January 24, 2008
Sometimes I have to remind myself that the term “drama queen” is usually considered a negative thing. I didn’t miss a memo did I? Drama is still something we’re all trying to avoid, right?
Tonight was visiting night for the patients at the hospital. Unlike the medical sections of the hospital - which have pretty liberal visiting hours - the psychiatric units only have visiting on two nights… and then only for one hour each night. Because of this restriction, we try our best to get everyone who visits in the door for at least a short time.
So when a patient’s spouse arrives at the door, we don’t usually think twice. Tonight, however, there was some confusion. One of our patients arrived at the hospital after being picked up by the police for violating a restraining order. When the patient in question was taken in to the police station it was quickly determined that something was a little off about his behavior.
No biggie, right? That’s pretty standard. But this patient’s spouse - who has the restraining order - showed up for visiting tonight. After a couple of phone calls to verify that it wasn’t illegal to allow them on to the unit (and a chat with the patient to make sure it was ok with him), we let her come on. You’d never have guessed these were anything but happily married people. They were chatting… hugging… and giving each other the puppy eyes during the entire visit.
It was a little strange.
But what was even more strange was the phone call that I got about an hour after visiting ended. The patient’s spouse called to see if there was anything that we could do about him calling her. Apparently he’d called her after she got home from visiting him. She went into great detail about the restraining order and all but demanded that we do something about his calls to her.
First of all… we don’t do that. We don’t monitor our patient’s phone calls. They’re free, grown adults and they can call anyone they want. I suggested she call the police if she felt like she was being harassed. I mean… she does have a restraining order against him. He shouldn’t be calling her.
But more importantly, how do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you spend an hour pawing a guy and hugging him and chatting him up… only to turn around and act like it’s a problem when he calls you? If you don’t want someone to contact you… maybe you should consider… oh… I dunno… NOT MAKING OUT WITH THEM?
Can you say “drama queen”? How is this not a case of someone making their own bed and then not wanting to lie in it? Ok… so you have a restraining order. You call the cops when he comes to your house. You call the cops if he calls you. But then you turn around and visit him in the hospital and spend more time wrapped around him than not?
I’m convinced that, while most of us try to avoid drama at all costs, some people crave it. They long for it. They look for ways to make their lives as dramatic as possible. Life seems boring to them. There’s nothing to do and nothing to occupy themselves with if there’s nothing dramatic going on. These are the people who drag drama into the rest of our lives simply because they need it. For what? I don’t know. The thrill? A sense of control or power? A way to feel?
Think about it. If a restraining order actually makes someone leave you alone… the drama is gone. It’s over. No more. But… if you can lead them on… give them reasons to keep hope that you might change your mind alive… and keep motivating them to violate the restraining order so you can get the police involved… the drama can live on!
What’s really sad about this situation is that the guy in question is on the fence. He’s teetering on the point of giving up. And I don’t mean on his marriage. I mean on his life. Anyone who’d spend 5 minutes with this guy would see the signs. He’s a man without a purpose.
The drama queen is just pushing him over the edge. And for what? The thrill of drama.
Posted in Human Nature, Rants 
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December 30, 2007
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=ufYF0f-zMgY[/youtube]
I can’t wait to see this movie. I’ve been following the websites and blogs about it for months. Hell… I even switched shifts at work so that I could be off on opening night. Since I’m so excited about seeing it… I have a feeling it will suck. That’s just how things normally go.
But man I’m hoping it doesn’t. It looks like it could be an original twist on an old story:
- Big monster
- The destruction of New York
- People running around screaming
- The shaky “I made this at home” cinematography
Ya know… if I was a big movie watcher… I’d never even think about visiting New York - let alone living there. How many times has that city been destroyed on the big screen? 5? 15? 100?
Hopefully The Big Apple’s destruction on 1-18-08 will be just as exciting as the others…
Posted in Personal, Video 9 Comments »
December 22, 2007
I’m pretty sure that if you look up the word “slacker” in the dictionary, it will have a nice definition accompanied by a picture of me. Haha. Yes… it’s been a while since I posted anything here. But this isn’t the only place I’ve been slacking.
I’ve always said if you’re gonna do something, don’t half-ass it - do it all the way.
Such is the degree of my slacking. I partially blame my neglect on all fronts to my newest toy: a Tivo. How I ever lived without my new best friend is beyond me. Tivo knows exactly what I want and never stops delivering. We spend most evenings and mornings together. Weekends are usually spend catching up on everything Tivo has done for me that I wasn’t able to appreciate during the week.
Talk about your engrossing relationship. I’m such a Tivo whore. Haha.
But this morning I discovered a new button on the Tivo remote. It has two little vertical lines on it (like this ||). When I pushed that button, Tivo froze exactly where it was. At first I wasn’t sure what was going on. I thought I’d killed my friend. But when I pushed the button again, Tivo came back to life - just like that. I spent a good 10 minutes pushing the button over and over again: pause… resume… pause… resume…
And then I had an epiphany: Holy crap!! I can be friends with Tivo AND have time to do other things.
I’m going to check for one of these mysterious buttons at work on Monday. Keep your fingers crossed that the same principle applies there. You should probably start checking around for a pause button of your own. Maybe you can find one at work or home. Let me know if you stumble across one. If I haven’t found another one of my own I might need your advice on where to look.
It wasn’t until I’d pushed this magical button that I had time to sit down and look at all of the stuff I’ve neglected to do in the past couple of months or so. Not only did WordPress release a new version… they’d even released an update to the new version. A bunch of the plugins I use here had been updated. Oh yeah… and I hadn’t posted anything in over a month. Haha.
Well I can safely say that not only are we all up to date now, but you’re even reading a new post. No. Seriously. This one isn’t old. I’m writing it this very second.
I had a ton of updates and requests on Facebook that I hadn’t seen. I ended up ignoring and/or canceling most of them. But man… you’d think I’d been gone for a year. Seriously, my friends… how in the hell did ya’ll have enough time to do all that stuff on Facebook? Haha.
My text message inbox on my phone was 1 message away from being full. My email inbox was three pages long (and half of the messages weren’t even read). If you’ve ever heard my rant on inboxes, you’ll know how strange that is (The short version: Inboxes are NOT for storage, people!! Read new messages in your inbox and then delete them or move them to a folder. It’s INbox… not a STORAGEbox or a ALLOFMYMAILbox. /end rant).
My iTunes library had 1210 songs in it. But my iPod only had 849 songs on it. What?!? How in the…? You can’t be serious?! Oh but I am! Before you freak out like I did… don’t worry. Both now contain 1140 songs (I did some musical housekeeping).
Now you know why, for several weeks, I’ve felt like I was rocking back and forth all day long. It was my world spinning out of control without my knowledge. It was probably a good way to weaken some of my OCD walls. Haha. I can already feel the stabilizing effects of getting the world back in order.
I bet you didn’t even notice the turbulence, did ya? You probably had no clue that the entire fabric of space and time were about to unravel. Chaos was mere days from taking over. Do you have any idea what would have happened if inboxes went uncleaned and WordPress plugins were left unupdated? I shudder to think about the repercussions of a mismatched iTunes+iPod library.
I’m giving myself a big pat on the back for saving the world from destruction.
Damn that little Tivo tramp. I see that big yellow pause button laying on the bed right now… calling me… begging me to unleash Pandora’s Box again. Now that things are right in the world again, Tivo has stepped up it’s sinful assault on my more baser instincts.
“Push me”, it keeps saying. “Come on… you know you want to. All the cool kids are pushing their resume buttons.” That voice… like a Siren… calling me back to my own destruction…
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