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(Last night)

I am currently waiting for a friend from work to come over and watch some movies. The current plan is to bask in some Keanu Matrix Hotness as she has never seen any of the movies. It might be awkward as you never really know how some of these work friendships work out in real life so we’ll see.

I feel as though I have been a horrible friend as I seem to have declined in my updating and reading LJ and I don’t really know why other than I stay so busy here lately. I don’t like feeling out of touch so I know I need to make more time as LJ and online is usually the only way I get to interact with many of you.

My house is super clean. There’s nothing like having someone over to motivate a person to get busy. Unfortunately, it took longer than expected and I didn’t get to walk today. Yesterday I had to run errands all day and then there was play practice and church Wed. night and I never had the time to walk yesterday either. The time change also has a negative effect. If I miss a few days I feel as though I am getting out of the habit. It doesn’t help that it’s that time of the month, I’ve eaten anything that isn’t nailed down and then some, and my weight loss has stalled for the past few months. I’m not quite sure how to jumpstart it again either so I am going to keep plugging along but there is always the fear that it’s only a matter of time before I gain what I have lost, a feeling that is worsened by missing a couple of days exercising this week. It’s also daunting to know we are entering the dieting “nightmare before Christmas” LOL!

Brandon’s arm is improving and his ROM is getting better and better. I think we may have dodged the physical therapy bullet, hopefully.

I can’t believe I signed up to be in the Christmas play but I am working ever so slowly at working to decrease my intense public speaking phobia. And it is a true phobia! I explained it to someone like this; When I walk, I am always on the lookout for snakes and fear coming across one, but not enough to stop walking where I do. Driving can be fearful for me and I have reason to be afraid of driving, but it hasn’t been enough to make me chuck the keys and move to where public transportation is an option. My fear of public speaking/performance has been enough to hold me back and actually has influenced some personal decisions. Anyway, it should be interesting and I don’t have a bazillion lines. Brandon loves it. He has way more acting chops than his poor mother, though….LOL!

Tomorrow I have nothing planned until the evening. It will be nice to get up, drink some coffee and putter around my clean house. I DO intend to workout tomorrow but I am not an early am exerciser. I prefer the afternoon, really, but with the time change I need to be more mindful of the time. I have to work Saturday and I will probably be in the ER. Again.

I like working where I do because I don’t do the same thing every single day but here lately, what with all the people who “don’t feel comfortable” in the ER coupled with a rather ineffectual CNO (read: coasting till retirement), I have been stuck working it more here lately. All of the nurses in my position are grumbling about it but everyone is so completely passive aggressive sometimes it feels that I am the only one who will ever say anything about crap situations to the CNO directly. Tuesday, after hearing report for the patients’ on the floor and not realizing that the other RN scheduled to come in had called in, in walks one of the nurses who “can’t” work the ER. It was totally infuriating because just the day before, I had the same situation. After I cooled off a bit, I grabbed one of the night shift people who is always in the ER and always griping about being stuck there and told her that she should come with me if she is serious about being tired of working the ER all the time. We went to the CNO and told her how we felt, which I am sure she already knew but her method of management involves the idea of ignoring problems, hoping they will go away. I told her there is a reason the RN’s don’t want to work the ER every day and that since we were, many of us could go somewhere else and get paid specialty pay for doing so. The reason why we don’t want to do it every day is multifaceted and I won’t bore you with the complete details here but the main problem is that you are the only nurse in the ER. Mostly, you will have help if you need it but you are completely at the mercy of your coworkers working other areas for this help or if you want to take a break or even go to the bathroom. You usually have a full house the entire day and it is not completely unusual to be trapped there for an entire 12-hour shift. If you get to go to lunch, you may have barely had a chance to sit down and an emergency comes in. This is worsened on nights and weekends when the only other RN in the building “can’t” work the ER. Since the CNO has a surgery background I tried to compare it to being in surgery for 12 hours without ever “getting away”. This is the main reason why we all take turns working either Charge or the ER. It’s not that being the Charge nurse is any easier, it’s that you have the ability to step away from it all now and again when you are the charge nurse for the floor. The way our facility and staffing is structured, I don’t think anyone who can’t function in the ER should be in the Charge position in the first place but, these days, it’s all about having a “warm body” to fill a slot. I really don’t think my supervisor particularly cares for me and I am sure she just loves to see me coming because if I feel it is important enough, if it involves patient care, or if I really think it could make all of our lives better/is something that everyone is complaining about and/or thinking about quitting because of, I don’t hesitate to speak my mind. Some say it is because she is threatened by me and other “strong nurses” though I can’t imagine why. I certainly don’t want her job and, sure, I am well aware that I know more than she does, clinically, in the ER but I would be fumbling around if they stuck me in surgery, I am sure. But she is the type who wants to be SuperNurse, so I can see where that might factor in. Every conversation I have ever had with her has involved her telling me about how she has done this, that, or the other, while walking uphill both ways in the driving snow. Whatever. (Oh please deliver the Nursing profession from its martyrs!!!) Or, perhaps, it’s merely that she can sense that I have lost much of my respect for her as a leader, though I don’t intentionally try to convey that. I suppose that’s enough ranting for one day, huh?

My entertainment junkie thoughts are not very cohesive at the moment so I have nothing to say really, other than I did finish season one of Heroes. I was underwhelmed a bit by the finale and thought the last scene between Nathan and Peter was rather cheesy, not the interaction itself, but how all of the other Heroes were there watching. It almost felt soap-opera-ish. I also expected a bit more from the showdown, though I did like how they all played a part. My problem now is that I have been recording the current season but I didn’t start recording at the beginning. I have the DVR set to record all episodes so I hope that I’ll pick them up in reruns because I do want to get to watching. As for Atlantis, I enjoyed both the last episodes, which I watched out of order, but strangely found myself wanting Kate to have lost her memory of Rodney. What’s up with that? Maybe I was hoping for a bit-o-angstfest for Rodney. And while I do like it that they don’t have Carter stepping on Rodney’s science toes, come on!?! She has skills comparable to his and it seems like they have neglected that. I did like the interaction between Carter and Rodney when they were searching for Teyla. I also liked the episode where Sheppard get’s kidnapped more than I thought I would (as evidenced by me watching it after Tabula Rasa….I wasn’t in a hurry to see it initially..LOL) I certainly LOVE Torchwood and its (the writers?) view of life after death is certainly a mind bender. In the story thus far we have heard that after death, there’s nothing? There’s darkness? Oh, but wait, you (Your soul? Your lingering life force? Your what?) has an awareness that there is nothing and is existing in this void. But, there’s something moving in this void, this nothing, and it’s not a good thing. Certain alien objects have the ability to cause you to hang out after death to review your life. For what purpose? For nothing? I can’t wait to see where they are going with this, if indeed they are going anywhere. Hum, I suppose I had a bit more cohesion than I thought.