morbid curiosity

The title sounds worse than it is. It's my job right now to have morbid curiosity. I came home on the shuttle yesterday afternoon. I had been to an anatomy lecture to which we were instructed to bring our skull from our bone box. Back up: for anatomy learning purposes, each of us shares with our partners two boxes of human skeleton - one containing the skull and the other containing the remainder of the skeleton. So I was transporting my skull box with skull back home. It's a the size of a generous lunchbox but is made like a black plastic instrument case and has stenciled on the outside: Anatomy Dept.

I was walking home from the bus stop, past a line of stacked-up traffic, when I realized I was walking past what appeared to be a freeze-dried squirrel on the sidewalk. I was immediately interested: it wasn't squished, so how did it die without getting squished (Acute respiratory distress syndrome? I crack me up). How come, if it wasn't squished, it didn't get scavenged? But I thought, for the sake of adhering to social norms, "Ignore the squirrel, Brandi. Just keep walking...".

But I was holding a human skull. And when you're holding a skull, you can inspect a dead squirrel, by golly. So I stopped and peered. I turned it over with my shoe. Hard to say what happened to that squirrel to land it in the state it was in. It was just dried-up and hairless, yet not flat. This was primarily an act of getting closer to what my role will be. Fascination is supplanting disgust. Surprise!

Also, I cleaned vomit on Super Bowl Sunday. That's always a little challenging. I'm not complaining because I wasn't the one vomiting...Richie was. He got a stomach bug that's been sweeping Decatur. While I was cleaning up, I was wondering where (in which body fluid, I mean) the greatest concentration of microbes would be. Of course, every surface received maximum disinfection, no matter where I estimated to be the germiest. Our house still smells like bleach and the girls are getting dishpan hands from washing them so often. Poor Richie felt awful. He was gray and wobbly and soooo sick. But now he's walking and talking and no longer vomiting. Yay!

Off to memorize the skull bones and all their features!