Nurses, Aspirin, and Genocide

Another great writing day!

I did another 5,000 words on "Fish" today, finishing out the section that had caused me so much trouble and made me put it aside in the first place. I think it went pretty well but my rule is no second reads until it's time for editing so I can't be sure. Think I did a good job of showing the horror of the scene without being too graphic. (More Alfred Hitchcock than Wes Craven, ya know?) I also got in a huge chunk of editing last night on GS, I pushed through a solid 50+ pages of line edits with only a thousand or so words of necessary add-ins. I figure both of these novels should fall into the 80k-90k range when done. Good size (from what my research tells me) for a first novel.

What's up with school nurses today? When did they become the biggest pushovers on the entire planet? Yesterday, my boy went to the nurse's office because he had a headache. She wouldn't give him aspirin (They're not allowed for legal reasons. Thank you to all the lawyers!) so she called my wife at work and suggested she come take him home. Home??? For a headache? Christ, I distinctly remember vomiting for an hour straight in school and my nurse telling me to "lay down for five minutes" before she shipped me back to class. The conversation between the nurse and my wife went something like this:

WIFE: "Take him home? Why?"
NURSE: "He has a headache."
WIFE: "Is he vomiting?"
NURSE: "No."
WIFE: "Is he bleeding? Does he have uncontrollable diarreah?"
NURSE: "No, just a headache."
WIFE: "Is he asking to come home?"
NURSE: "No, he just wants an aspirin"
WIFE: "Then give him one and send him back to class!"
NURSE: "Oh, we can't do that!"
WIFE: "What do you do when kids have a headache then?"
NURSE: "We send them home!"
WIFE: "Put my son on the phone, please."
SON: "Hi, mom."
WIFE: "GO BACK TO CLASS!!!" <click>

I don't know about you, but I feel much safer knowing there are such skilled professionals ready to assit my son at his place of schooling! Come on people, when does it all stop? if you can't even allow an R.N. to dispense aspirin to a child for fear of a lawsuit, what the hell is the point of having one on staff? Save the cost of her salary and put it towards something worthwhile (like a coin operated aspirin dispenser!) We wonder why kids in the U.S. are getting one of the lowest rated educations in the world when we let the ambulance chasers put so much fear into the administration that they can't actually take the chance on doing their job for fear of lawsuits!

Okay, back now. Took a little side trip to bitchy-land but I'm back.

Want a disturbing read today? Try this article on Monica Jackson's site. (I caught the thread off Holly Lisle's site). I suggest you follow some of her other links regarding the topic as well. She makes some very disturbing accusations which (as a middle-class white male) I'd like to deny but I'm student enough of history to know that genocide is not as far fetched as it might sound at first. Ask the Jews, the Kurds, or the American Indians. As I said: disturbing.

Later!