Blackout.

I'm sitting here writing this in the dark. Because this morning, Maggie and I were sitting in the living room of my little townhouse apartment, and I heard this funny buzzing. And I traced it to the breaker box that's on the wall between the kitchen and the living room. And I thought, ew, there must be a bug trapped in there or something. So I very cautiously opened it up, and no, no bug, but the circuit breaker for my bedroom was sparking. So, I flipped the breaker, called and left a message for maintenance, got a very long extension cord for my modem and router (which were on an outlet attached to the sparking breaker), and didn't worry about it.

But then I got home, flipped the switch for the lights in my living room....and nothing happened.

Except that Maggie was like, "AHHHHHHHHHHH! PEOPLE INVADED OUR HOUSE TODAY!!! LET ME OUT OH MY GOD LET ME OUT OF THIS CRATE AND PROTECT ME FROM THE SCARINESS! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

You know, but in dog.

So, okay, I find the little maintenance form that says "replaced breaker". And I think, alright, well, he probably knocked the living room breaker out when he did this. So I went to flip the living room breaker. Except, there is no breaker marked "living room." Plus, it's still making that buzzing noise. So I could just start randomly flipping them all, but alas....

The maintenance guy just came. And he flipped the breaker on the bottom right of the panel which was clearly marked "living room" and was obviously tripped.

Okay. Either I'm an idiot, or it was dark in here.

And he says the sparking was because the breaker stands a little bit out from the post, and so it occasionally grounds out to the box and sparks. Or at least that's my interpretation of what he said. He's going to come replace something else tomorrow, because, still sparking. But he swears it won't burn the house down.

I mean, come on. I have renter's insurance, but I don't really want to use it.

Also, I haven't had a man run out of my apartment so fast in a long time. I think he was afraid of Maggie. She did a very good job of barking intimidatingly when he came. She heard him and barked before he even knocked. Good puppy.

Oyyyyy, it was a long day today. I have a couple of the most....draining, suck-all-the-life-out-of-you kind of patients on my team. Which I'm trying very hard to keep from influencing the amount of care and time that I'm giving my more stable patients. Which is a hard thing to balance, when the squeaky wheels are coming up to you every five minutes because they're having some sort of issue. I have this one chronic schizophrenic who's just a big ol' leech, and wants to tell me something every time I walk by her, and yesterday asked to see me and when I asked her what was up (a half hour after I was supposed to have left, with another half hour of work left to do), she said, "Oh, I just wanted to get a feel for your personality."

Mmmm, right then? No, you really don't.

I have another patient who's convinced she's going to jail forever, despite the fact that we cannot dig up any current charges on her, anywhere. Today she informed me that she's absolutely certain that she's going to get the death penalty. For fraud. Because she passed just so many bad checks (which she didn't). And when I tried to point this out to her, and reiterated that we couldn't find any charges at the federal, state, or local level, she told me it was because the government was still watching her, taking their time to make a move. We even got the special counsel (lawyer who handles the commitment stuff, as the patient's lawyer, as opposed to the AG, who's our counsel) to talk to her, and she still will not budge in this delusion. She's also the woman who slit her own throat and stabbed herself in the abdomen multiple times, necessitating surgery. I have another patient who's 30 and has this very fixed and rigid delusion that her 82 year old ex-boyfriend (who doesn't exist) has a contract out on her and her family and that her neighbors (who, according to her dad, don't know who she is) are spying on her for him.

And then I have one whom I think has multiple personality disorder (no, for real), and who is just so damaged and has such trauma stuff going on, and oh, I could just sink my teeth into her case for months. She's totally right up my alley. But I've got her for such a short time, and she managed to cut herself twice in the ER before she came to State Hospital, so we're always worried about her sneaking off and doing something. Plus she's been cheeking her meds, etc, etc, etc.

And that's only, like, half my service. I also have Eeyore, and this new-onset dementia lady who's independence I'm having to curtail (that sucks), and, and, and. It's tiring. Plus then I basically gave my medical student a free therapy session today (he's been bugging me to diagnose him for two weeks now). And, I was supposed to have lunch with my assigned mentor, right? Who thought I was a third year resident - i.e., someone who was applying to the forensics fellowship next year - and showed up with the director of the program in tow. You know, for kicks. So the whole thing ended up being very formal and intimidating. Although I did find a good new restaurant in Raleigh.

Whew. No wonder I'm so tired...