Turns out my gut instinct was right. 1.09 million premature births lead to death per year. Abortions, about 1.1 to 1.2 million per year. It is not a lot more, but it is more, meaning that premature birth is in fact the second-highest cause of infant mortality in the US.
...though we're only supposed to care about the preemie deaths, right? Not the infanticides?
* * *
Thursday (which was my Monday) I felt fain to embalmed. As my week progressed I've gradually felt better and better. Tomorrow will be hard, but hopefully not as hard as Thursday was, if only because Thursday was a really bad day, all around.
Just work-related bad, though, which helps.
I'd like to be able to go back to the days when all I had to do was work around the house, and not worry about being somewhere at a certain time and working to their schedule. But this way pays a lot better, even though it's much harder work, and I'm doing something economically useful instead of fapping around the homestead doing stupid crap no one cares about.
Thursday was probably my worst day so far in this job, but at that it was miles better than 95% of the days I spent at Best Buy manning that stupid counter, schlepping junk back and forth.
I don't have to wear that idiotic getup, I don't have to stand. I can sit at a desk and I can even take my shoes off if I want to. No one cares. For this, the only sacrifice I must make is that I cannot get up and hit the can when I feel like it; I must wait for a break. Also, I only have half an hour for lunch. But I get breaks and lunches, and they're scheduled--none of this "Okay, work for six hours straight with no breaks or anything BECAUSE WE CAN MAKE YOU DO IT!!" that went on with Best Buy.
Today was pretty decent. The drive home was nice and relaxing--Sunday night there's almost no one on the roads--and I only had one problem call, which solved itself when the call dropped. I called the customer back and sent a text message, and got voice mail, and counted myself fortunate.
* * *
Last night Mrs. Fungus and I watched The Green Mile, a movie I never saw before. It was not-bad, even with the "THIS IS CHANNEL NINE!" mangling of the swear words.
Besides that, we've been watching American Horror Story: Hotel and Leftovers. The first eps of both didn't make a lick of sense, but gradually things are improving.
...and tomorrow night is a new ep of Gotham, which will rule.
* * *
Finally: the Fiero's been gone a week now, and when I've opened the garage to get the compressor out (so I could top up the Jeep's leaky tire) I've seen the empty space formerly occupied by the Pontiac, and instead of feeling sad or anything I look at that space and think, Win.
Yeah, it was time, all right.