Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Some well-deserved days off...

I'm really appreciating being off today.  Yesterday morning I woke up in absolute agony with my shoulder.  I must have slept badly on it, because it felt like all of the muscles were tearing away from the bones.  ALL DAY it continued, as I put hot packs on it and tried to stretch the pain away at work.  My orientee took my whole group of patients and I just tagged along behind him and made sure that he was doing O.K.  This made my life a LOT easier, as I didn't have to do as much work.  That sounds terrible, but it was really helpful.  I have a high pain threshold...I birthed a ten-pound child naturally for goodness sake!  But this was just a total bummer.  Anyway, I feel better this morning, about 50% less pain, and I'm trying to get in with a Chiropractor today or tomorrow and I have an appointment for Acupuncture on Monday.  So I'm expecting to be 100% soon.

So, people, I'm on Facebook!  I put a link on the left side of my blog so you can find me, if you're interested.  It's brand new so there's not a whole lot of stuff on there yet, but I'll work on it.  

We decided to wait on painting the house until a little later.  We have minimal stuff here, and we've just decided that we're going to just paint sometime before we go get all of our stuff from Florida.  The fact that we haven't painted yet has been preventing us from moving (haven't painted due to time/date/money constraints), and we're all REALLY ready to get into the house.  We celebrated our July 4th over there, had fireworks in the backyard, some grilled chicken and corn-on-the-cob, and hung our American flag.  It was really fun!

I'm giving some thought to starting a new email account.  I've had my old one since the beginning of high school.  I would keep my old one, of course, but my new one would be used predominantly.  I will be starting school soon, and I'd like to have a more professional-sounding email address.  Something birth-related.

Well, I went to Starbucks the other day and didn't feel like getting coffee...not even iced coffee, since it was so blazing hot.  So I went to the counter and said "I normally get coffee, but I don't feel like it today...I'm thinking something with tea would be good.  What do you recommend with tea  that's cold and refreshing?  The guy behind the counter said "Well, have you tried our Green Tea Lemonade?"  "No", says I, "but it sounds good!"  So I got an unsweetened Green Tea Lemonade and fell in love!  Only problem is that, like everything at Starbucks, it's really pricey.  So, I went home and made a strong cup of Green Tea, added a spoon of honey, and poured in some Simply Lemonade, stirred, and sipped.  It was even better than Starbucks!  So it's been my daily treat, very light and refreshing, good for you as compared to other non-water drinks out there, and much less expensive than Starbucks.  It would be even more cheap if I made my own lemonade.  Well, the other day I ran out of lemonade, but I had some Pomegranate Lemonade in the fridge that I had gotten on sale.  I mixed that in instead.  It's even better than the regular kind!  I'm really enjoying my variations of tea and lemonade mixed.  

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Some pics from the past...

I have several sewing projects to be done.  But one of the ones that I really WANTED to do was sew some Thai fisherman pants for lounging around the house.  So, I found this fabulous linen fabric at Joann, and not only was it 40% off, but I got the end of the bolt, so the second yard was an additional 50% off!  They turned out to cost about $8.  Not too shabby!  I'm also going to be using very similar material for pillows for the sofa, since our new furniture didn't come with any pillows.

I'm also throwing in a couple of other pictures that I've been meaning to post.  The first is Ziggy the Magnificent as a pup, although his is much bigger now.  And he looks kinda' weird in the pic, with his eyes all funky...  
The second is poor ol' Maximus, the Boston that we had for all-too-short of a time, who was stolen from us.
The third and fourth are of LoLo's baby blanket.  I took pics a long time ago, I just forgot to post them.  It was done using the Tiramisu Baby Blanket pattern off of Ravelry.

I am very proud of this blanket.  It really is quite pretty, very simple, albeit time consuming.  I have more pics to come...I've been a bit of a flunky in the photo department these days.  Oh, and I'm in the process of adding some pics to my older posts...like Gavin's birth story.  Check it out!

Friday, July 3, 2009

Thoughts and ideas, ideas and thoughts!

I have so many of them!  I recently had some mandatory education classes to do for work, one of which was regarding consents.  I'm going to have to get the paperwork out of the car in the morning for the class, because as soon as I read the first couple of Power Point sections, I started getting riled up thinking about the status of OB care in hospitals.  I suppose I'll get to that another day.

I have to say that I got a bit offended at work today.  I had a patient with a new (very bad) diagnosis, a grim prognosis, and the news of it deeply effected both himself and his family more so than it ordinarily might have, due to the circumstances surrounding his getting the illness in the first place.  I've had this patient for several days, and very often he's tearful, withdrawn, and clearly depressed.  I'm not a huge fan of pharmaceuticals, but I suggested to the intern that she might consider a psych consult, a spiritual referral, and/or an antidepressant/anti-anxiety type of medication.  She then said "Medications aren't the answer to everything.  He's just getting used to his diagnosis.  And besides, I need to treat the whole person, not just give meds."  Now, part of me wants to shout "Hallelujah!" from the rooftops that there's actually a new Doc out there who isn't ready to pop a million pills into their patients.  However, I resented the insinuation that I think that meds are the answer to everything.  That is the farthest thing from the truth!!  Even on our crazy floor, I'll be the first nurse to not push Ativan/Valium/Haldol on a patient, unrestrain them, and take them out to the nurse's station for some interaction to help calm them down.  I hate giving meds unnecessarily.  But I really felt that this man needed some help.  It was within my scope of practice to order a spiritual referral without a Doc's order, but I couldn't do anything besides that, and trying to support him and his family the best that I could.  That had me bent out of shape for a good part of the day.

Now, for what made my day!  I seldom take the boys to Toys 'R Us because they turn into rabid little toymongers.  But Trav was buying some fireworks from a stand in the Toys 'R Us parking lot, so I took the boys in.  Trav wanted me to get a puzzle of the U.S.A., since he's trying to teach Deklan a little bit of elementary geography (where we live, where Popi and Noni live, where Mum-Mum lives, where Grammy and Pappy live, where PaPa and MaMa live, etc.) so I picked one up.  Then I wandered over to the Melissa & Doug section to lust after some cool (expensive) wooden toys.  As I perused the aisle, a set of emergency vehicles caught Deklan's eye...he wanted it!  I took a look at the price, then did a double-take.  It was marked down from $19.99 to $2.00!!!  Surely that can't be right, I thought.  So I let Deklan get it, and headed to the register.  Sure enough, less than $7 for my entire purchase!  So, I ran back to the van, told Trav that I had to run back in, grabbed up the remaining 4 sets, and hauled them to the register.  It was there that I realized that, not only were they $2, but they were also an additional 20% off!  Four sets of Melissa & Doug rescue vehicles for less than $7!!!!  I couldn't believe my eyes!  So I got a total of 5 sets, and I'll be going to the other Toys 'R Us in town tomorrow (if they're open) or Sunday to see if they're on sale at the other one as well.  I saved almost $100 on those toys!  I'm still in disbelief.

I'm so fried.  I just finished my fifth consecutive day at work, and I'm just so incredibly done with this week.  I'm so glad that I have the holiday weekend off.  I get to recuperate a little bit.  I have an orientee who is a new grad, and is very, VERY labor intensive.  This person doesn't pick things up very quickly, and has been on orientation for 6 weeks with another nurse, who finally threw her hands up and refused to orient him anymore.  My boss said that she's putting him with me for 2-3 weeks, then she's going to review his progress.  If he's not progressing satisfactorily, she may fire him.  I sincerely hope that it doesn't come to that, and I have every confidence that he can grow to be a good, competent nurse.  But 2-3 weeks isn't long.  So I've been trying SO HARD this week to teach him, to be patient, to explain things, and yet to give him enough independence so that he can learn what's best for him and develop his skills.  It's exhausting.  It's flattering that my boss thinks that he has a fighting chance in my hands for a while, but it's still exhausting.  And if he fails, then I'm going to feel like a failure for failing him.  I hope this all goes well.

I'm still telling people that I miscarried.  The news is taking longer than I thought to get around.  It still hurts every time that I have to explain that I'm no longer pregnant.  I hope it doesn't take long for us to conceive once we decide that it's time to officially drop our guard.