mystic_savage

WARNING:  icky and gross parts ahead:

Just saw the video of an autopsy that is shown to PATH 521 students prior to their observing an in-person autopsy.  Was thinking about seeing a real autopsy, but am now undecided.  The video was fine; but it was a lot of information to absorb, and it took only about 40 minutes whereas a real autopsy takes much longer.  Parts of it were distinctly icky (as expected) but mostly it was just interesting.  The method used was the Wirkow method, where the organs are examined in the body first before removal.  I did feel a little sick when they got into the lungs -- the woman had emphysema from being a long time smoker, and she basically drowned in her own mucous.  When they expressed that mucous I felt faint and had to look down at my notebook and take a notes for a few minutes before I felt like I could look up again.  The body fat was also gross, even though this woman wasn't fat.  Thinking about how much fat there is in my own body kind of squicks me out.  The brain seemed beautiful when they removed it -- I was unprepared for that. 

Feel much more invested in my health now & (typically narcissistic) hope that when I die the inside of my body looks good -- organs in good health, clear arteries, not much fat, etc.  Much work ahead.  Feel like I should go for a short walk now.

Tabitha and I decorated Eric's desk area for his return to the office today.  It was done along a "welcome back to the WEST coast" so everything is mid-70's groovy.  We left peace signs on all his stacks of paper, covered up his files with a sarong, hung a bamboo curtain and a macrame plant holder (with string from the autopsy suite), and liberally scattered albums around on his desk--the Who's Tommy album, Earth Wind & Fire, Simon & Garfunkel, Jefferson Starship.  Also left a tiger-print pillow on his chair with a hand-lettered sign that said "Keep on Truckin' -- Eric will be back July 8th".  It looked a bit like this:

Oh yeah -- I forgot to metnion the half-melted wizard/tree trunk candle and the incense holder. 

Eric's reaction was great -- he felt "totally happy to be back" and said this really made his day. 

Yay!

Somebody upstairs noticed that I pummeled through four dictation files in an hour and wants to give me a transcription test.  Lots of political push-pull between the main office and this division about using me for transcription back-up and it may not happen, but ten years down the road I'd much rather be a work-from-home transcriptionist than an all purpose all the time secretary.  Color me optimistic.

UW recently hosted a pocket film contest with the theme of "What Do You Do at the UW?" 

Winners are here:  http://uwpocketmedia.org/2009-winners/  and the first two are highly watchable, each under 2 minutes.

My very cool closest gamer supervisor and I just rolled to see who had to serve on the Department's Capital Equipment Team.  Highest number "won" the honor.  He rolled the highest number.  WOOT!

Went to the doctor's office yesterday. Have a handful of diagnoses, antibiotics, allergy pills, and a referral to lung x-ray if things don't clear up by next week. And I'm going into work -- just running late.


EDIT: got sent home by my supervisor as soon as he saw me. Kind of relieved. I had to drag myself to the bus stop & slept on the bus on the way there. But also kind of depressed. Either way, going back to bed soon.

Had a good performance review experience yesterday. I got mostly "meets expectations" and a few "exceeds expectations" with one "outstanding" (on "cultural compentency--demonstrates an awareness of patients' and coworkers' views, traditions and actions in light of individual cultures--respectfulness shown to coworkers"). My numerical average was 3.5 on a 5 point scale, well within the "meets standards" area. My manager's comments:

"Virginia is a hard-working, intelligent, considerate, and good-natured employee who is quickly starting to understand and excel at the complex nature of her position. She has created professional relationships with both faculty and staff, who are increasingly relying on her for assistance and support. Virginia has taken a leadership role in the Division's recent employee feedback and satisfaction program. She treats anyone at her desk with respect and kindness regardless of their attitude toward her or the Division. I look to her for her consistently outstanding work, thoroughness, and ability to be a team player. Virginia is a pleasure to work with, and hopefully will continue to grow as a member of the team."

Goals for improvement were to spend more time soliciting work from the faculty who are hesitant to ask for help, work on time management, and to do more about keeping the conference room clean.

I'm enjoying this morning -- have an extra hour at home before leaving for the pain clinic appointment. Woke up naturally, rather than by alarm clock or kids. I can't remember the last time I was able to do that. Plus, my housemates are going to be out of town today & tomorrow and I don't have the kids tonight, so I'll have some space & privacy tonight. Have decided (with the small amount of defiance that stems from a small amount of guilt) to blow off the workshop tonight and come home and just be in the house alone. It's been four months since I've had the house all to myself.

Spent this weekend at Duwamish, watching the kids at Kevin's place. The spontaneous conversations in the community were great -- there are some stellar people living there right now. Most of yesterday I just hung around outside the common house, talking to other adults whose kids were playing outside. Jen brought out a large platter of food and kept replenishing it, and it was just...nice. So very glad not to be involved in the business of the community, but it's nice to and connect with people on an occasional basis.

A few worries, of course -- my supervisor wants to do some "goal setting" with me at work. I hate goal setting. Find that it is spectacularly ineffective. Told him I'd send him a list of the goals I'm already currently working on & he was glad to hear it. But now I have to send him a list. So far I've got "maintain a sustainably low level of effort and expectations," "achieve a personal best of 60 days in a row without perpetuating workplace violence," and "limit the amount of erotica written on the job to three posts a week". What do you think?

At some point, I'm going to sit down and write down what my real goals are, and then I may be asking for your help to turn them into workplaceese. Mostly, my real goals are about getting my ass out of bed, to work on time, sit down in the frickin' chair and stay there regardless of whatever pain I'm in or whatever emotional torment happens along on a given day. To show up, stay there, & be productive while I'm there. The other "goals" I have are for myself as a person -- be pleasant, be helpful, do what I can to make other people's days easier while still being authentic. If you have suggestions of things I can include in my list of goals, please feel free to comment.

But there's never any shortage of stuff to worry about. Am interested now in getting downtown and enjoying a few extra minutes at the coffee shop between buses. Hope you all have a great day.

I'm still irritable in spurts, but they seem to come & go. Reminded that I've been off of SSRIs now for seven months and am still managing well, considering, you know, history and chemistry and worldview and stuff. Had a good, quiet, productive day at work though...no struggles there. And the kids are liking drama camp. And I'll be asleep in another half an hour, no problem.

Started reading my journal tonight, from when I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2005. In that time there has been so much change, a huge, huge amount of change. It's maybe no wonder I'm a little nuts? Although, to be fair, I was more than a little nuts to start off with. But in a good way.

Gratitude-ness today: got a package in the mail with birthday presents from Ed & Katy. The card was awesome -- Katy made it, and it may be the most beautiful card I've ever gotten. It went straight up on my wall. Got two yiddish books from Ed (which i can't wait to read!!!) and an Alice Hoffman novel from Katy (which I've already started reading!!!). Had a bath tonight, a long, hot one. Ate a good breakfast this morning -- the cafeteria workers at UWMC have started to get to know me a bit, and I feel like they always look for the most perfectly cooked pieces of bacon for me. And I found the perfect compass-on-a-chain pendant for my steampunk outfit, but it also looks good with my real clothes. And--I've decided I'm going to check out Norwescon this year. Poke my head into a few sessions & get a sense of whether it's my thing or not. (From the session descriptions it seems very much my kind of thing, particularly the writer workshops. But I'm speaking more about atmosphere.) Allen gave me a ride home from the workshop last night & we had a mini-date & that was my dose of real love for the next few days. So there is a lot to be grateful for, as always.

Today I:
woke up with a headache, overslept, missed a bus by half a block, made a dumb pedestrian mistake and was almost hit by a car, was late to work anyway, discovered that i'd left the door open all weekend, screwed up a dictation, lost emotional control in front of my supervisor and another co-worker and told him to just fire me already, and now am sitting back at my computer and can't seem to stop crying. Utterly humiliated. One inch, people. I'm one fucking inch away from completely letting go of reality. Stupid reality. Who needs it? You know what I need? A fucking drink.

2:20 -- edit: While not completely better, I am now calmer. Had another short temper tantrum around noon, but I've dosed myself with melatonin & can make it until 5. Plus--you know, all that virtual support. Thanks all.

There's a Program Assistant job in Pathology & it's posted on the UW website.  It's actually a receptionist-plus-office-assistant position, extremely busy.  On the plus side, the days go quickly and the benefits are great.  Once you're in, Pathology hires from within.  The person who was holding that position (since August) is now moving up to work with the accessioners.  And you'd be working with a really mixed group of people, some really, really cool people (like me) and some passing-as-mundane people who aren't really.

This isn't quite as entry level as it might seem from the job description.  We need someone mature enough to handle the unexpected and able to cope with the calls from surgery looking for Dr. Whoever right now.  But if you're looking for administrative work in the Seattle area, consider it.  This particular job is about as secure as any job will ever be.  And it would be a nice entrance into working at the U.

Anyone who wants further details can email me:  mysticsavage@gmail.com.

Posted via email from mysticsavage's posterous

UPDATE: We got an email from our HR people about an hour after I posted this...the state has instituted an immediate hiring freeze for any position funded by state money. Don't know exactly what that means for *this* position, but it's still listed on the UW website (www.washington.edu -- click the "Employment" link at the bottom of the page to get to it). V.

Really interesting article in the International Herald Tribune about big companies conducting quiet layoffs.

From the article:

IBM is one such company. It reported surprisingly strong quarterly profits in January, and in an e-mail message to employees, Samuel Palmisano, the chief executive, said that while other companies were cutting back, his would not. "Most importantly, we will invest in our people," he wrote.

But the next day, more than 1,400 employees in IBM's sales and distribution division in the United States and Canada were told their jobs would be eliminated in a month. More cuts followed, and over all, IBM has told about 4,600 North American employees in recent weeks that their jobs are vanishing.

More here.

In related news, from BBC, the US jobless rate has reached 8.1%.

After a total of 16 job interviews this year, I've gotten a job offer.  It's a Secretary Senior position at UWMC Pathology, 8-5, with a 70-75 minute commute on either end.  And it pays about 300/month less than I was making as a Program Coordinator.  But it seems like a good group of people, and I'll get to know all about pathology, and there is a lot of variety in the duties.  So, while I'm not excited, I am relieved to be back in the good graces of Mama UW, and I want to be as consistent and professional as possible in this position and really work on growing into budget management and administration.  Not that those things will ever be my joy, but they probably will be my bread and butter, and I can't live on credit cards and my ex-husband forever.  So I have a job.  Wish I felt happier about it.  That will probably come in time.

V.

I do clerical work at a hospital right now and this morning I was downstairs and ran into one of my friends from the downtown bus-stop.  We talk sometimes while we are waiting for the bus.  She doesn't speak much english (she's from Africa) and she's always wrangling these twin 5-year-old boys and I think she must be fairly alone.  So we talk at the bus-stop once in awhile and she practices english and I try to learn even a few phrases of Meru. 

I ran into her downstairs.  She was lost, wandering around with one of her boys (who was dressed in hospital garb) and she looked a bit frightened.  When she saw me, her face lit up and she hugged me and I hugged her back and then I helped her find the right elevator to her floor. 

Later today, I was down by the elevator on the ground floor and as I was approaching the elevators I saw a very frustrated man in a wheelchair. His wife was trying to placate him.  I asked how long they'd been waiting, and they said they'd been bypassed by two full elevators already and had been down there ten minutes.  At that moment I noticed the door to the freight elevator open in the hallway to the side of the main elevator bank, and I ran over there to stop it and hold the door open for them so that they could ride the freight elevator up to their floor.  It seemed to defuse the situation.

Returning to wait for the main elevator, I was joined first by a teenage girl in a wheelchair with an IV attached.  She wore a neck brace and had crookedly bent hands and one leg in a cast from her ankle as far up as I could see.  A minute later, a guy in a wheelchair joined us.  He was wearing shorts and had some raw skin rubbed off of his thigh.  The girl asked about if it was a burn.

"Nope," the guy said, "This is where they took the skin to put on my shoulder and on this foot".  He pointed.  She kind of blanched.  He was missing a finger.  He continued to talk.  "They also took this finger and this leg."

"Oh," she said.  "I'm sorry."

"I'm not," he said.  "I'm alive!  And I got something too!"  He seemed to be enjoying the conversation.  "I took 1500 volts electricity from Seattle City Light." 

"Wow," I said.

"Yup," he said, "And it was free!"  The elevator came then and he continued to joke with me all the way up to the 7th floor. 

Another conversation: most days  I stop to talk to L, one of the mailroom guys and he's usually quite cheerful.  This morning I asked how he was doing and he said, "I wish I could say ok.  But I'm not."  I told him I was sorry and asked if there was anything I could do to help him.  He said no, it was just early and he'd probably feel better as the day went on.  Later I checked in with him and he was his cheerful self again.  He said he'd felt better since he'd had lunch, but it was hard for him to forget his past sometimes and stay in the present. 

I talked to G., the receptionist, on my mail rounds too.  She told me she'd missed work yesterday to be with a friend whose uncle had died the night before.  She and her fiancee had both gone over there to cry with her and hold her.

"We just went there to love her," she said.  "She needed love.  And that's what it's all about, isn't it?"

Yes, G, it is.  It really is.

Yesterday, I registered and enrolled in Psych 200, Lifespan Development.  It's one of four prerequisite psych classes I need to take to apply to the Art Therapy program at Antioch or the Master's in Counseling programs at either Antioch or Argosy.  (Both have rolling admissions, so as soon as I finish the classes I'll be able to apply).

Also yesterday, I had two job interviews.  One in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and one in the School of Social Work.  Seems like the Medicinal Chemistry job would be the least stress, but they both have things to offer about them.  Would welcome an offer from either, although would face the Social Work job with more trepidation than the other.  The Med Chem job seems laid back.  The other is a program coordinator/assistant to director position in a program that is funded half by UW and half by DSHS/state of Washington.  So there would be not one, but two, bureaucracies to manage.  But the program director is a woman who seems to have a good sense of humor and compassion.

Last weekend, I finished leveling the concrete floor and filling in the nail holes of the room at Karen & James' house (where I am going to move at the end of August).  Got to the point of actually buying the paint for the floor.  It's a color I call "Mystical Purpose", but its real name is "Mystical Purple."  You can look it up on the Behr website, but I found a close-looking sample on another site:


I'm pleased with it.  The walls are stark white & I only have $$ to do the floor right now, but as time goes on I may--oh I dunno--tile a bright yellow border at the bottom of the wall or buy a thousand plants or something.  The thing I'm going to miss the most about my current bedroom is the purple wall, so it will be nice to have a purple floor to make up for it. 

I want to downsize quite a bit...get rid of at least 2/3 of what I currently own.  I want a more spare, simpler physical environment.  Moving is a great opportunity to de-junk, although I don't really have that much junk.  But I'm going to keep only what I really love, keep only those clothes I look forward to wearing and plan to wear at least 10 more times in the next year.  I'm going to keep the books I go back to over and over again, and the books I work out of and a few of the books I haven't read yet --that's still probably 200 books, but everything else is going.  I'm getting rid of my beading supplies and my art supplies -- well, they'll be absorbed into Karen's craft supplies since she has a lot of those things.

So all in all, things are moving along & going ok.  Hope you are all well. 

Love and light,

Virginia

The Big Fish interview -- kind of a flop.  (get the fish pun did you?)

They went with a couple of other candidates for this position, but I knew they would as soon as I'd left the building.  Nothing specific was a tip-off, but as the interview went on I could tell the position and I wouldn't be such a great match.  The job title:  receptionist.  The job duties:  admin assist level work.  They needed "a mind-reader" who had "a sense of urgency".  This is code for the fact that whoever's in this position will be working with someone difficult and demanding. 

I like this job well enough -- the job I have here at Harborview.  It's a bit of a backwater job.  There are six or seven things I do that matter to anyone and beyond that, not a lot of stuff to keep me busy.  I really like Pete, the guy who was a Secretary Senior for three weeks and is now acting as Manager of the department.  Today I'm a bit busier than usual because there is a faculty candidate to show around and a lunch being delivered.  I'll do another mail run in the afternoon and take some lab coats down to the laundry.  If Pete finishes the on call schedule early enough in the day I'll enter it online, being super careful not to make any mistakes, and I'll post it downstairs in the OR.  And at some point I'll check and see if there are evaluations of the residents that I can enter on a spreadsheet.  But honestly, this job is about 4-5 hours of work on any given day and the rest of the time is spent "organizing" (eg, cleaning out the supply closet; shredding stuff; etc).  I'm trying not to be depressed to find myself yet again rudderless in the work world.  (sigh).  I just have no ambition.  Zero.

I'll be moving in with Karen and James in August or September -- as soon as they get a wall built in the downstairs area to make a room.  I'll be a block away from the kids and Kevin, and Karen is our primary childcare provider after school, so it's very convenient.  Karen and James have two kids now--Sam, age 5, and Tera, who just turned 1.  They also have step-daughters who visit for long weekends--Natalie is 11 or 12 and Naomi is 8 or 9.  So there's a lot going on there all the time.  But if there is a wall, and a door that closes, I can make it my own.    I'm half dreading/half anticipating the move.

Writing -- haven't done a lot of it lately, but have been feeling the pull to.  Soon. 

Soon.

Had a really wonderful lunch in the hospital cafeteria here:  roast beef, mashed potatoes, a side of brussels sprouts and mushrooms -- all for $5.60.  For that price you'd expect the portions to be small and the food to suck.  And you'd be wrong.  Two slices of roast beef so tender I could cut it with my table knife; homemade mashed potatoes; lots of garlic in the brussels sprouts.  And the gravy...yum.  So yeah, I'm becoming a big fan of the cafeteria here.  If you're ever in Seattle, eat at Harborview Medical Center.  Plus, for free local color, you can ride the elevator down to the cafeteria with a guy in an orange jumpsuit with his own security guard and ride back up with a woman wearing three sweaters and talking to herself.

In non-food-related news, I have an interview at Big Fish Games tomorrow for an admin position, temp to perm.  I think I may really want to work there.  Burn a candle for me.

And I don't know where I'll be tomorrow...
I didn't have time to write a last missive from the suicide cube yesterday, but it was my last day on the job.  I bowed out because I'm sick and they need someone super healthy and energetic...the fundraising breakfast is less than a week away and I felt my energy and focus becoming more diffuse instead of more concentrated. So I'm at home now (still with no voice) and recuperating.  And by "recuperating" I mean drinking coffee, taking naps, playing around on Facebook -- you know, all the fun stuff.
Mother's Day was wonderful.  I was sick, but everyone let me sleep until 11:30, when they woke me with cards and coffee.  Penny, who couldn't write anything more than her name three months ago, wrote a poem for me and wrote a message on the card.  Sar wrote on the card too-- "I lov you" -- very impressive for a 5-year-old!   Penny's poem was wonderful -- and full of backwards s's and cute misspellings.  Penny picked out the card they gave me -- it was a piece called "the sound of the chakras" and it's really beautiful.  Kevin gave me a card too -- a picture of Henry the 8th with a pierced eyebrow, ipod, happy face pin, peace symbol pin.  He wrote:  for Mother's Day, let's buy you a Queen-sized bed.
Pretty darn generous for a soon-to-be-ex-husband.
We're filing a confirmation of issues this month, and our attorney has bowed out.  She's not going to practice law any more because of health issues.  So it may be another eon before we've roused ourselves to finish the divorce.  At this point that's fine with me.  Kevin's doing some heavy lifting of the family financially, and I'm still covered by his insurance as long as we're still married.  No doubt the end of the marriage will coincide nicely with some permanent job opportunity...that kind of synchronicity seems to be how my life works.
Case in point:  yesterday, I decided to leave the job at about 11:00.  I talked to my supervisor on site, then called the agency and told them I'd finish out the day.  When I got home, I had phone messages from two other agencies about jobs -- just out of the blue!  I hadn't called them with my availability or anything.  And I haven't heard from any agencies out of the blue in the last three weeks.  So that was super cool.  I don't think I can work in the next couple of days -- I can't even speak today -- but I feel affirmed by the coincidence.
So.  Blessings to all of you.  I'll try to be more present in the next few days than I have for the last couple of weeks.

Quiet around here this morning.  It's one of those rainy spring days that look so romantic when you are looking out over the boat docks from the bus window.  This is the kind of weather I moved here for.  It makes me feel contemplative.

I was looking around on the bus today and thinking about the folks around me and their jobs.  I think my career expectations have been skewed by the class norms I grew up with.  When I was young, all the adults around me had super rockstar jobs...that is, they all had jobs they liked, and were good at.  When I told people what my dad did (he was a lawyer) I always felt proud.  When I told them what my mom did (she was a lawyer too, and in the 70's that was a big deal) I felt even prouder.  Their friends were judges, entrepreneurs, teachers (yeah, that qualifies as a super rockstar job in my book), newspaper journalists, television reporters.  Many of my friends now are college teachers, attorneys, directors of nonprofits, doulas with their own businesses, therapists, novelists who actually make a living from writing.

But you know what?  The people who have super rockstar jobs are not the norm.  I know this probably seems obvious to most of you.  It's a learning that came late in life to me and that still hasn't been absorbed very deeply.  As an adult I've always had service industry jobs or clerical jobs.  I've had those kind of jobs for 25 years.  But it still comes as a shock to me when I find myself filing.  My whole working life has been a struggle with my expectations as matched up against reality.  

Plus, those super rockstar jobs?  Very few of those people ended up doing the same thing that they started doing.  Most of them have moved from their super rockstar jobs into follow-your-bliss jobs.  The millionaire lawyer is now the founder of a nonprofit and runs a retreat center in Colorado.  The teacher is a Master Gardener and teaches inner city kids how to tend plants.  My dad is an energy healer.  My mom is a poet.  And I'm ahead of the curve, I guess, because I've always rejected what looked like success in favor of what felt right to me at the time.

This job at PATH is starting to feel right to me, at least for now.  It's not a super rockstar job and it's not a follow-your-bliss job.  But it's the paving stone settled into just the right place on the walkway.

One of the worst things about being a temp is that you're perpetually on a first date.  This is lovely if the match is good and you've been taking your happy pills and you've just had a great haircut and all is right with the world.  But:  say you show up to work the first day and your allergies are acting up and your nose is running.  From then on, you will be known as the Sniffly Temp, and there is never enough time to say "Oh hey, yeah, I ran out of Claritin D, but I don't always sniffle like this."

In my old job at Women Studies, I was occasionally out of sorts, but mostly I was known as cheerful, warm and welcoming.  Even when I was depressed or people thought I seemed out of it or sad, no one took it personally or assumed it was because of them or what they asked me to do.  They had enough experience with me to know that, in general, I put a lot of effort into my work and was dedicated to what we are doing.  Here, however, I fear I am known as the Disgruntled Temp, and that it is stamped across my forehead so that no matter how cheerful I act, everyone is going to think I'm faking it -- because  i am faking it.

So yeah, I'm not giving good first date here.  I feel like I'm out on a blind date with a guy named Fred.  We're at a football stadium and it's first quarter and he's already drunk or well on his way to it.  I'm freezing my ass off, my boots are too small, his friends are leering at me and cracking jokes about the size of my breasts and I'm supposed to be charming about all this?  

My complaints are metaphorical of course.  My real complaint is that the work is physically exhausting and repetitive and causes all my fibromyalgia symptoms to flare up.  That us, erasing lines causes my thumb to ache and my wrist to swell and by the time I'm into the afternoon my entire body feels like it's on fire from the inside.  But: you don't talk about pain or illness on a temp job the way you don't talk about politics on a first date.  Especially not if you have a condition that other people don't think exists.  Dropping the word "fibromyalgia" in the workplace would be like declaring my feminism to Fred.  The end of the date.

So today, onward and upward.  Working on correcting a bad first impression.  Trying to use my left hand as much as possible and adjusting my chair every half hour.  Popping the ibuprofen.  And calling you on my cell phone from the ladies' room just to let you know how awful this date is.  Thanks for listening.