Taking Stock

I cleared out my work locker yesterday. It was my last full day (though I'll be helping out a bit here and there with chart-auditing as a gesture of good will), and forgot until the end of this last day, after going over the last of my lab tech duties to delegate, after eating company-paid Jimmy John sandwiches and marble cake in farewell (thanks, all) and after paying my final vet bill (Ramona & Hazel needed eye meds and anti-B's), that I really needed to empty my locker. I've had that locker for nearly 4 years (got it a few months after I started), and I guess I was so used to having it and using it that I hadn't given much attention to leaving it.

There was a lot of stuff in that locker. I'm a pack-rat; I save just about everything and I will fill any space I'm given to maximum capacity. Here's an abridged list of what was in that locker:

-a dozen or so slip leashes.

-fat & skinny Sharpies (you need both, trust me on that)

-a spare pair of socks (because you know at some point something foul I mean FOUL will get stuck in your sock we work with animals after all)

-some articles from various newspapers that I had saved to read later

-my toothbrush, toothpaste, and contact lens solution

-a few back issues of industry magazines, like Trends and Veterinary Technician

-a can of green beans and a can of crushed pineapple (both of which I had brought in on separate occasions to go with my lunch but instead opted to do without and decided to just leave them in my locker rather than lug them back home just in case I was at work and thought that my lunch or someone else's could use either green beans or pineapple or maybe both and all of my co-workers laughed yesterday when I showed them those cans but I gotta tell you that there could have been an instance when green beans or crushed pineapple would have been useful nay even needed and then in that instance I would have been like King Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone except the sword would be beans/fruit and the stone would have been my crowded locker oh scoff ye naysayers but if some situation comes along in life and you slap your forehead wishing you had a can of Del Monte brand no-salt added cut green beans and/or Safeway brand crushed pineapple in juice and there is none to be found oh you will think of me oh yes the image of my face cackling with self-righteous glee will dance before your eyes haunting you like a spector and you will have finally experienced humility in its purest form)

Anyway.

I sorted through this and more. What belonged to the hospital I put away in its proper place. What was good and useful to me I brought home, to be sorted through later.

And what was no longer needed and no longer useful I discarded. And so it goes.

-C.