time in a bottle

It was very nice indeed to have the week off. My activities, in loose chronological order, were as follows:

First was the Marathon Sleeping, which was greatly needed.
Then came the Lolling About, which was also not to be missed.

After that was a a smidge of Self-Indulgence, followed by various and asundry Epicurean Delights.

Now I am dreading Week O' Work (having more or less cycled back to being a Marginally Functional Human Being During Daylight Hours).

Am also, somewhat randomly, contemplating urban composting techniques, namely vermiculture/composting vs. Bokashi vs. the oxymoronic electronic composter.

The latter is shamelessly attractive in this Jetsons meets hippie love-child kind of way. (If you investigate the website, I will have you know I draw the line at composting Piper and Flip Flop's poo--at least as an indoor activity, although the Pet Friendly NatureMill assures me it is "ideal" for the waste products of "up to 2 large dogs, or 4 cats, rabbits, hamsters, snakes, ferrets, or other small animals," while cautioning me quite rightly, I think, that should equine poo-composting be for you, this is not the machine. I mean, thank goodness they made that clear. I'm also rather glad they added this helpful caveat: "Pet waste not recommended indoors."

I'm sorry. I can get down with worms hanging out under my kitchen sink happily and organically digesting yesterday's carrot tops--but I just can't see myself running home from a Piper-dog walk, all charged up about recycling his freshly-made turds.

Like, putting my dog's poo in a fancy, eco-friendly version of an compost-generating Easy Bake Oven is where I draw the line at crunchy granola, folks, sorry.

The vermiculture thing interests me from a "keep it fairly simple" perspective, and indeed, some of the information makes it seem like your average eight year old, with appropriate adult supervision, could keep one running. On the other hand--other websites I've perused in the last twelve hours makes me feel as if vermiculture is sort of composting's answer to gourmet baking--get one ingredient or variable out of wack, and you're doomed to micro-ecosystem failure. I mean, they have these Master Composters floating around, instructing people on the fine art of getting worms to do their stuff with your garbage. That's kind of hardcore and intimidating, in some ways. I mean, I'm new to this stuff, and I find out there's a league of Jedi Knight Mater Composters out there somewhere in Greater Seattle? Scary! And, I'm not sure I can be trusted, either, in my intermittently sleep deprived state, to keep up with the worm farm as I should.

The other option--Bokashi, basically works off the principal of pickling your waste--and has the added advantage that you can pickle not only fruits and veggies and paper, but alo meat and dairy products, a huge no-no in Old School Composting. It's got a self-contained, relatively small system, doesn't require the constant monitoring of a worm farm, and seems to keep the smell to a minimum. The drawback for someone living in an urban apartment or condo, is that one does not generally have a plot of land to then go and bury the results--which do not fully compost until that step is finished.

While I do have friends who would probably like the Bokashi almost-compost product, the problem is then getting it do them on a regular basis, as the system seems to cycle about every month or so.

And if my activities as of late (scouring the internet for interesting ways to help food rot!) aren't strange enough, I cooked this egg bake recipe this morning. I added potatos, a walla-walla onion and tomatos from Nancy's garden, and substituted sausage for bacon (and no, I don't have an alternate identity as a SAHM who cooks for her kids--I just happen to share my name with the owner of the blog.) It was spongy, and sort of like a poor man's quiche, but having never had the stuff before, I have no idea if I "did it right." I'm always vaguely suspicious of my cooking efforts, any way.

In fact, I'm very suspicious of just about anything I do these days that isn't involved with sleeping, or developing a plan to obtain still more sleep, as the neurons do not seem to be functioning optimally.

Be forewarned, folks, if I break out the crystals and a Dog Psychic in the next couple of weeks, please stage an intervention, STAT, okay?

psycho killer. qu'est-ce que c'est?

I figured out my life is basically about two things lately: terror, and trying to get enough sleep to survive the terror for one more shift.

Terror = work. As documented elsewhere, work is really scary. And, as fun and smart as the people who I work with are, they are also extremely intimidating. It's like working with the Green Berets of nurses, or the Marines. These nurses are hardcore, and if you're new, you're likely to be fodder for a lot of disdain, both explicitly expressed and implied.

It's hard to go from feeling competent and secure in your job skills to feeling like you just stepped off the S.S. Clueless (or onto it, or something). Plus, did I mention the terror of crashing patients, and the chilling numbness that descends after each death? While it doesn't happen every shift, it's happened enough in the last sixth months that I've sort of stopped counting how many deaths I've witnessed at work. It gets depressing, and the fact that you start shutting down over other people's untimely demise is, I think, probably not particularly healthy.

Plus--I'm no fan of trauma, as a speciality. No pun in tended--but my heart longs to get back to cardiac nursing.

Working day shift, ever elusive, might help some of the brain freeze I'm experiencing as well. As the weeks wear on, my sleeping pattern gets more and more erratic, and my waking hours--daylight or nocturnal--are infused with a sense of exhaustion which precludes any meaningful functionality, intellectually, and sometimes, emotionally. I feel drained and slightly low-grade unwell, constantly.

Night shift is fucking with me, in other words.

double your fun

Last night at work we had nearly two simultaneous codes going on--both crashing trauma OR patients who didn't make it.

The code I worked was the result of a fairly young guy chasing after his dog across a street and getting smacked by a car. Dubious silver lining: the dog is fine. I sternly informed Piper this morning that if he runs out in traffic somehow, dog, you's on yo' own.

The patient's tragedy did, however, remind me to change Piper's address-of-record on his microchip, and city dog license. When I called the microchip company, however, they were trying to sell me on paying for the microchip service, and making it seem like I needed to, because their old service was obsolete.

Smelling a rat, I steadfastly probed and poked holes into this story, and flatly refused to pay fifteen bucks a year for services I don't need. I pointed out I had paid to microchip the dog back in 2003, and I wasn't about to pay again for random "services" that are basically covered by his Seattle dog license and basic, "free" microchip non-annual fee.

I mean, the whole point of the microchip is that if your dog is found, sans collar, by a vet's office or a shelter, they can wave their magic microchip wand, contact the pet service, who will then call you. And any way, if some non-magic-microchip-wand owning person finds your collarless dog, they'd probably bring it to a shelter any way, right?

The guy pointed out if the dog was wearing his collar, with the microchip tag on it, that if someone found him cum collar, and called the Home Again number, that the company "would not be able to release any contact information" to that person.

Personally, I'm not convinced I'd want my contact information to be released to a stranger who might then come over and kill me and my little dog, too.

Plus, in a time of economic downturn, people get a little incensed when forced to pay for mysterious 'services' that defeat the entire purpose of having bought or invested good money a thing in the first place.

It sort of feels like having to buy and install digital cable in order to get any t.v. reception at all, doesn't it? Or having to install that box-thing (I'm very high-tech, you know, with my electronics jargon) and then pay more money per month to get the high-definition to work on your high-definition capable t.v.?

(Incidentally, what was wrong with regular old t.v.? Maybe I'm getting blind in my old age, but I don't really see much of a difference between HD t.v. and non-HD t.v. images unless you have a trillion-dollar t.v. set, and if you had a trillion-dollars to spent on a friggin' television, you'd probably be out buying other planets for sale in the universe or actually running your little Evil Empire off of the backs of the rest of us working slobs, not watching On the Record with Greta Van Susteren and counting her chin hairs.)

Any way, this is not to say I don't love Piper and wouldn't spend the money on him if I thought it was necessary. I mean, obviously, I thought it was necessary to microchip him because I love him (except perhaps not enough to want to take a car vs. ped accident for him).

In conclusion: I'm not a heartless cheap-ass who wouldn't care if Piper got lost, I just don't think it's necessary for me to lose a dog and get ripped off, is all I'm saying.

blue's clues

I'm really sad today.

Mom visited for six fun-filled days (okay, some days were filled with multiple trips to home improvement stores and painting 8 hours a day) and left yesterday, which always leaves me feeling a little verklempt, especially since she lives on the opposite side of the continent, a fact she keeps pointing out all "hint hint, move back, my offspring" sort of way.

Plus, mousie was put to sleep today, and I am still rather ridiculously weepy about this, considering my entire repertoire of interactions with her over the span of her two years on the planet was chasing her out around and scooping her out of tank with a cardboard tube on Cage Cleaning Day, as she detested and feared being handled at all.

And, I don't think it helps I'm going back to work today. We moved to the Shiny Brand New Unit while I was off , feverishly comparing paint samples and swaths of fabric as if I'd entered some Designing With The Stars contest. This means while I got to escape the Yuck Factor of the merge, I now have to go in and try to find where they put the twomey syringes and 2X2 gauzes and stuff that's not likely to be where it was before, considering we're in a new building.

Since we merged with another unit, I'm also going to have to figure out More People, And Who They Are And Of What Use They Are To Me.

So, what little comfort zone I'd eked out on SICU has been ripped away, and I'm feeling very much wrong-footed and whiny about the whole thing, as in, "Why can't everything just stay the same for like five minutes, so I don't have to keep taking notes on where to find the staff bathroom or where we keep the linen cart, for Chrissake?!"

Plus, I still fear work, especially after a comfy stretch of days off, hanging out at home painting my apartment with mom and feeling all happy not to be at work being scared shitless by some crumping patient or other.

I also really haven't slept at all properly the entire week, and didn't get in any marathon sleeping ventures prior to this start of the work week (the weekend, for me) due to Mouse Crisis 2008. So, I'm tired and was tempted to call out and sleep, but then wussed out, as I felt it would be difficult to justify a call-out related to mouse grief later on in say, winter, when I'm hacking up a spare lung during a real illness.

Maybe it's better I have to go to work and be forced to interact with people today, however, since I'm kind of morose and depressed about having to put the mouse to sleep, etc.

Oh well. There's always time for sleep. Tomorrow.

mostly martha

There is tons new to tell you. Tons, I say.

But, this post will be brief and, as the title suggests, mostly about Martha, my late pet mousie.

She was blonde, svelte and a bit bitchy at times, and her two favorite subjects in life were food and nesting--so I named her after that Maven of Most Meticulous Homemaking, Evah, Martha Stewart. But, I called her Martha for short (and sometimes, perhaps uncharitably in light of her recent passing, "the Fat One").

She lived a good old life, eating roughly twice her body mass in cheerios and Life cereal per day, and creating all sorts of Interesting Nesting Textiles with various bits of kleenex and fluff. In fact, if she would have had opposable thumbs on her paws, and itty-bitty knitting needles, she would have probably out-home-afghaned even yours truly.

Unfortunately, due to some Moste Mysterious Mouse Malady, Miss Martha ended up turning her meticulous attention to detail upon herself, and was grooming herself into nonexistence.

Not a pretty thing to watch, so I chose to let her go quietly, into that great mouse house in the sky, with the aid of some very nice ladies down at the veterinarian's office (not to mention a happy overdose of anesthetic gas and a liberal dose of phenobarbital).

Goodbye Miss Martha, we will miss you and I will always think fondly of your determination to make a tuft of kleenex and a roll of cardboard tubing a proper mouse residence, not to mention your amazing ability to eat your entire weight worth of whatever oat-based cereal was on hand at the time.

day is the new night

I am consumed by this ridiculous schedule, and it is bunging up everything from getting a proper night's rest to even eating. Now my body has lost all sense of when it's time to eat, as opposed to sleep. For example, it is 6 a.m. right now. In The Normal Universe, I'd still be sleeping, this being my day off. But, in Parallel Hell Universe, I wake up early in the a.m., hungry and unable to go back to sleep. Not to mention my stomach is pissed off about the random eating changes, too, and has gone on "I'll make your life miserable if you do try to eat, my pretty" strike.

Likewise, most of my days off are being sucked away by a tiredness or outright exhaustion that precludes doing anything meaningful and/or creative, but I try, and end up stumbling around, feeling annoyed that I have have to break every rule of sleep hygiene and common health sense in order to make money at work. For about one hundred dollars extra per week, they can keep their fucking night shift is all I have to say about this crap.

I'm getting more and more annoyed as the weeks wear on, not the least of which that I'm missing out not only on the last sun and warmth of the season (which means I forfeit the last of summer, essentially, and therefore it'll be a year before I see sunlight again) but that I'm destroying the delicate internal workings which are mine own circadian rhythm.

God, I really hope I don't have to stay on nights for a really long time, because I think I'm going to go insane from not ever sleeping properly. How do people live all tired and cranky like this for years at a time? This overwhelming sense of bitterness at having had my life go from "pretty much regulated the way I wanted it" to this "I dunno, I guess I'll be compelled to sleep sixteen hours a day and still feel tired" crap-o-la is making me nuts.

I need an easier job, with banker's hours.

I am getting in the odd outing here and there, however. Kitschy Seafair/Torchlight Parade on Saturday, dinner in the International District and then a visit to Community Hospital to visit my friend (who works in the hospital and not a patient) on Sunday, and fun (if dusty and slightly overwhelming) Magnuson Park outting with Mister Piper and his new friend, Taylor's Mochi, followed by Intensive Bath Therapy for both Piper and Jamie.

Now Mister Piper is thinking quite a lot of himself, and designating all sorts of Self-Selected As Piper Appropriate places to sleep and lounge, like the bed and couch. These are not, however, Jamie Approved so we have been having a bullshit battle of the wills at present, with Piper generally winning out as I haven't the strength or consistency to really be a stickler for making him move unless I want the spot.

tired of being tired

When I said last post that night shift was the least of my problems, I probably didn't really mean that.

What I meant was, "It's a big problem, but not as big a problem as being dead (like my patient.)"

I'm trying to experiment with Ways of Dealing, like Sleeping When I'm Tired (difficult, because I'm always tired) and Pretending Night Shift Is Like A Form of Camp (yeah, like Camp Sleep Torture).

I think I feel today like I'm tapping on my reserves. Whereas the first week I couldn't sleep during the day (and ended up exhausted) my problem now is that I can't cycle back to sleeping during the nights on my days off, or do so inefficiently. I haven't slept decently in three weeks! I'm tired all the time and have to resort to exclamation marks to spice up my writing, because I can no longer think properly!

Now I sleep during the day, the evening, everything but at night when I'm supposed to, like the good God-fearing woman that I am. Instead, I wake up from my "night time" nap, if I'm lucky, thinking, "My God, what is this unnaturalness?!"

Or I come home from work to this pleasant permutation: sleep, get up, force myself to mingle with the Living for a few hours, then come back home, and wonder what to do with myself until 3a.m., or sometimes 7a.m., when I am finally at that brink of exhaustion which means I must sleep the entire rest of the day away.

When I finally get up and walk the dog, I envy the normal people with their normal schedules, who are all going home now, because it is 5p.m., and that's what people are supposed to do. I have a feeling this Work Shift Envy is going to multiply exponentially as the months go by, until I'm finally caught outside someone's ground level condo window, gazing in rapturously at those lucky people watching the evening news and eating dinner and getting ready for bed at 8p.m., rather than just waking up for a greuling 12 hour overnight shift.

Meanwhile, my internal clock, which was never quite programmed right for healthy sleep any way, is screeching all sorts of alarms like, "This is bad for you! BAD!"

I can tell I'm starting to lose functionality when I am awake, too. I'm clumsier, and my capacity to think quickly (which, you know, is a charming feature in critical care hospital work) is dulled. Mostly, I'm jonesing for a good night's sleep, or at least not try to program myself to be awake when I'm supposed to be sleeping, which is exactly what night shift does to a person.

Add forcing yourself to be awake all night to a neurosis about trying to get to sleep, and watch me progress into the same cranky, constantly sleep deprived wretch I was during the last assignment.

Because yeah, while sleeping during the day seems to be coming slightly easier than it did last time (in large part due to the Pharmaceutical Wonders Available In Our Modern Era), I can't pretend that it's not been three weeks since the last time I slept in an initial stretch longer than four hours, and did not wake up every hour or more from that period on, confused, wondering if it was still today, or did I sleep through both tomorrow and today, which is now actually yesterday?

How do people on submarines survive without killing each other, I wonder?

And all for what? Two hundred dollars more per paycheck? My next paycheck looks sweet, due to weekend and nights premium (and a holiday, too!) until you rip away the taxes, insurance, and all kinds of Working For the Man goodies, and then you just want to boycott working ever again, especially when rent sucks up most of one of your paychecks.

I must also add: I don't think being sleep deprived, on top of being new, is good for my patients. The nature of my job forces me to be quick-thinking and acting, and how can I do that if I'm not sleeping properly?!

I'm talking (writing) myself into tiredness, here, and I have two more shifts to go this week. (It also sucks that they scheduled me three on, two off, three on. My saving grace is that I then have a long stretch of days off afterward, but I must say, these next two days are going to kick my poor little sleep deprived ass.)

crash course.

For the record: the least of my problems is adjusting to night shift.

Sure, I don't really sleep as well during the day, but I also really never slept well at night, so things run about even. I now don't really sleep at night, but somehow, I'm finding this less problematic than last time I worked nights.

My first night off of orientation we had a patient come up from the OR basically dead, with a pH of 6.88 (incompatible with life, to say the least) an INR of 10 and blue and mottled. He'd already been coded four to five times in the OR and why they brought him up to be worked over some more was anybody's guess.

By the time we were done, there was blood on the bed, splattered on the floor and cabinets two feet away, and over our scrubs and shoes. Blood oozed out his abdomen as I did compressions. I've personally never been in a code that bloody before, but ICU veterans assure me that's not the bloodiest they've ever seen it.

Into the same bed, I admitted a cantankerous guy later on that shift, who was walking and talking (although quite ill) on admission but by that same time the next night was also for all intensive purposes, dead.

When I took him back the second night, I predicted the biggest thing all night I'd have to do is get him intubated, and after that, he'd be ever so much easier to manage. Of course he had the potential to tank, but even the most stable-seeming patient in the ICU can crash. I didn't think he was ultimately going to make it, but I did think intubation was going to give us some more time to figure out palliative treatment.

He wasn't so lucky.

By 11:30p.m. that night, he was mottled, purple, clamped down, intubated and his pH was in the toilet, along with his blood pressure and heart rate. And no one--not the MICU team, not the surgical chief resident, not the cardiology fellow, could figure out why he had dumped so badly, nor what the acute cause could be.

We spent the rest of my shift barely keeping him from coding, throwing lines in and bolusing him and almost maxing out his pressors. By the 0600 last-ditch-diagnostic emergency run to the CT scan, he was and had been so unstable I insisted the resident come down to CT with me (I'd already been down to OR for an emergent induction intubation earlier that night) because I was almost certain he was going to code and was surprised he hadn't yet.

At 0730 that morning, I was calling his elderly, frail mother to tell her she needed to come in and prepare herself because her son wasn't going to make it.

I left at 0745, having helped day shift set up for the code we knew was coming, and about fifteen minutes later, as I was on the bus riding home, thinking about that horrible phone call, he coded.

I was scared shitless the entire night, but eventually, I had to turn down that part of my brain that was insisting, "Run away! Run far, far away!" and get the job done. The charge nurse's patient started to crash, too, so after about midnight, I was essentially on my own, in a room full of docs unable to figure out why the patient had tanked so quickly.

At some point that night I realized based on his clinical picture, that he was eventually going to die, no matter what we did. It didn't make it any less scary or surreal, but it gave me an ironic determination and calm born of futility. When you're back is up against a wall and you have no choice, you can surprise even yourself at what you can do in a shitty situation.

Of course, there is no consolation prize for working to save someone's life when that goal is impossible. You feel like shit the next day. After all, I'd admitted this guy and developed a rapport with him. He was talking to me at the beginning of my shift, and by the end of it, he was almost dead. But, you also realize you can only do the best you can do, and some patients are so sick they are going to die whether they are in the hospital critical care unit or not.

I think the scariest thing for me was that I'd never had to manage a crashing patient without help. You can have all the orientation in the world, and nothing is quite like that moment when you're on your own, and your skills and quick thinking and ability to remain calm are the only things between what is often in an ICU not the patient's life or death, but "dying now or dying later."

It's a strange rite-of-passage ICU nurses go through, but the old cliche is quite true: there is only one way out, and that is through to the bitter end.

"seat belts save lives." discuss.

So, last night I took care of a patient who'd been ejected from a car and thrown down an embankment of some sort.

The day before, I'd taken care of a nearly-dead patient who unfortunately still had one, last primitive reflex left, and therefore was not a candidate for brain-death organ donation. (In actual fact, I took care of the multitudes of family, who were grieving).

By the time I got to ejected-from-car-thrown-down-an-embankment patient, I was exhausted, mentally and physically, as the day before that I had two tasky, but stable patients with Lots of Concerned Family. Also, I hadn't sleep properly for a couple of days, and could barely remember what the date was myself. Unfortunately, by day thr, I really had nothing left for this patient's family, who were also traumatized.

Sometimes, I wish I had a bit more character and could make myself give more than I have, emotionally, but last night I was so tired I couldn't mold my facial muscles into anything that resembled an expression of benign concern. By 5 a.m., I was so exhausted that whenever I had to go into the room and the family was there, I just looked elsewhere and pretended they didn't exist, because I was literally too tired to talk to anybody, much less get into an emotionally draining, "There, there, it's okay to cry," bit.

Somebody asked me how he was doing--as if there'd been any changes in the last fifteen minutes--and I snapped, "Fine." It must have come off pretty brusque, because I wasn't asked again, but at that point, I'd already had half a dozen conversations with the family About How The Patient Is Doing, I was frazzled to the point of not being able to think clearly, and I just wanted to go in my patient's room, undisturbed and do the patient care for which I am paid.

Of course, I could have been less of a bitch about my response, but I was cranky and functioning way, way beyond my usual hours-of-sleep-to-hours-worked tolerance ratio. And, really, with the dawn of this patient-family-centered care crap, we're supposed to allow families to be at the bedside pretty much whenever they damn well please, and sometimes, I just figure, while I'm working, and I can't be expected to spend all my time coddling the family who chooses to be there, pretty much in my way, when, you know, my job and primary responsibility is to the patient.

I usually adjust my attitude to fit the circumstances--for example, with a patient who's dying and we're withdrawing care from, I allow family to be near the patient even if it impedes me "caring" for the patient, because I personally feel it's more important for the family to be near the patient than it is me.

But, you know, when a family spends pretty much the whole frickin' night at the bedside of an intubated, sedated patient who can't talk to them any way (and then wakes them up after you've just gotten them all nice and sedated and pain controlled and, in doing so, makes a full-spine precaution patient twist his neck around in his C-collar, despite you having patiently explained to the family just minutes prior about how that's not good thing to do) it starts to piss you off a little bit.

You feel like a mother who has just spent twelve hours washing and waxing her floors, only to have kids and pets come running in fresh from a mud-puddle fest five seconds later.

Oh, and another note: while I think in general, I won't be ditching my seat belt any time soon, the admission we got last night was wearing her seat belt, and although I won't post any identifying details here (really, too gruesome) I have to tell you, my faith in mechanical restraints has dropped to an all time low.

I was also thinking, "Damn! If my seat belt saved my life in that collision, I'd be pissed!"

do androids dream of electric sleep?

I made it through three night shifts, although, just barely.

By the third night on about four hours of non-restorative sleep, I was so exhausted I couldn't understand English, which is my first and only language, for God's sake:

CT Tech:
[incomprehensible mumble]

JAMIE:
[grumpy, clueless silence, imagining self tucked away in bed, as it's 1:30a.m.]

CT tech:
[louder, incomprehensible mumble]

JAMIE:
[still orbiting Planet Clueless]
Sorry, huh?

CT tech:
[same incomprensible mumble]

JAMIE:
[wishing she was in bed, asleep, and not looking like a deaf, demented person who clearly shouldn't be licensed to provide health care services to others in need]
WHAT?

CT tech:
[completely annoyed]
Never mind.

I don't think I've ever been so tired I couldn't understand my own frickin' language, when spoken to me by an equally native speaker, but that's how tired I was.

I mean, in my favor, her head was turned the other way, facing the scanner, but I doubt lip reading would have helped me any way at that point.

I was okay the first night, but after two days of complete shit for sleep (eg fall into bed, exhausted, only to wake up, even more exhausted, at 1:30p and not be able to gt back to sleep) I was feeling both murderous and completely foggy at the same time--a bonus, as surely it's more difficult to pull off homicide when one is too uncoordinated to do much more than stare blankly into space for long periods of time.

Plus, the first night, I hadn't been able to nap before my shift, so by the time I got off shift the following morning, I'd been up for nearly twenty four hours straight, and certainly had been up that long by the time I went to bed.

Today, I toppled into bed in the middle of writing an e-mail. When I got up, I realized I'd also inexplicably popped some popcorn, which was left in the microwave, bag and all. I only have a vague memory of popping the popcorn, and am certainly glad I didn't decide to bake a cake and fall asleep with my head in the oven, or decide to use the toaster in the shower, to save time in both eating and daily hygiene routines.

I'm beginning to think those "sleep-walking" murder trial defenses aren't so hokey after all.

g'night.

With much trepidation, I start night shift tonight.

With even more trepidation, I'm off orientation next week.

The latter is enough to give me pause, because despite having been at this ICU gig since February, I really don't feel like I'm ready to be doing this on my own. I mean sure, on a good unit, you have your peeps, your back up, your whatever... but I just don't know if I'm ready. It doesn't feel like it's been five months, and sure, I've learned some skilz and stuff, but how can they just let me off on my own like this?!

Wailing and gnashing of teeth does nothing to persuade people I'm Not Ready And Need More Time, however. Again, it's sink-or-swim time. I remember being a new grad, fresh off of orientation, and going to work actually was scary. While My First Nursing Job (tm) was legitimately frightening, there's also that spankin' new green feeling I have to deal with again, and it feels almost precisely like being a new grad. Except there's even more pressure, because I've been a nurse, and I'm supposed to magically know this stuff.

I do admit it is somewhat less difficult now to be The New One than it was really being The New One back in February. (Especially since no one's really thought of me as the new one for months, and people kept asking, "When are you off orientation? Why aren't you off orientation yet?!" and I kept having to explain how I was new to ICU nursing, and then they'd look at me puzzled and say, "Oh, but you know this stuff. Why aren't you off orientation?")

I wasn't sure how to feel about that. Like, did people think, "What the hell is her problem? Is she like, the Special Needs Orientee From a TRY-CU, who clearly isn't up to our world-class standards of bad-ass ICU nursing and needs the Remedial Orientation Version 2.1?" Or were people trying to give me a compliment, as in, "Wow, you're an awesome nurse. What's the bureaucratic glitch holding you up from being One Of Us?"

I certainly don't feel like an awesome nurse. I feel like a brand new grad, right off of orientation, who thinks these people are crazy for letting me practice nursing without a preceptor. I feel like I should be on at least two more months of orientation, or should be allowed to go back to stepdown, where I clearly worried way too much over patients who were stable.

I'd be great at stepdown now. I mean, seriously, what's the worst that can happen? You get an unstable patient you have to manage until they go to the ICU? Big deal.

It's much different now. While every once in a while we do a lateral transfer in an ICU, it's usually to get a much sicker patient instead of the stable ones.

Any way, back to this "Am I ready or not to be off orientation?" internal debate. After about three months or so, my main preceptor kept saying, "Why aren't you off orientation yet?!"

Well, first of all, no seasoned nurse worth her salt is gonna pass up the opportunity to have another nurse ready to back her up if she needs help--I don't care if I was working the floor, I'd still grab the chance to have a "preceptor" for weeks and weeks if I could.

I mean, yeah, the last couple of months have pretty much been me, taking assignments more or less by myself and having my preceptor act as back up/resource when I needed her. And it was a great set up. I loved it. Some days were better than others, of course, but on the whole, I knew one of the reasons I stopped getting so stressed out about work all the time was because I knew I could never get into a situation where I'd be pushed to the brink of fatigue, anxiety, or cluelessness and not have someone help me.

That's where a large part of the burn-out comes from in nursing, any way--feeling (and in some cases having) to do everything all by yourself. I've worked a few of those kind of nursing jobs--and they are brutal pyschological torture at best.

In fact, I think this is how the floors should run: more seasoned nurses acting as back up to the younger ones who need to learn this stuff.

People keep telling me I'm ready to be off orientation, but I think I should feel more ready to be off orientation.

However, like going to nights, I don't have much of a choice. I have to learn how to cope. That, and maybe figure out who I can sleep with to get to the head-of-the-list to go to day shift.

Just kidding.

belltown

So, what of it if I have moved three times in about about 14 months?

WHAT OF IT I SAY!

Last week, between being Death Shepherdess and Semi-Death Shepherdess (note to self: ending argument with one's significant other by jumping out of car is only reasonable if said car is not moving, as opposed to going forty miles an hour on asphalt) I found a new place to live.

Glossing over for the time being why I found a new place to live, I must say I felt rather like one of those poor saps on HGTV's House Hunters. Will Jamie take scary ghetto apartment with high risk for break-in and become Seattle's next victim of violent crime? Will she take the shoebox in a beautiful building that says "I can't really afford to live here?" Or, the one with the great layout, quiet building, but pathetic, pixie parking spots?

What I quickly realized is that staying within my price point (roughly $700/mo) was going to leave me options that I might have dealt with in college or grad school in order to save money, but wouldn't now. I was gonna have to pony up a large amount of my working wage, something I was not prepared to do. However, as I am a huge homebody, it seemed very silly to rent a place in which I was going to be totally miserable until some psycho stalker came and put me out of my misery.

In fact, studio I lived in whilst attending Divinity School was a big studio, and, had the building been completely up to code (which I maintain it patently wasn't) and had a few extra renovations (bathrooms and kitchens entirely gutted, for one) I think they could have commanded much higher prices. As it was, with the "scrubbed away porcelain" charm of the tub and single kitchen sink with no garbage disposal, it was still a deal for $450/mo, as I could walk to class, and not bother with my car.

However, now that I am Gainfully Employed and aware of exactly how many stupid and scary people exist in the world, I want a place that is quiet, up-to-code, and after years of lugging my laundry into foul, smell, and rather scary basements, only to have the whole mess unceremoniously dumped onto the dirty floor or dusty tables if I didn't get there before Fellow Tenant Did, I have long since decided having washer/dryer in the unit is one thing I can't live without (3 years and counting, in-unit washer and dryer proud!)

I mean, I saw one of those condo conversion places charging $1300/mo rent for a one bedroom apartment without an in-unit laundry. There was a shared set down at the end of the hallway, but I'm sorry, what kind of person pays over $350,000 for a 700 sq foot piece of property on which you aren't even able to wash and dry your own clothing?

Probably the same crazy people who bought condos in the building I'm living in now, with the parking spaces which would barely be adequate if you drove one of those toy Matchbox cars, let alone a full sized vehicle.

I admit it, I had to compromise when it came to this place. I didn't get the furnished apartment (ergo, I'm sleeping on an air mattress. And also sitting on an air mattress. And eating on an air mattress, as I haven't a shred of furniture besides a glass sofa table David donated to the cause). But, the furnished apartment (in the same building) came at a price, too: apparently, the guy who lives above the apartment likes to dribble a basketball at random hours of the day and night. For hours. And, the all-in-one-washer-dryer doesn't exactly dry your clothes, and I don't have an airing cupboard (do they have those in America? I feel this is a strictly British term). Also: no balcony.

Granted, in Seattle, you need a balcony to enjoy the beautiful warm weather about as much as you need a swimsuit to bathe in Elliot Bay in December. It's damned chilly most of the time. However, psychologically, living in a 400sq ft space with one window might feel slightly depressing at times, and I hesitated, feeling I might do better in a unit with at least a faux-sense of connection to the (urban) out-of-doors.

So, I passed over The Furnished Place.

A few days later, I looked at my place, which is in the same building, but is slightly larger, has a "sleeping nook" for the bed, and California closets (in the bed "closet"). It also has a sliding glass door that leads out onto a common patio which I feel has "O Come, All Ye Stalkers" written all over it, even if it isn't on the ground level floor.

I'm in the corner of the patio, where NO LIGHT SHALL PENETRATE, but seeing as this is Seattle, I think that hardly matters.

One of my thoughts is to paint a wall in the living room a tasteful robin's egg blue (and then accessorize with chocolate colored accents) to mimic THE BLUE SKY I CRAVE DURING FALL WINTER AND SPRING WHICH HERALDS DEATH TO ALL COLORS GREAT AND SMALL.

Other bonuses of the place: a dishwasher (the house did not have a dishwasher, which I learned to deal with, but dishwashers are really nice for people who procrastinate, like me).

The location is much better than the previous place, which was residential, and not very walkable. I've lived in far scarier places (downtown New Haven comes to mind) but being able to walk to shopping, downtown, and even just going 'round the corner to the oh-so-Seattle coffee shop will be a nice change. Also, it's within walking distance to a bus that will take me practically to Work's doorstep in one fell swoop, therefore obviating the need to drive all the time. (Work is also now much, much, MUCH closer!) I am glad of this "I don't have to drive" bit, because the parking situation here is really enough to give me fits.

Granted, Belltown has a grittier feel to it than its urban sophisticates would like to believe, but it's not quit as gritty and grungy as Capitol Hill (I saw a really gorgeous apartment there, but I thought the unsecured walk out to the nearby secured parking lot might do me in one night.)

I've been here a whole afternoon, and people seem friendly enough. The women here sort of ignore each other, but the guys say hello and seem like the Seattle Guy With a Bike type, not the Microsoft Corporate Spaz type. Yesterday, two women had a strange elevator conversation in which they both tried to subtly brag about owning their places as "pied-a-terres" rather than primary residences.

I could barely surpress my gag reflex, and hope for the most part, ironically, that's true: means less folks around during the weekday. I'm guessing not all of the units are bought or occupied, as it seems unnaturally quiet. Or, it could just be good building construction, unlike in Florida, where I could hear pop music through the vents every morning.

I can't complain. After all, THE MONORAIL flits by the building, and the Space Needle is blocks a way. Sure, I can't see either of these Seattle treasures from my own window (I can see right into my neighbor's living room if they decide to open the vertical blinds, however!), but I KNOW THEY ARE THERE. Such reassurance!

little black ache

Every once in awhile I get this idea of how my ideal Fantasy Life would go in, you know, Fantasy Land.

It pretty much goes like this: I would be able to go to work and not pull my back all the time, I'd be able to eat a full meal and not get an upset stomach or other GI upset, and I'd be able to fall asleep within fifteen minutes of my head hitting my pillow at night.

Plus, when I went to the doctor because I couldn't do one or some of those things, that doctor would actually be the doctor I made an appointment with, not I Just Got Out Of Residency Five Days Ago McSmarty Pants MD, and then that doctor would docilely just prescribe what I need, not make useless little patronizing speeches about sleep hygiene.

I mean, "If you can't get used to night shift, you'll probably have to find another job," is not helpful when probably 90% of the hospital nursing jobs are night shift, especially if you have to start all over and find another job because your first night shift job was killing you.

I was almost sorry I brought up the fact that my back has been hurting for two weeks straight. I can't sit or lie down without LOTS OF PAIN, and it is sort of starting to wear on my temper just a wee bit.

Apparently, even though it is my job to control my patient's pain, when it's my turn to be the patient, I'm just supposed to suffer in silence.

Well, maybe not in complete silence, but wholly unmedicated, any way.

I guess that doc was right in a way, though, I could potentially solve all my problems if I just got the hell away from bedside nursing.

why I heart hearts.

As if to mock me, the poor soul being damned to night shift (because I'm sure the weather personally cares) it's turned summer 'round these parts, replete with the loud various landscaping power tools and ubiquitous siren song which is the hallmark of the drunken and disorderly.

The beds at work are crammed full of summer's first blush of warm-weather-related traumas. In fact, Work refers to summer as "trauma season." And, one supposes they might as well, as how else does one differentiate summer from any other season around here, other than the sun comes out, people mistake it for Armageddon, and immediately commence shooting and stabbing each other.

I'm also convinced that Seattlites mistake "sunny" for "hot," as they are well-acquainted to neither. Yesterday, everyone I knew at work complained of it being "hot"--including visitors--yet when I was finally released from Haus of Payne (or Chateau de la Pain-in-the-Ass, alternately) I found it only mildly warm, and nothing I would change into hot pants and a tube top for, even if I were going for the Slutty Seventies look.

In any case, after working three-days-in-a-row (my most dreaded schedule, as there can be no pain like the pain of knowing you've just gone through some of the worst work-crap of your life, and yet somehow, you're still not allowed to go home) I have some observations and pithy trite sounding maxims.

Maxim #1: Even if you're feeling lots of annoyance and bitterness at say, Piper (value neutral as I can get, right?) always say good bye to Piper and at least have something marginally friendly to say before you leave, even if he gives you a mildly puzzled look which conveys he's utterly nonplussed at your solicitous overtures. Sure, he might have left you feeling a bit cold the night before when he snubbed you for the couch, a six pack of milk bones and Bad Bitches of Animal Planet Gone Wild, or some such, but god forbid you come home and find him "down for an unknown length of time" which is medical-jargon for "you're fucked."

I'm not saying I always practice this maxim, because in a lot of cases, I don't. Have I bothered to reach out to family or friends who have taken the high road and left for greener pastures? No. So one day, this maxim is bound to hamstring me with deep guilt and shame at my own hypocrisy.

But, I did just that yesterday before leaving yesterday, and was glad I had, because the first five hours of my shift was spent withdrawing care on a patient who had suffered a devastating injury only the night before, and watching his partner grieve openly at the bedside while his loved one died right in front of him.

Observation:

Every time I have to take care of a brain dead patient or dying patient or what not, I totally lose my appetite.

It's not because of the dead part. Really, at that point, the patient isn't feeling any pain. It's about the grief and suffering I witness from the family's end.

It's like taking a detour to hell for a few hours.

Even more jarring: half an hour later, you're admitting a new, living patient into the same bed and taking care of a whole new set of issues and family who expect you to give a damn.

And you're just supposed to process all of that, because It's Your Job, and you'll be branded as a wuss if you can't take it.

I have a weird job, really.

Observation:

I think I decided a long time ago I trauma really isn't my bag. Sure, it's fun to look up the daily horror show of local news and know what you're day is gonna look like, but I don't really like it. It's just a constant reminder that your life could be all happy and then complete shit five seconds to the rest of you life later.

However, I really like the people on the unit, and the way it's run.

But, I think I belong back in the world of elective heart surgery and interventional cardiology, so I don't know how long I'll stick with this trauma gig. Long enough to get some real experience and feel comfortable as an ICU nurse, but I think at the very top, two years is about all I can handle of level one trauma without becoming a traumatic brain injury case myself.

Observation/silliness:

As a resident so pithily observed yesterday when teaching another doc how to pronounce death legally (almost as bad as filling out one's taxes), "Think about it: everybody dies of cardiac arrest. Don't use it as a cause of death."

Point being: this is the third patient of mine since I started ICU whose cardiac death I've watched on the monitor. Reading cardiac monitors is like reading the language of life, if I may be so floridly purple prose about it.

It's one of the things, philosophically, that I love and prefer about cardiac nursing: reading telemetry is like being able to read a foreign language in some ways. (Unfortunately, it comes with the caveat that a lot of the times, what you're reading is, "Uh oh! Danger! Bad!")

Any way, every time I've had the misfortune to be stuck being Death Watch Nurse, I've always marveled at how stubborn the heart is. I'm tempted to call the heart blindly optimistic; even if it isn't pumping blood any more, it's still trying to do it's sodium-and-potassium-pump channel thing, busy organizing an electrical impulse, and while I suppose physiologically this is no more than brain-dead patients "posturing" due to random spinal cord firings--there's a certain kind of ironic optimism about a dying heart.

I mean, I think if I can indulge in one more irritating reference and make a lame joke, I'm rather tempted to believe, based on my preference for the cardiovascular system over the neurological one, that G-d spent a great deal of time designing the first, and rather had to gloss over quite a bit when it came time to give us the latter--especially the brain. I mean,if you follow that whole seven-day biblical creation story bit and follow it out to its logical conclusion, I'm assuming G-d had to cut corners on some stuff just so that He didn't disappoint His inaugural Monday night bowling team date with, like, the Holy Rollers, or something.

I've always held the cardiovascular system to be rather more well-thought out and practical, and, in an optimal state, I really think quite proletarian and puritanical in its work ethic, whereas the neuro stuff I've always kind of thought of as the product of what would occur if you married the physiological equivalent of the Crazy Darkly Artistic One with the Brilliant Mad Scientist One and The Megalomaniac Control Freak One and then they had offspring: no one really understands a damn bit of the science part, so then the artistic part takes over and makes up a bullshit, impressive sounding reason that in actual fact no one else really gets, either, but since Meglomaniac Control Freak One says that's the way it goes, nobody argues. On top of that, this brilliant brood is saddled with being responsible for an entire group of physiological systems it rather thinks of as its servants, servants it would rather just eschew altogether if it could, but is unwilling to abdicate its coronal powerhouse, and thus...

Also noted: for all of the reverence we accord neurosurgeons (bless them, for they spend their lives digging around in other people's noodles for a living) most of what I heard in rounds is, "Well, we really don't know what the outcome is going to be," which I always interpret as not only the truth, but also, a thinly veiled, polite way of saying, "We think your loved one is really very fucked right now, and we don't know enough about the brain to say otherwise."

Yes, if I had to compare physiological systems to philosophies, I would call the cardiovascular system Kantian (plugging away in its little self-contained universe, stubbornly doing The Right Thing when all hell is breaking loose around it and all evidence points to imminent doom no matter what the heart does or doesn't do).

misery hates company

Have you ever had the unpleasant experience of swallowing all of your anger for somewhere around two weeks to two years, and finally, one day at work, you realize, "Boy, am I miserable!"?

At the time, you'll be tempted to blame it on work, which seems the most likely suspect.

But then, you go home, and sit down, and expose yourself to relative quiet and sounds that don't mean, "Someone might die if you don't do something about this all quick like!" and realize it wasn't work that was making you want to throw things and use profanity in the manner of a sailor. I mean, yes, in a general sense, work absolutely sucks, and it's a good target to blame, but then you take a good look around your surrondings and realize it's not all work's fault. In fact, you make the almost-awful true discovery that indeed, work has picked up the scapegoat slack about a hundred times for something/someone at which/whom you're exceptionally pissed off.

Not that it makes it any easier to go to work when you're mood smacks of a sort of Goodfellas goomba, "I wanna smash your face in, Paulie, etc." (And, in my line of work, people come in with faces already smashed, thank you very much.)

In fact, I feel particularly cranky at the fact that I now have to to go to work having spent half the night up in a miserable, seething kind of emotional detritus, the kind that then can't sleep because of all the snoring going on right next to it.

While I can assure worried readers of this blog that anything as sensational or cinematic as Michael Douglas's baseball-bat-in-commuter-traffic performance from Falling Down will happen today, it seems to me modern life leaves little civil recourse for the kind of pathetic angst it inspires.

If revenge is a meal best served cold, what of piping hot anger?

I could spend a good part of my morning drinking beer and throwing the bottles at the tile fireplace, but then that would only inspire more anger, as I'd then have to clean up the mess. (I mean, I could if I had Jeeves, and also, if I didn't have to show up sober to my workplace in an hour).

I'm clearly in the wrong profession. I should be a rock star, for whom regular hooliganish behavior is not only tolerated, it's expected.

However, I think my temperment is far more of the Suicidal Dark Poet, somewhere between the pop cultural phenom of J.K. Rowling ("I did want to kill myself, but then I made more money than God, and now, funnily enough, I don't.") and the guy who does those travel shows about food ("I'm angry and hate things in a snide and sneering way, but I sure do eat a lot of tasty meals for absolutely free!')

Any way, it's not so much as being morose right now as it just feeling large amounts of resentment and the urge to slam cupboard doors and primal scream in the closet until hoarse.

I feel like that robot with his vacuum-piping arms flailing madly about, screaming "Danger! Danger!"

If the human soul comes free with an anger compactor, mine is on overdrive today. I hope work is a perfect steady state of whatever I need to keep my fingers from randomly scratching out my eyes in sheer frustration.

bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

For the record: it is JUNE and I am wearing a wool sweater and double knit wool cap.

I am also just on the other side of being rather sick (eg getting better) and still a bit fuzzy headed. I still sound convincingly sick. All I want to do is curl up and rest, but I do feel better than even a couple of days ago.

It is grey and damp and chilly. I wouldn't be surprised if the suicide rate spiked in Seattle this month.

Reminds me of JK Rowling's Dementors flying around in London circa Harry Potter book #6, producing all that unnatural mist and cold in July.

Oh God. Please don't let this weather wind on into July.

sickness unto death

By crikey, I am sick.

I had a preview of what I was in for as D got all sick and cough-y before I did, but either D is more stoic than I am about The Pain, or else I got a more virulent dose of The Plague than he did--in any case, what a gift that keeps on giving!

Unfortunately, I make myself worse with the hackity-hack when I lay down, so this cold has a bit of a medieval-morality-play-Dante-in-yo'-face quality to it. I have self-exiled myself to the couch so as not to reinfect D or keep him awake with my dreary litany of "cough cough hack hack, moan, cough" repeat ad infinitem.

Meanwhile, it also heartily sucks to live in Seattle at present, with the gloom-and-doom, ever grey, damned cold weather (it is 47 degrees right now. Evil and wrong, I say!)

I am knitting D a warm woolen cap out of leftover wool from his much-hyped hybrid sweater (which sounds energy efficient, but refers in actually to the shoulder shaping--a piece of knitting trivia that I doubt interests anyone but a knitting geek like myself), which he may as well wear now as in December.

As for myself, I am craftily awaiting a surreptitious stash of good old fashioned Shetland wool, etc, for my wool self-swaddling. I am finally going to attempt the Henley Neck Fair Isle in Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Around. And a Moebius scarf, which never appealed to me before in the slightest, but now comes to the foreground as An Objet which I must knit. And if I may be so bold, a Snail Hat, which no doubt will make me look like a right old frigid sno-cone in winter time. (Again, more knitting esoterica which makes no sense unless you are a big a fan of Zimmermann's knitting patterns as I--and approximately a million other knitters globally--am).

In other news of the inane (very hard to write of anything of universal interest when the whole of one's senses is narrowed to "my damned head is full of snot!") Piper finally got his teeth cleaned on Tuesday last (right as I thought I was getting over my cold--useless prediction that was) which left him stoned and rather a wobbly-on-his-pins treat to watch for a couple of days. This, I'm afraid, was a rather expensive venture, and one I have been putting off for more financially fair-weather times, but alas, dental hygiene, even from a dog's perspective, cannot be neglected, and the dog really was starting to suffer.

I am not much good for conversation these days, having lost my voice about Thursday. I retreat to a pile of knitting and the hopes I will turn a corner in this dread disease soon-ish, rather.

batteries not included.

(Overheard)

SURGEON #1:
...So this guy comes in, right, and he tells us he's got a vibrator lodged somewhere up his, uh... colon.

SURGEON #2:
[chuckles]
Really? He told you the truth?
[muses]
Usually people don't, you know.

SURGEON #1:
Yeah, well, we asked him if when we go to retrieve it, if he actually wanted it out, or just have the batteries changed.

[General mirth at expense of patient who, thankfully, is several floors below and can't hear the above conversation].

most of what i know.

Most of what I know, I can't believe. -Richard Swift.

It's been awhile since I've blogged. I've been saying that a lot, because I've been working a lot, and lately that tends to mean a lot sleep on my days off.

Plus, I inherited a cold from D, which has us both sycophantically hacking up a lung all night long.

Swell.

Any way, I find lately, along with a strange suspicion that God is mocking me from on high not only with Seattle's crap weather (am I really still wearing my down jacket in the mornings in June? Why yes, Virginia, I am!) but also with a somewhat nagging suspicion that my metaphoric brains have leaked out of my ears almost entirely.

I seem to be caught in a middling storm of mediocrity, in which I can still manage to chuckle mirthlessly at Marx's criticism of what he calls Hegel's "logical mysticism."

(Try explaining to those in the nearby vicinity why you're laughing while reading Marx's Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of State sometime, and you'll find yourself feeling even more ridiculous than usual, I promise. )

In any case, coming up at the fifth month mark of what is beginning to be a strangely interminable orientation (not that I'm complaining) I seem to be feeling a sense of accomplishment on the one hand for having managed to survive the front end of an exhausting introduction to the world of critical care, and a sense of dull, glazed-eye fear at the thought of being finally kicked out of the nest on the other.

I'd say I'm in an awkward holding-pattern of an ICU nurse's professional adolescence--a bad combination of knowing just enough to be dangerous and yet still tell-tale klutzy and overly green in ways I can now recognize in those with even less experience than myself. When, oh when, do I get to grow up and become one of those cool, sophisticated paragons of ICU nursing--those nurses for whom even the scariest of bad scenarios is handled with swift, skilled professional aplomb?

I get the feeling it's going to be awhile before I shake off not only my underwhelming sense of confidence in my skill set, but also that nagging sense that everyone else in the vicinity is not secretly sneering into the sleeve of their white lab coat and thinking, "Amateur!"

I'm also faced with the bald, inelegantly trite fact that there's no way through this mess except directly through it and have resigned myself, if somewhat sadly, to this fate.

My world as of late feels achingly lower middle class and I can't shake the feeling that I'm slowly physically going to seed. Two colds in the span of two months? This is a record,for one who typically succumbs to GI Infestation of the Month, but not the common cold.

Feel pasty and soft, although I've tried to start a half-hearted walking/jog regimen on the streets of oh-so-safe (not) Rainier Valley. Annoyed my attempts at getting in shape have been thwarted by lame-ass cold, which is of the half-assed variety, but will probably hang on in tenacious fashion until mid-June. (Tune in next time for Pointless Predictions of Pestilence with Peevish Patty!)

I think, however, the simple solution to all this mealy-morass would be a steady infusion of sunshine.

Seattle Weather Gods, what say you?

k.c. and the sunshine band

Feeble (but photographic) attempts to show this blog isn't all about work, I give you The Backyard in Summer. Or Spring, or whatever season this is supposed to be.