Friday, December 22, 2006

Off to celebrate an Insane Christmas!

And I wouldn't have it any other way! I am heading out to my Mom's for the whole holiday season, so you won't see another post here from me until into the New Year. Don't forget to subscribe to this blog and then you will be informed when the new posts start in January.

Thank you to all of my loyal readers for the fun comments and just the shear joy of knowing what you say matters to someone!!

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Saving the world, one granny at a time.........

Now, I am not a believer in active euthanasia, that would definitely be frowned upon in my profession.....but....when they are heading towards the light........LET THEM GO!!!

I once had a doctor from South Africa tell me, "We are in a civilized nation here, we can't just sit back and do nothing"......Why not? Why can't we let God's will reign, why can't we let nature take its course? Why can't we let people who are old, sick and dying, just die? What is this need we have to hold on?

Countless times I have seen us trying to force medications down the throats of people dying of cancer. We know they are dying, they have opted not to take treatments or their cancer is too far advanced. Does that Colace and Vitamin D really NEED to be given? Does the Alzheimers patient who doesn't even recognize her own face in the mirror really need to take her Didrocal? I just don't understand it.

As for myself, if, God Forbid, I am ever struck with one of these ailments, I will refuse all and any treatments. No IV, no blood work, no antibiotics, NO CPR, nothing. Feed me only chocolate pudding and ice cream. I just do not think that you last days on earth should be spent trying to force down pills that you are only going to throw back up anyway.

Please go and get a living will drawn up, no matter how young or old you are. Make decisions for yourself, and don't let a grieving family member have to make those decisions for you.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Just another Manic Monday

I suppose that title dates me a bit, huh? I remember when that song came out. Sometime in the early 80's. I was in Junior High school I think.

But this is definitely the anthem for my Monday mornings. Always.

I really don't like having to get up in the mornings and get kids off to school. The constant struggle is too much to take some days. I call them in plenty of time to get up, get dressed, eat, make their OWN lunches..........but, they don't get out of bed. They lay there until like 8:25......until I have yelled back down at them several times. They never seem to find the time to make their own lunches or even eat breakfast. I have tried calling them up earlier and earlier....nothing helps. I have tried leaving them to face the consequences with school, but I am the one who gets the phone call and the reprimand about them being late. I don't know how to remedy this situation.

This particular Monday is more manic though. I have to work tonight, and for 3 nights. I have gotten my Christmas shopping done at least....but nothing is wrapped. I wonder if it is bad form to wrap presents at work if it isn't busy? *LOL* I also have a house that is a demolition zone. I have a ton of laundry to do before I leave on Saturday. I have to somehow convince my kids to clean the garbage out of the van so that I can pack in said presents, clothing, 4 kids and a dog to travel the 5 hours to my mom's house for Christmas. I honestly do not know if I am going to make it!!!

Friday, December 15, 2006

6 weird things about me

I was tagged by Frannie Farmer of You Can't Unscramble Scrambled Eggs fame a few days ago to write about 6 weird things about me. I am having some difficulty with it, since, frankly, I do not think I am weird. I am completely normal, the rest of the friggen' world is weird. But.....I am sure that YOU all would be able to note some weird traits about me. If there are any I have missed, please feel free to comment.......you bunch of weirdos...........

Weird Things About Me

1. I love the cream filled chocolates in the box of chocolate...you know, the ones other people bite into and throw in the garbage....no, I don't take them OUT of the garbage and eat them, (thinking of George of Seinfeld and the half eaten donut), but I would never throw one INTO the garbage.

2. I have an office supply fetish. I love office supplies. I carry a ziploc bag full of markers and pens and highlighters and crap in my bag to work. I also carry kids stickers to hand out at work. And I don't let my OWN kids used any of it!

3. I am a blog addict. But none of you think that is weird, do you. What is weird is that I don't understand why lay people are not as interested in it as I am. You would think they would find it really interesting to read what is going on in my crazy little mind.

4. I am a nurse, and that just makes me weird about certain things. I have this strange compulsion to see what is lurking inside boils, pimples, and generally any festering wound that I may find. I should have actually been a pathologist.

5. I collect craft supplies. I have boxes of yarn, cross stitch patterns, kits, knitting needles and crochet hooks of all sizes. I do crafts a bit. I love to do them, but even if I live to be 125, I doubt I will ever use it all up.

6. I have a thing about patterns and numbers. I know that is some psychological disorder. I don't care.

I guess I need to tag someone.........hmmmmmm........not sure who reads here everyday and who hasn't done this already. What the heck, if you want to join in, consider yourself tagged.....

livewithrealme

Thursday, December 14, 2006

I am really PO'ed with Blogrolling

I know, I know, you get what you pay for.....and since it is free, I shouldn't complain.........but......I will anyway. This piece of crap service they call Blogrolling needs a kick in the gonads.

It claims to be the best link manager online. Well, it can't even seem to ping the blogs efficiently. I have mine set to put the most recently updated blogs to the top of the list, this particular feature has not been working for days. I did go in and manually ping all the blogs a couple days ago, but I see that everything is settling to the bottom again. FRUSTRATING! The worst is, I have sent email complaints, and been scouring the discussion forums, only to find that Blogrolling has all but been abandonned by its owners. No one writes back, no one checks the forums, and their own blog about blogrolling news hasn't been updated since August.

Anyone out there reading this know of a better service that will do the same thing that Blogrolling CLAIMS to be able to do?

Guest Post Thursdays have become a bust.....

Another Thursday, no guest post. But hey, I can post for myself, I am a big girl!!

It is such a difficult time of year. The hustle and bustle. The overspending, over eating, over drinking, over and over and over. I am not particularly a Christmas person.

I have often said, if I hadn't had children, I would just ignore Christmas all together. The holiday had always been rather depressing to me, even as a child. I was the youngest of 5 children. My siblings being 14, 12, 10, & 6 years older than me. I often felt like an only child. The three older kids all left home young, marrying young and moving away. I do not really remember any Christmases with them home. They didn't trek home like so many families do. They made their own traditions with their children, and outside of maybe one or two, we just were not together.

My mom worked in a nursing home. She, like me, worked swing shifts, and often worked holidays too. I do not ever remember resenting this. It was just how life was. My children have much the same feeling....there are many holidays that I am not home. This left my father and I alone a lot. This was not a bad thing. My dad and I were close. We talked a lot. We talked about intelligent things. I loved having my dad to myself a lot of the time. He taught me to speak French....though, not particularly well. I wish I had paid more attention to that now, now that he is gone. I would love to be able to speak French with more confidence and ease.

At Christmas time though, my dad would often turn sullen, melancholy. I would ask him what was wrong. He would tell me, he missed his family. His brothers had both died young. His sister rarely ventured from her home to visit us. He sometimes would go to visit there, but usually, he just was home with me. We would sit in the living room, by the lights of the Christmas tree, watching some TV special, or listening to Mario Lanza's Christmas album, my dad's favourite. He would often be crying.

As years went on, I too left home. I rarely came back for Christmas. I had my own baby and chose to make my own traditions too. But still, at night when everyone was gone to bed, I would sit, by the lights of the Christmas tree, and I too would cry. Not even sure why. Probably mourning the big family gatherings I never had. I had always wanted to have a family like the Waltons.....everyone just caring so much about each other, wanting to be together. I had tried a few times to bring my family together at Christmas.....for Heaven's sake, we all lived in the same city... my parents had even moved there too...but it never really happened. Sure we would get together for the meal, but soon everyone would drift away. There was no lingering and visiting......it left me feeling empty and even more alone.

This year, though, I am taking some vacation time. I am taking my children and going to spend Christmas with my mom. I have already told my sisters that I want us to get together for New Year's Day......I do hope that they honour this request. But even if they don't......I am going to go home, to be with my mom.......to spend the holidays the way they should be, with my family. And for the first time in a very very long time, I am excited about Christmas!!

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Tuesday, December 12, 2006

My first breakdown as a nurse.......

This past weekend has been difficult for me.

For anyone who is just tuning in, I am a registered nurse in a rural hospital. I am a recently single mom again, to 4 children. I work 12 hour swing shifts, and am in a state of anxiety and exhaustion a lot of the time. Friday morning was no exception to this rule.

I went in to work on Friday morning. The girls (my co-workers) were talking about events that had happened in the community the day before. Neither incident happening in our own hospital, but to people in our community. There had been a bad accident where a pregnant woman was killed 2 days before her wedding, while her fiance was travelling in the vehicle behind her. The other involving a 2 1/2 yr old baby, who was sleeping with its mother. The mother woke to find the baby dead beside her in the bed. There are speculations about what happened, the baby had been ill at birth for several weeks, but my heart just ached for these people. So much death, so close to Christmas. It was really a shock. But I am a tough nurse and a tough person, things like this, while they make me reflect on my own mortality, do not really affect me in any other way.

The morning had been uneventful. I had a meeting for one of the committees I am on, and that was fine. After lunch we had a staff meeting planned. When I came back from lunch, one of my co-workers said that there was someone there to see me. I go to the nursing station to find my ex sitting there. He and I have been having problems probably since shortly after we got together, but more intense difficulties in the last year, until I told him not to come home again about 8 weeks ago. This man is the father of my youngest son, Tuc. He and I never married. But, he is still my ex for all intents and purposes. I ask him to come to the quiet room, so I can shut the door and tell him off in private. How inappropriate to show up at my work, bringing me gifts.....we are not a couple anymore. He wanted to talk about getting back together.......I want nothing more to do with this relationship. I spent way too much time trying to convince him that it was truly over. I did go to my staff meeting, but my head was not in the game. I kept wondering what the hell this man was wanting.

The meeting ended, he was still sitting in the quiet room. Two of the other nurses had gone to pass out ice and do vitals in the afternoon. The emergency bell rang from one of the rooms. I rush in there to find a relatively young man lying on the floor, a pool of blood under his head. No pulse, no breathing. The other RN comes in, we are doing CPR, waiting for the dr to come.....what seemed like forever, probably just a few minutes. He is intubated, we are still doing CPR, there is no rhythm on the monitor. We are giving him drugs. I am bagging him, my co-workers pumping his chest. The dr calls the time of death.........then the man's cell phone rings........the room falls silent. We know it must be his wife. No one answers the phone. I take the bagger off of him, lean my head against the wall. I am overcome, I cannot take one more moment of this scene. I leave the room and head to the med room. Shut the door and put my head on the counter and cry. I have never once cried over a patient. That is not to say I haven't felt sad or angry enough before, but I have always kept my composure. This, the culmination of all that was happening, just did me in. A fairly young nurse came into the room too, she too was crying, I hugged her, told her that we did our best, that there was nothing more we could have done. All the while I am angry at my ex for having added to the stress of my day. He is still sitting in the waiting room of my hospital. I want to scream at him, but I can't. I want him to go away. I refuse to go back to talk to him again. He does finally leave, late in the afternoon, after a co-worker went and told him to please leave, he had been there long enough. I was so drained.....but I went back to work on Saturday and on Sunday. Sunday morning being another difficult one. A palliative care patient, only diagnosed with cancer a few days earlier, died at the morning shift change, with many many family around him. It was so sad, his wife barely able to cope. This too, broke my heart. I hugged the wife and talked with the children. Then set about my task of caring for the body. Not a tear in sight.

I have been an RN for going on 9 years. I worked in health care for many years before that, in several different capacities. I am a good nurse, I am a tough nurse, I am a compassionate nurse. I care for patients, families, co-workers alike. I do my job as efficiently as I can.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

I love big butts and I don't know why.......

Me: Tuc, you are such a cutie-patootie
Tuc: What's a "tatootie"
Me: *patting his butt* That is your patootie
Tuc: My cute tatootie!! Cute TATTOOTIE!! Cute Buttootie!!!
Me: *laughing*
Tuc: You cute buttootie too, Mom....
Me: Thanks, Tuc....
Tuc: Mom, why is your butt big and mine is wittle??
Me: Tuc, mommy's have big butts sometimes.
Tuc: You just growed it that way, huh?
Me: Yep Tuc, with the help of you four kids and Ben & Jerry
Tuc: Who are Ben & Jerry??
Me: Never mind, kiddo
Tuc: I wuv your big buttootie, Mom......

Gotta love that kid.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.

Seems that things had really settled down. Until another crap load of lemons hit. That was Friday night. I won't go into details, there are more details over at Imperfect Perfections.

So basically, the events of the past week have driven me out of my mind. I haven't been able to be very creative, and I really didn't want to litter this blog with anymore anger and bitterness than I had already done......so, I am taking five. I hope to be back tomorrow or the next day with a decent, fun, funny, insightful post. Of course, Thursday is guest post day, if anyone is interested?????

Saturday, December 02, 2006

We Have Lemonade!!!!


Now, a couple days ago I posted a rather angry, frustrated post about the nasty stinking lemons that life was throwing my way. Without going into detail about what it was that happened, I can say that it had the very real potential to change the course of my life, and not for the better. It was the kind of news that you know, deep in the pit of your stomach, is coming. When the person telling you starts telling it, you feel your stomach, flipping and churning, your mind is not even listening to the words being said, you are making silent prayers in your head saying, "Please don't let them say THAT" "Please let it be something else" "Please, God, Please don't let this be happening". But it is to no avail, the dreaded words come forth anyway, and then the sinking feeling hits. Your stomach lurches. You can't even speak. One, because you really don't know what to say, and two, because if you do, you will only cry or curse or scream. Sadly for me, I was at work when this happened. I had to hold it together until the end of my shift when I could go out to my van and just sit there, head resting on the steering wheel, crying. Driving home, trying to see between tears. Wondering what I should actually do. Or if I should do anything at all. Wondering what the other people involved were going to do or would want me to do. It was confusing, and upsetting.

But now, a few days later. Things have been discussed. Decisions have been made. Things are being planned and life is going on. It still has the potential to change the course of my life. But not as profoundly as first thought. At least for now that is what we are thinking. It could change on a moments notice. But I have faith that things will work out the way I am being told they are. It has become but a minor setback in the original plan, but, what is life if there are no setbacks, right? I think we finally have lemonade....anyone want a glass???

Friday, December 01, 2006

You all may have noticed the change of scenery here

I am not happy with it at all. I liked my unique look. My sarcastic blog template. I can't get it to work at all with Blogger Beta. And that pisses me off. I have always prided myself on not being one of the masses. Having something unique. And now, my blog looks like every other blog in Blogger's Blogland. I have tried everything I can think of to get it to work, all in vain. If anyone out there knows how to make it work, please please please email me and help me out.

I must apologize for the lameness and suckiness of this blog lately. As you can see by yesterday's post, life kinda crapped all over me this week.....and I am working night shift, and not getting any sleep during the day....so my creativity has kind of fizzled out for the time being. I promise to get back to the fun stuff soon. I think I need to sit down and have another conversation with Tucker soon, he is always good for a blog post inspiration.

I may actually decide to post a meme here, just to fill in space. Is that lame? Naw, I like the blogs that post unique memes. For right now, I will just sit here, at work and wallow in the fact that I won't be able to sleep tomorrow because I have no babysitter again. That actually might spark some creativity, or a little more insanity.....not sure which. You can check out what happened LAST time I worked a night and didn't go to sleep the next morning here. If you like it, I am sure that there are more of them lurking about in my cluttered mind, I just have to do a little tidying up in there to find them.