76 hours

In.One.Week.

Work, that is. My brain is fried.

I'll post for real tomorrow. Today, I do Halloween costumes; Katie's for her Rogue party tonight, Andy's for the Boo-Ha-Ha Parade. He marches at 3 with the rest of the band, dressed as a Sith Lord from Star Wars. She parties at 7 dressed as Mr. Rogers.

I am beyond tired.

Sleep is the great equalizer

OK, 3 1/2 hours of sleep and I'm better. Not shaking anymore. Katie woke up a little while ago and is sitting on the porch drinking tea and eating toast. No hives, no swelling, no abdominal pain, "but I do still have my cycle, damn it!" LOL She's looking extremely pale but I guess that's to be expected.

Off to the store for meds and groceries while Andy's still here.

Then more sleep for both of us I think.

Children should be height/weight proportionate to their parents

It should be a law. Really. It should be. Children should be height/weight proportionate to their parents. So that when you have to carry them to the car because they're horribly sick, you can actually do it. When you find you can't, and they are frighteningly close to passing out and sliding down the wall, you should be able to pick them up off the floor. You should also not be scared shitless when one of the people you love most in the world is that sick.

Katie came home from an overnight trip to Norman with friends last night not feeling well at all. It was the first day of her cycle, and those are usually difficult, but this was brutal. She was doubled over, crying, and she's not a whiner. I tucked her into the couch with pillows and blankets and a heating pad, gave her two tylenol, and we tried to rest. She woke me at 3:30 this morning saying she'd gotten sick and needed help. I cleaned up, got her changed, decided I'd call the doctor's office first thing as soon as they opened. She's finally agreed with me to talk to the doctor to see if there's anything we can do about the pain associated with her cycles.

As I was settling her back down on the couch, she said her stomach hurt really bad, and she was "itchy." Eh? Itchy? What the hell? She had a slight rash on her arms.

Two hours later, at 5:30, she walked into my room said, "Mom, I feel really weird." I looked up and her whole face was swollen. I sat her down on my bed, checked the rest of her, she was solid hives. What the hell??? OK, ER now. I went to walk her out to the car because at 5'9" to my measly 5'2" carrying her was not in the equation. She stood up, flushed bright red, then dead white, and started to go down to the floor. I propped her up against the wall and yelled for Andy. THAT child sleeps like the dead. He didn't hear me. I let her slide to the floor. She's starting to wheeze. I ran for the phone, smacked his bedroom door with my hand on the way through the house and yelled for him to get up and help me. Called 911, the ambulance was here in minutes.

Two hours later and we're back home. They gave her steroids and Xantax, both for the histamine reaction. We can't figure out what the hell did this. She didn't eat or drink anything she hasn't had a million times before yesterday. No spider bites, or bee stings or anything like that. The only meds she had was Tylenol and she's taken that since she was a baby.

I'm stumped. But my blood pressure's back to normal, I think. Jesus, she scared me bad. Oh yeah, and in the ER, when she finally came around, her only comment was, "Can we go home now? This all seems a little excessive for a rash, Mom." She doesn't remember any of it.

Something bumping around in my head

There's this stuff that's been running around in my head since the Indigo Girls concert. Thoughts that keep bumping into each other. Lots of them. I need to get them outside my head because a) it's really very crowded in there, and b) I need to view them with some distance.

Now if only I could find a way to put them down on paper (screen?) without self-editing.

Crap.

The Sax Man

Homecoming Parade, 2007 - the sax man marches. I like this picture. He's concentrating, focused on the drill and the music, blocking out everything else. I love watching him when he's like this.

The music is a living, breathing thing inside him; the beat of the drums, the other instruments, nothing outside the bands registers on his radar screen.

A voice from the recent past

Remember a while back I was supposed to have dinner with Dee and she cancelled? Had to go help a friend change out the locks on doors at her house. She asked for a raincheck and I said sure, I understand. I was disappointed but hey, stuff happens. That was the last time I heard from her. Nearly 2 months ago. I called and left a voice mail message once, dropped her two emails and never got an answer. I heard from another friend that she seemed to be fine, was in church every Sunday.

Well, I got an email from her today. It said she had Ms. X move in with her and they were doing great. How was I doing? She hadn't seen me in a while.

Um...nope, you haven't. Short term memory loss on her part, I guess.

I wrote her back, told her I was fine, working a lot of hours, I was glad to hear she was happy, and I wished her well.

I'm still disappointed but for different reasons now.

Workday Woes

I walked into work at 7am today, to a war zone. I could hear them from halfway down the hall, long before I actually got to the office door and opened it. M came around the corner just before I turned into the hallway that our office door opens off of. Her face looked like it was set in granite. I asked her what was going on. She never said a work. Kept right on going. As I rounded the corner I heard, "WELL THEN THE MOTHERFUCKIN PATIENTS CAN WAIT ANOTHER FUCKIN 15 MINUTES FOR ME TO GET HERE! AND ALLA Y'ALL BITCHES GOT NO FUCKIN BUSINESS TALKIN ABOUT ME BACK HERE SO GO FUCK YERSELF!!"

Excuse me? WHAT did you just say? I could not believe my ears. First, who in their right mind screams something like that, at the top of their lungs, when anyone walking by will hear them? Who does that? At work? Where patients and doctors and other staff could hear you? OK, stupid thought. No one in their right mind. Right mind being the operative phrase here.

I opened the office door and walked in to find E and C in the middle of the aisle that runs between the cubicles on my side of the office. E was less than 2 inches from C, and she was the screamer. Five of us are having to split the duties at registration at this location, on a rotating day basis, while the company is in the midst of moving/remodeling the area we'll be moving to in about 6 months. The weekdays are split up between E, M, T, A, and myself. It's made for some harried days at times. Still, it's part of the job. Suck it up, slap a smile on your face, and be a professional about it. Not these 4.

All four of them, on a regular basis, have bitched and moaned, whined and complained, bitten heads off too often and, in general been really immature about the whole thing. All four of them. They range in age from mid 30s to my age, and they're acting like teenagers; immature, unprofessional, backbiting, bitches.

I stepped in between them and told them this is neither the time nor the place for this, whatever your differences are you need to walk away right now and cool off. I have to give C credit. She'd already said, "I don't have to listen to anyone talking to me this way," and turned away.

E stormed out, M stormed in a few minutes later, and both C and M asked me what I thought. I told them I wasn't here when it started, I don't want to be in the middle of it, but I sure hope somebody has some explaining they're able to do. I can't be the only one who heard that, and you can bet our boss is going to know it 5 minutes after she walks in here today.

Turns out our boss was onsite at another location all morning. Each of them emailed her their version of the events. C is a coder, and not part of the registration rotation. M had covered for A during lunch on Wed., then covered her own full day at reg on Thursday, and when she walked in this morning, there were patients already waiting to be checked in with E, whose assigned day it was, nowhere to be found. M did the right thing. She clocked in, checked in the patients, and opened up the waiting room for them. Granted, they were extremely early. It was about 6:40. Their appts were for 7:30. They're told to come in at 7 so we have time to get the paperwork done. Someone almost always shows up before 7. M checked in the patients, locked the computer as she is supposed to for security reasons, and headed back to our office area to find out who was supposed to cover reg today and where were they. Apparently she and C were standing there talking it over and trying to figure out what to do when E walked in at 7:05. That's when all hell broke loose.

M packed her stuff, refusing to discuss it. Mainly because our supervisor sided with E, saying that she was raked over the coals as soon as she walked in the door for not being there before the patients arrived. To my mind, that's just plain wrong. No matter what the reason, no matter what's gone down, I don't give a good god damn what the hell happened, there is absolutely NO reason that excuses talking to anyone the way she was screaming at them, especially not in the work environment. Yet she is not being reprimanded, not disciplined in any way. Nothing. I doubt that M will be back on Monday and that's a damn shame. E gets away with treating people like shit, M and C get away with this drama/gossip shit, and we all lose in the longrun.

They called a meeting. They told us all we're under a lot of stress. True. They told us all we need to be more tolerant. Probably also true. End of meeting. What???? That's IT? You're not going to say anything at all about what happened here this morning? Nothing? Not a word? No one asked me what I'd seen/heard. I guess it didn't matter to have an objective recount of the situation. Or maybe that's what they were trying to avoid.

I've lost every iota of respect for these people. How can they expect anyone to want to work for them if they know nothing about setting professional boundaries? How can these women, grown women, act like this? Take so little pride in how they present to staff and patients?

I am confused and disheartened.

What the hell is happening in today's world where this type of behavior is rationalized, even in the workplace? It makes no sense to me.