moominmuppet

Home from escorting; hot day, and no shade, but a good time catching up with Casey about all the excellence in the past few weeks. And the rest of my weekend is entirely unstructured and should be really mellow and nice. Rambling just for the sake of rambling, at the moment.

I've been in an odd sort of mood for the past couple of days. Post-everything slump, combined with the news about STJ. I was anticipating the former; I'm always really prone to that, and things have gone very suddenly from really exciting to very calm. It'll hit even harder when grf heads out in a few weeks (and he's gone this weekend, which is a bit of foretaste of that). Even with feeling a bit melancholy, though, I'm also still feeling really good about how my life in general is going, and the great deal of goodness in it.

Sleepy now. Naptime.

148 calls so far today. I hate the new resident rush. Handling it half-staffed blows.

3 people listed as available to escort this weekend. 5 is supposed bare minimum. Begging email has been sent.

lunatickle is at my house now. She leave the state tomorrow. I am here, and today, of all days, I can't beg my boss to let me go an hour early. Can I just say how much I wish I were there instead of here?


The above, although all moderately frustrating, aren't actually bringing my overall mood down, though, which is nice. And I've been having especially lovely conversations with marnanel today, which make me especially grateful for zir friendship.

Nope, don't even mean that sarcastically. Once I finally got the crabby, crappy Friday and early Saturday, things smoothed out immensely. I finally got enough sleep to feel substantially better, emotionally and physically, than I had on Friday, and I was able to catch up on housecleaning and prep for lunatickle's visit Saturday evening. I do adore our wonderfully chill, conversation-intensive, pleasantly hedonistic weekends. I've noticed one of the things I enjoy most about watching TV/movies with other people is the pause button. I like watching things with other people, but I really most enjoy pausing them regularly for related conversation, geekery, and gratuitous media analysis. We watched Thinking XXX, This Film is Not Yet Rated, In Search of the Wild Kingdom, Shortbus (the commentary track this time), Kinky Boots, and an assortment of other stuff I'd been saving to share with her, and had great conversations through all of it (well, except the nappish bits, because naps are a wonderful thing).

In other news, it looks like I'm getting another housemate + cat for a few months. Our friend grf is going to move in, probably next week or so, until the end of the summer. He and Mark and I went over the idea this weekend (it was a very sudden thing -- from idea to confirmation within a couple of days, and that delay was only because Mark was out of town at the time we came up with it). Mark's cool with it, it'll help lower his rent a bit, and raise the household income a bit, both of which are for the good. I think Grafton and Mark will get along pretty well, and I think I'll do just fine with living with Grafton, as well, especially since he's been hanging out with us for years, we know each other's quirks pretty well, and he's got a good sense of the existing household he's moving into.

musicalchaos -- added bonus, grf has a truck, and is willing to make a trip down to Kent with the rest of your stuff so we can get that extra room cleared out for him. We'll just need to help him out with gas, but we should be able to do it all in one load, once we find a good day for everyone.

And now, back to work. Tonight I'm going to the event at Preterm on clinic protests, ( Crossing the Line: A Forum on Abortion Clinic Protests )

The rest of the week I'm working the late shift, but two things have changed with my schedule in the past week that make life easier:

First of all, I'm most commonly going to be working 8am-4:30pm on the day shift for the foreseeable future, rather than 7am-3:30pm. This improves my life in several ways -- less wasted time before patient-instructing, and also getting to sleep later. Hoorah to both!

Secondly, the evening shift hours have been moved up, since the coworker we just lost the other week has agreed to work some late-shift hours part-time. So, my late days are now 10:30am-7pm, instead of 11:30am-8pm. Also an improvement.

So, all in all life is going pretty well.

Apropos of nothing, except a random reminder that I'd meant to post about this:

We get a lot of bizarre chants and insults from the protestors outside the clinics. I mentioned recently that I was amused by "Wicked Witch" -- we also get "Deathscorts", "Evil Vultures", "Mother-of-Death"/"Daughter-of-Death", and "Young Lady" (which I despise more than any other, although they often attempt to use it ingratiatingly). Additionally, they spend an awful lot of time talking about how we could possibly take this "blood money", and suggesting other ways we could earn our income. One once offered to pay me double what I was making to come join them on the other side (yes, the amusement value of all this is that we're volunteers, as you'd think they'd bloody well know by now).

The woman who tries to stealth bless us with holy water over the fence amuses me no end -- she's constantly chasing cars with her little plastic water shaker, dousing whatever she can, and sending little squirts over toward us. I wonder what she thinks will happen if she hits us?

Many of our regulars have their own bizarre little chants: "They want to kill your baby, and they want to kill YOUUUUUUUUUU" is a favorite, for example. Various factual bullshit is common too: "Abortion causes cancer" is a perennial favorite, but sometimes they go the "post-abortion syndrome" route, and sometimes they go the "colostomy bag" route. Some of the least appealing and creepiest descriptions of sex I've ever heard are common too: "When your father went inside your mother..." Insults toward the men accompanying the patients are a common topic, usually starting with "A Real Man Wouldn't...." And, of course, there's the expected "Mommy, Mommy!" "Daddy, Daddy, save me!" "Grandma, Grandma, don't let them do this to me" "I speak for your baby" crap that sounds insanely creepy coming from a chorus of adult male strangers.

Weekend before last, though, one of our extra-crazies spent most of the day screaming the following:

"A Real Man wouldn't let another man anywhere near his woman's privates!"

Even aside the myriad other things wrong with that statement, it's so good to know that our health is of such great concern to this psycho that all of modern gynecology should go out the window, and we should return to describing our ailments from behind screens. *headdesk*

And they wonder why we don't take them seriously.

I wish I could remember the wording on more of the extra-crazy ones, but I think at some point I should just make a phone post to LJ when I'm out there so people can hear for themselves.


And yes, laughing at the protestors is at least in part a way of coping with how incredibly angry they make me when I'm walking intimidated and crying patients past their onslaught of cruelty and bullshit.

Most telling (lack of) reaction? That a patient can turn to them, in tears, and yell to them that she has cancer, and has to have this abortion, and the yelling doesn't even abate.

Best patient reaction I've seen in ages? A woman turned, looked at one of them, and yelled back "Ooh, baby, you're makin' me hot *smoochie noises*" That baffled and befuddled them for a good few minutes.

I was out on Friday, so I'm even further behind on LJ than usual. And today's pretty busy, so I'm unlikely to rectify that just yet.

In short, though, Kevin Smith was fun, even if some of the practicalities of the evening created some stress for all of us. Escorting Saturday was good (taking the camp chair with me is absolutely the way to go; I've definitely decided it's worthwhile to tote it across town just to be that much more comfortable for so much of the morning). The rest of the weekend was massive housecleaning and reorganizing, so I'm achey, but pleased with myself. I've totally rearranged the living room and a good chunk of the dining room, gotten a lot of cleaning and laundry done, set up the Vonage, and generally been Very Productive.

With what little time I've got left here today, I'm probably going to focus on checking into some various options for apartmentmate-hunting, and catching up on LJ comments.

Lots of work to get done, as I expected. My last dentist did indeed make a mess, as I suspected (that experience, and knowing there was no way in hell I was going back to them, is part of why it's taken me a while to get motivated to find a new dentist). Got two root canals today, and go back for crowns on January 3rd, when I've got my new year's allocation of FlexPay, and there still some more stuff to be done after that. But even considering that I got plenty of bad news, and two of the procedures most commonly used a metaphor for suckiness, it was a very positive visit.

The cleaning used a new ultrasonic waterpick thingee in place of the evil scrapey tool that I loathe (I react to metal scraping the way most people do to nails on chalkboard, and having that happen inside my mouth is one of my least favorite things in the world), and it was the least icky cleaning I've had as a result (she also said my teeth were really clean, given that it'd been a year and a half since my last cleaning - being obsessive about dental hygiene in an attempt to compensate for being a smoker has its upsides). The dentist came in, and we figured out exactly what was going to need to be done, and they sent me out to the office folks to figure out how to make it all work best with my insurance and everything. The guy doing their financial processing was incredibly helpful -- just sat me down and made it all happen -- and they even gave me the Lutheran CCF additional discount, even though I'm actually Central Region CCF, and I did clarify that to them. We figured out that the best plan was to do the two root canals tonight, and put the crowns on right after the new year, so back into the chair. I started to doze off in the chair more than once while he was working, and as well as being the gentlest dentist I recall, he was very good about checking in frequently on how I was doing (including giving me a hand signal to make if I needed him to take a break for a moment), and he explained what he was doing and what it was going to feel like throughout. At present my face is still half numb, and I'm just starting to feel the soreness, and I'm a bit nervous about the Dr. Pepper I'm going to attempt to drink without splooshing down the front of my shirt. But, damn, that could've been so much worse in about a million ways. If I evaluated dentists instead of residents, I would so be putting raving reviews all over the comment section on that eval form.

Very pleased.

So, free advertising for them as a thank you, in case anybody local is looking:

Hudec Dental Associates, Lutheran office. I saw Dr. Mancuso.


Also, I came home to find an Amazon package that of course I did not wait 'til Christmas to open (will power has never been one of my strong points). Chris sent me Farscape Forever: Sex, Drugs and Killer Muppets, which I'm very psyched about, especially since Bec and Jer just gave me part of Farscape Season 4. And in writing about last weekend, I forgot to tell about the very cool hematite necklace with a little hematite goddess pendant that Fin made for me (hematite is one of my absolute favorite stones) (and Rio painted me a very pretty box that's perfect for holding it, too). So yay, and thank you!

I'm pretty sure I'm working 14 hour shifts both tomorrow and Friday. Given that, I think it's not a bad thing that Casey needed to reschedule our plans for tonight, and we're getting together Saturday night instead (I'll also get to see her Saturday morning, since we're escorting together).

I'm so exhausted and achy from yesterday's Election Protection work that I wish I had today off for recuperation. Unfortunately, that couldn't be less true. Work (with two people called off), then patient-instructing, then my folks are arriving. Oy. (Edit: and Bec is now taking my part-time housemate to the ER, and I can't do anything useful about that. Argh.)

However, I'm very pleased with both how the elections went (in terms of fewer irregularities), and how the elections went (in terms of results). Although we had some problems in Cuyahoga that resulted in a number of precincts staying open until 9pm to make up for late starts, overall it was much smoother than the May elections here, and definitely smoother than 2004. Here's EP's list of complaints/problems for this election in Ohio.

I didn't personally have any problems voting, although I'm displeased about the total lack of privacy in the local setups. I got up at 6am and once I'd done some housework and gone to vote, I headed out to my EP precinct location, on E. 126th (other side of town, so it took about an hour on RTA). I was there from about 10am until 7:30pm, and it rained off and on throughout the day. Years of experience escorting stood me in good stead, though, and I came thoroughly prepared, so I was as comfy as possible all day. Lots of munchies of all sorts, Bec's camp chair, plastic trash bags to keep supplies/backpack dry, and more layers than seem necessary for the temperature. Although the person before me had a few issues to report, nothing went wrong during my shift, so I mostly just handed out hundreds of Voter's Bill of Rights papers, and checked in with folks to be sure they hadn't had any issues. The hardest part, as I expected, was being sure to keep my big mouth shut. I believe deeply in the need for non-partisan observation of elections and I agreed theoretically with everything about not broadcasting our personal views while working for a non-partisan group (I had to doublecheck my bag and my reading material before heading out -- no pins, no books like "The Republican War on Science", etc). However, it's always something of a battle for me to keep quiet when anyone so much as hints at wanting my opinion on anything, as I'm sure anyone who knows me can attest. So I think that was one of the most psychologically tiring aspects, really. That was also reminiscent of escorting, although in this case I couldn't have those conversations with anyone, I wasn't just refusing to engage with a particular group (our escorting agreement is that we don't engage with the antis, which can be quite an exercise in self-control). Also, I found it very weird to be approaching cars in this situation. It's so ingrained in me that people getting out of a car may be seriously fearful or angry, and believe I'm about to harass them, that it's hard to overcome that and remember I'm in a different situation, and that these people are not generally upset, stressed, and having horrible things screamed at them. Very strange.

Also, it brought up some odd issues about dealing with the folks who were out on the sidewalk with me, handing out literature for various campaigns. We all sort of bonded in that way you do when dropped with five other random people for 10 hours of standing around together (most of them didn't know each other either; they'd been hired for the day by different campaigns). But I found that avoiding political discussion also left me feeling very closeted when random homophobic remarks were made (almost entirely from one woman, who was prone to saying all sorts of offensive stuff in general). Do I get into the discussion here or not? What about the other things she says that I disagree with? Is it possible to have those conversations on election day without it being political? I ended up deciding not, but it's not a solution I was thrilled with. I'm curious whether others have run into similar situations, and how they handled them.

And that's all I can think of for the moment. I'm falling-over tired, though, so I may come up with something more when I'm more alert.

Celebration moment: South Dakota abortion ban went down! Blackwell went down!

Also, I'm really interested that the chance of repubs maintaining control of the Senate may rest on a recount in VA, which apparently doesn't use the optional paper-reel ballot recorders on their electronic machines. I really hope this wakes up more of the country to recount issues surrounding elections without paper trails. Maybe if people learn that it's as often in their best interest as the other guy's, there'll be more motivation to improve the system.

My mood gradually improved over the course of the day, and my patient-instructing session with the nurse prac student went very well; she was personable and fun to work with, and had some gyn familiarity from working in gyn as nurse, so it went as smoothly as it possibly can for someone who's never done the exam before. I'm home, I don't have to go anywhere, and I've already taken care of what chores I plan to do tonight (just basic pet-care and house-sweeping), so now I can relax, vegetate, and revel in the idea that I don't have to be up any earlier than I please in the morning, and that how much I interact with the wet drizzly nastiness outside is entirely up to me. Hoorah.

Also, I've already gotten one response about possible coverage at the clinic on the 25th, so it's looking hopeful that we'll be able to find folks who are available to cover for me and the other person currently scheduled (for whom it's also a really non-ideal weekend).

Now I'm going to call Liv and see if I can arrange to hang out with her sometime this weekend when I'm actually awake.

Another day, another headache. Blarg. I'm tired, achey, and very irritable. Definitely back in "beaten with a baseball bat" season; we've been getting rain, snow, and remarkably amounts of hail in the past week, and the fibro's reacting as usual.

Patient-instructing craziness this week, trying to get various stragglers from different programs through. Last night I had two separate sessions instead of one normal 2-person session: a second year and a fourth year, both med students. Tonight I've got a specially scheduled resident and then a regular session with nursing students. Tomorrow I've got a special session with a nursing student who couldn't be scheduled any other time (we normally don't teach on Fridays). Not escorting this weekend, though, so at least I get to sleep in on Saturday. That'll be wonderful.

Work has been substantially calmer than any of us expected. We're still sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop, because it's so weird, but we may just really luck out this year. If so, that's a very good sign, because next year should have less complexities than this year, and so may flow quite well indeed.

Liv's been staying with me the past few days, but I'm kind of frustrated; I'd like to hang out with her, but our schedules are so contrary that I'm invariably asleep by the time she gets home, and she's gone before I get home. I think the extent of our communication has been me sleepily mumbling a bit at her the other night when she came in.

Still hassling with the depression, but it's really only noticeable when I'm by myself and undistracted, so it hasn't been too life-eating.

Recently finished Mapping the world of Harry Potter : science fiction and fantasy writers explore the bestselling fantasy series of all time and Boarding the Enterprise: Transporters, Tribbles and the Vulcan Death Grip in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek (like all the SmartPop books, fun in you're into the subject matter). The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right was amusing, but a bit longer than warranted; it felt like a 150 page book artificially turned into 220, and it repeated itself a bit as a result.
Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show was interesting, but like several of the political books I've read recently, felt very much like it was written more for a mainstream liberal audience than far-left woowoo progressives like me. I'm currently reading the new Lackey Valdemar anthology, Crossroads, and I'm not deeply impressed yet. It's one of my favorite worlds for escapism, and I'll forgive a lot (even Lackey pulling a shameless MarySue in her own books, as the Herald Myste), but if you're going to give your husband the first story in a collection, don't make it look like blatant favoritism by letting him get away with the most ridiculous cheat I've read in quite a while. You get to write a prologue if you're recapping a previous story, or if you're explaining some distant past history. You don't get to do it because you don't feel like bothering to work the exposition of immediately previous new events into your actual story. Lazy. Lazy, lazy, lazy. Hopefully the other stories will be an improvement.

Other than that, it's been a slightly odd week. A baffling and completely out-of-the-blue letter from an ex asking if I still felt the same way about a love letter I wrote almost a decade ago, a weird attempted scam/robbery at the clinic while I was escorting on Saturday that left me with the satisfaction that Dude wasn't going to have that $50 to spend, but the frustration that neither was I (we each ended up with 1/2 of each of the bills, and mine are "police evidence", so I can't even check to see if I can exchange the ones that are more than 50% of the bill at a bank). On the positive side, I found a friend of mine on LJ via one of the more bizarre "small world" links in a while (Cleveland->Portland->Seattle->Cleveland->Miles!), and we'll hopefully be hanging out sometime in the next couple of weeks. And I think I finally figured out what's up with Harry's whining when he doesn't need to go out -- it seems directly related to Leroy having something he wants. Still haven't figured out how to make him stop it (it's quite obnoxious), but at least figuring out the cause is progress. Also, I've been watching a lot of My Name is Earl; just finished up the first season DVDs. Oh, I do love that show. The commentary and special features were interesting; I had no idea that Earl was roughly based on Greg Garcia's stepfather.

Still working on my LibraryThing. I've gotten through the R's of Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror. I keep meaning to tidy up entries during quiet moments here, but the past several days I've had the window open on my screen all day, and haven't even gotten to it until less than 1/2 hour before I head out. I keep getting distracted by all the news/opinion/etc articles coming through my various mailboxes, with it being election season. I'm a sucker for emailed headlines, so I get mailings from NY Times, Alternet, Ms, MotherJones, Truthout, as well as piles of other more general listserv stuff and political/activist emails. Right now it's predictably crazy in terms of volume. It's ridiculously easy to lose an entire day just going through my primary hotmail account. In terms of LJ, I'm keeping up with my basic filters, although not commenting a whole lot. Because this enrollment period's going better than expected the phones are going pretty constantly, but not such high volume that it's stressing me overmuch, so I'm still managing the multitasking I do most of the time. At least when I'm not totally braindead and babbling away endlessly in random posts like this. And I think I'm done now. Or I should be. I started this entry more than three hours ago. Oy.

But I officially saw my first snow of the winter yesterday evening.

Patient-instructing last night went very well, despite being tired and achey from the weather change. Only one student, and he was one of those lovely ones who's really interested in learning, and in being as good at the exam as he can be, and appreciative of our expertise in that regard, which certainly doesn't hurt the mood of the session.

Not a lot going on recently. Still depressed, lots of brain-mice about my own mediocrity, lack of drive, lack of contribution, blah, blah. Same ol', same ol'. Currently reading The Anthology at the End of the Universe, which is pretty entertaining, although not as much so as some of the others I've read in the SmartPop series. Just finished up Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, which I enjoyed a good deal. Next up may be the sequel to Clive Barker's Abarat, Days of Magic, Nights of War.

Probably escorting tomorrow morning, which is going to be very chilly. I need to call this afternoon and see if I get a reprieve; there's a new person who might get slotted in there in my place, which would certainly be nice.

Very sleepy. Need to clean house, do laundry, get my library books, bathe some more pets, and look at winterizing the house. Must be productive this weekend.

Still not sure what I think of Heroes. I'm curious as to where it'll go, and there's at least one character I find interesting enough to follow (Hiro), but the sledgehammer approach to every single plot point is really starting to wear on me. Also, the attempts at "scientific" explanations are just painfully, painfully bad. Laughably so. Don't make one of your characters an academic in order to provide explication, and then force him to spout that junk. Also, I could really do without all the DESTINY!!!!! Yeesh. Ah well.