Glass Half Full

I broke my uninsured cell phone - but the nice young man at the service center got me a free replacement phone as a courtesy! So, all I lost were some blurry photos from a Joan Osborne concert and a few phone numbers, not several hundred dollars.

I had to schlep to the city and wait a long time to get the phone - but I got to sit in lovely Bryant Park and watch the Polish Day Parade at one end and some quaint old French guys playing petanque on the other - now that's cultah!

I had to leave my job because of my knee injury - but the head receptionist at the office has to be out for a couple months, so they might hire me back at the front desk!

My days off from school are over - but that's great, because I seem to get all stressed out when I don't have a structured day and things to do!

I can't afford any new clothes - but you can't even tell that I patched my favourite old jeans!

We are durn near broke this month, what with my accident and loss of employment - but there's a two-for-one special on spaghetti sauce at the Latino supermarket!

This message has been brought to you by the Campaign to Get Me To See Some Silver Linings and Stop Wallowing Pathetically.

Finally, I have something in common with Tom Brady.

Too bad it isn't his salary. What I mean is, for the second time at the beginning of a school year, I have injured my right leg in a ridiculous manner.

You may remember that an unfortunate encounter with a granny cart while merely doing my laundry left part of my shin cored down to the bone and the entirety of me holed up in the hospital for some time after the wound went septic. This time, it was also a fairly innocent event. A little trip to the beach at Cape May, NJ for a couple days, to be exact.

I mainly booked a couple days at the beach because I had my annual forceful yearning to swim in the ocean. However, when we got there, the surf seemed rougher than I expected. There was even a cluster of surfers catching some actual curling waves - not a usual site on many placid New Jersey shores.

At this point, a disagreement broke out between Mrs. Nator and I that went something like this:

Me: Well, going for a swim now!

She: Honey, I'm not sure you should. I don't see many other people in the water.

Me: (Not seeing warning flags posted) Well, it looks a little rough, but we're right here in front of the lifeguard's station. I'm sure it will be fine.

She: (Wading in a bit with me) The current is really strong. I don't think you should go out. Stop going out so far!

Me: Yes, it's strong and pretty cold. I'm kind of surprised. I haven't seen it like this before here. But I really want to go swimming! That's what we freakin' came here for, so I'm going in!

She: (Gripping my forearm) Don't you go in there! It is not safe and I don't want you going in there and getting hurt!

Me: (Flailing) OHMYGOD I AM NEARLY FORTY YEARS OLD AND I HAVE BEEN GOING TO THE BEACH SINCE I WAS A BABY! I THINK I CAN FREAKING HANDLE A LITTLE ROUGH SURF FOR CHISSAKES! LEAVE ME ALONE!

At any rate, she won the first round, but as soon as she dozed off, I went back to the water. Where she found me at the edge and accused me of trying to sneak away and scaring her to death, with me responding that I thought she heard me go and I wanted to swim, Goddamnit. Repeat argument 1, with less politesse.

Fast forward less than five minutes. I have stormed partially into the water. A giant wave comes and smacks me in the side of the knee while my foot is planted in the sand. I hear a distinct "click-CLICK!" as the joint bends unnaturally sideways and I go down. "That's probably not good," I muse to myself, then spend the next five to ten minutes flailing in the surf, letting wave after wave spin me around while the lifeguards repeatedly blow their whistles at me (gee, thanks), because I'm not sure I can get up.

I do get up. I can walk - wobbling and painfully, but I can. I have swelling and some trouble with stairs and walking long distances over the next few days, but with ice and rest it gets better. Until the first week of class, when, while innocently walking across the floor in the animal lab center, my knee completely buckles under me, leaving me on the floor in the doggy position, keening in pain in front of everyone.

I agree to go to the doctor at the urging of the folks in the vet tech program, who reasonably enough don't want me toppling over and flinging animals. I get an xray. The doctor thinks I'm fine and can go back to doing whatever. He says I could get an MRI, if I want. I decide to do it, just to be safe.

And I have a torn anterior cruciate ligament.

I will have to get surgery, eventually. Right now I'm trying to opt out of it in order to complete my final year at school. Lots of people make it around just fine for some time on torn ACLs, as long as they don't have very athletic things they have to do. The problem is, I have to get my doctor to sign off on a list of physical activities I have to do for class, such as stoop, lift 50 pounds, turn and balance. I also have a job where I'm carrying things, including live animals, and running around and on my feet for 10 hours at a time. I'm not sure if/how this will all work out.

So, if you've been wondering why I haven't been posting lately, there it is. I'm trying to work this out and keep up with a so-demanding-it-makes-my eyeballs-bulge-and-my-brain-weep-angels'-tears course schedule. Wish me luck... and don't go in the water!

For God's Sake, People - Keep An Eye On Your Pets!

I'll be the first to tell you I'm not always the best pet parent. I get annoyed by the cats' neurotic behaviour, Mrs. Nator and I put off cleaning the litter or aquariums for too long, and I get frustrated at not being able to get our female turtle to nest. But some of the terrible conditions I have seen in my first couple weeks at the vet hospital could have been prevented by some very basic attention.

The main thing I want to tell people is, look over your pets! This means running your eyes and hands over them from stem to stern, if not every day, then at least a couple times a week. Get to know how they look and act normally, and if that changes, make sure they aren't sick! We had the sweetest kitty ever in the other day. She was 15 years old and had never been fixed. Somehow, her people claimed not to have noticed the chain of mammary tumours, some a good deal larger than golf balls and oozing, running down her tummy. How did they not notice this?! What's more, if she'd been fixed, this probably would not have happened! This poor elderly feline ended up having major surgery - excavating growths from the entire front of her torso, plus the removal of two rotten teeth. Afterwards, she was still as sweet as ever - purring and stumbling over to be scratched. But she would have been far less traumatized and in pain had this been caught earlier.

Another thing I need to advocate is crates for puppies. Many people think they are unnecessary and maybe even cruel. They think of them as dog prisons that their pets see as punishment. But crates are only punishment if you make them so. In truth, they can be safe spaces for your pet where he or she can feel cozy, take breaks and stay out of trouble. All you have to do is make them an inviting place to stay and train the dog to think of the crate as his or her special space. In the case of puppies, if you are not able to watch or have them watched 24 hours a day, this is extremely important. Just the other day we had two adorable puppies in. One had been in a couple weeks before for eating an entire pack of cigarettes! After some emergency care and nursing, he was released in a few days, only to come back in a few days later after eating a package of allergy medicine! Apperently, the first episode was not enough for the owners to puppy-proof their house. I wonder if anyone told them about crates.

The second puppy is an even sadder story. The owners reported that they came home to find he had somehow knocked the television over on his head and lain unconscious and convulsing for some time. What a horrifying homecoming! The dog had irreparable brain damage, and had to be euthanized. My heart aches for both the puppy and its people, knowing that if he had been crated while alone in the house, this would not have happened.

I'm not telling these horror stories to make anyone feel bad. As I noted, I, like everyone else, am ignorant of some things and make mistakes with my pets. I just want people to know that there are a few simple things they can do to help insure their animals' health. And if we love them like they love us, isn't that the least we can do?

Memememememememe....

Howdy, Natorettes! I've been spending my day recovering from what I hope will be my last 10-hr shift at the veterinary hospital for a while (not to mention my last viewing of a dangling eyeball for a while, which was a first for me, thank you). It's hard to go from laying around on one's ample ass most of the time to constantly moving for that amount of time, especially at a certain age and weight. The 8-hour shifts are alright, though. Or least they are now, while I'm not yet back in class. After that, whether I have to clone myself to get by remains to be seen.

Anyway, not having much time (or anything of interest to say), I'm finally getting to the 123 Book Meme Corn Dog tagged me for a little while ago. Here are the rules:

1. Grab the nearest book of 123 pages or more.
2. Open it to page 123.
3. Find the first 5 sentences and write them down.
4. Then invite 5 friends to do the same.

And here goes:

"Everything comes and goes
Pleasure moves on too early
And trouble leaves too slow
Just when you're thinking
You've finally got it made..."

Kind of leaves ya hangin', doesn't it? And do those count as sentences? Anyway, that's from Joni Mitchell: The Complete Poems and Lyrics, which I suppose isn't so complete anymore, since it came out in 1997.

Actually, my quote in my senior year high school yearbook was from Joni Mitchell. It was from the song "Black Crow" on the album Hejira, and went thusly:

"In search of love and music
My whole life has been
Illumination
Corruption
And diving, diving, diving, diving
Diving down to pick up on every shiny thing
I'm like that black crow flying
In a blue sky"

No, I wasn't no damn hippie. Just pretentious and full of passion hormones.

Now I tag First Nations, oneofhismoms, Qenny, Chaucer's Bitch (whenever she gets back from Sith Efrica)and Warrior Two. I imagine they will have disparate and interesting reading at hand. Now, do the meme and send it on to five friends or little Jimmy will die!

A Snowy Day In Brooklyn Town

Had me low, had me down...

But I'm not really low so much as tired, and the weather is a good excuse to hole in for a couple hours and contemplate my first day at the new job.

I was lucky that my first day turned out to be oddly quiet, as there was a lot to take in. The vet assistant I was shadowing was a big ol' dyke, also entering the vet tech program at LaGuardia. She showed me everything from where the cleaning supplies were located to how to read charts, from how to prepare ER stations to how to handle bodies. When I took a recently deceased cat in my arms, stiff with rigor mortis and looking disturbingly like my beloved Maya, to make a final pawprint in Sculpey as a keepsake for her person, we got misty together. When a small dog suddenly crashed and had to be given CPR, foaming blood pouring out of her mouth onto the floor, she suggested I watch to see what the ER team did. When one of the tiny puppies mistook my nose for a nipple (happens all the time) and tried to suckle, we laughed.

And laughter goes on a lot, there. Most of the team communicates with the easy, mildy insulting humour that people who like each other and have gone through important work do. Several times during the day, while I was learning how to run bloods, put together surgical packs, or just discussing the finer points of reptiles with the classmate who recommended me to the job and is now my co-worker, people told me unbidden that they love the place and stay there because it feels like a family. "You can always ask questions, and people are happy to teach you," I was told. And it was true. Several times, I didn't even have to ask. Someone who had noticed me watching or answered a few questions earlier would fill me in further. My head was swimming with new information, but it felt good.

Tomorrow is my second day. I bought some new scrubs, and I'm nervous and excited. I'll be working with a different team, and have new things to learn, accomplish, or maybe mess up. I'm hoping I do a good job. I've discovered that I like doing this kind of work, so far, and I want to do it well.

I HAS A JOB!

And I'm starting tomorrow!

Granted, it is a low-paying job.

A very low-paying job.

But! It is a veterinary assistant job at a sparkly, new, state-of-the-art facility with lots of knowledgeable staff, specialist vets, a top surgeon, and lots of fascinating gew-gaws like an MRI machine, digital x-ray system, sonography machine &c.

What does this mean, Natorettes? Well, one hopes it means I will be learning a lot at this job, which is just what I want to do.

So, I'm a little nervous (and wondering when my other pairs of scrub pants are going to arrive in the mail), but excited for tomorrow. All in all, this calls for a round of the Happy Happy Joy Joy Song! Commence... singing!

Stay Tuned...

I know I have been mainly absent or boring around here, but finals are coming and I'm negotiating a job offer I got. I am really interested in working at this place, but need to hammer out some financial details. I won't share too much until I'm a little more sure, but please wish me luck. I hope to be more interesting again once I've gotten this worked out!

The News from Here

1. I officially got into the clinical vet tech program!!! OK, it was unlikely that I wouldn't, but that didn't keep my hands from shaking when I opened the letter. Next stop: Modell's, where I can finally cash in an old gift certificate for my first set of scrubs! (And possibly a Giants cap, for obvious reasons.)

2. Skype kicks Yahoo Messenger's ass, yo. I mean, I've been trying to get this VOIP thing going for months so I could record my AC consultations for my clients, and I could not stop my calls from getting dropped. First the headset was for crap, then I was afraid it was my cable connection. Now I know I just should have been paying the extra money for Skype. It's worth it to actually be able to hear both ends of a conversation and not have malfunctions every few minutes. Now, if I can just get my recorder to register both speakers at a reasonable volume...

3. I still don't have a job. But! I had two AC clients today, a follow-up on a web job, and a referral from a classmate to an opening at the vet hospital where she works. Progress?

4. I am disturbed to inform you that now I cannot look at my cats without imagining their skeletons. Unfortunately, my first cat dissection will finally happen on Tuesday. I think I'll get through it okay; I just hate the thought of imagining slabs of dessicated meat every time I hug my critters.

5. Tomorrow night we see Kathy Griffin! Woo!

Further bulletins as events warrant, y'all.

Depressed

I still don't have a job.

I don't know what to do.

Did You Ever Have One of Those Moments

... where an entire song you wrote when you were maybe seventeen years old, but had completely forgotten, comes back to you in its entirety, and you think "wow, that was actually a really good song," but you realize that, although you could put so many deeper nuances of emotion into it now that you are older, you probably can't sing all that well, anymore, and maybe weren't as good at the time as you thought, either?

No? Well, then.

P.S.: I had a really intriguing job interview yesterday. As in, I'm beginning to think it might be possible to have an interesting job I care about while going to school to study something else I care about. Hmmm.

What I Learned In Lab Class

Behold the lamprey: not quite an eel, not quite a fish, not even quite a vertebrate. In other words, one weird-ass mothafukkin animal, my people. Damn.

What you see at its front is essentially an extended upper lip with nary a lower lip in sight. Lampreys are jawless. They sort of have heads, but you'd be hard pressed to find exactly where they end and the body begins (not to mention their brains are barely more than a cluster of cells). Their front ends are basically sensory organs with that big mouth at the end, which functions like a suction cup with teeth in it. They glom onto a hard-spined fish, stick to them and rasp away with those teeth, ingesting the fish's blood and tissues. Their tongues even have teeth on them!

I have stuck my finger into this maw - and lived!

Their skeletons are cartilaginous, like sharks, and they have both a nerve cord, which is similar to a spinal column, minus the vertebrae, and a notochord, an early version of the vertebral column which is much less rigid, and is now found in mainly lower forms and embryos (yes, you had one, too, early in your development). A bizarre throwback to ancient times, fossilized records show that they may not have changed in over 360 million years. Judging from the condition of our dessicated dissection specimen in lab class, it was probably among the first.

1. nerve cord, 2. notochord, 3. the eggs that become millions of little lampreys waiting to suck your braaaaiinnns!

My first dissection went fairly smoothly, considering the condition of the specimen and the fact that the scalpels in those dissection kits are about as sharp as prison-issue sporks. The lamprey was actually pretty small, so it's a stretch for eyeballs over thirty years old to see all the mushy parts, especially since doing so meant getting close to that smell. However, I did it, and I made a new friend in one of my new lab partners. It turns out she is a geeky gay white girl, too. In fact, she's so gay, geeky and white, she makes me look like Snoop Dogg. Let me put it this way: we ended our conversation by talking about the origin of slash in Star Trek fiction. For further research in lab: how did the idea of Kirk, Spock and McCoy all getting it on at once not kill slash in its infancy, if not actually kill homosexuality altogether? Discuss.

Do not try this at home.

After a long-ass lecture, delivered in an outrageous French accent by our professor (thank goodness I did the reading), I filled in an application at a local vet's office, and then went home to find my lab coat had arrived in the mail. Question: if you found out your animal health care professional had run around the house in his or her lab coat and underwear singing "(s)he's the one they call Doctor NOOOO PAAAANTS!", would you entrust him or her with your beloved pet? Does it help to know it was to the tune of an old Mötley Crüe song?

All in all, a very productive day. I think I'm going to enjoy this class. It makes me feel AAAAWL RIIIIGHT!

New York Holiday

I turn off the news quickly after finishing my coffee. Benazir Bhutto has been killed this morning, and if the headlines aren't shrieking about that, it's a more local atrocity, or fluff about New Year's Eve champagnes I can't afford. I've got an appointment at a job agency for creative tech workers soon, anyway, and I can't be late.

Exiting the subway, I fish out my umbrella to fend off the oddly warm drizzle. Bryant park looks festive, nonetheless, with a Christmas tree, shopping stalls, a skating rink tent and a small but ornate merry-go-round. I'm rarely in this part of town, so I wish I'd left myself more time to wander and brought my camera, but instead I silently hail Patience and Fortitude, the NY public library lions, over my shoulder as I cross the street.

Some kind of meeting is taking place as I enter the agency, and my interviewing rep asks me to wait outside for a moment. I take off my coat, pat my hair, and check to see if my laces are tied. I should be wearing my good brown shoes, but I couldn't find them, so I ended up in the fraying ones with the recalcitrant laces. They're tied, but I realize just then that these work pants that I haven't worn for weeks sometimes unzip themselves, and my hand flies to my lower belly. Wide open! I sneakily yank it up, but a woman rounds the corner as I finish, and I wonder if she saw me with my hand around my crotch. I turn to examine a nearby print on the wall of a Scottish castle and pretend I was searching my pockets, but I'm sure I'm sporting a giveaway blush.

When I'm taken in for the interview, the rep seems very nice. I'm encouraged, also, that this is a small agency that caters specifically to creative techie types, which is exactly what I've been for the last eleven years. I'm beginning to have a little hope that I won't have to start begging the regular agencies for corporate receptionist work, when she cautions me that while my resume looks good, clients usually look to hire people for a solid week of day hours, an option which my two mornings of classes will not allow. I try to remain upbeat and tell her that I am absolutely open for late night hours, weekends and one-day gigs, if they get them. In my mind, I am already rehearsing the call I intend to make to a local veterinarian, in hopes he has an opening in his office, instead, as a part time assistant or just to update his mess of a website.

Back out into the drizzle. I call my girlfriend and she's feeling so sick she doesn't want me to go to TKTS to look for show tickets, after all. She just wants me to pick up some vegetarian soup. I decide, since I am in the neighborhood, to swing by Grand Central Terminal to see if the holiday light show is still in swing. It is, and I perch on a balcony overlooking the throng in the glorious, historic main concourse waiting for it to begin. While waiting, I people-watch. Mostly I see what looks to be groups of tourists, clutching cameras. I begin a game of spot-the-gays and realize it's almost impossible to pick out gay people in Grand Central, at least today. Is my gaydar damaged? Where are they? I briefly imagine my voice ringing against the marble as I shout out "where my gays at?" à la Kathy Griffin. Fortunately, the light show begins first.

The show is pretty, mainly kaleidoscopic light effects with music, but I find myself disappointed that there are no lasers. What's a light show without lasers? The setting is lovely though, with dancing stars projected over the famous constellation mural on the ceiling. It is even more fun, however, to watch the children who are watching the show; eyes bright, laughing, dancing.

Better get home to continue sending out resumes. I treat myself to a piece of chocolate and a book at Hudson News. It's usually when I'm at my most desperately broke that I find myself compelled to buy fiction I can't afford, just to have some escape. The book is about a young man in veterinary school during the depression, who ends up caring for animals in a traveling circus. It's almost as if it were written for me. I almost wish for a life like that, except I know it would be incredibly hard, especially as a woman. I glance up and see a poster for a new cartoon movie about "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything." On second thought, that sounds more like my ideal lifestyle.

My mood is strange as I exit the subway and head out for soup. It's been a week of grey weather, and I've been alternately bored, wracked with fear and depression over job hunting, and filled with holiday spirit just by looking at our tree or outside decorations. It's almost a miracle I got all A grades my first semester, but I'm finding it hard to be proud of myself while I don't know what kind of work I'll find when, and everything is constantly in flux. As I head up the block I glance at the mini-yard in front of the house where the local evangelist lives. I usually think of the neighbor as a bit of a nut, as he has a giant, bloody cross on the front of his brownstone year-round. This time of year he also breaks out the lighted nativity scene, though, and I observe Joseph, Mary, the wise men and angels standing solemnly in the mist, grubby but steadfast. Suddenly, my pace falters as my eyes flick down at the manger. It holds just some straw and a sign: "please return the baby Jesus."

I know just how he feels.

Quandaries of a Privileged White Girl

So, the holidays are upon us. While I should be spending all my time looking for a job (okay, okay - I've started!), I am equally sentimental, hidebound and and premenstrual enough that I've decided to dedicate a few hours to making cookies.

Like many families, mine has a tradition of making Christmas cookies. My mother used to make dozens of dozens, filling large boxes full to send to people as presents (particularly the kids when we went off to school) and keeping plenty on hand to snack on for months. Sometimes there would still be some stored in the freezer by the time the next Christmas rolled around.

For a few years, I followed her example and would wind myself up into a tizzy of cookie making. However, eventually, she and I both realized that, while cookie making is fun in the short term, once you get past a couple hundred dollars' worth of ingredients and a half-day's worth of cooking, it gets overrated real fast. Neither one of wanted to have stress-related breakdowns over whether we'd get all the damn cookies done, or who burned what, or how to get them shipped in time, anymore. And so, every year we try valiantly to resist making too many cookies. Yet, every year, the urge to bake returns.

So, what to do? I want to make a few cookies - enough to make us feel cozy, indulgent and satisfied as we loll around over our break, despite not exchanging presents due to a tight budget. But which to make? When you have multiple kinds of cookies enshrined as family traditions, how can you choose just a few?

It's puzzling enough that Mrs. Nator and I are setting aside a particular time to talk about it. I happen to know that Ma Nator is making gingerbread and chocolate chip, and Sis and Bro-in-law Nator usually make pinwheels and ranger cookies, so those are out. For me, I think I'm going to set the rule that I am not going to make any cookies just because they're someone else's favourite. If the Mrs. & I can do without 'em, they're off the list. Also, we don't need multiples of particular flavours. One kind of chocolate item, like brownies, will do, as will one fruity item and one buttery item. And for heaven's sake, no kinds that have to sit around for several days, or be chilled overnight, or what-have-you, just to get done. Let's keep it simple, people. This is supposed to be fun and fulfilling, not a chore.

So, my short list this far? Brownies, macaroons and jewel brooches (a buttery cookie with jam in the middle). And possibly those white trash concoctions made of Saltines, butter, sugar and chocolate chips that my ex-roommate introduced to us. That's it.

Now watch me break these rules just because we "must" bring those pecan sandies and/or lemon cookies to Mrs. Nator's family in Atlanta, or everyone will cry and think we don't love them.

What are your holiday cookie musts?

Tired Old Lady

How is it that I am pooped just from traveling to MD see my family this weekend? My dad's wife got sick, unfortunately, so he couldn't make it, and it was just me and my sister, bro-in-law, niece and nephew hanging out. Mostly I made the young'uns happy by watching their favourite videos with them, so it wasn't like we were out running marathons. So why do I feel like it should be Saturday on Monday?

Also, am I a terrible aunt because my nephew seems to have a meltdown every time I visit? I think our family is just genetically predisposed to wanting our usual, secure, homebody routines. Here I am exhausted just from being away for a couple days, and every time I visit my nephew seems to be thrown off track and act out, and then his father gets cranky, and then my sister gets quiet. (My niece does just fine, as long as she's not the one getting in trouble.) I had a really nice time with them most of the time - because, let's face it, my sibs are fun and my niece and nephew are adorable - but I think we all need to figure out a way to be less routine-bound. I guess it's not surprising that no Nators have been world explorers or astronauts, yet.

I wouldn't put it past niece Nator, in the future, though. She's a firecracker.

Anyway, I'm knackered, and I have school work to do, and today is my first job interview in, oh, say... nine years? EEEEEK! I need to figure out a way to wake up and put on a charming, positive exterior without slipping into some disturbing rictus of a false smile. Wish me luck!

Brooklyn's Got Talent

Lots of talent. And I've got... a little tiny piece of it.

Which means, aside from working feverishly to catch up in school and get my grades up (which is going... well, it's going), plus beginning to kick the search for any kind of semi-decent paying job into high gear (two interviews with temp agencies coming up, and pouring over listings on the student employment site and various others), I've had a little bit something good going on. I got some unexpected recognition for some of my photos.

Yep, when I recently checked my Flickr account for the first time in weeks, I had two requests to use some of my photos. One of them was a request to us this photo as a slide for a Remembrance Day musical performance in Vancouver. It's a local theatre project and pays nothing, but I was surprised and tickled to have someone just randomly discover one of my photos and ask to use it. I will get some sort of credit in the program, I'm told.

The second request came from a representative at priceless.com, a MasterCard promotion site that posts people's stories and photos of "priceless" experiences they've had. I guess she was searching Flickr, trying to drum up interest in their site, and she liked this set of my photos, because she asked me to submit a brief description of them and let them post them there. This one actually pays something, too. A nominal amount, really, but it's the first time anyone's paid me anything for my photos, so... neat, eh?

Anyway, it's nice to get a little encouragement and recognition while I'm so stressed out about other things. Now if only I could start making more money off my photography, maybe I wouldn't have to resort to temporary admin assistant work to get by for a while... sigh.

...AAAAAAAAAAA...

Chemistry exam on Friday! Help!

Smooches,

- DN

P.S.: Anybody got a freelance or part-time job I can do? I gots lotsa skillz. You don't want us having to move in with one of our mothers on your conscience, do you?

P.P.S.: Anybody know a good malpractice lawyer? Hello?

P.P.S.: Yes, I am still boring. Check back sometime when I'm not in a panic.

Please Pardon The Interruption

What kind of idiot mutilates herself with a granny cart?

I have a giant hole in my leg!

I am so behind on everything in school I am never going to catch up!

The universe is trying to tell me that I made a mistake in going back to school!

I don't WANT to have to go back to doing computer work to make enough money!

I don't deserve anything better!

I am a failure! And unlovable!

It's NOOOT FAAAAAIRRRR!!!

WAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

Sigh.

Well. I wonder if that got it out of my system?

I'm OK, You're OK

Good news: I just got back from the surgeon's office, and he said my wound is healing excellently. Thanks to Mrs. Nator's vigilant and attentive care, it is now no longer acute, but "red, beefy and granular," which is apparently how the inside of one's leg is supposed to look.

This means that I am okayed to go back to all my normal activities. Yay! So, it's back to class for me on Tuesday, and back to pet sitting sometime this weekend. Now, if I can get all caught up with my studying and other duties, maybe I will have something more interesting to blog about than fevers and misapplied stitches. (I'm working on it.)

As an aside, I found out today that there's a good reason that surgeons aren't usually the ones bandaging their own work. Ten minutes out of the doctor's office and my ace bandage had exploded, leaving me trailing gauze out my jeans leg and down the street. As a consequence, I also found out today that I can dress my own wound! Either I'm just getting used to the sight of a big hole in my shin, or it really is getting a lot better looking. Maybe both.

P.S.: For those or you (sickos) who requested photos (and you know who you are), this is the closest you're going to get. Actually, at first it looked a lot worse than that, so maybe for Halloween I should just ditch the dressing and wear shorts...?

What The...?

Y'all, the last week has been doggone crazy. As if the unfortunate Cart of Dooooommmm accident wasn't enough, being out for that one day put me all behind. I think I did alright on the Intro to Vet Tech quiz, despite falling asleep while studying that afternoon and thus being late for class (no blue workbooks, though; I guess my dreams aren't that psychic). But then I had to stay up late that night to finish some materials I promised to design for my mom's art show, and thus ran late this morning, stumbling into Chemistry class to find out we were having a surprise quiz - O, Joy! I don't think I did very well on it. It wasn't that I didn't know the material, per se, so much as I was so exhausted and frazzled that I couldn't tell where the donkey should go, how significant those places between him and the f*ck-chain were, and whether his name was Kelvin or Celsius.

THEN I get my Chemistry homework back, and Yay! because I got all the answers right, but Boo! because the prof took 30% off my score for "lateness." So, I had to follow him around for ten minutes until I could get him to pay attention to the fact that I had contacted him the morning after my night in the freakin' emergency room, so it had been an excused absence. He said he would change it back to 100%, but I have a feeling I'm just another face in the crowd to him, so I'd better watch him like a hawk.

NEXT it turned out that there was a message on my voicemail that I could make my missed lab class up, after all, but ONLY IF I RUN RIGHT NOW TO THE OTHER BUILDING AND TAKE IT CHOP CHOP RIGHT NOW DON'T STOP JUST GO! So, I did. And it was... fine. Like being in junior high once again, really, including having the partner who seemed a little slow and thus I ended up doing everything while she watched and copied my notes, except for the one thing she did do which messed up the experiment and would have ruined our results, had I not gone back and doctored the numbers.

Are we having fun yet?

Then, it was RACE back to Brooklyn to meet with my pet sitting partner, who had been circling in her car for over a half hour with two little dogs, waiting for me to meet them. They are cute, but I am not convinced they won't gnaw my face off when I go to walk them without her. I'm planning to Shake 'n Bake myself in a leaf bag full of crushed dog treats, hoping that they will then decide I'm worth sparing.

Now I'm late to get to my mom's house before the massage she's giving tonight, so I have to pack and await a call from her. Then it's schlepping to New Jerseyfor one day full of hanging her show, printing her materials, doing some store returns and hanging out at some harvest festival for a few hours while she gives chair massages. If there is a God, there will be fair weather and funnel cake.

Finally, on Sunday and Monday, I have to catch up on all the studying I'm behind on, try to do some of the neglected housework, and let Mrs. Nator know I'm still around, as well as resuming pet-sitting duties.

One day, and everything's backed up. And I'm only taking three classes right now (well, more like 2 and 1/2, since the student seminar is a gut course of sorts), y'all. God forbid I get the flu, or something, in Spring, when I'll presumably be taking at least 4 or 5.

Oh, and now my wound and shot site are beginning to hurt pretty regularly, thanks for asking.

And my Mega Millions ticket was not a winner.

Sigh.

 

...funnel cake?

Lassie Come Home

Sigh.

I hate lost pet cases.

I wish I could make everything better.

Sometimes being an animal communicator is hard.