Oh, no you didn't.

Let's say you're a manager in a hospital. Let's say that you have excess staff because nobody's doing surgery, much, during this inter-holiday period. Let's say, specifically, that you have extra staff in two departments: Neurosurgery and Transplant.

Now, then. Neurosurgery will need staffing this morning, while Transplant will need staffing this afternoon, when ICU transfers start to come in. You have three extra nurses on each unit to cancel.

Do you:

a) Staff Neuro with a neuro nurse, waving off the transplant nurses until the afternoon, or:

b) Send a transplant nurse to Neuro, then call a neuro nurse to go to Transplant in the afternoon?

If you answered "a", you obviously do not work for La Schwankienne Hospital Du Monde. I, unfortunately, do, which is how I found myself in the midst of Transplant and asking questions like, "Now, where did they put that kidney, again?"

In other news, I grabbed The Work Pal Who's Been Sworn To Secrecy because she knows about my blog and told her, "Hey! I have exciting news!" (Meaning that I'd had that interview, y'know?)

Her response? "Oh! Chef Boy bought you something with a diamond in it!!"

My head did not explode then. It exploded later, when I told a non-work pal that I had exciting news, and she said the Exact Same Damned Thing.

Let's take as read my howling objections that marriage shouldn't be considered the pinnacle of a woman's life. Let's ignore for the moment the fact that I don't wear diamonds and haven't since I started learning about the diamond trade and the human rights abuses inherent therein. Let's pass over both my general and specific objection to marriage both as an institution and as a thing that I would want to do again on my own.

Let's instead take the next thing that came out of Work Pal's mouth, after I told her that no, I wasn't getting be-diamonded and betrothed.

"Well," she said confidentially, "you might want to think about it anyhow. I mean, you're not getting any younger [yes, she actually said that] and the time's going to come that you might want somebody, but nobody will want you."

Hm. The time might come, eh? Which means that I, of course, ought to hook up with the first charitable soul that comes along (since I am, as she pointed out, not immune to the Inexorable Maaaaarch of Tiiiiime), just in case the time comes at some future date that I might want somebody to kill bugs or lift heavy things.

I'd better get cracking, eh? I mean, hell, at 36 I'm already twenty years past my use-by date, am I not? Well, eighteen, at least. Because we all know women get all dried up and flaky and ooky after twenty-five, thirty at the latest.

Wait a minute. Nobody would want me *now*, right, since I'm like, all wrinkly and stuff. So I guess my time has passed. I suppose I'll either have to marry Chef Boy posthaste, just in case, or find somebody with even lower standards than he has. To take on a woman who's past her prime and not getting any younger. You know. Wrinkly and stuff. It'd have to be a nice man, a kind man, involved in charity work and able to look past ook. A monk. That's it. I need to meet and marry a monk. Right.

I would like to say that if I hadn't already been on edge, her comments wouldn't have bothered me...but they would've. That whole third-wave feminist thing comes to the fore whenever I hear obdurate stupidity, and it comes *screaming* to the fore whenever I hear that particular sort of obdurate stupidity. Yeah, I was primed to be pissed, but I probably would've gotten equally as pissed if I'd spent the day napping. (Us old folks need a lot of sleep.)

What I don't get is that she's not that much older than I am. I mean, she's right at the right age to remember her mom having consciousness-raising sessions in the living room. She grew up in a fairly liberal political climate and is, in practice, a walk-the-talk feminist. And she wasn't just making fun; no, she was serious. Which boggles my exploding head.

Many, many moons ago I was involved with the birth of a women's political group at one of the colleges here. It was great while it lasted; that is, it was fantastic until everybody that was running it left.

To get married.

*sigh*