Stumbling Through Adulthood

Dh and I just signed up for a Learn to Row Class.

Holy hell.

The only good thing? Since I don't have the same name as Perry and I don't know either of the LTR coaches, I might be able to be stealth about it. Dh? Not only do they share a last name, they look alike, sound alike, and walk alike. 🤣 Random people have stopped him at rowing events and asked "Are you Perry's dad?"

So yeah. This is going to be fun. I hope.

I came in yesterday to a note on my desk from my PI explaining how one of the steps in the protocol wasn't necessary. OK, dude, but you keep on telling me that each reaction costs $100 and to be very careful, and now you're telling me to disregard the manufacturer's protocol? Whatever, I guess. Tears of rage in an empty office.

And today just got even worse. I can't detail it all, but basically Elena is a goddess that can do no wrong, and who gets to decide that we need to toss $400 $3000 worth of reagents to buy new ones because she doesn't think the old ones are working. I asked three months ago if I could toss those reagents because I didn't think they were working and was told that no, they worked I was probably just doing something wrong. I'll add that the experiment that I failed at twice? Elena has now failed at twice as well, but for her, it's something wrong with -you guessed- one of our reagents, but me, it's just that I don't know molecular biology well enough. Note that the implication was that I'd done something to the reagent, left it out on the bench or thawed it at 37C or some such. UGH. But Elena was trained by the PI's wife when she worked in the lab, so of course she's perfect. Oh and Elena gets to do work on the neurons one week and the week we don't have pups, she gets to do molecular biology, working "with me" on my project. It's, however, very obvious to me that with the time I have in the lab each week, there is no time for anything other than fucking lab manager work. I've worked two full days and not a bit of time was spent on anything other than the routine tasks, made worse by the fact that people left a mess in the lab for me last Thursday and Friday... namely: emptied all the ethanol bottles, didn't refill. I've pre-diluted the 200 proof stuff, they'd just have to pour it in. Someone left bottles of reagents empty but put away so I didn't notice until I needed one that it was empty, there were discarded gloves all over the place, and oh, someone -the PI I think- broke glassware and left most of it in the sink. Just because I got fucked with the lab manager job does not mean I am the maid. We're all adults. Fucking clean up after yourselves.

There is a very clear division right now: the three of them are the researchers, and I'm the support person. They chat together in a manner that feels like it deliberately excludes me. And often, they speak -of research- in Spanish, completely cutting me out of the conversation. I grew up in a multicultural and multilingual environment. I don't take offense at people speaking a language they prefer even if I do not understand it. However, at work? Make a fucking effort. Also, I'm pretty good at determining if a language is being used because of comfort versus to exclude. This feels like the latter. Or maybe not exclude as much as... I'm not worth the effort of switching to English.

And the killer thing, the last straw that might make me quit? There is a white board by my desk, one of the three or four in the lab. PI told Elena and Nahuel that if they needed something done or bought, they could just leave me a note there. Which Elena promptly did. Way to make me feel like the hired help, not even worthy of an ask, but instead, just write down a list of things to do for the clearly inferior person. For some reason I cannot seem to articulate, that just seems like the final insult, the one that is clearly meant to make it obvious where my place it, at the service and beck and call of everyone else in the lab and certainly not as someone worthy of the respect of a "could you please...?" Up to now, Nahuel has been great about being polite and asking and is getting better at asking in a timely manner (or understanding that I can't make bacteria or cells grow instantaneously!), it'll be interesting to see if this board changes his behavior.

I feel alienated and excluded.

Sorry about the whining. I've spent the last few days in tears more often than not. I hate crying and I hate it even more when it's tears of rage and frustration.

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.

1. We were a bit late because of a major accident on I5 that delayed us by about 45 minutes, but we did get to the Hands Off event in Bellingham. Lots of cool signs, lots of people... mainly very young and very old, with older millenials and younger GenX very much absent. The sign that made me cry: one with the iconic red-white-and-blue drawing of Kamala Harris and the caption "It didn't have to be this way."

2. Apparently Trump has said that we're on track to eliminate the capital gains tax in 2025. LOLSOB, that's because there aren't going to be any gains. And let's not even talk about the stock markets. Holy hell. It was nice thinking we might be able to retire someday.

3. So many things to do this week. I'm flying down to Bend next weekend and seem to have accumulated quite a few Things That Must Be Done before then. Ugh. And on top of that, I'm trying to plan summer stuff (hikes and the like) and I need to talk to my boss about my schedule starting in May. I'm very concerned, from what he's said last week, that he going to want me to "be flexible" but that's not going to fly for me. It seems, however, that all the power is his, that this is not something I really have any negotiating power on. So anyhow, I need to talk to him and I'm dreading it.

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. 🤮

It's staying in there. It's not in a position where it should cause any problems, so absent symptoms we can just let it sit. The 1.2 cm piece is pretty much exactly where the NP thought it was, but the gyn is pretty sure she could not get it during an office visit and it would require surgery with general, so just no. Not worth it.

Also, opening a chart entry to the first words of "abnormal exam" gave me about 3 (fast) heartbeats of panic until I remembered... duh, there's a freaking piece of broken IUD up there, of course the results are going to be abnormal. 😅

The follow up on the IUD saga.

I finally had the gyn appmt today. It seems that the referral was not clear that most of the IUD was out. So, well, this just got escalated from IUD removal to hysteroscopy with general anesthesia. And since I'm on Zeppy, they'll have to intubate just in case, even if I stop it for a week or so.

Blah. Major blah.

OTOH, the first step in the process is getting an ultrasound to see where the bit of IUD ended up. She'll call me when we have those results, with the intent being to decide if it needs to come out or if it really can just hang out there. I mean, it's just a tiny bit of plastic and wire and it should not be in my cervix so I'm pretty ok leaving it there if she agrees.

Serves me right. 🙄

1. Cleaned out the fridge today. 🤮 I loathe that job. It needed to be done for a while, but I'd been avoiding the task. Since dh was back east this weekend I just went ahead and did it. Perry helped me by doing the annoying deed of drying the plastic stuff and putting it back in. I can never get the drawers to click in properly so over the years, I've given up trying and pass the task on to others.

2. I was supposed to go up to Vancouver to see my aunt today but... she caught norovirus and I chickened out. She should be out of isolation tomorrow, if all goes well. I figured I could keep myself safe with a mask and being very very careful for a short visit, but with a three hour or so drive (plus border wait times) the visits tend to be longer and I just didn't want to risk it. I feel terrible. Next weekend I'm in Bend -to visit my mom- and then I'll be up in Vancouver again the weekend after. I'm glad dh and I went last weekend. We had such a good visit.

3. I cannot even begin to describe the horror and dread I feel about what is happening in this country. It's almost incomprehensible how fast we're sliding down a slope that we may never be able to climb back up. At the very least, we've lost standing in the world as a partner and China and Russia must be very pleased with the situation. Elon Musk has bought himself a country, just like he bought Tesla and SpaceX, and it only cost him 200 million and whatever he paid for Twitter.

If I do it as three things, I don't have to worry that everything is internally coherent.

1. I'm so fucking sick of the Dems and trans issues debate. Enough already. Trans issues hurt us and will continue to do so. Acknowledge it and work to not need those votes. We don't want them anyhow. Stop even hinting about throwing people under the bus. My god. The Rs bad enough, we don't need to support their shit. And I say this as a person who still does have issues with trans women in high level competitive women's sports. But. You protect the vulnerable. If people don't vote for Dems based on trans rights, then we need to find better voters, not cater to these ones.

2. I can't even begin to think about the damage that fucker in the White House is doing. From cryptocurrency to putting a bunch of violent criminals back on the streets... It's just overwhelming. I can take it in in small nuggets of news, but when I sit down to write a coherent summary of how I see it all fitting together, I just want to cry. I fear, especially, for the environment.

3. Just finished the final book of the Bloodsworn Trilogy by John Gwynne. That was excellent. Left me in tears, but also satisfied, it was a tale well told.

Work tomorrow. Le sigh.