NaNoWriMo

I’m giving NaNoWriMo a try this year. And oh boy, am I having fun with it. I had no story ideas whatsoever, just randomly grabbed an idea for a scene and went with it, and so far so good. It’s total crap, of course, but it’s crap with potential, I think. And I’m having fun.

You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.

-C.S. Lewis

Should I stay or should I go?

My current place of employment has been going through some negative changes lately. Don’t get me wrong, I feel blessed to have a job at all. However, the hospital is seeking Magnet status, and while this sounds nice in theory, in reality, it means that each week the hospital adds five more minutes of charting to the nurses’ workload. All of this new charting is aimed at proving to the Magnet certification people what top-notch care we provide to our patients, but each five minutes of additional charting is five minutes less that we can spend actually face-to-face with our patients. It’s frustrating.

Some of my coworkers fear that the hospital’s atmosphere is swinging back in a negative direction, with less and less autonomy and respect for the nurses, after many improvements in recent years.

Lately, I have felt compelled to look at the job postings at City Hospital again. City Hospital is a teaching hospital, and is the county’s “charity hospital”, and therefore the culture is very different from that of a smaller, community hospital.

I left for multiple reasons, but not because I didn’t like working there. When I left my job there, several nurses predicted that I would be back eventually. They said, “Once a City Hopsital nurse, always a City Hospital nurse.” Same sort of pride in their careers as military people seem to feel.

I bopped over to the City Hospital website this morning, and they have a video posted showing nurses that I used to work with speaking in glowing terms about their jobs. And truly, City Hospital has better nurse retention than just about any hospital I’ve ever seen. I did have to chuckle at their glowing descriptions of births in the hopsital, when I know from experience that their births are typically quite assembly-line fashion. However, though it’s not the perfect workplace, a big part of me craves to go back. I had just gotten approval from my (wonderful) manager there to drop down to two nights a week when I rather impulsively quit my job there, to come back to the hospital where I had worked as a student nurse. What was I thinking? I fit in so much better with the nurses in the city than with the nurses in the suburbs. Maybe I didn’t fully think my decision through.It seemed right at the time, but now I’m not so sure. Fortunately, I left on very good terms, and I know that I will be welcomed back when/if I decide to return.

So, all of that writing to admit to myself that -

1. I want to work at City Hospital again. Screw the commute, it’s worth it to feel like I’m working in the right hospital.

2. I need to wait until Jake is at least a year old, because I hate pumping.

3. I need to be back in mother-baby.

4. And not full-time ever again, not even during orientation.

Not right away, but eventually.

I don’t ask for much, do I?

Good to have all that out of my system. Now to clean this house!

Torn

My son is sitting between my feet on the floor, waving his red plastic telephone around, chewing on it, squealing to himself, and slamming it into his sister’s toys which are scattered on the carpet.

I feel pulled in about seven different directions at this point in my life.

Right now, I work on a unit that handles both pediatric and GYN cases. In a typical week, I only work about 10-12 hours. Working part-time is nice but also weird. Just enough to keep my skills up, but not quite enough that I feel like I am really part of the unit. Everyone is friendly enough, but people don’t see me enough to really consider me more than an acquaintance. Working little enough that I am still able to be home with my kids most of the time, but just enough that my home still feels chaotic part of the week, with the kids being shuffled to grandma’s or next door to my in-laws’, or else someone coming to my house to watch the kids while I sleep for a few hours after working a night shift, or passing the kids to my husband the moment he walks in the door at 5 pm, so that I can hurry into my scrubs and out the door. Working enough that I have a hard time pumping enough milk for my voracious five-month-old to eat while I’m gone, without having to resort to the can of formula in the cabinet that my husband has had to give the baby in a pinch on a week when I was too lazy about pumping on my days off..

Working full-time nights at City Hospital, as I did last year, exhausted me and made me a grumpy mama on my days off. However, I also loved my job and loved feeling like I was part of the unit culture and that I was making a positive difference on a daily basis, corny as that sounds. I miss the excitement of being part of what goes on in the hospital. And I really, really miss working in mother-baby.

Being a mom is more rewarding than anything else I have ever done, but the pats on the back and financial compensation is certainly more sparse than as a full-time worker outside the home. I love being a nurse. I also love being home with my kids. I have a really hard time trying to split myself between the two. I suppose that is just the way this season in life is supposed to be. There will always be jobs for me as a nurse, but my kids will certainly not always be little; they are only babies and preschoolers once, for a brief span of years before they start to branch out into more activities in the community outside of our little household.

I was crunching numbers for our budget the other day, and realized, strangely enough, that my husband’s average income plus mine (both are variable) adds up to exactly one dollar less per month than our expected expenses. In other words, we are just making it, just barely. Staying home full-time is most definitely not something we can afford, not without going deeply into debt.

I was interrupted while writing this by my sweet little baby waking up from his nap. His dark eyes found me as I opened the bedroom door, and he gave me a gummy smile when I leaned over his crib to pick him up. We walked into the living room, where my daughter is cozied up on the couch under a blanket, eating a caramel apple and watching The Sword in the Stone. She makes silly noises at the baby to make him laugh. It’s a lazy day today. We are all still in our pajamas, although it’s almost noon. But I know that, despite my insecurities, I am right where I need to be right now. There will always be nursing jobs. I have plenty of time to dive deeper into my specialty as a nurse.

Bare minimum

Wow. Being a mom to two kids is hard. Really hard.

I need to start rising earlier in the morning so I can have a few moments to myself without a child on my lap.

Something in my routine needs to change.

Local moms? Bueller? …Bueller?

I took both kids to story hour at our tiny library last week. The librarians were shocked, delighted, and a little flustered to see us, because we were the first to show up, in FOUR WEEKS of story hour times being posted around town.

So Jubilee had a nice one-on-one story with the librarian, practically sitting on her lap, while Jake played on the floor.

Very hard to get moms together around here apparently… one of the hazard of living in a small town, I guess…

I may have to put Jubilee in part-time preschool next year, even though we’re planning to homeschool, as it may be the only way to get her around local kids, other than through our church, which is in the next town north of us. (the homeschool groups are all 20-30 minutes away).

On working

First swine flu (oh sorry, H1N1) patient last night. And already I’m convinced that I have it. Guess I will know for sure within 1-5 days (incubation period) whether or not the body aches and headache are just the typical I-worked-13-hours-yesterday-with-only-one-break feelings.

Also, what is up with all my coworkers trying to guilt me into working more shifts?

Following is a rant in the general direction of one or two of my coworkers:

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If I wanted to work part-time hours, I would have taken that part-time position that I was offered last week by our unit manager- that way I would get benefits, 401k and insurance, which I don’t get in my current position as a PRN nurse! I work PRN for a reason, because I DON”T WANT TO BE AT WORK. I want to be home with my kids, and thus I work as few hours as we can afford, and we do without certain things in order for me to be home most of the time. I never schedule myself to work more than 20 hours a week. Most weeks, it is between 6 and 12 hours total. THere is a reason that I left my full-time job to be a PRN nurse!

It is not my responsibility to pick up random shifts on top of what I am already signed up for. That is not in my contract. My contract says that I work 6 hours a week minimum, and one holiday per year- if that is all I do, I am still fulfilling my work agreement. I am not the float pool nurse, and it is not my fault that my hospital does not have a float pool. Sorry if this annoys you. Take it to the manager. Random comments about how the PRN staff are not helpful with picking up random last-minute shifts really piss me off, as I pick up more of these last-minute shifts than anyone else on the unit. DO NOT MAKE THESE COMMENTS WHEN I AM THREE FEET AWAY- ESPECIALLY AFTER I HAVE JUST AGREED TO TAKE AN EXTRA SHIFT! Even if you quickly backpedal afterwards, saying you meant everyone except me, these are not good comments to make in my presence! You are great to work with, and I hope to be an awesome expert nurse like you one day, but please, lay off the guilt trips!  Thanks, I feel better now!

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In happier news, I have been looking into getting trained as a lactation consultant at my hospital. I broached the topic with a couple of LC’s at work, discussed it with my manager, and then mentioned it to the childbirth center director (who is also over my unit) yesterday. She seemed thrilled that I was interested, as their lactation consultants are “dropping like flies” (her words).

She told me that she will let the head LC know that she is fine with me starting to take classes/ workshops/ shadowing- I’m not sure what part will come first, but I am very excited! I will stick around my current unit at least through another year or so, but as soon as I am capable of being hired upstairs as a PRN lactation counselor (I think counselor is the first step, if I remember correctly), I will most likely be out the door. I have learned a lot on my unit, but Mother/Baby nursing is SO much more my passion than Peds. My place of employment has a fairly high breastfeeding rate (some days upwards of 90% of the moms in postpartum are at least attempting to breastfeed), so they really do have a big need for lactation help up there.

The day that I shadowed an LC was one of my two high points in nursing school, the other one being the day that I shadowed a women’s health NP in a community clinic. I guess the fact that my two favorite nursing school experiences were not in the hospital should tell me something about why I often feel so out of place at my current place of employment!

Where do we fit in?

Went to local homeschool group for second time yesterday. Didn’t much like it, although my daughter loved getting to play with some little girls for a change. The moms all hung out at a picnic table away from the play area, all but one other mom who was old-fashioned like me and seemed to agree that 2- and 3-year-olds actually do require adult supervision when playing on a sprawling playground  . I’m not talking hovering- I do want my children to be adventurous and independent and to climb things like little monkeys.  I’m merely talking about being within eyesight of one’s toddler when they are playing ten feet from a busy road (this particular playground is set up in a really strange spot, right by the road).

I did get a chance to talk to one other mom briefly, and she seemed very nice, but she was also the mom who was later chatting on her cell phone fifty feet away, while I helped her toddler get down from a high ledge clear on the other side of the playground without falling on her head. One other little girl followed my daughter around and kept requesting help with the play equipment, since she had a cast on one leg. I never did figure out whose kid she was…

Maybe I’m just being surly and unfriendly, but I don’t see the point in going back to this particular homeschool group if I always end up as the unpaid babysitter for everyone else’s kids in addition to my own, while everyone else gets to have a two-hour coffee break with real live adults and gives me fish eyes when I introduce myself. I feel it is very important for Jubilee to get playtime with kids other than my nephew, whom she plays with for hours each day. But at least when I watch my nephew for a couple hours while sis-in-law cooks dinner or gardens, I know that she will inevitably return the favor and allow me some free time to get my own things done, you know? Fair distribution of kid-watching is all I ask for. Sigh…

One of the moms at church homeschools, and she has invited me to the group she attends. I didn’t follow up on it at the time, as I thought it sounded too structured, and also involved signing a statement of faith, which for some reason rubs me the wrong way. Now I’m reconsidering. Maybe structured is a good thing. Maybe a statement of faith will mean none of the kids at the officially Christian group will be regaling me with a plot summary of the gory witchcraft book they are currently reading, as happened yesterday. I guess I always sort of assume that I won’t seem “Christian enough”. But after yesterday, methinks I’m not “secular enough” to attend the secular group.

Plan of action- Keep taking Jubilee to AWANA every week. Start back to biweekly nature park preschool program again. Join the Christian homeschool group. And keep taking her to the park to play with other kids, but avoid going when that group is meeting, so I won’t get stuck watching three other preschoolers whose moms are nowhere to be seen!

Last night shift

Worked overnight for twelve hours last night, but the good news is I am not signed up for any more night shifts for the next six weeks. My main competition for the day shift slots went and got herself a fulltime job somewhere else, so now I am in the lucky position of having my pick of what scheduling gaps I am willing to fill. No more signing up for night shifts out of desperation for money.

Of  course, this also means that I am the first person all the fulltime nurses call when they need a day off.

I am getting really good at telling people ‘no’. One shift a week (or less) is just fine with me, in this phase of life, thankyouverymuch.

Can can (can)

I am drowning in produce from my garden. This year, thus far, I have canned:

14 quarts dill cucumber spears (turned out well)

12 quarts dill cucumber coins (these don’t count though since they turned out disgustingly mushy- no wonder all the recipes say spears. Now I know.)

24 quarts of tomatoes- and many, many more ripening on my porch and in my garden

7 pints of salsa

I have frozen bags and bags of shredded zucchini, knowing that I probably won’t use it all but didn’t want the guilt of just letting it go to waste without at least trying to use it. And this week alone, I have given away 3 or 4 big bags of ripe tomatoes, because I want to put off having to can more of them, since canning as a mom of two little ones always involves staying up into the wee hours of the morning. Canning while the kids are awake doesn’t work.

I also have a bucket of green beans in my kitchen, which I will probably just blanch and freeze. I picked them from my sis-in-law’s garden today; she is so tired of all the preserving that she told me to just take whatever I wanted out of her garden, because she is done with picking beans. She also has some lovely green peppers that I was told to help myself to however many I wanted. They are so pretty and shiny, not all dull and bruised looking like the ones you buy at the store; I just want to paint a picture of them. Maybe I will.

I realize that canning tomatoes probable doesn’t save me all that much money, when you add in the cost of electricity (or maybe it does- I never added it up), but home-grown tomatoes taste so much better than store-bought, and I love being able to eat them all winter long. Tomatoes are my absolute favorite food in the whole wide world. It’s been nice this year, having so many extra that I can just give them away and still have plenty for my own family’s needs. I like that feeling of generosity- I should give things away more often.

I have gardened almost every year for the past ten years, but this has been my first year having a big garden that I actually kept up with for most of the season. It was planted a couple weeks too late, due to having my son in early May, but considering the circumstances, I think I did really well with it this year. The cabbage, peas, and beans all crapped out due to being planted too late, but the cucumbers, zucchini, squash, pumpkins, and tomatoes all did crazy good. I got a whopping ten ears of corn, but that’s no surprise, since I never have much luck growing corn. Next year maybe I will try growing the type that my sis-in-law planted- Silver Queen. She has had tons and tons of really nice looking ears off her plants.

Time for bed- I am not canning anything tonight, so I need to catch up on my sleep!