I did this journal entry tonight, actually. I was feeling really creative and artsy, and so I put on a mixed CD, and doodled away to my hearts content. The actual journal writing on the page is about the summer, the weather, and why I do and don’t want to go back to school. I won’t bore you with those details, they are mundane, and I just used them to fill the space on the page and empty the space in my head. Cheers, people. 

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Sahara Hotnights– Alright Alright

I know that there are a lot of things that I probably should be posting on, but they can wait.

Y’know, have you ever heard a song, and just got carried away? Classical, jpop, or whatever? Today, I just can’t seem to get away from songs like that. From Sahara Hotnights’ “Alright Alright”, which makes me just want to jump up and play an air guitar, to L’arc~en~ciel’s “Hitomi no Jyuunin”, to Utada Hikaru’s “Deep River”, to Ayumi Hamasaki’s new “Inspire”, to the one song that just took me away from everything– Yano Maki’s “Ashburn”.

Something about these songs just picks me up and takes me away.

I used to dream about being a big star, a singer. But that was crushed when I never got solos in choir, and my own mother told me that I “sucked”. Her words. Not mine. Boy, was I hurt. I still sing in choir. In my opinion, I’m pretty damn good. Apparently my choir teacher thinks so as well because I’m in an audition choir. But… Whenever someone says something bad about my singing, I get really uptight. I should have more of a tough skin, I suppose. But, when your own MOTHER tells you that you suck, at the tender age of 13, it can really hurt. It still hurts. Later, she told me that she was lying, I was good, but she wanted to discourage me from “that life”. The life of a musician. Like I was going to go out and start injecting Speed into myself while doing night shows in seed clubs.

She’s so sheltered.

That’s a weird thing to say about your own mother, but it’s true. She has no concept of the “real world” what people are like, how they react… She’s so clueless. Why do I think that she married my dad?

What would I know about that anyway? If she was my own mother, wouldn’t I be sheltered? Well, she may be my mother, but I grew up with my father as well. Emotional, verbal, and physical abuse makes you grow up real fast. Plus, half of my childhood my mother wasn’t even around. She was a workaholic, and so I basically took care of my brother. Oh, Dad helped out, of course. He dropped up off, picked us off, took up to the doctor, and bought frozen TV dinners. So I took on just about everything emotional involving my brother.

You just see things as how they are. You just go out into the world and look at it, and experience things. I’m not sheltered, I never wanted to be. I glimpsed a cold reality at four and up, and I didn’t soon forget it.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my parents dearly, and wouldn’t trade them for the world. But just because I have parents who love me, and feed me, that doesn’t mean that they can’t get so wrapped up in themselves that they forget that they even have kids. That they have problems that stem from their own childhoods.

Life with people that love you is not always posies and rainbows. Because sometimes they don’t love you enough. Enough to care, enough to stop their behavoir, their addictions. Even love can be flawed.

No human is perfect, and thus their love wouldn’t be either. Learning to love unconditionally is a continuous process. Sometimes, before you love your kids right, you have to love your spouse right. Sometimes before you love your spouse right, you have to love yourself.

Another journal scan. You can see the change in my mood from the top 3/4 of it to the bottom. Bottom, I was angry and not feeling like I wanted to punch someone. You can see how everything is so messy? Top I was fine, and just wanted to explore an aesthetic, of sorts. I love drawing my journals, and anyway, it’s the most descent of any drawing that I’ve done lately, this scan. 

Have you ever had one of those days where you feel like nothing even stops? Not for play or fun, but just work, work, work? Continuously? Today was like that. I got up at 6:30, left for the hospital (I’m a candystriper) at 7:40, started my “shift” at eight, ended at 11:00, worked on Driver’s ed homework until noon, ate lunch, went to Drivers Ed until 4:00, walked home in the heat till 4:20, practiced piano until 5:50, and then sat down to work on the computer (checking e-mail, etc).

I’ll post longer about my second time working as a volunteer, and I need to post about VP Cheney’s visit, and my VIP Gold tickets (mmm, gold). That was an experience I’ll never forget. I don’t agree with the Bush Administration on a lot of things, but the point is that I can’t find a single thing to agree with Kerry on. Everytime I think I might he changes his opinion.

The point is, in a few minutes I’ll have to get up and clean our (my family’s and my) kitchen. It’s horrendous. It’s disgusting. And I didn’t even make the mess.

After that, it’s dinner and then more Driver’s Ed homework, and probably then to bed, since I got up earlier than usual this morning. It feels like I won’t get a breath to breathe. All I do is put my effort into things that aren’t particularlly satifying to me. I like working at the hospital, and I know that I need to take Driver’s Ed. But sometimes this stuff isn’t fun, invigorating, or exciting. I’m not trying to complain. I’m venting. This is the only time that I’ll have today to get out my thoughts and take a rest.

Ugh.

When they say that the critics of standardized testing view it as bad, they are right. I mean, ugh!! I know I wouldn’t mind having a few extra points on the SATs, which, by the way, I’m taking a year from now. But I hate standardized testing as it is. It doesn’t show anything about the student, nothing at all. Just “how well they can take a test”. In my book, a true education is supposed to be about teaching a student how to live in the real world and function successfully, and have the tools they need available to them. Schools are supposed to teach you how to think, not what to think, and, furthermore, to analyze problems and not just memorize formulas, conjectures, history dates and grammar rules. All of that can be applied to an education, but it shouldn’t consist of it. It really makes me sick, though. I hate standardized testing. Guinea pigs. Scores. People as numbers.

Give me an interview, a personal essay, any time over this.

Apparently, it’s stylish to post a pic of the desktop. Well, here’s mine. For some reason, I just couldn’t summon up the energy to go for an all-out blog post, so this will have to suffice. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? So, see what my desktop screenshot says about me. By the way, the image is courtesy of Webshots. 

Current Mood: discontent
Current Music: chihiro onitsuka– infection

I promised a post on my first day experience on Wenesday. So here it is.

I didn’t really do much at all, except stock the cabinents. They have these cupboard things right next to the doors for the patient rooms. They’re usually filled with charts, pens, straws, guaze, all the little medical supplies that the nurses and doctors need on hand. Things were really disorganized, but once I knew where the supplies were kept, it was a breeze, if not the most exciting volunteer work.

It’s a very busy floor that I’m on. All of the nurses were really nice, and helped me find stuff. I made sure to make myself as personable as possible, and to smile at everyone. Most people smiled back. I didn’t meet anyone unfriendly, but there was one doctor that ticked me off. Since I work in the heart center, and they have all these different machines, there are signs all over that say: “NO CELLPHONES: INTERFERES WITH LIFE-SUPPORTING MACHINERY“. So, this doctor comes out of a room, oh-so-important in his white lab coat, etc. And his cell phone rings. In his pocket. So, I’m thinking, maybe this guy forgot to turn it off. Right. SURE he did. So, he reaches in, pulls it, and answers it. It wasn’t a business call. It wasn’t about such and such patient or charge nurse or whatever need this. It was a personal call. Not only was he on the job and taking a personal call in front of other nurses and patients, he’s on a cellphone that interferes with machines like pacemakers, heart monitors, etc. He just thinks he soo important ’cause he’s this almighty physician that he can talk on his cellphone on a floor where it’s forbidden. He wasn’t even a floor doctor, but a visiting physician. Ugh. I was disgusted. Because I’m the lowly candystriper, and I’m in a work enviroment, I didn’t dare speak my mind, but I gave him the coldest evil-eye that I could summon, once I partially got over my shock at his audacity and arrogance.

For the most part, people didn’t notice me. That’s fine. I’ve realized that when people don’t notice you, they say things that they otherwise might not if you were talking to them. When I first signed up to be a volunteer, I had to jump through all these hoops for patient privacy– HIPPA– and remember getting annoyed. I mean, to the average person, it sounds like the government passed a CYA law (cover your a$$). But then, working on the floor, I realized how much even a lowly volunteer can hear. Now, because of that law, I can’t repeat any of that here, nor would I want to. Most of HIPPA is kind of obvious– except to only the most depraved of doctors and nurses, none of which I’ve found so far. But I did find out about who was getting this procedure, exactly what that procedure entailed, the detailed on the medicated patients. I even heard all about others’ personal lives. For example, one woman I was working with made lots of personal calls also (to her credit, she did it one a regular phone and only because there was no work– nothing– for her to do). I then knew when the repairman was coming to fix the thermostat, when her cellphone plan expired, what she planned on getting her husband for his birthday, etc, etc. It’s laughable how much I know about all of these people, and they don’t know about me. Well, it seems like I’m going to change all that, posting on the WWW. Not that they’d make the connection, but…

Anyway, after I finished stocking those cabinent things, I was sent into an office-like area, so make the patient packets. That was easy. Once I got the order down, I got one of those rubber things to put on your fingers, making pulling down papers faster, and I was putting together packets like a commando on the war path.

Then, my shift was up. I went out of the hospital after grabbing my purse and slathering on sunscreen (it was 105 degrees out there, and I didn’t want to be london broil). I was in white pants, a white polo shirt, and my candystriper pinafore thingie. So, I took of the pinafore, jammed it in my purse, unbuttoned the first button of the polo shirt, untucked it, and stode away, thinking: watch Amy as she goes from selfless hospital volunteer to the street chick dressed in white with ugly tennis shoes. Reminded of the superman identify changes.

Needless to say, I was sweating buckets by the time I got back to my ACed house. I had to walk a little over two miles– not terribly far but the heat made it nearly unbearable. I was so dehydrated that I couldn’t walk in a straight line. Next time I’m bringing a purse big enough for a water bottle.

After I came home, my dad came back for lunch and we drove to the airport to pick up my grandmother, who was staying with us. Her plane was delayed, and as we were leaving, she alternated between complaining about the airlines and the weather.

My dad went back to work and so I entertained Grandma, and when she went for a nap I plugged away on the computer. That night we took her out for sushi. She didn’t like that, but luckily we had all ordered some bento boxes, and she enjoyed the rice, the salad, and the chicken terriyaki. I, of course, devoured my California rolls and hers, and took half of the crunchy rolls, and one of the maguro (tuna). The maguro was sashimi (raw fish; most people get sushi [cooked meat/fish] and sashimi [raw fish] mixed up). Dad wasn’t too happy with the maguro, he thought it plain and simply mediocre. I disagreed completely. Yes, the maguro was plain, but that’s what made it so good, so incredible. It wasn’t fishy, but just good, fresh fish, that tasted so awesome. It tasted, this will sound odd, but it’s the only description that fits– organic, and elegant. I got to appreciate just the plain fish, without cooking, frying, batter, marinade, vinegar, anything. And I find enjoying something for what it is is often pleasurable enough, refreshing, even, then taking it with all the trimmings.

The thing that really got Grandma was the pickled ginger and wasabi (green Japanese horseradish paste). She asked my dad was it was for, and he replied “oh, you put it on your sushi.”

BUZZ! Wrong! I said: “don’t listent to him, Grandma, that’s a common misconception. You pair the wasabi and the ginger together, and take it between rolls, to cleanse your palate.”

Dad: “well, Americans do it that way, and we’re in America.”

Me: “well, we’re also eating the food of another culture, so I think that it’s better to eat it their way, apparently they’ve done this for longer than us dumb Americans have, so they’d know better than we would. And anyway, we’re eating their food, and we should be a little more respectful. Honestly, it’s that arrogant, ignorant additude that makes other cultures resent us so much.”

Dad: “well, if they don’t like it, not my problem.”

Me: “well, I don’t like it, so it IS your problem.”

Honestly, he can be such a jerk sometimes! So close-minded! I mean, in reality, putting wasabi and ginger on his sushi is no big deal, it’s just the additude he had at being corrected, and being told that it really is rude to behave that way. Honestly, can’t people appreciate other cultures for what they are? I love the USA as much as anyone, but that’s no excuse to be arrogant about it. Other people matter, and their culture matters, so deal with it. It’s not like we can “fix” them with Walmart, Starbuck and McDonalds. I love these brands (except Walmart), but using them, and behaving the way that people do, is just plain wrong. And I’m sick of the “dumb, arrogant american” sterotype, so people really need to stop encouraging it. Honestly.