Might as Well Jump (Myself, Off a Cliff)

Might As Well Jump!

So I was at my local more-upscale-than-the-one-in-Chicago local grocery store, buying a plethora of clear liquids that I have to consume the day before my hysterectomy. (I'd also been to Walgreens to get a) sunscreen for my tattoo, b) OTC Meclizine for random dizziness and c) the disgusting magnesium oxide "cherry" flavored laxative* drink I have to consume the day before my surgery, which I plan to mix with Sprite so I don't throw it all up.)

*TMI ALERT! Not that I necessarily would ever require a laxative to show up to surgery with a clean bowel. TMI, but if I stop taking Lomotil, which I've done before, and Immodium doesn't work, my insides literally explode. TMI TMI TMI.

I know the operation's not until the 26th, with the cleansing on the 25th but hell, I had nothing else going on today, so I was planning ahead. I went to distract myself from heavier things on my mind (heavier than the hysterectomy).

At the grocery store today, what comes on (and they play their music LOUDLY) but Van Halen's "Jump!" which made me walk around laughing, looking more like the lunatic I already am. All the Ridgeys in their Stepford Wives' best, scooting their carts away to Van Fucking Halen.

I was going to try and write outside, since it's such a nice day, but the umbrella's not up on the table yet, and I couldn't see the screen of my laptop.

But I digress.

Perusing the produce section of the grocery store, I stumbled upon PRE CHOPPED fresh red onion. Fuckin' A. I wish I'd seen that yesterday when I was fucktardedly attempting to chop a red onion for the dinner I made (a Mexican lasagna w/ground turkey breast, no Soylent Green!). I'm notoriously poor at chopping onions. Garlic? Easy. Herbs? Sure. A red pepper? Anytime. But onions? Terrible. I got over my pissedoffedness and went to look for vegetable broth, part of the clear liquid cleansing diet.

The music they play in grocery stores and other commercial establishments never ceases to amaze me. There was that time in Walgreens when they were, swear to God, playing Ozzy's "Crazy Train" when I was there picking up my bipolar meds. On another occasion, I heard The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated." Seriously. My best male friend and I have a game of texting one another the bizarre songs we hear whenever we're at our respective Walgreens, and we've both had some zingers that were just the perfect soundtracks to what we were there to purchase.

I find the brain to be an amazing thing when you think about all the songs, throughout the course of your life that you know by heart and can sing or recite the lyrics from. I have a relatively new computer and iPod, so I only have about 1,000 songs on there, but I know them all by heart. How does the brain make that possible? I find it fascinating.

Did I mention I ran into one of my former patients at the store, who's a regular visitor to Balderdash & Verities?

After much discourse early this morning with the woman known as Ms. Blog Stalker, for lack of a better name, since that's how you know her, who was not in the office when a text-a-thon began, she denied ever reading the blog at the office and laid blame on the other employees. Though, again, why would she tell me to "stop it" from during the work day if she was not reading the blog? I can't wrap my brain around that coincidence and neither can anyone else, unless one of the other office staff came running in and voiced "Look what Andrea's saying about us...blah blah blah" or something. In that case, the supervisor should've reprimanded the office worker for being on the blog during work in the first place.

She said it was she who put the signs up about no personal internet use at the office. She doesn't understand why I would write about the practice so much, not realizing it was a huge chunk of my life, my livelihood, my job, my life for 3 important, growing years. I asked nicely and not-so-nicely in my blog in the past for the crew over there to leave me alone, to stop reading my blog, yet they continued to do so, obsessively. Looking for what, I don't know, but there's nothing to find other than autobiographical diatribes, stories and random whateverness. But goddamnit, this is MY space, and while I have no control over it in the stratosphere, there is NO reason why, according to statistics and a little pie graph I came across today, 23% of my readership comes from the medical practice during the work day. That accounts for a quarter of my total readership. That's some serious time wasting.

I cared deeply about the people I worked with and about the job I performed, and if any of you read the first draft of this blog, you would know that I voiced much praise and adoration for one particular woman in the office who reportedly, according to the patient I ran into at the store, quit.

I was first told that she did not quit via text. Then I was told late this afternoon that she did. I was mislead, and thus dispensed potentially incorrect information. I praised the woman in question for not only following her bliss, but being "street smart," which is a high compliment that was taken as an insult, as it is something I am not. I flat out admit I'm not street smart. "Street smart" (which is a VERNACULAR!) refers to someone who has a measurable amount of common sense, can take care of his/herself, and doesn't take shit from anybody, who knows the ins and outs of how the world in reality works, unlike a creative idealist, perpetually out in the field, right-brained thinker like myself. I also praised her for her technical skills, which as I said in the first draft, were unparalleled. That meant that nobody I'd ever seen in my life does her job better than she does. Why she assumed I was "talking shit" about her with such accolades is beyond my comprehension.

My former supervisor wants to see proof of the now 18 log-ins from the office IP that I am in possession of that occurred over the last few weeks, not to mention the dozens of others since I left in January, which my tracker is helping me gather. I said I would print them out and send them to the head doctor at the practice, which was perceived incorrectly as a threat. Why, I'm not sure. I would prefer that a third party, not involved in the bickering, would look at the log, if indeed what she's saying is true, and that "everyone in the office" is reading my blog, for if they are, someone needs to bring the IT guy in and have him block certain web sites from being accessed from the practice. That's the easiest way out. If the rule is ultimately the doctors' rule, the doctors need to see the log, not one of the parties being contended as a perpetrator in the much aforementioned "blog stalking." If online surfing and off-medical-topic reading is being done during the work day, the practice has a much larger problem on its hands than simply me dispensing my opinions on my blog. It came into question whether or not people in the office reading my blog from their cell phones would show up on my tracker with the office's IP address. The answer to that is NO. The practice has a secured network, password protected, to gain access to the internet. Plus, cell phones, even on a wifi connection, come up as separate IP's. I have had visits from people with T-Mobile, Verizon, and other cell carriers. They are separate from the practice's IP, which is always the same.

If I get enough printer ink, I can print out the logs, and can contact my tracking company to provide me with how to access the logs from months and months past showing the visits from the practice during the work day.

I was unfairly and unjustly threatened, essentially, to shut up and quit writing about the practice, which I have in text on my phone, or else I would face negative consequences for things I did not do and events that would be considered, legally, as pure hearsay, conjecture and rumor without just cause. The party threatening me is implying that I said things in the offices in front of witnesses that cannot be corroborated and is threatening to turn to the wife of my friend in the office, implying that we're having or had an inappropriate relationship, which we didn't and we aren't, and that I said things about his children, whom I never talked about in the office to the best of my pretty accurate recollection. Even the reason I was fired, which I blogged about already, a long, long time ago, is subject to much open interpretation and was agreed upon as a moot issue between myself and the doctors I met with when I was fired.

Will I continue to write about the practice? If I do, I will continue to be threatened. That's not a cool situation to be in. Is this whole situation juvenile? Yes, because juvenile personalities abound that are prying into my personal life, no matter whom they are at that office and I'm quite frankly really fucking tired of it. I know that I am protected under the First Amendment allowing me freedom of speech, that much is certain, though I was threatened as well by someone in the office as that being, essentially shit.

What's true of Balderdash & Verities, apart from a select few? They, themselves, confuse those two words an awful lot.