Of Guitars, Collarbones and Paychecks

I'm waiting for a phone call from an old friend--calling from work--on a Saturday--what's he doing there on a weekend?? I'm a good one to talk--my work week is supposed to be Monday-Friday (first weekday/daytime job in several years, by the way) 10AM-7PM. I like the 10AM part because it is a 20 mile drive and I despise tying up extra time on the freeway during "rush" hour (why the hell do they call it that? It does not last an hour, and it doesn't feel like any kind of rush when you can't get out of second gear for 10 miles). Anyway, I seldom leave the clinic before 9pm, and I pretty much never take a "lunch". Well, that's not completely accurate. I used to take "power naps" and then eat at my desk--much better usage of time--I'd always feel like crap for about the first 20 minutes post-wakeup, but it did a world of good in the big picture. Now that it's wintertime (albeit a wimpy winter, not one speck of snow--booh!) my car is just too cold unless I want to go to great extremes like using the mylar emergency blanket under my little Martha Stewart throw (which incidentally, I did--once. Conclusion: they work amazingly well, but god help you if you think you will ever be able to fold that sucker up tightly enough to fit back into that teeny little package it originally comes in). I gave up after I had managed to rip a few holes in it and found that the remnants made great bed liners for my rescue kittens, helping to retain their body heat, supplemented with old IV fluid bags capped off and microwaved to use as hot water bottles. A few other scraps, approximately 18" x 18", placed on the floor, are like amusement parks for kittens. They jump on it and love the crinkly sound and a few clever kids have actually figured out how to take a running start and jump on a piece, effectively sliding a foot or two across the carpet.

Shit. Me and my tangents. The biggest hazard of thinking fast and typing--how fast do I type? I dunno, but it's fast. The only human I know who can type faster than me is Sean--he is like one of the fast forward scenes from Gilligan's Island. (Second reference to Gilligan's Island in a week).

That manual dexterity must be helpful with Sean's guitar playing (he's a lefty too, but doesn't use the same techinque Jimi did). He is so talented. I know it sounds like I am gushing, and I won't deny it, but he is astounding. I remember when he was teaching himself (which he did--took a few lessons at age nine, abandoned it for seven years, and then borrowed a friend's guitar over the summer of 1996)....he'd say, "Mom, do you want to hear another song I learned today?" And he'd proceed to finger pick "Blackbird"--flawlessly. I remember when he borrowed that accoustic guitar; we all thought at the time the ultimate purpose in learning to play was to provide fireside entertainment on our many camping trips. When we got our first computer, he found internet sites with tab tables for various songs and then he went crazy. When we moved up here and spent our first eight month stretch of rainy weather confined to the indoors, the guitar became Sean's salvation. Funny, now the rain doesn't faze us. Oregonians don't use umbrellas. Maybe if it's really, really coming down hard we do, but most of the time the rain is fairly light compared to the infrequent but monsoon-like deluge that seemed to come out of nowhere when we lived in Huntington Beach.

Eek, here I go meandering onto another tale, one involving Huntington Beach. Sean started body surfing at about age 14. One summer afteroon when Sean was about 16, I got a call at work and it was my boy. He sounded weird. I asked him what was wrong, and his voice broke...."I got fucked up" he said....."wha?" I thought, at first imagining he'd been jumped by some gangbangers. He then told me that he had caught this big wave, (or it caught him) which promptly slammed him onto the berm, and he felt a snap, and the pain was so bad he didn't know if he was going to pass out or vomit. I asked him if he needed me to come get him and he explained that he had already taken the bus home and he said he'd be okay. When I did get home, I looked at the area where he told me his shoulder hurt, and aside from a bit of swelling I couldn't really detect any major deformities. However, he did tell me that he couldn't really use his left arm without his shoulder hurting--in fact he almost couldn't use that arm, period. I figured he had at least sprained his shoulder. We had no insurance, and I wasn't getting child support at that time (another story--not today, though). I gave him some Motrin and made a sling for his arm. After about five days of arm sling and ibuprofen, the swelling began to resolve--and that's when I saw it--his left clavicle, which had previously been straight (as clavicles ought to be), had been hiding under some tissue swelling, but now that I could see it, I was horrifed to discover it was disctinctly shaped like a "V". My stomach dropped. Insurance or no, I promptly took him to the emergency room, feeling like utter shit, knowing my son had spent the better part of a week with a broken collarbone and hadn't seen a doctor. Talk about guilt! Finally, when the E.R. doctor saw Sean, he said, "yep, it's fractured all right". I asked him when he was going to get an xray. He said, no point, it's fractured, you can see it plain as day. I asked him what we do now, and he said--and I quote, "Ibuprofen and an arm sling". At that point I felt kind of ripped off. It cost us 300 dollars to have someone tell us to do what I was already doing....that, and to have a certified doctor say, "Good job, Mom". He said that a collar bone is one of the "best" bones you can break (most of the time--as long as a fractured end doesn't point inward and puncture a lung--how reassuring) and that aside from skipping weight training for six months or so--he'd be fine. It was really rather cool, watching (from the outside, obviously) as the callus formed over the fracture, so that for awhile, the left collar bone was about twice the diameter as the right one. (Sean called it "reinforcement".) Then, cooler yet, over time the bone "remodeled" (that's the medical term) and as the callus began to smooth out, the bone became straight again. In all, it took about four months. Weird.

All this yakking and I still haven't gotten to the point. My original point was that I typically put in anywhere from 50 to 60 hours a week at the clinic. I never claim overtime. It all works out though, because I am the first to admit that sometimes I get carried away "pounding out" letters to friends, and I'm not paid to do that.

**WARNING** Self-righteous Bullshit Moaning and Groaning Below:

Speaking of pay--is anyone out there nosey? God, I am. It's a sorry thing to admit, me and my wretched humanness. When we get paid, our paychecks (or abstracts of--I do direct deposit) sit in our mail slots vertically in contrast to the horizontal balance of our mail. When it's late and no one else is around, I have been so bad as to pick up an envelope (not mine of course) and try to read the numbers through the paper.

That's how I found out our accountant makes four dollars an hour more than I do.

I am a licensed critical care tech, and the buyer for two clinics--a huge job. I've worked at this hospital for over two years. The accountant has been there eight months. I have to teach him everything about why things cost what they do. If the clinic were to be suddenly flooded with incoming casualties and they had to start calling up technicians, I'd be right there. The accountant wouldn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. My guess is that he makes more money because he is a man.

Doesn't that suck?

That's what I get for being a snoop.

current mood: contemplative
current music: There goes my Hero--Foo Fighters