Hodgepodge

We have been working on the house a lot over the last month. A friend of ours has helped and done a lot of the work himself, with Nathan helping when he could. We now have window sills on most of our windows, painted a few rooms and put 5 inch baseboards in with crown molding in what we are calling the mushroom room. We finally put tile in for our back splash in the kitchen. It looks a lot better than the ripped dry wall we had for the longest time, that's for sure. Our white appliances look a little funny right now, but...that will just have to wait for now.

We have our last 3 windows on order and as soon as those get replaced, we will be able to put in shutters to cover 4 windows. Unfortunately by the time that gets done, the 105 degree weather will be gone. Until next summer anyway:-)

We are also in the middle of painting the dining room. I'll post pictures when all this other stuff is completed. I'm hoping before October, but we'll see :)





Monday night (tuesday morning) we stayed up late to watch the lunar eclipse. OK...Nathan stayed up to watch the lunar eclipse and woke me up at the beginning, middle and end. We actually only watched it go to a full eclipse, but didn't stay to watch it go back. A friend of ours described it accurately saying that watching an eclipse confirms that the Earth is moving. Watching it made me vaguely remember watching one on our deck late at night when I was a kid.

Carpooling

A co-worker of mine lives fairly close to us and we've often seen each other on the road on the way to work. She is soon going to be living even closer so we have talked about carpooling. Our hospital has a carpooling program where you can get 5 gallon per month gas vouchers. That's about $15 a month in gas. There is also a section of the parking structure, with prime parking spots, reserved for carpoolers. It's tempting.

This morning I called to look into the program and was disappointed. It appears that the program is designed more to alleviate the parking structure congestion during the week than to encourage helping the environment by carpooling. A few of the "rules" to receive the gas voucher through carpooling is that we would need to drive together 2 out of the 3 days we work. This won't be too difficult as long as we can get the scheduler to work with us.

Here are all the rules to receive the voucher:

1. Must drive together 2 out of the 3 days we work a week
2. Must start work between 6am-10am (we start at 7am)
3. The days you drive do not count if it is a weekend (we work every 3rd weekend)


This bothered me. This means that people working nights and weekends can't benefit from carpooling. Good thing I work days, but... I'm still bothered.

Late Night (or is it early morning?) Musings

Well, I can't sleep and you all get to suffer from it (or benefit) depending on how you look at it. I appear to have pink eye. I was suspicious yesterday when the corner of my eye seemed a little more red than it usually does. Then, I woke up a couple hours ago with that classic crusty, pus stuff. So, I called into work and now my Saturday will be spent at urgent care for eye drops so that maybe I can go to work on Sunday. It will be pushing the 24 hours on eye drops rule before returning to work, but we'll see how it goes.

All things causing me to be up right now can be blamed on Nathan:

1. A couple weeks ago he had pink eye. I was trying to figure out what I hadn't touched in that time that I touched recently. Then I realized I have been driving his truck the last couple of days. Mystery solved.

2. I am driving his truck while he has my car in San Diego for Comicon. Something about my little Corolla getting better gas mileage than his honkin' Tacoma truck.

3. He is not in bed with me and therefore I can't go back to sleep.

I would get up and be productive, but anyone that really knows me, knows that once I am in bed, I don't get out of bed for anything (yes, even to urinate...I hold it) and that obsession was reinforced tonight when I heard strange noices that I couldn't identify. I figure as long as I stay in bed, the boogieman can't get me. This will inevitably cause a problem when the goop in my eye gets so thick, I will need to add a warm compress to my eye.

There's a plus to not going to work tomorrow. I don't have even the slightest chance of being assigned to a patient that I politely refer to as a "pistol." I won't get into it. I will just say "grrrr" and move on.

The upside to anticipating a 3+ hour wait at Urgent Care is I can finally read the book I've been wanting to read "Angels and Demons." I am not going to read it now for obvious reasons. #1 it's in the living room #2 Its a dark, scary book.

OK the red battery light is blinking and yep, the charger is in the other room. My time is up.

Goodnight!

Gotta Love SoCal

Here's a story that doesn't involve a patient. I was at lunch at work and there were a few other nurses in the lounge. I can't remember what our conversation was, but out of nowhere a nurse said:

"I saw a llama for the first time the other day"

We all were silent waiting for more and wondering at the same time where she was going with this, so someone asked:

"where did you see a llama?"

With such enthusiasm in her voice she said: "The Orange County fair!"

I still don't know why it was so funny.

Cute, Yet Simple Story

At work today I was the circulating nurse which basically means I didn't have a list of my own and just went around and helped anyone that needed it. I heard a medication infusion pump beeping, so I went into the room and saw that the medication was finished and needed a saline flush. I wanted to know what fluids the medication was connected to because the patient had both TPN and regular IV fluids running. So, I thought outloud "where is this going?" The 5 year old patient looked at me and said "It's going in me" That made my day and I was still chuckling hours later.

Roadtripping

We just got home from a roadtrip to MN to see my family. It has been a long time since we've been on a roadtrip. We had a great time. We accomplished a lot of things in the 10 days we were gone. The theme of the trip on our way out was Sonic. (I love how they have tator tots!) Nathan had all the Sonics mapped out along I-80 and I-70. Our first stop was Arches National Park in Utah. Then, we stopped in Denver to visit a childhood friend of mine that I hadn't seen in years. After that, we ventured onto Lincoln, NE to visit more friends. Then, we spent the next night in St. Paul, MN with my cousin and drove up the next morning to meet my family to stay on a lake and do some fishing. Fun stuff.



After spending a few days with my family, we drove down to WI for both a family reunion and a friend's wedding. Once again having a great time seeing people I hadn't seen in years. The trip back was much faster. We left after the wedding and drove to St. Louis. We arrived around 1am, drove up to the arch and decided to keep driving to get a hotel room. We woke up the next morning and had an early lunch getting St. Louis BBQ. Then we drove a few more hours and stopped in Kansas City to compare the BBQ there. No offense, St. Louis, but I think I like Kansas City BBQ better. After that, we pretty much just kept driving (got pulled over in the middle of Kansas and got a speeding ticket...oops) Nathan didn't want to miss the midnight showing of Transformers. He looked up theaters and we found one in Denver that had a midnight showing. Bought our tickets and had really good seats. It was awesome by the way. We drove for a few more hours after that and stopped early morning to rest for a few hours. We arrived home Tuesday evening.

Race Across America

Our friends are participating in Race Across America (RAAM) again this year. We joined them last year serving as crew for the race. Last year we raced with team ViaSat. This year they are racing with the Northcoast cycling team. They've been at it for almost 24 hours. They are in 4th place right now out of 8. Looks like team ViaSat is right behind them. Team ViaSat is supposed to have live internet feeds again like last year, but is not up on their website so they must be having problems like we did last year. The Northcoast team has called Nathan a few times to go to the RAAM website and tell them what the standings are. Its crazy to think people bike all the way across the country and some people even do it solo. They are all stronger than I.

They have a blog that is updated periodically. If you are interested, visit here.

The race started in Oceanside, CA yesterday and ends in Atlantic City, NJ. If you're interested you can also track their standings here

Every now and then I wish we had made time to join them this year, then reality sets in and I remember how stressful it was and am just as happy watching from the sidelines.

Updated backyard

I talked about the backyard for so long I thought it would be wrong not to show a picture of the grass all grown in. And good news...the dove eggs in our patio hatched. It was fun having the nest there. There was always a bird sitting on the nest and every few hours, they would "change guards" as one bird flew in the other would fly out.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today is my Dad's birthday. This picture was taken almost 5 years ago. I guess its time to get an updated picture of me and Dad. If any of you know my dad, saying that he is a quiet man is incorrect. He may be "soft spoken" and a "man of few words" but his actions always speak a thousand words.

I always enjoyed watching my dad watch M*A*S*H* reruns. He would sit in his chair and I wouldn't even know he was laughing until I looked over and saw him smiling while his whole upper body would bounce. He was always independent as I was growing up going about his day doing his thing. He worked at home a majority of the time, so he would get up early and do some work, eat some oatmeal, have some tea and get on with his day. He was usually the one driving us all over to sports practice, play practice or piano lessons. Just to come home, make dinner and stay up late at night working depending on what he needed to finish. He rarely asked us to help him. It was probably easier to just do it himself than to fight and argue trying to get us to do anything.

As I've grown up and started having adult responsibilities, I often regret not paying more attention to the things Dad did. He always had a pretty large garden and I never once helped him plant, weed or maintain the garden. I remember him canning, freezing and pickeling vegetables at the end of the summer. Can I tell you how he did it? Nope. I just remember husking the corn and cutting the corn off the cob. Somehow it involved a pressure cooker to can. He wouldn't have needed to say anything, if I had just watched him more clostly, I would know how to do it to this day.

Dad always has a creative way to get a point across. We kids were always leaving things on the floor. One time I remember Dad asking who picked up a quarter that had been on the floor. I don't remember who 'fessed up. But he asked why they didn't pick up the empty pop can that was next to the quarter. My dad had purposely placed the quarter there trying to prove the point that if someone was going to bother bending over to pick up a quarter, it shouldn't be any more difficult to pick up the pop can as well. I still think about that today as I'm tidying up.

The road we grew up on had horrible pavement with pot holes for a good mile. You couldn't drive on the road without hitting a million potholes. After a mile the pavement turned into gravel. There was a road sign at the end that warned drivers "Pavement Ends." My dad painted a sign and hung it below the sign that said "Thank God" Eventually they fixed the road.

Then recently, Sears did something to really disappoint Dad. He's been a faithful customer for years and when this issue happened, Sears wouldn't do anything to "make it right" or apologize. So he not only cut up his Sears credit card, he mailed it to them.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Tagged

Being tagged is sort of a love/hate relationship. I love that Meigan thought of me, yet I am not excited to come up with 8 facts/habits about myself.

1) Post the rules of the game.
2) Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3) People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things.
4) At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5) Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

1. My comfort food is grilled cheese sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, or cheese and crackers are you seeing the theme?

2. I remember when I learned huge life lessons. The first being, when I was about 5 or 6 years old. I wanted to wear earrings but my parents wouldn't let me get my ears pierced until I was 8 years old. So, at the store I saw some huge, gold, clip-on earrings and put them in my coat pocket. I walked around the store feeling terribly guilty knowing it was wrong to steal, so I finally put the earrings back. The second lesson learned is that smoking is bad for you. I was on a walk around 8 years old. I came across a used cigarette on the road. No joke, this is kind of embarassing. I picked it up and pretended I was holding it being all cool. The thing is, I didn't feel cool at all, in fact I felt really dirty. Hense...smoking is bad.

3. I have hairy toes and therefore...I shave them.

4. When eating chocolate (especially dark chocolate) I MUST have a glass of cold milk already poured before I put the chocolate in my mouth. Then I chew a little while savoring the chocolate. After that, I drink the milk until there is not a trace of chocolate left in my mouth. Yum!

5. I'm kind of a speed demon on the freeway. The way home from work is the worst. I'm in such a hurry to get home. I accelerate down the entrance ramp and quickly cross the 3 lanes of traffic positioning myself in the left hand lane. Which leads me to #6...

6. A couple weeks ago (again on my way home) I was turning right at a traffic light. As I approached the light I started to make a right on red. I thought I had stopped completely, but I don't know. It was dark and the cruel, hidious, obnoxious red light camera flashed. Blinding me, really. Did I get a ticket? I don't know. It's been over 2 weeks and I haven't received anything in the mail. They say if you don't hear within 2 weeks, you probably didn't get a ticket. But ever since, it's not much fun to get the mail dreading what might be in the mailbox.

7. I have a terrible habit of leaving lights on.

8. I am on a personal mission to change people's minds about peas. None of our close friends like peas. When I found that out, I asked if they've ever had peas fresh out of the garden. They said no. Right there a mission was born. So, I have a pea plant out in the garden and I have already had a few people try them and they admit that they are good. This isn't the time of year to plant them in California, so I hope to plant a few more in the fall and continue with my mission.

There. I did it. Now this wouldn't be a tag if I didn't tag someone so, KARLENE Tag, you're it!

If Elevators could speak

We started watching Grey's Anatomy this season after catching up on the previous seasons on DVD. The elevator on Grey's Anatomy is almost another character. Alot of things take place in the elevator, conversations, exchanges of looks, surgery (it is an unrealistic drama) and even silence. The elevators in my hospital tell a different story.

One of our main Staff elevators has been down for at least a month, if not more. (due to it being old and parts being difficult to come by) This makes the elevator right next to it slow being that everyone wants to get on this elevator. I choose to frequent the elevators around the corner. They go up faster and have less traffic on them. Today however, I may have been converted (ie forced) to taking the stairs for the rest of my nursing career.

I got in the elevator with a fellow co-worker and 4 other people. I pushed the #4 button. Up we went. Have I mentioned this elevator is super duper fast? It must be so fast that I think it got confused this morning. It shot up, then dropped what seemed to be a few feet, then went up a little bit more. We found ourselves up on the 5th floor (one floor higher than it was supposed to go) and I noticed the #4 light had turned off by this point. I looked at my co-worker and said "I think I can handle one flight of stairs down" So, we got out of the elevator, turned the corner and went down the stairs. For the first time I can remember in a long time, the elevator made me tachycardic, not the stairs.

So, now I'm wondering. Tomorrow morning, what do I do? Give the elevator another shot praying it was a freak thing and is fixed or do I just give in, do my body some good and take the stairs? Here's the problem. I am a creature of habit. I may intend to take the stairs tomorrow, but habit will most likely take over. I will park in my same spot in the parking structure, I will use the same outside door I always use. I will walk down the same hallway past the research labs, past the A level CT, past ER and onto the elevator I am so accostomed to taking in the morning without even thinking. Taking the stairs may not even occur to me until the elevator door opens and I get that Dejavu feeling.

Central Service

Every day on the way to work I pass a billboard for a hospital that features a new person every month. This month they are featuring a person that works in Central Service. (where all supplies for the hospital are kept) In quotes is the person saying "Everyone in the hospital is integral" I would agree with this wholeheartedly. Sometimes I wonder if the physicians realize how much goes into carrying out their orders. It might seem like the nurses just snap their fingers and its done, but it often takes a combined effort from a variety of people to carry out the order to completion.

Even the people I have never met, help me care for my patients. For example, Diane* in Central Service. I have never met her, but there is something that gets me super excited and relieved when I call down to central service for something (espeially when I'm not sure what it is exactly called) and I hear Diane 's raspy, most-likely a smoker voice answer. Our conversation always starts out the same.

"Central service, this is Diana, how may I help you"

I say "Hi, its Angi from 48. I need the thingee for the thingamajig that goes on the end of the whatchyamacalit. I'm not sure what it's called"

"you mean the..."

"yes, that's it"

"what room, hon?"

"4806 bed 1"

99% of the time, she knows exactly what I am talking about. If I don't realize something comes in multiple sizes, she knows exactly what sizes are available.

One of these days, I need to go down and introduce myself to Diane so I can see how accurate the picture in my head is.

*name has been changed

It's the Season

Signs of warm weather are all around. Last night, I turned on the air conditioner for the first time this season. Today Nathan showed me doves that have taken residence under our patio roof. Then, we went to our neighbor's garage sale and passed several garage sale/moving sale signs in the neighborhood. We also drove through our neighborhood and saw a group of teenagers out in the yard taking pictures before heading off to the prom. Then, this afternoon, the air and sky filled with smoke as we could smell a fire that was nearby. One of the pictures is ash that had fallen onto our concrete patio. I haven't seen the doves this afteroon and I hope the fire didn't drive them away forever.

Multitastking

I'm not really sure why I always share my silly moments with people, but when I'm still chuckling at myself the next day, it's worth telling.

Yesterday at work I had 3 patients. They were stable patients, but between the 3 of them, I had 4 procedures. These always take a lot of coordination to get everyone together at the right time, prepare for sedation and give sedation,etc. Anyway, there was about an hour left in my shift and I was told to give up one of my patients so I could admit a very sick little girl. We needed to move another one of my patients out of the room they were in to make room for this one girl. So, hurrying along, we moved my patient to another room and realized the phone in the new room didn't work. So I went to get the phone from the old room. As I walked into the room, the phone rang. I figured it was the father of my patient I just moved, so I answered the phone to give him the new number. Now... multitasking is not always the best choice, especially when just as you answer the phone and start to explain that the patient has moved to a new room, you start to do what you origianally went into the room to do and you reach over and unplug the phone from the wall cutting off the person on the other end. Oops!

April 11

A Happy Birthday goes out to my sister Karlene today!

Backyard...Again

I realize that a majority of my posting is revolving around the backyard these days, but this is very exciting. Note the pictures in my previous post before the grass was planted. It was very brown, dark and depressing. Over the weekend and especially this morning, the grass has just popped up and while looking out my patio window, it really is starting to look green. There are some patches where we are hoping it is just behind due to lack of sunshine. There is also a patch that we knew would be a problem where the sprinklers don't quite reach. There are also a few patches where there isn't much growth, but that's where we always found the birds eating the seed. I cannot wait until a few weeks from now when it keeps growing and needs to be mown? mowed? Whatever the proper word is.

Backyard

Yeah! We finally have grass planted in the backyard. We have spent many hours the last few weeks preparing the backyard to have grass planted and we just spent the entire weekend finishing it. The pictures are kind of backward. The bottom one shows the rough shape the yard was in when we started. We had to rake all of the debris and junk off the surface. Then, we leveled it out. Then we laid compost. There is a picture of the mound of compost. Nathan put in the garden planter last weekend and it looks fantastic. I will be sure to show you once we have green grass growing. I am super excited to have grass back there finally. However, I won't be as excited when the next water bill arrives.

Hijacked by an elevator

The last couple of days at work were busy! Especially for a weekend. It was nearing the end of my shift yesterday and I had been waiting a few hours for some platelets that a patient desperately needed. When the platelets were ready, to make things faster, I decided to go down and pick them up myself. On my way down to the lobby level, I realized I needed an extra IV pump to run the platelets since I was already using the other 2 pumps. I took the 5 flights of stairs down to central service to get a pump, then I decided to take the elevator up to the blood bank (those pumps are heavy) As I'm waiting for the elevator, a couple of workers arrive with a gurney, when the elevator arrives, we get in. One of the workers puts his "magic key" in the key hole in the elevator and we start to go up. Then he says "sorry we're going all the way up to the 9th floor then we're keeping the elevator" I put two and two together and realized that they are headed for the heliport on top of the hospital. There is a trauma coming in.

When we got to the 9th floor, I got out of that elevator and headed around the corner to another one. I got in along with a guy with a wheelchair, a guy with a linen bin and a couple transport nurses with roller carts. We make our trek back down, of course stopping at every floor (keep in mind I'm starting on the 9th floor) since the other elevator is "occupied" everyone is trying to use this one, except no one else will fit. Finally, we get back to the lobby level floor. I pick up the platelets and take the children's hospital elevator back up to the 4th floor. When my co-workers said they were wondering what took so long. I said I was "hijacked by an elevator" We all agreed it was worth it. We needed that little laugh to finish off our shift.

Full circle

Never have laundry and gardening been so closely intwined. We have been working on our backyard everyday for the last 2-3 weeks. This weekend was no exception, we were out there all day yesterday and again today. This morning I asked Nathan where the clippers were so I could trim some of the calla lilies. He wasn't sure. We searched the garage, even searched the house. Nathan was stumped. I gave up. After a hard day outside, I realized Nathan was almost out of jeans for the week, so I put a load in the washer. A few minutes later, I heard a clang, clang that didn't sound good. I went to investigate. What did I find in the washer? ... The clippers.

I wonder who left those in their pants pocket? You know how I know it wasn't me? I didn't have a single pair of jeans in that load :-)

House Update

It's been awhile since I've shown a picutre of the house lately. We finally got the stone put on the wall and columns. They still need to finish the rest of the columns, and go around the garage door. The front yard is finally in the final stages. This weekend we have some friends coming over to help us clean up the back yard so we can at least start getting grass to grow back there. Anything is better than dirt at this point. Notice the large dark cloud in the picture. That cloud passes us by as usual:-)