Did I mention clusterfuck? I did right?

No organization. Left hand, right hand, left foot, right foot. Completely clueless.

Could be worse.

Today was all hurry up and wait. Gotta do this.. no you don’t.. yes you do, with the utmost urgency… oh that? who told you that?
Sheeite.

You don’t even want to know about the food. I thought the rice was potatos until I tasted it. Took a lot of will power not to spit it back out.
The peas were 3 different colours.
The chicken was.. well I’m sure it had been part of a chicken at one point in the last couple years. The chicken was the best part. I ate part of the peas but they were so much mush in a garlic butter sauce that I couldn’t handle more than a few forkfuls.

I’m going to be hungry most of the time while I’m here from the looks of it.
Fortunately there’s a grocery store not too far from the hospital and supposedly I’ll have a few times when I can bip off and get some non-perishable foods to keep in my room.

The biggest thing so far is that there are already power plays by the staff.
One of the nursing staff, all ingoing and outgoing are monitored, it’s not a locked facility but it is contained and constrained.

The psych doc told me to go ahead and grab my stuff and go to my room and get settled in. I do so.
Then the staff nurse calls me from her office (and she’s also afraid of dogs, oh great..) and tells me that I have to bring all my stuff back to her office. Shades of boot camp anyone? It isn’t a short trek with two duffels full of stuff (one is Keegan’s supplies) though it’s not far in reality.
AND I’ve already unpacked everything. I asked if it would be possible for her to step down to the room and inspect things there.
I invoked the psych doc’s name and then said that I was also told to take my prescriptions over to the hospital to get filled so I was wanting to know if I would be allowed to do this before they closed. That won me a retrieve.

I’m in the hospital “library” using one of the very old grimey (in a hospital no less) public computers while I’m waiting for my prescriptions to get filled.

The beds are pathetically thin plastic twin mattresses (very little room for both me and Keegan), the pillows are plastic lumps of *something*. The blanket is… well.. not a blanket. I’m glad I brought my snuggie at least. I’m going to be wishing I’d brought my sleeping bag I think.

I have to say that it reminds me a lot of the bunking arrangements I saw in the prisons I worked in, nicer of course. There’s little cutout paper butterflies on the doors. Still, very institutional. Very.

My anxiety is growing. What little confidence I had in the hope for the program has disintigrated.

Tomorrow’s orientation has been cancelled until Thursday but we’re all supposed to show up bright and early anyway. There was the promise of “lots of homework” even though we won’t have had any classes.
For a program that is so stressed for time that there is no free time this doesn’t seem like an auspicious start.