Glass in my eye.

There was blood everywhere. Blood in front of me. Blood behind me. Blood to the side of me. Blood all over my hands. It was a typical days work in the hospital lab - "the dungeon" as I like to refer to it. Its in the basement where there are no windows and crazy smells. There's even the occasional tortured scream. The place sometimes seems like a torture chamber.

"Hey man, you wanna do this one real quick before you go to lunch?" I turned in the swivel chair that was too high for me to face my coworker, who was offering a specimen with a smile and said that I surely would, took the specimen from him and turned back to the microscope and within minutes, resumed hunching over. Lots of things in labs are not built for blundering hairy apes over six feet tall such as myself. The predominant gender in this sect of the workforce is that of the female, and the predominant height is a height well under my own.

Extra large latex gloves can sometimes be a challenge to find, along with extra large labcoats, and extra large face masks. Extra large egos, however, can be found effortlessly. Extra large materials for my extra large hook hands to work with would be nice also but this, in terms of the extra tight budget all laboratories tend to be on this is a completely extra unrealistic fantasy. Labs are good at budgeting. I have a theory that this is because labs are full of frugal women who are good at prioritizing and unlikely to take risks. The nursing workforce, on the other hand, makes me wonder how nurses can receive up to $20000 sign on bonuses when healthcare is allegedly undergoing a huge crisis, but I see I digress as usual.

Flashback to me in an undersized swivel chair hunching over a microscope counting blood cells. This time I'm counting what you call reticulocytes. Retics (for short) are immature red blood cells that have been pushed into blood circulation early as a protective measure against some traumatic event, like a severe loss of blood. This particular procedure usually involves manually counting at least 1000 red blood cells under a microscope and determining the percentage of retics present. Yes, it sucks. Usually two glass slides are prepared with patient blood and 1000 cells are counted on each. Afterwards the counts are compared to maintain accuracy.

So, in switching from the first slide to the second slide, I go to secure the slide onto the stage of the microscope using the little metal clasp most microscope stages come equipped with, and my large fingers lose their grip, letting the small clasp fly back into position against the corner of the glass as the glass chips, and (>FLING<) lodges a tiny piece of glass just behind my lower eyelid. 

And that is the story of how I got glass in my eye. And yes, I did get it out with no trouble.

Terrible Cliches Exist For a Reason

Its hot, and I need to shower, and thats pretty much how I feel on the inside too - in need of cleansing.

I slept 15 hours last night. I had to. I had to get away from my thoughts. The things that we require emotionally as human beings are not always, or dare I venture to say, NEVER what we first anticipate needing. Sometimes they are the exact opposite of what we want. Sometimes the right thing to do is the thing that scares the hell out of you. Sometimes these questions plague you until you cannot do anything but think about them. Sometimes you can't sleep, or eat, or even leave the house. So here I am, leg sticking to the leg of the desk in my bedroom, in my apartment, in Arizona, lost in a world of thought.

What the fuck is it in me that has such twisted requirements and why? Is it really my ego - and does it need these things to compensate for a lack of self confidence?  

Look at the relationships people choose to get themselves into. Everyone knows somebody, at least ONE person, who gets into one bad relationship after another after an even worse one. The whole while this person doesn't seem to realize that instead of addressing the issues they obviously have with themselves, they create more issues. I suppose these people have an insane fear of being alone because they don't know how to face themselves. Sounds terribly cliche, I know, but there's a reason for terrible cliches.

In the meantime I still need to clean my apartment. Its probably not going to happen today.

Like A Herd of Cows

"Thats a great idea. When I started here I wondered how that worked - is there some hierarchy of authority or all we all just like....cattle in a field?"

This was me voicing my opinion about the new scheme they are trying to implement at my job, although I had not yet recognized it as a scheme. Career track. Graduation of authority. Supervisory plan. Bullshit. Whatever you choose to call it.

Actually, I'm all for it to tell the truth, but I am no longer under the impression it will make much difference. The deal is you have the team, then you have the team lead, then the assistant supervisor, and then the supervisor. Its good that they finally added titles to these positions because they had previously existed without being recognized.

The con is, they may not actually involve much of a pay raise. Or at least thats what everyone has been saying. One rather notorious coworker of mine explained it to me.

"Oh its complete bullshit. There isn't goona be any more money. I even asked, I said ' so these positions involve more money' and The Director says, 'I didn't say that,' and so I ask, 'so they're NOT going to involve more money and he says, 'I didn't say that.' Everyone was laughing. Yea - what a joke. You can't fucking fool me I've been doing this shit too long and I have had EVERY one of those positions. It doesn't mean shit."

Management; its all about TRICKS. Maybe we really are just cattle.

Tea and Toast Fueled Thoughts of Breeding and Best in Show

Its dark. 

I move through the seven hundred some square foot apartment I inhabit, back and forth from the kitchen to the bedroom with barely any light, ready to sink my fangs into whatever food is left in the house. Another cup of tea, another slice of toast. Another cup of tea, another slice of toast. Tea and toast tea and toast tea and toast. Most of the time my food supply runs on bare bones like this. The floor must play host to at least 1000 crumbs.

At night the thoughts come. This is why people like myself gravitate towards it - the night. Mysterious and powerful qualities have been attributed to the fall of the sun by probably every culture throughout all of history. Something about brain waves slowing down causes neurotic minds like mine to move in a more comfortable rhythm.

I can still hear the laughter of a coworker telling the story of a twelve year old grandson who asked a girl in his class out.

"It was so cute! He said, 'Nana....I asked a girl out.' Really quick. and I said, 'Oh. Where are you going with her?' And he kind of looked at me strangely and so I said, 'Oh! You mean like, to be your girlfriend?' And then he said, 'yea.' So I asked, 'What made you decide to do that?'

The answer was I don't know. Is this a raging example of social programming, or is it just me? Cute story though.

It happens all the time. I'm at work minding my own business, and all of a sudden somebody drags their kid in. There the kid is, bouncing and gurgling, face full of food and hair full of tangle, and I feel bad for a second, because I really don't fucking care. Maybe I'm just that far gone. Either way its good for a laugh. I usually lean over to my gay coworker and whisper, "So whose goona win best in show this year?" 

And we laugh and laugh and laugh.....