Breathing Room

I have the gift of a two days off in the middle of the week. So I am taking it slow this morning. It is really nice. Especially since I have my period right now. I do have some errands to run, but I can do those in my own time. I only have one more 12 hour shift to go before my time off for vacation starts. It is on Friday, but I can deal with that.

I finally made a date with my friend to get our tattoos! We are going this Saturday. I took in my picture of a dragon for the artist to work with, and I think he is not going to do a lot to change it. The dragon itself is too wonderful. When I saw this picture, I knew that this was going to be my dragon. And then when I printed it out, it was the exact size I wanted, I think it was kismet. The picture is below, but I will show you the finished tat once it is done. Yes, he is going to be a red dragon. I am planning on having him a really dark red. I think that will go better with my skin tone.




I also decided what I am going to do for Christmas gifts for my family this year. For the past year or so, I have decorated bags and given them to my family. This year I am going a step further. I think I am going to make bags for Christmas gifts this year. I tried one out the other day, and it wa really pretty easy. I think I know what I need to do to get them to come out the way I want them. And I have a sewing room this year, so I can leave all the stuff set up. I love it. I have never had a creative space of my own before, and I am discovering that it is a real gift to have it.

Oscar went his first obedience class last night. He was really nervous and stressed. I hope it gets better. The instructor suggested we take our dogs out to places more often to get them bette socialized. I think that is a good idea. I may try to plan a dog outing for the weekend. I also do not think that Oscar and I have really bonded. I think in order for the class to work for us, I need to spend time with him. So Hubby and I are going to switch dogs on our walks. I will start walking Oscar, and he will walk Gertrude. I may start doing some training with Gertrude after I train Oscar so that she know I still love her. We will see how this all works out.

Happy October!

I have not been a good blogger lately. Really bad with the posting, and not doing a lot of commenting. I think I am just marking time until we start our first IUI with trigger cycle, so there is not a lot to say.

Thanks for your kind words about my co-worker. I have been trying to be better with her, and she seems to be trying, too. So it seems to be working out. Thank goodness!

I signed Oscar up for beginning obedience. The class starts this Tuesday, though no dogs on the first night of class. I think this should be good for him. He is a big dog, and we have not done any formal obedience training, so he can get out of control. Usually Hubby handles him when we are out, so there is not usually a problem, but it would be nice for him to have some manners. I am not sure what Gertrude will think when Oscar and I go off and leave her. I think she may get a little jealous. I will have to figure out something to do with her.

Our vacation is coming up in a couple of weeks. I think we both really need it. I know we are both looking forward to it. We are vacationing in Tombstone, Arizona. I should be able to do a whole lot of nothing while I am there. I may take a trip to Bisbee for a spa day, unless I can find a spa in Tombstone. We will see.

Hopefully everyone will have a good week!

Stupid me!

There are times when I can be really jerky and idiotic. I was that way this past week. I was impatient and blind and insulting with someone who I really need to be able to work with. Now I am in self-flagellation mode because I was so stupid and careless with this co-worker. I just want to hide my head in the sand and make it disappear. Unfortunately, I cannot do that. I have to find a way to make this work. I am trying to be more patient, but it does not come easily. We work completely differently. I am a little anal and like things a certain way. She is not nearly as organized (it appears to me.) She moves a little slower, and she has different priorities. Some of her priorities are dictated by her position, but they conflict with my priorities at times. I am afraid I also got a little cocky. Not good. I am still new in comparison to many of the people I work with. I think the events of the past week have opened my eyes to a lot of things I was doing wrong. That is good, I think. Now I can accept them and deal with them. Hopefully I will be able to get over this without too much trouble. I hate feeling like an idiot and stupid, though.

In-Laws this weekend!

Hubby and I are going out of town this weekend to visit his parents. Hubby's grandmother is turning 80, so we are celebrating her birthday. We are giving her a breadbasket filled with my made from scratch butter milk biscuits. No one in her family makes biscuits from scratch, so I thought I would make some for her birthday. We are boarding the dogs this weekend at a kennel. I think this is sort of a dry run for vacation. Hopefully it will work.

Speaking of vacation, our vacation is causing us to delay IUI #1. My period started this past Monday. When I went in for my injection class on Tuesday, the nurse and I looked at the dates, and we discovered that November will be the first chance I have at trying a cycle. I think the waiting will kill me. On the bright side, I will be able to drink on vacation. That is something, at least.

Work about killed me this week. Wednesday we had two robot cases with slow and difficult surgeons. I also had a weak circulator with me. The scary thing was, the second circulator was my clinical team leader. She needs to be a resource and a leader, but I have not found her to be very helpful to me since I have been on the service. Robot cases need two circulators. If a robot case goes bad, it can go bad quickly. Also, it helps to have two people there to troubleshoot the robot and get any other equipment needed. My second circulator kept leaving. She even tried to re-assign herself to another room. I was really mad. If she does not want to do that part of the job, she should just admit it and find a way around it. It is not fair to the patient, or the rest of the surgical team, to be in a room and do a half-assed job. Robot surgery is technical and involved. I do not have a lot of patience for people who act like they cannot do the job. I was scheduled 12 hours that day, so I knew I would be in that room the entire day. It still makes me mad just thinking about it now two days after the fact. I had to run that damn room all by myself. I talked with my managers the next day, they told me that they would talk with my clinical team leader, but I do not know if that will do any good. On the bright side, they promised me that I would learn to scrub robot cases. I may not end up scrubbing a whole lot of the robot cases, but at least I will know how the robot really works. I hopefully will be able to troubleshoot the robot better if I have gotten the chance to play with it. That is the piece I am missing. I think they will like it because I will be able to do lunch reliefs and things like that. One more person who can stay late and finish a long robot case.

I hope everyone has a good weekend!

Long Days...

Robot case this morning, then I stayed late to finish the room. I think I can be a pushover sometimes. But I am not on call, so I got to have a lovely glass of wine (well, two glasses, really) when I got home.

Tomorrow is another long day, but for different reasons. I have another robot case tomorrow morning, so I have to be at work early. But I have my injection class tomorrow after work! Yay! One step closer to actually doing something. Unfortunately, my period chooses a stupid time to start. Yep, my period started yesterday. Bummer. That means this cycle is likely going to be another waiting cycle. I totally thought my cycle would be longer, because it usually is. I hate it. Why does it have to pick now to be inpredictable? Stoopid period. Just holding off a week would have been fine. But no, my body decided to have a four week cycle instead of the five week cycle I usually have. I wish something would work out for me, and my body will cooperate. My body is not helping with this infertility stuff!

Sept 11

Today is Sept 11, the Anniversary of the bombing of the Twin Towers in New York, and the Pentagon in DC. The day it happened, I was at a temp job in Christiansburg, VA with no radio, and no way to get the news. I did not believe it at the time. I cannot remember how I finally realized that it had happened, but it eventually registered that something really bad had happened. My immediate family was living in the Northern VA at the time, so I called all of them and made sure that they were all right.

What was interesting for me about 9/11 is that traumatic events like that can really shake up your life. One effect of the events for me is that my grandmother and I had another falling out. After this event, I finally decided that I had had enough of this relationship as it was. My grandmother and I were constantly butting heads. My husband thinks it is because we are so much alike. I do not know about that, but I did know that my grandmother and I could not get along. It would not take much for either one of us to start an argument with the other. After 9/11, I started seeing a counselor to work out the relationship with my grandmother. We get along better now, but we still do not like to show the other our weaknesses. I had to let go of my ideas about my relationship with her in order to get along with her.

The other thing which came out of my counseling sessions was nursing. In looking at my life, where I was, and where I was going, I decided that I wanted to go to nursing school. It was a decision I never regretted. I love being a nurse! I always wanted to have a cool job, and now I have one. I am an OR nurse. Sure, the hours are long, and the job is demanding, but I love it. I would not want to be anywhere else.

The emotional fallout from 9/11 affected me more than anything else. It was a national traumatic event which definitely affected the entire nation. The EMS and firefighters who were there for the attacks are truly heroic.

Nights and Weekends

I have to get used to staying up late the next few nights. I have a couple of evening shifts coming up this weekend. I am hoping they will be calm, but I am not expecting it. With the weekend comes alcohol, and with the alcohol sometimes comes trauma. I am praying that it will be shifts full of lap choles and lap appys, maybe even a stable ectopic. (Unstable ectopics are really scary.)

One website I have discovered is Pandora. We listen to music in the OR, and often we leave the music on all day. You can get any kind of music, and it does not repeat a whole lot. You can ban songs for a month if you think that they are being played too often. The account is free, and you can customize stations just for you. If you put in an artist, it will play similar music. (It is way better than A.O.L. Radio, just sayin'.)

The counseling appointment was a no-go. I do not know if we got the date of the appointment wrong, or the counselor forgot, but no one was there. If it is our fault, I think we could reschedule. If it is their fault, I think we should go elsewhere. Just my feeling. I hate having my time wasted. I missed an agility class to go to that appointment because I thought our marriage was more important. Hubby will call today and see what happened. Hopefully he will make an appointment somewhere for us. Just not on a Tuesday.