Tomorrow Night and Tomorrow Night

So I'm mostly over being sick. Yay. (Now I have to go and get my flu shot, so I'm sure I'll feel like crap again next time I post.)

I worked on Thursday night. We were short handed and I ended up covering two units--ten patients--from eleven to seven. It was fine--the patients go to bed at 9 p.m. and after that, there were luckily no problems--but that situation always has the potential to go from fine to shit in about a tenth of a second. All it takes is one patient not being able to sleep, waking up sick, or going off and then things tend to slide downhill. But they didn't, so lucky me.

It's colder now in the night and so I spend less time outdoors, but I still got a few short walks in, moving from building to building. At four-thirty or so, we had a new admit--not my patient , but I helped with the admission process. It ate up some of the time in the night (usually between five-thirty and seven-thirty a.m.) when I start counting down the time until my relief arrives. When I was done helping out with the admission, I checked in with all my patients and techs. It was just six a.m. then and so I poured the last of my strong, old, grown-cold coffee down the sink in the bathroom. I usually do that at five a.m., when the temptation to let caffeine push me through the last two hours of my twelve and a half hour shift grows too strong. Coffee after five a.m. means no sleep for hours after I get home, which is not a good idea.

Dave picked me up at 7:23 (the time I'm officially allowed to leave, even if I'm finished early, which I was this morning so I just had to pace around the timeclock in the breakroom for about fifteen minutes, getting my steps in so that my FitBit will continue to love me). We came home via the parking and transportation department where I handed in my $400 a year parking pass because now that I work nights, parking is free. I came home, showered, ate something, and then tried to sleep. After a couple of sleepless hours, I got up and took some benadryl and slept for awhile.

When I woke up, I sewed awhile and read awhile until Dave was done for the day with his work. I'm into the seventh book of the Patricia Briggs series. (After that, I'll start the next series by the same author, as Helen suggested in the comments last time.) I'm reading the rest old school, in mass market paperbacks, so I can drop them off on the shelves in the breakroom when I'm done. I like the stories, but I'm at the point in my reading life when I'm unlikely to double back to read anything that isn't already a burned-into-my-brain favorite book. (I should probably just get a library card at this point, but me and the library have a beef that goes way back.)

We went out for dinner to a Middle Eastern restaurant that has the best hummus I've ever had in my life. I had a sizeable portion with chicken taouk and tabouli. Dave had a giant vegetarian platter with hummus, baba ganoush, rice, tabouli, dolmas, and felafel. Everything was really good and we had enough to bring home leftovers, which I promptly ate.

We came home via the grocery store. I didn't want to go to the grocery store (not enough sleep and a likely to be hormonally driven headache), but we did it anyway because I needed stuff for breakfasts and work lunches. That done, we came home and I got back into my pajamas, read awhile, and then napped for a bit. When I woke up, I sewed for a bit. It's almost half past midnight now--I'll stay up as late as possible so I can sleep tomorrow.

I work again tomorrow night.