Got Kitties in my G-String Ain't No Thang

Family dinner conversation often goes like this:


"I’d just stand up there and throw cats at them.”

-Me, on how fantastic of a stripper I would be

“You train those cats yourself.”
-My sister

“I trained my pussies myself.”
-Me

“They talk this way because they listen to rap."
-My dad

Celebrating Memorial Day

Memorial Day is no longer a day to honor America's veterans; it's not that we've let the terrorists or the heathens or consumerism win - it's that we've let our stupidity win.

It's the holiday that falls just on the cusp of summer, the warm weather making people feel invincible, when in reality most of us are out of practice and out of shape due to long winters and school being in session. We think we can climb up on the roof and patch it up. We think we can play soccer.  We think we can go fishing.  We think we can man huge manly pits of fire.  We think we can deal with the in-laws. And we think we can do it all while drinking heavily.


That's what Memorial Day is all about: doing dangerous household projects and then celebrating by charring half of a cow and opening a Bud Lite.


All of these factors make it an exciting day to work in the ER.


My new position within the hospital is at ER Registration. When someone comes into the hospital waving around a severed finger in a plastic bag, I am the first person who gets to see that finger. I am also not the correct person to show that finger to. All I really need is some basic demographic information, and then the triage nurse will come and examine that severed finger and the hand it was once attached to.  Many people who come into the ER don't understand that all I need is a general condition and area. Think you have a kidney stone? I'm going to type in FLANK PAIN. Throwing up? I'm going to type in SICK. An embarrassing device stuck on your penis? I'm going to type in PENIS PAIN.


My coworkers warned me that Memorial Day was a happening day in the ER, which I should have deduced upon seeing that Monday was heavily reinforced on the schedule.  Indeed, the day brought in all kinds of accidents from broken bones to burns to giant fish hooks lodged in flesh.  The worst was a nail gun accident, where a nail had been lodged in the patient's eye - painful enough just to imagine.


Next Memorial Day, stay inside. Lock your doors. Do nothing.


I wonder what the Forth of July will bring.

My Cat Often Gives Me This Look.

Feliz Cumpleaños

I got a cake today.


It's a cheesecake.


It was from two coworkers, for my birthday on Monday.


My birthday was not on Monday.


These two coworkers have been hired to do construction on the building in which I toil. They often take breaks in my "office" - which is just the lounge. It has a television, and a charming assortment of torn and not-quite-broken furniture.  The two construction workers watch Animal Planet and take siestas during the noon hour. Sometimes I'm there, sometimes I'm off taking calls.


These two construction workers are Mexican. I have not actually had a conversation with either of them, though often I say hello to them in the hallway or as I'm coming out of the elevator, and I know one of them has two girlfriends - one Mexican, one white - but that has been the extent of our interaction. So I was very surprised when, today, while I was trying to shove my lunch of tempeh and cold potatoes down my throat between calls, the taller of the two (and yes, I do know their names, but for blogging purposes they will remain anonymous) walked up to me and said they made me a cake to celebrate my birthday on Monday.


I stared at him.


"It wasn't my birthday on Monday," I said. I asked him if he was mixing me up with someone else.


He showed me the cake in the fridge.

It was a cheesecake. He looked at me as if it proved that my birthday was, indeed, on Monday.


I told him, again, that it hadn't been my birthday.


"We both had a slice," he said. "We were looking for you yesterday, and you weren't here. We wanted to say Happy Birthday."


I thanked him and the other worker, and said yes, I'd eat a slice. They went back to Animal Planet.


Confused, I asked my other coworkers if they knew anything about the cake in the refrigerator. The first few people I asked seemed just as confused as I was.


Then one of my coworker buddies sauntered over to me. He told me that the two men who had made me the cake had been looking for me yesterday, but they had not known my name. They had asked where "that girl" was. "Which girl?" he had asked them. "The young one." "There are three younger ones." "The one that's always reading." That was when he knew they were talking about me.


"Apparently they saw another coworker giving you something and wishing you Happy Birthday," he said.


"Oh," I said, remembering that on Monday another coworker had kindly brought me some chocolate she didn't want, and had presented it to me with the necessary and sarcastic "Happy Birthday."


"That makes sense," I said, explaining the reject chocolate.


"They saw her giving you a gift and wishing you a happy brithday," said my coworker, "and they felt really bad that no one else had."


Gracias, señores.

Escape from Jurassic Park

This week is my last week at Jurassic Park, and I am more thrilled than I would be if I was riding a fucking unicorn over a rainbow made entirely of cheese.
I am pretty damn excited.


I finally found another part time job to supplement my other part time job at the hospital, which isn’t the best solution in the world, and it’s not the most prestigious job - I will be entering the sparkle and hustle of the food service industry - but the new place of employment will fit my personality and tree-hugging ways. Jurassic Park doesn’t even believe in recycling paper, which is, by far, the easiest resource to recycle (I kept my own box under my desk, and recycled everything I could at home). The dinos probably consider recycling fruitless, because a big meteor will come and wipe them out - or, maybe, like so many other endeavors, they are too lazy, uninformed, and selfish to care.

My successor will surely experience the joys I have been experiencing for the last few years: a creepy, spider-filled bathroom; a microwave that smells like fishy vaginas and is located in the closet with the toxic cleaning supplies; thankless requests with zero direction; and a whole bevvy of pathetic questions regarding simple computer tasks.

I hope this next person is blessed with the patience of a saint.

The kind of patience that can weather such requests as “Can you call my cell phone? I want to see what the ringer sounds like and how loud it is” (something one can preview on most phones). This was asked of me last week - never mind that I was in the middle of actually working on something, and my coworker had an office phone sitting right on his desk.

I understand that there may be a lack of experience because my coworkers belong to a generation that didn’t grow up with technology. For the most part of their pre-historic lives, they lived in a pre-digital, non-virtual world, while I was just at the cusp of the technology and online information boom - I had to dial up to access email and chat rooms - CHAT ROOMS - which were the big electronic communication thingys of my day. But the dinos are grown adults with no diagnosed mental handicaps who have had computers both in their personal and professional lives for 10-plus years. I don’t think it’s too much to assume that they know how to add page numbers to Word documents or attach files to emails. The questions I get asked go beyond eye-rolling, and they don't just get asked just once. There is no notion of “learning how to do things on one’s own.” My coworkers think that there’s always going to be someone younger and more adept at computers there to help them, and that they don’t need to pay attention when I show them how to do a simple task for the 4,599th time.

My successor, who will also be considered a “secretary” (if she’s female), should be prepared to say the following only a few hundred times: “Click ‘New folder.’” “Click ‘Add attachment.’” “Use the return key.”

He or she should also be prepared to get called by the wrong name over and over again, as I did, despite years of working there.

I have also stated (nicely) that when my coworkers copy and paste large parts of documents together, it’s a lot more difficult to get the formatting right. I petitioned for one basic document for proposals, but that went unheard. I always have to go in and do some major re-indenting and re-page-numbering work, as well as basic formatting and making sure that all the fonts are the same. 

I was called over to my coworker’s computer just a few weeks ago. “How do I make this go here?” Well. I meandered over to look at his screen, and then realized that what my coworker had done was that he had built a document out of a series of spaces and return keys instead of tabbing and page breaks. Holy. Shit.  I had showed him how to work those wily indents and page breaks before, but he had resorted back to tap-tap-tap-tap-tapping the space bar until things looked aligned to him (which they were not). Tap-tap-tap-tap. And then he wonders why, when he adds a word or two somewhere, everything else gets fucked up.

So. My last day will be joyous. When I quit my last job, I made a cake with the word FUCK JOB X on it in cursive. And then I ate the shit out of it.  Who knows how I will celebrate my flying off and soaring away from here.

Let’s hope it involves booze.

Roommates & Lewd Japery

I got a call last week from a woman who identified herself by first name only, said she knew my former roommate, and had a "gift" for me.


I was tempted to call back. After all, the "gift" could have been something totally fabulous: a lifetime cheese subscription, for example. Or a unicorn. We don't live in New Jersey, so I'm pretty sure the "gift" was a positive thing, and not code for "You're going to get the kiss of death." I figured it was probably something that my former roommate had given this woman to give to me (as she now lives, sadly, two hours away), or possibly something Jewish. I never rule out the possibility of my fake Judaism being a reason for why things happen. During my college years I was pretty much Jewish by association through the sorority I was involved in, the people I knew, and my love of free food. I used to get packets with Hamantashen from the local Chabad on campus; somehow they had tracked down my address with their Jewdar.

For example, my mother just got a call from a Jewish organization that wanted to ask her some questions. My mother, who had had a beer, got a little sassy and said, "I'm not interested, I'm an atheist!" and hung the hell up. Then she tried to blame me for the family household getting calls like that.

Instead of calling the woman back, I texted my former roommate to inquire about this lady and her "gift," and she texted back that it was a Mary Kay lady, and she had had a Mary Kay party, where she was directed to put down contacts to be stalked and madeover.  Imagine my disappointment that my "gift" was going to be some lame free pink lip balm or the like, and not something Jewish and delicious. I did not call the woman back. I wasn't pissed or anything - I just didn't want her stalking me for the next six months, telling me I had fall colors, and hustling her overpriced makeup. I have a hard time saying no or being VERY FIRM with anyone, so calling her back would have been my own undoing.

I happened to be following in my mother's footsteps and drinking at a bar that night, when my former roommate texted me about this Mary Kay lady. At that point, any old thoughts were liable to enter my head, and I thought, giddily, why didn't we have a party - and not a Mary Kay party - A SEX TOY PARTY? Are we not modern ladies? Isn't one of our rites of passage having sex toy party?


I texted my former roommate this thought.


YOU KNOW WHAT, I thought, suddenly huffy, WE DIDN'T HAVE A SEX TOY PARTY BECAUSE OUR STUPID BOYFRIENDS WERE ALWAYS HANGING AROUND, RUINING OUR POTENTIAL DILDOFESTS!


And it was true. We were both dating men pretty much the entire time we lived together, boyfriends who either got the boot or gave us the boot, eventually. We occasionally had our nights together, but most of our time was spent studying, drinking with our lady friends, or hanging out with these men, an arrangement we were both fine with - but not one that lent itself well to planning and executing special parties.

I texted her this revelation as well, and ordered another gin and tonic.

I have been to sex toy parties before - probably three or four - all hosted by someone else. I never did make any purchases, but came more for the camaraderie, and to kick ass at the penis drawing contests. During one of these parties, another former roommate did purchase something - it was phallic, glow in the dark, and had the ability to stick to the wall.  She had bought it on the sly for prank purposes only.  Its first moment of fun came when another girl, who lived with us, walked into the bathroom one day to see it stuck to the shower wall, pointing lewdly at her. From there it moved around the apartment, appearing under pillows and on laptops, in dresser drawers and behind boxes of Mac N Cheese.


Before this particular product had appeared, however, we had been pulling the same prank on each other with a tube of Vagisil - hiding it in backpacks and purses, bathroom cupboards, and wherever it would be a surprise. One became hyper-aware, in those days, that one might open a cupboard or shake out a sock and suddenly come face to face with that loathsome white tube.

That particular game ended when, after a long day, I came home and was sitting in the living room, and one of my roommates asked if I had found anything.

"What?" I asked. "What would I find?"

"Oh, nothing."  I knew she was up to no good, and it probably had something to do with the Vagisil.

"Where is it?"

"Oh, I don't know.  Did you use your backpack today?"

At this point, I'm sure I gave her a questioning look. "Yes, but I didn't find it. Where is it?!"

I ran into my bedroom to dig inside my backpack, but found nothing. Not in any of the small pockets or larger compartments.  Then I looked at the net pocket on the side, used mainly to hold a water bottle. There it was.  In full view.  The Vagisil. And I had been carrying my backpack all day - around campus, to class, to work, to the library, EVERYWHERE.

I came back to the living room, probably looking pissed and/or defeated. "I FOUND IT." I then retreated to my room, thinking about the people who could have been witness to what they surely assumed was MY Vagisil.

My roommate was apologetic. She'd thought I'd find it that morning, before I left.  She even wrote me an apology note.  I've forgiven her, but I remain wary of games of lets-plant-the-whatever-on-somebody.


It's all fun and games until somebody walks around with Vagisil all day.

TAMBOURINE OF FURY