it down the four stone steps before Meggie's losing it; it'll be a little later for me. Instead, you might have guessed, I'm angry at these women - these backwards, gleeful, power-hungry teachers. So ror a second day in a row, we walk up the long red-dust path from the secondary school to the mission house, my arm tightly around Meggie as she sobs and I clench my teeth in anger so hard it hurts.

Problems in a Pile

So at a comedy venue the other night, the house manager was a beautiful woman, with the kind of skin they probably use to design Photoshop templates. Flawless skin, a great figure, wearing a sleeveless top when she assisted the bus boys in clearing a few tables and picking up tossed-aside programs.

As she made her way through the audience toward the end of the show, cleaning a few items, I found myself admiring her arm and shoulder. I am pretty obsessed with arms right now - I have this vision in my head of what I want them to look like - since the next step of fitness on the Weight Watchers program for me has been adding in strength training, and I'm enjoying the journey of sculpting the arms. To be fair, the arms I really want I can't have... I don't think they'll ever be as thin as I desire... so instead, I am actively trying to make a new goal, and finding beautiful, toned, muscular arms to admire and strive toward.

Her shoulders were tough and strong, not tiny, but oh, so lovely. I can really covet a great arm in a sleeveless top, let me tell you. Add in that perfect skin, and I'm thinking of adding reps to my workout already.

And then she turned to double-back through the room.

And you could see that she had one lovely shoulder and arm; and she also had one smaller, still lovely, shoulder with an amputated arm above the elbow.

Covet away, Emily, covet away. There's an instant lesson for you!!

Have you ever heard of the pile of problems? Bring together 100 people, some you know and some you don't. Pop all your problems into a pile of 100 scraps of paper and choose one. Do you pick someone else's problems - the ones you can see, the ones you can't, and the ones they hide written on their piece of paper? Or in the end, do you pick the problems you know, understand, can handle and own?

Tell me how to heal this.

At Zumba class tonight, 4 kids showed up a bit after it began, and stood in the back of the room. One was little, 7 or 8, with her older sister, maybe 14. They were tapping their toes. The teacher invited them in to be in the ballroom with us.

The older sister seemed to have a very sweet boy with her, who was crushing on her enough to dance Zumba with us! And the 4th one - maybe 13?, maybe 14? hard to say with boys that age - sat in the back, in the lone chair in the ballroom. Which is right behind the computer where the music is played from.

He watched, he laughed when we tried to get him come dance. I admit, my inner control freak wanted to give them the boot - what if they got hurt and hadn't signed a waiver? What about how they didn't pay, which is a loss to our amazing teacher? But I let the part of me win who respects authority - and I let the teacher, or more senior folks in the class, make the decision.

They left as we did our cool-down stretches.

I got a round of high-five's from my classmates on the 15-pound weight loss I'm now up to, combining Weight Watchers and Zumba.

And then I walked out, and picked up a water bottle that had fallen on the ground.

And another woman picked up a wallet that had fallen on the ground. She flipped it open, "Whose is this?"

And I looked at the ID. "That's R's. That's our teacher's wallet."

Sure enough, the kid in the back kept his eyes on us while he fished out her wallet and stole $20. He left her ID, her credit cards, her health insurance card - which is pretty important for a cancer survivor turned Zumba instructor.

I am enraged. This foments distrust in my neighborhood. This foments fear of teenagers, roamin' around in packs like they do. This encourages a really nice teacher, who was embracing the experience of letting some kids come dance with us - one of whom could certainly benefit from a good cardio class even at a young age, as she was rather heavy, and see that working out can be fun - to become hardened and wary.

Look, I don't care if he needed the money (and I don't believe for a second he did). I don't care if he has parents at home who ignore him or no parents at all. I don't care if he is teased for being a slow reader, a bad football player or too feminine. He came into our little fun workout world and stole money. And for the cost of $20, he sent home a room full of women with negative feelings, increased distrust and a reminder to not be kind, open, loving, or soft with the rules once in a goddamn while.

And don't you dare tell me our teacher could have made a better decision and not let them in, or made them sign their names, or not let him sit in the chair. She could have. But that comes awfully, awfully close to victim-blaming. And to use a more typical victim-blaming line: a short skirt did not a rape create. This kid stole. End of story.

So tell me. How do I heal that hurt? Sure, we students could pay our teacher back - but that's not the real loss, that's not her real pain, and if I come across that kid in my neighborhood, he better be fucking ready.

4-6 Weeks

That's the estimated time to be back to some normal function from breaking a finger... or fracturing the proximal phalanx with damage to the proximal interphalangeal joint.

Well, Saturday was 6 weeks and those doctors aren't kidding! I've turned a huge corner, including typing at work this week all day - and not having to take a break with the left index finger aching. So I'll do my best to be back to blogging, and even though I can't lift anything for a couple more weeks, and I only have about 60% of my flexibility back, it sure is nice to have turned the corner.

#1 of 5

With no hesitation...
it is typing.

I'm not forgetting to email you, I'm not letting texts pile up. I'm saving myself a frustration level through the roof and saving my husband yet another cranky remark by not typing. CALL ME. Otherwise, I'll respond after March 2nd when this damn thing comes off.

#2 of 5

Opening a ziploc baggie. Try it. Tell me how fun it is. See how long it takes before you're frustrated with one hand behind your back.

#3 of 5

The number three? Using a q-tip in the opposite ear of the functioning hand. (Yeah, yeah, I know, you shouldn't use q-tips in your ear canals.)

#4 of 5

Fourth most annoying thing about being one handed? Blowing one's nose. It is infinitely less satisfying with one hand. Go on, give it a try...

#5 of 5

Fifth most annoying thing about being virtually one handed for 2.5 more weeks: squeezing toothpaste onto your toothbrush.

The Report: from yesterday

• Two separate parties of skiers triggered avalanches near Frazier Lake in the northern Bridger Range. The first group of three skinned to the top of long and popular east facing chute (>45 degrees). The first skier triggered a slide that broke 18” deep about 1⁄2 way down the run, but managed to ski out of it. This slide likely broke on the weak interface between the old and new snow.

• A second group decided to ski a nearby steep slope (also >45 degrees) slightly to the north. They were unaware of the previous avalanche. The first skier safely descended the run. The second skier had the slope break on his first turn. He tumbled over 1,000 feet through rocks and was almost fully buried. By wiggling his head and using his free arm he was able to dig himself out. His femur was broken, but luckily it was not an open fracture. His partner shouted to the other group who returned to help. A cell phone call to Gallatin County Search and Rescue got rescuers and a helicopter to the scene. He was evacuated with only minutes of daylight to spare.

The second skier was my big brother, who, being a preeminent big brother, can survive anything in my mind.

This now includes 1,000 feet in an avalanche slide that also included an enormous drop over a cliff. It now includes a broken femur, and a dig - with help, though not explicitly mentioned above - out of the snow, and a 200 yard drag to a better helicopter landing site.

It also makes him a bionic big brother, who has a titanium rod in his thigh... who also took his first steps today, less than 24 hours out of surgery.

There will be notes about it in the posts to come, but in the meantime, thanks for your thoughts and thanks to the universe for missed rocks, muscle memory and big brothers (mine and the fellow rescuers).

Jargon

While I'm using Google to frantically search "nonarticulated fracture" and "interphalangeal joint" to understand my x-ray results... to understand them more than "CHRIST, MY FINGER IS BROKEN" and then shuddering violently at the idea of hand surgery... ugh, shudder... violently... I must say it is not very nice, Mr. Radiologist Lab Dude, to tell me - in writing! - that the rest of my metacarpals are "unremarkable."

You, sir, did not see all the football catches I made in practice before the one I missed broke the proximal phalanx of my left index finger. They were great, and rather remarkable, if I do say so myself.

Healing Lessons

Many things learned from a broken index finger, so far, not the least of which is that typing takes a while...

Also, in the way your gramma told you put on clean underwear in case you're hit by a bus, I'm telling you you should do the dishes before leaving the house. Because if you break a finger with a sink full of dishes waiting at home, your spouse will be too busy taking you for x-rays and making you meals (adding to the dish pile...) and thus not have the time or the fortitude to wash the ever-more-intimidating pile.

Good Thing Friday: The waiting is the hardest part.

OK, this is an excuse of a title. BUT. I have been contemplating it since Friday, and I put it into action today. Hence, it was Good Thing Friday to follow the advice and it just took 'til Sunday to put into action.

The advice? From Michael Pollan's readers on the New York Times... he asked what food rules to live by, and published twenty of them. Two are really, really good ones that are burned into my brain:

1. If you aren't hungry enough to eat an apple, you're not really hungry.

2. If you want to eat it, make it yourself. (See: fried chicken, grind your own beef and make hamburgers, gravy, mashed potatoes, french fries or potato chips, white bread, cookies, ice cream... heck... we could throw mayo, butter and wine on that list too.)

So in the spirit of rule #2, I made egg rolls! Exhibit A:



John ground the pork for me, and diced the bell peppers and carrots. I sauteed it all with cabbage, ginger, soy sauce, garlic (yes, John pressed it and Dancing Roots Farm grew it out in Troutdale), and something called "fire oil". I did not make the wrappers but I stuffed them, fried 'em in olive oil and holy moley! Success! Delicious success! I would even call it major success but then we have Exhibit B:



Smeared with Neosporin - or the generic equivalent - we have the marks of an over-zealous fry cook. Hey! I was listening to my Sunday-blues-beating radio show "The Splendid Table"! The inimitable Lynn Rosetto-Casper was interviewing PDX's own Andy Ricker! The owner of Pok Pok! I couldn't help it. Splashes occurred.

The egg rolls were good medicine, though. Maybe good enough for Chef Bill?! We'll see. Incidentally, Chef Bill is whose ice pack gel thingy I still have... and am putting to good use.