whiskey in a teacup . com

At my workplace, I’m one of the only employees in a non-administrative position who wasn’t born in either Africa or Haiti.  This leads to a lot of great sound bites, such as this one which was lobbed at me last night:

“Forgive me for what I’m about to say, but…you’re white.”

I’ve also overheard “…if they brought some more money into this place, they’d be hiring more white nurses!” but that wasn’t specifically about me, so it was a little less hilarious.

As I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen, my recent birthday bothered me a little. I can summarize the reasons why by repeating what I told Famous Comedian and My Personal Birthday Buddy Erin last night: “I used to be way ahead of the game, and now I’m just in the game.” It goes deeper than that, of course, and includes fears about my reproductive organs imploding within me before I get to use them (we’re on year thirteen of menstruation here, and still no spawn!), but that’s the jist of it.

Also, twenty-four is, as my friend Willis pointed out, unique for being divisible by lots of other numbers, thus giving you many different ways to break up your life into sections and look back on them all. This can get a girl seriously contemplative. In sixes, for instance:

Age 0: Born by c-section.

Age 6: Had my bladder cut open so my own vile urine would stop destroying my kidney. Officially received the awesomest scar the first grade had ever fuckin’ seen.

Age 12: Saw the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time, which largely informed my sexuality. Life at home and at school laid the groundwork for my teenage depression and self-mutilation. Good times, good times.

Age 18: Moved out to the city on my own, making seven-fifty an hour. Hung out in Harvard Square pretty much all the time. Learned German and some other things at Harvard Extension, which never culminated in any sort of degree but was fucking great.

Age 24: Working as a nurse, living with my boyfriend and cat, regularly watching What Not to Wear and MythBusters and trying to out-run the ennui that keeps pestering me.

If I were to do it in fours or twos I’d probably start divulging shit that I don’t even want to think about, but you catch my drift. I’ve done a lot of living in my life so far, more than most of my peers, but now that the great gears of change and growth are slowing down and I’m in the meat of my twenties (and the meat of how my life will probably be for a very long time, and the meat of a horrible choice of metaphor involving the word “meat”), there’s a little bit of adjusting that goes on. It’s not necessarily bad, it’s not necessarily good…it’s just all a part of getting older, I suppose.

…is that I can now genuinely state that I am, in fact, 24.

“So, I’m going to go drink my coffee, and then hang around, and then possibly do stuff.  See you around four?”

Working the evening shift has made me useless before eleven a.m.

After a few years of owning a Ubiquitous Japanese Sedan, Jared (and, technically, I) have added a second car to the family:  a Used and Practical but Still Obviously Sexy German Pocket Rocket.  In a rare moment of submission, I left the decision entirely up to Jared and didn’t even see the car before it was purchased.  Last night he brought it home and, raving about the performance, offered to take me out for a drive.  We got in the car and drove for a few minutes on the side streets that bring us to the highway.  Nice seats, smooth engine, whatever.  No big deal, I thought.  Then we turned onto the highway, Jared romped on the gas, and we shot forward as my intestines coiled out onto the street behind us and I yelled “Okay very good I believe you STOP IT PLEASE GOD!”

I should note here that the first stick shift I owned was a junker with a V6 and a clutch made of dark matter.  I enjoy a little excitement in my driving.  I admit that this new engine purrs like a whore, and it gives us both a little thrill.  However, to quote myself last night after I stopped soiling myself in terror, “that’s the sound of fun, immediately followed by death”.

Here’s a link to a gorgeous song I often listen to when I a) need to get pumped up for work or b) want to ponder the great mysteries of life and death, which is getting to be as much a part of my workday as punching in and doing rounds. I don’t know anything about the band, other than that one night Jared and I were flipping through tv stations and caught the tail end of Letterman, and this song was being played live, and we both fell totally silent.

It still gets me every time…

It doesn’t matter how good a rapport you’ve established with someone or how nurse/patient your relationship has been up to that point; a palpable wave of awkwardness will wash over the room when you ask a relatively young guy to take his pants off so you can insert a tube into his manhood.

Said wave will reach a dizzying crest when you reach for said manhood to insert said tube, and said guy starts apologizing for the size of said manhood.  When the procedure is finished and you subsequently leave the room, and he comes along with you and says, “You did that beautifully…you should put that skill on your resume,” you will not be able to come up with any response that makes the situation even slightly less embarrassing.

The satellite radio has had an annoying habit of cutting out lately (file that under “problems of the bourgeois”); I’ll be enjoying a song and suddenly the signal will be lost, only to resume a moment later at a different point in the song. Normally this is cause for sheer frustration, sometimes rage, and occasionally mild violence. Last night, however, I was listening to Bowie’s “Young Americans” when the signal failed, and I took the occurrence as my chance to shine.

I know the lyrics to that song pretty well, but I have notoriously bad rhythm and have trouble keeping any sort of beat. I wondered, if I start singing the song where it left off, can I be perfectly in sync when it comes back on? I’ve tried this before, many times, and failed. But Bowie is my homegirl, and I felt lucky. So I began:

“…leather leather everywhere and not a myth left from the ghetto
well well well would you carry a razor, in case just in case of depression
sit on your hands on a bus of survivors, blushing at all the afro-sheeners
ain’t that close to love? well ain’t that poster love
well it ain’t that barbie doll, her heart’s been–”

And at that instant, the signal came back, and Bowie and I belted out “broken, just like you have!” in glorious, glorious harmony.

A glucometer, large quantities of ice, a stranger’s hand down my pants, and me telling a joke about Electric Light Orchestra that made Patrick Stewart chuckle.

So yesterday, after noting on this site that I was tired, I went to work. My workday began at around two-thirty in the afternoon. At nine p.m. it became clear that the night shift nurse had called in sick, and that no replacement had been found. At ten p.m. someone from administration who was on-call told me she would come in to relieve me at two a.m. At two a.m. I called her and said since it was already two and I was still there, I’d just finish out the shift.  At seven-thirty a.m., I left.

Working a seventeen hour shift, including the night shift, wasn’t so bad. The interesting thing was how it messed with my appetite: I ate a veggie burger at nine a.m., fell asleep, woke up at four p.m., and was ready for breakfast. The coffee is brewing now!