I just have 3 words to say about NaBloPoMo……

Veni, Vidi, Vici.

Translated to English, it’s 6 words….

I came, I saw, I conquered.

And now I feel like this….

Whew. In what turned out to be an absolutely crazy month, I still ended up pulling off at least one post a day. What a relief!

Here’s a few thoughts about today…..

I must run to Wal*mart (the only place in town) to try to find Nick appropriate Christopher Robin shoes.

I must take the kids to piano lessons (30 minutes to the north–of course, nothing can be close)

If I can’t snag appropriate CR shoes here in town, after piano I must drag the kids into Columbus (30 minutes to the east).

Nick might be having to pick up opening night tonight. The little boy he is double cast with is sick and losing his voice and may not be able to perform tonight. If that’s the case, we won’t come home between shoe shopping and his 6:30 call.

KT informed me last night she wants to audition for “Antigone.” Rehearsals would run (most likely) from late December until mid-March.

It’s obvious from the above list that I can hardly put together a coherent sentence.

Because of this fact, I just cannot tackle the last NaBloPoMo question today. It’s a good one, and I won’t be able to do it justice.

Tomorrow is Saturday. It’s PhotoHunt day. Sunday is meme day. Two easy posts in a row.

After Sunday this blog may go dark for a few days. Just a few. I hope you’ll all understand.

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Here’s proof I’ve been spending a lot of time at the theater lately….

I can’t remember exactly when I started it. Maybe only two weeks ago. Whenever it was, it wasn’t long ago at all!

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…..for NaBloPoMo!

And two more questions to answer! Did I time that perfectly or what? Carolynn from Western Australia writes: You have mentioned before that you are a Paediatric Nurse, are you still practicing and in what field. What was your favourite area. I have spent the last 23.5 years in Neonatal Intensive Care, in the same Unit and absolutely love it. I have been nursing now since 1974 and still love it as much today as I did then.

Do you have any ideas how we can attract young people into Nursing and to get them to stay in the field. I would imagine that the US and Canada has the same problems with Staffing as we have here in Austraia. Here in Australia 65% of the Nursing profession are 50 years of age and over and we are struggling to Staff the Hospitals we have now and we desparately need to increase the Bedstate??? What happens when we older ones decide it would be nice to Retire?

Yup, Carolynn, I am a pediatric nurse! I received my B.S.N. from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1990. I went to work in a local hospital on the pediatric unit. I was actually hired as the official Peds/OB float so in the summer when the peds unit was slow, I’d work on the postpartum unit. In hind sight, I had no idea what I was doing in OB! Having had two kids and nursing both of them, I’m sure I’d be a much better resource to OB patients now. But I digress.

I worked there for a year until I married the wonderful Dr. Mike and moved to a new city. At that point I worked in a regional Children’s Hospital in their SICU. Our unit was highly specialized focusing on surgical problems for children under the age of 2. Most of the problems we saw were congenital anomalies (my favorite being gastroschisis) It was a challenging job that had its ups and downs.

After giving birth to KT, I switched to a peds office practice. The main reason for the switch was to get better hours and no night shifts because Dr. Mike was just starting as an intern! And we all know how crazy those hours are!

After having Nick, daycare costs pretty much would have eaten up my income, so that’s when I began my stay-at-home journey.

To tell you the gosh awful truth, I’m really out of the loop when it comes to the nursing profession. I have no idea where the shortages are, what pay scales are at, or what the current benefit packages contain. I will give you a couple of ideas about what I think are a couple of problems with the profession from my own experiences.

For one, the schedule that nursing jobs require are just very difficult ones to maintain when you have kids. When I was pregnant with KT it was stressful for me to consider where I was going to find daycare for her that would accept her at 6:00 in the morning, or overnight for when my intern husband was on call, or on Sundays, or on holidays. I didn’t have family close enough to watch the baby, and I’m sure that’s the case with many many nurses. Hence the switch to an office practice. No Sundays, no night shifts, no holidays.

I also think it’s a thankless job. Some of the work nurses do is just downright disgusting. It has to be done, and it has to be done right. It also has to be done in such a way to maintain a patient’s dignity. Most kids these days don’t want to do such nasty jobs. But in nursing, there is no way around it.

One of the things that really irritated me about the nursing profession was having to work with all women. Ok, I’ll admit, we did have two male nurses on the unit, but for the most part they were women. Gossipy, catty, cliquey women. I’m not a clique person. I didn’t fit in for that reason. I also didn’t fit in because I worked hard and was extremely conscientious about patient care. It bugged me to no end that certain nurses (mostly those who were in the head nurse’s clique) gave minimal or sub-par care. It seemed like many times I was picking up slack for others because the only person who was going to suffer was that little baby. I know cutting coupons from the Sunday paper is important, but not when your patient’s IV is beeping. Ok, vent over.

But how about another vent? Unit policies must be fair to everyone. Case in point…. I was due in July with KT. In May, I actually started working at the pediatric office part time while still working in the SICU full time. I worked days at the office (there’s that good hours thing) and I did swing shifts in the SICU. Every two weeks I rotated between days and nights. So there were periods where I’d work a day shift, then the next day I’d work nights, then days, then nights, until finally I switched back to day shift in the SICU and then I’d work all days for two weeks. My nurse manager explained to me that I couldn’t have special treatment just because I opted to take another job.

Until a nurse in her clique did the same thing–picked up another part time job. Suddenly it was alright for that nurse to give up her night shift rotation. When I asked again, it was shot down. So for two months I worked this nutty schedule and that helped seal my decision to quit working there after KT was born. Could I have gone over the nurse manager’s head and reported the unfair situation? Sure, but it’d have come back to haunt me. After all, I’d have been messing with her clique. At that point, even though the schedule was exhausting and irritating, it was just easier to do it for 2 months than to subject myself to the consequences.

So I don’t know what can be done. More money? Better schedules? More support? Onsite 24 hour daycare? Fair distribution of patient loads? No special treatment for certain nurses? I dunno. I will say, it’s going to take a lot to get me to consider going back. As much as I loved the babies and the care involved, I can’t imagine putting myself through everything else that goes along with it.

*I apologize for my somewhat disjointed, scatterbrained response to this post. It’s just nuts over here.

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When I woke up this morning, I faced a crazy schedule. I had an appointment this morning to run into Springfield (30 minutes to the west) to meet up with someone and give them a few things we were donating. I figure, including drive time, I’d be gone from 9:15-11:00a.

Then I was going to come home, pack in some school, and eat lunch.

The next step was to drive into Columbus (30 minutes to the east) at 2:20p and drop Nick off for rehearsal at theater A. Then KT and I would go to the library and do a little more school until I had to get her to rehearsal at theater B at 5:45. I’d run back to theater A to get Nick, have him eat his packed dinner on the way back to theater B so he could get to his second rehearsal of the day. Then I’d stay there until everyone’s rehearsal was done….at 9:00p. Getting us home just in time for bedtime at 9:30.

I got a call early this morning. The person I had to meet with needed to reschedule.

Then another call around lunchtime informing me that Nick wasn’t needed today at theater A.

And then I heard Handel’s Messiah playing in my head. A sort of HALLELUJAH sound that was music to my ears.

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When will the madness end? Life has been Nuts with a capital N. Typically I’ve been leaving the house around 1:30 or 2p.m. and not getting home until after 9. My time out includes running kids from theater to theater for rehearsals. Nick is in the final rehearsals for Winnie the Pooh. His performances start Saturday. To add some fun to his schedule, he starts rehearsals today for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs! KT is in the last two weeks of her rehearsals for High School Musical.

So, how has that affected my weight loss plan? Well, for one thing, exercise has all but stopped. Between rehearsals and teaching school, there really isn’t time. Even squeezing out 30 minutes would be challenging. My last day to exercise was (gasp) last Wednesday!

Water intake, not a problem. I take one of those big 64 oz jugs of water with me to rehearsals and sip on that. Surprisingly, by the time rehearsals are done, my water is almost gone. Luckily, all theaters have bathrooms!

Eating…We haven’t been eating dinners here during the week. Mike comes home and fends for himself (leftover pizza or chili from the freezer) and the kids and I pack a dinner. Because of that, it’s not as big of a dinner as I would eat if I was home, so I’m definitely taking in less calories.

Eating less food this last week is the only way to explain my weight going down 1.8 pounds to 155.6 today. I figured I’d be up, or best case scenario I’d be the same. I never expected a LOSS! But I’ll take it, of course.

Then again, maybe I can explain the weight loss by all of the cross stitching I’ve gotten done. I mean, all of that arm movement counts for something, doesn’t it?

And, seeing as Nick’s rehearsals run until February, maybe I can keep up this insane pace and lose some more weight!

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