begin the begin.

when you're absolute beginners
it's a panaromic view
from her majesty mt. zion
and the kingdom is for you.
-M. Ward "For Beginners"

I don't know if you've looked at a newspaper lately (because that might be something you'd have done in like, 1985, before the Internetz and all) but no matter what outdated mode of information you've been sourcing these days, you've probably read enough to realize that the Financial Situation Around These Here Parts Is Dire.

It's so dire, that even a little scutmonkey like myself is somewhat worried that I'm gonna show up to work one day, ready to code patients and wipe ass like nobody's business, and get a pink slip for my effort. And then I'm gonna be shit-out-of-luck like the thousands of Americans right now who are being summarily handed their walking papers.

And that is a chilling thought, indeed.

On the other hand, having recovered from Brink of Exhaustion Expo/My Own Private Night Shift Disorder Hell 2008, I'm feeling very lucky, and... dare I say it, happy.

Yeah, this Cardiothoracic ICU thing could totally come back to bite me in the professional ass. I mean, I remember how terrified I was of crashing trauma patients--what makes me think patients crashing in a cardiac unit is gonna be any less scary, pray tell?

Well, it's not gonna be any less terrifying, and I'm probably gonna go through the same, I-can't-believe-you-thought-this-was-gonna-be-cool soliloquy some blustery April morning, having spent a 12 hour shift keeping some unlucky soul from the brink of coding, or coding, or whatnot. I'll garner stares from curious passers-by as I publically document my own stupidity at having stayed in critical care, and not gone back to the known hinterlands of stepdown.

And I'm probably gonna feel like a crappy cardiothoracic nurse for awhile, just like I felt like a shitty trauma nurse, for just about the entire duration of my (admittedly short lived) career in that field.

So, what's the difference?

I think the difference is I really, really like cardiac as a speciality. Maybe not as much as I prize my sanity, and definitely not as much as a cherish a good night's sleep, but still, as specialities go... I'm all rainbows-and-unicorns-and-sunshine-up-your-ass about cardiac.

My hope is that this will translate to Pure Intensive Care Goodness.

And so, I "begin the begin." (After I sign my name to human resource documents in triplicate for five days, which is apparently what they mean by 'hospital orientation.')

possession

First things first. Observation: Now that I'm on a brief hiatus between jobs, I find that sleeping at night, like human beings were intended, puts a new spin on life.

For starters, I'm not nearly half the bitchy crank-pot I was working nights. It's amazing, not to be reduced to the emotional lability of a toddler when confronted with super human choices like, "Should I have peanut butter and honey, or peanut butter and jelly on my sprouted grain bread?" (Let alone, "Fuck, I have many life-saving decisions to triage rapidly as a critical care nurse at 2a.m. in the morning, which one of these life-saving skills is the priority at this particular moment?")

Ah yes. Sleeping at night. Awake during the day. It's such a simple joy to work within nature's own biorhythms. People who bitch about waking up at 5a.m. to work during the day (and I was/am one of them) should be forced to work nights for six months and re-evaluate how shitty waking up at 5 a.m. really is compared to having already been awake for ten hours at that point, and still having two more hours to go before the pleasure of death is ushered forth, or you get off-shift, whichever comes first.

I just can't tell you how much I needed to SLEEP AT NIGHT, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS COUNTING SHEEP AND WARM MILK AND COOKIES AND TRYPTOPHAN.

There is nothing like realizing instead of running around ragged saving other people's lives for twelve grueling, largely thankless and often smelly hours, you actually get to crawl into bed (clean and sans someone else's shit spores floating up your nostrils) and save your own soul from being torn to pieces from lack of sleep.

In any case, I was obliged after my Last Shift In Trauma (a shift which, incidentally, made me wonder, "Since when are teenage kids unsatisfied with snorting good old fashioned cocaine?!") to board two buses, and two planes--again, on no sleep!--arriving finally in Florida. At that point, I had been up a full twenty six hours, looked like something out of a freak show and still needed to drive 28 miles from the airport to my parents' house.

All without the benefit of a car I had reserved days before.

Sample conversation, confirming, should there ever be an inkling of a doubt in future times, that we indeed live and work on Planet Bizzarro, Amidst a Population of Total F-in' Dullard Douchebags:

JAMIE:
So, what you're saying is, you don't have a car, even though I made a reservation?

CLERK:
Yes.

JAMIE:
So. What was the point of making a reservation?

CLERK:
Well, we overbook. We don't have the car you want.
[with unconvincing note of fake concern]
We've got a minivan, though, or an SUV.

JAMIE:
[feeling the last strings of her already tenuously-threaded sanity snap]
Uh, no offense, but, I don't want an SUV or minivan, and it's clearly not what I reserved. Just so we're clear, you don't have the car I reserved, correct?

CLERK:
[as if it's just the most insane fucking thing she's heard since Britney went 'round the bend, these crazy-ass patrons reserving cars at a Car Rental Establishment and then expecting to have same at the ready, because, you know, they've reserved one!]
Nope. No car.

JAMIE:
[resisting the urge to turn around and look for "Candid Camera" host]
That's unforunate.

I then spent the next week or so dealing with a Sanford and Son-esque pile of my stuff I'd stored months prior to trekking out to Seattle. While fortuitous circumstances and some enterprising mice meant there was exponentially less bullshit directly pertaining to said venture, it was still a complete money hemorrhage (how much do you suppose half a ton of moldering theology books are worth to the general public, let alone ship across the continent to yourself, I ask you?) and general allergy inducing chore.

It also meant quality time bonding with The Paper Shredder, and questioning my own sanity for inexplicably saving five years worth of Act Now! Don't Wait! Credit Card Offers (my best guess is I was waiting for an opportunity to, you know, bond with a paper shredder).

Having dumped and shredded a ton of absolute crap, donated my massive furniture to a worthy cause, and shipped the remaining Questionably Useful Crap to Seattle, I feel a certain sense of peace. Finally, after wishing, numerous times, that I had my beloved copy of Wheelock's or Kant's Critique(s) at hand--I will (at the USPS's Media Mail shipping's mercy and reliability, of course) finally have My Most Valuable Crap, aka, A Bunch of Books and Yarn, here in Seattle.

If ever there were a milestone for "You have now officially moved your crap to Seattle," I guess this would be it.

If I can just get to the milestone that reads, "You never have to move your crap ever again, any where" I'd be set, but I suspect that particular milestone would be of the "free epithet with every fifth granite headstone purchased!" variety, unfortunately. (Or maybe fortunately. At least when you're dead, other people are forced to deal with your crap.)

the bladder scanner as postmodern metaphor

When I was staff at Hospital of Doom, we had this bladder scanner. And when I say "we had this bladder scanner," I mean we had one bladder scanner for 511 beds. That's right, folks. One.

It was old and I thought of it as a useless generator of random numbers from 0-900. Not only that, the sheer effort it took to locate where in the hospital the bladder scanner might currently be hanging out (never mind getting an order to use it in the first place) added such exponential layers of exquisitely soviet redundancy and bureaucracy to an already frustratingly pointless undertaking, that it was often easier to weasel one's way out of Bladder Scanner Limbo, pretend you did it, and just make up a number, without bothering to locate the damn machine in the first place.

Lately, I feel like that old, much-maligned bladder scanner--broken, overworked, and yet still shimmied and jostled endlessly from place to place, obliged to spit out useless information in a reliably imprecise and inaccurate way.

I'm so tired, and have been running on empty for so long, that I feel like the bladder scanner and I, metaphorically, are one: both symbolic and symptomatic of the American working class and their damnation to an eternal redundancy, inconsistency and arcane uselessness--hopelessly overworked, reliably ineffectual, consistently broken, and endlessly ridiculous.

plus ça change...

Because I am apparently a staunch proponent of self-torture, I moved, lock, stock and barrel o'monkeys, on New Year's Eve (and spent the two days prior to that packing up my place, having worked the holiday week).

It was an ironic mix of grim puritanical roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-the-job-done-sleep-and-sanity-be-damned on the one hand, and the blessings of friendship and kindness on the other. (Friends who help you move more than once every ten years? Amazing people! Ply them with lots of good wine and give them lots of hugs!)

Top New Year's Resolution? To NEVER MOVE. EVER AGAIN. (At least not this year.)

Put another way: If there were an Olympic Sport called Moving Way Too Much-- I WIN FIRST PLACE! I WIN THE GOLD MEDAL! Shoo-in! No contest!

Any way. There are still Issuez which are making me contemplate living as far away from urban claustrophobia as possible, which I can't really blog about as They Are Being Sorted Out Right Now and would bore readers silly any way--but at least my stuff is all in one place. For now.

Switching jobs (and facilities) made the move virtually a no-brainer, and the New Place feels like a luxurious palace in terms of space and light (windows! natural light! WINDOWS!) compared to my little shoebox of a studio in Belltown. The studio was wonderfully close to my old hospital (walking distance!) but so is my new apartment (relative to my new hospital)--and it's within half a block to trails, parks and quite a lot of other Stuff To Do. I am well-pleased.

There is also the wonder of a GAS FIREPLACE, which warms the place so efficiently it almost overwarms the place, and this is saying something, coming from The World's Most Perpetually Chilled Woman.

Of course, I am not allowed too much of a rest, and all this idyllic surveying of my domain would, in theory, at some point cause terminal boredom. My last week on the trauma ICU commences tomorrow, and I am chomping at the bit to git-her-done, have a couple weeks off, and start on the cardio-thoracic ICU.