Hurricanes & Moral Quandries . . . still don't help me do the Laundry!

It's a Saturday, which means here at Casa Largo we clean the house: vacuum everything, steam clean the "accidents" the cats have had recently; empty every garbage can in the joint, and do the laundry. Since we're in the process of moving to a new apartment the end of this month, that means everything, and I mean EVERYTHING gets washed. Linens, towels, blankets, comforters -- everything.

And, of course, we're expecting Hurricane Emily to storm through here later this week with some much-needed rain -- so we're trying to get a leg up on the situation by doing everything as early as possible. So, we're pretty busy.

That means a lotta laundry to be done!

As I'm doing the cleaning, the laundry, the vacuuming, and the garbage, I'm catching little bits on Fox News and the Internet. Three things really caught my eye that just make me shake my head in wonder. Maybe I grew up too morally bound to understand this "alternative lifestyles" thing -- buy I'm sorry; I just don't get this:

1) Natalee Holloway -- Sending an 18-year-old girl off to Aruba with "chaperones" who go to bed at 8pm and don't supervise these teenagers drinking underage and wandering off with locals into the hills for sex? Whose Idiot Idea of a good-time graduation gift was that? When I was driving limousines for a while I saw several parents try to rent "fully-stocked" limos for graduation -- including booze and pot for their high-school Seniors!

This reminds me of those "I've-gotta-be-friends-with-my-kids" kind of parents. I feel awfully bad for the Holloway/Twitty family, but what did they expect here? A Disney movie ending?


2) Shasta Groene -- Her mother has a half-dozen kids -- most of which by different fathers, by-the-by -- and invites total strangers into her house for drug parties? And when the family comes up dead and the two youngest kids missing -- whose fault was that? Shasta Groene and her brother pay the price . . . . but how did we get to this place? Didn't anyone from the Idaho Department of Families and children suspect anything? Didn't some member of her family suspect she might be in a potentially unhealthy or dangerous situation?


3) I stumbled across a blog here on Blogspot (and you'll forgive me; but I can't remember how I found it -- must've been the "Next Blog" button) called "Discreet London". This fellow has the chutpah to describe the affairs he has with other women in gloriously excruciating detail. But when his wife wants a divorce because she's having her own affair, he's at a loss for words. He makes this discovery, of all places, at a massage parlor:

The masseuse made eye contact with me; I could tell she was confused too. As soon as she clamped eyes on me, I felt ashamed of myself, ashamed of being here, and ashamed of not being able to get it up. Then, I did something I haven’t done in ages; I burst out in floods of tears.

Once the sobbing started, I just couldn’t stop. I was wailing like a baby, which only served to confuse the young lady even more. I’m sure whatever experience she had as a prossie didn’t prepare her for this sort of thing. I guess punters don’t break down crying very often.

It was very awkward, I could sense her unease. I sat up on the table and saw her looking at me, her expression bordered upon the horrified. I think looking me in the eyes was more than she could bear and she finally wrapped her arms around me and held me against her with my head resting on her shoulder.

I was back in my car before I knew it, heading back towards my home. But I wasn’t ready to go back home yet, so I decided to just drive around. I drove aimlessly, without purpose or destination for a little while before realising I had no place else I could go. Finally, I gave up and just went back to my house.

Maybe I just needed some human contact, perhaps the orgasm I didn’t have wasn’t really what I required. Maybe I just needed a good cry in the arms of someone sympathetic. Well, “the cry� wasn’t that satisfying and “the arms� were less than sympathetic, but at least it was something. It’s more than I'm going to get elsewhere, that's for sure.

Really.

Y'know, what did he expect? He's getting exactly what he was going to give his wife -- shattered marriage, shattered dreams, broken home -- and he's crying about it?

Lie with dogs -- wake up with fleas. You are judged by the company you keep, indeed. Don't get me wrong on any count here -- I feel really bad for the poor participants of the above-described tragedies. But I really feel somebody ought to be shaking the living crap out of these folks, telling them to wake up and smell the coffee, already!!!

The self-delusion of rationalization is a Sad, sad, and dangerous thing.

~~~JD~~~

NURSING: Noble Profession of Comfort and Care . . . ?

. . . . or just a Royal Pain in the Ass?

I'm a Nurse. More specifically, I'm a male Nurse, which many see as a contradiction in terms. Very specifically, mostly by other (female) Nurses.

An example, if I may. I always tell people I've been a Nurse for 25 years, because I consider it to be true. I re-enlisted in my second tour in the Army to become what they call a 91C10 (or "Ninety-One Charlie") to get better promotion opportunities. I attended a ten-week Combat Medic Course from June to August 1980, followed by the ten-week "Ninety-One Charlie" course from August to October; which was swiftly followed by six months of on-the-job training at Fort Leonard Wood Missouri from November 1980 to March 1981. So after 11 months of medical training I was officially awarded the title of 91C10 in March, 1981.

And promptly had it taken away in April.

You might ask why -- I know I sure as heck did. I had re-enlisted for a specific job -- only to have it rescinded a month later? What's up with that?

The explanation were complicated. It seems that several (if not, indeed, MANY) of the graduates of the 91C10 course were challenging the LPN (or LVN, depending on your state) boards of their home states and being granted licenses in their home states after graduating as 91C10s. At that time in the early 1980's LPN Nurses were a two year degree, and someone somewhere didn't like the idea that eleven-month wonders could become Practical Vocational Nurses.

I've frequently found that when an explanation is that complicated, somebody's hiding a nasty truth. The theory I've heard from more than one Army nurse is that it was not the quality of the nurses that civilian nurses found unpalatable; and the quality of these nurses was never in question. (Army-trained nurses consistently score in the top 10% of their licensure boards.)

It was the fact that the military was filling the nursing pool with male nurses. They were Gender Offenders; highly competent, capable nurses that were almost exclusively male in a traditionally female profession.

I laughed the first time I heard this, and you might, too. In the intervening years I've seen far too many nurses make rude, sexist comments to dismiss it easily.

Another story might illuminate more completely. I was interviewing for a nursing job in Valparaiso IN one time, and had a ten o'clock appointment with the Director of nursing to interview. I arrived to my interview in a shirt, tie, and dress slacks.

As I was waiting for my interview, the UPS girl came in to pick up a package. The receptionist called into the Director's office to tell her UPS was here to pick up, and her 10:00 am appointment was there as well. (The UPS girl was dressed in the traditional brown Dickies uniform of UPS workers, I might add.)

The Director of Nursing came out with a brown-wrapped parcel, which she put into my hands, saying "that needs to be there tomorrow, okay?" She then took the UPS girl into her office -- and as soon as the doors closed, the laughter began.

The laughter died fairly quickly, though. The Director of Nursing interviewed the UPS girl for almost five solid minutes before realizing her "mistake." When she finally did come out and get me for my interview, she spent almost a half-hour convincing me I wouldn't like working there -- that I was more of a "Home Health Nurse", and would be happier there.

(In other words, you're not good enough to work for a regular employer. Go work with nurses who have to worry from day-to-day about if they'll have work tomorrow.) And lest you think this is simply my own paranoid ravings, the demographic that the Nursing profession is losing fastest is males with under three years of nursing experience. Has been for the last 15 years, too.

The one thing about the "Center" where I recently worked? You don't have to be a female nurse to be sexist about men you work with.

Some days I just despair; but most of the time I laugh my butt off at the idiots I used to work for. I must be feling melancholy this week, otherwise I don't know why I'm sharing this.

Heh.