10. When taking paint chips to the hardware store, don’t just tell them you need exterior flat paint and walk away to wait. Tell them you need the CHEAP exterior flat paint. Otherwise they will give you the flat paint used on the last space shuttle, and we all know how frugal NASA is.

9. A dog who suddenly has a lapse in housebreaking skills probably has a bladder condition that will cost $200 to diagnose.

8. Never attempt an intelligent discourse with your boyfriend when you’ve both been drinking an unnaturally blue concoction from cheap plastic cups at a seedy bar.

7. A cut-pile yarn shaggy rug feels curiously like grass to a dog with a bladder infection.

6. Actually, any rug feels like grass to a dog with a bladder infection.

5. A forty-pound bag of mulch weighs forty pounds when someone at the garden center is loading it into the car.

4. The house really doesn’t look too bad without any rugs in it.

3. Bags of mulch will miraculously double in weight during the drive home from the garden center, as if they could sense that your boyfriend is at work and cannot carry them to the backyard in a manly fashion.

2. The backyard shed looks much better with a coat of paint. Bonus points if you are painting on a windy day and the paint glues down a few grass clippings, some of your own hair, and an assortment of both live and dead bugs.

1. It doesn’t matter if it puts you into overdraft, there is no better investment than a steam cleaner and a wheelbarrow.

I need CALCULUS II to take applied statistics?! Okay, I did quite badly on plain old stats in college, but would two levels of calc helped or just given me two more classes to fail? And why are the prerequisites for classes at University of Wisconsin only listed on the page where you register, not on the course description you can see before applying?

I’ll go into their wretched, sneaky-description program anyway (especially since UW is much cheaper and 12 months shorter than Penn), but The Master Plan (no pun intended) is yet again thwarted, and I am not pleased.

In other news, E is back on the job trail. After The Restaurant had a pretty gruesome St. Patrick’s Day – the day of the neighborhood street festival, normally their biggest moneymaker of the year – BossMan went beserk and decided to blame E for the fact that no one came out in the muddy deluge to buy beer. His fault, obviously. In an act of goodwill, E and I waded through the muck and took food out to the cops and street crew since no one was buying and it would have gone bad. BossMan was so pissed that we were feeding public servants with food that wouldn’t sell that he threatened to fire ME, and I don’t even work for him anymore.

E was happy to escape to Gulf Shores the next day for about 108 holes of golf in 5 days, and returned Sunday night to discover that he was being punished for his approved absence by only getting 30 hours on his schedule this week. Then yesterday he was informed that because of BossMan’s incompetence and lack of people skills (read: blatant mistreatment of staff), he is now working 50 hours this week to cover the person who stormed out in a rage on the lunch shift today. Today he found out that The Restaurant acquired not one, not two, but an admirable THREE $5000 liquor fines on St. Patrick’s Day – two for serving alcohol outside after 6pm when the street fair ended and business had to return indoors, and one for serving alcohol to a minor. The latter, of course, came with a sternly-worded threat against the liquor license.

As frustrating as it all is, I can see some good come of this:

1. E wants to find a 9-to-5 job where he can wear a tie to work, which is nice because he looks quite handsome in a tie and then we will be on similar work schedules at last.
2. If he can put up with this much crap from BossMan and not have bailed out on him yet, I think we may have a future together.

One of my least favorite things about telling people where I work is the fact that this revelation will often prompt a complete stranger to regale me with his entire medical history, often adding a few diseased family members in for dramatic effect.

Due to the recent exodus of my neighbor/friend/partner-in-crime from The Hospital workforce, I now have to make alternate travel arrangements when the Jeep goes into the shop. Something on the dash started blinking at me the other day, so I dropped it off at the dealer and asked for the free shuttle to ferry me to and from the hospital, about a mile away.

A grizzled old fellow introduced himself as Gary and declared that he and the shuttle were at my service. I filled out the little slip of paper with my name and destination.

“The big hospital, huh? What do you do there? You a nurse?”

Everyone assumes that a female who works in the hospital is a nurse.

“No, I work for project management for the operating rooms.”

“You know, I had open heart surgery – FOUR bypasses! – there back in ninety-three…”

And so it began.

“There was this nurse there, pretty little thing, probably your age – how old are you?”

“Um…”

“And she saved my life. Man, those doctors never believe you. I told her about what happened and she believed me. Doctors never do. But when I went under for that surgery – four bypasses, remember, so it was a long surgery! – I saw a light!”

He turns to me and nods emphatically.

“Um…”

“And I saw JESUS in the light! And I know how they always say in the movies that you should stay away from the light, but I couldn’t because man, it was Jesus! And he was talking to me! He told me I should light candles for sick people at the church, for all the people I know, to make them get better. So as soon as I got better I started doing it and you know what, it works! There was this buddy of mine who had cancer, and this kid down the street, and I lit candles for ‘em every day and they’re healed now! And I’m going every day for this other guy and lighting him a candle and for this one lady’s baby. Cause you know, Jesus said so and that’s what I gotta do!”

“Oh…”

“Now I know it sounds fishy, so I asked around. There’s three guys I know who had that surgery just like me, open-heart, and I asked them did they see a light. Well, one fella tells me he didn’t see a light, but he remembers hearing everything going on during his surgery, like people passing needles and knives and stuff. What do you make of that?”

“Well,” I began hesitantly, “people react to anesthesia in all kinds of ways. It’s been said that some people really do hear what happens in the OR, it just depends on the patient—“

“But what about the light?” He sounded slightly frantic.

“Anesthesia causes some people to dream, to remember everything or nothing at all. It can be different for everyone.”

“Well, these other fellas that had the surgery like me, those other two didn’t see a light neither. But I know I did and that’s why I light candles, and I know it was real ‘cause it works! I mean, those people get well, and it’s cause we do what Jesus says.” He paused. “Hey, do you know Susie Blackwell?”

“Who?”

“She’s the nurse who took care of me here in ninety-three. You know her?”

I shook my head. Ten thousand people work on this campus. About three thousand are nurses and our retention rate is hovering somewhere around negative 8 percent.

“I light a candle for her too, every time. She believed me when them doctors didn’t. You said it could happen, right, so you believe me too, don’t you?”

I nod. “Of course I do.”

“I’ll light a candle for you then too.”

I have never been so happy to see that hospital.