(2 | say something) lovely [08 Aug 2009|02:09am] the fremont police department is trying to fine me $426 for making a right turn at a red light without stopping. considering that i make $12/hour and work maybe 24 hours a week, it should take me about a week and a half of my life to pay that ticket off. it was one of those very special, camera-captured events.

(4 | say something) [31 Jul 2009|05:42pm] sometimes in the summer when all of california is burning up under the sun, san francisco is enveloped in the most beautiful fog. from a distance it looks as if the city is being engulfed in a very clean-burning fire. right above the golden gate bridge is about where the sunlight can no longer diffuse through the mist, and afternoon suddenly becomes evening. if you look over the edge of the bridge on the right, it's like glancing into heaven: a deep expanse of light gray clouds that you can't see even 6 inches into, yet you keep trying. when you first cross into the city there are the blackened silhouettes of cypress trees lining the hills in the distance, oscillating in the winds. the fog fades and blurs them particularly at the edges, just like it does everything else.

(say something) [20 Jul 2009|05:37pm] this is a good summer for: museums ribbons reading blackberries walks braids aesthetic movies old movies lazy days little spoon mushrooms dancing drinking handsome men short trips long hair little dresses flat boots stupid shorts laying in grass picnics freckles fog working 4 hours a day dogs trying new things/food experience over materialism

(say something) [08 Jul 2009|01:39am] it is 1:40 am and i'm eating mint chocolate chip ice cream while reading up on sotomayor. i haven't gotten much sleep the past two nights and i don't think tonight will be an exception. i sort of want to reread an entire novel in the next 5 hours and have an oh fuck moment at 7 am when the sun is hitting me in the face.

(2 | say something) [06 Jul 2009|08:31pm] my laptop has this infuriating tendency to go "back" one page if i tap on the mousepad in the right (WRONG) spot. it constantly makes me rewrite things like emails and shit and i don't know how to turn it off.

(3 | say something) [29 Jun 2008|11:32am] ( el salvador thusfar )

(say something) [28 Jun 2008|08:10pm] Wednesday, June 25, 2008 Hospital Rosales: Men’s Ward, Surgery Recovery (General and Neurosurgery) Today went very well. I talked to a few new men, Hugo, Alfonso, Carlos, and Jesus. Huge is a portly young man who has hydroencephaly and maybe meningitis. The pressure in his brain makes it so that he can’t open his eyes all the way and it looks like he’s always sleepy. He went into a coma last night and was supposed to get an operation today, but it got delayed. Instead I watched as he got a spinal tap, which was different than I had envisioned it, then had to leave before they put a catheter into his heart to check the central venous blood pressure. The neurosurgeon that speaks English is a bit of a jokester, he kept twirling around the syringes and said I would be able to do it too one day, with practice. I might be able to watch one of his neurosurgeries tomorrow! I’m incredibly excited about it. Alfonso is the man who had shit coming out of his nose. He was shot in the chest, has a lot of internal damage, hence the coughing up blood. He’s pretty nice but we didn’t talk much. Carlos has the most fucked up teeth. There are about five or six of them, long and blunt, that stick out at odd angles like a claw. He didn’t do too poorly for himself though; he has a wife and four kids. He was riding his bike when he got hit by a car, which left him with some internal organ damage, I couldn’t understand what exactly. He’ll be out in a week. Jesus is my favorite so far. He’s very calm and soft-spoken. He got into some sort of car accident and broke his leg about a week ago. He said he likes literature so I might bring him a novel tomorrow. There is a new addition to the ward, a boy about my age, very fair and innocent-looking, like an angel. But angels don’t usually get shot in the chest and neck and leak out their lifesource all over a soiled hospital bed. We met eyes a couple times today but I didn’t talk to him because he went to sleep. I think I’m getting sick (haha, sick she says!), my throat hurts when I swallow. And of course, I can’t help but swallow twice as often as usual just to see if it still hurts. It does. I start my first Spanish class today. There are three classes: intermediate, advanced, and conversational (in order of difficulty). I bought the book for the intermediate class online before I left and it didn’t get to my house until after I had already arrived in El Salvador. It was $150 new. Then, my darling mom went ahead and shipped it to me for an additional $150, insisting she would have spent that much on me anyway had I been home. Then yesterday I took the placement exam and they put me in the advanced class, so I basically wasted $300 on a book I don’t need and now I have to get the other one somehow. A bit frustrating but it means I get 5 upper division units instead of 4 lower division units and can definitely graduate after fall quarter.

(1 | say something) [24 Jun 2008|10:44pm] Tuesday, June 24, 2008 Hospital Rosales: Men’s Ward, Surgery Recovery (General and Neurosurgery) Today was better; I think the men have gotten a bit more accustomed to my presence in the ward. I fed the paralyzed man again, but this time he wasn’t afraid to tell me what he wanted, rather than politely allowing me to clumsily thrust every scrap of food on the plate into his mouth. He tried to ask me for the drink, which was warm milk, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying (it didn’t sound like either bebida or leche) and I was getting a little frazzled when the man in the next chair chimed in with some well-timed English, simply: “drink”. Oh! Gracias. I turned to see a new addition to the ward, a young man in glasses who was also paralyzed. There are a lot of car accidents apparently, which doesn’t surprise me because the driving here is atrocious. On the health and safety sheet they gave us on our first day it said “Pedestrians DO NOT have the right of way. Be careful when crossing the street.” One girl swore a car sped up when she crossed in front of it. I thought that was funny. The new man’s name is Eduardo, and he learned a bit of English when he was in college here. He had a good job and even had social security, but ever since he injured his spinal cord, he lost his job and thus his social security as well. So now he’s stuck with the rest of them in the public hospital, along with me and my terrible pronunciation. I read the first guy some futból articles, butchering nearly every other word. I asked him if he caught the game on Sunday and motioned to the TV at one end of the ward. He said it was broken. I asked Eduardo if he liked futból but he said he preferred the news so instead I read him an article about the bus crisis. Due to the high gas prices buses have had to raise fares from $0.25 to $0.35, which is a shit ton of money if you only make a dollar a day. In protest, a group of masked men hijacked two buses, robbed everyone on board, made them get off, and then set fire to the buses. Not that I actually understood the article I was reading; I garnered this information later from one of the program coordinators. Later I noticed there were actually 5 or 6 new additions to the ward. There’s barely enough room between the beds for a person to stand. The windows are always open but the air doesn’t circulate well and a stagnant stench pervades the room. There are four men in the ward that are on the brink of death. First is the elderly man with the trachea tube, then there are three other guys that I got a better look at today. One is a complete invalid and is never conscious as far as I can tell. We wheeled him to another section of the hospital to get a CAT scan and had to grab the sides of his sheet to transfer him from bed to table. I think the breathing tube down his throat got jostled while we moved him, so he started coughing and choking. His breath smelled like death, as if his insides were decaying. I looked at him more closely, wondering about his family, if he had any kids, a wife, brothers or sisters. I had thought he was an elderly man at first, but when I looked closer he seemed rather young. He had a full head of dark curly hair and probably wasn’t older than his early thirties. His time in the hospital seemed to have aged him prematurely. Another one is a young man connected to an oxygen tank whose entire body undulates abnormally as it struggles to breathe. He keeps his eyes open yet sees nothing while a crowd of doctors and nurses lift his MRI scans to the light from the window. After they’re done, they tuck the scans back under the brown mattress, that’s the official storage place for them, and move to the next bed. There is the thinnest man I’ve ever seen. His skeletal frame hides beneath a spotted sheet, his eyes study the ceiling blankly. I watched him closely while my partner read the newspaper to him; no hint of recognition or comprehension. I wonder what sort of visual processing is going on in his brain as his eyes take in the same patch of ceiling throughout the day. I question the nurse’s feeding methods. His thigh is the size of my forearm. I need to get the fuck out of this ward. I’ve sort of befriended a neurosurgeon who speaks English rather well and I’m going to try to weasel my way into watching one of his brain surgeries. I’m not enjoying myself very much here. The $0.35 chocolate-covered frozen bananas and the bakery with $0.20 cookies and breads are of little consolation. I just spent the last five minutes crying in the bathroom and I can’t lucidly explain why. I tried to watch the Michael Moore film “Sicko” with the rest of the group earlier but I got up and left 5 minutes into it. I can’t stand Michael Moore and I’m too socially retarded to function in a large group of people. I can never seem to integrate myself into conversations with relative strangers. A number of the girls have irritating laughs, voices, or accents. I need to find out where the latter are from so I’ll know never to visit there. One of the girls hooked up with Ben a few times last year and I can’t stop thinking about them together. She’s very pretty and nice to everyone. He said she’s kind of annoying, and that she puked on him and his bed once. She hasn’t mentioned to me that she knows him, or knew him I guess, in the biblical sense. I catch her staring at me sometimes and she always compliments me on my outfits and includes me in conversations when I’m being antisocial. I don’t want to be here for another three and a half weeks, I’m too maladjusted and isolated from the others to feel comfortable. I try to immerse myself in my novels but they aren’t as warm as human companionship. They never are. I miss resting my head at night on the chest of someone who whispers that they love me right before we go to sleep.

(3 | say something) [23 Jun 2008|06:10pm] Monday, June 23, 2008 Hospital Rosales: Men’s Ward, Surgery Recovery (General and Neurosurgery) I saw a man vomit through a trachea tube today. The poor nurse hurriedly tried to sop up the mess and cover up the hole in his throat to keep the liquid from spewing all over the bed and the front of her uniform. I believe he had a brain tumor, but the language barrier kept me from completely understanding what was wrong with most of the patients. My Spanish is miserable. The nurse admitted there was nothing left to do for him except try to keep him comfortable as he slowly died in that wretched bed. I fed ham, beans, avocado, bread, and vanilla pudding to a twenty-five year old quadriplegic. Twenty-five years old. He could move his arms a tiny bit so he wasn’t completely paralyzed from the neck down, but they weren’t functional enough for simple tasks. He said it felt as if they were sleeping. It’s an odd feeling to feed a paralyzed person; I can’t say it’s an enjoyable experience. I kept thinking, is this too much food? Not enough? Am I putting this spoon in his mouth too quickly or too slowly? I was glad when it was over. He was the nicest man in the ward though, and I think he was glad to have someone to talk to. These people just lie in their rusted beds all day long with nothing to do but wait. A few men had Bibles to read but this man couldn’t hold one up, so instead he would just lie there in silence. I’m going to bring a newspaper tomorrow and read him the news in Spanish, I think he’ll enjoy the diversion. Another man had been shot in the face, I think, and had a large tube coming out of a patched up area around his nose. He would make a coughing or sneezing sound, I couldn’t really tell which it was, then blood and brown stuff would come out into the tube. I caught his eye once as this happened and immediately regretted it. The look on his face was terrible. I could tell most of the men were uncomfortable with being seen in their vulnerable conditions, by some foreign girl, especially in a country where machismo is so prevalent. Another man was a double amputee and didn’t know what to do with himself because his family couldn’t afford a wheelchair. They lived far away and couldn’t afford to visit him often either. The hospital is in terrible disrepair. The health department asked the government for $60 million this year but only received $32 million. That’s to run thirty hospitals for an entire year, including all the workers’ salaries, medical supplies, upkeep costs, etc. The two largest hospitals alone require $10 million each, which of course they’re not getting. Many hospitals were severely damaged in the 2001 earthquake as well, yet only one has been reconstructed in the past seven years. The hospitals are promised money they never see; instead it’s spent elsewhere or disappears. The health professionals are miserably underpaid ($200 a month!), the hospitals are overpopulated and understaffed. There isn’t enough medicine to go around. People die in the emergency room while waiting to be seen and sometimes their bodies aren’t noticed for hours, except by the other surviving patients next to them of course who are left, scared shitless I’m sure. The journalists that publish articles criticizing the public health system are threatened by corrupt politicians. I don’t know how to feel about this experience. Right now, I’m dreading going back to that ward tomorrow morning. I feel awful for these men who are so completely dehumanized by the doctors and nurses. The male worker showing my partner and I around the ward brought us to the foot of each bed and loudly explained what was wrong with them without asking for permission first or even looking at them. When one of the men had something wrong with a part of their body that was covered with a sheet, the worker would pull back the sheet and show us the bandaged limb or wound, just like that. The patients just laid there and stared at us with solemn eyes. I tried to avoid them. Some had been wearing diapers under the sheet as well, can you imagine how that must have made them feel, for me, a young girl in a blue and white polka dot dress, to see them in that state? There is absolutely no sense of confidentiality or privacy in healthcare here. Not that they should be used to it anyway; all the beds are crammed into such a small ward that everyone knows what’s wrong with everyone else anyway. There are no partitions, no screens. Everyone knows when you shit yourself and when you vomit up your lunch through a hole in your neck.

(3 | say something) [15 Jun 2008|02:54am] being in love has got to be the best feeling in the world

(say something) [24 Mar 2008|12:57am] even though it has only been a couple days, being on break from school makes me feel so under-utilized. this last week of finals was killer though, i'm glad i got that shit out of the way. it might just be because i'm on my period, but i've been feeling really depressed lately. i think a lot of it has to do with my shitty boyfriend and feeling dumb because he doesn't want to hang out with me, and when we do he's content to check out and talk to other girls. god i suck at life sometimes... since when am i such a dumb fucking sensitive little girl? grow up, idiot. stop dating children and maybe you won't have this problem.

(4 | say something) [11 Feb 2008|03:52pm] [ mood | sore, stressed ] goddamnit i'm so not cut out for this rugby business. i'm a delicate flower. i bloom the essence of youth and purity, not battery and self-doubt. i wish i never learned about momentum conservation for inelastic collisions in physics, which is what tackles are essentially (if implemented correctly). problem is, i just don't have the mass to compensate for that of a 300 lb samoan chick, no matter what our relative velocities are. who is going to absorb all that energy in the form of gut-wrenching pain? me. not her. oh, and will she go down after all that aforementioned suffering? very unlikely. so my pragmatist approach is, of course, to drift outward to cover the girl in support and possibly try to intercept the pass, only she isn't going to pass unless she gets tackled and there's nobody there to tackle her but me. bitch ass situation. and no of course i didn't take her down... instead she stiff-armed me in the face and i made an ineffective arm tackle. i always tell myself i'm gonna stiff-arm the defense but i never really end up doing it, i guess because i'm just naturally opposed to running the heel of my hand into someone's nose or jaw and pushing out as hard as i can so that their head goes flying in the opposite direction of their body. what can i say, i'm a paradigm of morality. rough game to say the least, but we've only got a couple more of them so i've just gotta stick it out and stop being such fucking pussy. this saturday we play san jose state and from the looks of their team, they all persistently inject themselves with human growth hormone. that is when they're not pumping iron and going down on each other.

(11 | say something) [11 Dec 2007|08:58pm] i'm in chico visiting my dad this week. yesterday i shadowed him at work, and today i shadowed dr. kevin brown, a primary care physician. it was so much more fun to shadow dr. brown cuz he let me get a stethoscope and listen to everyone's heart and lungs, and i got to use that pointed hand-held microscope to check their ears and throats. i had no idea what i was doing of course but it was fun to pretend. he even had me get a glove on and lube up my finger for my first prostate exam. i don't think the poor man was too thrilled to have some random little girl in heels with no experience sodomize him, but dr. brown assured him i had small hands. and besides, it was in the interest of science and broadening the minds of today's youth. i saw my first case of scabies. kinda gross, but not as gross as i thought it would be and the treatment is really simple. i tried to feel some woman's incisional hernia but it was kinda small and i couldn't really feel anything, but i acted like i could anyway so he'd stop making me poke the woman's abdomen because my hands were cold and i don't think she was too happy about that. most of my dad's patients are old people with diabetes, hypothyroidism, and B12 deficiencies, so not so fun there. i'd really like to shadow a few surgeons but i'm going to have to wait til i get back to fremont for that. i've sorta been studying for the mcat but not really. i started phillip pullman's book "the golden compass" but i have yet to fall in love. otherwise chico is prettty boring since i don't really know anyone here.

(2 | say something) [27 Oct 2007|04:38pm] why, in the only game my mom watches in my rugby tournament today, do i get slammed backward on my head by some he-she?

(6 | say something) [15 Aug 2007|05:25pm] i got impulsive and cut off around 8 inches of my hair. its right above my shoulders. very weird.

(6 | say something) [28 May 2007|11:13am] i'm going to be living in a small room in the back of a mexican woman's house next year for $525/month. compared to living in the dorms that should save my parents around $300/month, according to what i think my dad pays for it. this woman's house is around 4 blocks from campus, which is okay with me because i have a skateboard and a really cute bike that i rarely ever ride. i timed it at 5 minutes by skateboard, but probably around 8 or 9 minutes from the science buildings which are where most of my classes are. my mom is worried i'm going to get assaulted and expressed her concerns about me getting picked up by transients. as if she didn't make me take karate lessons for 3 excruciating years so that i would be able to protect myself in such a situation. as if the area of santa clara that i'd be living in had transients anyway. she said i can't wear skirts while i'm walking because it will introduce trouble. she is going to take me shopping for pants which i think is really funny, but its cool because a girl can never have too many jeans. even though i still won't wear them if its 75+ degrees out.

(4 | say something) [20 Apr 2007|02:04pm] all of a sudden i can't do anything right in organic chem lab this quarter. i keep fucking dropping my recrystallized products or using my reagents outside of the hood in front of my lab instructor. a strange coincedence is that the flammable chemicals cabinet smells like sugar cookies. i don't know what glorious mix of aromatic chemicals spilled in there, but i like it.

(1 | say something) [05 Mar 2007|09:04pm] oh geez. i made a severe error in judgement by waiting until the night before to start studying for my ochem midterm. no matter how many times i read over these 309820985 reactions, i can't seem to memorize them. i wish my roommate would commit suicide so i could automatically get straight As like in that awful movie 'dead man on campus.' jp!

(say something) [02 Mar 2007|03:09pm] when i can't sleep i like to watch court tv and freak myself the fuck out about every sound and lock all the doors.

(1 | say something) [29 Jan 2007|05:49pm] christmas ryan, me, & mom

(11 | say something) [05 Dec 2006|12:59pm] i watched 'love story' last night and i literally couldn't stop crying. i had to get up like 5 times to wipe my eyes off and told aaron that there was something in my eye so that he wouldn't know the truth: that i was crying like a little bitch over some 70's movie that nicholas sparks clearly jacks off to every night before he goes to bed.

(say something) [13 Sep 2006|10:15am] this is so sad

(5 | say something) [13 Oct 2005|04:38pm] every time i leave a room i have the sinking feeling that i'm forgetting something.

(12 | say something) [14 Sep 2005|01:57pm] okay, when i bought 'mother's cookies: chocolate chip cookie parade' i had no idea oatmeal was invited. sick.

(15 | say something) [17 Jul 2005|09:04pm] got a sweet new do

(15 | say something) [18 Jun 2005|03:06pm] i think i got a concussion last night when i was in the fat sumo suit and i fell backward and hit my head on the wooden floor.

(5 | say something) [31 May 2005|03:28pm] is it just me, or did that econ website (www.next-ten.pieceofshit) completely fuck up your computer and print out a billion pages of pure garbage?

(11 | say something) [23 May 2005|08:38pm] i've renamed the black cat lucifer. on saturday he tried to kill my dad in his sleep by biting through the tube that gives him insulin, and my poor old diabetic dad didn't wake up when his pump started beeping the malfunction alarm. if i didn't wake him up to tell him to shut it the fuck up he could have died. then on sunday the cat jumped on my face while i was sleeping for no other reason i assume, than to kill me too. senior ball was whack and a big waste of money. i'd post pictures of my cute dress (since i just realized that we actually do own a digital camera) but i don't know what happened to the usb cord and i'm too fucking lazy to go find it.

(9 | say something) [28 Feb 2005|10:15pm] today paul was telling me how he memorizes his vocab words by relating them to sex. i.e. encumber tr.v. en·cum·bered, en·cum·ber·ing, en·cum·bers 1. To put a heavy load on; burden "tommy encumbered all over jessica's face"

(9 | say something) [18 Oct 2004|07:15pm] dear renata lerner, today in ap biology we had to do a lab which you just so happened to be absent for, and it just so happened to be the first lab we did not entirely fuck up. so i came to the conclusion that you are the hindrance that keeps us from achieveing scientific brilliance and success and that you really needn't come back to our lab group ever again. try to remember that it isn't anything personal and that jesus still loves every single one of us, though clearly some slightly less than others. ♥ a.m.

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