Stumbling Through Adulthood

Perry totaled the Prius, sigh. He's fine, so is the other driver. Same way as the other Prius, when the person in front of the person in front of him slammed on their brakes and as #3 he wasn't able to stop in time. The driver who caused this by braking had their car tapped by driver #2, but drove off without stopping or checking on their car, WTF is with that? The thing is... everyone who drives with him is impressed at how good a driver he actually is, he just seems to get caught in those wrong place wrong time situations (the third time he was rear-ended, he got stopped in time, so did the two cars behind him, but a 4th car -with no insurance, of course- came up and slammed into everyone, though Perry did not hit the person in front of him). Anyhow. Sigh. So yeah. He has to buy a new car, and hopefully his insurance won't drop him, though he's never had a claim with them. And we have to buy a car too. This just sucks. Dh keeps on insisting it's not worth it to repair the Pilot, and he might be correct, but he's doing zip to get anything in its place. This time of year, it's all work, trains, and the occasional surfacing for a rowing event. But ugh.

I'm off today, starting my new schedule. Boss wants me working M-T-W, which yeah, gives me 4 day weekends every weekend, but damn, Mondays are going to be difficult, getting back into the swing of things after that long of a break.

I had an interview this morning. Eh? Dunno.

Our pregnant mama rat had her pups, Elena sacrificed all but one but did the part I refuse to which is taking them away from her. Despite our desires, the three of us (E, the postdoc, and I) did not take mama out to cuddle her. I did, however, do the PI-to-PI transfer that means E or I did not have to euthanize her. I don't know what happens to her next, I hope for a better outcome. I was kinda horrified that they let me transfer her, without an official ok from the PI, though of course I had his verbal agreement. I suspect that in an effort to get the animal management off his plate, he gave me the keys to the (rodent) kingdom.

I had a weight check with my NP yesterday. BMI officially under 25, even accounting for the fact that I'm shorter than I used to be. 🤬 My 1.60 m is now just only 1.58 m, so no longer a short 5ft3 but an even shorter 5ft2 and a tiny bit of change. I remember measuring in at 1m60, because it was the height a few doctors used to bully me, since my 60 kg at the time -132 lbs- was OMG, disgusting and gross, I should not weight more than 50 kg (110 lbs), ie the number of cm after the 1 meter minus 10 that they used. I bulemia'ed my way to 55 kg (hey, it was the 80s, I was in good company) but could not get any lower. Ah well.

Other outcome of the visit: got persuaded to get two vaccines: pneumonia, since I guess at some point the rec went from age 65 to age 50, and shingles. They warned me the shingles vaccine was a bit rough. Yeah. It is. I got one in each arm -that was stupid, what was I thinking?- and now my arms are hella sore, I have chills and nausea. My body has not been doing well with vaccines these past few years, since the second mRNA shot. Ah well, done. And I must remind dh to get his, as well as an MMR booster.

Tomorrow is Opening Day for the boating season! Linnea will be racing in the 2V8, since there is no category for her V4 boat. Perry will be in an 8 with a bunch of WWU and Seattle U alumni, should be fun. I think they need to rename their team to the Flying Fossils and apply decals of a skeletal T Rex rampant. I'm thinking that dh and I should drop Perry off at the boathouse, leave our car there, then bike to the course. Once we decide we're committed to one side of the Montlake Cut or the other. I might leave our bikes in the lab. Yeah, it's frowned upon, but maybe nobody would notice on a Saturday?

My new schedule starts next week. I have tried three times now to get my boss to discuss what days he wants me in. Each time he asks me which days I prefer, I tell him, and he says he'll think about it. And it's next freaking week. I'm stressed by the uncertainty.

I suspect that he wants Golden Girl Elena (whom I really like, actually) to get to pick which days she wants to work, and I'll get what's left. And while I like her a lot, she's a bit of a flake. We're trying to do a project in parallel (so she can "train" me on something I've been doing for a while) and she is invariably late, getting in at 11 or noon, rather than the 9:30 she promised. So a three-day project has taken three days already and we have two more to go, both are overnights so at best we'll be done Wednesday with verification Thursday night. I'm sure the boss will blame me since my work hours mean I'm often on my way out of the lab when he comes to do his afternoon review of the fiefdom past 5pm, but I've gotten there before 9am.

And we now have a rat that is supposed to give birth Tuesday or Wednesday that Elena is supposed to 100% deal with. I know how long these preps take and how physically demanding they are. She has health issues that have me concerned about her ability to take on a prep that typically takes at least 4 hours, even for someone experienced. And despite boss's claim, she hasn't done the time-consuming part of these preps before. Frighting that I might have more experience than she does. Nutshell: the prep involves removing the hippocampi from the brain. These are tiny in mice, apparently bigger in rats. She hasn't done that at all; I haven't done it in rats. The other part of the prep, which is tbh the easy part, is transforming the hippocampi into a neuronal culture. The dissection part involves being hunched over a microscope that is in a biosafety cabinet. I don't have back or neck problems and I'd finish those days in serious pain.

I'm stressed out and very unhappy at work right now. I'm desperately applying for other jobs, but there aren't many out there, and plenty of people more qualified than me so I don't have much hope of finding anything.

ETA this evening. Elena stayed home today, she was too tired to come in. Boss showed up asking me if we had colonies, and sounding dismayed at how long this joint project was taking. UGH. But in good news, I got an email to set up an interview for one of the jobs I applied to last night, so fingers crossed.

So. This week, twice, I told my boss that I would not work with rats. I'll get trained to work with rats and I'll help out in case of emergency, but I do not want to be the person who takes the rat pups away from their mothers. That was bad enough with mice, I won't do it with rats. When I first mentioned it, he talked about hiring a former grad student of his who was in need of part time job, to do all the rat work. I heartily agreed with that decision.

I've been low key expecting to get fired. Not for cause, my performance is fine, but because he can hire Elena to do the rats, and she's probably better than me at everything. But no. I'm bumped down to 60% time. I don't know, but I expect, that Elena will pick up the other two days.

The reality is that he doesn't know if his grant is going to be renewed. I get it.

I'll get my pots of tea in the morning back, my rambles though my beloved wildland park. Hikes in the middle of the week. Long weekends.

The biggest issue, however, is that it means I'm going to end up doing more lab manager work. 🤮

Well, I don't know when they started blooming, but dh and I got to our wildland park last night and saw some beautiful trilliums.



I don't know if I mentioned it... years ago, when I started taking classes at UW, I needed a user-id. I didn't want to use nwhiker or it was taken, but I landed on "trillium". When I started work, I expected to have to pick a new ID, but no, trillium came right up. I like it.

I got me a job offer.

OMG.

Research tech at UW.

OMG.

I just did something I've been dreading for months. Sending a simple email. But fingers crossed, it'll let me move on to better things, LOL. Like, I mean, looking for a job.

Thanks, siamese1!