Saturday/Sunday; Thursday/Friday

Last Saturday:

I'm here at work--it's my Saturday night shift. I mean, it's my shift that starts on Saturday night and ends on Sunday morning. So it's Sunday morning. It's about 5:35 in the morning and I'm tired. As always at this time, I'm very, very tired.

The person who relieves me (when she doesn't call in sick) usually shows up an hour early to gossip. (Something that I appreciate, honestly.) It helps to keep me awake for that last hour. We gossip for an hour, then she clocks in and we take another thirty minutes to hand off patients, then I go home. This morning I'm going to go home and sleep.

I tried sleeping yesterday, but everything went haywire and my sleep was a mess. So I'm tired. I've had so much coffee that my heart rate was above a hundred and so I slowed down on the coffee. But I might need more caffeine just to get me through the next couple of hours. I'm going to have the rest of my long-cold, half-caf coffee (there's about four ounces left, maybe). I can make a cup of decaf after that--and I also have a sixteen ounce diet Pepsi waiting in the wings. Just in case. (Though I already had one tonight and I don't want to pull out that big gun unless I absolutely need to.)

It's been a hell of a long night. My unit is full. Not a single bed open--nine patients--which is good in that it means that there can be no admissions. But it also means that, once the kids go to bed, there are some long hours to fill with drudge work like restocking supplies, auditing patient charts, cleaning and organizing. Piddly stuff. That's all done now. And I'm going to make some decaf coffee.

I'll be right back.

Okay. I have some fresh (instant) decaf coffee and a bottle of water. That should hold me for awhile. Hopefully for another ninety minutes until I clock out.

It's six a.m. when the hospital supervisors change shifts. They hole up for about 30 or 40 minutes in their office around this time. Everyone else, including me, changes over an hour later. So I just have to hang on. Sometimes at this hour I take a walk to keep my head clear, but it is too damned cold out there--27 degrees--and I don't feel like going out.

So what can I write about?

I've been having some crazy dreams lately and I've been jotting down some notes when I wake up (as I do several times a night) and sometimes the notes I jot down are crazier than the dreams. Yesterday I had a few words ("side yard" and "raccoon") some of which fit into what of the dream I remembered (the setting was the side yard of the house I grew up in) and some of which I have no idea about (was there a raccoon? I don't remember a raccoon in the dream). I feel like the dreams are hormonally motivated--that is, I am having some crazy pre-menopausal hormonal shifts and the dreams are one manifestation of that.

I think I'm going to put on some Cat Stevens to listen to for this last hour. Let's hope it doesn't put me to sleep.

So I've been listening to News Radio episodes as I sleep or try to sleep. I really loved that show, though watching it now reminds me of what a loss Phil Hartman's murder was--and what god-awful people Andy Dick and Joe Rogan turned out to be despite how funny they were on the show. Anyway, I'm through season two. I alternate it with the last season of Northern Exposure (the worst season). Somehow it's enough to keep The Brain occupied while I try to sleep.

Did I really think that 12 ounces of decaf coffee was going to get me through this last ninety minutes? How naive can I get? Jesus.

I am going to go out for a quick walk. I'll be back in a few minutes.

Tonight

It's Thursday night. I'm back at work. That's the only time I take out this, my new computer. The rest of the week it lives in my work bag. It's a nice computer, but my old one has all my saved passwords and such and transferring them is such a pain.

Here are some random things:

I have a bruise on my right thigh. I have no idea where it came from, but it hurts kinda. I forgot the stuff that I put on bruises, can't think of the name right now, starts with an A. Arnica. I had to look it up. I forgot my arnica gel.

Also on my right thigh is a sore muscle. Just the smallest sore muscle about halfway up on the top of my thigh. (The bruise is more on the inner thigh, towards my knee.) I have no idea what I did, but it's been sore for several days now.

Every time something like this happens, my hypochondria goes into overdrive and I think I'm dying. Like, this is going to be a blood clot and it's going to kill me by causing a stroke or an MI. You know.

So that's going on.

I just paused awhile to talk to one of the techs. She's an interesting person, has been working here for forever. I think she's originally from Mexico, but I could be wrong about that.

Ugh. So this night. It's not busy--the unit is full which means that once the kids go to bed, it's quiet and there aren't any admits possible. Sometimes that's a mixed blessing. Like, if I'm tired, then it's hellish because there is little but busy work to break up the monotony.

So I'm on a new unit tonight; not my usual unit. I can't really take pictures at work, except of things that couldn't necessarily relate to work. In that spirit, here are some pictures of random things like, say, the inside of an employee refrigerator.

That is an entire one-pound block of real butter on the top shelf (why?), two energy drinks on the next shelf, then a bunch of random stuff, including half a gallon of Walmart brand coffee creamer. I just went and looked again at the bottom shelf. There was a diet Coke with my name on it and since I haven't worked on this unit in about six months, I went ahead and dumped it out. (Caffeine intake is serious business around here and no one would dare toss out what could be someone's shift-saving caffeine source.)

The inside of the fridge is my green lunch bag in the center (I forgot to include an ice pack, so I stuffed my bag in the fridge, which I never do), a bag of rolls, two containers of dip leftover from a Superbowl Sunday snack spread, and some random drinks. (On top of the fridge, which I didn't photograph, is a large can of clam chowder and a container that looks like it once held cheese sauce. One of my coworkers also left her monstrous 64 ounce water bottle on top of the fridge.)

And here's a corner in one of the bathrooms at the hospital.

And one of the new-fangled rolls of toilet paper, balanced on a handrail.

And this photograph has nothing to do with work, but it's a bag that Dave and I saw the last time we were at Target. I don't like the color. (Brown is probably my least favorite color of anything. I don't have brown shoes, for example--though I do have a dark brown Carthartt jacket that I bought online and the only reason I took the brown was because it was the only color they had in my size.) I do like the round design and I think I'll use it as a model to sew my own bag, but with a cross-body strap instead of handles.

I have some cool Tula Pink fabric that I think will work.

So now I'm taking a short break and watching a Netflix stand-up comedy special, Tom Papa: You're Doing Great! I love Tom Papa most of the time. He did a great segment on what used to be Prairie Home Companion called "Out in America," which is one of the funniest things I've heard, possibly ever. (You can find it on youtube.) So that's playing in the background.

So I am off this Saturday. I have a list of things I want and/or need to do:

I need to clean up the casita, for example. My desk is a perennial mess and I have to vacuum the whole casita. (I cleaned the bathroom but I need to mop.)

And I want to finish the shadow quilt that I've been working on for what seems like forever. (That will take some doing. All the panels are done, but I have to add binding to each panel and figure out a way to attach them together. I was thinking of going the "potholder route"--like sewing a bunch of potholders together--but now I'm not so sure. The Brain keeps shying away from problem solving this one, so I keep putting it off. But I want to finish it, if only to see what it looks like when it's finished.

I want to sew the bag above. Not that I need a new bag, but I think it will be an interesting experiment.

On one of my days off, I'd like to drive up to Santa Fe and go to the the crazy chocolatier there that makes the old school drinking chocolate that is literally just chocolate and water.  Sometimes they throw in a little coconut sugar or chile or other spices to liven it up, but my favorite is the chocolate and water one. (It's like drinking smooth, chocolate flavored dirt. I like it.) While we're up there, we may as well go to the quilt shop that I like there, too. They sell a lot of Kaffe Fassett prints--not the batiks (I do not like batiks)--but the legit prints. They're expensive (Santa Fe is an expensive city), but if I confine myself to a few yards, it's not too bad.

I also need to go pick up my new pair of glasses from Costco and do some grocery shopping. We usually stock up on veggies and fruit and cheese at Costco. Dave buys yogurt there, too. (I eat soy yogurt, which they don't have there, so I have to go to Whole Foods or Smith's for that.)

Fading
It's that time of night when I start to fade out. Ninety minutes until my relief gets here and another thirty minutes after that before I can leave. UGH. I just have to hang on for awhile longer. 

My work email just binged; an email with the morning bed report. There are no open beds in the entire hospital. We are full. So now you know.

Maybe I'll go take a walk; get some cold air on my head to wake up The Brain.