"M" Doesn't Like Helmets.

"M" loves to tell stories.  She'll tell you about who drove her to work in the morning, who she sat next to during her day program, and who picked her up in the afternoon. She also has plenty of stories to tell you about her family.

Problem is, M sometimes forgets who she's told these stories to. So she'll tell you again, just to be on the safe side.   Which means I've heard some of her tales so many times, I can repeat them word for word.
I know that:

1.  Her brother and sister wear glasses, just like she does.

2. She's left handed, and so is her sister!

3. Her mother had a really high forehead.

4.  When her father moved to Colorado, he was a widower!

Over the past two years, it's safe to say that I've heard each of these facts about 100 times.   While M can't remember the amount of times that she's told me about her sister's pet duck, she's perfectly capable of remembering how I styled my hair two weeks ago.

One conversation:

M: You have your hair in pigtails!


Me: Yes I do "M".


M: Yesterday, you had your hair in a ponytail! Braided!  But usually you wear your hair to the side!

I do usually wear my hair to the side, or I did, until I got a haircut.  "M" was the first to notice.

Every once in awhile I hear something new. Yesterday was one of those days.

Me: How was day program?


M: I'm sitting in "CF's" old place.


Me: Really?


M: I hate "CF".


Me:  Why?


M: He wears a helmet . . . and he never takes it off!  He wears it all the damn time!


Me: . . .So . . . you don't like helmets, huh?


M: I don't even want to look at him! 

In "M"'s world, helmets are a big don't.

One of the Greatest Things I Ever Heard

It was the overnight.  I was settling in and preparing lunches when I heard a client talking to herself; something that was nothing new for this particular client. What was odd was what she was saying.  It was mostly, mutters and what sounded like gibberish.  The only words I could make out were "Charlie Sheen."

Charlie Sheen.  Charlie Sheen. She was saying the name like a prayer, as if she was asking him for something.  Her voice was pleading, almost intense.

Intrigued, I made my way down to her room.  More gibberish, more "Charlie Sheen."

Finally, there was this exchange:

Me: "K" what are you saying?


K: I'm saying Charlie Sheen!


Me: And why are you saying Charlie Sheen?


K: BECAUSE CHARLIE SHEEN IS GOING TO MAKE THE SNOW COME!

It was one of the most amazing, brilliant, crazy things I have ever heard in my life. Charlie Sheen was going to make the snow come.  Not Jack Frost, not Jesus, not Santa, Charlie Sheen. I had to bite my tongue to prevent myself from informing her that Charlie was involved in a different kind of snow.

I had visions of Charlie, dressed up like Saint Nick, riding around in a black sleigh that was being pulled  by a group of hookers wearing antlers and giant platform heels  Drinking whiskey from the bottle, Charlie would wave his other hand around, allowing pure white snow to fall to the ground.  Until he crashed into the Hollywood sign, of course.

It made my night, possibly my week.

The next day K yelled that she was "sick and tired of Charlie Sheen." I guess Charlie didn't come through with that snow.

Rectal Valium!

Diastat is the brand name for diazepam rectal gel.  Valium in a suppository form.

It's used to treat seizures.  It's effective because the rectum is super absorbent, which allows the drug to enter a person's system quickly, and because you really can't give a pill to someone who is thrashing on the floor.

Where I work all the controlled meds have to be counted three times a day.  A controlled med is basically anything that can get you high and can be abused.  Vicodin, Oxycontin, Valium etc. The fun meds.  The kind that when prescribed you try to hide your excitement, because you know if you get too excited the physician will think you're an addict and suggest you treat your gallstone with massive amounts of Advil instead.

Back to the butt drug:

Because Diastat is Valium, and therefore a controlled med, it has to be counted.  In case someone steals it.

Have on person who is prescribed 15mgs of diastat.  The applicators don't come in 15mgs. So he gets 20mg applicators, which are set to only dispense 15.  Which means when given there's 5mgs left over.  Which also means we have to save the damned things so they can be properly destroyed.

How desperate does a person have to be for a high to steal something that has to go up their ass?  Furthermore, how desperate does someone have to be to steal something that might have been stuck up someone else's ass first?

Don't think the rest of the people who I work with haven't pondered this.  They have.

Which let to this exchange:

"Would you be able to put it in food?'

"You mean, eat a suppository?"

"Well, would it have the same effect?"

930pm at night and I'm texting a friend who's an RN, asking about the side-effects of eating a suppository. Her reply was "I think it would make you sick."  I did a get promise that if she ever runs into it at work, she'll give me some details.

So while friends get married, have kids, buy house and work on prosperous careers, I lie awake at night wondering about suppositories.

I Dreamed a Dream . . .

Once I had a dream that involved Tom Waits, a train, a steering wheel, and really awesome shoes.

I was riding on top of a train. It was a big cartoon train, bright red, with a huge smoke stack.  Tom Waits was sitting next to me with a steering wheel "driving" the train.  He informed me that this was the best way to travel.

 The cartoon sun was smiled down upon us, as the train went up and down over great big hills,  Flowers danced and cute bunnies hopped on the green, green grass.

Then the train crashed into a shoe store.  Tom said that since we were there we might as well go shoe shopping.

It was the most awesome shoe store ever.  All the shoes looked like something out of fetish magazine from the 1950's.

I was about to try on a serious pair of ballet heels when I woke up.

. . . That's about it.

Aimee Semple McPherson

Sister Aimee fighting the gorilla of evolution, or something like that.

Word Nerd: Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude: ˈshä-d^ən-ˌfrȯi-də


From Merriam Webster:

enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others

But it is Schadenfreude, a mischievous delight in the misfortunes of others, which remains the worst trait in human nature. It is a feeling which is closely akin to cruelty, and differs from it, to say the truth, only as theory from practice. In general, it may be said of it that it takes the place which pity ought to take—pity which is its opposite, and the true source of all real justice and charity.  -  Arthur Schopenhauer, On Human Nature  

I love the German language.  I love the way it sounds, I love the way my mouth feels when I (try to) speak it.  There are words and phrases that are so perfect that English speakers like me have to steal them, because we just don't have the equivalent.


Schadenfreude is one of those words. Sound it out.  The word has weight.


Schadenfreude is a noun.  It isn't enjoying someone's misery.  It's is the enjoyment, it is the feeling.


Yes, Arthur Schopenhauer is right: it is an awful trait.  But schadenfreude is all around you.  Most gossip papers are built on it. We love reading about some bratty starlet "get what's coming to her". It's all over modern politics as well. We love watching then enemy fail.  We don't just want to see the "other guy" lose, we want him humiliated.


For being German, schadenfreude is the perfect American word.

Spontaneous Combustion and Me

BOOOM!

For about two weeks in early 2001, I became convinced that I was going to spontaneously combust.

I suffered from insomnia.  This preceded any "suddenly bursting into flames" fears.  When I couldn't get to sleep, I would go back and forth between lying in bed, trying to force myself to sleep, and pacing about the house "dwelling" on things.

During the "dwelling" is when the spontaneous combustion idea popped into my head. It went from me recalling a episode of Unsolved Mysteries to "I'M GOING TO FUCKING DIE!"

 So for he next two weeks, I would pace about the house, waiting for my body to go "PFFOOMMMFF!"  Yes, "PFFOOMMMFF!"

Now, even then I knew that the evidence surrounding spontaneous combustion was pretty sketchy at best, and I also knew that even if it was real, my chances of suddenly bursting into flames were pretty low.  This didn't matter to my brain.  I was going to burst into flames.  They would find my leg and maybe an arm, and that would be it.

Why? Why me? Because the spiritual realm had it out for me, that's why.  I was God's own personal whipping girl.  I had figured this out when I was 13, and believed it for a long time.  If he was going to kill me in a big way, why not with fire?

So for the next two weeks I spent my sleepless nights, sitting at the kitchen table, drinking water and checking my temp, waiting for the inevitable "PFFOOMMMFF".  I thought about calling someone, but, I had "delusions" before, and I even I knew how nutty this one was. 

What saved me was the real drama in the house.  The events are bizarre, and scary enough that they deserve their own post, but I'll give a quick summation: my coke addled roommate finally broke from reality and became dangerously obsessed with my other roommate.  Among other things, he became convinced she was moving into a crack house in Lowell, and once "borrowed" my car for seven hours in order to go on a coffee run.

That will take a person's mind off going up in flames.  That and smoking a lot more pot.