independence day

My children are gone for the week, out in the country at my ex in-laws. Last year, when I was still in school, I would have been able to take advantage of this time to myself and do stuff (being me, most likely it would have been fixing stuff up around my 100 plus year old house of cards that I call home). But now that I'm working any free time is eroded, especially working nights this week and last, I sleep fitfully during the day, wake up at noon and can't get back to sleep (which is really really bad if you're going to be working 7 pm - 7 am later that night). I walk around in the drunken fumes of sleep exhaustion, trying to function on four hours sleep, trying to find the right way to explain when I last worked, surprisingly confounding for one that's college educated, not yesterday but last night into this morning. I had a free Monday and I can't even tell you how I spent it except to say that I don't think I got enough done. Slept tuesday to work last night, in a hermetically sealed nurses station where I can't see the outside world. I didn't realize how bad it was storming until I went to get a coffee in the lounge around 1:00 am.

I'm back to work tonight, I'll be missing fireworks, which is no biggie for me since I used to be terrified of them. Seriously they used to render me close to catatonic as a child, way way too loud I remember my mom taking me to watch them outside, spreading a blanket for me and her date and I was five or so, very excited to see the lights in the sky and then it started and I had my first experience with absolute terror, I couldn't move, I might have started crying or screaming, I can't remember. My mom had to carry me to the car, guess I ruined that date.

I'll come home tomorrow and sleep then I get a free day for Friday and then it's back to work, mornings this time, for the weekend and then I get the kids Monday morning. My two free days I don't even know how to properly suck the marrow out of them because I'm still trying to get my body back to being among those who do stuff during daylight hours. How the fuck am I going to accomplish anything, going back to school, cleaning the house, having a life, on this schedule, it's like the employment equivalent of a death eater sucking the life out of me. 

In other, match maker news, match continues to disappoint reaffirming my belief that my golden years will be spent with a vibrator and a stack of saucy erotica, if I can find erotic writing that I actually think is well written and erotic. I had a date last week with a man that I was really getting along well with through writing. He sounded very nice and we have a lot of shared interests and he's a doctor in a related field so I was like cha-ching, I hit the jackpot, a man I can use as a sort of medical pensieve (I'll try to limit the Harry Potter references from here on out).  I should have listened to my gut (Malcolm Gladwell would be so disappointed with me) when there was only one headshot on his profile. Now, to be fair, this man was incredibly kind, unbelievably polite and really interesting. But, let's put it this way, he listed himself as stocky and he's probably a good seventy pounds overweight. Plus I think the headshot of himself was taken a good decade (maybe two?) ago. As soon as I saw him sitting at a table, not facing me, he had left the seat that faced the room for me, like I say unbelievably polite that way, but  all my hopes sort of deflated when I saw his flesh straining at his clothing (just one more Harry Potter reference, like Aunt Marge when Harry puts the spell on her and she starts to swell). He made the chair he was sitting in look so tiny and he was only an inch taller than me. 

And, one other sort of odd thing with the dinner. Well first, I can't believe I didn't post this on Facebook but I saw this slight, asian man with a pleasant face pop up in the doorway and I said to my date, 'Isn't that George Takei' lo and behold it was. Mr Sulu wound up sitting right next to me at a neighboring table. I didn't post it because I never really watched Star Trek, caught an episode here and there, I'm not a trekkie but I have many friends that are, although I'm a friend of George Takei's on Facebook because I love his posts, think they're great, very playful and liberal, he's done a lot for gays just by being his lovable self on Facebook but I'd feel like an imposter bragging about this sighting because, while I was happy I knew who it was in a heartbeat, it's not like I'm going to fawn over this man and disrupt his meal. My date stood up and shook Mr. Takei's hand as he was leaving and thanked him for his work (he's a trekkie). Anyhoo, so I had written that I wouldn't eat much the day of our date because I wanted to fill up on all the sushi at one of my favorite restaurants in Pittsburgh but this man ordered so much flipping sushi and kept holding off on eating certain pieces and kept encouraging me to eat everything, even though I was stuffed half way through the meal, it was sort of weird, like was this some feeder thing? I'm sure he was, once again, just being exceedingly polite and me, being exceedingly untrustworthy and bitchy, I go to feeder fantasies. I hate dating.

In other news I went to see a sports medicine doctor for my ongoing back and hip issues. This guy was funny. At first I couldn't tell if he was flirting with me because #1 I can never really tell when someone is flirting with me, my flirting radar is nonexistent but #2 he'd look, smile and interact with me in a way that made me think 'is there something on my face or stuck in my teeth? is that why he keeps looking at me?' Like I say my gauge for determining if someone finds me attractive, it's nonexistent. And, anyway the doctor is married because he answered a text while talking to me. OH NO YOU DIDN'T! Can I harp on how fucking unprofessional and disrespectful it is to even look at your phone while being with a patient unless you preface it by I'm expecting a call, with intonations of pathology results of the five year old whose life you're single handily trying to save. This doctor is giving the med student who initially examined me a hard time because she didn't make small talk with me and learn about my interests and then he's like, looks at phone, my wife didn't sleep last night, why didn't she tell me she couldn't sleep, she should have woken me up, that's why she wouldn't go to the gym with me, my wife my wife my wife, the uxoriousness he displayed, I'm thinking is this an act or compensation for a cheating mind, heart, penis? Once again displaying my untrustworthy bitchiness.

Well, as a doctor, aside from the phone thing, he was great. He said my situation is different because I'm so flexible, even being stiff and injured I'm exceedingly flexible, he seemed strangely delighted, like he was playing with a new toy, putting me through motions and moving my legs to see just how far they could go. He actually took the time to get a resident, who goes back and forth between this hospital and a competing system, to bring up my MRIs online and then point out to me what he thought was my problem. So after talking to him I decided to hold off on the steroid injection in my back, he doesn't think it will help, try physical therapy yet again to strengthen my core, being flexible (or floppy in my mind) is makes back issues likely because moving so easily it can cause the vertebrae to also move easily. And, my favorite part about the doctor, he ordered a mess load of blood work. But not without quizzing me on what one blood test was 'come on you should know this you're straight out of school.' To my eternal shame I didn't. I'd, in fact, never heard of the blood test (ACE) before. I know what ACE stands for and what ACE inhibitors are but an ACE test to see if I have sarcoidosis? I'm going to bet that test comes back negative. But he ordered so many flipping serum test, seriously they drew something like 7 or 8 tubes. I talked to phlebotomist while my right antecubital vein was squirting in the tubes (I'm sick that I enjoy hearing the blood spraying into a vaccutainer tube) and got info about which tubes do in fact need to have blood up to the black line and which can you cheat on and by how much. All in all that was a productive doctor's appointment. 

I've got to iron my scrubs, I seem to be the less than 1% that do this, and get ready for work.