Thursday, April 12, 2007
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Featuring Kung Fu Grip
I have had a fascination with terror birds for a couple of years. I read about them in Discover, and they were described as the closest thing to a dinosaur that a human has ever encountered. The fact that they weigh more than half a ton and could simulataneously eviscerate and kick the hell out of you makes the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
I applied for that physical therapy tech position about 2-3 weeks ago and I haven't heard anything from the hospital. Is it cool to send HR a follow up letter that says "GIVE ME THIS DAMN JOB OR I'LL CUT YOU!" ? Or at least with that theme? Hospitals take forever to hire anyway, but I was hoping they would get my application and say, "This is the person we have been searching for! Call her stat!" (Everyone who works in a hospital says "stat." Everyone.) I could start applying elsewhere, but they were they only one who actually had a position open.
I like Fridays at work. I try pretty hard to make my work load as light as possible so I can finish up paperwork in the afternoon and chat with my cubicle mates about how drunk they will be in 6 hours or where they will be bagpiping on Sunday or whatnot. Because cubicleville is the corporate equivalent of 40 illegal immigrants stuffed into a studio apartment, I am privy to a lot of conversations. Such as Vagina Skirt Girl's side of one over the phone. At the other end was a young man who is pretty ill and has a compulsion to put acid in his eyes. He had never done it...until Friday. Everything went as well as could be, considering. She kept him on the phone, he only put it in one eye, which may not be blinded totally, and she got the sheriff there before he could swallow it. Can you imagine how you would feel after that? She did everything right with him and it wasn't enough.
I applied for that physical therapy tech position about 2-3 weeks ago and I haven't heard anything from the hospital. Is it cool to send HR a follow up letter that says "GIVE ME THIS DAMN JOB OR I'LL CUT YOU!" ? Or at least with that theme? Hospitals take forever to hire anyway, but I was hoping they would get my application and say, "This is the person we have been searching for! Call her stat!" (Everyone who works in a hospital says "stat." Everyone.) I could start applying elsewhere, but they were they only one who actually had a position open.
I like Fridays at work. I try pretty hard to make my work load as light as possible so I can finish up paperwork in the afternoon and chat with my cubicle mates about how drunk they will be in 6 hours or where they will be bagpiping on Sunday or whatnot. Because cubicleville is the corporate equivalent of 40 illegal immigrants stuffed into a studio apartment, I am privy to a lot of conversations. Such as Vagina Skirt Girl's side of one over the phone. At the other end was a young man who is pretty ill and has a compulsion to put acid in his eyes. He had never done it...until Friday. Everything went as well as could be, considering. She kept him on the phone, he only put it in one eye, which may not be blinded totally, and she got the sheriff there before he could swallow it. Can you imagine how you would feel after that? She did everything right with him and it wasn't enough.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
What Came Before a T-rex?
Is there a higher power that does not wish to see me go back to school? I have attempted to sign up for two of my nine prereqs (prerequs? prereks? ah ha! prerex!) FIVE TIMES and they will not allow me to enroll in algebra and anatomy. Two failures stemmed from the registrar failing to enter all of my personal information into the computer. It turns out she did not approve of my birthday. You know what anonymous moron? I don't approve of it either and I'm not going around messing up people's plans. Two attempts were thwarted by system failures, please try again later (Make me!). This last one said I need other prerex to get into these prerex. WTF? I do not have time for these shenanigans! I have a future to gamble on! I have to take classes that may or may not raise my GPA, then apply to a competitive program that may reject my sorry white ass, so I can take a stab at being careerly satisfied! Maybe I will just stab you, prerex foiler!
Today was sort of easy, I only had a bunch of paperwork that doesn't count toward my billing quota, I talked one of my favorite patients (she has schizo-affective disorder, mild mental retardation, 7 ex-husbands, and used to be an exotic dancer. She is also one of the happiest people I know.) out of buying a bunny, took an elderly patient shopping and she told me about her sex dream last night, and Brain Damaged Lady was manic and delusional and hugged me. I can escape the clutches of Elvis (thanks for the organizer again, F-bomb, it is a great personal space defender) but BDL manages to plant one on my cheek.
I had all kinds of fun articulating bird bones the other night, I was in some sort of ass-kicking spatial skills zone that helped me put together half a wing with no diagrams. The bones just sort of snapped together. I have a new respect for paleontologists, I figure their job is akin to assembling puzzle pieces from several boxes mixed together, with some missing, no border pieces (maybe a skull is like a border piece. At least it lets you know when to stop adding bones in one direction), and no picture to look at. I wonder if anyone has turned that into a drinking game.
Today was sort of easy, I only had a bunch of paperwork that doesn't count toward my billing quota, I talked one of my favorite patients (she has schizo-affective disorder, mild mental retardation, 7 ex-husbands, and used to be an exotic dancer. She is also one of the happiest people I know.) out of buying a bunny, took an elderly patient shopping and she told me about her sex dream last night, and Brain Damaged Lady was manic and delusional and hugged me. I can escape the clutches of Elvis (thanks for the organizer again, F-bomb, it is a great personal space defender) but BDL manages to plant one on my cheek.
I had all kinds of fun articulating bird bones the other night, I was in some sort of ass-kicking spatial skills zone that helped me put together half a wing with no diagrams. The bones just sort of snapped together. I have a new respect for paleontologists, I figure their job is akin to assembling puzzle pieces from several boxes mixed together, with some missing, no border pieces (maybe a skull is like a border piece. At least it lets you know when to stop adding bones in one direction), and no picture to look at. I wonder if anyone has turned that into a drinking game.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
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.
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
