Triage should be taught early.

Maybe it's because I was taught triage. There is a core assumption that some will die, some might die, and save the more likely to live. It's a dire philosophy, but it keeps me from agonizing over dead children or when a frail elderly dies. Human, animal, languages, everything dies.

Death is one of those essential concepts that every child should get accustomed to. There will always be wastage, in any system. It may well include me.

Or you.

And we both need to be ok with this.

Cats just go where they are comfortable

Last night as I lay on my back, legs stretched out, close together, I feel the cat probing the lumpiness. He sat down just below where my knees were, reached out with both paws, pads up to my crotch, warm body sliding my calves apart, tail brushing my feet. Figured, I'm not moving for a while, and fell asleep.

Cat likes lumpy.

Why I need to stay away from Gypsies and OCD patients

I read Bury Me Standing many years ago, and it haunted me. Because this is a culture that is alien to everything I believe and value. I have compassion for them as human beings, but I feel deep dislike, discomfort, with that society. I knew, therefore, that I should not watch any of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. And of course, I did, and turned it off, unsettled and irritated. In part at myself, for being repulsed at any group. Hating my own prejudice. Although, having never met any Rom myself, and only disliking them based on what I learned about them, that is not probably the correct term.

This is a people who starts out with a whole different set of assumptions about how the world works. And I love reading, knowledge, restraint, stability, equality. I struggle not to label them as being willfully ignorant, superstitious, and treating women badly. Instead, they value their oral traditions, their beliefs are more situational, and divide their labor differently - which works in their world.

But if I had to deal with them often, I think it would grow into bigotry. This is a shameful admission.

I also know I should never work with people with OCD. I nearly hit a patient once, who was perseverating on a ritual, and managed to walk away. I never let myself be alone with patients with that disease again. It was as if they could hit a switch in my brain that disinhibited my self control and decency. I cannot trust myself there, and I will not.

Ugly truth.

shoulder joint

Thanks to a sports surgeon, my shoulder is now on the mend, and I'm sleeping at night. Apparently I have something weird in the anatomy. Sure, what the hell.

yup

My right arm needs to work, dammit

My arm/shoulder hurts. Has been for the last week. Like I need something else giving me shit.

Bugger.

Yeah, well, prove it.

Young woman at work, keeps saying what a good scrub she is. Which proves she isn't. People who are good at their work never need to brag.

Boasters are always wrong.

Darwinism in Action

Five children have drowned over the last two weeks, locally. The meltwater is fast and cold, and lots of warnings have been broadcast. It's not a secret.

Parental supervision is often not what it is cracked up to be.

This and that

Worst pain squeezed away in a very good massage, ache and hormones left to drain me of all will to move. Beer helps me not fucking mind. Still, crappy.

Bugger

Not-driving while distracted

Lately, I have come across more and more drivers who sit at green lights, long after they have changed. I suspect texting. When I have driven toward a green light for half a block, and have to honk at the car stopped at one the whole time, I have to wonder what they fuck they are doing.

Red means stop, green means go, as every young child can tell.

For the record

Aside from the one time when I was assigned to train him, help him get the details in and his speed up to par, and he turned red and shouted at me in barely restrained fury, "SHUT UP!" I made no further complaint about him. When my supervisor asked about him very recently, I refused to make vague reports. I admitted I found him difficult to work with, but unless I had something specific to describe, I would keep my feelings to myself.

That one time I reported immediately, for behaviour I considered well outside professional conduct. I made no further mention of it. He, however, didn't even acknowledge me for over six months. Which is odd, considering that by the codes of military service, (when he strongly self identifies as Marine) no matter your personal feelings, you salute and greet anyone crossing your path. I'd give him a "good morning" and he would pretend I didn't exist. I found this very funny and childish, but never pushed further.

Not a whole person we were dealing with there. Divorced from himself.

Tra la la la LAH!

So, marine gave his notice. When S tells me this, a small smile twitched the corner of my mouth, then was suppressed. S saw, though, and tells me this has been the usual reaction. We talked later, both relieved that he had not been fired and escorted out by security. Both admitted to each other our suspicions that he really is the type to return, armed and begrudged.

I really was afraid of what he was capable of, and I'm very relieved that he will be gone.

Just be peacocks, and quick mocking women, ok?

D went for a walk before the heat accumulated this morning. And stumbled across the forming up of the Gay Pride Parade. We both went back out to watch a while, part of it coming within a couple of blocks of us. We've seen better organized riots, there seemed to be two staging areas within two blocks, with the parade circling the main festival area. Very colorful, although way too much crappy club music thumping around. D has gotten cynical about the utility of such movements, I figure it helps changing public attitudes. Making it familiar, a bit funny, normalizes it for many. We've finally gotten to the tipping point where more people are on board with equal rights and marriage for gays, and I really think parades, and TV characters, have been a huge part of that. Not a direct route, and financial and political power have to be building as well, but I think this does keep a public spirit keeping those real movements going.

The one part of the movement that still bothers me is the Female Impersonators, drag queens, flamboyant cross dressers*. Men taking on extreme female stereotypes, feels insulting, condescending and very, very offensive. Akin to wearing black-face. I fitted another piece to this today, that men who wish to be splashy and decorative, instead of looking to show-girls and other female entertainers, could well look to eras when men were peacocks. Model themselves instead after the fops and dandies, with lace and codpieces, bright colors and wigs - but without mocking women.

*Non-flamboyant cross dressers are usually too sad to irritate me.

Matriculation before freshman year is bad.

My only regrets involve holding on too long, believing that I was wanted when it was only that my existence merely fed a badly articulated need. The last year with the ex, the last month of contact with a once dear friend, when I should have simply been the bad guy and put an end to it. Sticking to theater instead of trying a different degree course when I never got cast.

Actually, I also regret committing too soon to a course of study when I had a full ride scholarship to college, instead of taking all kinds of classes and finding out what I would love.