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bitch, bitch, bitch
May. 11th, 2005 11:43 pmFor those interested and/or concerned: my grandmother continues in stable condition after her surgery. She'll be in the hospital for a little while (she is in her ninth decade of life, now; she has broken her hip; this is only to be expected), but she made it through, and the doctors seem fairly confident that she will continue to improve.
My family. We are of hearty, long-lived stock. I am grateful for my yeoman roots, man, for my grandmother's sake, and mine too.
:::
When I was really pretty young--maybe six, certainly not much older than that--my father was gardening and got bitten by a rattlesnake out in our front yard. We rushed off to the hospital with him, and we sat in the emergency room for hours while the hospital tried to find a specialist who had experience with rattlesnake bites, and in the meantime, every doctor in the hospital stopped by to view the bite. Which, in South Louisiana in the seventies, rattlesnakes didn't bite people every day, and each doctor would examine my father's arm, kind of nod over it, and say, Oh, that looks terrible, or some such thing. With no help forthcoming: instead, my dad spent an afternoon as a tourniquetted observation tool before the surgeon arrived and dramatically (to our panic-stricken family) saved his arm and his life.
I am feeling a little like my father, this week, albeit without the thrilling possibility of death or permanent damage. I'm working twelve-hour days, each in a different office, each with a different spectacular difficulty. I spend hours on the phone with programmers and hardware specialists, none of whom can help me, all of whom want to waste my time walking me through procedures I've tried three or four times on my own and a couple more times with other people trying to help. And eventually they just say, Well, wow, this is amazing! You've tried everything I can think of, let me know how it goes, okay? --click-- and I'm left to try and solve the difficulty on my own, make sure everything works correctly before I leave the office, because I'll be in another city the next day. And I leave and drive on to the next city--tack another hour onto my day--and my success rate is so far about fifty percent with these fixes and I am so tired and discouraged and pissy.
I do not want to be an object lesson. I want someone to say, Oh, sure! I know exactly how to fix that! It is this totally obscure thing that I happen to have seen before.
Where is my specialist, damn it?
But tonight I checked into my hotel and there were chocolate cookies with peanut butter chips just waiting for me. And they upgraded me to a jacuzzi room--a room! With a gigantic bathtub sitting in the corner!--without my even having to ask for it. And I am going to take an hour-long bath tonight, and tomorrow I am going to do those memes I see floating around my friends page, because by the time I get to my computer tomorrow, I WILL BE DONE FOR THE WEEK. And then just travel home ahead, and then I will do my best to forget this week ever happened.
Tomorrow night cannot come soon enough.
My family. We are of hearty, long-lived stock. I am grateful for my yeoman roots, man, for my grandmother's sake, and mine too.
:::
When I was really pretty young--maybe six, certainly not much older than that--my father was gardening and got bitten by a rattlesnake out in our front yard. We rushed off to the hospital with him, and we sat in the emergency room for hours while the hospital tried to find a specialist who had experience with rattlesnake bites, and in the meantime, every doctor in the hospital stopped by to view the bite. Which, in South Louisiana in the seventies, rattlesnakes didn't bite people every day, and each doctor would examine my father's arm, kind of nod over it, and say, Oh, that looks terrible, or some such thing. With no help forthcoming: instead, my dad spent an afternoon as a tourniquetted observation tool before the surgeon arrived and dramatically (to our panic-stricken family) saved his arm and his life.
I am feeling a little like my father, this week, albeit without the thrilling possibility of death or permanent damage. I'm working twelve-hour days, each in a different office, each with a different spectacular difficulty. I spend hours on the phone with programmers and hardware specialists, none of whom can help me, all of whom want to waste my time walking me through procedures I've tried three or four times on my own and a couple more times with other people trying to help. And eventually they just say, Well, wow, this is amazing! You've tried everything I can think of, let me know how it goes, okay? --click-- and I'm left to try and solve the difficulty on my own, make sure everything works correctly before I leave the office, because I'll be in another city the next day. And I leave and drive on to the next city--tack another hour onto my day--and my success rate is so far about fifty percent with these fixes and I am so tired and discouraged and pissy.
I do not want to be an object lesson. I want someone to say, Oh, sure! I know exactly how to fix that! It is this totally obscure thing that I happen to have seen before.
Where is my specialist, damn it?
But tonight I checked into my hotel and there were chocolate cookies with peanut butter chips just waiting for me. And they upgraded me to a jacuzzi room--a room! With a gigantic bathtub sitting in the corner!--without my even having to ask for it. And I am going to take an hour-long bath tonight, and tomorrow I am going to do those memes I see floating around my friends page, because by the time I get to my computer tomorrow, I WILL BE DONE FOR THE WEEK. And then just travel home ahead, and then I will do my best to forget this week ever happened.
Tomorrow night cannot come soon enough.
