we meet again.

So that you may all enjoy the Cheesecake of Ungodly Goodness, I give you this link:
your new raison d'etre

Follow the suggestions given in the first comment down, and your cheesecake will turn out eleventy-seven different kinds of awesome. (I vote for using 'nilla wafers for the crust, rather than graham crackers, but that's because I hate graham crackers.)

So anyway, I have a new obsession! I learned to crochet granny squares last night, and now I am making an afghan out of them. I literally spent like six hours crocheting. It was kind of hilarious. I get like this when I have a new project, though...it becomes almost all I can think about until the "new" wears off, and then it goes back to just being more interesting than the rest of my mental dreck instead of the SHINY NEW THING of the moment.

Wow, that was a long sentence.

Anyway, I have big plans for crocheting myself things like fingerless gloves to keep my hands warm whilst typing, several afghans, perhaps some baby blankets for the friends of mine who have crotchfruit, et cetera and so forth. Enormous amounts of fun will be had. By me. I don't know anyone who would find it all that entertaining to watch me crochet, so I'm thinking I'm most likely the only one who's going to be all that entertained.

You haven't missed any entrancing stories about clients lately, mostly because they've either not been inspired to weirdness or I just haven't noticed their weirdness. There's been a lot on my mind, what with this apparently being the Year for Enormous Drama in my family. Can't give you any details on the Enormous Drama, mostly because none of it is my story to tell.

Gasp. Platypus has some kind of ethics? Shocking!

Actually, I'm keeping my mouth shut because I don't want to cause any sort of yucky familial fallout WHY YES, I HAVE ETHICS, HOW KIND OF YOU TO ASK.

I had to take like eleventy-billion hours of ethics classes at school, after all. Can't have massage therapists running about without ethics. That'd be like running about without underpants! Except you can't exactly get pink flowered ethics, but you can get pink flowered underpants. There was a point to this comparison, but I forgot what it was.

And on an entirely unrelated note, you guys should totally go hiking in New Hamster. Because it is all pretty an' stuff.

Back to the tying-knots-in-yarn I go! Whee!

whurbleburbleflurblegurp

Events in PlatypusLand this past week have included:

• spending eight hours in the emergency room to find out that I had a mild UTI, a case of gastroenteritis, and a 2.5 cm cyst on my left ovary; their symptoms had combined to form something that felt like the Kidney Infection from Hell
• going to Nude Hamster (also known as New Hampshire) to hike and buy cheap booze
• going to the library (because I love the library)
• reading a book entitled After Silence: Rape and My Journey Back, by Nancy Venable Raines
• receiving three or four emails from the admissions department at B.U.; apparently they are desperate for me and my parents (because, y'know, I totally am bringing them along, fact that they live about a thousand miles away notwithstanding) to attend one of their open houses (which are all during my work times)
• and making Mr. Platypus's Favorite Cheesecake of Awesome Tasty Doom.
  

The time in the E.R. was not especially happy fun-ness. I spent most of it catnapping, since they gave me Dilaudid for the pain I was in. Whooboy, that stuff does not mess around!

The book has been a difficult read for me thus far...it's beautifully written, and I admire the author's courage in coming foward with her story. It's just that the subject matter is...challenging, shall we say. Reminds me of the hours I've yet to spend talking to a therapist. Have I mentioned that I hate talking about unpleasant things? Shocking, I know, considering how much I complain.

As far as the cheesecake goes...it is totally worth the 450 calories per slice. It's all almondy-amaretto-y-smooth-melty-goodness. If it were a man, I'd run away with it to a Caribbean island. Except that might make me a cannibal, because let's face it: if there's a man made of cheesecake out there somewhere, he probably deserves to be eaten. I mean, srsly. It's cheesecake. It's almost better than sex.

Come to think of it, perhaps I should post the recipe sometime. Y'all let me know if you're interested.

I don't really have much else to say right now...gonna go fight with my unruly hair because for some reason it is absolutely crucial to me that I have it in French-braided pigtails right now.

I mean, what's not to love?

Excitement and apprehension!

So, this is going to be my next big endeavor.

Assuming I can get my G.E.D.-earning, flunking-out-of-community-college, deranged-massage-therapist ass into Boston University after slamming through a few prereq courses at one of the community colleges.

I sent off for admissions info today, and I find it amusing that I'm already wibbling about "oh em gee, what if they laugh in my face, what will I DOOOOO?" Let's just say that I am very good at talking myself out of taking risks once I take steps towards actually taking them...did that sentence make sense? Yeah. Anyway.

All the woo and wackadoo behavior I keep seeing within the massage industry has me pretty much soured on staying in it for the long haul, which is kind of depressing when you consider that I only graduated from massage school last December. Don't get me wrong. I love my job. I love helping people feel more comfortable in their own bodies, both mentally and physically. I do not, however, love all the nonsense about reflexology, acupuncture, and whatnot that people seem so much more prone to buying into when they're involved with massage in some way. I do not love the ridiculous assertions that poking someone in a particular spot on their foot will cure their thyroid issues, or that jabbing a needle into a supposed "chi point" will "correct" the "imbalances" causing a person's health issues.

Really, I'm working in the wrong field, and I'm fully cognizant of that. I'm not going to try to paint myself as some kind of uber-skeptic or some such...I do my best to think rationally and carefully research new topics in healthcare, and I do my best to consider things from a fair and balanced standpoint. I'm only human, however; I know that there are things I buy into that are complete stuff-and-nonsense. On the other hand, when I'm in a field packed with people who think that all this alt-med bullshit is actually worthwhile, I start to feel like the lone thinker in a sea of crazy.

Bluh. I can't maintain a coherent train of thought right now.

days like this...

...I'm glad I work in a low-pressure field.

See, ol' Platypus has some kind of wonky thing going on with her brainmeats in which she is prone to random sudden mood swings and copious amounts of causeless anxiety. Panic attacks are fun!

Today is going to be another very rough day, mood-wise. I can feel "the crazy" lurking just under the surface of my mind, much like river water under black ice. I get this feeling like if I can just keep moving fast enough, I can stay ahead of the breaking "ice" just enough to keep from drowning.

It isn't much fun, and I really dislike it.

So, here I am whining about it, because that is clearly the most effective solution to the problem! Bluh. Time for me to slug back a teaspoon of concrete with my whine and harden the fuck up already.

Anyway, O Innarwebz Of Bliss, how fare you this lovely partly-cloudy day?

What the hell?

So, Gentle Reader whom I adore and worship (oh, but honey, please re-think the plaid pants; you look so much better in the khaki corduroys), I believe that I promised you the Wonderful Tale of Pervy Pervyson, did I not?

Never let it be said that the Platypus does not keep her promises.

Unless it involves promising not to drink everything in the liquor cabinet, because seriously? You should know me better than that. I see booze, I drink it. That's how it works.

Anyway, so onward to the interesting part (unless you're absolutely dying to know what my favorite drink is at the moment).

(The answer is yes.)

Way back not so far in the not so misty reaches of time, I had this client who was a Weird Guy. Yes, I know, I get a lot of Weird Guys (and Gals, because honestly, people are just weird). This guy was...how shall I put this? Special. Yeah.

He comes in for his massage, and I'm pleased to see that he's very polite...shows up on time, answers my questions with a minimum of fuss, so on and so forth. I'm thinkin', "whee, this'll be easy". You'd think I'd know better than to assume such things, but that is not the point. Anyway, so things progress pretty much as expected when I'm working on his arms, neck, and shoulders. He's pretty quiet and laid-back; I'm assuming that he's napping as I do my thing and proceed onward to his ankles.

Well, may the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch explode in my face if I lie, but the minute I touched his ankles, it was like he'd shoved a damn colony of gerbils into a tube sock and then stuffed it into his Jockey shorts. There was all KINDS of happy-peenor-twitching going on! Of course, this necessitated a raised eyebrow and a mental "what the fucking fucker fuck?" from me, but ol' Pervy Pervyson remained a gentleman...y'know, aside from the Dancing Penis of Weirdness. I continued doing the massage as per standard operating procedure, figuring that if he said or did anything even the least bit inappropriate, I would be outta there in a flash (after seriously considering punching him in the nadgers). Pervy kept his hands by his sides and said nary a word as I completed work on the fronts of his legs (with extra-deep tissue work on his quads and IT bands, since extra pressure in sensitive areas like that tends to take the mickey right out of an...unruly male client, most of the time). When he was face-down, there was no heavy breathing or other shenanigans. I figured it was a fluke and chalked it up to the vagaries of the human nervous system.

So, I finish the massage, run through my usual list of recommendations, and tell Pervy that I'll be out in the hall with a bottle of water for him when he's ready to head out the door. He took about ten minutes to get up off the table, get dressed, and show his face...I thought, "whatever, he's probably fallen asleep, no worries".

Yes, Gentle Reader, I can hear you face-palming from here.

Anyway, Pervy comes bouncing out of the massage room all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (as well he might), hands me a $30 tip (which is about double the norm), and raves about how wonderful the massage was and how he's definitely going to re-book with me. I'm feeling all pleased with myself as I trundle into the linens room to grab a fresh set of sheets for the massage table. I took a few minutes to scribble down some notes on ol' Pervy, as I do with every client, then proceeded into the massage room to do a quick sheet change.

You know that smell, don't you, Gentle Reader? The post-coital smell that, if you've just gotten done with one of those rousing sack sessions where you swear that you had an out of body experience, is not really all that objectionable? (Assuming, that is, that said sack session was the sort involving a male of the species and that equal amounts of fun were had by all concerned.) It's pretty unmistakable.

Yeah. That smell was what slapped me in the face like a ton of dirty, diseased bricks when I opened the door.

So of course I had to run up to the desk and grab my usual partner in crime our hapless receptionist, Jane, and get her to confirm what I already knew. The joy just wouldn't be complete if I didn't share it, right?

"Oh. My. Gawd. He did not flog the dolphin in there, did he? Ew. Ew. What the hell? I'll go get the bleach. Ewwww. Who the hell whacks off after a massage? Ew ew ew ew EW."

Yeah, we had about the same reaction. Pervy had, shall we say, opted for some manual release of tension of his own. He at least had the decency to clean up after himself and chuck the used towels in the laundry bin, but still. Who the hell does such a thing? The doors to the massage rooms do not lock! It wouldn't have bothered me if he'd done that in the bathroom, but in the massage room, where I could have walked in on him at any time? Yuck.

Of course, I did make a note of this in his file on the computer at work. Because, y'know, it's important for the other therapists to be aware of his...predilections.

Sigh. All of our clients are special people. Some of them are more special than others. At least he tipped well!

Don't lie to me. Seriously.

So I had this one client today...new client, seemed like a decent individual, wanted a light-pressure massage geared towards relaxation. Easy peasy, right?

After the massage, she raved about how relaxed she felt and how wonderful it was, and made a big production over how she was going to leave my tip at the front desk. I smiled and thanked her, then went on about my business.

Worked on my next client (and had this sudden bizarre unexplained fit of rage at everything in the history of ever during said massage), went out to grab me some diet Pepsi (mmm, diet Pepsi), and then checked with the front desk about whether Client A had left a cash tip or had put it on her credit card.

Yeah. She left me nothing.

Not even so much as a "never pet a burning dog".

Hell, if you don't wanna tip, that's your prerogative...but don't effing lie to me about it!

weeda weeda woooo!

Okay, so it's been nearly a month since I posted, which maybe kinda makes me the worstest person ever? Yeah, probably not so much. I haven't had anything of interest to say (or at least nothing that I've considered interesting enough to post).

Also, I've been working my way through a lot of mental yuckiness, and that tends to be rather draining. Feelings suck. I'm not looking forward to talking to a shrink-type person once I get my health insurance situation sorted out, but it's either that or continue to go crazier. And I doubt that I'd be crazier in a fun way, so there goes that idea right out the window.

I kind of think that maybe, if I had some sort of theme or unifying subject to this blog, it would be easier to come up with regular posts. Of course, I then realize that I would thereby be depriving the Innarwebz of my pointless ramblings, which would just suck. Really, how is anyone going to survive without hearing my six-minute dissertation on why tube socks are stupid?

Since having a blog seems to be about telling stories, I shall dig through the ol' mental filing cabinet whilst at work and see what I can scare up to use as subject matter for a longer post. Perhaps I shall tell you about Pervy Pervyson, the guy who enjoyed his massage a little too much. I know how much y'all love stories about idiot massage clients...right?

And if you want to hear a different story, there are scads of other blogs out there deserving of a read or six.

Off to work!