Yes, today should have been horrendous, if only because a hell of a lot of lousy things happened to me, and yet it wasn't. It was actually pretty good, all things considered, which surprises me somewhat.

I will sum up the morning with the phrase Public Transport Nightmare and let your imagination take over. Think of the worst commute ever. Now multiply that by fifty and add gratuitous roadworks. Congratulations, you are still nowhere near imagining how horrendous this journey was. Luckily for me I didn't notice much of it, because I spent half of it hanging on the telephone (of which more anon) and the other half wedged in the corner buried in my faithful, battered Red'n'Black notepad (of which more anon too).

The phone call? My attempt to ring the placement area and let them know that as a result of the aforementioned nightmare scenario courtesy of London Transport I was going to be late. The result of this brave endeavor was fifteen minutes on hold whilst some recorded voice told me, more and more frequently, that the clinic I was trying to call was very busy and could I call back later if it wasn't urgent. By the end, I was so frustrated I was about ready to hurl the phone out the window and the phone wasn't even getting the chance to ring once before the soothing voice told me that the clinic was very busy, etc.

At this point I ran out of call credit, which might have been a blessing in disguise.

After topping up (sigh) I called the switchboard again, but this time managed to get more than three words out before the operator put me through. Turns out the first idiot thought I was trying to arrange an antenatal appointment and put me through to the booking service. Ah, the perils of being young, female and on the telephone to a maternity hospital. Thankfully, this time I got through.

I'd been on the phone for twenty minutes. My conversation lasted two minutes. The bus was now in Camberwell after dealing with Nightmare Roadworks. I was so thankful I decided to celebrate by wedging myself in the corner, sticking my favorite Cheesy Anime Song on repeat (the song in question, 'Honki' from Idol Densetsu Eriko - a series I have never watched and know I never will do - is the acme of my guilty pleasures: it's shockingly cheesy but I love it), and trying to get over my writer's block. And it actually worked. Character position for action scenes is always a problem for me. With any luck, today will have helped me some.

Note to self: remember to put on ignorable music next time I try and write in front of my PC. It makes the time go faster and, perversely, seems to help me think.

Though work was fundamentally unsuitable and I got ticked off by a bossy midwife for daring to step toward the nurse's station when on the labor ward (no, I didn't get it either considering that firstly I didn't want to go behind it and was only trying to get out of the corridor and secondly when on placement I'm on staff there - what did she think I was going to do, eat the patient notes?), that wasn't so bad either. The midwife I spent the afternoon with was nice and helpful and willing to answer my questions, the like of which I'm sure she'd heard a thousand times before. And, heaven be praised, she actually kept me busy, which is an absolute bloody miracle.

It's funny how spending a few hours round the company of women who are, with a single exception excluding myself, heavily pregnant, makes one start to wonder about how subjective normality is. I'm no stick insect (Internet User Stereotype conformed to) and yet standing around a bunch of pregnant women being shown around suites of rooms I'd already visited and doubling up for a breaking flip chart stand made me start to feel rather, shall we say, odd. As if I were fundamentally the wrong shape. Well, I guess normality is what you make it...

I'm still pleased that I've managed to pretty much finish my Blackboard work - not to mention my clinical placements. Maternity. An experience which in retrospect I'm extremely glad I've had, but would certainly not care to repeat. Okay... I still have a load of paperwork to finish up but what the hell. I'm a fast writer.

Meeting my parents tomorrow evening. We're hoping to see a film about Hitler in the Bunker and I may get a small amount of free food (any meal I don't have to pay for is good in my book). Excited about that one. ^^ And now I've finished this I've got a really lovely chance to ramble on about Ken. It's been a good, bad day.