carry that weight

Things that are happening today.

Pretty sure my dog farted the nastiest fart ever today. It smelled so horrible. I don't even have a hospital-people-poop-smell to liken it to. As bad as C-Diff poop, but different. Oh, it was awful. And she just kept chewing away on her little rawhide bone. That used to not be so little, but she eats them, you see. Well, she finished it today. Gross.

I hadn't used my Chi to style my hair in quite some time until yesterday. This has stemmed out of laziness, not dissatisfaction. I try to blow-dry my hair when I get out of the shower and make it look good, but after that, I am usually not motivated for Phase II styling which is, the Chi. Yesterday, I let the hair dry naturally to it's frizzy, weird-curly self. So it had to be straightened, and you can't blow-dry-style dry hair. Chi is faster and easier anyway. And my hair stays stick straight no matter what, it seems like. I slept awful weird last night and I'm pretty sure my neck got sweaty (usually leading to funny looking kinks in the hair in that area), but my hair stayed straight and smooth. It's like a dream. And to think, the crazy girl at the mall tried to tell me that her only-sold-at-the-mall-by-snake-oil-salesmen straightening iron was better than my hot pink shimmer Ultra Chi. Ha. Wrong. Nothing is better than this.

Nothing, I tell you.

I am having another unmotivated day.  I have to do a load of work-clothes laundry, though.  I work all weekend (bleh) and would rather not go in dirty clothes or naked.  I really hate doing housework.  It sucks a lot.

I have been playing Smurfs Village on my iPhone a lot lately.  A friend at work told me about it, and being a person who is always looking for a way to kill some time, I downloaded it.  I currently have a happy little village of farming smurfs who have a meth lab, a special bakery, the timber mill, the workshop, and a mine.  And an abundant field where they can grow "crops."  

Corey also made me start playing Family Feud.  I can't stop.

Also, as I'm sure any non-blind person can tell, I redid my blog.  I just needed something new to look at.  I found a website called ShabbyBlogs.com that has some very crafty looking designs on there.  I wish they had more tutorials.  What they do have is wonderful.  So after a combo of figuring out how to do some stuff on Blogger and fiddling with how to do the header in Photoshop, I got it how I want it.  I like the change.

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I wish I had more money.

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"you never give me your money, you only give me your funny papers"

princess of china

I can't stop saying how particularly unmotivated to write I have been lately.

First, I'll share a video I took of Corey torturing Abigail:

I got the newest Coldplay album.  Via iTunes pre-order :))  I really like it!

See what I mean?  Not too terribly much to talk about.  Work has been same old, same old with more bad days than good.  Bad staffing has made everyone hate our floor and look for the first opportunity to jump ship.  It's sad, because this job could be a really great one if we had enough people to be able to do our jobs well without wanting to shoot ourselves at the end of the day.

I'm thinking about re-designing my blog.  I like the font style finally, so I may look for different backgrounds and headers and whatever.  That might be my project today even though I should be doing laundry...

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"you're holding in your hands the two halves of my heart"

workin' for a livin'

Things lately have been borderline good and bad.  I'll only list off and talk about the good things, though. I never meant this blog to be a place where I complain about life.

1.  Well, Corey got a new car.  New to him.  It's a 2008 Mitsubishi Galant.  Certainly an upgrade from his truck.  He feels so great now having a reliable mode of transportation.  I have to say I'm jealous of the reliable transportation bit.  My car has been iffy for a long time, and I'm hoping it's my turn soon to get a new car.

2.  I upgraded to iOS 5.  It is totally awesome.  I like the new notifications.  I LOVE iCloud.  My favorite feature of iCloud is syncing my calendar.  That is such a beautiful thing.  iMessage is really fun.  Corey and I message each other across the apartment from my iPhone to his iPad.  I just love everything about it.  Now if I could only pair it with a new iPhone 4s with the awesome camera and Siri.  Wouldn't I love having a personal assistant to talk to and control my iPhone that way?  I'm way jealous of the folks getting that phone today.

3.  Work is still good and bad.  Good thing is, I'm starting to get to precept new nurses, so I make more money and have better days at work.  Love that.  Bad thing is, more nurses keep leaving, so we're more short-staffed.  That sucks majorly.  I'm scheduled to take the nurse preceptor class in January, though, so maybe I'll be assigned a regular orientee and keep that bigger hourly wage on a regular basis.  That would be fabulous.  And my clinical ladder bonus is coming up in January.  That will be a down payment on a new car for me.  I hope so, anyway.

I've had more and more days in between posting lately.  I'm not sure why (too busy?  unmotivated?  boring life?), but I am going to attempt to be more consistent.  I'll find some piece of new to discuss at least briefly.


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"some days won't end ever, some days pass on by"

golden slumbers

A very sad thing happened today.

Steve Jobs was a brilliant person who put in the work to make his dreams real.

He changed how we do everything if you think about it.

I'm proud to say my iPhone is seemingly surgically attached to my hand, and that I am typing this blog post on my MacBook Pro.

I see people everyday struggling and dying because of cancer.  It is heartbreaking every time a person does not win their battle.  This time is absolutely no different.

God bless him and his family and friends.

And long live Apple Computer.

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"sleep pretty darling do not cry, and I will sing a lullaby"

eleanor rigby

What a long day.

I made chili today, though. Got the recipe off a blog I follow. I realized that I had all of the ingredients in my kitchen and decided to go for it.

Let me go ahead and say chili is not a strongpoint in cooking for me. The last time I tried it was a disaster.

Well, I did it this time and it was great! I thought so anyway.


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"where do they all come from"

help!

I'm considering making a new blog within this one.  Kind of like a serial newspaper article.

I'll have to figure out how to embed it within one of these pages.

I want it to be loosely based on my adventures at work.  Because of privacy issues, all names will be changed, and certain details will be dramatized and changed to make it unlikely that one could figure out which patient I was talking about.

I guess it will be kind of like a soap opera.  In blog form.

I'll have to figure out just how much I can muddle the facts to make it not a HIPAA violation to post the stories.

--
"you know I need someone"

all i ask of you

I have had a boring life the past couple of weeks.  [although somehow this post became a novel, so I will break it up in the middle with a picture of Corey and Abigail]

Corey got a new gun.  He traded his old pistol for a different one.  He is very happy with it.  I think we will go to the gun range and shoot it tomorrow, since we are both off of work :)

Work has been same old, same old.  I am not necessarily complaining about that, because I would rather it be boring than be interesting because something bad happened to a patient.  Boring days are good days for the patients.

I had an orientee with me this week.  I have never had one before.  I've just precepted students in the past.  She was at the point where she was taking a portion of our patient group by herself, so all I really had to do was check up on her and answer questions and help her with tasks so she stayed caught up.  She reminded me what it was like to be a new grad.  She had all the knowledge, it just takes longer when you're brand new to bring it all out at the right times.  She was doing great though.  And she got a lot of skill experience this week, since she had a busy little group of patients.  Lots of IV starts and even dropping an NG tube.  She was great and smart and I hope I get to have her assigned with me again.

Some nurses do not like having students and orientees.  I like it.  It's like having a friend with you all day. It's good to have someone to talk to.  And it brings out the nerdy "I would be a teacher in another life" me.  I love teaching.  When I was the membership educator of my college sorority, it was the time of my life.  I love sharing knowledge about things I am passionate about.  I like to see that other people who just "like" what they are learning become passionate and love it like I do.  I feel that way about my sorority and I feel that way about nursing.  I also like being able to teach new graduate nurses that they actually are smart, they do know what they are doing, and they will be amazing nurses.

Some nurses (namely the ones who don't like taking students) do not possess the compassion, patience, and encouraging manner required to effectively guide new nurses into the work force.  That is unfortunate.  The new grads we have at our hospital are bright, caring people who need to be nurtured, not put down.  I recently saw one new graduate with a preceptor who made her feel like she was completely incompetent.  It was uncalled for and that nurse got a different job, which I am grateful for, because the orientee got a better preceptor.  She got a preceptor who I had a lot when I first started, so I know she's in excellent hands.  There was a lot of damage control to be done there.

I feel like I had a really unintended soap box speech there.  Sorry, blog.  You know how I can get on a tangent.

A good thing that happened this week (on Monday) was getting my hands blessed again by Sister Anita at work.  I am lucky to work at a Christian hospital that adds loving and serving people like Jesus to the already compassionate, serving nature of our job as nurses.  It reminds me to see people through the eyes of Jesus and realize that even the most cantankerous patient is a child of God who is in a very vulnerable part of life and needs compassionate care like anyone else.  I think working for God at work makes me a better nurse.  I will always carry these ideals with me no matter what organization I am getting paid by.

This has become a terribly long post.


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"say you love me"