Whingeing and Ranting

I’ve made a kind of promise to myself to do something, anything, that isn’t work, house things or TV (although I usually combine the last two), and at the moment it’s this thing, for want of a better name. Given my terribly dilettante approach to regularity, I don’t want to say “my blog” because I think I’d have to duck my head and gulp at the same time. Which I did, even if you couldn’t see it.

I don’t offer any guarantees that I have anything interesting to say - to all three people who read this (which is, quite frankly, a relief) - but I refuse to only go to work and come home and go to work, occasional dinners out notwithstanding, and feel guilty about how much luckier I am compared to large swathes of others. I refuse, dammit.

I’m having trouble writing (or doing anything) for long periods of time. Used to the brevity of twitter and facebook, that usually isn’t a problem, but I have other things I want to do, and the lack of attention span is a complete pain in the backside.

It’s mostly attributable to my job, where if the phone rings, I have to answer it, and generally stop whatever I’m doing to take up a new thing, and then return to whatever I was doing in the first place. Or go back to the first thing, do the second thing - I don’t always get to decide, because it isn’t up to me whose patient goes first, it’s up to who’s bleeding right now.

As an aside whinge, I can pretty much be guaranteed that if I’m doing something long and complicated and time-sensitive, the phone will ring. Every. Single. Fucking. Time. And if I’ve had to get up more than once, the phone will ring just as I should be reading the end result. For anyone in the know, I’m talking about auto-adsorptions, elutions, antibody things that aren’t in cards and multiple phenotypes - where one patient needs all the things to check all their things. (Why can’t all phenotyping methods be the same? Why dammit, why?)

With most of the things I have to do, it hardly matters whether I have to stop and start a bit, because a lot of the tasks I do are quick, so big whoop, I do it my way. But that intrusion of the phone is like a claw under my scalp, trying to scratch its way out every time.

And whinging aside (see what I did there?), it has taken a toll on my attention span. So here I am, doing this thing to redress the balance.

Having stared at the cursor a bit, I’ve gone on to check twitter and facebook, and holy crap, a passenger plane brought down by a missile? What the shit? To go all sweeping generalisation on everyone’s arse, the people in charge are really screwing this up. How are we still having armed conflicts? Again, why, dammit, why?

What makes me even angrier, and I know I’m going to sound like a lone hippy yelling “hey, man” against the dark, is how this will be turned into a run around complete with sabre-rattling and blame. Continued demonisation of one group of people over another. There’ll be arguments in tea rooms. Please. As if anyone in our happy group of campers (all employed, have roofs over their heads and food on the table) can possibly understand what it’s like to be either a) so desperate that violence is the only light at the end of the tunnel, or b) have violence as the only escape because culturally, that’s all you have had. I don’t think I do, and I try for an open mind.

Violence in large chunks is simple arse-hattery, and understanding why someone acts like a shit doesn’t excuse them, but demonising only perpetuates the shit. And I think around here I’m also ranting about a really crappy graphic I saw on twitter last night about how “Muslims” are trained to be terrorists. To flip that on its head, the largest powers on this earth are primarily judeo-christian democracies: and bombing the crap out of a third-world country isn’t going to win you any trips to heaven, despite the idea that might is right, or rather, God is on OUR side, not theirs. Bollocks.

We’re better than this. We’re smarter than this. The assumption that people doing bad things are a them is a comforting one, but also stupid. Just stupid. We’re all us, kids. All people.

Right, well I haven’t been clear, but I’m going now. Love and peace, peeps.

The Stocking Filler (Late, or Very, Very Early)

I should complain about the weather more often: yesterday the mercury rose to summer-like levels.

It's 5:00 am and an anaesthetist is waiting in a small room. A cockroach observes from an air vent, waiting for the doctor to leave: there is a crumb on the floor with the cockroach's name on it. Or would be if the names of cockroaches could fit on the surface of a crumb.

Yesterday small lad was playing his new Lego Star Wars III game - this was his best Christmas ever, or he was imagining it (I paraphrase). Since Christmas, if it isn't the DS, it's the (actual) Lego. It's so nice to get Christmas presents right! Onya Santa! Earlier in the morning he rescued me from my 2am sleeplessness - he doesn't remember what happened, but he appeared around three, bleary eyed and looking for a cuddle, so I escorted him back to bed and lay down with him for a bit. It's the quickest way to get the light off, believe me. Aside from the back pain from sleeping on the edge of the bed, I had a lovely sleep. So did he, which works out nicely for everyone.

It's 5:02 am: Doctor Darling holds Gemma close in his manly arms as her tears dry prettily on her cheeks. They move apart and look deeply into each other's eyes, finally acknowledging their feelings for one another. Gemma tilts her head up, lips parted softly, and the breathless sexual tension is marred by the man in the front row eating popcorn with more noise than an industrial grader breaking up a road.

I surfaced somewhere around seven, but husbandly was sprawled in our bed, so it was off to the lounge with me. Sometimes I have trouble re-adjusting my sleep pattern. Meh. So it goes.

It's 5:10 am. There are cats. They are all thin. They sit in rows. They look alert. They do not shuffle. They watch us silently, us people hiding behind a gate. I expect Alfred Hitchcock to appear any minute. I hope he is walking some dogs.

Tonight I'm in the glory of Blood Bank, forever, amen, whatever. Whatever is, for the third year running, the most annoying word in the English language. Lucky it.

It's 5:20 am. Inside the room we watch the rain rill prettily down the windows, four girls in armchairs. By turns we feel: romantic, intellectual, consumptive or restless. It depends on how the light strikes us. Or perhaps it's the whalebone in our corsets.

Who reads this blog? Somebody must be, or I would have no stats (unless Google really is mucked up), but who are you? Not that I'm complaining, it's much nicer to have an audience rather than shooting these missives into the ether. But the country stats are weird (I'm geographically limited - I don't have many overseas friends). Please email me, go on, you know you want to....

It's 5:30 am. My alarm has gone off; the power is out and it is pitch dark. I have barked my shins on very piece of furniture in the house. I am trying to get to my phone, because the alarm is going off for a minute every five. It is annoying, but it will do as a torch. As I finally reach it (face down, I'm navigating by sound, not light), the alarm cuts off and out of the speaker comes James Earl Jones' voice reciting "The Raven". My hand stops, a foot, two feet - how can I tell? - above it. Well I'm not picking it up now. I've just stepped into a horror movie.

The sun is coming up. The mornings always look grey here. Our ground-floor windows face another five-storey building, and south, and haven't been cleaned in a very long while. Will you sleep better tonight, knowing that? You probably will. Unless your fevered brain is tortured trying to imagine finely-gritted windows imparting a grey tinge to the morning sky. Imparting. Tinge. Dig it.

It's 5:50 am in the airport and four security guards are running away from the terminal. They pelt across the tarmac as though the proverbial hounds have been released. Big Matty just took his shoes off at the check-in desk and the smell is terrific.

Is facebook a bad idea if friends read your entries, but never post any of their own? I had a friend comment (verbally, with mouths and everything) on something I'd posted, and then a guilty moment, because I thought I hadn't read my feed properly. I hadn't seen anything from my friend for, like, you know, ever. But when I got home, I hadn't missed any posts. So I wonder, is it a bit like watching someone through a window, to see if you can get a glimpse of them in their undies? Or picking their nose? (I suppose that depends on the friend). I don't really worry about twitter, so colour me contradictory on concerns.

It's 6:05 am. A man lurks in a rhododendron bush just outside a door. As people walk out he intones "You'll be baaack" in a deep voice. As they enter he squeaks.

In five minutes time I will get up and shut down machines. Then I'll start them back up again. It sounds rather futile, doesn't it? Then I'll put things away. Or not, because probably the phone will ring. And I will answer it. And I will have to do something because of the person who has rung me. I want a big red button in this lab. An emergency stop like we have at TAFE. I never cared about the big stop buttons when I was at TAFE, but now I don't have one, I'd like one. I'd like to hit the emergency stop button because it is all big and red and funky. But of course, I'd then have to explain why I hit it (because we have to call in an electrician to start everything up again), and I don't think a goofy grin and an "I felt like it, because the button is big and red and funky" would cover me.

It's 6:20 am. Heavens, is that the time?

It's time for me to stop fooling around in bits and pieces and start fooling around in earnest. (Not Ernest, I don't know where he's been aside from the squeaking as I came in to work tonight). Take care of yourselves, all ten peoples.

That Hoary Cripple, With Malicious Eye

I've spent the last six days in bed! Or on the lounge! Same thing! I was so bored today I nearly painted my nails! Black, but still! I feel very weird! I'm in at work tonight! Not sure this is a good idea! I have fifteen minutes before the trauma specimen finishes and I have to do a crossmatch! No pressure! I think I may lose my voice! That would be trouble! Semaphore doesn't work down phones! I've tried! The phone wound up rebounding into my face after catching on my out-flung arm! These exclamation marks are giving me a headache!

The fog has settled in for the night; the streetlights are hazy and soft, illuminating little. The road, bordered by untended grassy fields, dips ahead into the black. The mist catching on the grasses looks like frost; cold and breathtaking. Visibility is at ten metres and dropping: a man stands in the long grass by the side of the road. Unseen, he leans down to fuss at something at his feet, then looks at the road. He can hear nothing, but the fog - the blasted fog - could be hiding anything. He moves in front of the unseen bundle and reaches down. He pulls ropes up to his shoulder, turns and pulls the bundle behind. It could be a rolled-up rug. It could be.

Husbandly caught the lurgy as well, but he, natch, is shaking it off after a day or so. Shouldn't there be some rule about taking it in turns for illnesses? Not that I wish him sick, but it seems a bit unfair when I subsist on four hours sleep a day Mondays and Tuesdays while toddling off to work all night. Ah. Perhaps I have put my finger on the problem. Hmmm. Will have to consider options, yes?

The three sisters tended house for their ailing mother, a cliche in four parts. None of the sisters married; their mother and eventually they themselves discouraged such things. They grew their own vegetables and took in sewing when times were lean, or, not so lean, for special occasions. Over the years their prowess with needles earned them celebrity. They might have been known as witches, else.

My ten minutes is well up and has been for a while; there's been a problem. Now I have to wait for a new sample. Lucky me. I shall leap (leap!) into action when it arrives. I really do need a life instead of alternating odd paragraphs. I would have liked to have taken some more time off but ditto the needing a medical certificate and unable to get to doctor; I'm not so badly off as I was, I'm just tired. Or...

There were cigarette butts jammed into a styrofoam cup by the back door, squashed into dirty liquid that might have been coffee. She hoped none of the staff knew she came out here, but didn't care enough to stay inside. She could sit by that bed for only so long before the walls closed in, the smell became unbearable, the scream inside her head no longer un-screamed. The hospital was tiny - he should have been flown out to Sydney yesterday. There was a storm, she could feel the acid dripping off the words - more important people than her husband would be flown out first. Then the storm. He was still here and no longer conscious.

Ferrets dance in my fevered brain and I feel I should explain; the darkness and dreck. Nah. I just like the word ferret. I wish I had brought my pillow tonight though, if only to be able to rest. Every now and then. Between samples, as it were. At least I no longer have to do fertility counts (yes, that is what it sounds like - Gentlemen, if your swimmers were slow, I salute you - they were easier to count). I sometimes miss some of the things I've done in my career. I told small lad about being an enucleator for the Eye Bank (yes, removal of eyes for donation). It was a brief period. His response? "Yuck." Succinct. I like it.

I hear the sea booming at the shoreline through the crack of the window and wonder if I should be finding it relaxing. I smell jasmine from the trellis just under the window: the night should be warmer so the scent of jasmine can herald some promise. The smell of flowers should always be warm, because the first time I smelt gardenia was at a funeral. The body was cold so the smell was stale.

See? Lots of detail in the unwritten words. It is long past midnight now, I had to break off to do all sorts of work and ... stuff. I am going to put this in under Septemeber, because I like temporal upsets (it's like I have my own TARDIS). I would sing if I had a song to sing, but in lieu of singing I shall spare your eardrums and simply say, if they held upper-class twit of the year, someone would claim discrimination. It would be an open event for twits of all socioeconomic dispositions. There's a thought, yes?

My Little Horse Must Think It Queer

I wish to sleep far more than I do. Failing time I would choose to sleep more deeply and all-round under the radar. Today's carnival of dreams involved Nathan Fillion looking concerned, but I could only see half of his face - as if I was too short and trying to see him across a shiny table. His face was reflected in the surface with something strange about his mouth. I climbed on something to see better and he didn't have a mouth, it was a black concrete railway tunnel. He held it open and I kept waiting for the scream, but there were only whispers, dark and deep, dry and dead, his eyes were dead, but it wasn't him it was a blonde man whose eyes should have been red. Then I was standing in the lab trying to spray the air with deodorant but I was holding the can in some spastic way so I sprayed my fingertips and got that foaming-because-you've-hit-to-close-to-the-nozzle.

Sleeping during the day isn't all it's cracked up to be.

I found a note to myself about zombies feasting on brains, with no tie to Nathan Fillion so far as I'm aware. I can't figure out the appeal of les zombis to anyone since I find them pretty naff (I have seen the enemy and he is a shambling corpse). The potential for metaphor is enormous, if completely unsubtle and lost in the bits-keep-falling-off-and-there-are-fluids-and-teeth! I have enough fluids, including other people's, to deal with, thank you very much. Besides, imagine the smell.

I have rediscovered Robert Frost (and apologia of a not very formal nature to anyone looking for more Robert Frost than my titles and this paragraph). I have words singing through my head when I'm not asleep. That it may be preventing my own use of words is troubling me only slightly. The music of words is enough for anyone if they know how to listen and the woods are lovely, dark and deep.

For Christmas I will be getting a Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver - Tenth Doctor - which I suspect will be a boomerang back to small lad since he was supposed to hide it while I forgot about it when it arrived. Instead I had a rehash of "Partners in Crime" in small lad-speak. He wants to try the pointing of two sonic devices together. His sonic screwdriver - Eleventh Doctor - is now part of his school kit, in that it goes in the side pocket of his bag and gets carried everywhere. I love that he lives in his head.

Plumber's cracks abound around me at the moment. There is a lot of work going on around the lab and at home there have been workmen. Of the plumber's crack variety, not the serious eye candy sort. Dammit.

Once upon a time there was a frog who had once been a parrot. He also tried out monkey-ness, being a teapot, half-a-bee, a barfly and eventually gave up to live in a puddle. The end.

I Have Stood Still and Stopped the Sound of Feet

I have a notebook in my lap, torch in one hand and my pen in my teeth whenever I have to clap. I sit in a darkened high school auditorium, with husbandly twiddling his thumbs next to me. We sit in the mosh pit, though I doubt it ever gets used as such.

On stage, years three-four-five-six are performing in the annual school musical and small babies are crying throughout the audience. The lighting cues are being missed, and the kids are bravely carrying on, singing their hearts out and barely forgetting their lines. The microphones the leads are using are screeching occasionally and still an improvement on the matinee last week. Unfortunately the bitchy lead (who must be wearing the latest and greatest brands, and pity the poor fools who aren't - to wit, the leads) has no microphone, so we're all missing some dramatic tension on that one.

The younger grades were on at the beginning and will come on for the big finish ("Up In Lights", "Can't Stop the Music" and some tripe called "Pots and Pans"). At the moment they're in the balcony above us all and the volume from up there is getting louder at every cheer and clap. I'd like to think they're really enjoying the show but chances are it is the influx of sugar at intermission from the cupcake stall.

Small lad is cross with me because I wouldn't let him get a cupcake - the line was out the door - and then he was cross because he wanted to go home and I wouldn't let him do that either. I am a mean mother.

The mum-and-brood who were sitting next to us in the first half have run away. I hope it had nothing to do with the juvenile note passing going on between husbandly and myself. Or rather, from me to him. As he twiddled his thumbs. Seriously, he does that.

In front of us is a lovely little girl who might be three. I seem to have made a friend. So far she has told me her whole family's names and now we're on to the plot of the Lion King. Now she's showing me some very nifty dance moves.

The action of the play is winding up on stage. Dad of the bitchy lead (who I'm pretty sure played a similar role last year) has just come out on stage and read her the riot act, including the priceless gem of "My daughter, a snob" while he hangs his head. I can't help but think that he's come to his parenting late since he's mentioned several times before this as buying her anything she wants.

Oh, the small kids are being moved back onto the stage and my friend in front of me is showing me the splits, some nifty hand movements and just asked me to spot her while she climbs on the chair. Glad to, keed.

Small lad is on stage now and has his tense face on, oh dear. It turns out later that he is very tired, but right now I'm trying to will happy thoughts at him.

I have more, but in reality I type in the fluorescent lights of the lab and I have things to do: thrills (well, blood) galore and Monty Python playing in the background. He likes traffic lights.