I hate working in a hospital. I've had the same rounds for three days, and it hasn't been the happy, cute wards in the hospital. I've had really sick old people, Intensive Care Units and asthmatics. Every day I smell shit, piss, disinfectant and death creeping down the hallways. I try to ignore the moans and cries from the ill and dying as I do my job, routinely enterting the bar code numbers from special medical equipment into my little handheld computer. When you have the same route everyday, it gets a little harder to convince yourself that the woman hooked up on all sorts of life support equipment made a miraculous recovery during the night and went home and that's why someone else is in her room. It's even harder to do once you've seen them wheel someone out with a sheet over their faces. Not even looking at obnoxious minor celebrities weak and helpless is any fun.

My newly shaved head seems to have caused me to rank even lower in the hospital caste system, today an LVN (Licensed Vocational Nurse) was incredibly snotty as I took the charge cards from flip file as I do at every Nurse's Station on my route she snarled, "I already pulled those. I don't want the ones going out that have less than three charges on them" I apologized and told her that it was our policy to pull the charge cards daily and she told me, "not here you don't", I said, "I'm sorry" and mentally I added "Sorry you went to trade school instead of charm school". I hate being patronized. One of the interns started to flirt with me when I was taking my morning break and eating oatmeal, but his interest seemed to wane once he discovered I had a brain. I suppose with the shaved head and that hideous smock they force us to wear, he assumed I was some sort of roughneck B-Boy. I just hate to ruin people's twisted fantasies.

At lunch I went over to the Beverly Center. The mall wasn't aging well, but they've gone on this remodeling jag that makes it terribly interesting. It's sort of fun to see the bolts and wires beneath that old eighties interior decor they've banished. I window shopped at all the trendy stores. I thought the clothes in Traffic and the Dolce & Gabbana Store were horrible and gaudy, although I was pleasantly surprised by the muted tones of the stuff at United Colors of Benetton. I went into Bang & Olafson for a while and sat on an ultra-thin couch watching an ultra-thin supermodel on an ultra-thin television. The whole place was so terribly minimalist, and dare I say, anorexic that I felt bloated and huge. I went into the Warner Bros. store and played with the sorting hat keychain, I chuckled as Griffindor came up; I'm definitely a Ravenclaw or a Slytherin.

I'm starting to hate Marc. If he were pleasant or tried to clean or cook or did something, I don't think I'd mind his couchwarming so much, but he does nothing. He hasn't looked for a job. When I come home after a horrible day of work, he's still there, doing nothing. Once he was asleep. I wanted to kick him. He told me that I didn't appreciate him. I asked him what there was to appreciate? He's not kind to me, he doesn't cook, doesn't clean, doesn't work, doesn't do anything but take up space and eat up my food and complain about being hungry. He's not even sleeping with me, although the thought of ever being touched by that particular green-haired master of hystrionics is nearly enough to send my stomach into instant convulsions. Yesterday he ate an entire jar of peanut butter. I don't have any bread. How did he eat an entire jar of peanut butter?