The Fairy Tale Bedroom Dead Zone

Hollywood has done us all a great disservice. I know, that's not really a revelation. We all know that we are a generation of messed-up expectations. We feel all relationships need to involve dramatic plot twists and epics denouements. We are programmed to expect beds sprinkled with rose petals, last minute dashes to airports, pronouncements of undying love after one date and that all breakups (except for the best friend's character) end up with the characters growing, changing and somehow belonging together even more. We've been raised on a diet of old school fairy-tale romance set against a background of insanely affordable New York lofts.

This whole change of expectations, and inevitable slump when we realize that our lives will never involve exposed brick walls, 1400 square feet and the entirety of Tiffany's being rented out for our viewing pleasure is not what I'm talking about. True, we have been programmed this way. But the men in most of our lives are, at the very least, aware that this is going on. I challenge you to find one guy that hasn't been dragged to a chick flick and, upon leaving, had a women demand to know why he's not as romantic as Heathcliff/Mr. Darcy/random male lead. If this hasn't happened recently, it did when he was in high school. So yes, we have unrealistic expectations. But somewhere in the dim recesses of the male brain, in an area normally reserved for the proper order of cutlery when setting a table and what color of socks to wear with black pants, men know this.

What I'm referring to is something else entirely. I don't know if anyone has ever identified it before so, like an explorer in colonial days, I am claiming it and choosing my own name. I shall call it The Fairy Tale Bedroom Dead Zone.

I think that the damage that Hollywood movies have done to us is not that we expect too much. It's a cultural norm now and I think most people are pretty aware of it. In lucid moments I think we are even able to tell ourselves "Hold on, I'm being crazy. This is life, not an episode of Friends." I think our problem is is that our frame of reference begins with coffee shop flirting and ends, abruptly, at the bedroom door.

With the exception of Sex and the City there aren't a lot of rom-coms out there that deal with, well, sex. Sure there's a lot of scenes that involve pre-sex romantic build-up, dimmly lit foreplay and post coital cuddling, but there's not ever really that much guidance in terms of sex and sex based relationships. It's as if we are all following a map that has a big blank in the middle of it labelled "Here Be Dragons." What's a modern day Cinderella to do when faced with the dilemma of when to break off a friends-with-benefits situation when a new romantic relationship bears its head? Is it morally reprehensible to be having casual sex with more than one person, or just difficult to schedule and perilous in terms of staying bladder infection free? Even the previously mentioned SATC (I know, I shortened it, shoot me) offers little guidance. Carrie is always vassilating wildly from one long term relationship to the next, Miranda has a stick up her ass, Charlotte is a prude and really, if Samantha doesn't have an STI by now it's a Christmas miracle. None of them are really role models I want to base myself on.

And really, when you look at it objectively enough, I shouldn't feel the need for a role model of the Hollywood variety. In fact I usually pride myself on NOT using Hollywood as a guide to my life. It's just that, having had this background noise for all other steps in the relationship world, this sudden void seems awkward. Meet guy, fall in love, procreate- covered. Meet guy, meet another guy, have good time until such time as right guy becomes evident or new guy enters scene-? How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days didn't cover this.

Early Morning Conversations: Turning Patients Medical Conditions into Hilarious Jokes

So I just got off a night shift. My eyes are blurring and, since there's no food in my house, a Tim Horton's breakfast sandwich is sitting happily and heavily in my stomach. I don't have to think about work again for 11 glorious hours. However just before I fall into a coma I'd like to share an early morning conversation I had. Is it equally witty if you aren't a massively sleep deprived nurse? Probably not. But that's not my problem.

Anyhow, for the purpose of this story lets just pretend that I had a patient named Smith overnight. And, because this always happens to me, Ms Smith was sane and coherent all day long only to spiral into an abyss of confused, thirsty delirium all night long. A delirium so deep she couldn't figure out how to use the call bell and instead lay in her bed yelling "LISA!! LISAAAAA!!! HELP ME! I'M FALLING! I NEED WATER! HEEEEELP!!!!" every 5 minutes. All. Night. Long. Usually I frown on writing whole sentences in caps lock, but there's no other way to write in Smith-speak.

I was giving report to the day nurse, who had been Smith's nurse while she was sane in the morning while the most adorable doctor ever invented sat behind her at a computer looking at some nasty looking x-rays. Here's how it went:

Day Nurse (DN)- "So she's crazy again?"

Me- "Oh, yah. I taught her how to use the call bell, but it fell of the side of the bed and I just never put it back because it's easier to ignore the person than the bell."

DN- "Right...... I just don't know how she went crazy again. She was so with it before!"

Me- "It's a special thing she does for me . Days go by and she never ONCE tries to climb out of bed to board the skytrain. I come on shift and all of a sudden the walls are waterfalls and she needs her rain slicker. It's a curse."

Enter the Super Cute Doctor (SCD)- "Would you like my clinical diagnosis? The patient is allergic to you and displaying the rare allergic reaction supercrazititis. Alternatively you have developed a horrible case of the Smiths and are imaging that your patients have gone insane. Either way, you should never work with this patient again."

Me- "Would you care to explain your diagnosis to my charge nurse?"

SCD- "I will write you a prescription for a patient load made up entirely of finger amputations and AVM's (easy stuff) until the symptoms clear. Otherwise you'll need surgery, and that would suck."

And that, right there, is why I sometimes love my job.

HIPSTER!

My friend recently told me about a game called "Hipster." You walk down a hipster street (for example: Vancouver's vinyl store and plaid infested Main Street) pause and yell "HIPSTER!" at the top of your lungs. Then, while trying to pretend that it wasn't you that just screamed a random word in the middle of the sidewalk, you watch all the hipsters turn around in response to the call and then cringe at the fact that they responded to the term hipster. Cause everyone knows, nothing is as un-hip as calling yourself a hipster.

While I'm sure you'd be pretty successful if you did this in the vicinity of the 5 Points on Main, I really only find it kind of funny. Because, truthfully, a lot of my experiences in the city lead me to rub shoulders with the bearded, bespectacled indie crowd and I always end up feeling massively out of place. Maybe in other cities this would sound like paranoia, but anyone who has been to a show at the Biltmore wearing bootcut jeans and a hoody that isn't skin tight knows exactly what I mean. Vancouver's in-crowd has a way of making you feel so out-of-the-loop you want to apologize for crashing the party.

The funny part of this is that I have lived, and continue to live, what basically amounts to a hipster lifestyle. I may not smoke weed but I listen to CBC Radio Three and love the weekly podcast with a passion. I know indie bands by name and can toss out descriptors like "grunge-y jazz," and "alt-country with a emo vein," and actually know what I'm talking about. I'm an (admittedly new) convert to Canadian hip hop. I know the difference between dub-step and drum and bass thanks to some incredibly cool people in Ottawa and a random bus conversation with a tattooed DJ/ street person. I have art that I spray painted myself on my walls. I hitchhiked across Canada. I have, in the past, worked at a coffee shop. I bike around town, love yoga and wear sandals far, far past when it is seasonally feasible.

But I don't dress like an indie princess. I own plaid, but it is mainly in the form of shirts that hug my curves and make me look polished, in a sort of cowgirl way. My moccasins have made their way back to their original owner and, although I own a pair of mismatched Keds, I never wear them because they are too flat and make my feet hurt. Also, in all honesty, I CAN'T really dress like an indie princess, not without looking incredibly stupid. I have curves and boobs and there aren't too many oversized teeshirts out there that a girl with a chest and hips can layer over floral leggings and birkenstocks without creating the visual of a potato sack on toothpicks. Trust me, I've tried.

It really comes down to this: the indie scene in Vancouver really is a SCENE. These people are supposed to be listening to music that is deeper than the mainstream, caring about topics that are broader than the average young adult and embracing a lifestyle that is open and inclusive. That is the vibe that is supposed to be normal at indie shows everywhere. Really, though, I always feel like people are just eyeing me up to decide why I showed up to their show without an afghan scarf on. But maybe it's just me.

In closing: a word from one of my favorite local artists, who, although he is the king of the hipsters at the moment, has apparantly felt the same way.

"Bus down to the local record store
Buy something to make you like me more
Indie queens and tatty east-side punks
They are listening
Always waiting
Are you watching, are you?"

The Indie Queens are Waiting- Dan Mangan

Growing Up, Not Throwing Up

For three years my friend Britt and I have been planning a great adventure. During boring nursing classes, while drunk and pretty much every other time we hang out we’ve been hashing out the details of this amazing excursion. The first stop has always been South East Asia; revisiting the land of my heart and introducing Britt to the joys of Mekong Whisky buckets and street Pad Thai. Then it was on to Australia to work part-time as nurses, putting in just enough hours to pay for a semi-nomadic surf bum lifestyle. This plan has had so much love and hope poured into it that it feels like I could leave tomorrow and know exactly what to expect.

Today I killed the plan. Britt and I went for a walk and I took a deep breath and told her I just couldn’t go to Australia in the fall, that things had changed and I needed to stay here awhile longer and get my career on solid footing.

I find myself in constant disbelief that I made this decision. I know, in my gut that:
a) It was the right choice and
b) I want a cookie,
but it has taken a serious amount of introspection to reach this point (not about the cookie though, that’s pretty much a constant). I have, for the first time in my life, made a decision that was not based on my ever present desire to be somewhere else, but rather on sound financial principals and the possibility of creating a sound footing for my future.

I know, right? I never thought I hear those words come out of my mouth. I am the girl that people used to say was “happy with a penny in her pocket, as long as she’s in another country.” What the hell happened to me? I have come to a crazy realization: people ACTUALLY change. I’VE actually changed. I made these travelling plans when I was 20. 20 year old me never thought I’d change. 20 year old Lisa would be appalled that I have chosen debt repayment and further education over a backpack and further liver damage. That Lisa would not understand that it’s not forever, that it’s just a short postponement. She would stomp her sandal-clad feet and scream. But I’m not her anymore.

How weird is that?

Backlog

I just published two posts that have been sitting in my little editing que waiting to go out for EVER. I didn't edit them at all, so if they don't make sense....that's why. I just felt bad for them, sitting there, never getting to live up to their full bloggy glory, so I let them free.

I don't, however, know how to change the order they appear in my actual blog....so they're down past the one about the big scary world.

Hello World, You Terrify Me

I wrote a "History 225: The History of British Columbia" final exam today and, with the completion of a 3 page essay on Japanese Canadians, internment camps and "The Iron Chink" officially finished my four year long Bachelor of Science in Nursing. It seems fitting to me that a program with so very many useless courses should end on such a note.

It all seems a little anticlimactic to me. I've been in school, just out of school or about to head back to school for as long as I can remember. I actually have almost no memories from before I was old enough to be educated, although I do remember trying to get my little sister to eat dirt when I was pretty darn young. It's taken me 5 and a half brutal years to get through this program. I've almost quit so many times that I'm pretty sure my friends got tired of hearing it. I've written so many papers on so many things, from the ethics of force feeding meds (for the record: not ethical unless the person is legitimately crazy) to the leadership styles of Hitler (charismatic) and Obama (transformative) that I think I could actually write papers in my sleep now. I am so used to spending all my time finding ways to not do school work that, now that all my time is my own, I'm a little freaked out.

That freakout, however, is minor in comparison to the one that is coming, very, very soon in my future. Because, as anyone who has seen my bank balance will tell you, I gots to get me a job. Like yesterday. Luckily, I just finished nursing. I could, probably, get a job starting yesterday, even if I didn't apply for another week. Finding work is not my issue. My issue is that once I start working I will be on my own, actually responsible for people's lives. Up to this point I've either been a care aide (fewer ways to immediately kill people) or a student (lots of people watching your every move). Now, according to a program that made me take 4 courses titled "Self and Others" I am a fully grown nurse, raised from my infancy of making hospital corners on beds and interviewing healthy families to a young adult, perhaps with much to learn, but able to function on my own assessing unstable patients and administering blood products.

I don't feel like a young adult. I feel like a gawky teenager. I'm all legs and my decision making capabilities aren't all there yet. I long for independence but, in every tough situation find myself screaming "I need an adult here!" I'm the 13 year-old who's braces have been removed too soon. Sure they were awkward and uncomfortable, but I'm not totally convinced my teeth will stay straight without them. Is that too many mixed metaphors? It makes sense to me.

I'm starting to panic guys. Other careers you get out of school, you take an entry level job and if you fuck up, even massively, it means something like your boss' airline tickets not being booked or a shipment of files going to Tanzania instead of Toronto. You work your way up the scale and, unless Daddy owns the company, earn the right to have any responsibility at all. In nursing they educate us, tell us at the end of the program that we really don't know enough and "all the best learning comes from the real world" and then hand us a patient load of 8 acutely ill post-op hips. I've started to have nightmares where I over medicate all my clients, someone codes (their heart stops, for the non-nurses) and then I sit down to cry only to find out that I've sat myself on a bed of used syringes. This is my life.

I know that it's probably all going to work out. I (sorta) know what I'm doing, and I'm applying to a hospital with a great, supportive mentorship program for new grads. I love the work I did during my preceptorship and I'm applying to work there too, as a casual RN. I only have to work long enough to make the money for an airline ticket and some spending cash and then I can pretend to be irresponsible again. But still, this is too close to the real world for me. I almost miss the bagel store.

Conquering the Mountain

Awhile ago B, her friend A and I did the Grouse Grind. For those of you who don't live in Vancouver the Grouse Grind is like the outdoor stairmaster from hell. It's somewhere between 3 and 5 kilometers depending on whether the person you ask is a tour guide (3) or someone who just finished the hike (5), and it's STRAIGHT UP. Really. No joke. It takes a fit person an hour or so to get to the top.



As you hike up this massive hill, cursing yourself for:

a) deciding this is a good idea

b) getting drunk anytime in the previous 2 weeks and

c) eating anything, ever,

you start to notice something. People are passing you. And not just a few crazy fit people. I'm talking lots of people. Some of them look about 80 but have the calf muscles of Nepalese sherpas. Others RUN past you up the hill, barely breaking a sweat while you begin to seriously contemplate going on all fours just to pull yourself up the next set of stairs. Just as you are beginning to harbour feelings of homicide towards those that can run up this thing you will look up and see the same person that ran past you 15 minutes ago running BACK DOWN THE HILL.



This happened to us as we climbed up the hill. And as the guy who had passed me back at the quarter ("We're not seriously only a quarter of the way up, right?") mark ran back past me at the 1/2 way ("I hate stairs. And nature. And you.") mark I turned to my friends and said "Dont' people like that just make you want to trip them?"



The thing is I kinda miscalculated how far voices travel in cool, damp westcoast air. Also, I may have possibly been breathing too hard to control the tone or volume of my voice. I'm pretty sure that he heard me because as he ran past he looked at me with a shocked expression on his face and gave me a whole lotta space on the stairs.



What DOES make me a bad person is the joy that I got from the looks on the faces of the two old folks that shared our gondola down the mountain afterwards. 40 people, 38 of whom just did the Grind in one gondola car? Those old fogeys didn't stand a chance.

Mille TheNurse Has Taken A Facebook Quiz and her result is: Confused

I am tired of Facebook quizzes, I really am. It used to be that I would sign on to my Facebook page and be greeted by pictures and updates from my friends, actual information that I might actually care about. Now everytime I open up the ol' FB my entire wall is covered with endless quizzes taken on topics I don't care about by people I sometimes just barely know.

Now, I'm all for taking stupid quizzes to amuse yourself/procrastinate/zone out boring classes, but do you REALLY have to put them all on display? I know our culture is getting more and more self absorbed and most people have an inate fear of being forgotten but I'm not 100% sure that this is that way to go.

Just for illustration purposes I went back 24 hours through my wall posts. In that time this is what people have found out about themselves:

-5 people are prego- 1 of whom is a boy. Not totally sure about the science behind that one.

-2 girls should name their first child Vanessa, 1 should name hers Sara (apparantly she will be a tomboy)

-Someone's Filipino name is Esperanza (don't worry, I still like you, even though you did a quiz)

-3 people are passionate kisses, one is a lip biter.

-Someone has schitzophrenia. That one might actually be true.

-1 guy is the element light and the periodic element Neon, Hitler, the pink Power Ranger, Codename V, chocolate ice cream, a rainy day, an oatmeal cookie, England, a member of the Psi Delta Fraternity, a beer bong, Conan O'Brian, blue, heavy metal music and an elephant.

I just don't get it. Add to all the quizzes the endless "Favorite 5 lists" and "Fan of" postings....does anyone have a private life at all anymore? I just learned through a friend the other day that if someone in a relationship changes their relationship status to single, FB changes the other person's status too. That means its possible that all the people on your friends list will know you've been broken up with before you do. How effed is that?

I want to know what drives people to answer and post those quizzes.

(You will all please ignore the fact that I just ranted about oversharing on a blog, the homeland of self-indulgent public displays of emotion.)

Dear 2009: 2008 Still Wins (But You're Doing Better)

Dear 2009,

So, my last letter was a little harsh. To be fair to me, being with you up to that point had been 2 months of icy chill. You didn't warm up anytime soon after that either. You taunted me with a bit of warmth and sunny demeanour and then snatched it away. I have to say, '09, that until recently I've still been pretty upset with you.

You may think I'm being unfair but really, you made liking you difficult. Do you realize I haven't sat in a class 5 days a week since my ill fated relationship with '07? After that ended I ran away to Asia and '08. It's actually kind of impressive that I stuck around you as long as I did. Especially when I think of the people I had to hang out with. '09, your friends suck. How did you manage to find so many stupid people and put them all in one class? While I will admit that there were one or two winners in there the majority of them would have benefited from a good 10cc of air IV. The friends that I brought with me from previous years were really the only things that kept me going.

But things are finally starting to look up for us I think. There is maybe, just maybe, a chance that we can pull this relationship out of the nosedive that was the first 5 months of the year.

You've really come through with this move thing, first off. Who knew that there was a nursing job that I would like THIS much anywhere in the world? While it might not be everyones cup of tea talking down people that do so much crystal meth their brains are so fryed that you have to trick them into taking their pills in the manner you would a five year old (come on, they taste good!) I really love it. I guess you knew me a little better than I thought.

And living on the coast is working out pretty well too. You've really started to come out of your shell '09. Partying in downtown Vancouver, getting so drunk that we get lost on the way to the beach, chugging gin and grapefruit pop out of a 2 litre bottle while sitting on a log and watching the sunrise? That's something I never saw us doing together. I mean, sure, you still have a long way to go to catch up with '08, but you're really starting to hold your own now. You're starting to let me stretch my legs a bit and it's making all the difference.

So, '09, I think it's time I cut you some slack. Sure you were boring in the beginning, but at least I got to spend a lot of time with Treesh and Meg and Robin before I had to take off. And maybe all we did was go to the gym and pretend to pay attention in school, but at least I got fit out of the deal. Maybe you just knew what I needed at the time. I still don't understand why you ever thought Tian was a good idea though.

Keep things headed in the direction they're going now and I might stop wishing that you were last year. Someday.

Millie

Confidential Smonfidential

Over the past two weeks many funny things have happened to me. They've caused me to bust a gut laughing and, as I like you guys, I'd like to share them with you.

But I can't.

Nursing is the kind of world where things happen that people don't want their friends and family to find out about. For (a totally made up) example cute old grannies go loopy post surgery and spend two days in a "gerichair"- basically a big highchair that only Houdini could wiggle out of. Respectable, stable, adult people defecate in their clothing, projectile vomit from one end of a room to the other and go so cucko for cocoa pops on morphine that they have in depth conversations with their bedsheets. People yell, scream, curse, bawl like babies, throw tantrums like teenagers and basically act in a way that would, in any normal situation, have other people doing the "don't look at the crazy person" eye shuffle. Alot of the time it's annoying, as crazy people take up way more time than the totally sane ones. But sometimes it's so freaking funny, I just want to share.

But I can't.

One of the major ethical things in nursing is confidentiality. It's not as simple as it seems at first. I mean, there's the obvious stuff. If Joe Brown comes into the hospital with a raging case of genital warts and I let it slip to Mrs. Brown that she may want to be getting some testing done herself, that's a big no-no. Pretty basic. But it gets a lot more intense than that. If I am at a coffee shop talking to someone I work with and I happen to mention that I know one of my clients has got the crazys big time and the sister of another patient overhears and recognizes me as a nurse from that facility and now knows that someone on her brothers ward is a psychopants and freaks out and takes her brother off the ward......yeah, that's a breach of confidentiality too.

It's not really fair. I know that it's important to protect people's privacy and stuff but really, what am I supposed to gossip about? When I was travelling I had no such boundaries. What I saw, I could blog. Even when I was in school I mocked the heck out of people on here. But now I'm on my own. I'm the only student in the whole facility and since I like my preceptor and don't yet feel confident enough to make fun of the rest of the staff the only thing left to gossip about is the goofy clients we have.

But I can't.

If I can't talk about things like (hypthetically) watching someone making an apple bong to smoke their medicinal marijuana and then, when stoned and forgetful, eating the apple and asking why it tastes so weird, what am I going to blog about? Is this the end of Millie?

Ewwwww

Today someone's toe fell off in my hand.

IN. MY. HAND.

I love my job

Disclaimer: I actually do love this job. And, disgustingly, doing dressing of the sort where there is the potential for toes to fall off. But it was still gross.

Nursing: Killing Perfectly Healthy People Since God-Knows-When

I took one of two pharmacology exams I have to pass in order to be a nurse today. It was open book (yay!) and written by my least favorite instructor. Below are two actual questions from the two exams. Don't worry, I know not everyone that reads this is a nurse, so I'll explain.

1. What IV solution would the nurse most question giving to a woman on potassium-sparing diuretics?

a) Normal Saline
b) D5W
c) NS with 40 meq K
d) water

Ok, here's the breakdown. Normal saline is just what it sounds like. Normal. A-OK. D5W just has some extra sugars in it. As long as she's not diabetic it's also par for the course. I would be seriously cautious giving normal saline with added potassium (K) as the meds she's on makes your body hold onto potassium like an OCD hermit holds onto tupperware. Apparently that was the right answer. Which at first makes sense. Giving extra potassium makes your body do fun things like have major seizures. Not cool. The only thing that makes this 100% wrong is that you also have the option to choose d) water. Giving extra potassium= possible bad things. Giving WATER through an IV line makes this happen:

That's right. Injecting water into the blood stream makes your red blood cells swell up and BURST. Your blood sees the water and guzzles it, frat party style. And then dies.

So, of course, when the world's smartest teacher (from here on in referred to as TWST) announced that the answer was C I put up my hand and asked why it wasn't D. Her reply?

" We wouldn't use tap water"

Oh good. We may make their red blood cells explode, but at least we won't give them sepsis. I feel better.

That was on the first exam. The next gem is from today's.

2. A mother asks an RN who gave her child a vaccination "How do I make her feel better?". The nurse should answer
a) "Don't be so weak, she'll be fine."
b) "Put a cold pack on the injection site"
c) "Give her baby aspirin"
d) "Put a warm compress on the injection site."

Ok, this one isn't QUITE as stupid. But still. I'm thinking that in response to "How do I make her feel better the nurse should, perhaps, answer "What is the matter". Because C (the official correct response) may make a slightly swollen injection site feel better, but it's not going to do a whole heck of a lot for anaphylactic shock......sorta a majorly scary adverse reaction to being vaccinated. When I asked TWST what I was expected to make of this question I was told

"It's right there in the question. She's got a swollen injection site."

I copied the question word for word. Does anyone else see any mention of a swollen injection site in there? I didn't think so.

You know what makes me extra lucky? I, and I alone, have TWST for a practicum instructor. Think of all the individual attention. I can't wait.

Dreams, Goals and Other Imaginary Beasts

I went to my friend A.M.'s wedding this weekend. Her, me and B all lived together in 3rd year. We did things like taping signs to B's back while shopping in Jysk, making casseroles out of whatever we happened to have in the house, and hosting parties that you had to dress up as a fake superhero, complete with a unique superpower, to attend. I was The Plague, B was Passive Aggressive Girl and AM was Master Debater. Also in attendance were such greats as Corporate America (a supervillan), Crazy Tennis Playing Guy and The Highlighter. AM's car used to break down about once a month and I remember using the fact that her battery constantly died as an excuse to talk to the guy I liked who lived across the parking lot.

B and I wrote a toast to give at the wedding and while doing that spent about an hour sitting around and reminiscing about that year and the rest of our times in nursing school. It all seems so long ago, but really first year was only 2004. Its weird that some things have stuck so much and others have faded out. I only remember parties at "The Party Quad" these days when I am consciously thinking about them. But I still call T Treeesh, and spell it out with 3 E's every time. B and I still involuntarily quote Jimmy Falon whenever we walk past the leather store in the Kamloops mall ("Eeehhhllleather).

What are this reminiscing boiled down to was one thought: just how much we all have changed. How weird is it that someone who taught me all I know about applying smokey eyeshadow and picked me up from work wearing a dress shoes, Pj pants and a towel on her head just got married? It's definitely strange that the girl who's fish tried to die every time you looked at it just bought a house, with spare rooms that I can stay in if I ever pass through town. Sometimes I just don't know what to do with the fact that the world is growing up around me. Every time I turn around another of my friends is getting married. Everyone I know seems to own a house, a dog and a new car. I can list off 5 people that I went to school with that either are pregnant, are trying to get pregnant or have had a kid in the last year.

Sometimes all this change gets a little overwhelming and starts to get me questioning my choices in life up to right now. It seems like everyone else is going the regular "mature adult" route, while I seem to be hacking my own path through the underbrush. Yet I never doubt that what I'm doing is right for me when I'm bouncing along a dusty road in Cambodia in the back of a pick up truck, holding two Cambodian babies and sharing coconut rice out of a bamboo tube with a toothless old lady. Even when I'm upside-down in a river in Nepal and semi-convinced that I'm about to drown I know that each near-death experience is going to be something I will never regret. The only thing that makes me question myself is sitting in a room decorated with tulle and fake ivy, twinkle lights and a cake on a pedestal, surrounded by people that are so happy that someone else in their lives has reached this adult milestone.

I guess it turns out that aspirations are kind of like perfume. If you spend enough time surrounded by someone else's dreams (especially when they are on display as conspicuously as a wedding, kinda like dumping a bottle of perfume over your head) you start to wear it, and for awhile it almost seems right for you. Then you get back out into the open air and realise: I smell like a rose garden. When in my life have I ever wanted to smell like crushed gardenias? The scent of vanilla pods and lilies may seem grownup and classy, but what if I really like smelling like raspberry body mist?

Time to Get a Job

I just finished the "What to Expect in the Big Wide World" class. Here's what I've been told I can look forward to in the first year out of school:

-for the first 4 months after I graduate I will be so concerned with doing things right and making people like me that I won't be able to sleep, I will lose all my friends and any semblance of normal social life and all the experienced nurses will view me as an indecisive suck-up.

-eventually this self-doubt will get tiring and I will begin to pretend I get it, at which point the experienced nurses will start calling me cocky.

-I will have 2 serious crises of confidence: one at 4 months out and one at 8. Each of these will be above and beyond an overall feeling that I will never be a good nurse, that I made the wrong career choice and that everyone is judging me (which they will be).

-I will kill someone, either by a med error, oversight or overwork driven neglect. Apparantely everyone does.

-Everything I have learned up to this point is useless, as the real world is not a textbook.

I'm stoked.

Welcome to Kamloops: Now With 500% More Racism

Public transit is always an interesting thing. You never know who you are going to run into or what manner of drug induced rambling you will get to hear. Usually, I don't mind the bus. It's sometimes a little sad, often a little funny and generally kind of ho-hum. Today that changed.

Today as the bus was about to pull away from the curb at a major transit exchange, one last lady flagged it down. She ran aboard, flashed her pass and began to make her way to the back of the bus. All normal, except that, when she passed an older black man, she paused every so slightly, screwed up her face and spat out "F*cking N*****." Seriously.

I've never seen so many people have to actually pry their jaws off the floor. She said it so loudly I heard it through my headphones. Everyone, including the man it was directed at, reacted with stunned silence. When was the last time you heard that word not in the context of:
a) a rap song
b) a movie portraying racism in the southern states or
c) a movie where producers are trying to show they are "down with the lingo" of inner-cities?
I don't think I ever have. I mean, this is Canada. Sure there is racism here, but people generally go to great lengths to hide it. This hit me the same as reading about the peace protesters clashing with the white supremacists in Calgary....there are really people that think like that?

The worst part is, that's not the part of the story that made my blood boil. Q was obviously mentally unwell (stained parka in May, almost dreadlocked hair, twitchy erratic movements, random tearful outbursts). The worst part is that nothing happened.

The lady said it so loudly that for the driver to not hear he would have had to actually have his fingers in his ears and be going "LALALALALA" at the top of his lungs. But he didn't do anything. When he failed to act on his own a woman sitting behind me, let's call her A, went up, told him what had happened and asked that the woman be removed from the bus. He said that, as he hadn't heard it himself, he couldn't do anything. When the woman told him that the whole front of the bus had heard it at least five of us piped up and agreed. Still, nothing. Even Q, between telling the woman talking to the driver to get some class and shouting something about her pimp, admitted that she had said it. Nothing.

How can this be? The buses all have placards posted with the rules of transit on them. One of them is that people have the right to ride free of harassment. I don't really think that it's open for interpretation, but this driver made it that way. If nothing happens to him then the transit authority is basically telling everyone that all WHITE people have the right to ride free from harassment. I don't understand.

While I was still on the bus Q got off, threw a quick apology to A and the man she had originally insulted. He just sat there, through her hurried "I'm sorry", through people around asking if he was alright, staring at his hands. How do you react to that? This isn't Hickville, Texas. No one is on their guard to have racial slurs hurled at them here.

So that's the majority of the story. I have called the transit authority to complain. So have 6 or 7 others that were on the bus. When the answer to my complaint was "Ya, ya, I've already put a note in the managers box, ok?" I also called the newspaper and told them the whole thing. It's apparantely going to be in the next days paper. I might even be photographed for it. But I'm still feeling confused and thrown off guard. My naivety and belief in human goodness both got a bit of a shake and I think they might need some time to recuperate.

As a finishing note I'd like to throw in a quote I just found on another blog:

"Racism isn't born, folks, it's taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list."- Dennis Leary

Exactly How Wrong is it to Strangle People?

Are we talking burn in hell for all eternity wrongness? Fighting lawyers, politicians and crooked salesman for a tablespoon of cold water? Or merely a stint in purgatory? Or do you thing the wrongness is relative and gauged on a sliding scale, kind of like insulin? The more legitimate your reason, the less the wrongness. Example: going back in time to strangle Hitler before the Holocaust= A-OK. Strangling someone because they sat in your seat at the theatre= eternal damnation.

I need to know the answer to this question. Because I've recently started a month long session of the 5 day a week, 8 hour a day type of schooling. Which means I spend 40 hours a week with my class. This ain't no J-School class. There are no balanced, informed political debates. In our "Politics for Nursing" class someone asked what a premier is. Not WHO the premier is, that's kind of understandable, names are easy to forget. WHAT the premier is. Yesterday our class on liver failure began with the world's dumbest girl talking for 10 minutes about how she'd gone to a question forum with the candidates for our riding and no one should vote for the liberals because he was rude with the other candidates. Not that the liberals plan on cutting health care (sort of a nursing concern) or that the NDP is the only party that really has anything to say about retaining nurses. Just cause he's a big meany pants.

I was almost able to handle it when it was 2 days a week. I went to school, sat in awe at the things people said, came home, blogged about it and then went about my life for 5 glorious days, until I had to do it all over again. Now I don't get that kind of reprieve. And people seem to be taking this opportunity to really show what they've got. There's one girl that talks an average of once every minute and a half. I counted. Not asking questions or participating in a discussion. Just putting up her hand, interrupting the instructors and stating her opinion on everything from conflict resolution methods to abruptio placenta.

There is also the instructor. Or, to be fair, one of the three instructors. Two of them are great and have been my favorites since the first time they taught me. But one of them.....I don't have words. So, instead of a description, I will just post the tally we've been keeping in class:

Personal Stories Told That In No Way Connect to Class : 42
Declarations of Personal Greatness: 27
Excuses For Not Doing Her Job: 17
Mocking Students: 34
Sounds Effects Reminiscent of Epileptic Seizures: 12
Technological Failures: 8

That's in 4 hours, we didn't start keeping a tally until halfway through the last day. That's an average of one inane personal story every 6 minutes. It's fun. I know all about her car, her dog, her husband and the time she went to Disneyland. What I don't know anything about is the stuff that's going to be on my insanely scary 9 hour long exam that determines whether or not I can actually BE a nurse. So that's good.

They make me insane. On reflection, I'm pretty sure I could pull a "not legally responsible" or "way too Eff-ing crazy, your Honor" if I strangled one of them. I'm just still not sure about the morality part of it.

Staying Sane 101: How to Work Nomadism into an Otherwise Functional Adult Life.

I haven't blogged in a while. Somehow having the most free time since the beginning of the year translated into simply not having enough time to blog.

See, I've had 2 weeks off school. I'm only just, this week, starting up another round of staring listlessly towards the front-ish part of the classroom while attempting to keep my brain alive by folding origami paper balls. You can tell I'm thrilled. Anyhow, I've known for awhile that I was going to have those 2 weeks. Ever since I figured it out I've been joyously planning ways to fill them with things that make my heart happy. Here's what I did:

1. Made my parents drive the 6 hours each way from PR to Chilliwack so that I could see them. Visited. Hugged. Even nomads need love. Stayed with my Dad's family. Had a scintillating debate with my uncle about how not all Muslims are terrorists. Was informed that all bad things happen on the 7th of Ed (a month on the ancient Jewish calendar) by my aunt. As she is not actually sure what day on the normal calendar that is I'm deciding to ignore the predictions of doom. Had another debate with my uncle when he threatened to not order me a pizza because I requested spinach on mine, rather than sausage. Apparently vegetables on pizza are "crap."

2. Went to Van and visited B. Ate a LOT of sushi. Drank coolers in the sunshine. Attempted to sunbath in the wind and cold the next day. Froze myself almost to death, but got a sunburn (SUCCESS!). Shopped. Randomly ran into my little sister in La Vie En Rose. Had coffee with her like two grown-ups would do. Felt weird. Hung out with a group of very, very serious kareoke singers. Sang. Did not impress anyone.

3. Went to Tofino for 3 glourious days. Attempted to surf. Mainly failed, but caught one wave on my knees. Loved every second of falling off/attempting to catch waves. Hiked straight down a hill for an hour. Lost shoes in mudhole mid way. Hiked barefoot for half an hour. Got incredibly soft skin. Considered patenting process- cardio bootcamp/spa day. At the end of the hour hiked to the world's most awe inspiring beach. Questioned decision to travel ever again. Pondered possibility of becoming a hermit. Ate the world's best chocolate chip cookies and realized that, as a beach hermit, I would have a difficult time aquiring said cookies. Gave up hermit plan. Sunbaked in first ever bikini!!! Got wicked tan, thanks to recessive Metis genes. Hiked straight back up hill. Died a little and then continued to die for the next week everytime moved legs. Hung out with surf instructors, got very jealous of lifestyle. Learned to sing every single word to Desaparacido while drunk. Now feel fluent in Spanish. Ate life changing sushi (seriously). Learned how to make fruit salsa. Never, ever wanted to leave, but had to as:
a) not a good enough surfer to be instructor
b) selling spray painted t-shirts won't pay student loans
c) job being crazy and stealing empty bottles from people's garages is taken.

4. Returned to Kamloops. Spent almost a whole week recuperating. Watched a lot of movies. Became laziest person in the world and loved every minute of it. Almost bought bike (with streamers on the handlebars) but checked bank balance first. Dream of cruising down road with streamers flying crushed. Then realized that Kamloops is 90% uphill no matter which direction you go and felt better.

5. Went out to Barriere to visit second family. Went to Pow Wow, watched very cool native dancing. Ate bannock. Was, apparently, there to be hooked up with future husband (according to second mother) but didn't know that, so failed to fall magically in love with anyone. Got drunk. Very drunk. Somehow managed to explain single transferable voting to my second mom while shloshed. Very impressive, as I don't actually understand it when sober. Pet the dogs, threw the tennis ball for them a thousand times. Sat in the hot tub once, for five minutes, before getting way too drunk to handle hot water. Ate chocolate for breakfast (it kills the hungover shakes).

So. That's what I've done. You can see I've been far too busy and important (read: hungover) to blog. I anticipate a much better blogging to time ratio in the next three weeks....I'm tired of playing hangman with whoever is sitting next to me and plan to bring my laptop to class and play hangman online instead.

Regression is a Circle

It's actually kinda funny how life seems to move in a circle. I mean, they talk about it in pretty much every single new age-y book there is. The Lion King gets all the animals in the Serengeti to sing about it. Working in the hospice everyone is constantly talking about "the circle of life and death." But, as a general rule, they are talking about the fact that you are born, you live and then you have the potential to be turned into compost and grow plants to feed people but will, in actual fact, be buried in a big box or burnt and pollute the air just a little bit.

OK, so that's the big circle. I get it. Cicular. Awesome. But I wasn't aware until just recently that there's a lot of little tiny circles in that big circle, too. For example: my housing situation. I seem to be regressing in the housing world and doing it in a very,very circular manner (see visual aid 1). Or possibly a sideways bell curve. Or a straight line and now I'm just going backwards. I'm not sure, but for the sake of my first paragraph lets just go with circle. It's actually weird. Let me explain.

Step one forwards: I started out living in my parents house. That's normal, the average person lives in their parent's house when they are growing up.

Step 2 forwards: I moved to my cousin's house, then to the ranch, then after a series of short term things (Thailand, ranch one again, ranch 2)

Step 3 forwards: I moved into the dorms.

Step 4 forwards: After two years in the dorms I moved in with roommates.

The top of the circle?: I took off and spent a long time living in a random collection of hostels, Tim Horton's, Costco parking lots, TV rooms at Cambodian bars, kitchens and bus stations. Just for argument lets call that the top, the point of the circle where I start turning around. I know in the regular definition of living spaces (4 walls, you pay for it, it's generally safe and you have the ability to wash your hair) these might not have been what most people would define as the high point.....but it was fun.

And now it all starts to go backwards.

Step one backwards- I get a roommate again. But the second half of the circle is apparently not as much fun as the first half. This time, instead of a roommates that I can buy wooden "simple" signs for, who dress up like superheroes with me and bake tater tot casseroles, this time I get a girl who acts like she's 15, lets her dog shit on the floor and has loud sex that forces me to leave the house.

Step two backwards- I move back into the dorms. This time it isn't free. B does not live across the hall. Instead, across the hall lives a girl who spends equal amounts of time screaming at her boyfriend (SHUT UP! No, YOU shut up! I'm not doing that! YOU do it!) and laughing like a hysterical jack in the box. It's like living across the hall from a mental health case study and really I feel like there should be a PowerPoint on the wall asking me what medications I expect to be prescribed for this cut and dry case of bipolar disorder.

Step three backwards- I actually expect this one to be a good step. I think I may have maxed out the negative in 2009. So I'm going to move in with my uncle, aunt and cousins and look forward to it. I have nothing to rant about here.


THE FINAL STEP- I move back home. Actually another one I'm looking forward to ....but there's something anticlimactic about moving back home. I'm going to be an RN and my parents are still going to have to drive me to work.


Isn't that weird? I'm actually retracing my steps through time. It's like Father Time read my Dear John 2009 blog and decided to take me seriously, but accidently just set the dial on reverse and left it there.

Copycat

I love reading over other people's blogs and seeing them laugh about all their analytic stuff. So I decided to try it out. It took me about a month to finally get around to figuring out how to add tags or whatever they are. I still don't quite understand what I did, but it worked. So now my site is being tracked by internet things......I'm not exactly computer literate. I've only been signed up for a little while. I have one search query that directs people to my blog. Somehow 3 people have typed in EXACTLY

"How wearing sunglasses can be positive reinforcement."

Hmmm.

Dear 2009: 2008 wins

Dear 2009

We haven't had that much time to get to know each other yet. I know that we've only been together for two months, and one of those months was a short one. I just feel like if I let this go on for any longer it won't be fair to either of us.

2009, in the time we've spent together I've been almost homeless twice, been told that I am a horrible nurse and lived through personal financial crises that were resolved only by borrowing a lot of money, sorta the same effect you have had on the world in general.

I know this is hard to hear, but I just think my relationship with 2008 was much healthier. We were adventurous, '08 and I. At this exact time in '08 I was happily hungover and sleeping through a bus ride from Siem Riep to Bangkok, about to fly to India. '08 and I hitchhiked across Canada, we slept in Costco parking lots and befriended other parking lot hobos. We drank formadehyde based Thai beer, ate poutine from pie plates and got free muffins from the Tim Horton's night guy in Winnipeg. We expanded our horizons, learned new things and let the world come at us as it wanted to.

With you I'm starting to feel stifled. The adventures I had with 'o8 are something that never seems to happen with you, 2009. All we do is go to class and clinical. Your financial demands and extreme need for time commitment mean that I can't do fun things like go to Montreal for the weekend whenever I want to. You've turned me into someone that gets upset over the idea of sleeping on a floor rather than rejoicing over the thought of reduced rent.

I don't want to be harsh. I'm sure for someone with a need for stability you will be the perfect year. In this world there is someone that will love you and all your scheduled activites. I just think that you should be free to find that person and let me be free to go back to '08. I hope we can still be friends. Maybe we can hang out next week? '08 and I will be on the beach in Malaysia.

Love

Millie