In which Jo gets totally girly:

What Jo has in her hair right now:

What she's considering buying for the spring:

What astonishes her:

What makes her drool, drool (especially if worn with a simple white salwar kameez) (remind me of this if I ever decide to get married again, especially if it's in Texas in the summer):

And what she is wearing on her toes this very minute. It's considerably darker on than it is in the bottle.

That is all. I go back to work tomorrow; this girly-time is a necessary mental health moment.

Off the leash

Well, I'm done with my internship, off the chain, on my own, riding without training wheels, a danger to myself and society.

Six weeks ago, I felt like every day at work was like trying to climb up an escalator covered with bacon grease while somebody yanked on my shirt-tails at random moments. Now I feel like a barely-adequate skiier slaloming down a slope rated for Olympians. If I just go with what's happening, don't think about it, and don't try to look too far ahead, I do just fine. It's just a matter of not relaxing, of doing things right when I get the chance, and of being as efficient as possible.

Which is frustrating. It's hard to go from an area where you've been able to know without thinking what needs to be done, where the synthesis is second nature, to an environment where you have to stop, think, and double-check that you're even asking the right questions.

The head of the CCU internship program for Sunnydale and I had a conversation about that the other week. She wasn't exactly encouraging about my progress (though I thought I had done pretty well), and she expressed some serious doubts about my ability to form a comprehensive picture about my patients and anticipate/prevent problems. I left that interview feeling about three inches tall, until two things happened:

1. I realized that I cannot possibly be expected to think like an experienced CCU nurse yet. Fourteen weeks is barely enough time to review the things you have to review to keep from hurting somebody in the unit, let alone learn how to integrate all of those things into a cohesive whole. Everything right now is going to be task-based, and I'm going to feel like a complete idiot for a while, and that's just part of the learning curve.

2. The other interns in the program said that they'd had the exact same meeting with the head. The upshot of everybody's discussions with her was that she felt we're all safe nurses, but she's encouraging everyone to ask lots of questions and get help when they need to (collective "Duh"). In her defense, she's been a CCU nurse for about twenty years, so I think the thought processes involved have become so second-nature for her that she can't get into the headspace of a new nurse/new CCU nurse. Anyway, I felt better about the whole thing after we all got together and looked blankly at one another.

After the last couple of days on the floor, during which I had two not-really-critical patients who quickly turned critical, I feel more confident about my ability to at least keep people alive. Right now it's more a matter of being fast on my feet (as my Sainted Mother says) than of being a really good CCU nurse, but I'll settle for that for the moment. One patient yesterday shook off the propofol and Versed and tried to extubate herself in a particularly creative manner while shooting liquid stool all over the place, and the other had a fistula between an abscess and an artery break loose near the end of the shift, but I still got out on time and gave a good report.

As I was leaving work, passing the very last computer monitor on the very last computer cart near the furthest edge of the station, the monitor on that cart suddenly caught fire. I did not stop, I did not look back, I merely kept walking. That, my friends, is what the CCU is like.

And on a more optomistic note....(informal recipe roundup!)

I made the best damn blackeyed peas today. I swear. All vegetarian, low-salt, and nummy.

Take:

The leftovers of a can of low-salt tomatoes, diced

One and one-half bags of frozen blackeyed peas

Half a red onion, minced very finely

A handful of garlic cloves, chopped or not, depending on how garlicky you like your peas

About a teaspoonful of dried thyme, crumbled up in your hands

Enough water to make a soupy mix

...and combine in a large saucepan. Allow to simmer for forty minutes, minimum, and up to two hours (if you forget about it and start doing other things like I did). Eat. Nom!

I just realized that this is my last week on days. I work four days this week, then have four days off, then start nights with the remaining three shifts in *that* week. As a result, I've planned a number of things I can do right when the sun comes up (when I'll be getting home) and overnight, so I can adjust my body clock.

One is work out with Attila. That's a given.

One is yardwork. The stinkin' catalpa tree in the front yard lost all its leaves in one big whump, which means I have gobs of big, flat, nasty, non-decaying leaves all over the front beds. Plus, I have to cut back the butterfly bushes. Plus, I have to find something to put in the front pots. Bare pots with dead things in them are bad mojo on your front steps.

One is cooking*. All night long if necessary, interspersed with the books I plan to pick up on Monday from the used bookstore. If I need to, I can even refinish my dining room table over the course of a night, in order to stay awake.

I'm planning sausage-and-poblano-stuffed chicken breasts, Russian sour cream coffee cake, several different kinds of bread (not all for me, sadly), a lasagne to freeze, and maybe some of the trickier recipes from Cooks dot com, like tiramisu. If you have any time-consuming, niggly, detail-laden, and ultimately delicious, lunch-packable recipes to share, feel free to email me. Link is to the right.

I might even make biriyani without the spice mix: instead, mixing up my own spice mix.

Or not. I'm dedicated to resetting my circadian clock, but I'm not sure I'm *that* dedicated.

*January 8th through 11th! Come one, come all! I have a guest bed, a loveseat, and plenty of floor space. Bring your cooking utensils!

Mama's got a brand-new bag...of troubles.

It's astonishing how appropriate this is, and on how many levels.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and thank God 2010 is nearly here. I had hoped 2009 would be a non-sucky year, and for the first half, it was. The last few weeks, though, have really amped up the suckage, to such a degree that I find myself panting for an artificially-imposed break from the past.

Trouble the First: Turns out that I am hypertensive as heck (Stage I), probably sodium-reactive. I've been following my blood pressure lately with a nice little sphygmomuh-nuh-muh-nuh (doo doo dee doo doo) and lo and behold, my systolic has been hovering around 150, my diastolic in the low 90's. This Is Not Good, especially since back in the spring, I was a nice, boring 110/68.

Guess what? A lot of the foods that are low-points on the Weight Watchers plan, like Boca Burgers, are hugely high in sodium. I made a point the last few days of not eating any salt to speak of, and my pressures have already dropped into the 130's. Which means, of course, that I'm cleaning out fridge, freezer, and pantry. *sigh* No more gruyere potato gratin for me; instead, it'll be sweet potatoes (high in potassium!) done a dozen interesting ways.

Trouble the Second: I'm slated to work with two of the bigger assholes I've met in my nursing career, and that's saying a lot. Both of 'em are blowhards, both of 'em profess to expertise which they have not, and both of 'em work nights. With any luck, I'll get on to days before I have to deal with them in more unpleasant ways than their sticking their beaks in where they don't belong.

Example: Preceptor the First allowed me to take report alone the last couple of weeks of my internship, and this bothered one of the Blowhards no end. At one point, he corned me and asked me repeatedly if I thought it was a good idea that an inexperienced CCU nurse be allowed to take report alone, as it sure wasn't okay with him. It took me saying three times, with increasing force, "It's okay with the manager, it's okay with the educators, and it's okay with my preceptor." Finally, I finished up with "If you have a problem with this, despite it being okay with all of your superiors, perhaps you should speak to the DON."

Example: I had taken care of a patient with one of those walk/talk/die frontal subdural hematomas you hear so much about all day, upping his meds as necessary when it became clear he was going into DTs (with a BAC of 0.09, no less). The oncoming nurse for the shift didn't like that I had held things like Librium and Ativan when he'd become sedated to the point that I couldn't assess his neuro status, and proceeded to yell at me on the floor about it.

I looked grave, told her that I was not as experienced with detox nursing as I was with neuro, thanked her for her advice, and asked her further questions about what *she* would've done in the situation. That led a coworker to remark, "You rolled over and showed her your belly." I shot back, "What you don't know is that I've got a poison spur midway between my navel and my neck." If she does it again, we're going, right then and there, to the manager's office, because it's obvious she has a problem with me that needs third-party mediation.

I've learned that the easiest way to make a bully back off is to call them on it, then make them answer to a higher-up for their bullying, *right then*. I meet passive-aggressive and aggressive-aggressive with a hard slap across the muzzle and a sharp yank on the chain.

Trouble the Third: The last half of this year has been notable for its lack of logic. Not just *my* lack of logic, but the entire fucking Universe's lack of logic. Honestly? If the nursing journals I read suddenly started writing articles in the style of ee cummings, I would not be surprised.

jothenurse

lived in a pretty how town

(with up

so many

floating

brains

down)

Okay, enough of that. Suffice to say that people have been stupid this year. They've been driving like morons, making bad decisions that affect *me* (which simply is not done), and generally pissing me off. My biggest resolution--actually, my only "resolution"--this year is therefore to either not get annoyed with idiots, or to purge them systematically from my surroundings.

Which is why I'll be painting the Honda a nice blush pink and adding a gun turret.

I'll catch you guys on the flip sometime during the first week of the new year. Kiss the old year goodbye, and stay safe during your revelries!

Hm.

Sunday Sonnet

Sir Philip Sidney

Thou blind man's mark, thou fool's self-chosen snare,
Fond fancy's scum, and dregs of scattered thought ;
Band of all evils, cradle of causeless care ;
Thou web of will, whose end is never wrought ;
Desire, desire ! I have too dearly bought,
With price of mangled mind, thy worthless ware ;
Too long, too long, asleep thou hast me brought,
Who shouldst my mind to higher things prepare.
But yet in vain thou hast my ruin sought ;
In vain thou madest me to vain things aspire ;
In vain thou kindlest all thy smoky fire ;
For virtue hath this better lesson taught,—
Within myself to seek my only hire,
Desiring nought but how to kill desire.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

For the first time that I can remember, it's snowing on Christmas Eve.

I went to get chow for the Max-Zoats in the rain. When I got home, I let him in. Just as I did, the rain turned into snow.

I wish you a hopeful Christmas and a brave New Year.

A space where something is wanting; a break.

Did you know (I didn't) that the word "hiatus" and the word "yawn" have the same Latin root? "Hiatus" was apparently adopted more or less wholesale, while "yawn" went through the Old English (ginian) wringer to become, well, "yawn", from the word hiare.

The things you learn when you blog. It's amazing.

The above is a nice way of saying that Head Nurse will be on hiatus (a pause, a space, an anatomical feature [see also: foramen]) until after the holidays. I will be back, a la the Terminator; I just have a lot to do in the next three weeks or so. The last thing I want is for the fine quality you've come to expect from HN to suffer under the pressures of work and life.

This is not to imply that you won't get the random picture of Max or the cats covered in Christmas lights; just don't expect anything substantive (Peanut Gallery: "We don't!") until the second or third week of January. At that time, I'll be back with exciting tales of sleeping during the day and working at night. Expect me to sparkle.

Happy holidays, everybody, whether you celebrate with candles, trees, or dried fruit. Be well, be grateful, and be lucky in the new year.

Jude is the patron saint of lost causes. He carries a carpenter's level and a club.

Sunday Beatles!

Check the dude at the end with the carnations behind his ears.

Odds and Ends, Bits and Bobs

I am so glad I live in the twenty-first century, when most people bathe.

I met a man the other day whose gums were black. BLACK. I say "gums" because there weren't that many teeth left, and the ones that were still hanging on weren't in much better shape than his gums. Ew.

Plus, you could smell him from the door.

Plus, his wife, whom I bathed four times in the course of two twelve-hour shifts, smelled just as bad. The night nurse bathed her, too, which makes me wonder just how long she'd been marinating in a fug of sweat, oil, bacon grease, and cigarette smoke. When you wash your patient's hair for the third time and the water still comes out a yellowish-brown? You know there's a problem.

Love my job; happy to be here.

Letters: I get letters!

Mostly, the people who write me are sweet, complimentary, and encouraging. Sometimes I get something abusive via email, but not often. This week I got an email I wish I'd saved. It was probably the longest email I'd ever gotten from anyone, and covered such subjects as the New World Order, feminism, brain surgery, and how Big Brother Bruce's Bargain Brain Barn (aka Sunnydale) is involved in a Jewish/Communist/Lesbian plot to put chips in all of us.

It was like surfing an enormous wave, reading that email. The quality of the writing wasn't much, but Lord were the ideas somethin' *else*. Sadly, I deleted it, and Yahoo doesn't save every rant I delete.

Please, Mister Feminism is Destroying The World and All You Need Is A Good Man to Discipline You Before the Communists Come For All of Us, could you re-send? Thanks.

Decisions, Decisions

There are a number of Big Things about to happen here at Casa Jo, and more importantly, in The Mind of Jo. Some of them might have a bearing on my career; some not. I'll let you all know when I've worked out the sniggles and tail-ends of things and done some soul-searching; meanwhile, happy thoughts etc. are welcome.

Finally, Merry Christmas! We Decorated For You!

The boys opened a present this morning at oh-dear-thirty, then spent half an hour batting the contents of the box around before I was able to haul my ever-widening ass out of bed and remove it from their paws. Thanks for the popcorn popper, Mom!

They also (I suspect it was Notamus) chewed through the string of lights on the tree. I'm glad it wasn't plugged in at the time.