uno

Home again, home again. Where the hell are those ruby slippers when you need them? s'ok, my feet are probably too swollen to fit in them anyway.

I was planning on staying at work 14 hours today. Could only hang with twelve after yesterday. My knees hurt badly. They hurt last night, too. I soaked in the tub, and it helped but not enough. I was still awake until 2 am from the pain. Then back out of bed at 5:15. And did it all over again today.

It's 8:10pm. I am in my pajamas. I have taken 600mg of ibuprofen and 1000mg of acetaminophen, 6mg of melatonin, 25mg of benadryl. My electric blanket is warming. I will, with any good fortune at all, be well asleep within a couple of hours.

I hope the guy doesn't decide to call tonight. He was trying to talk to me all day today. I really wasn't trying to hear, "How have you been doing?" "Are you OK?" I was busy. I didn't feel well. And, if he were that interested, he could find some point during the week other than when he actually has to be face-to-face in the same shower with me (resident getting a shower) to ask.

It has come from 8:30pm Saturday to 7:03am Sunday.

I have been up for about 30 minutes. Wasn't my idea. The muscles and tendons in my right lower leg decided to spasm. That is usually what happens after a couple of days of working like that. At least I slept until almost 6:30. It generally strikes sometime around 3am, so I lucked out last night. I was trying to stand in order to get the inverted contraction out of my foot. My right leg was insisting that my foot needed to stay curled and if I needed to stand it was going to have to be on the outer aspect of my right ankle. The stupid dog kept trying to come into the bedroom and dance at me. She was yelled at twice for her efforts. Guess she didn't get the clue the first time I cursed at her and told her to get out.

It's cold this morning. Like 28 degrees right now. Well, one source says 28 and the other says 21. I'll go with 28 as it makes me feel less despondent. (Apparently that page isn't refreshing properly. I went to the weather site and it's 27.) There generally isn't much disparity between the 2 sites as both read from locations near my home.

I finally got some coffee brewing and took my medication. My knees and ankles aren't excessively painful right now. Then again, I'm not moving around a whole lot. My right hip and right lower back are, however, singing a rather discordant tune. When my joints swell and hurt, my gait is effected. When my gait is effected, my hip starts to hurt. When my hip hurts, I try and reposition myself and end up irritating the sciatic nerve on that right side.

Can you tell me why it is that I'm looking at the job postings for nurses?

When I was soaking in the tub Friday night, I noticed all of the spider veins on my legs. A couple of varicose veins. My legs look absolutely hideous. I'm going to have the laser treatments done. The wrinkles in my face... well they don't bother me so much. The way my legs looked - couldn't stand it.

I have a couple of more hours before I have to be dashing out into the cold. The high today is supposed to be 47. Winds 5 to 10 mph. Another one just cold enough to have my fingers go numb if I decide to go out for a smoke.

Of course, since it has been on the cold side for the last 4 days that I have worked, Monday and Tuesday, when I am not working will be in the 50s.

I'm in the process of copying and pasting my Yahoo 360 blog to a MS Word document. Yahoo is eliminating 360 but says the content of he blogs will still be available. They do not say where it would be located or how it would be accessed... So, I'm backing it all up and going to move it myself.

There are 72 entries there. I have about half of it C&P'd. My Word document is 52 pages long at this point. I dunno if there is a page or size limit. Guess I may find out. 50 entries and 67 pages, almost there! Finished with 100 pages and just over 1mb in size. Didn't take that long even with the antivirus scan running in the background. But I seriously need to get into "My Documents" and do some filing.

It's 9am. I have about 45 minutes before I have to start getting ready to go. I have consumed about half the coffee and am rolling a few smokes for later. If I can make it through today, I should be able to have my knees back in shape before I have to go back to work Thursday.

Hey, we're up to 31 degrees outside! Isn't it amazing what a little sun can do? And I say little because it is always sort of grey here, even when the sun is shining. Just don't get that "real sun" like do out in Arizona and Colorado. The sky here isn't as grey as Seattle, but it comes pretty close. Closer than you would probably believe.

Oh, I am sooooo ready to go back West. Damnable family ties. Aging parent, grandchildren, nieces and nephews growing up. I feel very stuck in the middle.

Gonna close this here, finish this cup of coffee, have a smoke and get ready to roll. It's generally a good day on Sunday. The residents really love going to church though I genuinely wish some of the churches loved our residents.

I wonder how the churches are with Genny's homeless folks? I'll have to ask her. I know the churches come in to the shelter. I don't know about taking the folks from the shelter into the churches. If they're like most "good church folks" I imagine they're sort of condescending in attitude towards "doing the lord's work."

Thanksgiving was good at the shelter. One of the church members from a church that likes to call itself helping set her up with a caterer who bailed on her the week before Thanksgiving. Why spend time and resources catering for a bunch of homeless people when you can direct them to a better paying gig, right? Fuckin' assholes... So, another church (a new recruit, by the way, lol) stepped up and Genny said they did awesome. Not an easy task when the shelter has no working ovens. More people showed up to help than were needed so the clients got more like two-to-one, rather than one-to-one, time. The pastor of the "helpful" church also showed up, with his wife and daughters. He tried to tell Genny how she could and should be more organized. Genny told him how it was, including the caterer that his parishioner had arranged and what she thought of his lament to her about his struggles with his denomination and wanting to come work for her. I love Genny (in spite of the fact that she is trying to draw my attention to the reality that I really need to understand and to appreciate and value the guy's single-mindedness for the awesome character trait that it is).

Hells bells! I know she's very aware that it is easier (and much more fun) to be obtuse, quasi-focused, and irreverent. (Hey, that's why she is my evil twin. lol) But, she can see the need to be focused and single-minded, too. That's why she is able to effectively lead in the midst of the chaos that is her milieu. I would not want to do her job for anything. Maybe join in the chaos but certainly not be ringmaster. Clown or side-show freak would be apt. lol.

My response is that I am seeking to send the guy to her for training in right-brained theory. I offered to pay 50% of her fee up front. He certainly is never going to understand it from me. I think it merely frustrates him that I am intelligent, can think, be rational and logical, and yet choose to be something other than those things.

I am very, very left-brained by nature. I decided several years ago that I hate it. Left-brained, in my reality, is stressed and obsessive and having to control everything because delegated tasks would not be completed to my exacting, neurotic standards. Left-brained has given me cardiac episodes. Left-brained has given me irritable bowel syndrome. Left-brained has made it impossible for me to be satisfied in relationships. Gotta remember, my personality is choleric-melancholy. My Jungian personality profile ENTP. (extroverted, intuitive, thinking, perceiving) I saw one statistic (you can make numbers say anything, remember - think Enron) that stated only about 3% of the population is that particular combination, and those are the thinkers and innovators (malcontents, lol). So, can you get some idea of how difficult my personality traits make it to just "get along" in day-to-day interactions and situations. omg! Put me in a fucking "think tank" somewhere and let me be my bellicose and surly left-brained self. Or, go back to IT and be stressed but mentally satiated. My left-brained self is misanthropic and cynical. And, I genuinely do like that about myself. Please don't misunderstand and get the impression that I decided to give up being dominated by my left-brained traits because I didn't like that about myself or thought that my views on life and humanity were wrong. I am still quite satisfied to believe that manunkind sucks.

It's midnight. I got in about an hour ago. I had wanted to finish this blog before I left for work this morning, but you can see that I sort of got on a roll.

It is now 1:30am. I have been chatting with Joni and then with Al. I have accomplished nothing further on this... darn it! It is going to be good though.

As I have to be up in the morning with the kiddos and hen go to work, I have to head to bed. Guess this will wait until tomorrow.

Back for another go at this. Had some serious "font issues" due to having blogspot having problems saving this and having done it in different segments. So, I re-typed what became 5 pages when transferred to a Word document.

It is 10am. I have dropped the boys at the sitter's but need to shower and drop their accessories and head to work for a couple of hours.

OK, showered. Having a cup of coffee and a smoke before I leave the house.

I suppose the right-brained portion of this will have to wait until the next chapter. That is not a problem for my right-brain. However, it frustrates the hell out of my left-brain. Why should we be bothering to discuss the right-brained nonsense in the first place....

Can you believe it's now Wednesday afternoon?

Well, it is. I have been in to work every day this week. Monday for just an hour or so to make sure some labs got drawn and were ready for the physician to review on Tuesday for an upcoming surgery. I covered call offs yesterday and today. I am going back to work in an hour to do

Well, my boss called and asked me what was happening today. He's off with a scratched eye. So, I didn't have time to finish that last paragraph before running out the door to go do the psychiatrist appointments.

I did pretty well. He got there about 5:30, and I had all of the paperwork done by 9pm.

So, it's now coming up on 12:30am Thursday.

I have officially been working on this entry for 5 days.

Geez.... What a week this has been.