Semen

Dani had a party. Here's some pictures. She invited mostly 16 to 18 y.o. girls and it was a pretty good time. Her NJ BFF Idil was here (that's them - the two little white-bread suburban princesses doing a gansta pose). Only one tiny hiccup -- one of the girls had an older brother come along - who showed up with 3 friends and proceeded to hide a 2-quart bottle of vodka behind the pool. Ken observed this and rectified things. Problem averted.

I bathed Morris, our old kitty. I had bathed a cat at the shelter with a blind woman (a fellow volunteer - she did most of the work) so I felt like I could handle this. He smells much better.

Summer school is half-way done. I've started the second session and it's not exactly what I expected. I'm in a class with a bunch of really young ones (all undergrads) and it's a little painful. This is the human sexuality class. Today we did an exercise on the scripts that we have for how sexual relationships progress and it was obvious that none of the volunteers for the exercise have ever been married -- or maybe that was my interpretation, it is possible they were presenting the "ideal" to the class. But seems like they had this fairy-tale expectation. Once you've lived through a few marriages (and especially had a few teenagers), you feel much more relaxed and nobody needs to follow a bunch of rules. I guess it rubbed me the wrong way. Judge for yourself -- here's what the group of class volunteers (about 10 students) produced.

Meet and agree to a date
Date 1 - kiss
Date 2 - fondle
Date 3 - fondle more and start conversation about sex, including contraception
Date 4 - oral sex
Date 5 - intercourse
After Date 5+ - say "I love you"
After Love - meet the parents
After Parents - get engaged
After Engaged - marriage

You know, when I look at that now, I think to myself, that can't be what these kids are actually doing. One of the guys had the energy to suggest that intercourse be moved to date 2 -- he was voted down. Hey, at least he's being honest about what he wants, right? But the outcome is so....predictable. I bet if it was a bunch of 50 y.o. women up there, we would've come up with a little different answer. I couldn't rubberstamp any specific timeline to be honest. People aren't like that - we rebel against that.

I've worked a few days. Friday I got to work with my favorite two guys - Curtis and Gilbert. We had a woman on the PICU that was very manic. You know, I'd never seen someone truly manic before I started working here. It takes some getting used to, you need to grow a thick skin for one thing, because they usually are saying a lot of things, and much of it isn't nice. I actually wrote down a sequence of what she said, just one interaction that I had with her. It was how we started the day together at about 7:30 am, I came out of the medication room and she was at the dutch door. Here's what she said. "I need a shirt and toothbrush. I came in last night and I can't find them. And don't try to give me that toothbrush you guys have - I need my special brush that I use with my organic toothpaste. Oh, but you can't give me that, can you (makes a face and slaps her hands down loudly). The class-action lawsuit that I've filed will take care of that, you will just see (voice is rising). You're looking at me like I'm dumb, but I'm not, my IQ is 1000 so we have a communication problem and it's on you, bitch! (I start to turn away at this point). Hey, when you come back, you need to wipe semen off me."

That's really what she said. About 10 minutes later, in the med room, Gilbert asks me, "Hey, did you get that semen wiped off yet?" And I did look into getting her a warmer shirt and her toothbrush. Just because she's manic doesn't mean that she doesn't have legitimate needs.