Health, Humor, University, Work

How To Get A Girl Pregnant (The Telephone Theory)

“Let it be a lesson to you to be less busy in the future!”
– Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy

Calm down, minions, I’m not talking about me.  Today we bring you a morality tale of A) staying out of other people’s business and B) not exaggerating.

We have an EMT internship program on campus and all of our kids are highly trained to assist in medical emergencies, often they are our first responders.  But they, like us, are often dispatched to non-emergencies because of faulty (not to say completely false) information.

Yesterday we received a call that there was a pregnant woman with vaginal bleeding on the floor of a restroom and non-responsive.

Our valiant EMTs burst into the bathroom, surprising the poor girl (who was not unconscious but bent over the counter and probably wishing she was dead from both pain and embarrassment).
“You’ve had some vaginal bleeding?” an EMT asked professionally.
“Well, yes,” she answered, confused.
“How many months pregnant are you?”

No, the other kind of hysterical pregnancy.

There was a terrible pause.  She paled and clutched at the sink.
“I’m pregnant?!”

It turns out she had been brought low by menstrual cramps, excused herself from her companions and went to the restroom.  A concerned friend relayed this information in a rather garbled way to a another friend, who in turn relayed yet a more garbled version to another friend, who in turn called 911.  Thankfully all was sorted out with some profuse apologies, pain killers, and a vigorous telling off for the person who called us without having a clue what was going on. And so, my likely-red-faced darlings, let that be a lesson to you: get your facts straight.  Otherwise people end up hurt.  Or pregnant.

Humor

Riddle Me This

“I was so cold the other day, I almost got married.”
– Shelley Winters

There is a strange American phenomenon that has yet to be satisfactorily explained to me: the wearing of coats, or rather lack thereof.

Even when it’s freezing there will be hordes of people in shorts, opened toed shoes, and mere t-shirts, shivering in the biting wind.  When the rain pours down, I seldom see umbrellas, just lots of people with their collars turned up against the torrent or huddled in on themselves in misery.

It’s far below freezing throughout most of the country, certainly in our University town – why on earth are these children wandering about half naked?

Mere hours ago, they walked and lived with us. A tragic end.
Humor, Shopping, Weekend

Tales From Walmart

“Wal-mart… do they like make walls there?”
– Paris Hilton

Walmart is still not my favorite place to shop.  I admit there are numerous variations ‘twixt the Walmarts of different areas, but I really do believe our local one to be sort of horrid.  It’s disorganized and sometimes dirty, the salespeople have been unhelpful and often rude, and I’ve had several bad experiences with product quality.  But I suspect the real reason I avoid Walmart is because every time I enter its doors I meet the oddest people.

Saturday, Sadie needed someone to run her to the store for some last minute shopping and the place she requested was Walmart.  So, off we went to print pictures for Pieter – still in Belgium and France for another three months, snag laundry detergent, and shampoo.  We exchanged stores of odd adventures we’d each had in Walmart and crossed our fingers that we wouldn’t have one that day.  We made it through without incident until we were waiting in line and the great sliding doors of freedom were within reach…

When from behind us a man piped up.
“Do you see that baby?”

We both swiveled from the drooling child sitting in the cart in front of us to the man behind us.  He was in a wheelchair and had a pleasant face, but he must have been on several medications affecting his pigmentation because his skin was a strange color between gray and dark blue.  He was staring at the baby, Sadie and I alternatively.
“Yes, sir,” I answered his question.
“Well, do you know that I can make babies talk to me in my mind?”
“Oh?”  Sadie and I kept our eyebrows from climbing, but just barely.
“Yes,” he said firmly.  “I just made that baby wave at me.”

Cheap produce, home goods, and theology, all at a low price!

We both glanced at the child in question, still gnawing on the handrail of the cart and not paying much attention to anyone.
“See, I think they remember me from before they were born when they hear me in their mind.”
“Really?” I asked, not really knowing what else to say.
“Yes.  You know, like the Horse Whisperer.  Or the Dog Whisperer!  I like that show.  Look!  The baby’s waving at me again!”

It wasn’t.

We politely bade him good day and proceeded to checkout.  Walmart is a bizarre place!

Home, Humor

Now Is the Winter of Our Discontent!

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”
– Albert Camus

Will someone please tell me which of the jealous domestic appliance gods we’ve angered recently so that we can sacrifice the appropriate item (sock to washing machine, milk to back of fridge, etc.) and get on with it?

Wednesday when I got home, I noticed it was a bit chilly but I had to quick turnabout to go pick up J. so I just adjusted the temperature and figured all would be well by the time we got back.

For all their drool-worthy abs, chiseled chins, and muscled glory, the domestic gods are cruel masters.

Foolish, foolish C..  You know the domestic gods hate you.  When we got home it was colder – our furnace had thrown up its hands in defeat and was slumped uselessly in its closet, clicking and wheezing occasionally but for all of our pleading, threatening, and dancing around cabalistic signs and fires…nothing.  The handyman was duly summoned.

I had to take off work as J. had class so I went home…and waited.  He was an hour late and then only stayed about 10 minutes, the ultimate underlying problem being that our furnace is from the Neolithic Age.  Our pilot light, clogged with the grime of ages, mastodon hairs, ash from Vesuvius, and soot from the Industrial Revolution, can’t stay lit very long.  The quick fix is a thorough cleaning – which the handyman advocated but was, of course, too busy to do that evening.  I smiled tightly, pulled out my diary, and briskly inquired when he would be available next.  He stuttered, “Saturday,” and I wrote it down firmly in dark, indelible strokes.

The real solution is, of course, and entirely new unit.  And since apparently we’re not the only people in our building to have our furnaces give out recently, I’m hoping the landlord will fork over the funds.  In the meantime we’re guarding our small, flickering light like Vestal Virgins and wearing sweatshirts to bed.

Humor, Work

“You Keep Using That Word-“

“-I do not think it means what you think it means.”
– The Princess Bride, 1987

The word of the day, class, is “profiling.”

A member of the media came to the office the other day in a rage because his daughter had been given a parking ticket.  Apparently she was using his press/media pass to park wherever she wanted, which is all sorts of against the rules.  We tend to frown upon people claiming privileges that don’t belong to them, see yesterday’s post on decency.  But he came in all aflame with righteous indignation…and spoiled it all by lying and saying he was the one who had received the ticket and how dare we ticket him, and he would go to the administration with this –

Red cut him off by telling him that his daughter had already come in and admitted to misusing the pass, which took him aback, but he recovered swiftly and threw out an accusation.
“So, you’re ticketing my daughter for using my pass?  That’s profiling!”

Dear, dear. We seemed to have missed the point, haven't we?

Cut to yesterday in J.’s class, scene: a discussion of hiring and management.  A young man for some reason failed to grasp the problem in a case study of a manager refusing to hire a qualified applicant because he didn’t feel that “a timid Asian woman” would be able to handle the rigors of the job.  (Ah, shades of the Annual Anti-Harassment Seminar…)  J. pulled his jaw off the floor and tried to explain the many, many errors of this man’s thinking but to no avail.  His classmate came back with, “So a woman should automatically be hired even if she can’t do the job?  That’s profiling!”

Acquaint yourself with a dictionary.

Humor, Secretary, Snark, Work

People. Problems.

“As a connoisseur of human folly, I would have thought you impatient to be savoring these delights.”
“Of some delights, sir, I believe a little goes a long way.”
– Pride and Prejudice, 1995

You may not believe it, ducklings, from all of my snarkiness and eyebrow lifting, but I really do like people.  I enjoy meeting people and making friends.  And I’m often deeply impressed at the heights human nature can climb to.  Alternatively, I’m often deeply annoyed by how low some people can sink.

My trouble is (as per usual) that I work at a police department, the nature of which means that at least 50% of the people coming through our doors are in some sort of trouble.  The other 50% have caused some sort of trouble, and so don’t help my attitude.

Believe it or not, this sort of excellence isn't required. Although laudable.

Here’s my beef.  I have discovered, through 2+ years of observation of this sort of thing, that it is extremely easy to be a fairly good person.  No, really.  It’s a piece of cake!  Don’t take what’s yours, don’t say what isn’t true, don’t go out of your way to be obnoxious, and have some sort of basic theoretical understanding that your actions affect others.  It really is that simple.  You may still get a little moody, you may still tell the occasional exaggerated story, you may still have a no-good-very-bad-day when the universe conspires against you and you lash out, but to all intents and purposes you will be a Decent Human Being.

And yet, in spite of the simplicity of this solution, there seems to be whole hordes of people incapable of being Decent Human Beings.  They are determined to be jerks.

Take for instance the late incident of a man whose daughter got into a minor car accident with a foreigner.  The daughter gave false/faulty insurance information and when the foreigner, who assumed the error was his, asked politely for the correct information, Daddy told him a series of lies about insurance in America, and ordered him not to contact his daughter again.  All to keep from reporting his daughter at fault in the accident, apparently.

Or the various attempts to hit others with their cars recently.

Or the Lothario-like attempts of seduction by married coworkers.

All entirely avoidable!  See?  Jerks.

Humor, Office, Secretary

Really? No, Really?

Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman – not the attitude of the prospect.
– W. Clement Stone

Dear Salesperson Who Thinks You Are Clever,

You’re not.  You are approximately the four hundred twenty-seventh person this week to try to get access to an administrator by claiming to be a close personal friend.  I am not quite an idiot, thank you, and I have heard every single one of the techniques you will try to get around me.

“He’ll see me, he asked me to come in,” you say.
I doubt that, since he’s been on vacation most of this week and plans on being out of the office for a good chunk of the next as well.

“He’s a very old friend of mine, but I don’t know how to get in touch with him,” you try next.
That’s funny.  I’ve got phone numbers, email, blogs, Facebook, googling, and any number of ways to get in touch with my “very old friends.”

“Don’t you know who I am?!” you cry in desperation.
No.  And since it’s my job to most relevant people, that ought to tell you something.

See, Small Dog may be a minor secretary way down on the totem pole, but she’s good at her job.  And it would take a far cleverer salesman than you to get past the gates.  You may leave your card and contact information like everybody else.

Have a nice day.

– C.

Health, Humor

Cutting Cutting Corners. And Ice Cream.

“This just in!  The secret to weight loss revealed: eat less, move more!”
– a friend’s Facebook status

Despite that three day nosedive into blissful sloth and inactivity, I’ve been doing rather well on the health end recently.  See, I’ve finally learned some of the keys to weight loss and exercise – none of them revolutionary to anyone with a functioning brain, but helpful nonetheless.

Principle the First: Garbage in, garbage out.  I’ve hit my mid-twenties and my metabolism has hit the wall, which makes me want to hit things.  Lots of hitting, but I digress.  I now understand why Mum eats large salads and few deserts, this dizzying cocktail of hormones that is feminine existence means that small things will have big effects on my system.  If I eat junk food I will feel awful.  Period.  Plan meals accordingly.

Principle the Second: exercise will trim the fat, not the skeleton.  I will never again go through the cycle of wanting to be thinner, working my bum off for months, and then throwing myself down a well of despair when my ribcage hasn’t shrunk to give me a longer waist.  My skeleton isn’t going anywhere…but the underused muscle will tone up because –

Principle the Third: underneath this shell of laziness and love of caramel, I actually do have a pretty nice little figure.  Willowy?  No.  Slender?  Ha.  Hourglass and the hallmark of a different era?  Yes.  But with a little effort, fabulous.  However –

Principle the Fourth: all the potential in the world is wasted if I don’t actually do anything about it.  Therefore one must watch the calories and make sure the ones going in are good, indulge rarely, snack better, and work out everyday.

Result: I’ve lost 5lbs in two weeks.  And since this is in no way tied to New Year’s Resolutions, the urge to quit hasn’t reared its ugly head.

Humor, Life

Cat. Nap.

Sleeping is no mean art:  for its sake one must stay awake all day.  ~Friedrich Nietzsche

I unabashedly spent the three day weekend on the sofa bundled in a blanket, napping cat-like in a sunbeam, and watching PBS documentaries.  I only pried myself up to drive up north with J. to see a visiting dear friend, and yesterday to go get some much needed Indian food.  Then it was straight back to the sofa because I was worn out.  I should have cooked, cleaned, or done laundry, but I didn’t.

There is something about this time of year that makes me tired, not to say exhausted.  I feel sluggish and snappish – though, thank heaven, not depressed.  To boil it down, I feel like I need to hibernate and a nefarious someone or something is stopping me.  Jerk.

Humor, Life, Work, Working Out

A Long Winter’s Nap…Please?

“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion… I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”
– Kurt Vonnegut

My doves!  My beloveds!  My fuzziest of chinchillas, and cuddliest of kittens!  I have neglected you again and I throw myself on your mercy with an account of what exactly has been going on, that you will be more inclined to forgive my hideous inattention thereby.

Small Dog isn't in right now. Please leave a message.

Last week was the first week of the new term and I was chained to my desk hiring and firing a double handful of students, and sending off about a million reports to various people and agencies.  Wise had her baby two weeks early, throwing Hennessy, Susie, and myself into a frenzy of reassigning duties, taking on new responsibilities, and (naturally) visiting the new baby.  Susie then threw herself onto the new year’s budget and has not emerged yet.  I’ve been working on projects with the investigators on a series of bizarre cases (drug addictions, bookstore thefts, and a mother who thinks her daughter is dating a murderer.  She’s not, by the way) and helping with a few projects to prep for an upcoming VIP visit.  Also a major art exhibition took up residence in our museum requiring an unbelievable amount of work.

I started working out again – in advance of the obligatory New Year gang bang of guilt, thank you very much – and my body is punishing me.  P90X yoga is not for the faint hearted, I can barely make it through the whole session without swearing/crying/having to be physically dragged away from leftover Christmas candy by J.

This week I have been enjoying being slowly consumed alive by paperwork, a couple of work scandals that I found particularly demoralizing, and good old fashioned exhaustion.  My sense of humor took a bit of a beating yesterday, but it’s nursing it’s bruises and we hope to be a full functioning snark capacity soon.

And you, ducklings?  How has the start of the year been treating you?