Crates & Blood

Being that I'm the most junior person in the ambulance crew, I always sit in the back of the bus, even if we have no patient on the stretcher. The driver is in the front (obviously) and the crew chief is riding shotgun. There is a short, narrow "hallway" between the back of the ambulance and the two front seats. It is stuffed with radios, but most of the space is taken up by a milk crate turned upside down.

"Hey," the driver said, "why don't you come up here and sit on the milk crate so we can hear you better when we talk."
"Is that....safe.....?" I hesitated.
"Yeah yeah, come on up!"

Ok then. I leaned my hand against the oxygen-tank closet on one side and with my other hand I grabbed the back of the driver's seat. I stretched my left leg over the milk crate and then my right, and sat down. I immediately felt like a little kid. Why am I on a milk crate? My knees are almost touching my chin, there's no way I look professional like this. I want to look professional!! What if people can see me??

And then we got dispatched. The call was for a "heavy bleeder."

I crawled back to my original place, sirens wailing, ambulance speeding past red lights. Crawling was difficult. It was kind of scary. My adrenaline spiked. How stupid of me to have sat up there. I need to focus, quickly.

We arrived. Police officers hovered around a female lying on her back, blood gushing out from the side of her head, a dark pool of blood on the street, getting larger. I put the c-collar around her neck while a FDNY EMT from a second ambulance controlled the bleeding. Right there, in the midst of adrenaline surges and team work, I felt like a professional again. I just need to get a different size uniform shirt that fits me better. And maybe a new name tag too.

Everybody knows your name

We had dinner at the Italian place on Fulton street. I recognized the waitress as we walked in, but I couldn't place her. We haven't been to this place often enough to be familiar with the staff. "Heeeey, I know you from Rice," the waitress said, "you go there all the time!" It was the waitress from the Thai place from around the corner. I don't like it when people in restaurants recognize me that freely. And this was not even the right restaurant for her to be in. "It's my first day here," she explained.

Whenever I go to Rice, the other restaurant (the Thai place), they always know what I'm going to order, I don't even have to order, the waitress usually orders for me: "Small veggie meatballs with sticky rice and sweet sauce...?" and she hands a note to the kitchen as I nod 'yes'. I guess it's because I always eat the same thing. But I'd rather them just treat me like any other guest and have me order verbally even though they're spot on - I would order the veggie meatballs. But still.

So here we are, in the Italian place, with the new waitress who knows me from the Thai place. I took the opportunity to place my order. "Can I have the veggie meatballs with sticky rice and sweet sauce, please?"

Maybe it was corny to order something from the other restaurant, she didn't really smile, but I thought it was funny.

Football

A reporter and a photographer boldly entered our Biology lab last night. I heard them whisper up front, conversing with our lab teacher. They were from The New York Times. I heard them mention Chris' name. Chris sits right in front of me.

"Pssst!" I leaned over the table towards Chris, "Are you famous or something??" He looked up and answered "Well, I'm a professional football player...." How awesome! A real professional athlete in our midst. The Times is doing a piece on him, I guess about being a football pro and a pre-med student, or something; a football player aspiring to become a doctor.

My lab partner, Jake, was not amused. He turned to me and said in a low voice: "I know he's apparently had an amazing season or something, but am I the only one who's annoyed by these reporters??" I think so. Personally, I liked having REAL New York Times reporters in my vicinity. I could reach out my hand and touch one of them, if I wanted to. Even touch the humongous camera.

Jake continued, in a whisper: "You know, I don't care who you are, you should leave your personal life outside, don't bring the press in here, in here we're all the same, just students, I don't care if you're Britney Spears or who you are." Wow. I would care if you were Britney Spears. Imagine having Britney in your lab! What would she say? What would she do? Would she dance? Would she sing? Lab isn't so bad after all.

PB & J

I've lived in this country my whole adult life (about 14 years already), and I consider this to be my home. I see my 'old' country - Sweden - as my childhood home. Still, being all-American and shit, I just learned to eat peanut butter last week. Certain habits are just hard to pick up.

My sister gave me a look of disgust as she saw me spread the stuff on my sandwich.
"What the hell are you doing??" she yelped.
"Peanut butter!" I responded, and took a big bite. She looked at me incredulously, as if I had just watched a baseball game and enjoyed it.
"It's really not that bad" I tried, "and it has a lot of protein."
She was not convinced: "Just listen to the name... peanut... BUTTER..."

Whatever. It's not like she's holding on to Swedish customs anymore than I am. We both drink coffee on the run (out of paper/plastic deli cups), and we eat out more than we cook at home. But of course, when it comes to life and death issues - like baseball and soccer - we consider the former to be idiotic and the latter to be common sense, like any Swede would. So we have not lost our common sense, though it's been challenged. It's nice to be all-Swedish and shit, too.

Fun and games

The cats play with their toys very differently. Bentley pounces his toy mouse around, he sometimes carries it over to me and I throw it across the room and he chases after it; we play fetch. Kompis, on the other hand, doesn't know what to do with toys. He used to be a street cat and never had toys, the poor bastard. Until now. Kompis picks up the toy mouse ferociously and tries to eat it. No play, just kill and eat. (Top: Bentley's mouse. Bottom: Kompis' mouse after I yanked it out of his jaws. He'd swallowed the tail already.)

Aaaah

Finally, a REAL spring day. These are the times when I truly enjoy not having an office to go to (sorry old office team mates), I can just hang out and do nothing.

First day of not wearing a jacket or even a sweater. I just strolled over to the post office in my pajama t-shirt and jeans (not that other people would know that I was in partial pajamas, it's just an old t-shirt, but still). And then I stopped for a cup of coffee at the neighborhood bagel shop, sat outside in the sun, aaaaahhhh, still in my pajama t-shirt, and actually, still sweaty from they gym this morning, haven't showered yet! The freedom of not having a "real" job - being scruffy on a marvelous Thursday spring day.
Picture: Fort Greene Park, by the entrance.

Please

You'd think you'd be safe from weirdness at the gym. At least I think so, but no.

Today there was a guy at the gym, working out on one of those cardio machines, who was wearing a bright red hockey helmet. Complete with the face cage and everything. Why? Why? Why? Why? And nobody said anything, nobody asked him what was going on, nothing. There he was, sweating away in his t-shirt, shorts, sneakers and the fucking helmet. And everyone just let him get away with it.

I would have said something if he hadn't been so far away from where I was sitting catching my breath.