Sunday, August 21, 2005

Of Validation and Junk Mail

Oh dear.

All this time I've left things blank on my personal profile. But today, most likely because the alternative was to do housework, I filled in those blanks. Lo and behold! I've been spamed!

All this time I've had not one comment. This has, of course, deepened my suspicions that I may be completely worth ignoring. But at least I was spam free. We never know how good we have it, do we?

Ah well, my existence is confirmed.

...I have been spammed, therefore, I am.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

I can't see a thing with this stethoscope in my ears.

Hello. Were you here? Did any invisible friends come to visit while I was gone? I'm sorry... I was away having my brains scrambled by my first nursing job.

....BEGIN SARCASM....

Uh huh, yeah... that lasted just a few days over three months.

So after spending countless (actually it was about 40) hours doing uncompensated self-study training packets and multiple shifts where I had a total of over 25 preceptors, I found myself in the oh-so-enviable position of having to resign or be fired.

Some idiot claiming to be a Rocket Scientist decided that having someone try to learn to do a job that they've never done before by training with different people all the time, the bulk of whom have never received training in how to train someone is the best way to do things. Naturally this is even better when the work in question is undeniably different from anything the new person studied for!

At first I managed. Toward the end of the first month the who-told-you-to-do-it-that-way's started to make me a little defensive. By the end of the second month the few people that would let me attempt to do my job, despite their having never worked with me before, were often a trying experience in and of itself. They were often the ones that would seemingly vanish leaving me with no resources.

The woman that was telling me what to do, how to do it and in what order, before I could even take my first breath on the clock, was causing me to have not so Christian thoughts. Whatever it was that I did to piss her off was my undoing. The new nurse has no credibility against the nurse with some two decades of tenure.

So now I have all this wonderful free time to have appointments with the endocrinologist that is my best hope of figuring out why my body is being so damn weird. In the meantime I'm NEVER, and I do mean NEVER EVER, having an MRI of my brain without prior sedation. I know you're dying to ask... yes, they found one in there.

Pardon me while I go lie down for a bit... being flat is the only way that I feel halfway decent these days. Good thing I've got the new Harry Potter book to read, being sick is handy for that at least.

I can't help but laugh at it all... after all, it could be worse :) I have some savings, DH has a job and I find the whole thing oddly amusing... I have to laugh at it all, the alternative is unacceptable.

Friday, May 13, 2005

Happy Friday the 13th!

Usually this is a lucky day for me. Today, the universe had other ideas.

This morning my favorite neighbor had her bank account attached by the IRS. The IRS sucks.

Then, while carpooling with a co-worker to a satellite clinic they go to, DH gets a ticket for driving 44 mph in a 30 mph zone. He wasn't going faster than anyone else, he just was the lucky one who had the radar gun pointed at him. Or not, who knows, he still got the ticket.

I go and take my medication administration exam for work, and pass! Woo Hoo! But then I stop in the ladies room, and my zipper doesn't want to go down. That's fine, these pants are way loose and I slide them down easily enough, but without thinking I press against the waistband with my calves and pop the zipper.

I still have to go meet with my manager to get my schedule for the next week.

I am forced to remove my pants and I spend 10 minutes standing in the toilet stall disassembling my pants to re thread the zipper.

Me in my underwear... hoping some nun doesn't come into the bathroom and wonder what I'm doing in there. For so long. Standing up that way... trying prevent myself from grumbling pseudo-obscenities (Pigeon-poodles!), let alone what I really want to say. The whole time I'm thinking about how funny this will be in my blog. Which is the only thing that keeps me from loosing it completely. See what good invisible friend group therapy this is!

While I make it through my day and get home, my favorite neighbor, my "Mama" calls me and asks me to put on my "nurses-hat" and come over and look at her elbow, she's been in a wreck on the freeway.

It is lucky after all... My favorite neighbor has other resources for now, the person that rear-ended her twice (TWICE! Wasn't paying attention to stopping at all! Hit her so hard they left the imprint of the license plate in the bumper) has insurance and DH can go to traffic school.

Now all I have to do is manage to get through the first few months on the job without committing complete social suicide... for a future blog: how the filter between the brain and the mouth can malfunction resulting in oral-pedal contact.

(post script: I just realized that the spell check feature does not work in mozilla; and here I thought I'd finally learned to spell! How embarrassing!)

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Where do my days go?

I had planned on a moderately productive day yesterday...

I did finally use this pet hair squeegee thing I have to assault the area rug in the living room... whoo hoo! What an adventure. And by the end of squeegeeing the rug I felt sick, so I wasn't surprised when I took my heart rate and found it to be over 150. No wonder I didn't feel right. Nothing like excercizing my fat self into a heart attack, eh? Unless you've squeegeed an area rug felted with dog hair you have no idea what FUN exercise this can be!

I need to study for a medication math test that I have to take at my job before I can go to work "on the floor". Yeah, didn't study for that. Didn't do the laundry. Didn't do the dishes. Didn't even make it to the chiropractor on time.

What I did do was visit blogs. Oh, and vacuum, I did vacuum. But mostly I visited the blog that inspired me to start this one, and some of her friends blogs, like Knit Kitty Knit. So now you can visit and wonder where your day went too.

Agenda for today: Actually do laundry. Actually do dishes. Actually study for test. But first... find the top of the desk.

Friday, May 06, 2005

Gotta Start Somewhere...

So I suppose I'll just start in the middle...

I live in a duplex. My neighbor is also my landlord... I'll just call her Cat Lady. Before we moved here she was a friend (it was an act of desperiation, trust me... NEVER rent from a friend) but in the last year she has oozed herself closer and closer to slumlord status. She's become obsessed with buying additional properties to increase her wealth, although for years she has insisted that she cannot afford to maintain this place correctly.

Cat Lady's ability to be penny-wise and ton-foolish (way more than a pound, trust me) is normally a source of near constant amusement.

The latest episode in the saga is that we've had standing water in the crawl space for months now. Every time it rains it gets worse, because every time the ground gets wet from above the water below (from an underground spring that dosn't exist) causes it to take forever to evaporate becuase we're on a high water table. Just about every other house on this side of the street has a sump pump. But not us... no no!

Did I mention that I live in a neighborhood where there has been at least one confirmed human case of West Nile Virus and multiple confirmed cases in dead birds? Well, I do.

So we're directly above the neighborhood Mosquito Motel.

If I don't keep windows open all the time the house gets very humid, and we're growing the most interesting mushrooms in the front yard. I won't gross you out with the mold issues in one of the bedrooms and the bath.

I have been unable to open the window in the aforementioned bedroom for ages because of the mosquito issues and the fact that the screen was bent. I had extra screens that we had taken out when we put in window a/c, but she took those to replace her own screens that her cats had shredded.

I finally took the screen to get fixed this week... I should have done it weeks ago, but in my life if it's not a crisis it's probably not even happening. I got the good pet-resistant screen so my current cat won't wreck it. Cost almost $24. One screen... good, fine, whatever.

So today when I go to pick it up I notice this really nice wooden screen door out in the parking lot. After I pay for the new window screen I ask the guy working there if I can have the door. At first he says that the owner might sell it to me. I explain that I just thought it'd be neat to use for a plant trellis. Now he says I can have it. Wow... I'm a better liar than I thought!

Of course my car is full of crap. I'm shoving this huge screen door into my car and the guy comes out and tells me to hurry up before his boss comes back... oh great! I shove it in, get in the car, hit my head on the screen and drive away.

I call my other neighbor who I adore. I tell her I'm bringing something home for her. She wants to know where I am... I'm driving, all scrunched up so I don't hit my head on the thing I have for her because it's so big! She says What the hell did you get?!

She's thrilled with the screen door, and she can use it. I tell her Happy Mother's Day, Mama... I can stop grumbling for at least 20 minutes, I'm so thrilled that she loves it.

I put in the new window screen... which dosn't quite fit so I'm going to have to buy some of that spray foam stuff to close the gap. But I'm not bothered, my friend is thrilled with her "new" door.

Ain't life grand?