Blog Slacker

Yes, that's me. A blog slacker. Or should I say "Forgive me blog land I haven't blogged in 6 days." It's been a busy week. Last week I was trying to get everything ready to leave and then heading for Washington for Thanksgiving. Yes I've had a good time. Lovely Thanksgiving dinner with the chosen family was just what I needed. Not to mention the mashed potatoes and gravy. Yummmm. I've had lots of fun visiting, and relaxing. I've eaten stuff I haven't allowed myself much of lately although not a lot of it (don't want to undo all I've accomplished so far). I did find a gym and go work out one day but their ellipticals were really strange and I couldn't use it and the treadmill made my knees and feet hurt. So I've stuck with the stairs I go up and down too many times a day to count. Not as much as I'd like to be doing but better than none. I've been over to my house and checked things out and spoke to my tenant about some things that needed to be addressed. The house seems to be doing mostly good and I went to the home improvement store and picked up a few things that were needed around the house. The sucky thing about having an older house is that things eventually start breaking. Luckily the tenant is pretty handy and has been doing a lot of the fixing himself.
I also got to go see The Lion King again. Yes I'm crazy but I just love it. I've seen it 3 times now and could see it another 300 times. This time though I got to have my picture taken with Simba which was pretty freaking cool.
It's been nice to be here and yet it will be nice to get on that plane tomorrow afternoon and fly home before it does something awful here like snow. I miss my kitties and my own bed. Not to mention my own shower. Then Tuesday is back to work. Long week ahead but oh well. It's been worth it. And I'm getting ever closer to the January FET.

Do You Ever Feel...

Like the machines in your life are smarter than you are? Today at work I stuck to pieces of paper in the copier and asked for 10 copies. When I went to go sort them out and staple them I only had the first page. I went back to the copier and looked again, nope. No more pages. Then I happened to pick up the copied pages. There was the second page on the back of the first page. My first thought was "oh shit, the copier is now smarter than I am." It did this (as far as I can tell) independently. Then tonight I came home and downloaded some music. It's been a really long time since I've bought much music. Partly because I was getting all my music from Walmart and then I changed computers (a couple years ago when I got my first lap top) and realized that I couldn't take all my music with me to a new computer. It was only playable on the first computer and my mp3 player. So I haven't bought much since then. I've been using the mp3 player a lot more often lately though and wanted to add some new stuff (and hopefully delete some older stuff that I don't care for which has been pretty much beyond me for a long time). I decided to go with Itunes even though my player isn't an ip0d. Easy right. No. I can't figure out how the hell to get new music onto my mp3 player because the damn thing keeps trying to link up to windows media player and sync with that (transferring all the songs that I have just now figured out how to remove from the mp3 player back on to it). I can't figure out how to get it to link to itunes instead. To those of you who have an actual ip0d, is this easier if you have their product? Cause this is a pain. I can't really afford to go get a new player but find myself wondering if I should. However if I did I'm guessing all of the songs I bought from Walmart would then no longer be able to play on the ip0d because I wouldn't have the "license" to play them. I just want to listen to the music I've actually purchased. Is that too much to ask??????

Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Yes, there are Christmas decorations up all around. I seriously considered putting my tree up before I left but I'm a bit worried that the cats will make a mess while I'm gone. Maybe I'll try to get it up with the lights only. I did get out some of my other Christmas decorations today which is fun. I usually do my decorating the weekend of Thanksgiving but I will be gone that weekend. As much as I'm excited about going home I will miss have 4 days to get stuff done. Oh well. I also made cookies today. Sort of. I was invited to a cookie exchange party (yes I am fully aware that I don't NEED 6 dozen cookies) that I really want to go to, just to see people and to get out. But I get home from late Monday night (as in close to midnight late) and have to work the next morning. Ugg. Then the cookie exchange party is Wednesday evening. Which sort of left me Tuesday after work to make 6 dozen cookies. So today I made the cookie dough for my molasses sugar cookie, rolled it all out in the balls I'm supposed to have and stuck them in the freezer. Once frozen I put them in baggies and when I come home Tuesday after work I'll start baking them. Hopefully they shouldn't take too long to bake. Yes, I'm probably crazy. Otherwise I haven't done much this weekend. I did laundry. And I got a new hidden object computer game which has mostly consumed me today. I did work out though so I don't feel too bad about it. I also only had two small cookies. And maybe a little bit of cookie dough. Which doesn't count since it's not really a cookie yet. Sometime in the next 2 days I really need to pack too since I'm leaving soon. Yay, it's almost Turkey day!!!!

Busy Week

It's been a busy week. I've worked late almost every night this week and while that will make my paycheck nice it makes for a tired me. A new project at work became mine temporarily while I get it started and train someone else to do it. I'm enjoying it sort of but it's a bit messy too. All if this is for the overtime. It was funny though because the charge nurse came over yesterday and was like "I have nurses who can help you with this so you don't have to stay late." Um, yeah. I want to stay late, that's the whole idea. She still didn't get it. So I had someone come over to help me and I spent more time explaining what I was and wasn't doing that I did anything else and it would have been much easier to just do it myself which I pretty much did end up doing. I also had a patient I called last night to ask her to come in a couple of days before her procedure for some lab work. I spent 30 minutes on the phone with this woman while she restated what I had told her for instructions about 70 times. I was alternating between wanting to laugh like crazy and beat my head against the desk. I feel bad for her but it was kind of funny too. The whole change of plan made her so anxious she had to keep repeating everything over and over again. Then she called back a little while later and wanted to repeat it all one more time.

I've spent part of today looking for a list of things I KNOW I had but for the life of me I can't find. It's driving me crazy and I have no idea what I did with it. I still need to pack and get ready as I'm leaving Wednesday morning early. Yikes. I'm excited though too. Looking forward to seeing everyone even if I'm not looking forward to freezing my now California ass off.

This morning I put on a pair of pants that I hadn't been able to wear most of the summer and they fit again. Even a little big on me. I'm feeling good. Both physically and mentally. I haven't been loosing as fast as I had hoped but I'll live with that. I have been working really hard on my eating habits. Trying to get rid of most of the sugar I consume and add in a lot more fruits and vegetables. It's not easy but I'm taking it one day at a time. Knowing that I feel better helps. Still working on exercising often too. Now to go do some other stuff around the house. So much to do, so little time.

Two Days Short

Ooops. I never did claim to be perfect though. Tonight after work 3 of us girls ended up going out for Mexican food and margaritas. Oh and they were sooooo good. It was a busy day. Lots of patients today. I also had my yearly review (I've been here almost a year). It went pretty well. My raise sort of sucks but it sort of sucks company wide. It was all pretty much good which I was fairly worried about due to the first 9 months of no one liking me etc. No problems there though and I got some very nice peer evals from some of my coworkers. I also may end up being able to pick up some extra hours which will be nice. It would only likely be a couple hours in the evening after my regular shift is over but it could add up. It would help to make up for the amount I lost in changing jobs and help to fund the FET. So hopefully that works out ok. I could use the extra money. Especially since my bathroom in my house in Washington developed some sort of a leak and affected the entire bathroom. Ugg. Luckily the renter is handy and has been fixing it and getting a good deal on supplies too. That helps.

I'm still working on organizing my recipes. I've tried 3 different soft wares so far. The first I didn't like at all. The second was ok. The third seems more like able so hopefully it will work. I basically have been downloading trials and trying them by entering a few recipes in and seeing how they work. Then I have to combine everything on one. That and trying to organize my house more and get more settled. I get a little more done every weekend. I might someday be able to leave the second bedroom door open. Oh and next weekend (or some evening this week) I need to figure out how to take apart my vacuum and clean the filter thing. I'm supposed to do it like every 6 months and haven't done it yet.

See, that's my boring life lately. Now off to bed.

Lazy Saturday

Well, I forgot to post last night. Tonight I sat down and wrote a post (not a long one but a post) and my internet connection crapped out and apparently didn't save the post I had typed as it's all gone now. Oh well. I'm too tired to come up with anything else and am going to bed. Hope you're all having a good weekend!

Almost Friday!

Thank goodness. Those couple of easy days we had at work the beginning of the week? Yeah, totally paying for them now. Today wasn't horrible but was steady busy. Then we are supposed to be done at 3:30, no new patients and we had 2 show up after that who managed to talk their way in. One insisted on being seen today then had the gall to ask if it wasn't too soon to be having their labs drawn for a December surgery. Yeah sort of but you're the one who wanted to be seen today. I also had a lady telling her significant other to take care of that dog while pointing at empty space. Yes I had a pretty good idea what she'd been taking. Then she tried to tell me oh I take sudafed every day. What so you think when we run a toxicology on you we'll think that's why it shows up in your system? Whatever. I ended up calling the doc and asking if he wanted me to run a urine toxicology. He asked if he should want that done and I said Oh yeah. Wonder if she'll actually have surgery tomorrow.

Otherwise mostly uneventful day. It's getting cold here finally. My house right now is 69 degrees and much colder and I'll have to turn on the heat. Funny how I go from AC to heat in a little over a week.

For now I'm beat and heading off today. I hope you all have a great Friday.

Hump Day

So, half way to the weekend!! Today was a very busy day. Today we paid for the last 2 days being sort of slow. It went by quickly though which was nice. I had of course several interesting patients today. First I had an older gentleman who spoke only a language I don't speak so I was using a web cam interpreter thing we have. I had asked about food allergies and the guy started telling me about some rancid bologna that made him sick. I looked at him and said, "that's not an allergy it's supposed to make you sick to remind you not to eat it again." I thought the interpreter was going to lose it laughing at me. That whole interview ended up being amusing. Then I had a guy come in and we did the interview for past health history, meds etc. When we finished I explained that the doctor had ordered a chest xray and where he could go to get it. I offered also to get a volunteer to help him get there as his mobility wasn't the best. He said no, it was ok and he left. Late this afternoon when I was getting around to checking my charts there

was no xray for this guy. A call to radiology showed that he hadn't shown up for the xray. So I called the patient at home and he was like "no, I didn't go. I thought it was wrong since they're operating on my leg." Really? And you didn't think to ask??? Then he asked if he had to come back in to do it. My reply was you do if you don't want your surgery postponed. Goofy people.

Some of you on Fac*book may have seen me going on and on Saturday about a Buffet that I wanted and had been going to the store to visit. Yesterday I finally couldn't stand it any more and went and bought it. Of course the clerks at the store loaded it up and made it look so easy and light weight. Then when me and my friend from work went to move it into the house we learned it was anything but light weight. Heavy sucker. But oh so pretty.

I just love it.

I also have some fabulous news.

I GET TO GO HOME FOR THANKSGIVING!!!!!!!

I'm very excited about that. I found out I could get a decent deal on a ticket if I stayed a day longer and I found someone at work to work for me so I leave on Wed the 25th for home. I can't wait. Of course I come back on a Monday at 11pm and have to work the next day but oh well. Thank goodness I don't go to work until 10am.

Another Nice Day

Today was another nice day (slow) at work. Slow enough that at 3:30 I asked if I could go home. I got to leave while it was still day light out!! Of course I still didn't get home until after dark. I ran around to various banks looking into their checking accounts and what I thought about them. One bank stated that Sat. deposits don't get processed until Monday night and all the banks do it that. To which I pointed out that my bank used to not, until they were absorbed but big bank. I finally end up going to the credit union and opening an account there. It seemed to have all the features I wanted with no little extra charges etc. So, I have a new bank. Or credit union. Not much else happening. Oh, except my feet feel like they are getting thinner. My shoes are looser. At least some part of me feels like it's losing weight.

The Fly

There is a fly dive bombing my face. Little fucker just tried to fly up my nose. Yuck. It seriously won't leave my face alone.

It was sort of a nice day at work today. For a Monday anyways. And considering that they are grinding the roof right outside out office windows and it was so noisy we couldn't hear ourselves. I also figured out a way to manage to go home for Thanksgiving. I'm taking an extra couple days off and the cost of my flight drops by almost half. I just got word that someone from work can work for me one of the days. I'm so excited!!! Oh and I also got some more information from my doctor today about meds etc for the upcoming FET. Plans for meds that I need to change, what I can keep taking and what I'm going to start taking. I'm going on Metformin. I just feel better about doing that, like I'm doing everything possible.

Today I felt better, less fatigued and I've been upping my protein intake and will continue to do so. I'll go work out tomorrow so hopefully that goes well. Oh and I'm also searching for a new bank as the money deposited on Saturday STILL wasn't available all day today.
Now I think I'll go find a fly swatter and sit and watch House.

Almost Monday

Another weekend almost gone. That is the only hard part about this job is that I sometimes miss having 3-4 days a week off. Granted I like working less hours a day but I sometimes miss the days off.

I've gotten a lot accomplished today. I did an ass load of laundry. That's what happens when I wait 2 weeks to do it. I also got a shelf hung up above my washer and dryer and a shower curtain thing hooked up to sort of cover the washer and dryer from the outside elements. I guess we'll see how that works. I'm in the process of organizing my recipes. I have cookbooks. Lots of cookbooks. Many of the cook books I have contain a few recipes that sound really good (most of which I have never tried) and a bunch of recipes that sound horrible. So I'm doing a trial on some recipe manager software and loading recipes I want to keep into the computer and will get rid of most of the books. I'm sure it will take me a while but I think it might be worth it. I think I might be more likely to use some of the recipes if they are easier to access.

I also went to work out this morning. I did manage the 30 minutes but my muscles felt so fatigued from yesterday when I pushed myself really hard. Then for the rest of the day my muscles continued to feel tired and shaky. It makes me wonder if I'm lacking something nutritionally and if so what. The problem is that in my attempt to diet and drop 20-30 pounds for my FET in January I'm having a very hard time finding things to eat that I like. So I end up making a lunch out of cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes and some fruit. Basically I think that I'm just not getting enough of everything. Hence another reason why I think it might be a good idea to work on the whole recipe thing. Bring in a bit of variety. I'm also hoping to find some recipes that I can sort of make up and freeze that I can then take out during the week and heat up. That way I'm not dealing with the whole trying to figure out what to cook when I get home from work. Maybe after grocery shopping I'll be able to work on that more. Of course I can't go grocery shopping until I can actually access the money in my checking account which I still can't do. Yes, I'm still really pissed off about that.

Anyways, that was my day. Sort of boring for all of you. Sorry. Last week I had all sorts of ideas about what to write about every day. I guess I should have wrote down the ideas.

Beautiful Saturday

Wow it was beautiful here today. Sunny and around 70 all day. Perfect. I can't say I went bike riding though. I did work out for 35 minutes this morning on the ellipitcal which wore me out. Ran a lot of errands and such things. It was nice to just be outside though. Still not much organizing or cleaning done. Oh well.

I came to a realization today. I hate it when something that's good changes and then it sucks. Last year my bank that I had been with for 11 years was bought out be one of the BIG banks. I didn't have much of an opinion on that then but I sure do now. Today I deposited $1600 in my checking account, half of which was a cashiers check. They put the funds on hold anyways and this afternoon when I tried to withdraw cash I wasn't able to. Hmm. Looks like I will be looking for a new bank as this along with other minor annoyances isn't making big bank look all that great. What a pain in the ass.

I also went today and bought the book that I'm going to read for a book tour for the Open Adoption Examiner page. I read about the book tour on Weebles Wobblog and it sounds interesting. Lavender always has all these great posts about open adoption and while I'm not really in the place where I'm looking at adoption, being adopted myself still makes me interested in her posts. I've read the first two chapters so far and I'm not sure what I think. But I'll be posting eventually about it.

Not much else going on. I have a bunch of little projects to work on around the house. I might do them tomorrow and I might not. Someday though it would be nice if I could walk through my second bedroom.

I hope everyone else is having a good weekend.

Friday!!

Oh how I love Fridays now that I'm working Monday through Friday. Weekends are days to sleep in and wander around running various errands that didn't happen during the week. My plans for tomorrow include working out and then who knows. I might go into the little "downtown" area of this town I live in (I'm no longer officially in Fres*n0 but am in the area). I drove through there the other day (the day of me sitting at a non existent stop light waiting for it to turn green) and it looked really cute with lots of little gifty sort of shops and antique shops. Maybe this time I'll ride my bike or something though. It's pretty close to where I live. I also seriously need to do more cleaning and organizing. Otherwise, the days are mine. The weather is supposed to be mostly nice. Maybe a little cooler but nice. Now though I think my bed is calling my name. And yes this is mostly a rambling post so I can keep up with the post every day.

Diet Suck Ass

Yes they do. And yes, I'm on one. Sort of. I know that diets aren't successful in the long term etc etc and yada yada yada. I'm not looking for the long term. I'm looking to be a bit lighter before January when the FET with donor embryos occurs. I'm looking to give myself a little wiggle room for weight gain during pregnancy. So I'm dieting and trying to lose weight. I'm also trying to stick to the eating plan that my doc recommends just because I may as well give this my all right? So I haven't bought bread in like 2 weeks. By Monday I thought I would just go mad with cravings. I say this of course admitting that I still haven't managed to cut sugar out of my daily foods and knowing that sugar is one of the most important things to ditch. I'm working on it. I've cut back which is good. Work in progress and all that stuff. So Monday. I'm going crazy. All I can think about eating is a huge plate of mashed potatoes and gravy. Cause of course potatoes are bad too in low bad carb land. Which sucks even more than diets since potatoes are seriously one of my favorite things. Monday and Tuesday I kept telling myself I could over come it. Wednesday I went out to breakfast with the girls from surgery and had French Toast. A small order though and I was mostly good otherwise. Finally last night I couldn't take it any more. I stopped at a local steak restaurant on my way home and ordered Chicken Fried Steak with mashed potatoes and gravy. They gave me a big ass plate of potatoes too. And they weren't that good, definitely not good enough to be worth the cheating. The gravy was kind of bland and the potatoes had too much garlic and basically more than anything they weren't Jan's (chosen family)mashed potatoes and gravy. Which I don't see myself getting any time soon. I had been hoping that I would be able to manage going home for Thanksgiving. Last night I priced plane tickets. It's not happening. It's like $600 and when you're still trying to figure out where to come up with $3600 for your next try at your dream it just isn't going to work. So no good potatoes for me. Bummer.

Today I had a couple of interesting conversations. Me and several other co-workers were talking to another nurse who had recently met her daughter who she had given up for adoption 30 some years before. It was a great story. I started asking how she had went about finding her daughter since I'm adopted and it interests me. I got some potentially good information from her. Later though one of the other girls who was there told me that when she met me she had a feeling about me (from something she saw in my eyes) that I was happy but that there was also something else that made me sad too or something that was missing. She had wondered if she had imagined it and after the conversation today about being adopted she felt like she had been sort of right. Funny thing is that she doesn't really know how right although it's more about infertility than being adopted. It's more about feeling unfinished without the chance to be a mom. I wonder if whatever it was she saw will ever go away.

Crazy Busy Day

So I have seen several of you post about the whole blogging every day this month. I thought I would give it a try although at first I kept silent. I think I have posted something though every day. So here it is. I can't even remember what it's called but I'm going to give it a try. It might all be boring crazy ranting from that batty nurse lady.

Today was a bit crazy. We were really busy at work. Busy is good in that it is job security but it's also difficult when patients don't understand why it takes a couple of hours for their visit, much of it waiting for what they think is simply lab work. I don't always understand it either but it is what it is. It's also more than just lab work and EKG's, it's a start to ensure their surgery is accomplished as safely as possible.

I did get another boob flasher today. Some lady trying to express to me where it hurt lifts up her shirt and whips out the tit. Umm, yeah. Could you please put that away. Really even in the hospital there are times and places where it's inappropriate to whip out ones boob. I was getting the idea pretty well just with the pointing. Oh well, gives me something to blog about. Oh and then there is the reminder that spandex velvet body suits really truly don't work for everyone. Honestly, I'm not sure they work for anyone but it certainly didn't work for this lady. Yikes.

Then of course there was the conversations about how people get to the place they are. That and different peoples perspective. One nurse I work with admits to being cynical and her perspective is that certain people are being polite to manipulate the system and most know how to work the system. Maybe they are, definitely there are those who know how to take advantage of the system as much as they can. Me, I find myself wondering how someone got to where they are. This is something that has hit me several times in the last week. One patient who stated he had "no one" to make decisions for him if he were unable to do so for himself. No one. No friends, no family. He went on to explain how he had no contact with his family. I of course have no idea what kind of life he has led but he seemed like such a nice man I can't help but wonder how that happened. How he got there. Then the guy who has done time in prison. Yet he is very polite and respectful, none of the crude behavior or speech often seen etc. Wondering what happened to this person that he ended up where he is now. Wondering if whatever it was was significant enough to be a life changing event that will enable him to choose a different life. I know the odds are against it but still I wonder. I also wonder if I'm the only one who thinks of these things. I have a hard time not seeing the person behind the person sitting at my desk telling me their life histories. Sometimes this feels like a really heavy thing to be taking in all these peoples stories and putting things down on paper. Helping them to find their way through difficult and scary times and diagnoses. Other times it feels like a great honor to have been witness to their strength and just who they are.

Missing Checks and Blonde Moments

So last night I started to get a little concerned that the refund check for my deposit on previous rental property was sent off a week ago and I still hadn't gotten it. Further investigation showed that apparently I had a blonde moment when writing down my address and forgot to include the apartment number. I did finally get the check today which was at the rental office for my current apartment. They hadn't called because apparently the guy who I haven't dealt with much didn't realized that my long distance cell number was still a good number. I'm guessing the check arrived Saturday and has been sitting there since then. This of course was all determined after driving all the way to the post office this morning. So I was on my way back to my apartment driving through a small commercial area in town and came to an intersection that required stopping. I stopped for what I could have swore was a red light. An undetermined amount of time later I looked in my rear view mirror to notice a police officer behind me and then looked up to realize that I couldn't see a light at my intersection. All I could see was the light at the next intersection. I have no idea how long I sat there or how long the cop was there but I felt pretty stupid. I think there was a stop sign for a 4 way stop but nothing requiring me to sit there and wait several minutes. Then leaving work tonight I forgot my cell phone. Today was obviously not a good day for my memory which just sucks sometimes. I hope tomorrow my brain decides to join me at work.

Oops

So some of you are likely wondering if I'm crazy. That was the dresser I refinished and some how last night I typed desk. Probably because I'm still recovering from the trauma of having to assemble a desk on Friday night. I loathe furniture that has to be assembled. Mostly because I usually do something wrong and have to go back and take things apart and redo them which makes me crazy. No matter how much I try to do it all right. Anyways thank you for all the comments on my dresser and my costume.

I'm so tired today I'm hoping to get to bed a little earlier. I went and worked out this morning and I felt even more tired afterwards which didn't help. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Working with the public I am often struck by things people do that don't make sense or that I can't imagine what they were thinking. I had one of those moments today. I hope that when I'm an old lady if I only have one tooth that I will get dentures (and wear them) to fill in the gaps. I hope that I will also realize that just because I'm an old woman doesn't mean that bras have become optional attire in public. Especially if I'm wearing a thin t-shirt. Cause that's just way too much information for most people. I also didn't really need the explanation of why you think you're allergic to latex and what the believed reaction looked like.

Now off to watch House and eat dinner.

Finally!

So the other night when I couldn't find my camera it was driving me nuts. I went back to looking for it as soon as I finished the blog post and finally found it like an hour later in one of my boxes of fabric. Oh yeah, that's where I put it. Then I ran into another difficulty. I couldn't find the cord to upload the pictures. So I finally gave up and went to bed. I spent a bunch of time on Wed and Thur getting my Halloween costume all ready. This weekend has been full of running errands and trying to get my house in order. It's getting there. I still can't find my way through the second bedroom but the rest of it looks better than it did. So finally tonight I'm sitting down to post the promised pictures.

Here is the before picture of the desk, before I sanded and painted it, before I cleaned it.

Now here is the after:

Looks much better I think. I could have done a little better job with it by spending a bit more time sanding it and such before painting but I was getting very tired of living without a dresser and wanted it done so I rushed it a bit. I still think it looks pretty good though.

Next is my Halloween costume. I bought the hat with the feathers and then got the idea to add feathers to the shirt. It turned out really cute and I loved it. I did lose feathers all over all day long but I got a lot of great comments about it. I had a lot of fun too. For the most part the costume was pretty comfortable although my hair looked awful if I took the hat off so I couldn't take the hat off and the false eyelashes I had (sparkly, glittery silver) sort of sucked. The glue made my eye lids itch really bad. Other than that though it was a lot of fun.