If I Wasn't Laughing I'd Be Crying

Did you know that there are about 6 quarts of blood in the average human body? A pint of blood weighs about a pound and 15 million blood cells are produced and destroyed in the human body every second. In a normal adult woman there are 4,500,000 red blood cells per cubic millimeter. In 1865 a guy named Max Johann Sigismund Schultze described the platelet for the very first time. The platelet lives about 8 to 10 days, then it is sequestered in the spleen. Ten percent of the population has one or more accesory spleen. In French, spleen refers to a state of pensive sadness or melancholy. However, the Talmud refers to the spleen as an organ of laughter. Sicilians may serve you a sandwich called the "pani ca meusa", or bread with spleen and caciocavallo cheese.

Mom used to have an accesory spleen, but the surgeons removed all trace of spleen from her body in 1998. A normal platelet count in a healthy person is between 150,000 and 400,000 per mm³ of blood. It's a spectacular day if the CBC shows mom has 60,000. Since December, she has received 2 gallons of blood and 3 pints of platelets. I just pulled a Debbie Downer on you, didn't I?

On to the amusing part! My job is a constant source of frustration and disbelief punctuated with hoopla. During supervision with my boss, F-bomb, he showed me the comment sheets his students gave him about his stress class. Question 5: "What would make this a better class?" Baloney In His Pocket Guy answered: "More touching!" Cranky Lady answered "A bigger room." Question 3: "On a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the best, how would you rate this class?" Anonymous answer: "True." Yesterday I had a pants malfunction: a button popped off which proved to be the most critical button ever. Without it, my pants slowly but surely set forth to the deep south. None of my co-workers had a safety pin, so I folded the waist over and held it in place with my pager clasp until I found a paperclip. I went to an assisted living facility to pick up a patient. One of the large, creepy men from Eldercare saw me coming and told his friend "She's my girlfriend she's my girlfriend." See, he quietly repeats everything he says. And he thinks he's Elvis. Seriously. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. "Hey sweetie! Hey sweetie!" he called, and lumbered forth with his arms wide for a hug. This is the part where I ran into the building and hid. He follwed me. My pants migrated. He found me. I readied my leg for a solid sidekick (just in case) and shooed him off. Luckily, Elvis left the building.

Plot Keywords: Stabbed in Eye, Rough Sex, Decapitation, Evisceration, Transvestite, Mutant

Saturday, March 24, 2007



After a day fraught with the desire to push Brain-Damaged Lady into the river so she could be eaten by catfish and sea monkeys, I had some good times. Namely, MacGyver and I saw 300 in IMAX, a sepia toned bloodbath of sexiness.

I like Frank Miller's work, and I'm not just talking about Sin City, I also liked what he did with Daredevil back in the day. I don't love his stuff, his work is darker than that of my favorite comic book guy, Kurt Busiek. I can see Frank as the archangel Azrael, bathing Egypt in the blood of every firstborn son. But with hot ladies! So I expected blood and death and T&A, and boy did it deliver. I was amused by Xerxes, the RuPaul of warlords, and the plethora or war beasts. Riding in on a rhinoceros has got to chafe, and I was glad to see the Orcs found work after the LotR trilogy ended, and this time they got pretty shiny masks! I really did like the movie, but it is hard to take a film seriously that uses Gerard Butler as the principal bad ass. I respect him and his body, but he's turning into Hollywood's go to guy for epic characters: he has been Atilla the Hun, Dracula, Beowulf, The Phantom of the Opera, and Lara Croft's bitch.

Whoever whipped the actors into shape did a good job. I suspect their abs were enhanced with airbrushing or CGI, but you can't fake the balance they achieved. Movies with top heavy heroes piss me off, the chest and arms are the showy muscles and distract from the crucial well-honed thighs, glutes, and back. A good example is Arnold in T3.

Every time I decide to quit my job as soon as possible, my boss does something nice. My patients were wearing me out hardcore this week: some canceled, a lab order got lost and I had to be all "This is when she was scheduled for a blood draw, so I don't care what your calendar says, we are not leaving till she is bleeding. Snap!", one's guardian rescheduled the mover so arranging my whole week around the apartment change was rendered pointless, and I think I'll have to commit Goatee Lady to the psych unit next week. She's all manic and the nurse said she was chanting "Jesus Saves" and accusing the secretary of being influenced by the devil. Sigh. I can't beleive I get paid less than $12 an hour to deal with this tripe. So then F-bomb, my boss, is all, "of course you can leave early! You work hard so don't even bother with taking PTO to cover it!" If he was meaner I wouldn't feel bad about wanting to escape.

180 degrees

I didn't want this to dilute the rage of Things Fall Apart, and I have to share it.

Occasionally strangers will yell out to me "Jesus loves you!" I don't need to hear that, especially from the population of inbred trailer trash morons in this region. What does one say to that? I'll tell you what I'm going to say: "Jesus doesn't love me, we're just fuck buddies."

Maybe I'll print it on a T-shirt.

Things Fall Apart

When people meet me they tend to think "She is so sweet and quiet!" Later, if they have actually talked to me some more, that thought changes to "Did I say sweet? I meant cynical and jaded. And weird." Lately I have been given one more reason to be cynical.

There was so much shit that was explained away with lame reasons. Trembling hands? Low blood sugar! Insomina? Stress! Not eating for days? Her mom put her on a diet! Dry hands that she picked at? Compulsive hand washing! Convulsions and memory lapses? Cancer! The list goes on. The list also includes paranoia, lying like it's her job, sweats, acne... My list has 23 signs of drup use. Twenty-three signs I should have pieced together before last week. Twenty-three reasons to feel betrayed.

I have a degree in psychology, my day job is social work, I meet lots of people that do drugs. Addiction is a disease. It has its roots in genetics and once you develop it there is no going back. But that's not an excuse. Addiction is a disease, seeking help is a choice. She chose not to join Narcotics Anonymous for the support her family wouldn't provide. She chose not to find a therapist after her first relapse. She chose to endanger the lives of children every time she went to work. She chose the addiction over everything in her life that had meaning.

Harsh? Yes. Justified? Fucking A.

I don't want to see her again, but her life is so intertwined with mine that I will have to. I'm not her social worker. I'm not her family. I'm not her friend. I can't fathom forgiving her. Maybe I'll mellow out by the time her initial treatment is over, but how can I accept an apology FROM A LIAR?!? I haven't been this angry in almost 7 years, and I wouldn't have forgiven him if I didn't love him so much.

Peace out. And don't fuck with my family.

Intermission from the Suck

A few of you 5 readers know that I had an appointment with the director of physical therapy at the local college. I decided a while back that bitching about my job is not acceptable unless I am taking action to improve it. By improve I mean leave and never go back. I was up oh so late Wednesday night because I NEEDED to wear a certain shirt to the meeting and it had to be washed. I looked forward to having a fresh happy shirt to give me confidence while trying to talk like a smart person with Ms. Director. Thursday morning: no shirt. Anywhere. Most of my clothes had been taken out of the dryer and put in various places. I had no breakfast due to the extensive searching for my shirt. Later at work I had to pick up Devil's Colon Lady in a company car (fuck using my car, she makes the elevator reek all day after standing in it for 45 seconds. Seriously.) except the keys were missing. One of the techs saved the day by chauffering us in a 15 passenger van after a 20 minute search for the keys.

At noon good things started happening. I had lunch with Charmer, my little sister-in-law, and had a great time. I was not late to my appointment despite parking issues. I carried my portfolio in a Historical Preservation Society tote, turns out Ms. Director has a passion for historical preservation. We talked for an hour solid. She told me my GPA was excellent (I had assumed a 3.56 was merely OK), she liked my range of experiences and professions, and she even told me she saw qualities in me that are necessary for a physical therapist to be good at her job. Stating I was elated would be as much of an understatement as saying Ted Haggard and Mark Foley are hypocrites.

I need 9 prerequisite classes and a few other things to apply in the Fall of '08, so it was not all good news. I have to enroll for classes and figure out if I am going to continue case managing so I can have insurance, or work a low level PT job for the experience and contacts. In 5 years, I could be MacGyver's sugar mama. Kick ass.

WWRRPD?

In the last few years I have been increasingly (almost exponentially) reading amusing non-fiction books that deal with deeper meanings of what I already know or what happens to things when I am not around. These books include but are nnot limited to United States of Wal-Mart, And God Said What?, Garbage Land, A People's History of the United States (Still not finished, it is taking a long time to process. Plus it is really damn long), and The Omnivore's Dilemma. These books have been feeding the part of my personality that hates to be ignorant and taken advantage of. Every few months I ask myself "Why do I do what I do?" Why should I believe in God? Why wouldn't I believe in God? Why eat meat? Why not eat some meat? Is it even worth it to recycle and give money to environmental charities? What retailers do I really want to hand my money to? Do I need to buy more stuff at all?

The questions are limited only by my attention span (Should I buy a more fuel effecient car this year? Hey! House MD is on! Rockin'!) and courage to really examine myself (Can I really accept gaining weight? Am I proud of what I see in the mirror? Maybe I should just look away). Asking myself these questions has been more important to me as I grow up, I can see the consequences of my actions and understand that I have a choice to be an ignorant fucktard and an enlightened consumer. I can be better. I can be more than what society expects of me.

You know what I think would really help society? If we all emulated Rowdy Roddy Piper. Put the glasses on! PUT 'EM ON! Otherwise we sleep, they live. The more I read about how things are versus how I think things should be, the sicker I feel. Everyday low prices are great, but they come at a cost I don't want to pay. Buying organic is awesome, but not when it takes more calories of fossil fuel to transport it than I can derive from the actual food. I want to believe in and love a higher power, but I refuse to accept conditions on that love (Like submitting to my husband, straightening out gay people, converting infidels, ad infinitum) I feel suspicious and cynical, I can't read an article without demanding works cited, I don't believe a bar graph has any pertinent information unless there are error bars. I just don't want to wear blinders for the rest of my life and let a small percentage of society profit from my ignorance.

I can't tell anyone else how to live. I am still figuring out what I can accept as right, but for now I am taking a cue from my man Rowdy Roddy. I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum.