the cleaning lady, part deux

as you may remember from previous posts with the same title, we have a cleaning lady. she's very nice, very helpful, and does an excellent job. i am super lucky to be in a place to have someone clean your mess as an adult. yet having a person clean your living space can bring its own, well, weirdness.
first of all. she rearranges shit. like little things. like moving my glasses in the bathroom, which is a really terrible thing to do to someone who's almost blind. you take your contacts out in the evening, reach for where your glasses typically are, and a moment of panic followed by annoyed careful face along the sink search ensues. she moves little things on the coffee table, like rearranges the candles or the vases as if the arrangement offends her. of course, it's likely she's just rushing to clean shit up, but it feels a bit judgmental, like my feng shui is off and must be corrected, which sometimes makes me feel like i've hired my mother.
second. i usually try to tidy things up before she comes. to make her work easier, but to also minimize the mess i really need to be minimizing as an adult anyways. on a very rare occasion, if i'm rushing in the morning, i may forget to pick up the clothes i've left on the floor the night before. the cleaning lady, in a masterful neat way, makes a point of folding whatever she finds. what would make one pick up dirty socks and random shirts from the floor and neatly fold them on the chair? i have no idea. it's a nice gesture, i guess, but weird because i've really never had this impulse of findings clothing items on the floor and deciding, oh, let me fold and put away these socks and this discarded bra. perhaps, she doesn't know where the laundry hamper is? but she puts other things like sheets in the hamper...so is this a passive aggressive move, to make me feel bad about leaving my clothes on the floor? maybe, and it's working.
third. there are pillows on the bed. regular sleeping and more or less decorative pillows. two and two. sleeping pillows get the sheet set pillow cases, to match the sheets; decorative pillows get the duvet pillow cases...to match the duvet. you get the point. there is also an extra pillow, which is this comfort memory foam whatever that doesn't match anything, but is part of the bed and the sheets, and either gets the sheet pillow or an extra pillow case i set out. the cleaning lady changes the sheets, it's very nice of her! but somehow the pillows are a constant battle of miss-match. it should be simple: 2 pillows for two pillow cases, 2 more pillows for the other 2 pillow cases, singular pillow gets its own pillow case. every time i come home after she's done, i begin this pillow puzzle. the math never adds up: it's 1 and 3 and 1, and 2 and 3 and 1, and 1 and 1 and 2.5. it's never just 2 and 2 but the wrong 2 (and i said the wrong 2 because the sleeping pillows are comfy, whereas the decorative pillows are just whatever, so it's kind of important what is what). how she gets what in where, i have no idea, and i have to pull everything off and figure out how to shove pillows in their correct respective cases, in a mathematical way that works. yes, i sound neurotic, but comfortable pillows are important. just as important as having someone clean your mess. happy cleaning!

horsey balm

I've recently had an injured shoulder and have been using this naturopathic ointment my mother gave me. She brought it back from her last trip to Ukraine and thrust it upon me as a miracle balm for muscle aches. I've used it in the past as well, when i've messed up or pulled my back yet again; it's kind of like tiger balm--similar weird ingredients, similar terrible smell--and it's supposed to be good for sore muscles.
It really acts like icy-hot, actually, acts pretty well as it's burned so bad in the past, i had to get up in the middle of the night and take a shower just to wash it off. it comes in a cream form and has a picture of a horse on it, well, an equestrian of some sort--maybe a jockey, maybe a gallop racer. and because of the picture, i refer to it as horse balm.
so the other night i'm putting this balm on my shoulder and i started reading the box. the balm tube and the box it comes in is in russian, white and orange. first ingredients: pretty straight forward, lots of homeopathic oils, camphor, menthol, rosemary, lavender, things that are supposed to warm body parts up. then, directions: apply to the affected area, up to 3 times a day, avoid contact with the eyes. nothing specific, very normal looking naturopathic balm. i turn to the front of the box: 'two in one: cooling and heating action', "not a medicinal remedy". then, i turn to the back again and see this tiny print: "zoological cosmetic agent not for reproductive animals". and right below that in even tinier print: "AVZ healthy animals"--like a manufacturing pharm company.
i text my mother immediately: "why does it say not for reproductive animals?" "you're probably not supposed to use it if you're pregnant" "yes, but reproductive ANIMALS??" "i'm sure they try to lick the balm off" "....why am i using horse balm???!?!" here is where my mother tried to logically defend the balm, arguing that it was recommended by a very human doctor to my very human aunt and it does an excellent job of relieving sore muscles. also there is a green one for joints!!
and then i thought, it has been making me feel better, it does heat up muscles really well, and i have not sprouted fur anywhere. i just hope my hoof feels better soon.

period misses. period

I hate when going through my patients' history, i ask them about their age of menarche--how old they were when they first got their period--and they don't remember. how do you not remember when you first got your period??! I don't mean like an exact date, but at least some ball park of an age. don't we all remember that first time? you told your mom, maybe she told your dad and you got mad at her? you had to find a pad, maybe had to ask your friend, or your friend's mom if you were somewhere not home? maybe you even freaked out a little bit? don't you remember, approximately, when that was? 7th grade because you were best friends with this person? or sixth grade because you had this person as your homeroom teacher and needed to get an excuse to go to the bathroom? Haven't we all read 'seventeen' as youths and were mortified over those 'most embarrassing moment' columns, hoping you won't get your first period while at a pool party, or while wearing that perfectly white uniform???? and when it did happen, don't we remember?
I also hate that my patients, when they, for some reason, don't remember their age, make up a number that is excessively too old. just to be clear, getting your period as a junior in high school, or after you've declared your college major, is not normal. so unless you were a super athlete and trained with symone biles, i hope your parents took you to a specialist to be evaluated for some hormonal imbalance, or a missing X chromosome. otherwise, you're just wrong.
same with age at first intercourse. i get it, the first time is frequently not great..and sometimes the second, and the third, and the 27th. maybe we wish we could forget, take it back, rearrange some things about it. maybe it was awkward, painful, even violent and unwelcome. but i feel like everyone should remember. those kinds of milestones in life are not the things one forgets. like you remember your first kiss, the first time you fell in love and felt it, the first time your heart was broken. which makes me wonder if people are just ashamed to tell me, their doctor, or they truly are weird and don't pay attention. i think it's conceivable that one would forget when or whether one had chlamydia (v gonorrhea), but losing one's virginity should, in theory, be harder to forget.
i hate that term. no one loses their virginity. you know exactly where your virginity went. it's not like you woke up one day and was like, shit! where did it go?? i had it yesterday, but now i can't find it! no, no one loses their virginity. it is given away, traded, sometimes taken, but never lost. i wish the same could be said about time wasted, time spent in bad relationships, about energy given to people who didn't deserve it, emotions spent on things and people who were not worth it. those are the things we should try to forget, not our first periods!

it's a scrub not life for us

There has been a real war waged against the linen department over the scrub machine. OK, OK, let me explain.
Medical scrubs at the hospital (so not cute scrubs you can buy online for office wear) come in two varieties: surgical scrubs and nursing scrubs. Surgical scrubs are unisex, equipped with one front chest pocket on the left, and right-sided butt pockets. They are reversible, therefore, they come with matching mirror inside pockets--right inside breast and left inside butt. They are pretty plain and tuck right in into your string tied pant. Nursing scrubs attempt to be cute with a v-neck and shorter sleeves; they have two front pockets low (like coats) and cannot be tucked in. And not to be offense to be nursing colleagues, but nursing scrubs are useless. They make you look like a penguin, the pockets are completely stupid as nothing can be put there--it either falls out, or prevents one from sitting down without taking all the shit out, or prevents one from reaching in. There is no place for your ID badge unless you're wearing a lanyard, which, let's be honest, no one does, or unless you stick it directly in your cleavage, where it is constantly at risk of coming in contact with a bodily fluid of some sort. And most importantly, it is untuckable!!
So scrubs come out of scrub machines: these scrub dispensers, which kind of resemble vending machines (the ramen and pop-tart vending machine, not candy and chip ones). you swipe your car, press "C" for collect, or "D" for deposit and it tells oyu to open a certain door containing your scrubs based on a pre-programmed sizing. sounds fool-proof. Except...
Labor and Delivery has a physician locker room. Two actually-male and female. Since these are physician locker rooms, they are supposed to be stocked with surgeon scrubs. Except, some idiot in linen decided that since it is a 'female' locker room, the scrub machines are to be stocked with nursing scrubs. And this has been going on for over a year. Over time, as this challenge has been ongoing, the scrub machine was persistently and steadily being covered with angry messages about incorrect stocking. Pleas and threats regarding stocking surgeon scrubs only have been accumulating on the little "please call the number for the linen department with any concerns". pleas and threats to stock the machine with 'man' scrub only have similarly been left unanswered. for while, i was getting my way of getting normal scrubs by going directly into the male locker room and using their machine. then, one day, either due to excessive complaining, or sheer complete confusion, all the scrub machine cards ahve been replaced with new clean ones, and the male scrub machine was being stocked with nursing scrubs as well. the linen department, confused out of its mind, just started stocking ridiculous scrubs everywhere, disregarding its own sexist practices.
the scrubs are ridiculously inconvenient, and as a colleague of mine raged on the phone with the linen department "preclude us from doing our job".
this seems like a trivial thing, but it's not. and it's especially fascinating as to why this continues to be a confusing stocking point. unless there is a prevalent thought of sexism, as if a woman works in the hospital, she must be a nurse, and therefore, must want to wear nursing scrubs. the fight rages on! until then, i will continue to be irate at all of linen department, demanding my normal useful scrubs back!