Sophie's Story

     A few days ago I did something that I haven't done in a long time. I bought an Easter dress. Well, actually I ordered it online and hopefully it will arrive in time for Easter....    I wasn't planning on buying an Easter dress, I have a few dresses that I could wear for Easter with hats to match of course. I was feeling a bit nostalgic I guess. Buying an outfit for Easter was a tradition in my family. Every year Mom would either buy or make Easter dresses for my sister and I and an outfit for my brother. (I don't think he wore suits as a boy.) We had some very pretty Easter dresses that we wore all summer. That was our summer church dress for the year. (We would also get a new dress for Christmas which would serve as the church dress for winter.) When we were older, Mom no longer sewed our clothes and we got to pick out a dress at one of the local stores. For awhile once I got out of college I would buy an Easter outfit of some sort even though I worked mos...

     In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Sunday worship service features short sermons called talks that are given by people in the ward on various topics. The bishop, who leads the ward, and his counselors decide who will speak and give them a topic.    This Sunday one of speakers started her talk by comparing her favourite superhero to her husband's. I wish I could remember the rest of her talk because it was really good. The beginning was the thing that grabbed me the most. After Sunday school, I heard her telling another person that people had been coming up to her to tell her who their favourite superhero is.   I spent some time thinking about who mine would be. I don't really have one. I never got into that sort of thing. Also I'm more than a bit of a feminist and most of the superheroes are men. (Yes, I know that Wonder Woman is a superhero, but I just can't get into someone who goes about wearing a strapless leotard for a costume...

     The shyest girl at my high school in 1986 was me. You'll have to take my word for it. The picture that was taken to mark to occasion is not in my possession.    It occurred to me as I marked the milestone 30th anniversary of being a licensed pharmacist in Minnesota that it is rather weird for a person so shy to end up in a profession that requires a lot of talking to people. As an rock solid introvert, my choice also seems very odd.     I did my hospital internship in a small hospital 60 miles away from Fargo. It wasn't bad but I spent most of my time in the basement of the hospital filling cartridges with medications for patients and practicing putting medications into IV bags. The highlight of my day was going up on the floor to check the IV bags of patients to make sure they were not running out. It was a good experience, but I was bored. I had spent the previous three months in a busy retail pharmacy in Moorhead and liked it a lot. I quic...

     On March 10, 1993 the state of Minnesota issued my pharmacist license. That mean that I have been working in the profession for over half of my life. I wish that I could say that I had always wanted to be a pharmacist and had been working toward it since I was young, but that would not be true.    I actually started out wanting to be a nurse. I read books about nurses that I checked out from the library. I pictured myself wearing a white dress and cap, helping people. In fact I even tried to make a nurses cap out of paper to wear as I took care of my dolls. I read every book about Florence Nightingale that I could find. I discovered my aunts' Cherry Ames books. I also read nurse romance books.     Being a practical person I thought it would be a good idea to get a little real life experience working with and around nurses. I volunteered in a nursing home and later on worked as a nurses aid. I saw some of the things that nurses did and decided...

     C and I have decided that we want and need to reduce the amount of time that we spend staring at screens both phone and computer. Both of us tend to spend time staring at our phones when we have nothing us to do or are trying to relax. Since both us us spent the majority of our lives pre cell phone, we thought about what we did before we had phones.    One of the things that I did was read books. It was not unusual for me to have a stack of four to five books that I would read a week. I loved going to the local library and looking through the books, picking out ones that looked interesting to me.     A few years ago I discovered that the local library system has an online catalog. I can find books and reserve them. If they are at another library, they can be sent to my library. I pick them up and bring them home to read. This works pretty well if I have a specific book or a specific author. It doesn't work as well if I'm not sure what I want ...

        C and I had an appointment to see our new insurance agent this morning, our former one having retired. We spent about five minutes talking about insurance and the rest of the time just chatting, well actually C spent a lot of that time telling all his funny stories. We had a good time getting to know each other, In fact as we left, the agent said it had been a long time since she laughed that hard.     We decided to stop at Target to pick up a few things. There were only two things on out list, but by the time we got to the checkout our basket was full. I got a bottle of conditioner, some craisins, a bag of coconut and cough drops. None of this was on the list, however they were things that we needed. I was planning to make some granola.    I was craving a sandwich for lunch so we picked up one at a sub shop. C decided that he wanted some soup. We took our food into the house and had lunch. We watched a couple episodes of the old Night Cou...