March 22

See thing #3, and you will understand why she is basking.

 

Thing #1

There's been a lot of stuff happening, and I'll give you the rundown as best as I can remember. Last Monday, my Mom was up from Brooklyn and she was staying with my Grandmother, and they had to take Angelo off to one of his many doctor's appointments (the assisted living place he's in don't bring him to doctors, so it's my non-driving Grandmother's responsibility, and the whole thing is a damn mess). She (my mom) called me while they were inside and told me that Ang had a really bad cold and wasn't walking too well and was sort of mumbling, which is never good. They brought him back to his place and brought him to his room and left. At about 6:30 that night, I was home and my mother called telling me that they'd gotten a call from the people caring for Angelo, that he'd spiked a really high fever (104), and they were bringing him by ambulance over to the Yale-New Haven Hospital ER. I did one of those panicked, half paying attention drives there and couldn't get parking and wound up driving around sort of pissed off until I found a space.

My mother and grandmother drove up next to me as I was pulling into a spot, and we beat the ambulance to the hospital by about a half hour. I ended up being the first one of us to go in and see him, and if you'll all recall, the last time I was in the Yale ER, it was for my eye and as I walked through, I was sort of trying to patch together my sketchy memories from that night, which didn't really work. Anyhow, when I found Angelo, it was the absolute worst I've seen him look since immediately after his brain surgery, which was pretty damn bad. He was non-lucid, non-focused, and the Parkinson's tremor he has in his hands was everywhere, his legs, his head, his arms. He was burning hot to the touch, but indicated that he was cold. He was dead pale. It was awful and the first thing I thought was "Holy shit, he's dying". We stayed with him for a couple hours, until the nurse told us that it would be hours before he got a room and to just go home, which we did, but honestly, we all thought he was going to die.

He spent sort of a gross week in the hospital with the flu AND pneumonia. And weirdly, they put him on a surgical floor, even though he was a medical patient, so I noticed as I walked to his room that almost everyone in the rooms surrounding his were missing limbs. The floor was amputated limbs, transplant patients, and Angelo. He was discharged the following Monday and now he's back in assisted living, which was a great relief to my Grandmother. In the telling of the story, I sound very blase (imagine the accent mark is over the e, since I have no idea how to figure out where to find that e), but it was a week of pure stress and freaking out.

 

Thing #2

I've decided that I'm going to apply to nursing school. It's been a long time coming, really. I feel as though I owe so much to nurses and doctors who've been so kind along the way to my Grandparents, that I'd like to be able to give something back and hopefully pass that kindness on to other people. Honestly, I'm excited and terrified and it's not even remotely close to the time when I have to apply. Since you all know me pretty well, you will know that I am not the most motivated person in all the world, and also that I've been sort of floundering with what I want to do and make of my life. I could very easily stay in the job I have now doing exactly what I do for years to come, but I'm bored. I'm bored and I'm ready to make a major change in the kind of person I am and how much I control my own destiny. Becoming a nurse seems like the exact right move for me, but jesus, I'm 35 and there's so much I don't know about nursing. I haven't been to school in 12 years, and when I went to college, I wasn't exactly a motivated student, and more importantly, I haven't taken a math or science class since HS. Let that sink in, because it's a good 70 percent of what I'm freaking out about. NO MATH, NO SCIENCE. The other 30 percent is divided up thusly: 10%: Where the fuck am I going to get the money to do this? 5%: Holy shit, can I really inject or draw blood from someone? 10%: Sick BABIES? Nooooo. 5%: What if I have to deal with someone who has maggots on them? MAGGOTS!!!!!!! MAAAGOOOOTS!!!!!*

*Note: Which adds up to 100 percent! Which is math! Go, me!

I'll be honest, I am drawn to disasters of all kinds, so nursing has a perverted (non-sexual, obviously) appeal to me, as well. I am fairly un-gross-out-able and always remain pretty unflustered in my daily life, which I'd imagine is a pretty important characteristic for a nurse. I already sort of know what kind of nursing I am NOT interested in, pediatrics, and what I AM sort of interested in: Cardiac, ER. We'll see how this plays out. The program I am interested in has a January 1 application deadline, so I've definitely missed the boat for 2006, but that might give me time to take any classes I need towards the RN degree (CHEMISTRY. !!!!) and to really make sure this is what I want to do, but the fact of the matter is that in all my thinking about what I'd like to do as a career and looking at different master's degree programs, absolutely nothing leapt out at me until I seriously started thinking about nursing, so I think I may have found just the thing. I hope so, because I think I'd be really good at it. If there are any of you out there who are in (or know someone in) the nursing field, how about you shoot me some mail and let me know what your training was like, and how you like your job.

Thing #3:

I got home from work last night and noticed, as soon as I walked into the house that it was not warm and toasty. In fact, quite the opposite. It was balls out cold and foul. I checked the thermometer and noticed that it was set, as usual, for 68, the coming home temperature, but that it was only 60 degrees inside. Let me backtrack this a little bit by saying that our house is about 60 years old, and the boiler is not much newer. We have a contract with an oil company for automatic oil delivery, and yearly cleanings as well as free service calls. I have been calling said oil company for the past 6 months, BEGGING them to come out and clean the boiler. Each time I called, I was informed by an EXTREMELY snotty woman that I was on A LIST and they'd be getting in touch with me. And since I have been waiting for 6 months for a cleaning, over the past month or so, the 50 someodd year old boiler started sounding VERY VERY BAD and smelling VERY VERY BAD like "Holy shit, is this thing going to explode in a fireball, or is it going to carbon monoxide me to death as I sleep?"

I automatically assumed that I was out of oil, and I will be honest. I haven't been great about paying them exactly on time because well, oil costs about 134 dollars a gallon and the tank is 160 gallons (give/take). If you add in automatic monthly fills, and the fact that they haven't come to clean the thing in nearly 2 years (note: I called 12 times LAST winter, to no avail) and my inability to menstruate money, I knew that they were not going to give too much of a shit about me and my (now) 55 degree house, but I called anyhow. I was pretty much told (by a different snotty woman) that they wouldn't come out if I owed them money, and they wouldn't take my payment over the phone at that time, because it was after hours and that the driver wouldn't take a payment when he came. Helpful!

I went off to work this morning with their number in my pocket, and got to talk to the same charming woman who'd told me I was on their apparently NEVERENDING list of people waiting for a clean boiler. I paid her the money I owed and told her of my sputtery and stinky when working but ultimately broken and useless boiler, and asked if she could send someone out, and here is the exact conversation we had:

Her: Okay, I will send someone out.

Me: Wait, I am at work right now, what time are you going to send someone?

Her: WHAT TIME ARE YOU GOING TO BE HOME?

Me: Well, THAT DEPENDS ON WHAT TIME YOU ARE GOING TO SEND SOMEONE OUT!

See? SEE? These are UNPLEASANT PEOPLE! It was finally established that I should call when I got home, and she would send someone out then. I left work at 2, called them at 2:30 and sat around waiting. The guy showed up at 4:00, a surly, creepy, serial killer looking guy. He walked up to me and into my house without saying a word, forcing me to babble to him about what the problem was. He told me to turn the heat back on (since it wasn't kicking on, I just shut it off. When I woke up this morning, I do believe it was about 49 degrees inside, which is just foul) as he stomped down the stairs. He groused up at me "IS THIS THE BOILER?" Isn't that something he should KNOW? "DO YOU HAVE MORE THAN ONE BOILER?" I replied, as sweetly as I could "Not that I am aware of, sir", and I started frantically text messaging friends and loved ones, in case I disappeared.

Over the next 20 minutes or so, the heat kept kicking on and off. He muttered to himself. He flung tools, and at one point, as I was mid-text message to my beloved Amy, he screamed JESUS CHRIST at the top of his lungs, threw what sounded to be a 50 pound pipe onto the floor and came storming up the stairs. I smiled at him. "Is something wrong?" He jabbed a finger at me and spluttered: "YOU DIDN'T TELL ME YOU HAD TWO FILTERS!" like I knew and was keeping the extra filter a secret from him to be SPITEFUL.

In the end, he fixed the boiler, and when he came back upstairs I asked him what the problem would be. He said a few words to me that I do not believe were of the English, or any language, and then said "When's the last time you had that thing cleaned?" I said "Sir, I have been trying for SIX MONTHS to get someone out here to clean it. I have BEGGED them to come clean it. They do not listen to me!!!" He said, hand to god, "They're ASSHOLES, tell them it just needs to be vacuumed" and like an angel in the night, he was gone, leaving me with delicious heat.

 

the other week - home - email - soon