New home, new job, new life

We're Texans again. I've been walking on a cloud for three weeks. The house is ok, but it's a rental so we aren't too invested in it. It's large enough (maybe a little too large) for two people and is only a few years old so it is in good shape. All the furniture is in it's place and we finally feel like we live here. I still don't understand how we could have increased the size of our home by 500 sq/ft and still have a garage full of stuff. We'll be here for a year until the lease is over and then buy our (hopefully) last house. I have been promised this is the last move we'll make.

On the job front, I was offered the job I wanted about 18 hours after we pulled into Texas. It's still oncology which I love, but it starts on nights which I don't. The reason I chose this over other hospitals is the actual hospital is an easy drive, it's a good hospital, and I'm first in line for the next available day shift. Even though I could have taken a job elsewhere that started on a day shift, I would rather wait a few months in a facility I want to be at than be unhappy on days someplace else. The happiest new was that this floor does not take "dirty" patients (MRSA, VRE). Since the hospital I've been at had the only isolation room, we took them all and that meant if you had one, you got them all since I couldn't care for the immunosuppressed after caring for someone with a communicable infection. I start orientation on Monday, and I'll be on days for a month or so until I get the procedures at this hospital down, then back to nights. This hospital is on paper charting which I've never done, but are in the process of converting to computer charting so I'll have to learn both systems within a couple of weeks. After a three week vacation (pretty piss poor vacation that it's been with moving), I'm ready to get back to work.

Going Home

I don't think I've blogged for months. It may be that no one checks it any longer. I haven't looked or done anything much because we have been so busy moving. Yes, we are going home. Fort Worth in a week. I've also got a new email address that I'll get to changing here pronto. I'm so scared. I'm going to a new job, a house that I've never seen before in my life, and moving a million miles away from my son. On the other hand, this is home. We have our best friends, our godchildren, and will be much closer to our families. I'm holding my breath!

chugging along

I haven't been posting much because I'd put everybody to sleep. I haven't got a single interesting thought to share. I've been sick as a dog and dragging my sick, tired ass to work. The Ft. Worth train is still plugging along, and though we don't have official confirmation yet, it's pretty certain we're going. I'm too tired and feel too crappy to care. The only prayer I have right now is since I'm working my last of three straight nights tonight, PLEASE GOD, if you love me, don't let me get a shitter tonight. Five drug seekers on pain pumps sounds pretty good to me. No muss, no fuss, just push the button every 15m to half hour and go back to sleep. Won't happen, but a girl needs a dream.

Ease on down the road............

I'm pretty certain that my husband will be offered a job in Ft. Worth sometime in the coming week. FW is home to us, and we are very, very excited. I'm not going to assume everything, because there are conditions. Since it would be a lateral move, there is a good chance we'll have to pay for the move. We're going to ask for them to pay for it, but the chances are pretty slim. Though we do have some money in savings, moving expenses will be in the thousands of dollars, so there is no way we can buy a house as soon as we get there. We'll have to have staff housing in the short term. I'll have to find a job and get my license in TX. We are not a compact state, so it will take a bit. Though I'm exhausted, I love my job here and will be crushed to have to quit. Renting off the reservation is pretty much out of the question since I have six cats and three dogs. Even though all go to the bathroom in the appropriate places, it's hard to convince a landlord that their house will not be a wreck with this many pets. I've got tired head just thinking about everything, but we will go in a minute as long as there is a place to rest our heads at night. When I think about being in a place where we have decades long friends, godchildren, our long time church, TARGET STORES, Dillards, and Taco Bueno, my heart starts beating a little faster. We'll be 10 hours closer to the in-laws and five hours closer to my family. I need to get a grip, because without a staff house available, we are not going to go. It's really hard to be this close to my dream of going home and accepting that something may go wrong. This will also put me about six hours further from my son than I am now, so no quick trips to Nashville. I'm praying that the right thing happens, and will just go with what is best for my family. Hub is excited too, but he also likes it here, so if things aren't right, we'll just take the savings and buy a house here and settle in for the long haul. There is going to be a lot of anxiety in Casa Hoosier for the next couple of weeks.

A full house

The hospital I am working at is full. Bursting at the seams. Not an empty room. I don't know what's going on around here. Is everyone like this? We never have an open room. I could work overtime every night if I wanted to. We are so packed that even though I work on an oncology floor, half of our beds are taken with medical patients because there is no place else to put them. The hospital has set up an over flow area by taking over office space and converting the rooms to beds. Even so, patients will sit in the ER for hours waiting for someone to leave so that they can have a bed. We have patients who desperately need a monitored bed who are sitting on our floor being monitored from two floors below because they don't have room. We have chemo patients all over the hospital due to lack of room and we are having to run from floor to floor to infuse since those nurses are not trained to give it to them. We also have to run around to other floors to access ports since a lot of nurses aren't well trained on that either, and we deal with it all of the time. We all have five patients all the time. That may not seem like a lot to others, but these people are really sick and require a ton of care, and five is a lot. We run for twelve hours with barely enough time to shove some food in our mouths. A float said she didn't like working on our floor because it's too hard. There is another hospital in this town with half of their beds empty because the doctors and the hospital are having a problem with each other, so they'll no longer refer there. We are building floors that will double our size, but it won't be done for another year. The pace is killing everyone. I don't mind the medical patients so much, but the more experienced nurses do since they really only like the cancer/chemo patients, and they resent having to care for all of these medical problems. They didn't sign on for this and don't like it. I'm tired......

Living with multiple pets, a public service message

I'm tired of talking about all things nursing. I think I'll talk about pets. Specifically, how to keep your home reasonably clean with multiple pets in it. I have six cats and three dogs who all live indoors (obviously, the dogs go outside several times a day to do dog things). How does one keep a decently clean house? First and MOST IMPORTANT, clean-clean-clean litter boxes. I have four boxes and six cats. In order to not throw up due to smells (and we've all been in "cat" houses that made us want to run in horror), daily cleaning is a must. A dust buster upstairs and down keeps the litter from getting spread all over the house. I also have large rugs under each box to catch excess litter. Good premium quality food is a life saver insofar as smells are concerned. We feel our cats Eukanuba and their poop doesn't stink nearly as bad as cats who eat cheap food. It's totally worth the money. The dogs get Nutro Natural Herring. Small compact poop that we can pick up easily. We keep a diaper pail with a tight lid and pooper scooper in the back yard and treat our yard just like we do at the dog park. No dog likes to go to the bathroom in a yard that is covered in poop, so we clean it up as it comes out. We invest in high quality cat litter, use covered boxes, and clean each one every day. Next, a good quality vacuum. I have a Dyson pet hair vacuum. I use it every day. I have hardwood floors throughout the house, but have large room size rugs and they are hair magnets. One rug will fill the chamber with pet hair every single day. All of my dogs are double coated and they shed a lot. With kitties, it's a few hairs here and there and that collects at the baseboards. I run a broom around all of the baseboards throughout the house every day. I have faux sheepskin that goes over all the cushions of the upholstered furniture. The best pet hair remover for furniture is a good quality pet brush. It's got to be very thickly bristled, and if you'll run that over the furniture, it picks up massive amounts of hair. It makes sense since it's designed to brush excess hair off of the pets. My dogs also go to a professional groomer once a month. She can really thin out the undercoat and they never smell stinky. This sounds like a lot, but if you do it every day, it only takes about 15 minutes. We made a commitment to take care of these animals and I don't want to resent them for making my house a mess, nor do I want to wear hair on my clothes (those tape rollers are all over the house for the errant hair) or find dog hair in my food. If you have pets, I hope some of this helps. If not, you should. There is nothing like it, and unlike your children, they love you all of the time and don't talk back. I love my babies!

The living dead

Yep...my new name is zombie girl. Nights are killing me. I am having a really hard time sleeping enough during the day. I go to sleep quickly, but after 4-5 hours, I'm awake and can't go back to sleep. The curtains in my bedroom are not keeping the room dark enough and we have a ton of windows in there. I'm going to try a sleep mask and if that irritates me, I'll break down and buy new curtains even though I love the ones I have now. I don't feel tired at work since it's go, go, go but when I get home, I feel like I'm dragging my ass all over the place.

That said, I really love my job. I love the patients (some WAY more than others) and I feel lucky to be able to do it. One of the other nurses was saying that she always tells people to think twice before going to nursing school, and I told her she was doing something important and not everyone can do it and that she is a great nurse and if I were as good as she is, I'd be proud of myself every day. I've found that even the complainers are excellent nurses, and their patients get incredible care. I work with a group of very smart women. I guess a few years down the road, they forget how talented they really are. They've been really nice to me though, and I feel like I'm included in the group. That makes work great.

We're off to the Super Bowl party a friend is having. I'll be the only one supporting New England. I hope I don't get lynched when the Pats KICK THEIR ASS!!!!!!