Love (mi vida loca) Thursday

Ahhh, call was wacky. Only two more overnights left at State Hospital. I'm on call again tomorrow night, but it's only until 8pm (or until the moonlighter gets there, if she comes early, which, for the kind of money they make, I'd get there sooner!).

So, when someone comes in, their reason for coming to the hospital is what we call their Chief Complaint. Like, if you're coming in because you have chest pain, your chief complaint would be chest pain. Or if you're hearing voices...well, you know what, it's not all that complicated. But in the psych world, we tend to make a habit of using the patient's own words against them as their CC. It's reasonably diagnostic. I tend to write down the first thing that comes out of the patient's mouth when I say, "so why are you here tonight?". Unless, of course, the second or third thing is funnier. Psych patients? Tend to be funny people. Here's a sampling of last night's chief complaints...

"Get me the fuck out of here, 'cause I ain't stayin'."

"Can I get a lawyer?"

"This is all a misunderstanding." (Oh, believe me, it always is)

"(Patient is Spanish-speaking only, but per the translator, what she turned out to be speaking was not Spanish, but gibberish.)" (Sometimes you have to paraphrase for them. And wow, that lady was so, so sick. I kept waking up with this sick knot in my stomach hoping she wasn't dead and wondering if they would call me if she did keel over.)

And my personal favorite, courtesy of this absolutely adorable autistic adolescent boy, who walked into my interview room covered in graham cracker crumbs. Apparently, earlier in the day he'd attacked his parents and several police officers. Anyway, when I asked him what had happened yesterday, he said:

"I LIKE HOME DEPOT!!"

He had some volume control issues. But God, was he cute. And so excited that he got to stay up until 1am.

My actual favorite of the evening was this sweet blonde girl about my age, with these wicked cool tattoos (there was a lot of cool ink that came through my office last night, including one girl who had her boyfriend's name in Arabic tattooed in three inch letters across the instep of her foot. It was really quite beautiful. But always, always a bad idea to get a boyfriend's name inked on, even if no one else can read it), who presented voluntarily to State Hospital, something that happens on occasion. She looked at me through her tear-filled, shimmering blue eyes and said, "I'm here because I need help. I waited too long to come in."

I know, sister. I know.

Man, though, the bats were in a-flyin' last night.

But I was walking out this morning, and it was a gorgeous Southern summer day, and there was this huge magnolia bloom just high up enough that I couldn't pick it (the grounds at SH are amazing, y'all. Some day I'll post pictures). And I thought about my night, and my patients, and even though I was so totally exhausted, and it had some really tenuous moments, I just found myself thinking, you know what? I love my life. I love what I do. This is good. Crazy, but good.

(If I could just manage to find myself a love life, then I'd totally be lovin' life.)

So then...I'm on my way home, and I find myself behind one of those livestock trucks. You know, the ones, usually carrying cows, or big ol' pigs. Except I'm looking at this one, and it was full of piglets.

Oh, my gosh, they were SO CUTE. They were all little snouts and floppy pink ears and tiny feet and they kept climbing over each other to stick their little noses out the holes and sniff the air like little puppies. And they were all squealing and adorable, and I tried to convince myself they were headed for long, happy Bocephus-like farm lives full of slop and sun and mud instead of, well, you know. But don't you know I pulled in behind that truck for a full ten miles, watching the piglets. And noticed that all the cars next to me kept pulling up and then pacing to the piglet truck for a while.

It was so random.

Much like everything else in my life.

So then I got home and I went and got the pooch next door, and Mags and Maxine and I spent some time outside being lazy and enjoying the weather. I Furminated the heck out of both girls, until they'd had enough of me and my silly Furminator. But we stayed out a while and they played in the sun and the grass. It was, again, so cute.

See the pretty hydrangea in the background? That's actually Sparrow's house. Our little cottages are separated by a very nicely landscaped lawn and a little stone patio. Each pooch has their own dog run behind our respective houses. Mags should be getting her doggie door this weekend, actually. Hopefully Maxine will show her how to use it, because I think my girl, who has been occasionally penned in using strands of yarn, might have a little bit of trouble with this push-through-the-door-in-the-wall concept.

She clearly had a good time today.


Maxine was happy to be out with us, too.

Those are my feet. I loved this.


I think she did, too.


He. They're funny together.


So then I cleared out for a while, because the cleaning ladies my landlord had hired were FINALLY coming to attack the filth that Kyle left.

They did a fine job. They missed a couple of obvious things, like, the cobwebs in the fireplace, and they did some peculiar stuff...


Notice that's my hair gel, not the hand soap. The hand soap was up on a shelf...

Whatever. At least the house smells like Lemon Pledge now instead of cats. But it REALLY smells like Lemon Pledge - the window they left open for ventilation didn't actually have a screen in it, but instead still had the storm window down. ::sigh::

It's definitely been amusing watching Maggie slide all over the polished floors tonight (you know, beyond her usual issues with hardwood). And I think this is probably the last time my bed will ever be made in this house...


But they DID fold both the toilet paper AND the paper towels into cute little points. (This is actually a recreation, just for you, Barb. The original one got lost in an urgent dog-feet-full-of-wet-floor-polish incident).


So while the cleaners were here, I went and bought blinds and saw my shrink and then went to the Whole Foods, where I purchased an extraordinarily disorganized collection of food (I should know better than to shop post-call). Whereupon I promptly got home and discovered I was ordering pizza for dinner, because you know what? I was waiting for the kitchen to be un-disgustified before I unpacked it. So I have nary a clue where the pots and pans are...or the plates...or the silverware, for that matter.

Oy, there's a lot to do this weekend....