JPEG GHOST

Sorry I'm a day late with my usual posting, I was a psuedo-DMORT (Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team) yesterday.

DMORT is operated and sent out by FEMA during disasters or other mass death with coroners, autopsy techs, and other funeral representatives. If we have another disaster I could get called out to work mass shooting sites, natural disaster sites, et cetera. ANYWAYS. Our local morgue was stockpiled to the brim yesterday and there was a supremely low staff shortage. They called out to local funeral homes for backup, and lucky me, I have the best immune system / am the youngest in our funeral home so I was sent out.

I saw around ... 200? Bodies? Mostly covid. I worked almost 9 hours yesterday around the clock shipping out bodies, prepping bodies, locating bodies in overrun coolers, et cetera. I feel like a more sensitive person would be shocked and overwhelmed by it -- but it only left me angrier at our governor who really screwed the pooch on this whole 'deadly pandemic' situation. It was EXHAUSTING and when I got home I spent most of the day in bed watching videos debunking DIY hacks.

In better news one of my favorite artist's vinyl came in! I've been a fan of Jeff Rosenstock for a few years, and No Dream was a great album when it dropped a month or two ago. It's so PRETTY.

7:00 AM: Wake up. Stare at ties, wear favorite one in hopes to make the day go well.

8:00 AM: Arrive at work. Morning poop. Listen to funeral directors talk about the insane families and office politics. Chug cold brew. Spill some on favorite tie.

9:00 AM: Go to the city Health Department for death certificates or burial transit permits. Meet multiple other directors from multiple other funeral homes in the same room ("Death Services" room). Catch up, talk shit, briefly forget why you were there to begin with.

10:00 AM: Return to the funeral home to either prepare for a visitation, funeral service, or graveside. If none of those, you have to check a body in and dress them. The body leaks all over the white shirt the family brought in. Spend 12 minutes drying the button-up with a hair dryer from 1989. 

11:00 AM: Glue someone's mouth shut because their mouth keeps opening. If family has allowed embalming, clamp their jaws shut with a wire gun that locks the alveolar processes together. Their lips part anyways and you have to use glue.

11:00 AM: If at a funeral service, the family is 30 minutes late. If at a graveside, the sun is out and baking you, and the family is 35 minutes late.

12:00 PM: LUNCH. Coworkers further believe you're a human trash compactor after you are caught eating cold fish cake (odeng) from the fridge. Explain that gochujang is not ketchup. Get food on your tie.

1:00 PM: Lunch, but only if you just got back from the graveside / funeral service. Go to the post office to drop off some death certificates that your boss forgot to give you until now.

2:00 PM: Put a body in a casket for their visitation tonight. You patched up any mystery holes that may purge liquid onto them, but they purge out of their mouth instead and onto your gloves. Add gloves to the ever-growing Biohazard trash.

3:00 PM: Youtube. Coworker is watching the History Channel. Boss left for the day, or to go to JC Penny's.

4:00 PM: One hour left, continue to watch Youtube and do homework. Coworkers leave between 4:30 - 4:50 until it's just you and the secretary.

5:00 PM: FREEDOM. Get free sandwiches from the caterers who came by for the visitation's reception as you leave, then go home to get butt-slapped by boyfriend and watch Buzzfeed Unsolved. Rinse repeat.

...That's generally my day to day at work. All of these things happened to me at least once, and I don't anticipate the insanity to EVER END.

 All my finals are over, yeehaw. I passed all of them but I'm so burnt out I don't have anything else to say other than I'm closer to my final certification. I don't know what to do with my new free time. I wake up and think of all I have to study (nothing), and when I am done making dinner or lunch or finish exercising I think of all the research I must do (for nothing) so I'm sort of at a loss. What do I do?! Enjoy my life?

Work was fun yesterday because of aggressively stupid nurses. The secretary who usually catches the phones was out on her 43rd smoke break of the day, so I caught a call from a doctor's office and it went something like this:

Her: I've been trying to contact (Funeral Director), this is my second time today.

Me: Sorry, she's with a family, can I have a call back number?

Her: I'm not at the office and I don't give out personal information. So no. -hangs up-

Alright lady.

The second I hung up the call, the funeral director in question was done with the family and walked by. Apparently she (the FD) had been calling that doctor's office for a week as they were overdue on death certificates -- Doctors have 10 days to sign DCs, and we often have to strong arm them to sign a little piece of paper so that the family of the dead can, you know, apply for SSA or VA benefits amongst other things. They realized they were late by 4 days (!) and finally were rushing to contact us but ... The nurse wouldn't give us a callback so ...?

Amongst other things I got to glue someone's mouth shut yesterday, hulk out on an obese body and lift them into a freezer, and was told that funeral home from several posts back (the one I helped at) was asking for help again and specifically wanted me, but my boss is cranky to the idea of loaning me out since I guess I'm of worth. I'm excited to go back. I like the director there and all the little old ladies behind the front desk are so sweet to me.

I'm aggressively checking Dreamwidth to see if any of you have received those nice cards I sent out. I understand the USPS has been backed up lately, but I really hope they're not lost : ( Some of them are rather close to Texas while others are in like ... Vermont? So I guess we will SEE.

 Picture me as of five minutes ago: Slav-squatting in front of my refrigerator, drinking old cold brew in an attempt to wake up. I have too much schoolwork to do and a funeral to deal with from 1-5pm, but instead I'm glaring down a bundle of carrots sitting in my vegetable drawer. I'm probably nearing mania. 1958 smash hit 'Tequila' is looping in my head.

Okay. Now we know my mental state.

I've had four funerals in the past 3 days. FOUR. Funerals are a 5 hour+ deal, but there are so many dead people. Luckily today I just have a Jewish service; I'm not Jewish, but I know the customs well enough to properly help with one. Those are almost always graveside only for a cool 45 minutes, rarely do they have a chapel service or visitation of any kind (unless they're Reformist, but we mostly get Orthodox and Conservative). I'm not sure why I have to be there 4 hours, maybe I'm needed for morgue work.

ANYWAYS. Yesterday at the end of a visitation I was in the thick of a rosary and nearly fell asleep. Rosaries are exhausting, my eyes usually cross and since I don't participate it's just a lot of chanting. The Father was particularly soft spoken and slow so what was a 20 minute affair was dragged to 45-50 minutes. He mentioned eating bread, and my dumb hungry self immediately thought of food, and then sin-eaters.

Back in ye olden times, sin-eaters were people paid to stand over a corpse, eat bread, and drink wine or beer. This, in theory, resolved the deceased of their sins as the sins ... went into the food? And it hastened their trip out of Purgatory, much like how praying the rosary for a decedent supposedly eradicates the deceased of their sins and allowed them into Heaven.

I always found sin-eaters fascinating, the concept of sins leaving the body and jumping into food is so bizarre but these are also the people that believed in bodies having miasma.

The Middle Ages were an ........... interesting time!

Also, dear Lurch has a few new leaves that unfurled, with some more on the way <3 I'm so happy he's thriving. Here's my favorite one so far:

As Texas just straight up reopens at 100%, I've had a lot of work to be done. Not only do we have Covid deaths, but there's also deaths from the reckless Texas drivers. In my time in Texas (it'll be one year in a few more days) I have seen countless people stop at a red light, grow weary of it, then just go anyways and weave through the oncoming traffic. I've seen people drive over the median, into oncoming traffic, to get to a shopping mall across the street (and pop the curb). I've seen so so so so many drunk driving deaths and incidents. I have a funeral every day next week because people are crazy, and we have driving fatalities because the roads reopened and it's Mad Max out there. SIGH.

One of the churches that I've done services at has confirmed cases and a dead priest, which is stressful since the governor doesn't see why churches should be closed at all.

I realize this post is mostly bitching about the state of the world. In other news:

I was thinking around December I will send out Christmas Cards to those who would want some weird turn-of-the-century cards that I always find at the local thrift stores, but also, the USPS is rapidly dissolving and I would like to save it. Not only for people who can't afford private carriers or our voters, but also because USPS is the only shipping service that will carry human remains for us for a reasonable price. Everything else is astronomical, or not allowed.

Who wants a fun letter from me? I promise I'll only talk about decomposition if prompted!

I hauled my ass out of bed to do a funeral today on my day off, which I was already cranky about ... but such is my luck I stepped in a fire ant hill at the service and got swarmed. I remained as poker faced and professional as possible as I shuffled off behind the hearse where no one could see me and proceeded to scrape the ants off my legs, socks, and shoes, with my wallet until my limbs were sufficiently bitten up and red, then dumped water all down my legs. I slid back into the service, sockless (the ants had Overtaken them and I had to abandon them into a bag in the car), and finished it off. Family didn't seem to notice. Grief blinds you in many ways; sometimes, it's convenient for the funeral professional who is getting attacked by insects.

I am apparently having a Very Good reaction, so says my medical professional boyfriend. He's fussed over me the minute he heard I got swarmed, producing hydrocortisone, benadryl, and reese's cups as soon as he picked me up from work. He's a water sign and a natural worrywart so he's been taking this a lot more seriously than I have. Instead of having dozens of pus-filled blisters, I just have slight redness and bumps.

Texas is full of surprises.

I came home and iced my legs while playing Animal Crossing, then switched over to sadly pawing through my 1930s cocktail book and imagining my prohibition party when Covid has been quelled. Under the cut are some ads that tickled me:

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I have to drag myself out of my comfy bed tomorrow at 6-ish so I can transport a body to the local airport to be shipped off, then Tuesday I have another funeral to work on. I love my job, don't get me wrong, but business is booming for all the wrong reasons and it's getting to be overwhelming.