I haven't lost you, but I don't have you anymore.

2002-09-29 - 8:21 p.m.

OK, for starters, I'd just like to clear something up about a comment I once made. And since only one person reads this, I think you know who I'm talking to. I said you look good in the picture with the glasses. I did not say you look much better with glasses than without them!

I'm actually writing this entry while I'm at work and I'm writing it on my PDA using graffiti. While I'm fairly adept at the use of graffiti, it does not even begin to compare with the speed of my typing. The point of this paragraph is that the speed of my writing is in no way keeping up with the speed of my thoughts so I am going to have to work much harder than usual to prevent this from being disjointed.

So let me tell you about my weekend so far. On Friday I worked at Del Paso. Apparently Donnie worked there on Wednesday so a significant portion of my usual work was already done. I only had one stack of refills to do. Plus only one of my patients showed up. So I had finished all of my work by noon. Which means I finally finished my book, "The Plains of Passage." I think the author got bored by the end (not that I blame her). The whole rest of the book we followed the characters and their journeys inch by inch. When they finally reached the dreaded glacier they'd been worrying about crossing for the last 850 pages, they crossed it in about 20 pages, even though it took them weeks. The first two days of the crossing were as detailed as ever and then the rest zipped by. "Then they ran out of wood to make fires and got really thirsty but then spring came and the ice started to melt which solved their water problem but made big dangerous crevasses open up. But they didn't fall in any and they made it off the glacier then had wild and passionate sex which led to the conception of their first child even though this was their 1,000,000th time trying. Then they met his dad and sister and watched his sister get married. Then they made it to his home at long last! Oh goodie, this calls for more sex! The end." Anyway, I finished it at about 4:15 and then left. I would've left earlier, but I was meeting Stretch for dinner downtown and it would've made no sense to drive all the way home just to drive all the way back. Stretch was in town for the Western Ed Faire which was being held at the Sacramento Convention Center this year. We were supposed to meet at Red Lobster at 5. I got there and put in my name. He got there at 5:15. I was surprisingly happy to see him, but about five minutes after his arrival I was already bored. We went to a seafood restaurant (he picked it, not me!) and we both ended up ordering chicken. Anyway, dinner was pretty uneventful. There was one incident in particular that made me angry. Perhaps I overreacted. We were talking--which means that he was talking while I was interjecting the appropriate comments and asking the occasional question. Maybe half an hour or so into dinner I made my first appearance in the conversation that lasted longer than two sentences. I was in the middle of sentence number three when he looked off over my shoulder at the TV that was behind me and said, "Oh! The Giants! What's the score?" And then the steam started shooting from my ears. Later we went back to my place. I've discovered that it's impossible to get any semblence of privacy in my parents' home. It's small and the walls are very thin. And my parents are in it. I was trying to have a serious discussion with Stretch. We were in my brother's old room where Stretch was staying and we had the door shut. We were both sitting on the bed talking. And then my parents came and knocked on the door. Both of our families are very conservative, but I would think that being in a room with my boyfriend with the door shut would not be crossing the line. I was very annoyed by that.

On Saturday Stretch got up and left for the conference before I woke up. I got up at 6:30 because I couldn't get back to sleep. I took my mom to the lab and then we drove up to Apple Hill. Apple Hill is a cute little place up in the foothills with (of course) lots of apple orchards. They also have pumpkin patches and christmas tree farms as well as blueberries and other fruit so that they can keep the tourists coming year round. The main attractions are the quaint settings, the beautiful scenery, the crafts, and the apples. I spent $50 on some necklaces for friends with birthdays coming up. We came back home around noon and spent the rest of the afternoon correcting papers for my dad. For dinner I drove downtown and picked up Stretch and three friends, Veronica, Jaime, and Katherine, from the convention center. We went to the Hard Rock Cafe. I was very unimpressed, perhaps due to my taste in music. But it was good to see the girls again. They are all first year pharmacy students and members of my fraternity. Jaime is my little sister. It was weird to hear them discussing Rho Pi Phi stuff and feel so much not a part of it. After dinner I dropped them back off at the convention center. Stretch said he really wanted to spend more time with me, he'd be at my house a half hour after me. He got there an hour and a half after me, leaving us about an hour before I had told him I was planning to go to bed. Am I wrong in interpreting this to mean he's not as serious about wanting to spend time with me as he says? At any rate, he is not making this easy. Our perceptions of the long-termness of our relationship no longer match up. It's sort of funny, because this reminds me of something Somnambulist is always saying. You know, the bit about how you shouldn't have to pretend to be happy. Isn't the same true with a relationship? He told me it seems like I'm not even trying anymore. I told him I didn't think I should have to try too hard to be happy. If I tried hard enough I could be happy with anyone. But there's a difference between pretended happiness and true happiness. I don't know, was that a silly thing to say? He looked at me like I was crazy. He said I should ask some people who are in happy long-lasting relationships how hard they have to try. The thing is I don't expect it to be effortless. I just expect to want to make the effort.

He insisted that I wake him up this morning to eat breakfast with me. I told him that was silly--I don't eat a leisurely breakfast. But he insisted, so I promised to wake him up. But he didn't trust me to do so, so he got up himself. Only I wasn't ready to eat breakfast, I was still getting dressed and doing my thing. So then I had to do all that with him underfoot, all the while trying not to wake up my parents.

And now here I am at work. I've been working on this since 11 and it is now 6. A little while ago the peds pharmacist brought one of her patients up here to "work" with us. She was a cutie pie. Her job was to pull the faxes off the fax machines and hand them all to me while the other pharmacists sat around talking. I don't know what is wrong with her. Nothing obvious by looking at her. All I gathered from the general conversation is that she is on vanco and TPN. I hope that I never have to go through what her parents are going through. I never want to have a kid in the hospital. I think I'd be a total wreck. But I am getting better about it. I used to not even be able to walk through the pediatrics ward without tearing up. Now I manage pretty well. But I don't think I would manage so well if it was my kid. But then again, if it was my kid I would have to be strong, so I probably would be.

There was another horrible case in the hospital today. In my opinion it should be child abuse. There is this middle eastern woman who gave birth to a baby here. She's not from here though. When she was wherever she came from she and her husband decided that now would be a much more convenient time to have a baby than later. So they convinced their doctor to induce labor by rupturing her membranes. Then someone in their family died in Sacramento and so they both get on a plane, ruptured membanes and all, and flew here. So she comes to this hospital complaining of, get this, back pain. It didn't take too long for someone to figure out that she was in labor and shuttle her off to L&D, but once she got there she discovered that all the doctors on duty were male and she wouldn't let any of them examine her. The only women on duty were med students and they didn't have the experience to identify surgically ruptured membranes. Anyway, I'm home now, and to get to the point. The baby became anoxic and was born brain dead. And yet this is ok. This was her choice.