Being a busy grad student and nurse meant I thought I didn’t have time for DIY projects, so my original intent was to purchase a pre-made coop and chicken run. To my amazement, I found a chicken tractor on Amazon.com–with FREE super saver shipping! I happily placed my order.

A week later, Amazon informed me my order had been canceled due to unavailability. Frustration set in. I searched in vain for another source, but couldn’t find anything I liked as much that was within my price range. It seemed that building my own was my only option, but I didn’t see how I possibly could. For one thing, we don’t have much in the way of woodworking tools. Also, finals week was fast approaching, and “spare” time was at a premium. I needed to come up with something I could do quickly and easily, without too many fancy tools. Here’s what I came up with:

I bought a Rubbermaid storage shed at Home Depot.

Inside, I added a roost and a rack to hold the “nestbuckets” made from Home Depot buckets. I also made a screened wall on one side, so that one door can be left open for ventilation during nice weather.

To secure the wooden fixtures, I drilled holes through the walls of the coop and screwed wood screws through from the outside into the wood pieces. Where possible, I took advantage of the shapes and depressions of the plastic to add additional support. The screen wall is fastened to the wall of the coop and also to the roosts. The nestbuckets are not permanently fastened to the rack they sit on — I use a bungee cord to hold them securely in place.

In the back of the coop, beneath the nestbuckets, I cut an opening for the chickens to use for going in and out. I made a mistake and made it flush with the floor, before realizing that there should be a “lip” to hold the bedding in, so I added a scrap piece of lumber across the bottom for that purpose. I used strips of trim to “frame” the opening and hide the hollow walls of the Rubbermaid container.

Since there’s no way to keep the right-hand door closed when the left-hand one is open, I added gate latches on the inside to fasten it to the screen door. I can easily reach the lower one by reaching down through the top of the coop, but for people whose arms aren’t as long as mine, a pull string could be rigged for that purpose.

The last step was to add four eye bolts to the outside of the coop, to secure it to the run (I’m using bungee cords for this purpose), and to add strips of 2×2″ lumber to use as handles, since the smooth plastic makes it hard to get a grip on it for transporting the coop.

The run is made from two cattle panels with 2×4″ openings, using pig rings to secure the pieces together. The sides and top are each a half panel. The remaining piece was cut into 3 parts. Two of them form the end of the run farthest from the coop. The bottom half is fastened permanently in place, and the top half is fastened only at the top, forming a hinge that allows it to be swung up onto the top of the run for access to the inside. Again, I used a bungee cord to fasten the access panel in place when it is closed. I’m tall enough to easily step over the lower piece, but someone without my height advantage might need to modify the design to work for them. The remaining thin piece of cattle panel was fastened vertically to one side of the end of the run next to the coop. It adds some structural stability as well as allowing for the fact that the coop is not quite as wide as the run. A 2-foot wide strip of hardware cloth with 1/2″ openings was fastened all the way around the lower portion of the run, to keep raccoons from reaching through to grab the chickens.

Finally, I fastened a tarp over the run at one end to protect the feed from rain. Here’s the finished product, complete with chickens:

My particular vestibular disorder, Menieres Disease (aka endolymphatic hydrops) is caused by excess fluid in the inner ear’s hearing and balance structures. Normally these structures are independent of the body’s fluid system, but in Menieres Disease the independent fluid control is lost, causing fluctuating fluid volumes and concentrations in the inner ear, which in turn causes pressure, tinnitus, dizziness/imbalance, and loss of hearing.

For years, people with Menieres have been told to go on low sodium diets. Increased sodium means increased fluid retention, as we all learned in high school biology. But in nursing school physiology I learned that the body regulates sodium balance in the kidneys, so I knew that although eating too much salt would definitely cause increased volumes, eating less salt would, at least to some extent, just mean my body would excrete less of it in order to keep things balanced. Nevertheless, once I had cut back on sodium, I could cause instant symptoms of dizziness and vertigo just by eating something that was too salty, so I could definitely tell it had an effect. As a result, I have spent the last 10 years or so carefully avoiding foods I knew have more sodium than I can tolerate.

Last month, I started seeing a new vestibular specialist. My symptoms have been pretty well controlled, but my previous specialist retired about 3 years ago, and I figured it was probably about time to have a checkup. My new doctor explained to me that the fluid volumes in my inner ear are governed by the overall chemical / hormonal / electrolyte balance of the body fluids as a whole. The driving factor behind that overall balance is not sodium, but insulin.

The key to symptom management, as well as minimizing the permanent damage being done to the inner ear and even trying to restore some function, is managing the level of insulin in the blood and trying to keep it as steady as possible. The more consistent my insulin levels are, the less fluctuation there will be in the fluid volumes in my inner ears.

The diet he wants me to follow (and this is the sobering part: FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!) is based on the Zone Diet. Where the Zone Diet uses 3 meals and 2 snacks per day, however, this version uses 6 equal small meals evenly distributed throughout the each day. The first one is to be eaten within an hour of waking up, and the last one before bedtime is the most important one, because of the long gap before the next meal.

Each meal consists of the same proportions of protein, carbohydrates, and fats. Carbohydrates, as probably everybody knows, increase the level of glucose in the bloodstream, which causes a corresponding rise in insulin levels. Protein causes the release of glucagon, which regulates insulin levels. And fats control various hormones that also work to keep insulin levels controlled. So the whole point is to balance intake in order to keep insulin at a relatively steady level.

At the Zone website there are lists of “Zone food blocks.” There are three types: a protein block contains 7 grams of protein; a carbohydrate block contains 9 grams of carbs (not counting fiber), and a fat block contains 3 grams of fat. There is also a “body fat calculator” that tells you how many “blocks” per day you should consume. I’m supposed to eat 12 blocks per day of each of the 3 types, so with 6 meals, that’s 2 blocks of each type per meal. I’m to eat every 2-3 hours, never going more than 5 hours between meals during the daytime.

The approach that the nurse recommended to me is to make lists of the foods I’m interested in in each of the 3 lists, stockpile those foods, and as much as possible, have them pre-prepared in block-sized portions. Then I can just mix and match for each meal. For the first 4 weeks, I’m not supposed to eat from the “less favorable carbohydrates” list, so that means the only grain I’m allowed to have right now is steel cut oats. Fortunately, that’s my favorite breakfast.

I’m also supposed to carry “emergency food.” One stick of string cheese is one protein block, and they don’t have to be refrigerated. One apple is two carbohydrate blocks; you can get your hands on an apple just about anywhere. Applesauce also comes in single-serving containers, and one of those is one block. Fat is easy – three almonds is one block. There are also Zone Balance bars and another brand called Balance Bare that have the right proportions and amounts for one 2:2:2 meal. And 6 ounces of 2% milk is a perfect 1:1:1 food, so in a pinch I can drink a half glass of milk and go a little longer before my next meal.

Besides the protein : carb : fat ratios, there are some other things that I have to monitor in my diet. Splenda and stevia are the only sweeteners I can use — all of the others can affect glucose levels. Caffeine increases insulin secretion, so ideally I should avoid it, although for people who just have to have a cup of coffee in the morning, my doctor says to do it consistently — the same amount at the same time every day. MSG is also to be avoided, as are aspirin and all other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. (I will have to ask again what the reason is, because I’ve already forgotten, but they do something that affects fluid balance in the inner ears.) And I’m supposed to drink a minimum of 64 ounces of water per day, evenly spaced throughout the day.

As for sodium, it’s to be avoided in large amounts. Like everything else, my meals should contain similar amounts of sodium — but the plan is to titrate me back up to within the ADA recommended 2000-3000 mg daily consumption range. Oh, and I’m supposed to eat a 1:1:1 snack 20 minutes before exercising.

It’s actually been kind of fun creating my meals, since I’m not cooking for a family any more, which means they can be as weird as I want. I’ve loaded the freezer with frozen protein servings (turkey sausage, chicken breasts, etc.) and frozen fruits, stocked the fridge with boiled eggs, tofu, apples, oranges, kiwi, and Mozzarella cheese, and stashed single-serving containers of salmon, tuna, sardines, and different flavors of applesauce in the pantry.

For breakfast today I ate 2 links of turkey sausage, and 2/3 cup of steel-cut oats with Splenda and 2/3 tsp of butter. I could have had 1/3 cup of oatmeal and mixed in 1/2 cup of blueberries instead — maybe I’ll do that tomorrow. I had a Balance Bare bar for one of my meals, and it was actually quite tasty. My latest meal was 3 oz. of canned salmon, 1/4 cup hummus, 1 kiwi, and 6 almonds.

I’m also expected to keep a diary of the foods I eat every day, what time I ate them, what time I noticed feeling hungry, my fluid intake, and my symptoms. That way, over time we’ll be able to fine-tune my diet to my needs. My diary is also supposed to show the barometric pressure each day — that’s the wildcard in the equation; it’s the one thing that can’t be controlled. (I still have to go buy a barometer.)

I’m the least-regimented person on the fact of the planet, but I’m determined to make this work. Wish me luck! Better yet, join me; then we can share ideas for making it painless and fun!

Official “7 Things” Meme Rules:

1. Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post — some random, some weird.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Tagged By:

Thinking I was about to be tagged for this meme, and knowing that after this weekend I wouldn’t have time to blog for at least the next month, I dutifully prepared my entry ahead of time. As it turned out, the friend I thought was going to tag me was merciful and chose 7 others. But by then I’d already gone to all the trouble of writing the post, and I’d hate to think I wasted a perfectly good free afternoon this close to the beginning of the semester. So I’ve decided to publish my post anyway, and credit Felicity with the tag, in hopes the meme gods will be merciful to her for flaunting their rules and not tagging anyone.

Tag, You’re It:

• Jeff
• Etmorpi
• ByGolly
• Greystork
• Weasel
• Rasama
• Enrico

What’s done is done.

There is no longer a choice of candidates before us – what’s before us now is a choice between sitting on our butts complaining to whoever will listen because our guy didn’t get elected and we don’t think the new guy is going to be any good, or rolling up our sleeves and finding a way to make America great again. I know what I choose. I’m not going to sit around waiting for a rude awakening — for me or anybody else. I’m not going to scrutinize the man’s every move for fault-finding opportunities. I’m certainly not going to hope something bad happens so I can say, “I told you so!”

I’m going to put my trust and faith in President Obama. I’m going to pray for him to make the right decisions as he moves forward. Since I firmly believe that every thought we think is a prayer, I’m also going to think positive thoughts toward him as he takes office and starts working for our country.

The United States of America wasn’t founded by complainers and fault-finders. It also wasn’t founded by perfect people who always did everything right and never made any mistakes. It was founded by doers, and by people who were willing to take what they had to work with, and do the best they could. And that’s the kind of American I want to be.

I love this stuff. This one seemed to peg me pretty well, actually. The link to the site where you can take the test is down there at the bottom.

NBPC – The Daydreamer

Nature, Background, Big Picture, and Color

Take The Perception Personality Image Test at HelloQuizzy

As someone who attended nursing school after a successful career in the tech industry, it was disconcerting to be expected to forfeit my adulthood and life experiences and submit to being treated as though I were a naive and inexperienced 18-year-old just out of high school. I had lived in a foreign country and six different US states, owned homes and businesses, raised three children to adulthood, was a degreed engineer with two decades of experience, had been a manager and department head and earned a six-figure salary, and was practically the same age as many of my instructors. The condescending attitudes I encountered as a nursing student, therefore, were appalling. Even if I *had* been an inexperienced 18-year-old, I would have deserved more respect than some of them showed.

It’s no wonder that nursing instructors often complain of the lack of respect they receive from their students. Respect is a two-way street; you have to give it in order to get it. As both a parent and a manager, I could have told them that; tried to tell them that, in fact, but because I was a college student, I had nothing of value to offer them, so they couldn’t hear me.

There were exceptions among our faculty, of course, as I’m sure there are at all nursing schools. A few did appreciate the diversity of experience and knowledge brought to their classrooms by the increasing numbers of “nontraditional” second-career students. They were usually the same ones who showed common courtesy and respect to all of their students, regardless of age or background. Unfortunately, they were in the minority. As I’ve moved on since graduation, encountering other nurses trained at other institutions, I’ve come to realize that my experience was far from unique. Megan D., a current nursing student, tells a story eerily similar to one of my own experiences in her blog post, Lateral Violence in Nursing School.

In a profession whose most important qualities are empathy, caring, and appreciation for cultural diversity, the treatment of students is sadly lacking in any of these things. “Nursing school eats its young” is a common remark, as is, “it’s too bad it has to be that way, but that’s how it’s always been.” Well, here’s another thing I learned as an engineer: the fact that “this is how it’s always been done” does not qualify a process as “the best way to do it.”

Here’s only one of many examples from my own experience: I failed a math test for the first time in my life, in my third year of nursing school. I used to write complex equations full of imaginary numbers and integrals and LaPlace and Fourier transforms that completely described the functional capabilities of electromechanical systems. Yet in nursing school, I failed a test whose most challenging calculations were unit conversions and simple division of real integers.

I didn’t get any of the answers wrong.That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I derived my answers engineering-style, using the unit cancellations to check my work as I went, rather than plugging numbers into a memorized equation. My instructor (who was fully aware of my engineering background) explained to me that although I had arrived at all of the correct answers, the fact that I had not used the “need over have” nursing equation told her that I did not fully understand the relationships between the numbers. “You’re a nurse now,” she admonished me soberly, “and that means you really have to know what you’re doing, because when nurses make mistakes — they can kill people!”

After more than 2 years of having my engineering, management, and intercultural experience repeatedly dismissed as completely irrelevant to nursing, you might have thought I’d have gotten used to it. I hadn’t. I was stunned speechless.

If I had been able to speak I could have pointed out to her that nurses, no matter how badly they screw up, can only ever kill one person at a time. Engineers, on the other hand, can kill them by the dozens, or hundreds, with a single miscalculation. Shoot, in the right circumstances, they might possibly even kill them by the thousands. This would tell any logical person that engineers are probably trained pretty stringently in how to avoid making stupid mistakes. But logic is one of those things I had been repeatedly told was irrelevant in my new career choice. “Oh, Ruth,” they would sigh, “you’re a nurse now. You’ve got to stop thinking like an engineer.”

As it was, when I reported to the instructor doing the mandatory remedial math tutoring sessions for those who failed the test, and encountered the open-mouthed stare of disbelief from one of the rare faculty members who actually understood and appreciated the meaning of a degree in electrical engineering from one of the nation’s top engineering schools, I got to have a nice therapeutic venting session, and I ended up not having to repeat the exam.

I didn’t get to keep the test, though. I really wanted to frame it and hang it on my wall. I’ll just have to be satisfied with telling the story, I suppose.

This is everybody but Ryan (my oldest) and Felicity, gathered in Galveston for Mom & Dad’s 50th anniversary. Click through to Flickr for labels telling who each person is.

I was just browsing some of my old Flickr photos and realized I had never shared this one on my blog. It still makes me giggle.

This was taken from the back parking lot where I used to work, at the Tuality Forest Grove Hospital Geropsych Unit. During my new employee orientation there, they told me that if we ever had to evacuate the unit due to fire, we were supposed to round up the patients and gather everyone at the light pole in the back parking lot.

“You mean that light pole?” I asked, pointing. “The one next to the giant tank of highly flammable liquid oxygen?” “Yes, that’s the one,” they said.

Fortunately, we never had a fire.

Jeff is a natural with the energy stuff. He’s ‘way ahead of me at sensing it, even though I’m the one that’s been doing all the exploring for the last couple of years. My head gets in my way — it’s the engineer’s curse. I want objective data. Am I feeling something, or is my brain making it up because I’m thinking about it? I start analyzing and mess everything up. Jeff, on the other hand, spends a lot of time using and depending on pure intuition in his line of work, and is a lot more comfortable with simply feeling. He feels it easily, much more strongly than I do.

After we talked for a while, and Fred showed us a few things and explained more about chi gung, he decided to do a demo. “Stand up,” he told me. I stood. He and Jeff both studied me for a moment. “Try standing on the carpet instead of on your feet,” Fred suggested. I considered this, puzzled, focusing my awareness on my feet, then on the carpet under my feet. Something shifted in my brain. “Good.” They both nodded, even though as far as I could tell, my physical position and posture had not changed.

“Now twist your body back and forth at the waist,” Fred instructed. I obediently twisted my upper body to the right, then back to the left. “That’s not your waist,” Fred told me. “You’re just moving your shoulders. Twist at the waist.” I tried, but nothing happened. Fred demonstrated, swinging easily one way and then the other. “Now watch this,” he said, and did it again, asking me as he did so, “What’s moving?” I studied him. His torso was moving as a unit; his knees continued to face forward. The twisting motion was mostly happening in his thighs and hips. I mimicked the movement, and found myself swinging easily back and forth. After a moment, Fred stepped closer and placed a hand over each of my hip bones, immobilizing me at the hips. “Now twist,” he told me. I tried. Nothing happened. I tried again. Without my hips, and without twisting my shoulders, I couldn’t seem to do it. Fred chuckled. “Watch this,” he told us. He rapidly tapped the fingers of both his hands around the muscles at my waist, moving from front to sides to back and then around to the front again. Then he clamped my hips like he had before. “Twist at the waist,” he told me. I swiveled at the waist, then stopped, startled, then did it again, feeling silly for not having been able to do it before. Fred grinned. “I changed your mindset,” he told me. “I showed your brain which muscles to use.”

“Now let me see you stand on one foot,” he said. Ha. Ever since I developed Meiniere’s Disease, an inner ear disorder, my balance has been off. With my eyes open and both feet on the ground, I’m fine. Without a visual frame of reference, though, my brain can’t seem to make good sense of the conflicting information it gets from my vestibular nerves, and “up” becomes difficult to locate. And when I took a Yoga class in nursing school a couple of years ago, I discovered that standing on one foot had also become a supremely difficult proposition. The rest of the class would serenely stand there, eyes closed, arms dangling, one foot resting gently on the knee of the other leg. I, on the other hand, would be flailing wildly as I tottered from side to side, trying desperately to get one foot off the ground. I couldn’t even get it all the way to my knee before starting to topple over and having to catch myself. And that was with my eyes open.

I tried to do as Fred told me, but just like in the Yoga class, I started veering to one side and had to catch myself. Fred ran me through a balancing exercise, having me march in place, lifting first one knee and then the other, slapping the outside of each knee with the palm of the opposite hand as it rose in front of me. After about a minute of this, he told me to stand on one foot again. I lifted one foot, stood for a few seconds, then swayed and had to put my foot down. Fred grinned. “Your brain is getting in your way again,” he told me, and tapped my forehead. I lifted one foot and stood easily, not swaying, for 30 seconds or so. “Now the other foot,” Fred said. I switched feet, stood for a moment, then swayed again. “There goes your brain,” Fred said, and tapped my forehead again. “You have to change your mindset,” he told me. “It will take practice to change your brain’s habits, but you can balance now.”

Then he stood in front of me, held his hands on either side of my head with his palms about 4 inches from my ears, and had me close my eyes. I sensed his hands there, and felt a swirling warmth over each ear. “Can you feel that?” he asked. I told him I could, and peeked briefly. He was moving his hands in circles around each of my ears. After a moment, he said, “can you still feel it?” “Not as much,” I told him. “Look where my hands are,” he said. I opened my eyes. His hands were far out to the sides now, each a good 20 inches away from my head. He grinned, and Jeff looked bemused. I closed my eyes again, feeling the sensations. I felt a sense of gentle buffeting at my left ear for a few moments, and peeked to find Fred moving both hands alternately in and out toward my left ear. I closed my eyes again, and heard Fred move around to my right. After a moment, he asked, “What do you feel now?” I considered this. “It’s like…pulling,” I told him, and opened my eyes at the chuckle this elicited. He was moving his hands as though pulling an invisible rope hand over hand out of my ear. I glanced at Jeff, and saw his startled look. Later, he told me how it had been interesting, watching what Fred was doing and hearing me, with my eyes closed, describe what I felt. It had all correlated, he said, “but when he was doing that pulling thing, and you said it felt like pulling — that was kind of freaky!”

I find it ironic that it’s the engineer part of me that understands where the energy comes from and why it’s there, and yet it’s that same part of me that makes me doubt that I can actually sense it. But maybe there’s hope for me yet. I’ll keep working on it. Meanwhile, I need to go practice standing on one foot. Stay tuned!

Grandma had long, jet-black hair that she wore in two braids wrapped around and around her head like a halo. She was big and soft and huggable, and felt good when she wrapped her arms around me and squished me into her. It scared me when she talked of losing weight, because I couldn’t imagine being comforted by a hug from a skinny grandma!

Grandma was a thrifty and practical soul — like so many who lived through the great depression, she was very frugal, and was into recycling long before “environmentalism” was even a word. When my dad was a kid, she’d stitch up his cuts with black silk thread, and if more complicated medical attention was required, she’d take him across the road to their neighbor who was a veterinarian.

I don’t think Grandma ever threw anything away. There was a mesh onion bag hanging on the door of her fridge where she kept the ends of any cans she used in cooking — they were for nailing over mouse holes, she said, and I used to try to imagine the amazingly huge mouse colony it would have taken to make that many holes. There was a drawer in her kitchen where she kept washed and dried tinfoil to be reused over and over again. Clothing that was too worn out to be mended was braided into rag rugs, and scraps of the clothing she sewed were turned into quilts. Once when she was cutting out a shirt for my dad on the kitchen table, she accidentally cut the red checked tablecloth too, so she made him another shirt from the tablecloth. I loved drinking milk from Ball canning jars and helping Grandma paste her S&H Green Stamps from Piggly Wiggly into their stacks of books.

Most of my memories of Grandma are from when I was 3 and 4 years old. That’s when my Air Force dad was stationed in Waco, only an hour and a half from where his parents lived, and we spent almost every weekend with them. All these years later, I have vivid memories of those days. Grandma taught me to talk to the frogs at night, out in the Texas woods where she and Grandpa lived, by banging two smooth rocks together. The frogs would answer from all around us, and it seemed like there must be millions of them. She would take me for walks and we would hunt for agates and arrowheads and pretty pieces of petrified wood together, and she taught me to call the chickens, “Here, chick-chick-chick!” and scatter their feed. When a nest of chicks had hatched out, she would gather any eggs that were late to hatch and nestle them into a Kleenex box padded with soft rags. We’d put the box next to the warm coffee pot in the kitchen and listen to the peeps of the hatching chicks, and when they were ready, we’d watch them hatch out there on the kitchen counter. Once when she butchered a rooster for dinner, she let me have his feet to play with, and I was having a grand time making chicken tracks in the dirt until my mom came along and had what Grandma called a “conniption fit” and took them away from me.

Grandma gave me lots of medical advice, too. Some of it was a little confusing; for instance, she told me not to swallow my gum because it would stick to my ribs, but she told me to eat my meat, because it would stick to my ribs. When I snitched tastes of pancake batter, cookie, biscuit, and pie dough in her kitchen, she told me I’d get worms, but she always made sure there was plenty for snitching, just the same. She said that when I grew up I should marry a man 5 years younger than me, so we’d die at the same time, and she said to never pick at my face within the “death triangle,” the triangular area of the face between the bridge of the nose and the corners of the mouth. When I got cuts and scrapes at Grandma’s house, she’d paint them with mercurochrome, or “monkey blood,” as she called it. It was fascinating stuff, red liquid that glinted green and gold where it dried, but it stung like the dickens. Grandma would blow on it to make it hurt less.

My dad used to play a game with us when we were little, one we called “I love you mostest.” It was a contest to see whose love reached the farthest, parrying back and forth with ever greater expanses, like “I love you all the way to the mailbox!” “I love YOU all the way to Africa!” “I love YOU all the way to the moon!” I came up with the hands-down all-time winner, though, one night on our way home from Grandma’s house. It was the biggest “I love you” ever, and when I resorted to it, Daddy knew better than even try to best it. My grand champion “I love you” was this one: “I love you all the way to Grandma’s coffee pot!”