Ch-ch-ch-changes

[coldsoup]

Next time you want to take a nap on the couch on a Sunday afternoon and you want to have really fun dreams about being eaten by sharks and losing your flip-flops and rescuing the seals on seal island make sure that the TV is on and the Discovery channel is playing a special about the world’s most deadly sharks. Not sure which part was dream and which part was TV. I’ve been having some weird dreams. A few weeks ago I had one that I just can’t get out of my head. Ever have a dream that just nags you for days or even weeks? I can’t remember the narrative or even if there was one. It may have been three separate dreams because I can only remember three images. The one that has been bothering me the most is the truck. I had a truck. It was a large green SUV, but I can’t remember what kind although I knew what it was in the dream. For some reason the truck makes me sad (now, not in the dream). The next image I remember is a big wide cement staircase. It was really more of a park and the steps were just built to accommodate a slope. It led down to a pond or fountain or lake or something. This place appears in a lot of my dreams. I don’t know where it is supposed to be. The last image was a King sitting in a recliner. Someone was distracting him because I needed to get something that fell under the recliner which was a clue to something else. Like I said, I think all these were separate, but the truck keeps bothering me. About a week later I had another dream where I had a large green Hummer (the new style), except in the dream it was more like one of those segway things where you stood on the back bumper and steered and had to look through both the back and front windows to drive. I was riding it along a sidewalk at a tourist spot. That one doesn’t bother me like the first truck but I remembered it because they were both green. The first one was definitely not a Hummer. Today is Sunday and I didn’t go to work because I no longer am a phlebotomist working at a hospital. For the first time since late summer 2002 I can no longer say, “Hi, I’m Karen and I’m going to draw your blood.” OK, I could say it but it wouldn’t be true or if it was true then there would be something really, really wrong. What I’m saying is that yesterday was my last day at the hospital. I did one draw all day and a couple sudoku puzzles. To be fair it was a slow day and we were pretty much fully staffed (how’d that happen) and I did help out with other things. I’m going to miss that place. Sorta. I’m going to miss the other phlebotomists and even the patients because old people are pretty cool and tell great stories. I won’t miss the mean nurses (all of them) and the worst management I’ve ever seen in my life which I won’t get into because it just makes me frustrated and I don’t have to care anymore. It’s weird not going back to that place. Most of the people that I’ve been working with for the last two years (yeah I know I said it’s been since 2002, but I’ve only been at the hospital since 2006 when I went back to university) I will never see again. Maybe none of them. Tomorrow I start anew. Tomorrow I get to say, “Hi, I’m Karen and I’m a non-registered tech in toxicology.” I get to test pee for drugs! I’m very very nervous and they are making me start at 0730 on Monday even though my real shift will normally start 0900 Tuesday. This may mean that I get next Saturday (and Sunday) off. Can you imagine having a real weekend that is composed of Saturday and Sunday? I can’t remember the last time I had Saturday and Sunday off. OK, I can - it was when I graduated last June but that was because I requested those days and then had to actually participate in the graduation process, but this is Saturday and Sunday just because they are Saturday and Sunday and I don’t have to do anything at all. Today I celebrated my day off by not getting up until 1400 and then I watched Ugly Betty for a while and then took the shark special nap and then watched more Ugly Betty. I think I’m hungry, but don’t feel like getting any actual food and it has yet to appear by my side on the couch so no food for me. I’d also like a nice cup of tea. I got the entire first season of Ugly Betty from the library and have managed to watch all 23 episodes plus the bonus features in just three days. I loooooooove that show and may be slightly obsessed, but I don’t really care at this point. They haven’t been showing any new episodes on TV (stupid writer’s strike) and I had to do something. Besides, I had missed about every other episode of the first season so there were big gaps in the story line that I’ve finally been able to fill in. At first I really liked Henry and his dimples, but he’s kind of a player and Betty really doesn’t need the baby-mama drama in her life. Gio is shaping up to be a real prospect. He’s hot and ambitious and even has his own business. They’d be good for each other. Clearly I can’t get a date to save my life so I have to live vicariously through a television show. Nothing new. Usually I live in Grease fantasy land so at least I’m living in the correct decade now. I got the letter on Thursday that I’ve been accepted into the clinical program I applied to last fall, so I will be moving to Spokane next summer. This is definitely a big deal. Now to pack up a house full of 20 years of stuff. Yikes! This is the program I didn’t get into last year, but somehow I’m a better candidate this year despite being out of school and not doing anything but work for the past 7 months. Hmm. I wasn’t going to try again, but I guess it’s good that I did. There must be a lesson about persistence hidden somewhere in there. I ought to pay attention. But, no one was hiring me and I didn’t think I’d get this tox job which I applied to in October so I decided to try again. Well, I got the job which I’m very happy about and I got in the program which I’m going to do because I’m certainly not going to get another chance and the earning potential and job opportunities of a registered med tech versus a non-registered tech are significantly greater so I will be quitting LabCorp in just a few months time. It will be right about the time they are planning to give me health insurance, because even though I’ve been working full time regularly since June (it would have been since January 07 but they did that awful thing last spring and I won’t discuss it here, so it’s just since June) I am (was) still officially only a Saturday and Sunday employee (I’m not bitter of course) and didn’t get benefits even though I did a lot of stuff for them like dispatch and train students which required my years and experience yet was completely unacknowledged, but where was I? Right. They are making me wait until June (that’s over 100 days - new hires only have to wait 90) before I get benefits. Remember that I applied for this transfer last October. Yeah. Anyway, this is an HR thing which I know very very well since I’ve been there since 2002. The people at toxicology have no control over any of this and they seem very nice and very organized (a very good thing), so I think I will like it there even if it is only for a couple months which they don’t need to know about just yet. I feel kind of bad about leaving so soon, but a girl’s got to take care of herself, right? Yes. Oh crap! I just went to save this document because of course I’m typing it in word (lucky you or there would be no capital letters at all) and it’s getting kind of long but I just realized it is no longer Sunday, Monday already. Where did Sunday go? I was going to take the dogs (yes that ‘s’ is supposed to be there) for a walk if it stopped raining. Oh well. I’m sure it never stopped raining and I never did well with Sundays anyway so it is probably good that I skipped it. So do you want to hear about the dogs? OK, turns out that Winston is a big fat fluffy jerk-head. He is so mean! But I love him and he’s my big fat fluffy jerk-head so little dog, aka Sparky has to go. OK, one of my co-workers, who is no longer really my coworker (weird, huh?), house flooded a while back when the whole state except Snoqualmie (how’d we miss that one) flooded. It was just the basement, but this is western Washington so she got a nice crop of blooming fungus. The mold. The mold released its little inhalable moldy toxins and spores into the air and made the whole family sick. Well, she had to skedaddle from that place tout suite and FEMA put them in a hotel until they could find a place, but poor Sparky, the family dog, was not welcome by the hotel so he stayed all alone at chateau mold. Somehow I decided it was a good idea that he come stay at casa de Karen (this place seems to have a revolving door. Did I ever tell the story of the Russians? Remind me to) until the family got settled. This was several weeks ago. The family has a nice new apartment, but Sparky is a sweet little lab-Australian shepherd mix and management said no, so he stayed here. At first Winston was OK. He wasn’t particularly welcoming, but he didn’t try to eat Sparky. In fact, at first he wouldn’t eat anything at all which he tends to do when stressed out so I was really worried about him getting sick because he’s old and sick, but now he eats. He eats all the food. He tries to eat Sparky. Like I said earlier he is a big jerk-head. Now Sparky is an absolute sweetheart. He is very friendly and lovey dovey and wants attention all the time. He’s got floppy ears and lips that stretch out really wide and he doesn’t mind when I flap his ears or stretch out his lips really wide and call him bat-dog (hey, the 3 year old in his old family used to dress him up like a princess and pretend he was her horse. He likes it). At first he never left my side, now he’s afraid to come near me (and it’s not because I call him bat-dog). I made sure to give Winston lots of attention and it’s not like he will play with me anyway. He won’t fetch anything except maybe a dirty look directed at me for deigning to think me might chase after a ball. So, I try to play with Sparky which pisses off Winston so he immediately picks a fight every time. Now Sparky hides in my room and won’t come out except when Winston is asleep except that Winston now sleeps in front of the door so Sparky can’t get out. I tried to teach him to jump Winston but he’s too scared. I don’t think Winston is going to change his jerk-head ways and Sparky is becoming traumatized so I need to find him a new family where he will be appreciated. Besides, I’m moving. What will I do with him then? I keep saying it, but I don’t think the moving thing has truly sunk in yet. How do I sell stuff on EBay? Doesn’t matter. I don’t need to worry about that just yet. Right now I should worry about what kind of tea to have. Calming or Chocolate Raspberry? I’m thinking the raspberry. Tea and then I will be able to think about getting up and finding food. The other day I made this really delicious soup. It was Thai chicken coconut soup and didn’t look anything like the picture in the magazine, but tasted quite lovely. The recipe called for cellophane noodles, but Safeway didn’t have those so I just got the little rice noodles which looked almost the same, but not quite. It also called for light coconut milk instead of regular but Safeway only had the regular and I wasn’t invested enough in this meal to search out either of those ingredients. It didn’t look pretty, but tasted pretty and I wish I had some more, but I ate it all and that says a lot about how good it was because I never finish leftovers. I also baked several batches of chocolate chip cookies for my last day at work. They tasted extra yum because of the Kitchenaid which doesn’t smoke when I make cookies the way my old mixer did. I wish I had some tomato soup right now, but am pretty sure that I’m out. Tomato soup always makes everything better, but I searched the cupboard last week and couldn’t find any. If not tomato soup I would settle for some hot cocoa, but I drank all that too. The tea is good. And hot. All I really need is tea. Why am I not happy right now? Don’t answer. I know. It’s the same never-ending story. How did I so completely miss the boat with this?

P.S. Sorry about the lack of coherence, continuity, or paragraphs. This is how it looks in my head. This is how it stays.