Some Light Housekeeping

Mopping is a really ridiculous chore. This is not a Women’s Lib thing since I do the mopping, vacuuming, cooking (read: microwaving) and other general housekeeping around my apartment because I am the only one here with opposable thumbs. Or a pre-frontal cortex. Also, I make most of the mess, so it’s only fair I do most of the cleaning.

I am not offended by the floor being clean, or by being the one to render it so, but this is one of the most inefficient ways of cleaning a floor I can possibly imagine. A classmate of mine wipes down her desk, laptop, and any other surface in reach with alcohol swabs in every class with an almost religious fervor (we laugh but still line up sheepishly for our share of hand sanitizer), and as I contemplate the bathroom floor I hear her in my head. Why would we take an object which has retained and grown microbes since the last time it was used and employ it to smear water around the floor which is now presumably replete with both the germs already on it and the ones that have been festering in the mop?

Yes, there has been bathroom cleaner liberally applied to the floor pre-mopping, but since I can’t see the microbes anyway I can’t prove they are gone, and meanwhile there is standing water on the tiles growing Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever or something. So, cue several minutes of an un-Eco-friendly use of paper towels to quell the epidemic, and then several more deciding if I should Chlorox Wipe everything as well (did not, feel OK about cleanliness status).

I do understand that mopping is probably superior to scrubbing on my hands and knees with a brush and bucket, but it is not as good as, say, autoclaving. Which is really the level of cleanliness I would love in my bathroom, since it is where I keep my toothbrush. Which goes in my mouth. Everyday. Twice.

Unfortunately this is merely the prelude to a larger issue, which will be sorting out the plumbing (had to mop because the drain overflowed and I know not what lurks beneath). Standard practice says start with a plunger, which I borrowed from my father. When I asked for it, he looked at me, aged twenty-six, and at the plunger (handle at one end, rubber bulb on the other, no moving parts in between) and asked thoughtfully,

“Have I ever taught you how to use one of these things?”

Nothing Complicated

I love my dog like the ocean loves the moon. Sometimes life need not be more complicated than that. I have no children and no plans for any, which frees me up to spoil my furry baby silly. Ronan is a toy poodle, emphasis on the toy, and has managed to attain the quite significant weight of 3.7 pounds. He won’t get bigger unless I continue feeding him Frosted Mini-Wheats, in which case he might make it up to an entire four pounds. Don't worry, he mostly eats organic dog food, he just prefers whatever I'm eating.

The name is Irish, meaning "little seal" because as a puppy he squirmed around like a baby seal. Lately most people think it is the Japanese Ronin, which is a samurai of some description. I'd like to think my baby looks tough enough to be a samurai, but eight inches probably doesn't meet the height requirement. 

At the moment he is suffering from an ill-advised attempt at hair-dressing because it occurred to me that what every truly manly poodle needs is a Mohawk. It did not come out exactly as planned, and I do draw the line at buying hair gel for a small dog, so we will let time sort that one out. I did, however, use my brother Jacob’s beard trimmer to do both the Mohawk and Ronan’s tiny nether-regions, and he blamed our brother Wilhelm for it, so this is still logged as a win.

Yes, I named my brothers after the Brothers Grimm; no, we are not above playing mischief on each other in our twenties.

Ronan has, in fact, just learned he is a little boy, and has to pee on everything so that the Bernese Mountain Dog and the three Goldens in our development will know that he, not they (who outweigh him approximately 1000% each), owns every blade of grass in sight. He understands the function but the form is still a little shaky, because the leg-lifting maneuver is performed with the back leg of choice and most of his lower body straight up in the air. Can’t picture it? Think flying squirrel, sideways.

Because I am not totally foolish about my dog (read: I am), he usually sleeps in his own bed, except on the occasions he prefers to sleep ON MY FACE. And I do admit that I actually built my tiny dog stairs so that he could climb up on the bed and snuggle with me…

3 Complaints & a Funny Story

Awfully tempting to use this as a forum for griping about whatever minor detail of life has annoyed me on a particular day, but being a professional grouch is a very niche role and unlikely to be a redeeming quality in a young woman. Besides, the position is already filled by Roger Ebert, Jack Cafferty, and, when the Democrats are in office, Rush Limbaugh (Oscar the Sesame Street Muppet does not count because you’d be a grouch too if you spent your life with someone else’s arm up your backside).

Here, in chronological order, are the things that I will endeavor not to complain about:

1. The freshman in the car behind me doing her make-up with full Hollywood intensity who does not realize that not even the face of Aphrodite herself will save her from a life as an insignificant dust mote on the lowest shelf of the twenty-first century.
2. The lab assistant in my Well-Respected Nursing Program who insisted that “paranesia” was a word synonymous with “proprioception.” Fact: it is not a word, except for someone on Facebook who has called themselves “Chocobee Paranesia.”
3. The mysterious inability of the professors in my Well-Respected Nursing Program to feed 47 test forms into the grading machine, or even consider doing so, when the computer lab manager is on vacation.

And now, to ensure my status as a non-grouch, here is a true story to tell at parties as your own:

The children I baby-sit, Hansel and Gretl (OK, the names are not true), are unreasonably intelligent for their ages. Hansel is 8 and excels at asking questions to which there are no answers. Most recently he correctly observed that I was taller than his mother but not his father, and asked why men were taller than women. Faced with the options of, A) explaining the humane genome to an 8-year-old, and B) giving an innocuous back-up answer, I chose the latter which in this case was, “that’s just the way God made them.”

I did this merely to invoke a mysterious authority on the matter rather than involve a deity in the discussion, but Hansel paused for approximately 0.001 seconds before telling me, “That doesn’t sound right, I’m pretty sure it’s the result of a hereditary genetic shift.”

At which point I explained the human genome to him and he spent the afternoon building one out of Lego’s.

Lastly, as a semi-useless side-note for those of you with small children, I do know that Oscar the Grouch does not truthfully have someone’s arm up his backside. In point of fact, I suppose he has someone’s HEAD up his backside, since full-body muppets like Oscar, Big Bird, and Cookie Monster are usually performed by puppeteers with their head and shoulders inside the puppet’s body, one hand in the muppet’s head to work the mouth and the other in the  left arm. The muppet’s empty arm is connected by fishing line to the mobile one so it moves in opposition with it and does not look empty. As an even more useless side-note, almost all muppets are left-handed because almost all puppeteers are right-handed and need that arm to work the mouth. 

A Word About HIPAA

Let us address HIPAA right away lest I be accused of neglecting to mention it. Any semblance of a moral compass dictates that you keep people’s private business private, but because that compass tends to point towards gossip instead of good sense the forces of law and order in this country also dictate that anyone associated with health care must abide by a certain standard of confidentiality. That standard, in a nutshell, is HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, although why they called it that instead of something like “Confidentiality Act” is one of life’s great mysteries.

HIPAA protects doctor-patient confidentiality, which is actually doctor-nurse-PA-tech-med student-nutritionist-physical therapist-case manager-billing department-insurance company-patient confidentiality. Nursing students fall under this umbrella, as does anyone else who lays so much as half a retinal cell on patient information of any kind. Whole forests of documents are shredded at the end of every day and there are Very Serious Consequences for anyone caught violating HIPAA, intentionally or otherwise. HIPAA is the Nazi-Argument-Theory of the medical world: bringing up Hitler automatically ends an internet debate, and the mention of HIPAA instantly ends any discussion in our field. Can you tell me about that lady I saw in the waiting room earlier? Sorry, HIPAA. Did that guy really have a heart attack? Sorry, HIPAA. What should we do with our patient’s hideously leaking orifice? I’ll tell you upstairs because HIPAA says we can’t talk about it in the cafeteria.

This is as it should be, because I may not particularly care if anyone knows I broke my wrist when I was seven (true story, not exciting, fell off a sofa), but loads of people would prefer to keep their irritable bowel syndrome, genital warts, and social security numbers to themselves. Some personal details are mundane, some are embarrassing, but they are all PERSONAL, and HIPAA helps keep them that way.

Are there doctors, nurses, and a host of peripheral health care workers that go home in the evening occasionally to say to their families (or their psychiatrists), “So guess what I saw today…?” Sure, and that’s a HIPAA violation. If you have attracted the attention of the federal government such that they are listening in your home, you may be in real trouble for that seemingly innocent dinnertime tale. The rest of us will get away with that tiny breach, but small bits of carelessness often lead to bigger, and for those foolish enough to publicly discuss, publish, or leak patient information (including, heaven help us, on Facebook) the considerable wrath of a dozen medical associations and government agencies will rain down on their heads like all Ten Plagues of Egypt.

So, much as I would like to regale my audience with amusing tales of Unit X in Hospital Y in City Z, I cannot provide all the gory, cringe-worthy, delicious, giggle-inducing details. My significant other’s great-uncle was Senator Joseph McCarthy, who would be ashamed that I cannot name names, but I can speak freely about non-HIPAA matters, and leave specific and identifying information out of certain other anecdotes. Fear not, there are lots of good stories to be told without violating HIPAA.