Real Fast

What does real fast feel like? Well, there are two kinds: significantly-over-the-speed-limit fast and triple-digits fast.

Triple digits fast has its own kind of sound setting it apart, so that when you reach that point you know you've been there without ever having looked at the speedometer. Part of that sound is created by the wind, which seems to come from every direction and pushes you flush into your seat, leaving your hands gripping for a door handle. The other part of the sound comes from the roar of the engine, which takes on a sort of wuuurrr and whoooooosh. The engine sound seems effortless and natural, as if by going so fast you've finally achieved what it had been engineered for. You realize you're going a scary sort of fast that has your legs tingling and your heart racing. A part of you begs to slow down, but you don't, and you can't help but laugh because you've never felt like this before. The wind peels the sound away from you lips before it even has a chance to be heard.

It's like flying.

You slow back down within seconds since you began goosing the accelerator, breathless and wide-eyed, looking around to see if anyone witnessed such a thing other than you.

_____________

I've had the pleasure of going triple-digits fast in Stella two or three times, and although they catch right back up to me later, for those brief moments all my problems are left in her dust and burnt rubber.

Stella

The first time I ever saw her was on a beautiful early summer afternoon, not a cloud in the sky, the way it seems so many fateful days are. We were driving down a busy street in the country, one we had never driven down before, wistfully jumping between peaceful neighborhoods looking at houses. We weren't exactly close to the point when we could purchase a house, but it was fun nevertheless to dream. I had the day off of work and not a care in the world. We had gone to a delicious Mom 'n Pop breakfast joint that morning and then we just drove--me with my flip flops kicked off--not caring how much gas we were wasting. I loved doing that. Just driving around the way we were. There was something soothing about that constant feeling of motion and staring out at the rolling landscapes that enticed me so much and so often.

I remember I'd been looking out my husband's side window when he suddenly asked, "Amanda, did you just see that car?" His voice was excited and a little shocked. Of course, I'd been looking the wrong direction and told him I hadn't. "We have to go back then. You have to see this car." He said this absolutely, as if there was simply no other choice.

He did a quick turn around and we passed it going the other way. I only got a quick glimpse, but one glance was all it took. I recognized it immediately as an old Corvette Stingray, definitely 1970's, for the Stingray era produced some of the most radical, outrageous looking body types I can ever remember seeing, Corvettes or otherwise. It was the look European cars might have but you'd pay a lot more money for.

We turned around again so that we were facing our original direction and I wistfully requested that he pull over so that I could 'take a picture.' Mike pulled our car onto the gravel shoulder of the road without complaint. He immediately hopped out on his side, startling me, for I had planned on simply rolling down my window, snapping a picture with my phone, and then taking back off again. But fate had a firm hold on this particular moment in my life, I know that now, and I was meant to get out of the car. I was meant to get out and look closer.

She was parked in the tall, uncut and weedy grass of what appeared to be an abandoned house-turned small junkyard. Mike would tell me later that there were many oddities scattered across the property, but I honestly remember none of them except the car. It was captivating. Perhaps the only case of that mythical love at first sight that I had (or would) ever experienced.

Close up she was small and aggressive-looking. Sitting low to the ground, she seemed almost to be stalking prey in that un kept grass. Her body was free of blemishes and the color of a bright red apple, complete with a black racing stripe starting at her pointed nose, following down her hood, and ending over her license plate. A shockingly low price was written in white across her windshield and O.B.O. across her driver's side window. Less than 60K miles. Her tires were those ass-kicking chrome jobs so popular for sports cars of her era. They looked mean and huge, a focal point on a car that was meant to go real fast real fast. The body seemed to be melted around them.

I walked around her in circles, taking in the mint exterior and the 'Stingray' emblem displayed boldly just in front of each door. She had a 1976 historic license plate decorating the nose, leading me to believe that '76 was the year she rolled off onto her first road. Thirty-five years ago--ten years before I was even born. My father hadn't yet met my mother or even graduated from college. Her interior was worn and in need of refurbishing from decades of butts sitting in her leather seats. As I stared in at her dusty dashboard and dirty steering wheel (adorned with the crossed double flags of the Corvette), I could envision what she had once looked like. What she could look like again with love and attention.

Her body was in amazing condition for her age and her mileage was impossibly low. I stared at a the asking price scribbled across her windshield. We have the money, a whispery voice said from somewhere deep inside me. Certainly not in any 'Old Corvette Savings Fund,' for I meticulously planned a future for every dollar I made, but we had the money nevertheless. In a house fund.

My husband stood somewhere nearby, grinning at me stupidly and taunting me with phrases such as, "Imagine what it would be like to pull into the driveway in this!" As if all the things I could do with this car, and all the fun I could have in her, hadn't already flown across my mind a million times. He knew this was my dream car, far more than any brand new, shiny sports car could be. This was the experience I always wanted to have but always believed was truly out of my reach.

I gave her another appreciative, longing look before resigning myself to returning to our own car. A car that was nice, that we loved, but was only a car. Something to get us around, to move our things from one place to another, and to get us to work and back. I realized in that moment the true difference between a vehicle and a car like that Corvette. A difference that I'd never really thought of before.

We drove away. Inside our car was quieter than before, lacking the earlier chattiness of an afternoon drive. I stared out the window and day dreamed, the same way I had about becoming a pharmacist or the way I would look in my wedding dress. I thought about the car.

I had learned over my young life to listen to my heart. You see, my heart doesn't speak to me very often, but I know right away when it does. It spoke to me when I met my husband, and for years after that regarding him, as we struggled through years of vast change and growing together. It spoke to me one sunny day on my college campus when it told me to give up my childhood dream of becoming a veterinarian and pursue pharmacy instead. It spoke to me the day I walked across the stage and held in my hand my Doctorate degree for the very first time.

It spoke to me now. As we drove away from that little Corvette I felt as if I had left part of my soul with it. Little did I realize that exactly one week later I would be driving around in it.

Some Honesty

I love my mom. I want to say that first and foremost, because not only is it true now, but it will always be true, no matter what happens between us. It's also important for me to say that she has done absolutely nothing recently that has made me think ill of her (as I guess I'm probably thinking now). In fact, since moving out, my relationship with her has improved tremendously.

That being said, it's come to my attention numerous times over the last several months that I have somewhat of an inhibiting fear of my mother's opinion of me. I thought this fear would go away with time as I entered the adult world and I spent less and less time under her influence, but it simply hasn't. Most alarming, I recently came across an opportunity to do something very important to me, something I've wanted to do for a long time, and I almost didn't do it because I was worried she would resent me. And although I don't want her to resent me, I also don't want to rein myself in--to not experience life to its fullest--simply thinking that she might.

I don't think this is very normal. Is this the kind of thing people speak to their therapists about? Is this the kind of thing all children deal with as they become adults and cut the umbilical cord? I guess I don't know.

Facelift

I changed my blog. !! I've also been married to Mike for over a year and we're both still alive!! Success! :D I'll write something noteworthy when I don't have to get up in six hours.

Second Chance

Over time, the days I've spent with Mike and the memories we have made together created a kind of structure, not unlike a building, with a strong and solid foundation, upon which we built our new life together. The care and tenderness we put into this process ensured that this structure, this love, could withstand the fierce blows of loneliness, separation, stress and much worse. My grandmother once explained to me that surviving a life together meant crossing over mountain after mountain of challenges. Sometimes you would enjoy the valleys together, when things were easy going and the weather would be calm. But then would come a mountain to climb, usually in the fiercest of hurricane winds, and it would be meant to test you. To pull at the cords that bound you together until only strings would be left behind. At times the outlook would seem bleak, but just when you think you could undergo no more, your journey would level out again and the winds would die down. You would recover... slowly building back what had been lost.

Pharmacy school was something like that. I hadn't anticipated another mountain for a while after that beast was done, but hey, when I'm wrong, I'm impressively wrong. I hadn't thought anything could even come close to being as difficult to endure together as those painful years had been.

Impressively wrong, as I said.

After such a long journey with this man I chose from a world of men, after building layer after layer of that structure of love, I find myself at the beginning with him. Stripped, trembling, and reduced to nothing but the raw material. Somehow, through all the horrible, regretful ways in which I was wrong, I was right about one vital thing--we've got the real thing. That magnificent kind of love that people write about, sing about, and long for. For surely only such a love could have somehow survived such a fatal blow, no matter its wounded state. I feel like I'm holding it now, carefully like a piece of old china cracked into a thousand tiny shards, and willing it to knit itself back together. I grieve over the parts of it I've lost--but a long time ago, on a beautiful day in June of 2004, I began with only this raw material, this spark inside me which he created. I love him. The rest of it just doesn't matter.

We left that life behind, and now we start anew. We've both learned things. Only he could tell you all that he has learned. For me, I learned that my confidence in our love for one another was not confidence at all, but all along I had been taking it for granted. I had assumed that we had paid our dues, that I would enjoy a lifetime with him in which we would face many challenges, but not once would we have to face them alone. We had each other. Thinking this way was a horrible mistake. If you love someone, hold on. Make them feel it, always. Never, ever, ever, assume that they can't be taken from you, either by choice or by fate.

Love endures all things. Regarding this, I was not wrong. But it is different now... scarred and raw, withering and small. It will be radiant once again, perhaps with time and constant attention. It is the most precious thing in this world to me. I have invested so much in it--trusted it and treasured it beyond all else. It is worth the agony, the tears, the moments of doubt and the awful loneliness. It lifts you up and makes you better than you were before. Like a chemical reaction, I can never return to what I was before I knew it. I cling to it desperately, because despite it all, I still believe in its power.

We left. We escaped that poisonous place where our love was put to the ultimate test. Now we take the first tremulous steps towards a new beginning--a second chance if you will. This time we'll do it better.

This time we'll do it right.

What doesn't break your heart into a million tiny pieces...

Only makes you stronger.

Phuck You Pharmacy: Intro

Someday, after I've served my debt to society, I will open my own DREAM pharmacy and it shall be called.... "Phuck You Pharmacy." My technician and I came up with this idea after a particularly nasty string of ungrateful patients visited us one slow afternoon. You see, being a retail pharmacist means putting up with a load of bullshit from the general public. It means accepting one fact that you've known all through school but have been secretly repressing because you wanted to believe it wasn't true--people are ungrateful.

People are just so, so, so damn ungrateful it should be a crime.

Working retail is like being a doormat, because of the "great" concept of 'consumer feedback.' Companies that employ pharmacies make the silly mistake of thinking that consumer feedback is not only honest, but also useful. For me, this basically means that people can be assholes to me, but if I so much as look at them funny in return, they can complain about me or my teams ability to deliver "quality customer service" which in turn hurts my pharmacy. Things that hurt my pharmacy hurt me, my sanity, and my paycheck. Bad news bears.

And so, I've created this wonderful utopia in my mind where I can go when the drudgery of reality becomes a little much for me. Phuck You Pharmacy. The idea of an aggressive pharmacy where I make all the damn rules and if you don't like them, you don't get your drugs. Period. A pharmacy where I can say whatever the hell I want and not get in trouble for it. This is a world in which I one day want to live.

Phuck You Pharmacy would have a very small sign which would be hard to see from the rest of the store, so that it would take patients hours to find us. Underneath the title, a description would read "where you get your shit and go." A small sign would be posted boldly at the drop off window, which would state "rudeness will require an additional 20 minutes to fill your prescription." A footnote would warn multiple offenders that we add five more minutes for each additional time you talk back and/or roll your eyes.

In my dream pharmacy, no one would complain about the cost of their medicine. The moment someone opened their mouth to even CONSIDER bitching about their copay, they would automatically have to pay the cash price and forfeit their insurance. As an additional bonus, this tactic might in fact help insurance companies to be better appreciated once patients learn what the REAL COST OF THEIR MEDICINE IS.

Anyone buying Sudafed would have to pass a drug test. Unless, of course, they were well-groomed, freshly showered, and had a drivers license in one piece with no paper stapled to it. There would be ABSOLUTELY NO EARLY REFILLS for controlled substances. I don't care if your dog ate it, you spilled it on the floor, you were stranded on a desert island after a plane crash, or whatever bullshit story you could cook up. I would have a special squad of hit men at my disposal whom I would dispatch whenever someone calls me to ask what color of cough syrup I have. I don't have time to waste in Phuck You Pharmacy.

We would close for lunch at a specific time each day, designated by our store hours sign, phone recording, and the giant sticker on the front doors of the main store. Any idiot who can't read ANY OF THOSE SIGNS and STILL comes up to my pharmacy past that specific time, gets the gate dropped on their head. No exceptions to this rule.

Anyone who comes back to pick up their script before the promised time gets automatically put to the back of the line.

In the world of Phuck You Pharmacy, there ARE stupid questions and no, you're not allowed to ask them.

Welcome to my pharmacy. More on this as I suffer through reality.

SnOWNED 2011

So far there are exactly TWO (and so far ONLY two) things I miss about college--Christmas break and SNOW DAYS. OMG. I transferred a script from a pharmacist to the southwest of me on Tuesday before the snow hit, and I remember the conversation going something like this:

Me: So it's snowing where you are already, am I right?

Pharmacist: Yeah.

Me: They're hyping it up to be a blizzard--so what's it like??

Pharmacist: .... Well.... It's a blizzard.

Crap.

To make matters even more super-fantastic, I've been encumbered with the rhino virus from HELL this week, and I'm producing nasal secretions from both my nose and my throat that could choke a mammal much larger than myself. In fact, I am so impressed by what my lungs have produced that I save it in a cup to admire later. Mike doesn't appreciate this practice of mine so much, but I'm nothing if not a huge nerd deep down inside.

I was supposed to have three technicians helping me out on Wednesday, during the aftermath of the blizzard, and exactly ONE showed up just after three o'clock. I think I got five phone calls before lunch, three of which were from each of my technicians whining about how they couldn't get out of their driveways. You know what I have to say about that? DIG YOUR CAR OUT LIKE I DID. You call yourself a Michigander?? YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED! But people still expect to be able to get their drugs, even after a weather crisis, and I'm the one with the keys to the Happy Drug Room. Ironically, not a single doctor's office in Lansing was open that day. So much for providing an essential service, huh?

Luckily I have today off and I'm spending it trying to cough up the rest of the Death which has lodged itself in my respiratory tract. The physical capacity of my sinus cavities has impressed even me. I'm still in a state of drug-induced grogginess from the ONE HALF TABLET of Benadryl I took over 16 hours ago, and even the happy cough syrup that the druggies at work seek is looking pretty good to me right about now.

But the purple kind only, because I'm allergic to that red dye you know. *eyeroll*

Things That Drive Me Crazy-Bat-Shit in the Pharmacy, Part 2

Printers.

My pharmacy has two large printers which can print prescription label information on special sticker labels (for bottles) and medication information on plain printer paper. At least 20% of my time in the pharmacy is spent un-jamming these printers. Sometimes, I unjam the printer multiple times before we even open. W.T.F. My printers are so awful that I've even given them names: Worthless and Dumbass. Worthless is (quite unfortunately) closest to my "area," as I like to call it. This printer jams the most and eats labels. Labels come out looking like they went through a blender, or like a dog recently chewed them to shreds. Paper will get lost inside and even though there are half a dozen parts which can be removed from the printer to get at paper jams, there are times when even that isn't enough. I can't find where the jam is, so I'm forced to ignore it and suffer tiny pieces of blackened label remains coming out with other labels throughout the day. Oh, and it seems to be always low on ink. F-ing always. Therefore, Worthless.

Dumbass rarely jams, but it can't seem to do anything quite right. It's always running out of either labels or paper, and instead of stopping to tell me that it needs a refill of one tray or another, it will just start printing on whatever is left. Because of this, I end up getting labels for bottles printed on plain printer paper, or medication information sheets printed across labels. I then must go back to the computer (after refilling the empty printer tray) and reprint all the prescriptions which got fucked up. Waste of my precious time!!

Closing Time.

I could be a Jedi all day long, rocking the scripts out like a pro and be completely organized and ready to leave right on time, and still have it all ruined within ten minutes of closing. It's one of the most insane things I have to deal with at work. The last call you want to get close to the end of the night is someone calling to ask, "Yeah.... when do you guys close?" Especially if they sound panicky, and get all freaked out when you tell them "We close in ten minutes."

"OMG BUT I NEED MY SCRIPT TONIGHT HOW AM I GOING TO BE ABLE TO GET IT????""

You're going to get here before I shut the gates, that's how.

I seriously had a guy ask me, right after I told him that we close at 7 pm, that it would be okay for him to come a few minutes after seven because I would still be there, right? Right?? NO. If we closed at 7:05, I'd TELL YOU THAT. Wtf seriously?? I had another woman call me five minutes to close to ask if I could fill a prescription her doctor JUST CALLED IN before we closed. Because it happened to be an antibiotic for her sick kid, I told her I would put a rush on it to have it ready, IF she could get here before we closed. She was very grateful and thanked me profusely, but then proceeded to keep me on the phone for the remaining minutes we were open to TELL ME A DUMB STORY about how last time she tried to get her birth control filled she couldn't on time and WAAA WAAA WAAAAAAAAAAA. OMG. I honestly had to tell her that I needed to get off the phone so that I could do what she asked me to do!!

People are so dumb! IT KILLS ME!!!