A gem...

Yesterday, I was poked, prodded, bled, stuck and processed.
I thought the hiring was tough at the last hospital I worked at.
Here, I had to give multiple forms of ID, proof I had actually graduated from an accredited college, and then sign my life away.
Then, after a physical, paper work and three nice people telling me "welcome" to the Hospital, I went to the basement.
Phlebotomy, the drawing of blood, has never bothered me. I do not like pain, but the stick of a needle is necessary, so I have never minded it. But to put it in the basement does not help the idea of bloodletting.
When I reveal to people that I am new to the area, they keep asking: "What do you think of New York?"
I have never been overly diplomatic, and I am told I have all the tact of black on white ( or white on black, what ever). But I am careful in my answer.
So the wonderful phlebotomist, a young, grey haired woman named L asked me what I thought of New Yorkers.
She was taking three large vials of my blood for titer tests or some such.
What I have found, I have stated before in previous posts.
She agreed with my findings and we talked a bit more.
She told me that people here do not look up or down but usually straight ahead. At this, she held up her gloved hands and put them around her eyes like goggles. She then confided that she takes her kids out into the yard, has them all lie on their backs and stare up at the sky. Her tone and word choices made me think that this is not all that common of an experience out this way.
How can you live in the Pacific NW and not look up at mountains, eagles, seagulls, crows, racing clouds, vintage airplanes, jet airliners whisking people off to adventures in a rumbling roar...
My comment to her, after making my usual disclaimer that I was not being offensive (look I am not intentionally offensive, just tactless and blunt) that New York, so far, did not appear to be a place for enlightened people.
I am not talking sitting cross legged at the top of a mountain as an aesthetic. I mean some one who has at least discerned that there is more to life than one foot in front of the other-keep-up-with-the-Joneses scurry through the maze rat lab.
She readily agreed.
I found her to be a jewel. A jewel is usually found among common dirt, gravel, rock and sediment. I found that to be an appropriate analogy here.
I am not calling the people that are in the rat maze dirt, not in the slightest. But I have moved my freaking cheese thousands of miles and started new with K and the animals. I am certainly not going to look only ahead, keeping up with the Joneses. I am going to look up down left right and side ways to find gems, jewels.

I signed up to take my license exam in January. I am so tired of taking the practice tests and seeing what I have forgotten and what they have changed in the last decade or so since I graduated.

Be well, my friends.
More when I take breaks and have a moment.

C