Today I Am Mostly....

An elderly patient calling to make an appointment for her husband:

Me: "and did they tell you which doctor he needed to see?"
Lady: "No they just said he needed to see a specialist"
Me: "OK, well can you tell me a little bit about his condition?"
Lady: "Well, .... today he is a little bit angry....and hungry."

Phoning It In

I've just deposited an Anthem BlueCross BlueShield check for $0.03.

Thanks, Anthem - thorough!

(and the NaBloPoMo award for shortest post goes to......)

Marbles, What Marbles?

Just when you thought it was safe to stash the old bikini in the bottom drawer, it's chuffing 80º here today. I'm roasting in my rather tasteful cable knitwear. That'll teach me not to watch the weather forecast before leaving for work.

Having lived here for over a decade *breathe* I know this to be typical Thanksgiving weather. Nothing says let's roast a 18lb turkey in the oven for hours like it being over 100º outside.

I don't have anything of value to write about, and for that I apologize. I have so much work sitting on my desk, so many sheafs of paper that I'm thinking of executing a controlled burn. Nothing major, just a very localised inferno.

There is one refreshing thing about working where I do though, and that is just when you think you're so busy you're going nuts, you're reminded what it's really like to be losing your mind:

Case in point, I overheard this particular gem this morning.

Elderly Patient: What's the date please?
Receptionist: It's the 13th
Elderly Patient: Of?
Receptionist: Of? Oh, November
Elderly Patient: And the year?

Sunday Bloody Sunday

In order for me to get everything done today I need Anna to nap for approximately 7.5 hours.

So far she is on her third viewing of the same episode of Dora and while my back was turned (OK, while I was on the pompooder) she has managed to do this with my earrings and a doorknob:
















That does not bode well for the banging sounds I now hear coming from her bedroom.

Her father is currently golfing and I am going mental as her favourite word is now why? Why is poop stinky? Why Anna no haf Hallowe'en candy? Why he haf no trousers?

Why who haf no trousers young lady?!

I usually work four days a week. Four days followed by a three-day weekend. I highly, highly recommend it. What you lack in bank balance you make up for in sanity. My rationale is that I get to spend more time with Anna in her important formative years, but truly, I'm wondering how I can get my employers to spin this out til Anna goes to college because working five days a week is for the birds. I know this because for the last couple of weeks I have been back to my old five-day-a-week schedule and it's doing my head in. I am thinking of scheduling time to cut my fingernails.

Which reminds me, I really should go and cut my fingernails.

Fawl and Boobs

I know, I owe you all a post on what went wrong with our trip to Vegas, but quite frankly it’s hard to get in to the mind-set of being stranded in the desert in 110º heat when overnight autumn has arrived in Santa Barbara.

Sorry, ‘fawl’ as you imagine I say.

I love autumn. It’s so much easier to consider a large glass of pinot and some Grey’s Anatomy when it gets dark at 5pm than mid-summer when by rights you should be out ocean-swimming past 8.

There is a barely perceptible chill in the air, at the tail-end of a breeze or in the shade of a building. That feeling that there's just a little more oxygen to breathe. Brittle-cold blue-sky days are by far my favourite, but they are as scarce in Santa Barbara as they are in North Yorkshire, so I will take this sudden greyness just for a change.

Seasons are nothing if not subtle over here. You can tell it’s autumn by the fact the temperatures will occasionally creep below 70 and it says September on the calendar. That’s about it. There is even the half-hearted promise of some rain in our future, although it's been so long since we've had a decent downpour that I might have to explain to Anna what the chuff is going on! It is so strange to live in a place where rain is talked about as an event days in advance. Where people watch the doppler-radar for a hint of green with awe and reverence. Ok, maybe that's just my husband who gets the day off work if it rains....

I've been reminiscing recently about rain, about that sharp breeze you get as a pre-cursor to a shower in England, the one that blows all the leaves backwards exposing their silvery undersides like a sylvan shoal of fish. Trees don't really have leaves here, not big fat deciduous leaves, just small spiky drought-resistant leaves. There is no 'fall', no leaf-mulch, no season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

So you see, I can’t really write about being stranded in an overheated car in the middle of the Mojave, when there’s a slight chill in the air and I’m forced to think about maybe grabbing a cardie. For the love of God!

So I’ll talk about boobs instead.

My muppet assistant handed in her notice last week. Then a couple of days later she told me she was taking 5 days of her 2 weeks notice to get herself a nice new set of boobs. I have two assistants and they both have fake boobs. Hello California! They are so prevalent here I’m surprised they don’t come free if you buy 3lbs of House Blend.

I don't know anyone in England with fake boobs. Quite frankly, under all those woolly jumpers what's the point? Living here makes you think about it though, particularly after nursing leaves you feeling a little, how should I say, 'deflated'.

So I said to LK, "What would you think about me getting a boob job after we're done having our eleventy-billion children" and he replied "you don't need a boob job, you've got a great rack" etc etc.

Good man!

But then a few weeks later he said "So, if you were going to get a boob job......."

Ten years of marriage, and he is still human.

She's A Bad'un That Lass

Here are some good reasons for using a live-body transcriptionist instead of phoning it in to a company in India:

"The patient has a significant history with Crystal Matthews".

"Patient used bee venom injections and broke out in hives"

"Patient needs to follow-up whenever you see feet"

Help Wanted

These are trying times chez blahblah. I'm hiring a new assistant, which is always wearying to the point of wanting to curl up in a ball and die. I'm beginning to think it'd be easier to clone myself rather than find someone halfway decent in this town for $20/hr.

Maybe I should re-read that Craigslist ad, perhaps I inadvertently wrote; '

'Wanted: Complete Muppet.
Go ahead and surprise me with
what you consider relevant
experience for this job'

Below are just a selection of suggestions I would have for my current applicants. I'm not making any of these up.

• Do not say you are 'currently working to make ends meet'

• Do not list under skills 'general tasks'

• Dear God please do not write that you enjoy watching movies and reading books.

• Do not say you possess the skills to make a great medical office assailant

• Do not write that your main responsibility at your current job is to 'rotate the candy to ensure maximum candy freshness'.

• Do not list your contact e-mail as anything along the lines of 'earthmuffingoddess@verizon.com' or 'luv2spank@aol.com'

• If you're going to list a contact phone number, you're probably going to want to either answer that phone with more than a perfunctory 'yeah', or make sure your answering message doesn't say 'hi, you've reached Madison, I'm probably too stoned to reach the phone so you're s.o.l dude'.

• If you're currently working as an equine masseuse/candy rotator/shelf-stacker at Vons, help me out with a cover letter that at least addresses what inspired you to think you could be my assailant.

I need a drink.