begin the begin.

when you're absolute beginners
it's a panaromic view
from her majesty mt. zion
and the kingdom is for you.
-M. Ward "For Beginners"

I don't know if you've looked at a newspaper lately (because that might be something you'd have done in like, 1985, before the Internetz and all) but no matter what outdated mode of information you've been sourcing these days, you've probably read enough to realize that the Financial Situation Around These Here Parts Is Dire.

It's so dire, that even a little scutmonkey like myself is somewhat worried that I'm gonna show up to work one day, ready to code patients and wipe ass like nobody's business, and get a pink slip for my effort. And then I'm gonna be shit-out-of-luck like the thousands of Americans right now who are being summarily handed their walking papers.

And that is a chilling thought, indeed.

On the other hand, having recovered from Brink of Exhaustion Expo/My Own Private Night Shift Disorder Hell 2008, I'm feeling very lucky, and... dare I say it, happy.

Yeah, this Cardiothoracic ICU thing could totally come back to bite me in the professional ass. I mean, I remember how terrified I was of crashing trauma patients--what makes me think patients crashing in a cardiac unit is gonna be any less scary, pray tell?

Well, it's not gonna be any less terrifying, and I'm probably gonna go through the same, I-can't-believe-you-thought-this-was-gonna-be-cool soliloquy some blustery April morning, having spent a 12 hour shift keeping some unlucky soul from the brink of coding, or coding, or whatnot. I'll garner stares from curious passers-by as I publically document my own stupidity at having stayed in critical care, and not gone back to the known hinterlands of stepdown.

And I'm probably gonna feel like a crappy cardiothoracic nurse for awhile, just like I felt like a shitty trauma nurse, for just about the entire duration of my (admittedly short lived) career in that field.

So, what's the difference?

I think the difference is I really, really like cardiac as a speciality. Maybe not as much as I prize my sanity, and definitely not as much as a cherish a good night's sleep, but still, as specialities go... I'm all rainbows-and-unicorns-and-sunshine-up-your-ass about cardiac.

My hope is that this will translate to Pure Intensive Care Goodness.

And so, I "begin the begin." (After I sign my name to human resource documents in triplicate for five days, which is apparently what they mean by 'hospital orientation.')

possession

First things first. Observation: Now that I'm on a brief hiatus between jobs, I find that sleeping at night, like human beings were intended, puts a new spin on life.

For starters, I'm not nearly half the bitchy crank-pot I was working nights. It's amazing, not to be reduced to the emotional lability of a toddler when confronted with super human choices like, "Should I have peanut butter and honey, or peanut butter and jelly on my sprouted grain bread?" (Let alone, "Fuck, I have many life-saving decisions to triage rapidly as a critical care nurse at 2a.m. in the morning, which one of these life-saving skills is the priority at this particular moment?")

Ah yes. Sleeping at night. Awake during the day. It's such a simple joy to work within nature's own biorhythms. People who bitch about waking up at 5a.m. to work during the day (and I was/am one of them) should be forced to work nights for six months and re-evaluate how shitty waking up at 5 a.m. really is compared to having already been awake for ten hours at that point, and still having two more hours to go before the pleasure of death is ushered forth, or you get off-shift, whichever comes first.

I just can't tell you how much I needed to SLEEP AT NIGHT, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS COUNTING SHEEP AND WARM MILK AND COOKIES AND TRYPTOPHAN.

There is nothing like realizing instead of running around ragged saving other people's lives for twelve grueling, largely thankless and often smelly hours, you actually get to crawl into bed (clean and sans someone else's shit spores floating up your nostrils) and save your own soul from being torn to pieces from lack of sleep.

In any case, I was obliged after my Last Shift In Trauma (a shift which, incidentally, made me wonder, "Since when are teenage kids unsatisfied with snorting good old fashioned cocaine?!") to board two buses, and two planes--again, on no sleep!--arriving finally in Florida. At that point, I had been up a full twenty six hours, looked like something out of a freak show and still needed to drive 28 miles from the airport to my parents' house.

All without the benefit of a car I had reserved days before.

Sample conversation, confirming, should there ever be an inkling of a doubt in future times, that we indeed live and work on Planet Bizzarro, Amidst a Population of Total F-in' Dullard Douchebags:

JAMIE:
So, what you're saying is, you don't have a car, even though I made a reservation?

CLERK:
Yes.

JAMIE:
So. What was the point of making a reservation?

CLERK:
Well, we overbook. We don't have the car you want.
[with unconvincing note of fake concern]
We've got a minivan, though, or an SUV.

JAMIE:
[feeling the last strings of her already tenuously-threaded sanity snap]
Uh, no offense, but, I don't want an SUV or minivan, and it's clearly not what I reserved. Just so we're clear, you don't have the car I reserved, correct?

CLERK:
[as if it's just the most insane fucking thing she's heard since Britney went 'round the bend, these crazy-ass patrons reserving cars at a Car Rental Establishment and then expecting to have same at the ready, because, you know, they've reserved one!]
Nope. No car.

JAMIE:
[resisting the urge to turn around and look for "Candid Camera" host]
That's unforunate.

I then spent the next week or so dealing with a Sanford and Son-esque pile of my stuff I'd stored months prior to trekking out to Seattle. While fortuitous circumstances and some enterprising mice meant there was exponentially less bullshit directly pertaining to said venture, it was still a complete money hemorrhage (how much do you suppose half a ton of moldering theology books are worth to the general public, let alone ship across the continent to yourself, I ask you?) and general allergy inducing chore.

It also meant quality time bonding with The Paper Shredder, and questioning my own sanity for inexplicably saving five years worth of Act Now! Don't Wait! Credit Card Offers (my best guess is I was waiting for an opportunity to, you know, bond with a paper shredder).

Having dumped and shredded a ton of absolute crap, donated my massive furniture to a worthy cause, and shipped the remaining Questionably Useful Crap to Seattle, I feel a certain sense of peace. Finally, after wishing, numerous times, that I had my beloved copy of Wheelock's or Kant's Critique(s) at hand--I will (at the USPS's Media Mail shipping's mercy and reliability, of course) finally have My Most Valuable Crap, aka, A Bunch of Books and Yarn, here in Seattle.

If ever there were a milestone for "You have now officially moved your crap to Seattle," I guess this would be it.

If I can just get to the milestone that reads, "You never have to move your crap ever again, any where" I'd be set, but I suspect that particular milestone would be of the "free epithet with every fifth granite headstone purchased!" variety, unfortunately. (Or maybe fortunately. At least when you're dead, other people are forced to deal with your crap.)

the bladder scanner as postmodern metaphor

When I was staff at Hospital of Doom, we had this bladder scanner. And when I say "we had this bladder scanner," I mean we had one bladder scanner for 511 beds. That's right, folks. One.

It was old and I thought of it as a useless generator of random numbers from 0-900. Not only that, the sheer effort it took to locate where in the hospital the bladder scanner might currently be hanging out (never mind getting an order to use it in the first place) added such exponential layers of exquisitely soviet redundancy and bureaucracy to an already frustratingly pointless undertaking, that it was often easier to weasel one's way out of Bladder Scanner Limbo, pretend you did it, and just make up a number, without bothering to locate the damn machine in the first place.

Lately, I feel like that old, much-maligned bladder scanner--broken, overworked, and yet still shimmied and jostled endlessly from place to place, obliged to spit out useless information in a reliably imprecise and inaccurate way.

I'm so tired, and have been running on empty for so long, that I feel like the bladder scanner and I, metaphorically, are one: both symbolic and symptomatic of the American working class and their damnation to an eternal redundancy, inconsistency and arcane uselessness--hopelessly overworked, reliably ineffectual, consistently broken, and endlessly ridiculous.

plus ça change...

Because I am apparently a staunch proponent of self-torture, I moved, lock, stock and barrel o'monkeys, on New Year's Eve (and spent the two days prior to that packing up my place, having worked the holiday week).

It was an ironic mix of grim puritanical roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-the-job-done-sleep-and-sanity-be-damned on the one hand, and the blessings of friendship and kindness on the other. (Friends who help you move more than once every ten years? Amazing people! Ply them with lots of good wine and give them lots of hugs!)

Top New Year's Resolution? To NEVER MOVE. EVER AGAIN. (At least not this year.)

Put another way: If there were an Olympic Sport called Moving Way Too Much-- I WIN FIRST PLACE! I WIN THE GOLD MEDAL! Shoo-in! No contest!

Any way. There are still Issuez which are making me contemplate living as far away from urban claustrophobia as possible, which I can't really blog about as They Are Being Sorted Out Right Now and would bore readers silly any way--but at least my stuff is all in one place. For now.

Switching jobs (and facilities) made the move virtually a no-brainer, and the New Place feels like a luxurious palace in terms of space and light (windows! natural light! WINDOWS!) compared to my little shoebox of a studio in Belltown. The studio was wonderfully close to my old hospital (walking distance!) but so is my new apartment (relative to my new hospital)--and it's within half a block to trails, parks and quite a lot of other Stuff To Do. I am well-pleased.

There is also the wonder of a GAS FIREPLACE, which warms the place so efficiently it almost overwarms the place, and this is saying something, coming from The World's Most Perpetually Chilled Woman.

Of course, I am not allowed too much of a rest, and all this idyllic surveying of my domain would, in theory, at some point cause terminal boredom. My last week on the trauma ICU commences tomorrow, and I am chomping at the bit to git-her-done, have a couple weeks off, and start on the cardio-thoracic ICU.

bullet proof bullet points

1) There is snow. On the ground. With ice. In Seattle. It was 16 degrees Farenheight when I woke up this morning to walk the dog. We are to have more snow tonight.

2) I have been sick with a head cold all week long, meaning I am literally snotty.

3) I am working virtually all of the coming holiday week.

4) I am moving on the following holiday week.

5) Then, work again.

6) Did I mention it was snowing, I'm sick, working the holidays, and haven't packed for a move that's less than two weeks away?

Guinness: It's a meal in a bottle! (or, Testing a Theory)

It's a sad day in the history of my refrigerator when I realize that in order to nutritionally supplement my dinner choices, I have to crack open a can of Guinness, because I just don't have enough in my cupboard to cover a full meal.

On the other hand, I guess I could just call it for what it is: an excuse to open a can of Guinness.

Early Christmas Gift (Or *Really* Early April Fool's Day Joke)

Because I value things like the ability to keep my job--and sometimes, and probably to a much lesser degree, my self respect--I've been deliberately keeping certain things on the DL around here on the old blogger.

Happily for me (and you, dear blog faithful blog reader, who has probably wondering what obscure little cubbyhole I've walled myself in this time) I can now reveal at least one of the "somethings" about which I've been prudent enough to keep my public yap-trap (eg blog) shut.

Really. I promise I've only been holding out on you guys because, well, I needed a couple of days to actually come to grips with my own decision, and you know, it's not like my boss even knows I have a blog, but it's kind of lame to tell The Internet At Large you've accepted a job when your boss doesn't even know it.

But, seriously. I've been fairly bursting at the seams to tell you about the New And Improved Job Offer for like, days, and now that I've officially accepted said offer and given notice on my current unit, I can--without compunction and with reasonably less fear of having to retract and redact the following statements at a later date--happily and freely announce that my tenure as The Unwilling Trauma Nurse is coming to an end at what feels like, but in reality really wasn't, long last.

As of next February, I'll be transferring to Trauma Center's Sister Hospital and working in Big University Hospital's Cardiothoracic Surgery ICU.

Naturally, I couldn't be happier, professionally. Or more relieved to get the hell out of trauma, which was starting to make me feel all kinds of dead inside. (You know it's time to get out of a job when you start listening to Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues" in order to stomach one more day at work, and actually begin to identify with the protagonist's plight of serving hard time.)

Pretty soon, I can all but eschew all the crap I hated about trauma: pelvic traction, halos, cranial bolts, Licox monitoring, Jones splints, multiple ex-fixes, abdominal traumas, big, messy, massive fluid resucistations.. you are dead to me now!

Likewise, I can soon kiss a blearily drunk good bye to the endless succession of patients with C-collars and on super-confusingly written orders for partial (or full, or whatever the fuck the resident actually meant, we're not sure but we'll clarify, ASAP, promise!) spine precautions. If I never have to do another full spine turn or put someone in a Miami J collar, it'll be too many times.

Having said that, let us not pretend I'm some ICU Icarus cockily sallying forth into yet another scary speciality in critical care as blithely as shooting Swan numbers (which I can't do even remotely blithely, yet, by the way).

I'm basically scared shitless to be returning to cardiac, after a year of being out-of-touch with even basic telemetry rhythms, on a unit that doesn't know what to do with a cardiac problem other than give it another fluid bolus. In fact, I feel like I've forgotten how to be a good cardiac nurse, and I'm once again afraid of looking like a class-A moron. Like, I can just hear these CTICU nurses snickering behind their backs: "This bitch claims she was a telemetry nurse for two years, and an ICU nurse at a level one trauma center for four states? What planet is she from, Planet Asystole?!"

Plus, recovering open heart patients is not the same thing as taking care of open heart stepdown patients. And I've never had to deal with heart/lung transplant patients before, so the learning curve, again is gonna be steep, and I'm gonna need to actually pay attention and get my shit together, and get all hardcore again, which just sounds fucking exhausting to me, considering this whole entire year was about me trying and essentially failing to get all hardcore about trauma.

I'm also not saying I'm completely happy to be leaving the trauma unit. As with most transitions, I'm a little more than sorry to be leaving my colleagues. Even with the clusterfuck that was adjusting to night shift, plus the move to the Big New Unit this summer, not to mention the weird social dynamic that was merging a tiny, marginalized cubby hole of a unit (surgery, which was my initial home unit) with the glamorous, bad ass hospital show case unit (trauma)--I've gotten used to all these people. I consider them my peeps. My homies. My fellow comrades-in-arms.

It's hard to know I'm leaving an established core of really fine trauma nurses, who, like me or hate me, know their jobs like the back of their hand. At least on the trauma unit, I know who'll have my back in a shitty situation, or even in a good one, and that goes a long way in feeling marginally okay on a hardcore, scary unit, especially when you're brand new, and aware of your suck-shit, subpar critical care skills.

Pretty soon, I'll just be The New One again--an unknown quantity adrift in a sea of other unknown quantities. And being The New One is hard, especially on an intensive care unit, where nurses are generally more critical of their peers and are apt to watch you like a hawk to make sure you don't fuck up and kill your patients. (I'm not saying I don't need that kind of babysitting. I'm just saying it's hard to be new when most people are gonna assume flat out you're a dangerous idiot until you prove otherwise.) It's an intimidating environment to begin with, and often, I've found, in terms of survival and job satisfaction, the social dynamic can make or break it for you on these kinds of units.

And, I feel guilty, leaving. Yeah, I know I'm replacable, and all, and I'm sure my manager could find a much more competent trauma nurse than myself. You know, one with actual, fully developed critical care skills. I just feel bad, because for the first time as a staff nurse, I actually have a decent manager who doesn't say things like, "Staffing is your problem, bitches, deal with it!" and actually gives a shit about managing her unit. And does it extremely well.

On the other hand, being "stuck" in a speciality you aren't all that stoked about isn't really all that fun, and I can't say I'd be super happy staying on indefinitely, good colleagues or not. I liken it to being stuck doing, say, Patristics, when what I really wanted to be doing was Contemporary Theology. It's like, yeah, right on, I'm working my ass off learning Jerome and Augustine when what I really want to be getting into is Hegel and Schleiermacher. It just gets lame after awhile, being stuck in the 4th and 5th century when you really want to be like, say, in the 19th or even 20th.

Likewise, it gets lame, after awhile, taking care of the Diffuse Axonal Injury Not-So-Jet Set, with the ridiculously poor prognosis and all, when what you really want to be doing is taking care of super sick heart patients. Sure, at the point your heart is so crappy you need a new one, and have to live on a heart machine until you get one, it's a pretty ridiculously poor prognosis, too--but it's one I have interest in learning about, and that pretty much makes the difference between feeling like your job has meaning for you, and feeling your job is going to eventually crush your will to live into oblivion.

But, I have to say, as scared shitless as I am to be transfering to a new unit, working with new people, in a sort-of-new speciality--I'm also more excited about this transition in some ways than I was about going into trauma. Cardiac surgery ICU is what I've been wanting to try for a year, and I'm hoping it just doesn't come back to bite me in the ass.

And, if it does, I hope I can supplicate my way back into the trauma unit, and maybe people will just think I took a super long vacation or something, and not razz me too badly for flunking out of Cardiothoracic ICU.

folsom prison blues (lego style)

i-pod

As the daylight hours compress upon themselves and the weather gets steadily chillier, I find myself wondering why I can't just hibernate, or become a spore, dormant until the spring time.

This option of dormancy comes at a time when I'm riding a particularly high wave of ironically low gloom about work. I think in fact there may be some kind of connection between the lack of light, my increasing desire to hole up in my apartment and cease to function for a few months, and my complete apathy about work.

To wit, I watched Mike Judge's Office Space last night, a movie which I had successfully resisted the impulse to view for years. I couldn't help but cheering on the main character, whose main desire was not to go back to work, and simply do nothing.

It's not that I want to do nothing, exactly, it's just that I resent being forced to do something when I feel this way. I remember feeling this annoyed and burned out with my job last year at precisely the same time, and it precipitated yet another lateral move--this time to ICU--in an increasingly pathetic attempt to pretend I'm supposed to be furthering my career in bedside nursing.

My fantasy is to quit my job and work in a knitting store. Things I dig about the scenario? Well, for starters, in a yarn store, as a opposed to an ICU, no one is shitting, puking, bleeding out, or dying. Family members aren't snottily insisting you suctioning trached and PEGed Timmy Patient q2min when if they'd been to school and earned a degree and license and all to practice nursing, they'd realize wasn't necessary to do that fucking frequently because a) the patient's coughing and oxygen saturation of 100% means they are protecting their airway and oxygenating properly and b) the fact that you're not Yankuer-At-The-Ready Suction Girl today and are running around with a harassed expression on your face might just mean that you're actually kind of busy trying to save the life of someone who can't and isn't maintaining their ABCs (airway, breathing and circulation).

To continue with Why I'd Rather Work At A Knitting Store Than in An ICU: your job as a clerk in a knitting store, as opposed to a nurse in an ICU, consists of schmoozing about yarn and patterns, enthusing about your hobby, and knitting on your latest project. Occasionally, knitting clerks have to ring up a sale, show you some yarn or patterns or needles. At most, the biggest crisis you'll have to deal with is you don't have an exact match of dye lot in someone's chosen yarn, or maybe undo a couple of mis-knit rows on a distraught newbie's First Scarf project.

There's no, "Uh oh. We gave that person waaaaay too much yarn; now they'll never be able to knit all that yarn and die of yarn-sepsis!" or "Oh shit! We just gave that customer five skeins of the wrong dye lot; call the yarn bank STAT and find out what we need to do to reverse the damage!"

In conclusion, I need a different job.

Wait, no scratch that. I need a different profession.

hiatus: a brief retrospective.

So, let's start with the obvious: I haven't posted to The Scutmonkey for awhile.

Long story short: I've been busy. Making plans, revising plans, executing plans, repeat ad infinitum.

But, never fear--I'm still rattling around, like so much change in a Belltown panhandler's insistently ubiquitous cup.

I'm in a rather odd mood right now--must be the infusion of caffeinated beverage and the fact that the sun is descending earlier and earlier these chilly early winter nights.

Off-kilter would be a good way to describe it. Just ever-so-slightly out of focus. Or, off balance maybe. Yes, that's it. Off-balance. Which I guess is the same thing as being off-kilter, isn't it?

The Hipster Dude's Guide To Dating (Or Not).

We know. You might seem like a chill dude on the exterior, all rockin' out to Pink Floyd --and rhapsodizing, repeatedly and at length to any one and everyone within a five mile radius of your King County Metro busline stop--about your latest awesome kiteboarding exploits and that new Kurt Cobain memorial built by some old geezer in Aberdeen.

But we know it can be an uphill slog, maintaining that attitude of vacuous enthusiasm for esoteric watersports in the face of a censorious, non-hipster public.

Like, dude, we feel ya. Totally.

We here at Ennui Publishing House (recent purveyors of the highly erudite textbook, "My Translation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is More Rigorously Footnoted Than Yours," by Professor P.J. de Sloghard) realize that sometimes, it's hard to live in Hipster Land, what with the ever present pressure to be au courant with the latest in Hendrix biographical research while at the same time maintaining your Most Orcas Sighted While Kiteboarding Record (zero!) amongst fellow stoner aficianados.

Furthermore, we know you're a busy hipster who's smart enough to realize that a dude has to have his priorities, especially in these tough economic times. You have Seattle indie band records to buy and old Subaru hatchbacks to run into the ground in search of new kiteboarding waters. Who has time to figure out women, or what to do with one who isn't trying to sell you pot, a top-of-the-line kiteboard or a vintage, restrung Stratocaster signed by Jimi himself?

Relax! (Oh wait. You already are, dude! We forgot! You're a hipster!) We here at Ennui are striving valiantly to fill that glaring gap in hipster how-to literature--and that's why we created this gratuitous guide to dating, expressly for you! (Ever-so-faint taste of mockery absolutely free!)

Enjoy, and remember the hipster's number one motto: no worries, it's all good.

Chapter One: The Dating Cycle of a Hipster.

Hipster Date #1: The Coffeehouse Crawl (Gift of Gab Method)

Level: Easy to Advanced

Prep time: Varies. Ranges from five minutes spent on Yelp(!) triangulating the closest place between your studio apartment in Fremont and her digs on Capitol Hill, to forever stuck in a penitential cycle of pretentious local hipster dives whose forebodingly tattooed baristas glare at you balefully and claim to be out of brew if you indicate you did not, in fact, bring your own mug created on your very own pottery wheel, fashioned while teaching women's correctional facility inmates lifeskills as part of your weekly slew of Seattle public volunteer work.

Advantages: It's only coffee. Which can be spilled conveniently to get you the fuck outta there, if your date starts talking about her Roth IRA options or how much she just loves Sarah Palin's updo and her politics and hopes you do, too (wink! wink!).

Hipster tip! If you choose a place that has a great bakery, you can not only drink overpriced coffee, but you can also eat overpriced tasty baked goods, which has the added advantage that it'll decrease the amount of time you need to make boring, pithy conversation that's not about Jimi, your Subaru, or your fascination with Orcas' totally amazing sonar capabilities.

Hipster tip! If you choose a place with a band, and it's live music night, you might not have to do much talking at all!

Disadvantages: See last half of notation under "prep time."

Seattle Hipster Dude's Mini-Guide To First Date Conversation Topic Do's and Dont's:

-Jimi Hendrix (but not Woodstock)
-Pink Floyd (but not Syd Barret)
-Kurt Cobain (but not Courtney Love)
-current, obscure Seattle indie rock bands (but not Pearl Jam)
-the STP ride (but not your slavish participation in the annual Turkey Trot)
-Subarus (but not how Dave Matthew's Subaru is the same color as yours)
-living in a t.v.-free household by choice (but not your resultant, pathetic codependence on internet social utilities like facebook and couchsurfing.com, for human interaction)
-taking the bus to work (but not riding the shuttle van from the parking lot)
-kiteboarding (but not how you looooove kiteboarding sooooo much that you wish you could have sex with kiteboarding, or something, dude.)

Hipster Date #2: "Either/Or" (aka The Pseudo-Philosophy Excuse, or The Dawning Realization That "Damn, this dating shit is taking away serious kiteboarding time, dude!")

Level: Intermediate-Advanced.

Prep Time: Ranges from fairly minimal, to months of reading philosophy Cliffs Notes depending on the circumstance, and who you're trying to bullshit.

Method: Requires, at minimum, binary decision making skills (eg, "Yes, I wanna nail this chic." or "No, I'd rather smoke weed/kiteboard.") May require in-depth knowledge and high-level manipulation of pseudo-philosophical concepts, grammar and syntax beyond the 6th grade level, and a certain amount of guileless charm. Not recommended for beginners. Warning: may require an actual conversation with grown up sounding diction if the addressee in question buys into your crap.

Advantages: If you can remember the word "Kierkegaardian," you might even get away with standing up a chic on a second date.

Disadvantages: You probably won't remember the word Kierkegaardian, or mistake it for the word "kiteboarding" and piss her off, no matter what else you do or don't say.

Sample hipster ready-made excuses:

Do say: "Like, I had this Kierkegaardian moment of Either/Or, you know? And I decided I had to like, go with my "leap of faith" that you'd have a "leap of faith" and understand my need to kiteboard for like, five days straight. "

Don't say: "So, like, I'm reading this book written by this guy who's last name sounds a lot like "Kiteboarding." Well, it starts with a K, any way, and it's called "Repetition"? And I thought that's what it was telling me to do: go kiteboarding, again. Hey, man, what can I say? This philosophy stuff is deep."

Hipster Date #3: The Would-Be Hippie-Dippie Hook Up (aka Granola Crunch Method, or "Dude, I guess I need to at least pretend I did more than talk about going somewhere with this chic if I wanna get past second base.")

Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Prep Time: Minutes to weeks, depending on the excuse needed, current level of THC in the bloodstream, and how hipster-hot the girl in question is.

Method: Start talking about nature. Add the words "Thoreau" and "transcendental" in there, somewhere, after claiming to have been some outdoorsy-type local place that sounds plausible for you to have visited via the metro busline (even if you were, in fact, smoking a joint in a friend's damp, mildewy basement pad while listening, in a very unhipster fashion, to Alanis Morrissette's "My Humps" cover.)

Intimate you would have loved it if she had been there, and you should both definitely go to this magically awesome, super cool lake/slough/mountain/shoreline sometime(!) Smile and look her directly in the eye as you say this, but be deliberately vague about when "sometime" actually might be. Be sure to gently remind this chic, if she starts whining about how you never spend any time with her, that duuuuuude, you're a hipster, not a soulless automaton ruled by the ruthlessly artificial and ultimately meaningless modern concepts of timeliness and social convention!

Hipster tip! Try not to talk about the drugs you did while "hiking" or "rock climbing" at said location, even though you're dying to mention Syd Barret's unfortunate relationship with LSD for the fifth time today.

Advantages: If you can pull it off, you might get off the hook about standing your date up to go kiteboarding, and get laid.

Disadvantages: If you fuck it up, well, can go back to listening to Hendrix and kiteboarding in peace. Oh wait. We forgot. To you, that wouldn't be a disadvantage.

Examples Of How To Use Your Words To Fake The Illusion You're Gonna Take This Chic Out Somewhere! Soon! Really!:

Do Say: "Oh, dude, sorry I missed "Dances with Knives: Interpretative Dance Recital By Former Psych Trauma Patients" at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center. But, like, check this out, man! I was out on Mount Si doing a wheat germ fast and reading Thoreau and thinking about transcendental stuff. The mountains out there are amazing! We should go some time!"

Don't Say: "Oh dude, sorry I missed going to that sold out performance of Common and Erykah Baydhu at Fremont Abbey, the one you worked overtime to afford and stuff. But dude! Check this out! Me and a buddy were chillin' in his basement, trying to see if that bumper crop of 'shrooms grew or not in his mom's vermicompost. You wanna trip? It's some awesome shit, man!"

Hipster Date #4: Sheer Avoidance of Any and All Reality (or, The Wake and Bake Break-up)

Level: Easy

Prep Time: Varies, depending on amt of weed required, method of consumption, i.e. joint vs. bowl, etc.

Method: Self-explanatory.

Advantages: Wake and bake, man. Does not require verbal communication. Plus, you should have already had lots of practice with the skill-set necessary to pull it off.

Disadvantages: You may accidentally set fire to your recent copy of "Kiteboarding Today" if you fall back asleep before you're done with your last joint.

canto

Every time I am feeling fucked over, I get this line from Dante's Inferno in my head. Don't ask me what Canto, because I don't remember, but you know, when Dante's cruisin' around hell with Virgil and all, and he meets this Italian military strategist, the once excommunicated Guido da Montefeltro?

And Montefeltro, who's probably not having such a great time in Hell after all these years, laments, "Promise great things, promise, but do not pay." (Referring to the advice he gave to Pope Boniface in dealing with the Colonna family who had contested his power; Montefeltro advised Boniface to grant them amnesty in return for their surrender, and then reneg on the promise once they had left their fortress. And, also maybe he's pissed, because the Pope promised him absolution, and St. Francis even came to collect his ass after his death, but some Black Cherub from Hell--and here I have an incongruous, anachronistic image of Jimi Hendrix, with a smokin' Strat strapped across his front--came to claim him on a superior, a priori claim. So, that's about how much money'll buy you, people, in case you're wondering in advance how much money you should spend on buying yourself out of Hell.)

Any way, I read Dante's Inferno the summer before 9th grade (no, it wasn't required reading. I was a weirdo back then, too). And that line struck me so much, I wrote it down, and memorized it. And from basically that time on, whenever any body fucks with me--or I fuck them over--I think, "Promise great things, promise, but do not pay."

I'm not sure who else goes around quoting Dante when they're pissed off, but, that's about where I am right now. That, and wondering how many limited edition Stratocasters you'd have to part with to stay outta hell.

perishable goods.

It occurs to me that if my job was more about things I like to do (such a reading and writing) and less about things I don't (life and death crisis) I would probably be better at my job.

And as for the supposed character-building, and inane, servile humility associated with the job--I find I need neither in remedial dose, or, as so often the case at work, in the prophylactic proportions in which they are doled out (liberally and generously and often, in other words). In any case, it does not pay any better to be truly insulted than falsely praised.

I find my burn-out with nursing is reaching a new, somewhat disturbing plateau of benign indifference, the sort I associate more with a desk-and-cubicle sort of job than a job in which mortality mingles precariously (as it tends to do) with the mundane. The sort of burn-out, in short, in which you've not only capitulated your hopes at becoming The Best At Whatever, but you no longer believe that if you did become the ultimate (or even penultimate) Best At Whatever, it would really matter at all, to any one.

Let me attempt to flesh out this Sweeping Statement. (If I am accused of anything at all, it is making Broad, Generic Claims-often with the certain religious conviction of the damned).

While there is a great deal of expecatation that a nurse perform under a high degree of stress, often in a severely limited amount of time, I find that less and less often do I care whether or not the patient lives or dies by our collective hand (except perhaps I care in the most self-preserving, litigious sense) or still less whether said patient has the miraculous desired outcome promised by Our New Moderne Medical Technology and Advances, or else has a dismal, lingering, liminal fate (and so many of them do).

I have even started to care less about whether or not I am ultimately perceived as a smart nurse, let alone a good one, except in a strictly egotistical way (and in that sense, I care very much about what others think of me, especially my colleagues; you'll have to forgive my flaws and inconsistencies that way. Or perhaps you do not have to forgive. Perhaps it would be better if you simply threw stones. People have a way of making you pay dearly for forgiveness; there is a reason purgatorial favors were once called indulgences. Stones, on the other hand, are quite free, at least for now.)

But, on a deeply fundamental level, I have less and less attachment to my job as a profession. In other words, I perceive it to be the vehicle through which I bide some of my time, make some of my social contacts, perseverate and lose precious sleep over, and pay my rent and bills.

I am, however, more and more disengaged with the job as a personal challenge or even a moral one, still less do I care about those those social accoutrements accorded with such lofty associations as "bettering one's self" and "going forward with one's career." Except as some self-flagellating, penitentially driven exercise in self-mortification (and unfortunately, I am prone to excessive bouts of this sort of thing) I have no desire to go back to school, obtain my master's in nursing, and be consigned, ultimately, for even longer shifts of nightmarish, endless medical tedium and the fulimant agita which comes from dealing with crisis, both imaginary and real.

The job--and the many unpleasant tasks associated with it--is less something to be engaged with and more something to be tolerated and pacified, like someone else's whining child, or a perpetually apopleptic spouse.

This sounds very navel-gazing and adolescent and whiny in the face of an economic (what's the word they're using these days?) downturn. I have steady, gainful employment, benignly endowed by the frugal but ever flowing coffers of The State. I should be thankful.

Let me explain still further, however. ( I am nothing if not gifted at the art of Detailed Excuses and Plausible Explanations. In fact, I believe I could make my living from this talent, if only I could find a way to market the skill without receiving more useless formal training or teaching. Or unnecessarily whoring myself. Although, I am not above necessarily whoring myself. Whoring is, as implied, necessary, at times. I would be far less feckless a wretch, in fact, would that my talent for whoring myself were exponentially more refined. I suppose I can whore myself, and do, occasionally, to some degree, but I also suppose by the same token, that I must do it poorly indeed. I deduce this, of course, because whores and thieves, by all accounts, do very well in this world. Select saints and the masses of menial, mediocre sinners such as myself, not so much.)

To wit:

My initial, perhaps overzealous anger and reactionary fury at The System has shifted, ponderously, but surely, into a lugubrious sort of dolor.

It is not precisely disillusionment; I never had high hopes for The Profession, nor did I ever see myself as being a martyr, patron or redeemer for The Cause; for one, I am too selfish and self-absorbed, and two, I do not believe in over-romanticizing and exaggerating one's professional disquiet to the point of public self-immolation, or, as is the popular term today refers to it, "political activism." (In private, immolation becomes an entirely different matter, of course, but that, for now, is out of bounds for discussion).

In fact, what I have found, as the pieces of self get chipped away in Prometheian fashion, is not so much an unearthing of the revelation of the Evils of Capitaliasm And The 12 Hour Work Day, and all that (because that much was made clear to me at the get-go) but is, rather, the seedling that grows through the chinks in the sidewalk, that altogether more prickly inkling that I am not cut out for the job, and yet, am fit for absolutely nothing else.

I am a Vocational Albatross in any other field, in other words.

And, I'd not only rather do something else (a sentiment which seems frivolous in a time of banks crashing stupendously, people out of home and job, etc etc) but I'd rather be doing something I'm quite sure has nothing to do with what I'm doing now.

(Again, I am a Vocational Albatross in any other field, if you skipped over that sentence the first time, thinking, rightly, that right now is not a good time for the word "albatross." )

Perhaps it is the nature of the job that has given me this festering sense of dread and dismay--a prism of tragedy through which glaring possibilities of ruin and decay never breached are now made possible.

Fundamental Truths must now be spouted. (It's part of The Spiel. These things must be said. Even proclaimed, if you must).

Shit is shit. Dead is dead.

There's nothing philosophical or poetic about it. Death, in particular, can be a nasty, brutal, and unfortunately protracted and lengthy process. Messy, in other words. Not neat and clean and full of last minute, cleansing confessionals and teary-eyed reunions with long-lost loved ones like movies and soap operas would have us believe.

But, every time I confront death on the job, I find a little more of humanity--or what passes for it in the most socially acceptable sense of the word--gets stripped away. In the beginning, I used to feel sorry for the patient. I don't any more. Now, I feel sorry for the family, if there is any. In time, I'm sure I'll lose my compassion for them, and be silently grateful when, by fateful design, they no-show . It will be one less act of contrition I'll have to fake in what is turning out to be an endless parade of fake-gasms on my part.

I've shellaced a look of benign concern on my face so many times I feel my face is going to crack. But my eyes have dulled, and my voice has that tinny, rehearsed sound that might come out of a mannequin if she could talk.

Mostly, though, I apologize.

(And thus we move on to The Confessional. Shouldn't all melodramatic and self-indulgent pieces of crap have a confessional? You are quite right if you protest they shouldn't. But, I am nothing, if not dogmatic in my application of form, however ultimately useless and outdated. We must have our relics. And perhaps some incense. Corpses tend to smell after awhile, and the hospital has quite a few of them. Then again, the more, the merrier.)

I apologize to the family: "I'm sorry he's sick." "I'm sorry, he's very sick." "I'm sorry, he's dying." "I'm sorry, he's dead."

I apologize to the patient, "I'm sorry, I have to stick you with a needle." "I'm sorry, this is going to hurt." "I'm sorry, I have to shove a tube up your ass." "I'm sorry, you're dead."

What I really want to say is, "I'm sorry, I'm too tired and have done this too many times to even want to look you directly in the eye, let alone reassure you everything is going to be okay."

I suppose in essence, I really am sorry, but not for the reasons I give to patients or their families.

I am sorry I ever chose nursing, and even sorrier I chose bedside nursing. I am sorry I failed to find a better, more suitable career for myself. I am sorry I am stuck, night after night, caught in a lassitude of indifference on one hand, and indecision as to what to do about it on the other.

To be liberated from this job would be a bit like being liberated from prison, or a loveless but reasonably financially secure marriage. (The problem being, of course, that a Hospital is not so much a Doll's House as a Shop of Horrors).

My choices aren't all that clear to me. Daydreaming about what life could be quickly becomes the stuff of nightmares, when yoked with the burden of reality.

(We are missing the Beatific Vision, as an astute reader might have noted. This is not so much because we have stopped believing in them, as much as it is we have lost the capacity to see them. There is a difference, but this is for the talkers-of-God to debate. Having lost our capacity to see, we insist on brisk discussions of our other God-granted faculties, do we not? In the beginning was not, after all, The Vision--it was The Word. )

late night living

Even though I've been off this week, I haven't reverted back to a day schedule, which I had been doing, more or less successfully, on some of my weeks off prior.

Hence, I haven't gotten a lot done, and have been keeping the hours of a vampire. A vampire who, coincidentally, has been living off of take-out and utter crap foods up until today, when I finally had groceries delivered (I am not only a vampire, I am a vampire princess.)

Considering the Cirque du Soleil acrobat-like contortions it takes to park my car in the pixie-garage, and my general state of somnolence between the hours of about 6a.m. and 5p.m., I decided to take advantage of the local Safeway's home delivery. Yey for indulgent laziness--I now have a super-stocked refrigerator and pantry!

I haven't been a very productive member of society on my days off, however, and therefore have dreadfully little to report in the way of "news." It feels very strange to sleep the day away, and then be up all night, a strange prisoner of your own home. I'm not complaining, exactly--it's better than being awake all night and at work, but, this late night living does have its disadvantages, the chief one is that you start feeling like some weird social leper.

Meanwhile, as inquiring minds want to know--the worm bin is going better than expected. No weird smells, no massive hari-kari worm suicides... compost is happening! Likewise, the bokashi bin is behaving itself in admirable fashion--smells faintly vinegary and sweetish, but not malodiferous--and without the magically-impregnanted-with-microbes bran, it would smell, I imagine, exactly like a putrid corpse, as I dumped everything in there from some iffy pad thai, to chicken bones, to moldy onions and cheese.

Pictures to follow, when I get off my ass and take some.

The Silence of the Worms

It puts the worms into the bucket or else it gets the hose...

Haven't really been up to the task of updating this blog, although in my crazy tiredness have gotten rather obsessed with home vermicomposting these days (more on my specific 'worm bin' later, when I actually get two synapses to fire properly in sequence). A good, fun, clean way to hooked/learn more about the wacky-sounding concept is to watch this video:



I also like this guy, mostly for his name, "Sustainable Dave" and the vaguely creepy "Silence of the Worms" basement thing he's got going on:



Did you notice the sign? "Support Global Worming." WORM POWER, bitches!

Now, lest you think I am alone in my craziness, I have to tell you--I just met another nurse who's into vermicomposting as well, and bought her worms from Seattle Tilth, just like I did. (And, she confessed to having run into other nurses who claimed to worm compost as well. It feels as if we're going to be headed to a very special kind of 12 step help program soon: "Hi, my name is Jamie, and I'm a vermicomposter.")

Any way, both of us found the Tilthers quite militant about vermicomposting. My "Tilther" (the one who sold me the worms) made me feel guilty about buying a commercial worm bin ("Why buy more plastic in order to recycle?" she said, disdainfully, quelling my desire to inquire about the posh worm bin they had for sale). I felt so guilty, I actually went out of my way, to another store, to buy the same worm bin for more money just to avoid the embarrassment and displeasure of the uber-eco conscious Tilther.

Likewise, my friend was telling me how the Seattle Tilth person that sold her *her* worms quizzed her about her worm bin set-up before she would sell her the worms, and very displeased at the idea that my friend was going to use peat moss ("a non renewable resource!" admonished the Tilither). Cowed, my friend had to defer and tell the woman, apologetically, that she had bought it for another gardening project, too, before the Tilther would sell her the worms!!

I have even taken the bokashi plunge, and actually went slumming around Belltown like the Crazy Homeless person I'll no doubt be in a couple of months, trawling for free plastic 5 gallon buckets. Then, I borrowed a drill from a friend to drill holes in the top bucket for my own version of the fancy-ass, expensive commercial bokashi bucket.

(I scored the drill; my friend now thinks I'm nuts).

For those of you who want to ponder the depths of my increasingly-deeper downward spiral into Seattle Eco-Madness, I give you the instructional version of How To Make Your Own Cheap-Ass Fermenting Compost Bucket, Like a COMPLETELY CRAZY PERSON:



Are you still with me? No? Good. Here's another bokashi video from an equally enthusiastic nutcase who has self styled himself The Compost Guy and has multiple websites (which of course, I have bookmarked, because I am going insane):




I've also been proving to myself I have other talents in addition to mewling pointlessly about my sleep-deprivation and developing bizarre hobbies involving annelids and garbage, and to that end, I managed to read a 300+ page book (online--which means I'm likely to suddenly experience complete and total blindness due to eye fatigue any time now) last night in under three hours. Try Neil Gaiman's spooky modern day gothic Neverwhere for free, online (limited time offer expires Oct 3, 2008, I believe.) If sewer-dwelling angels, assassins who enjoy staging a good old-fashioned underground crucifixtion for their victims, and/or simply not being able to access your own monetary funds via ATM sounds like the stuff of novella nightmares most notorious, then this book's for you!

(By the way, if I start going on about composting toilets, it's time for an intervention.

time in a bottle

It was very nice indeed to have the week off. My activities, in loose chronological order, were as follows:

First was the Marathon Sleeping, which was greatly needed.
Then came the Lolling About, which was also not to be missed.

After that was a a smidge of Self-Indulgence, followed by various and asundry Epicurean Delights.

Now I am dreading Week O' Work (having more or less cycled back to being a Marginally Functional Human Being During Daylight Hours).

Am also, somewhat randomly, contemplating urban composting techniques, namely vermiculture/composting vs. Bokashi vs. the oxymoronic electronic composter.

The latter is shamelessly attractive in this Jetsons meets hippie love-child kind of way. (If you investigate the website, I will have you know I draw the line at composting Piper and Flip Flop's poo--at least as an indoor activity, although the Pet Friendly NatureMill assures me it is "ideal" for the waste products of "up to 2 large dogs, or 4 cats, rabbits, hamsters, snakes, ferrets, or other small animals," while cautioning me quite rightly, I think, that should equine poo-composting be for you, this is not the machine. I mean, thank goodness they made that clear. I'm also rather glad they added this helpful caveat: "Pet waste not recommended indoors."

I'm sorry. I can get down with worms hanging out under my kitchen sink happily and organically digesting yesterday's carrot tops--but I just can't see myself running home from a Piper-dog walk, all charged up about recycling his freshly-made turds.

Like, putting my dog's poo in a fancy, eco-friendly version of an compost-generating Easy Bake Oven is where I draw the line at crunchy granola, folks, sorry.

The vermiculture thing interests me from a "keep it fairly simple" perspective, and indeed, some of the information makes it seem like your average eight year old, with appropriate adult supervision, could keep one running. On the other hand--other websites I've perused in the last twelve hours makes me feel as if vermiculture is sort of composting's answer to gourmet baking--get one ingredient or variable out of wack, and you're doomed to micro-ecosystem failure. I mean, they have these Master Composters floating around, instructing people on the fine art of getting worms to do their stuff with your garbage. That's kind of hardcore and intimidating, in some ways. I mean, I'm new to this stuff, and I find out there's a league of Jedi Knight Mater Composters out there somewhere in Greater Seattle? Scary! And, I'm not sure I can be trusted, either, in my intermittently sleep deprived state, to keep up with the worm farm as I should.

The other option--Bokashi, basically works off the principal of pickling your waste--and has the added advantage that you can pickle not only fruits and veggies and paper, but alo meat and dairy products, a huge no-no in Old School Composting. It's got a self-contained, relatively small system, doesn't require the constant monitoring of a worm farm, and seems to keep the smell to a minimum. The drawback for someone living in an urban apartment or condo, is that one does not generally have a plot of land to then go and bury the results--which do not fully compost until that step is finished.

While I do have friends who would probably like the Bokashi almost-compost product, the problem is then getting it do them on a regular basis, as the system seems to cycle about every month or so.

And if my activities as of late (scouring the internet for interesting ways to help food rot!) aren't strange enough, I cooked this egg bake recipe this morning. I added potatos, a walla-walla onion and tomatos from Nancy's garden, and substituted sausage for bacon (and no, I don't have an alternate identity as a SAHM who cooks for her kids--I just happen to share my name with the owner of the blog.) It was spongy, and sort of like a poor man's quiche, but having never had the stuff before, I have no idea if I "did it right." I'm always vaguely suspicious of my cooking efforts, any way.

In fact, I'm very suspicious of just about anything I do these days that isn't involved with sleeping, or developing a plan to obtain still more sleep, as the neurons do not seem to be functioning optimally.

Be forewarned, folks, if I break out the crystals and a Dog Psychic in the next couple of weeks, please stage an intervention, STAT, okay?

psycho killer. qu'est-ce que c'est?

I figured out my life is basically about two things lately: terror, and trying to get enough sleep to survive the terror for one more shift.

Terror = work. As documented elsewhere, work is really scary. And, as fun and smart as the people who I work with are, they are also extremely intimidating. It's like working with the Green Berets of nurses, or the Marines. These nurses are hardcore, and if you're new, you're likely to be fodder for a lot of disdain, both explicitly expressed and implied.

It's hard to go from feeling competent and secure in your job skills to feeling like you just stepped off the S.S. Clueless (or onto it, or something). Plus, did I mention the terror of crashing patients, and the chilling numbness that descends after each death? While it doesn't happen every shift, it's happened enough in the last sixth months that I've sort of stopped counting how many deaths I've witnessed at work. It gets depressing, and the fact that you start shutting down over other people's untimely demise is, I think, probably not particularly healthy.

Plus--I'm no fan of trauma, as a speciality. No pun in tended--but my heart longs to get back to cardiac nursing.

Working day shift, ever elusive, might help some of the brain freeze I'm experiencing as well. As the weeks wear on, my sleeping pattern gets more and more erratic, and my waking hours--daylight or nocturnal--are infused with a sense of exhaustion which precludes any meaningful functionality, intellectually, and sometimes, emotionally. I feel drained and slightly low-grade unwell, constantly.

Night shift is fucking with me, in other words.

double your fun

Last night at work we had nearly two simultaneous codes going on--both crashing trauma OR patients who didn't make it.

The code I worked was the result of a fairly young guy chasing after his dog across a street and getting smacked by a car. Dubious silver lining: the dog is fine. I sternly informed Piper this morning that if he runs out in traffic somehow, dog, you's on yo' own.

The patient's tragedy did, however, remind me to change Piper's address-of-record on his microchip, and city dog license. When I called the microchip company, however, they were trying to sell me on paying for the microchip service, and making it seem like I needed to, because their old service was obsolete.

Smelling a rat, I steadfastly probed and poked holes into this story, and flatly refused to pay fifteen bucks a year for services I don't need. I pointed out I had paid to microchip the dog back in 2003, and I wasn't about to pay again for random "services" that are basically covered by his Seattle dog license and basic, "free" microchip non-annual fee.

I mean, the whole point of the microchip is that if your dog is found, sans collar, by a vet's office or a shelter, they can wave their magic microchip wand, contact the pet service, who will then call you. And any way, if some non-magic-microchip-wand owning person finds your collarless dog, they'd probably bring it to a shelter any way, right?

The guy pointed out if the dog was wearing his collar, with the microchip tag on it, that if someone found him cum collar, and called the Home Again number, that the company "would not be able to release any contact information" to that person.

Personally, I'm not convinced I'd want my contact information to be released to a stranger who might then come over and kill me and my little dog, too.

Plus, in a time of economic downturn, people get a little incensed when forced to pay for mysterious 'services' that defeat the entire purpose of having bought or invested good money a thing in the first place.

It sort of feels like having to buy and install digital cable in order to get any t.v. reception at all, doesn't it? Or having to install that box-thing (I'm very high-tech, you know, with my electronics jargon) and then pay more money per month to get the high-definition to work on your high-definition capable t.v.?

(Incidentally, what was wrong with regular old t.v.? Maybe I'm getting blind in my old age, but I don't really see much of a difference between HD t.v. and non-HD t.v. images unless you have a trillion-dollar t.v. set, and if you had a trillion-dollars to spent on a friggin' television, you'd probably be out buying other planets for sale in the universe or actually running your little Evil Empire off of the backs of the rest of us working slobs, not watching On the Record with Greta Van Susteren and counting her chin hairs.)

Any way, this is not to say I don't love Piper and wouldn't spend the money on him if I thought it was necessary. I mean, obviously, I thought it was necessary to microchip him because I love him (except perhaps not enough to want to take a car vs. ped accident for him).

In conclusion: I'm not a heartless cheap-ass who wouldn't care if Piper got lost, I just don't think it's necessary for me to lose a dog and get ripped off, is all I'm saying.

blue's clues

I'm really sad today.

Mom visited for six fun-filled days (okay, some days were filled with multiple trips to home improvement stores and painting 8 hours a day) and left yesterday, which always leaves me feeling a little verklempt, especially since she lives on the opposite side of the continent, a fact she keeps pointing out all "hint hint, move back, my offspring" sort of way.

Plus, mousie was put to sleep today, and I am still rather ridiculously weepy about this, considering my entire repertoire of interactions with her over the span of her two years on the planet was chasing her out around and scooping her out of tank with a cardboard tube on Cage Cleaning Day, as she detested and feared being handled at all.

And, I don't think it helps I'm going back to work today. We moved to the Shiny Brand New Unit while I was off , feverishly comparing paint samples and swaths of fabric as if I'd entered some Designing With The Stars contest. This means while I got to escape the Yuck Factor of the merge, I now have to go in and try to find where they put the twomey syringes and 2X2 gauzes and stuff that's not likely to be where it was before, considering we're in a new building.

Since we merged with another unit, I'm also going to have to figure out More People, And Who They Are And Of What Use They Are To Me.

So, what little comfort zone I'd eked out on SICU has been ripped away, and I'm feeling very much wrong-footed and whiny about the whole thing, as in, "Why can't everything just stay the same for like five minutes, so I don't have to keep taking notes on where to find the staff bathroom or where we keep the linen cart, for Chrissake?!"

Plus, I still fear work, especially after a comfy stretch of days off, hanging out at home painting my apartment with mom and feeling all happy not to be at work being scared shitless by some crumping patient or other.

I also really haven't slept at all properly the entire week, and didn't get in any marathon sleeping ventures prior to this start of the work week (the weekend, for me) due to Mouse Crisis 2008. So, I'm tired and was tempted to call out and sleep, but then wussed out, as I felt it would be difficult to justify a call-out related to mouse grief later on in say, winter, when I'm hacking up a spare lung during a real illness.

Maybe it's better I have to go to work and be forced to interact with people today, however, since I'm kind of morose and depressed about having to put the mouse to sleep, etc.

Oh well. There's always time for sleep. Tomorrow.

mostly martha

There is tons new to tell you. Tons, I say.

But, this post will be brief and, as the title suggests, mostly about Martha, my late pet mousie.

She was blonde, svelte and a bit bitchy at times, and her two favorite subjects in life were food and nesting--so I named her after that Maven of Most Meticulous Homemaking, Evah, Martha Stewart. But, I called her Martha for short (and sometimes, perhaps uncharitably in light of her recent passing, "the Fat One").

She lived a good old life, eating roughly twice her body mass in cheerios and Life cereal per day, and creating all sorts of Interesting Nesting Textiles with various bits of kleenex and fluff. In fact, if she would have had opposable thumbs on her paws, and itty-bitty knitting needles, she would have probably out-home-afghaned even yours truly.

Unfortunately, due to some Moste Mysterious Mouse Malady, Miss Martha ended up turning her meticulous attention to detail upon herself, and was grooming herself into nonexistence.

Not a pretty thing to watch, so I chose to let her go quietly, into that great mouse house in the sky, with the aid of some very nice ladies down at the veterinarian's office (not to mention a happy overdose of anesthetic gas and a liberal dose of phenobarbital).

Goodbye Miss Martha, we will miss you and I will always think fondly of your determination to make a tuft of kleenex and a roll of cardboard tubing a proper mouse residence, not to mention your amazing ability to eat your entire weight worth of whatever oat-based cereal was on hand at the time.