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The following story is NOT in my book.
...just thought it would give you, the reader, an idea of the style of
Lady's Hands, Lion's Heart. Enjoy!
My Testimonial for the STAT-PAD
by Carol Leonard, NH Certified Midwife
I have been sent some sample STAT-PADS to use in my birth center to see if I like them enough to replace our traditional Chux pads for deliveries. We have a young woman laboring in the birthing pool, so I open a sample pad and place it on the bed that I am readying for her.
“What’s that?” asks Monica, another midwife who is helping me.
“Oh, that’s some new high tech, space age pad that’s supposed to have super absorbent qualities,” I reply. “It says it can absorb up to 60 pounds of body fluids or something like that.”
Monica eyes the pad suspiciously.
“We’re not going to put it to that kind of test are we?”
I stop what I am doing.
“Well, no, actually, sixty pounds of fluid would be quite, um, dead, wouldn’t it?”
Monica shudders.
“Want to just use a Chux?”
“No, no. We can branch out,” I say. “We can expand our horizons. It’s a new millennium.”
As it turns out, the young woman labors in that bed for a short while but doesn’t end up delivering in that room. When I return to the room early the next morning to clean up, I see that the pad only has a couple of tiny spots of amniotic fluid on it, so I decide to wash it and re-use it since they cost $11.00 a piece. I throw it in the washer with the sheets.
(What can I say here? It’s genetic. I have a long heritage of Old Yankee Thrift coursing through my veins. I can’t fight it.)
As I am tidying up the kitchenette, I hear our commercial washer make a terrible noise. The only way I can describe it is it’s a mechanical version of a loud groan. I think this is odd, but keep working until it groans again. This time it sounds really bad.
“Oh my god! That thing! That pad!” I deduce cleverly as I run to the laundry room.
Our washer is a commercial front loading model with a glass door. I look in the door and see what now looks like a white baby elephant inside. A bloated, swollen, doughy baby elephant. I get the door on a cycle where I can open it and try to pick the thing up. Too heavy. I have to sit on the floor to pull the thing towards me. Sixty pounds, my ass. This seems like it weighs closer to 100.
All of a sudden, the baby elephant breaks free of the door and explodes on top of me, knocking me over on my back. I am covered by a 100 pound mass of gelatinous, slimy, space-age mystery material. Soaking wet, I manage to slide free and get one of my husband’s utility-duty garbage bags. I stuff the thing in the bag and drag it by walking backwards out to my Jeep. I am going to ditch the thing at the Hopkinton dump.
I wave at Bobby, our old and wizened Dump Master, as I drive up to the trash compactor. I drag the bag from my car to the building, but I don’t have the strength to hoist the bag up over the side of the lip. Old Bobby comes over and gives me a hand, and we both heave it over.
We stand there watching it slide down to the crusher.
“Dead body?” he asks.
“Oh shut up, Bobby. Jesus.” I say as I walk away.
~)(~
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NEW OFFER! as of 2/10/09 ~ All copies of Lady's Hands, Lion's Heart purchased from this web site will be SIGNED by the author...still for the price of $15.00...and the S&H cost has been reduced from $4.50 to $2.50. Such a deal!
Greetings from
Bad Beaver farm
ellsworth,
www.badbeaverfarm.com
“How The Name BAD BEAVER Came To Be”
We have bad beavers. Not only bad—we have mason beavers. When Tom and I first purchased our land in
One of our rare marital spats ensued. I think I won, having drawn the line at mammalian violence. I said Tom would simply have to outsmart them…how hard could this be? I felt confident that Tom could outwit the world’s second largest rodent.
The first time Tom destroyed the dam, he only partially broke it down with his hands and feet, to make a sluice way to lower the water level. The water began gushing over the breach and the beaver pond/ex-little stream was lowered by about a foot and a half.
What we didn’t know at the time is that the sound of gushing water drives beavers mad.
When we returned to the field the next day, we saw enormous “swales” dug through the field. Overnight, the angry beavers had dug trenches about two feet deep and three feet wide so they could float WHOLE TREES to repair their dam. Now the front of the dam resembled a log fortress, complete with a sentry beaver. I thought to myself, “Uh-oh, I think this means war.”
Tom, not to be out-done by this engineering marvel and not having rodent incisor teeth, resorted to his trusty Husqvarna. He got busy with his chainsaw and removed a whole front section of the dam. Now the water was rushing out at a tremendous rate. We could tell by the damp rings on the skeletal dead trees in the pond that the water was lower by around two feet.
“That should fix the little bastards,” said Tom.
When we returned a few days later, our mouths dropped open in absolute shock. The beavers had repaired the dam with ROCKS! They swam on their backs carrying rocks the size of melons on their chests…then they mortared the rocks in with clay. The whole dam resembled the
Now we had to resort to some serious ingenuity…so we Googled “beaver removal”. First Tom got the plans for a “Beaver Deceiver” which he installed immediately. This was a wooden sluice-like contraption he made that had thick wire mesh on the underside, the theory being that the beavers can’t figure out how to dam something upside down. Right-O. This did deceive them for about two whole weeks (which, actually, is the longest time anything has worked.)
Next came the “Beaver Baffler” which was some kind of elbowed-PVC gizmo with holes drilled along the sides. We can’t even find that anymore, we have no idea what the beavers did with it.
So the contest between wonderful man and intelligent rodent continues to this day. I did notice this spring that it looks like the beaver lodge has a second story addition…and a couple of new flower boxes out front.
Love from Giardia Acres,
Carol Leonard,
Ms. Leonard is a midwife and the author of Lady’s Hands, Lion’s Heart: A Midwife’s Saga, Bad Beaver Publishing, 2008. Her husband, Tom Lajoie, is a phenomenal “economy of motion” builder.
Lady's Hands, Lion's Heart ~ A Midwife's Saga
A BAD BEAVER FARM TRADE PAPERBACK
ISBN: 978-0-615-19550-6
Trim size: 5.5" x 8.5", 368 pages
Price: US $15.00
ALL COPIES ORDERED WILL BE SIGNED!
Lady's Hands, Lion's Heart ~ A Midwife's Saga
By Carol Leonard
ISBN: 978-0-615-19550-6
$15.00