there are few places i dislike more than a city-hospital ER. andy called me from the train on his way home from work tonight; he'd cut his finger on some glass at the end of his shift and it was still bleeding pretty bad, and did we have any gauze and tape in the first aid kit at home? a trip to walgreens fortified our first aid supplies with gauze and tape (as well as spiderman bandaids and hershey kisses - oen wants to be prepared for any sort of emergency) by the time andy arrived. like head wounds, finger woulds BLEED A LOT, so the bathroom counter looked really dramatic and ER-like by the time we got it re-bandaged and andy installed on the sofa with his arm propped over his head. a quick consultation with the family nurse (andy's mother) concluded that he probably needed stitches. so we packed up our books, chocolate, and other camping-out essentials and walked a couple of blocks to the nearest hospital.

why i hate hospitals. well, 1) i'm a total germaphobe. upon arriving home several hours later i mandated that we both scrub our hands with hot water and dial soap until i felt sufficently de-germed (last spring andy brought the stomach flu home with him from a doctor's office and i have no desire to repeat that experience). 2) the place smells like shit. literally. once you've been inside for an hour or so you start to forget about it, but if you make the mistake of going out for a cigarette or some fresh air or a phone call, the desensitation process starts all over again. 3) the metal detector and interview with the security guard prior to be admitted into the waiting room. i plied the security guard with the aforementioned chocolate and afterwards had no trouble coming in or out. 4) all the sick people. sick people freak me out, there's no nice way of putting it. there's the young hispanic woman in a wheelchair, no visible injuries about her, but she can't hold her head upright, so she leans it against the built-in IV pole on the back of the chair, hand pressed to forehead. her worried husband crouches on the floor next to the chair, holding a plastic cup of ice water up to her lips and speaking to her in a low voice. there's the four-hundred pound guy who can't fit into the over-sized wheelchair. his bare feet are scabby, bright red, and swollen to to such a degree that shoes are not an option. there are several sets of parents with children draped across their laps sporting ear aches, fevers, asthma attacks. there's the young couple who share their newspaper with us; the wife has cut the palm of her hand badly and is worried about her job as a massage therapist. when andy and the woman both go for their stitches, the husband peeks into the back and gives me regular status reports on both cases. in the treatment room, andy tries to distract the young woman with jokes as she struggles with queasiness brought on by the sight of her own blood soaking through the bandage.

i hate hospitals. i think the people who work in them are heros. i just don't want to repeat that experience, even for a minor injury, again any time soon.

well, he wouldn't vote for barak obama, apparently. according to alan keyes, that is, who released a public statement today stating that if christ were here today, he wouldn't vote for barak obama (he doesn't specify whether jesus would vote for keyes or if he'd opt for a write-in candidate). well, how can you argue with a political opponent who has a direct line to god?

alright, i confess it. my secret guilty pleasure: WB dramas. i'm particular to gilmore girls, but really, any one of them will do, and i don't have to watch the episodes in order or on a regular basis to derive great, idiotic pleasure out of them. i drag the circa 1970 black and white television out from under the bed and set it up in which ever room i'm doing housework and revel in the pretty people, picturesque sets and mindless sappy plots. it actually makes me do more ironing/dishwashing/folding than i otherwise would, just so i can indulge in the entire hour (or two). there, i've said it. think of me as you will. it's better for my blood pressure than watching george bush invade my televison.

andy and i were foster parents to our friend piaf's impossibly cute chihuahua for the weekend. while i do tend to sneer at dogs that are so small my cat could make hamburger out of them, it's true that lola is pretty irresistible. and smart, too, i suspect because piaf leaves the radio set to NPR when she's gone to keep lola company. andy found she was a chick magnet of the first order, but as soon as he told the googly-eyed girls in the park that the dog's name was Lolita, the conversation was over in a big hurry. hey, we didn't name her. zeke gave me a dirty look whenever i'd come back from walking lolita all weekend. "you stink like dog" his glare seemed to say.

from last tuesday's Science Times section of the NY Times:

"Dr. Bianchi...stumbled into the field [stem cell research] when she was trying to find a new method of prenatal diagnosis. She knew that a few fetal cells enter a woman's blood during pregnancy...But then she discovered that the fetal cells do not disappear when a pregnancy ends. Instead, they remain in a woman's body for decades, perhaps indefinitely. And if a woman's tissues or organs are injured, fetal cells from her baby migrate there, divide and turn into the needed cell type, be it thyroid or liver, intestine or gallbladder, cervix or spleen."

okay, i don't normally get all excited about mothery sorts of things (my ovaries have apparently procrastinated the biological tick-tick-tick until later in life), but how amazing is that? a woman's offspring physically become a permanent part of her own body, and the act of giving life to a child could in turn prolong or protect her life from illness or injury years later.

science is cool. nature even more amazing.