Cell Phone Repair Lesson 1

As I was sitting through my nursing school orientation, I was feeling really out of place. I was in the minority of students that isn't currently working in health care. The introduce yourself to the room to 60 people game is uncomfortable enough, but the girl that announced she worked for a florist got some chuckles. I left out my current job in my introduction.

It's not that I'm ashamed that I repair cell phones. I've become proud of my job and I really enjoy it, in spite of my self. I would like to work in health care now, but I probably earn about double what I could earn as a CNA, and I get benefits even though I work part time hours. There is no reason to make any job moves right now.

I try to use my job to practice my conversational skills, showing empathy and patience, and listening carefully... But, possibly most importantly, I'm practicing dealing with completely disgusting situations with professionalism.

Case in point: I introduced myself to customer a few days ago. His name was Frank. He was 78, and was sort of unkempt and smelly in an old man way, but was sweet. I asked him what was wrong with his phone, and he said his "crazy ol' phone was actin' a fool!" Translation: The vibrator motor wouldn't turn off. It vibrated constantly. Very odd, but a telltale sign of liquid damage. I asked him if the phone had gotten wet, and he assured me it hadn't. I of course gently assured him I would figure out what was wrong with his phone, and he could just stay comfortable in his chair, and I would let him know what I discovered.

I took the phone back to the shop, took the battery out, and took the rear housing off. The circuit board looked sort of dirty. I saw something move out of the corner of my eye, and realized it was a small bug running across my desk. Yuck. I squashed it with a post it note, and got back to the phone.

Wait. There are two more of those bugs.

Crawling out of the phone...

Baby COCKROACHES...

I jumped up, scream-whispered an F-bomb, and asked the male tech to kill them. He was just as much a girl as I was, and another female employee had to step in to take care of it. She killed 5. 2 escaped getting squashed, and crawled back inside the phone through the ear phone jack. We double-bagged all the roach poop coated phone parts and their residents in ziploc baggies.

I eventually got myself together, and told the customer that I wasn't able to fix his phone because . . . there were . . . insects? . . . inside the phone, and so I can't fix it, and umm . . . actually . . . Ican'tputitbacktogethereither, so I have it in a baggie if you want it . . .

He didn't seem surprised, upset, or embarrased, just took it all in stride, and happily purchased a new phone. He even let me keep the old phone. Thanks Frank.

Lesson learned? A roach on the desk is worth 2 in the phone?

Update on Life

Well, I ended up with my A in A&P. It was a struggle, but I made it. I took Microbiology in the spring, and somehow ended up with an A in that too. I've never done so well in school.

I applied for the RN program, but was turned down since I was at that time still enrolled in Micro. I also applied for the LPN program, and was accepted. I'm starting the LPN program in the fall, and after a year of classes, will be a Licensed Practical Nurse, and then can bridge into the last year of the RN program.

So, why haven't I blogged... so much has happened in the last months. School and mommyhood and work kept me pretty busy. I'm still fixing cell phones, and actually enjoy it. Not a career, but great job for now. My mom went kinda nuts and lost her house. That added a lot of drama for a while, but it seems to have settled down.

The baby isn't a baby anymore. I stopped blogging right around the time he started walking, since he's now into everything. Now he's starting to talk, and everyday he's simultaneously amazing and terrifying me with his brilliance.

As I tend to tell my therapist every month, "Overall, things are going pretty well, I'm happy."

Last Week's Test

So far, I've been baffled by this A & P class. There is so much material to swallow, and it is so difficult, that when I take the tests, I'm sure I've failed. When I get the tests back, I'm getting A's. I think there's some sort of conspiracy for me to do well going on here.

The last test I got back, I knew I had really screwed up. I left off half of the explanation for one of my essay questions, and completely froze on labeling the muscle diagram. I ended up labeling it something like : endosteum, periosteum, fascicle, cell, fiber. Then I repeated the 5 words I could remember 4 times to fill 20 blanks. (of course I later remembered that even endosteum and periosteum were wrong, and were actually bone words) I wrote a note at the bottom saying "This diagram was hard, it looks like all the arrows are pointing to the same things." Although that was completely true, if I had studied harder I would have been fine.

So, I get the test back last week, expecting a C, and I have a 91%. The only A in the class. Nothing was marked wrong on my essay questions. Nothing was marked wrong on my diagram. I thought she might have missed grading that entire portion of the test, but she had written a note back to me under the muscle diagram that said, "LOL, you did fine!"

WHAT? Well, whatever, I'll take it. I really need an A.

Not making a career in cell phones

So a friend said to me the other day, "you haven't updated your blog for a while, did you decide to stay at the cell phone store?"

Oh, God, no.

Even when I have doubts about my future career path, I know I don't want to stay there forever.

I LOVE "The Office" on NBC, but right now, I think I'm starring in my own episode.

First Test

I took my first A&P exam today. Thought I might have a panic attack. No, not really, but it was way more stressful than any other test I've taken. This could quite possibly be the hardest class I've ever taken. All the studying and reading and everything else still doesn't get me to a point where I know the material really well. I'm guessing I got a C. The subjects covered were pretty broad though, so I'm hoping as we get a little more specific, I'll do better.

Not only did I have the test going on, but the baby has some sort of stomach bug today that resulted in about 6 pretty nasty diaper changes in 5 hours. The cat did his part by throwing up twice. Didn't leave me any time to actually get some last minute reviewing done today, let alone actually shower before I went to school.

I should rename this blog "Diarrhea and Furballs."

A "D-" in Parenting

I'm struggling trying to figure out how to balance going to school with taking care of a baby. He starts daycare tomorrow and will be going 2 days a week. Am I a mother that is tearfully dreading leaving him in a strange place with strange people watching him? NOPE. My mother-in-law is pretty worried I think, and has said things like, "but will they rock him and hold him while he naps?" Heartless as it may sound, I'm glad to get a break. No sooner has he learned how to crawl, but now he wants to stand up all the time too. I'm thinking he'll be walking by 9 months at this rate (he's about 7 1/2 now).

I'm thinking I'd give myself a D- on parenting today. I gave him his first bottle this morning about 7, and after he finished it, I put it in the sink. I realized an hour later as I was putting away dishes, that the nipples I thought were clean, where I had gotten the one to make the earlier bottle, were in fact, dirty. Good thing I'm so careful about washing my hands before I make his food, when I can't even use clean dishes. They just let anyone have babies these days don't they?

We've been pretty proud of his self-feeding skills with his little Gerber peach puffs, but now today, he has tried to eat a plant and a handful of cat food. Although I haven't seen crunchy cat food on the "list of foods not to feed your baby because of choking hazards," I'm pretty sure it was implied. He struggles to get one peach puff in his mouth, but somehow zeros in on the bowl of cat food a room away, crawls in there and manages to get 4 pieces in his mouth before I can stop him. I don't know how he does it... it's like he's part ninja... very stealthy.

Don't get me wrong, I love being home with him! It's just getting harder now that I have outside responsibilities too, like school and the new job, and that he's mobile. I'm only taking one class, and working about 25 hours a week. I have to say, I'm a little worried that I'm struggling with time management so much now, and I haven't even applied to the actual nursing program yet. If I do get in, I'm not sure how I'll manage those classes. Argh, I don't know how other people do it.

Decisions Decisions

Got the results of my CNA state exam, and I passed. I wasn't really worried, but it's always a relief to not have to think about it anymore. When I finished my CNA class, I actually graduated #1 in the class of about 30. Out of 600 test questions throughout the course, I missed 3. Granted, this was not a difficult class, but it helped my confidence a little since I'm not actually a very good student. I was in the lower 1/3 of my high school class, and nearly didn't graduate because I was failing gym. How stupid is that?

So now I'm wondering what I should do job-wise. I worked extremely hard to get into cellstore to shake hands, but now with my certification I can work in a hospital that might increase my chances of getting into school and then pay for it too. I don't want to work at cellstore forever, but it's good money now, and I'm trying to get a different job there that just opened up actually repairing phones, which would be about $4/hr more, and I'm sure that's more than a hospital job. I'll have to see what happens in the next few weeks here, and make a decision. It wouldn't hurt me to apply at the hospitals now anyway.

The baby is not the best study partner. I have to say, he's kinda insane since he started crawling. Insane in a good way though I guess. He's just so curious, he's into everything. But then he's so full of energy, he wants to skip all his naps, and party all night. I don't get it, you would think I'm feeding him Starbucks instead of Similac. Oh wait, that must be it, I'm not breastfeeding, so that must be why he's not wanting to sleep. Formula is evil! But, that's another topic altogether. I'm fairly convinced that he doesn't want me to go to school, and that's why he's making it so difficult for me. Or, more likely, he's 7 1/2 months old, and hes just being a baby, and I'm taking a difficult stressful class.