Friday Update

Friday morning, I had to drive out to the distant campus for yet more mannequin simulation exercises. The first was a kid with asthma who needed a nebulizer treatment. The second was a diabetic with hypoglycemia who needed IV dextrose. The last was heparin administration.

As always, I was partnered with the lovely, very young, blonde woman with the two nose jobs and the perfect makeup and the ever present wide-eyed, panicked look in her eyes.

That almost makes it sound like I don't like her, doesn't it? In fact, I like her a lot. She's pure anxiety and terror beautifully personified, and aside from that, she's very, very smart and almost maniacally over-prepared for every situation. But she's frozen and that translates to her being nearly frozen in every moment.

After the simuations, we go into a room and our performance is critiqued. My strategy is to immediately admit to my mistakes and then push forth and praise everything my partner did well. She is often criticized for not being pro-active enough, for not taking charge, for not jumping into the scenario feet first. (And it's not easy for her anyway, but it's especially not easy for her to do when I'm in the room because I have one of those personalities that gets into a space, unpacks itself, looks around, and starts barking orders at anyone in the vicinity.)

Anyway, we did fine today. (In my opinion. And my opinion is the only one that matters when it comes to my experiences.)

No mannequins died, in case you were wondering.

I was home by 10:45 and Dave (who came home late last night from Montana bearing chocolates and dangly jasper earrings) was still in bed cuddling with a Gray Kitty. I changed out of my scrubs into street clothes and Dave got up and washed his head and we went out to lunch.

Over lunch, we decided to go see Thor: Ragnarok (on opening day because we're insane). We drove home, dropped off my leftovers (katsu-don) and turned around and went right back to the theater and bought tickets for the 1:00 p.m. 3-D showing. We were too full from lunch to have anything other than a couple of coffees, so we bought those and found our assigned seats and figured out how to recline them to their full extent so that we were practically horizontal.

So the movie? It was directed by Taika Waititi, whose movies I think are often brilliant and moving (Boy and Hunt for the Wilderpeople are among my favorites), so I was expecting a lot. Maybe too much. It was okay. It was fun and interestingly cast, but thin on the backstory (which for makes for a rich film experience). I mean, you'd almost think it was a superhero movie or something. (A former friend used to call movies like that "Check your brain at the door" movies, because you don't need your brain to enjoy it. But don't tell The Brain that, because if there's one thing The Brain hates, it's having to sit in the lobby for two hours while The Id romps around in a movie theater marveling at how stupidly beautiful Chris Hemsworth is.)

We came home via Target, where we walked in to buy three things and came home with a shopping cart full of things. How? What? Who knows?

After unpacking our treasures, we went over to say hi to Kelly and Kevin, look at their bathroom (which is currently a kind of open pit with plywood flooring and a vision), feed Lester a handful of treats, drop off a rent check, and use my Kermit-green stethoscope to listen to Kelly's heart which has recently been making some interesting sounds (including the muffled creaking that I heard today).

That was practically it for me. I was so exhausted that I changed into my pajamas and ate my leftovers and was in bed asleep by 6:45 p.m.

Of course that meant that I was up by 8:45 p.m. and have been unable to get back to sleep. (It's almost 2:00 a.m. now.)

The rest of this weekend is devoted to study for an exam next week and a paper that's due on Monday that I haven't even started to think about starting yet. That should be fun, right?