These roses on the seat of my truck

2006-01-20 - 6:55 p.m.

The talk by Joseph Ellis last night ended up being very interesting. By the time he was done I practically had a crush on ol' George. I bought a copy of Mr. Ellis' book and had him sign it. He asked me, like he asked everyone else, "Who is this for?" I said, "It's for Lolo." (Only of course I told him Lolo's name which is pretty common and pretty obviously masculine.) He raised his eyebrows and said, "That's not you is it?" What a weird thing to say, of course it wasn't me.

Nobody called in sick today so I worked my regularly scheduled MS3 shift. Actually, I take that back, our graveyard pharmacist called in sick for tonight. I offered to work the graveyard shift tonight (ka-ching!) but Miko got O'Malley to do it instead because it wouldn't be overtime for him. Oh well, that's probably for the best. But O'Malley was scheduled to work the 13 so we didn't have a 13 this afternoon so Miko asked me to help cover central while Lolo, who was the 8, was at lunch and Miko had to enter TPNs. Too bad that happened to be right at the time when I was planning on taking my lunch (so I could eat with Lolo). Ah well, Miko didn't need me the whole hour so I got 15 non-private minutes with Lolo before he had to go back to work. It's amazing how nice those minutes can be even when they're non-private.

So yeah, lots of people have been calling in sick to work lately. And do you know what their symptoms are? Stomach yuckiness. Maybe I had that last week when I was blaming the birth control pills. I have to say I'm feeling perfectly fine now.

One of our techs who works evening shifts lives over in Bremerton so he has to take the ferry to work. In order to get to work on time he has to take a ferry which gets him here a little after two even though he doesn't work until 3:30. Anyway, after Lolo left the breakroom this tech came in. He's in his late 50's and he and his wife serve as foster parents to babies, usually just for a few months or weeks at a time. These babies are usually newborns from women in prison or drug addict women. It's really wonderful what he does for these babies. He's had one baby, little Julio, for a particularly long time--over six months. This tech was telling me today that I should adopt Julio. "He's just about ready to go," he told me. I said, "I think I should probably be married and have a house or something first, don't you?" He leaned over to me and said, "Let me tell you, as a man who's been married for more than 35 years, don't do it. My wife is a wonderful woman, but if I had it all to do over again, I wouldn't, that's for sure. Don't get married. Just adopt." I really have trouble telling when this guy is serious, but obviously that's not the route I'd like to take.

This morning Blinky showed me pictures of her baby from the ultrasound she had earlier this week. It's incredible the amount of detail you can see in those pictures. Then this afternoon as Buzz came into work he announced loudly, "It's a boy!" He and his wife just found out the sex of their baby. He was so excited about little "Owen." (Popular name, eh?) His excitement was contagious. I swear I had tears in my eyes I was so happy for him. Lolo was in the pharmacy at the time, too. I was very careful not to look at him for fear he'd see the excitement and longing in my eyes. Either I would find similar feelings in him (do boys feel excitement and longing for babies?) and we'd share some sort of intimate look that wouldn't be conducive to keeping our secret at work or I wouldn't find that and instead I'd scare the shit out of him. Don't want to push things.

One of the characters in the book I'm reading is a middle-aged man who spends quite a lot of time pondering the way women change throughout a relationship--the way they love men just the way they are at the beginning and then pretty soon want to change everything about them--and the way they start out saying they don't want babies and then later won't stop talking about them. He says he asks them straight out at the beginning of a relationship, "Which would you rather have, an eructing baby or a trip to Antarctica?" and they all opted for the ice floe. (Yes, I had to look up the definition of the word "eructing.") I don't think I'm like the women in the book (I would rather have an eructing baby) and I don't think Lolo is like this man either, but I still don't feel the need to rush things. However, if he brought it up, that would be awesome!