Happy Thoughts

Here is a little self-important post.  Designed to make me think of things I like.

Some things I like that are not my major passions:

• Twizzler's candy
• Diet Coke
• Rich colors
• Tulips, Lilacs, Snow drops, Peonies
• Reading the newspaper in the morning, particularly the Sunday paper 
• Asparagus
• Massages
• Pedicures
• Shopping in second hand stores
• Learning new things
• Bowling
• Planting a vegetable garden
• Neat and organized (you'd never know this looking at my house)
• Napping
• New York City
• Jigsaw puzzles
• Beautiful potted plants and hanging baskets of flowers

I am having trouble coming up with things to write about, so I tried this list. I think it is good discipline to write even though I don't have a passionate subject. This exercise got my mind in motion.  Here are some potential topics...I hope I remember to look back here:

• My thoughts on Christ's passion and crucifixion
• What I think my role in this world may really be
• Music lessons
• What I worry about

Certainly there's more....but dinner is done baking, I must get on to practical things.

A Quiet Thoughtful Quilter

Ugh, I am waylaid with a bad cold. I don't feel like doing anything, except sewing and finishing up my last Blue Valley Quilter's Guild Newsletter. I went to work all of last week and I think it was a mistake - although I was strongly compelled not to let my team down (we are short-staffed these days), I was probably too much of an infection risk to be a good nurse. 

To my patients, I apologize. It was a bad idea. I sincerely hope I didn't transmit my cold to anyone.

I tried my best, obsessively washing my hands, minimizing my time in close proximity to patients and coworkers, constantly sucking on a lozenge to hold off the coughing. Additionally, I had an early day on Wednesday, and this week was my Saturday. I felt strongly urged to be there and pull my weight.

The result is that I have prolonged my cold/sinus infection/bronchitis for 2 weeks now. Lucky me. 

I'm calling in sick for tomorrow. I just can't do it all.

Vacation

Vacation is a good thing. I am back from a week at Walt Disney World in Orlando Florida and feel refreshed and energized, even though I managed to catch a cold with sinus infection while on vacation. Bleh. Fortunately, it wasn't too severe a cold and I had a good time in the sunshine, playing at the various parks and resorts.

This year, we stayed at the Wilderness Lodge resort. I love the Northwest woods themed decor, and while it is one of my favorites, it is not the most conveniently located.  It is near the Magic Kingdom park, my least favorite park - it is just too kid-themed for adults to enjoy for very long. The layout makes the park feel crowded.  We enjoyed a few rides, seeing some of the new attractions, and a veggie burger at Cosmic Ray's Starlight Lounge. 

My husband's parents joined us for part of the week. It was so nice to see them, and we had a great time showing them around our favorite playgrounds. As seasoned WDW travelers, we know how to optimize our time, we know which rides are worth the wait, where to eat, what shows to see, etc.  It tickles me that my 70+ year old in-laws still like to go on the rides - even Expedition Everest, a new roller coaster at the Animal Kingdom. They enjoyed Soarin' at Epcot, too. They were good sports and let us set the agenda; in fact, they never complained about being tired - however, with my illness, I moderated our pace through the parks, adding breaks from time to time. 

At Disney's Hollywood Studios, I got chosen to be one of the volunteer "extras" for the Indiana Jones stunt show. That was pretty exciting. Sure, I made a fool of myself to get chosen. Whatever. It worked, and I had fun. I've seen that show at least 10 times; being in it made it new all over again.

After my in-laws had left, we had a nice gourmet meal at Victoria and Albert's, the 5-diamond dining establishment at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort. I think this was the 3rd time we ate there. It's a Prix-fixe meal customized to your tastes. We pre-ordered vegetarian. Yum-o - truly elegant dining with all the flair and panache you ca muster. Everything was delicious, even down to dessert.  Three chocolates - a Tanzanian chocolate mousse with edible 24k gold leaf on top, Brazilian chocolate souffle with Godiva Creme Anglaise, and Peruvian chocolate ice cream on chocolate flake pastry. Well worth the calories. 

Fortunately, we avoided much of the sappiness of the parks.  Usually, that gets to me after a while - I appreciate the positive image it portrays, but I get fed up with the "dreams come true" mantra after a while. 

It was a nice break, and now I feel ready to dive back into real life. 

Two topics for today

Resolutions
My thank-you-note resolution is not going perfectly. I made it 5 weeks at one thank-you note per week - then, I stopped. I had written one to someone at work and brought it in for her. When I pulled it out of my bag, I saw I had spilled coffee all over the note. That's no good!

That discouraged me, and I haven't written since. Until today, that is. I wrote a note to the person who held the wine party and another note to a friend with whom I played a clarinet duet at a church service.

I have not given up on the resolution; it's still a good idea. One per week is the goal I hope to achieve...but if I miss a week, I will persevere anyway. Missing a week or two is no reason to give up entirely!

Work

I have had a struggle at work over the past two weeks. I have written in the past that at times I

feel abandoned at my job, that I feel unsupported and alone. Our unit recently had a policy change in the scope of work for the technicians. They are to concentrate on certain aspects of their jobs and leave many other tasks to other people.  The ubiquitous "other people" who take over these tasks are, ahem, me. I feel even more abandoned.

Our techs used to meet our patients at admitting and bring them up to the unit. No more. Patients come up by themselves now. 

Our techs used to take vital signs some of the time. No more. The nurse is responsible for all vital signs now. There is a technical reason why: techs don't have the ability to download the vitals from the monitors, directly into the electronic charting system. It's a pain in the butt (as well as error-prone) to copy it down on paper then log in and type it in. So, now they don't have to do it at all.  Nurses can do the download.

Our techs used to assist with transport of patients when they are discharged. No more. Now we call the hospital transport team to wheel the patients downstairs. This is fine, except that transport is not speedy.  It can take 30-40 minutes to get a transporter to the unit to pick up the patient. Meanwhile, the patient is sitting there twiddling his thumbs.  Oh, and guess who has to call the transport team? Yeah. It's me.

Our techs used to help out any nurse who needed the service of the techs. No more. We are assigned a tech for each patient now. That's the only one who is supposed to help for that patient. If your tech is busy with another patient, but another tech is sitting around doing nothing, you can't ask the other tech to help. You're on your own.

In my opinion, the first few changes are poor choices for superior customer service, but otherwise benign. The last one really bothers me, so much so, in fact, that I cried all the way on the drive home the first day I was faced with the changes. I felt abandoned again. I feel like the nurse is expected to help everyone at any time, but the techs do not have to. I feel like this places a division between techs and nurses. I feel like it is a poor choice for teamwork.

Now, I really "get" why people leave nursing. There is no one who supports me. I am responsible for making sure all the work gets done for the patient, from ordering lunch to drawing blood, to making sure the consults will get done. I am responsible for checking up on the doctors orders for patient safety (Silly doctor! Surely you didn't mean to order morphine for this patient who is allergic to it??!). I am responsible for the accuracy and completeness of all the data collected on the patient during my shift. I am responsible for making sure every order gets entered into the system correctly for the patient, particularly the medications. I am responsible for making sure the patient isn't in an abusive relationship and if she is, I need to arrange her help. I am responsible for moving the sleeper chair into the room so his wife can stay over night. Indeed, this is necessary. 

What "gets" me is that it's so hard to complain about any of these things. After all, each little task is "just one thing." Or "just a phone call." Yeah, but multiply it times 50 incidents times 3 to 5 patients a day, and that gets to be overwhelming.

Despite all of this, I still like my job.  This post is a way of blowing off steam, and I'm sure my descriptions above are biased. After all, I'm angry about the changes; I had a comfortable way of working, and now I need to develop a new way .  I wonder if I'll get as deeply exasperated with the nursing field as I did with software development, or if there will continue to be enough emotional goodies to feed my soul all the way to retirement.

The Wine Party

Last weekend I went to a wine tasting party at a friend's house. It was a delightful crowd in a beautiful house located in a hip part of town, I had a pretty good time, but I didn't know these people very well and they talked about subjects to which I could only marginally relate.

One such topic came up, and I have been thinking about it. Many of these professionals are on "Linked in," the business networking site, and they spoke with amazement as the tool helped them reconnect with old friends from grade school. How wonderful! "He knew all my friends, but I don't remember him exactly."

It was a fine story, but I just had to wonder - what makes you think I would actually want to connect with old "friends" from grade school? The few with whom I keep a connection via other means are really the only ones I want to keep up with. To me, the others don't matter.

Some people are very sentimental about their growing years and how happy it was, how secure it was, how free they were, etc. My growing years were fine, but they weren't idyllic and all of the delusion in the world won't change it. Most of the children with whom I was friends have moved on and forgotten me - or at least I wasn't important enough to keep up with. Perhaps staying in one place would have helped maintain those connections. I was not raised to stay in one place, and I did not.

The other topic they rehashed was their days at college. They all went to a big college in the midwest.

I hate when people do that. I think it's rude when your whole crowd is not from the same place, so my husband and I could not contribute. They don't know they're doing it, though, and I could have changed the subject.

Eh, enough complaints. I am blessed that I have friends who invite me to their social events. I am blessed that I have friends here. I enjoyed being in a group of people who are child-free. I didn't have to hear about whose kid was sick, whose kid is a math genius, whose kid is the next tennis star of the Olympics, etc.

The Fundraiser

Last night I participated in a fundraiser event for a women's heart disease screening and education program at the hospital where I work. A local theater is rented, people buy tickets, get little giveaways, and enjoy an entertaining program on heart health. The audience is mostly women, understandably, and they all show up in black or red outfits.

I was a volunteer. To get to volunteer, I had contacted the director of marketing for the event, and a colleague of mine had put me in touch with this marketing person. They did not put out a general invitation for volunteers, so the fact that I was included in the group was somewhat of a coup. Indeed, many of the other volunteers were managers and directors at the hospital and the cardiology office.

I keep showing up at these things. I keep getting seen by the "right" people. This is somewhat intentional, but honestly, I really wanted to hear the headline speaker, and I thought the event would be fun. Moreover, I am a cardiology nurse - I am interested in the topic.

The speaker was Dara Torres, the medalist American swimmer from the Beijing Olympics. I heard her entire talk, and although it was good, I was a little disappointed. The only reason was that she wasn't as polished a speaker as I would have liked. Her speaking style was a little tiresome to listen to; she spoke in very long sentences that were hard to keep up with, and she spoke fast. She had some interesting things to say, though, and she was quite funny.

I came to the conclusion that if I had met her in other circumstances, I don't think I'd befriend her. That's OK (and Dara, if you happen to read this, no offense. You probably wouldn't like me much, either). Nevertheless, she is still an inspiration, a shining star of the Olympics for me, because we are of similar age and I relate to the need to persist at something you simply love, despite society telling you it's time to give that childish thing up. So it is with me and music.

As part of my volunteer duties, I stood at the top of the stairs and directed the VIPs to their pre-event party. I had some time to think about things while standing there. I thought about these types of events, with VIPs giving extra money to a cause and getting extra little goodies: pictures with the star, a nice pashmina scarf/shawl, a pretty boxed gift (I didn't get to see what those were). These VIPs are my people. These are the people with whom I was raised, and I feel very comfortable among them.

I thought about this and I was thankful. It takes an astute parent to raise children to function in the upper middle class and I appreciated my parents for doing this. My parents were not themselves raised in the upper-middle class, yet through education and parents who wanted them to be better, they grew into those ranks.

You'd think I'd want to be a VIP. No, right now, I'm OK being of service to the VIP. By being of the same caliber as these people, I can serve them effectively. This makes me think I should become a private nurse to the wealthy. I think I could serve them very effectively. There is honor in such service.

Quilt-a-thon

Yesterday at quilt guild was our annual quilt a thon for charity. We spent several hours after the meeting working on quilts for the charitable organizations we support. Everyone brings their equipment, picks a project, and gets down to work. Some people do cutting, some do piecing, some do tying, some do binding, some do quilting - whatever suits their fancy. Meanwhile we chat, admire each other's work, have lunch, form alliances and friendships, and share tips and tricks.

I like to do the quilting. I picked a baby quilt "kit" that had a printed panel for a top, a cut piece of batting, and a solid yellow flannel back. No elaborate piecing here! I pinned the three layers together and started to stitch. This was machine quilting, by the way.

The printed panel for the top was just awful. It was a stiff cotton poly blend, probably more poly than cotton. It had a double wedding ring design printed on it and the "fabrics" in the design were in Playskool colors of yellow, red, blue and green, with designs of a baby theme from a different era: rattles, diaper pins, sailboats. When we ironed the top in preparation for quilting, the acrid scent of melting polyester wafted upward.

Can I make this into art?

As my quilting design, I decided to follow the lines of the double wedding ring design - no marking needed, an added benefit! In the centers of the design circles I drew large hearts and then free-motion quilted around them. Free motion loop-de-loop quilting filled in around each heart. More loop-de-loops filled in the background area, and straight line quilting defined the printed "borders." Because the backing was a solid color and the batting was thick, the quilting design stood out nicely on the back.

It became something nice! The quilting gave the flannel backing an interesting texture to complement its fuzzy softness. It would be something someone could snuggle up in.

I didn't quite finish the whole project in our alloted time. It needs a little more quilting and binding. I hope to finish it for the next meeting, then it can go to help someone.

That's why I do it. ...and it's fun.