The American-ness

I wrote this a week-plus ago:

Thursday night (12/12/19):

There's about twenty minutes until my relief gets here and I hand over my eight patients. My unit is full. I came in with one open bed and filled that bed just before midnight, so now we're full. It was a relatively easy night after the admission. I got my stuff done and then worked on continuing education credits online. I did 2.5 hours, which brings me to 25.5 or thereabouts. I have to have 30 to renew my license--and I have eight more months before I have to do that. It was cold last night. I went out for a couple of short walks, trying to keep myself awake.

Friday night (12/13/19):

 I'm tired tonight. It's the second of my run of three nights. It's been a quiet night, which is great and also terrible. It's harder to stay awake on quiet nights than it is on busy nights. I have to take more walks out in the cold and drink more coffee. Then when I get home, I can't sleep as easily. Hold up, I'm going to go make a cup of decaf. Okay, I'm back. All my duties are done for the night and I have a few more hours left in my shift. I'm tired. I already said that. I should be working on my continuing education credits before my brain goes completely to mush, but I don't think I'm going to. Ugh. I will. OKAY. I will. I really just want to kick back and shop for fabric even though I haven't sewn anything in a long time and I have so much fabric to get through...but there's always more. And I want to buy some more fabulous black and white prints since I went through most of mine making the last quilt. Okay, I'll be back after I get another continuing ed credit. Let's see how long it takes me. (It's 3:36 a.m. right now.) I'm back. It's 4:59. I finished another credit, talked to my supervisor, talked to some techs, made two trips to the nursing building to look for supplies, updated the board in the office, and printed out reports for my relief (who won't be in for another two hours). God, this night is 10 years long. I'm tired! But I already said that. Maybe I'll go visit my friend. I told her I would, but its cold outside.

Saturday (12/21/19):

It's back to the present moment, whatever that is. I'm at work. Actually, it's Sunday morning, just after 3:00 a.m. I'm 8 hours into my 12 hour shift. It started out with a bang, my shift, and I hope it goes out with a whimper. It's 3 days before Christmas and the kids that are here are desperate to go home. I hope they all get their wish. (I have Christmas Eve off, but I'll be working on Christmas, from seven at night until the next morning.) Last week, when I wrote all that, I worked a bunch. I even had overtime hours on my check. I used some of the extra cash to buy some gifts to donate to the kids here and to go on a mini-spending spree at Clinique online. (I use their stuff regularly, so I just stocked up really.) I have yet to buy the boots I've been wanting. Maybe REI (which I know carries them) will have an after Christmas sale and I can get a deal on them. If not, I'm buying them anyway.

What's been going on besides work? Gee. Not much. We had dinner with Judi and Paul again, at Paul's assisted living place. We took Italian food this time. (This time, meaning last Tuesday.) We also had dinner with my mother, brother and aunt last week. (We had Italian food then, too.) Dave and I haven't been cooking much at home. We went to Costco and bought a bunch of food--after having dinner out, of course. We're eating breakfasts and lunches at home, really, but we're eating too many dinners out.

(Ugh, the tired just hit me. I'm having coffee now, but it's not going to be enough, I can tell. I still have four hours...I can make it, I know. But it's going to be one of those nights. I'm glad I'm off tomorrow. I'm going to try to sleep, something that eluded me all day.)

What else has been going on? I've been rewatching all of the Northern Exposure episodes I have on DVD. I love that show so much. I didn't start at the beginning, I'm just jumping around from episode to episode. I cycle through what I listen to as I'm sleeping during the day. When I started the job back in August, I was listening to The Golden Girls. Then I cycled through 30 Rock. Then I went back to The Golden Girls. I tried The Dick VanDyke Show for awhile. Then did the whole loop again. Now I'm watching/listening to Northern Exposure. The only thing I don't like is that the music that aired with the original series is gone on the DVDs. I think the rights would have cost them too much. It sucks, because the music helped make the show. But the stories are still good.

I remember I saw my first episode when I was in my early 20s. One of my then-friends was a fan and I watched an episode with her. I didn't really like it at the time. Later, when the show was on syndication, I started to watch the episodes in the morning before I went to work and I kind of got into them. Later, when I moved to Japan, I took the DVDs with me and would watch them over and over. It wasn't until I thought about lending them to an Australian co-worker that I realized that the show was 100% American. I really hadn't thought about it until then, the American-ness of it: The astronaut, the Indians, the stock broker turned trapper, the New York Jewish doctor, the Amelia Earhart-esque bush pilot. I wonder if the humor would've translated, but in the end I decided not to lend the DVDs to the Aussie. Instead, I gave him my copy of Napoleon Dynamite.

 It's only 3:20 now. Still four more hours. (My relief comes in at 7:00, but I spend about 30 min catching her up on things.) Maybe I'll write more later, but for now I think I'll make another cup of coffee.

God, I'm tired.