The Other Side Of The Mountain

Around here they have elevation issues - how much snow you get depends on what side of the mountain you live on. In Terra Alta they can have a foot of snow and by the time you hit Masontown about 20 miles away, it's springtime. I guess it's sort of like the lake effect upstate. My side of the mountain has become a giant mudhole, my lawn squishes in a most gross (and funny) way when I got trolloping around with the dogs. It's supposed to warm up for a few days, then get cold then back to warm. The other nurse is done on Friday but we have two part timers starting today - I'm doing the orientation class!! which I'm a little nervous about. The boss was supposed to be doing it with me watching but she's got to go to the other office today so I will be winging it. I finally got everything caught up yesterday and am now auditing and organizing the charts. I'm not on call this weekend and I'm hoping it warms up so I can go hiking up on Cooper's rock with Jackson. Miss Thing of course will have to stay home despite the fact that would make the hike more exciting. At some time this spring I want to go to the Catherdral Forest out in Aurora which is an entire forest of hemlocks but that would be a full day trip as it's 60 miles away. I'm having a little bit of a problem adjusting to this full time thing - realistically it's only 2 half days more a week but things like getting my oil changed, etc all have to wait until the weekend now and when the weekend comes around I don't feel like doing anything like that. I guess I'll get used to it.

Do I Smell Jelly Beans?

I have so far managed to keep off all the weight I lost - I've weighed between 135 and 140 for about 4 months now. That's not a bad weight for me actually, I would like to weight 112 but as I'm about 5'7" I know that's unrealistic. A friend of mine once told me we weigh ourselves when we're 17 and spend the rest of our lives thinking that's our "ideal" weight, spending disappointing years trying to get back there. But in reality at that age you're not done growing are you? So this weight is middle of the road, I do have to work at it a bit, but it's not impossible. HOWEVER my favoritie food holiday is looming on the horizon which would be Easter. And YES I know I don't believe in the christian god but I do believe in Easter Baskets. My record one year was 5 pounds of jelly beans in under 2 weeks and that's not including the chocolate bunnies, the coconut cream eggs or the acres upon acres of Peeps I consumed when I thought no one was watching. CVS has become an exercise in restraint as I walk by the aisles of little Peep bunnies with thier tiny chocolate eyes trained on me. I picked up an eight ounce bag of jelly  beans yesterday and for the first time in my life - looked at the calories per serving. The good news is it's only 100 calories - the bad news is there were NINE servings per bag. That would be almost a thousand calories per bag so if I eat nothing but two bags of jelly beans per day that would be ok. Hmm. There might be something wrong with that kind of thinking as it doesn't include Peeps. So there is a plan B which is I drastically cut my caloric intake now, up my exercise schedule thereby creating a buffer weight so I can eat like a loon at the appropriate time. We will see. In other news Pearl is in heat and I was informed the other day in the comments that this will go on for at least a few more weeks. I guess there's nothing I can do about it but continue deflecting the Trick or Treaters and keeping Miss Thing on a leash.

And Now Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Program

Well, I did not have the greatest of all weekends I must admit. First off  is the Thing That Must Not Be Mentioned as a certain Crabby Pants had threatened to open a "whole can of rotten worms!" and her sidekick seems to think I have a lot of nerve and so forth. Whatever. Moving On. In other news, Pearl has gone into heat finally - and now we wish she hadn't. We had some Trick or Treaters in the yard and I didn't spot them right away - but Miss Thing certainly did and I just had to just about carry her disobedient self back into the house. I did very patiently explain they were not her Kind but she was being very base about the whole business and didn't appear to care. I'm not really sure how long this is supposed to last so I'll write to Kathy the dog breeder and ask her, hopefully no longer than another day or two. I'm not enjoying the yard today at any rate, the snow melted and then it rained so there's mud as far as the eye can see. Running after Trick or Treaters is a slippery and slidey operation so Pearl will be on a leash until this whole business is over. David's had his hands full - the good news is his Dad's biopsy came back negative - it's just a polyp or benign tumor in his nasal cavity that ruptured a bit and he'll be having it removed soon. Then yesterday his mom started bleeding so it was off to the hospital - they took her off of her Plavix and Aspirin for now. Then David's sister called later as his mom was now having black spots in front of her eyes so back they went to the hospital and they treated her high blood pressure. I've been busy doing some paper work today and reading up on the next seminar I'm scheduled for - work has gotten a bit out of hand as I'm transitioning from visit nurse to supervisor to Home Health Agency Manager all in the space of about 6 weeks. The day in Pittsburgh set me back a day last week so I had to push the office work over to this week and I STILL have visits and infusions and I'm going to be there during the orientation of the new nurses because pretty soon I'm going to be doing it. But I'm looking foward to it despite feeling a bit overwhelmed - and I get to hang out in Bridgeport a couple of days a week eventually which will be really fun.

This Is My Journal

It was pointed out to me that there were a couple of comments on my journal from when I 'd written about a relative trying to contact me again, although she'd made it quite clear at the time that she didn't like me. I went  back to the entry and sure enough - there the actual party was - and her daughter too. Don't bother looking for them, they've been deleted, after all this is my journal and it is a free country. I think I was more mystified as to why they're reading my journal  and both felt the need to continue the "feud" as my father likes to call it even though it's a bit one sided. I can almost feel them reading this right now formulating thier response and next move. Ready to cast that next barb despite thier claims they wish to have nothing to do with me- they've made it clear they think I've done them some horrible wrong - and perhaps I have - but I had said to them back when this all happened that maybe it was better if we didn't have any contact at all. After all just because there is some small blood connection doesn't mean you have to get along or even like each other. The whole thing was strange as my best friend and I were talking on that subject today - about how sometimes you have to cut yourself off or be cut off - and physical distance isn't always the answer. So if you two are reading this (or three if my soon to be EX sister in law is peeping also) I am sorry. For what ever it was I did or you think I did - I'm sorry. Now, here is the fun thing - if you don't contact me EVER AGAIN I will have nothing to mention in blog! Is that like totally fair or what! Now to paraphrase my favorite song  - Don't Go Away Mad, Just Go Away.

I Was Wrong, I Would Rather Not Be In Pittsburgh

I left yesterday morning at 6:45 am - I had to be there by 9, but it's only 77 miles so I figured that would give me more than enough time, especially if I wanted to take pictures. I got to 10 miles within my destination in about an hour or so - then I hit Pittsburgh. I sat on route 276 for almost 45 minutes, it was nightmarish at best. Thank goodness I had the GPS - getting lost in heavy traffic makes me so upset. It's not the getting lost, it's the fact that if you get on the wrong road it can take forever to get turned back around and back on the right road. But I was on the right road and arrived 10 minutes before it started. I saw a couple of people I knew and the seminar was over by noon. At lunch the President of the Pittsburgh office came and sat at our table, eek! I hate eating in front of people I don't know and it didn't make it any easier that it was someone in charge of the whole kaboodle. So I got through lunch, hopefully not babbling too much and then off to the main office that I forgot to take a picture of. I met the rep from the insurance company and did another training session and then off for home. I hit some traffic, but since it was only 3 pm it wasn't too bad and was back home by 5pm. I do have to admit I do like the tunnels, they're fun to drive in and for some reason the second you hit the tunnels, the traffic breaks up. I'm still working on my latest project but I'm not sure if I like it or not. The yarn might be a bit too big or busy or something and the pattern isn't showing up quite as much as I would like it to. So I have to decide whether to continue or frog it, hmm. I've put a lot of work into it so far and I think I probably have to do another rep at least to get a better idea of how it will look. But I might sneaky order that yarn I'd wanted just in case.

All Things Considered, I'd Rather Be In Pittsburgh

So I'm off to Pittsburgh this morning for a coding class - and yes I know I took one, but this is specific to home health care. I drank a cup of coffee early - and then snuck another one down by the pot, I'm sure I'll be sitting in traffic later being VERY sorry about doing that. Work is busy reshuffling itself, there are two new visit nurses who are going to work part time so I'm sitting in on the orientation class as I will be eventually teaching it. It is fun being in the office though, I abuse my email daily by emailing my coworkers - the boss gets questions about The List which I keep posted by my computer so I can refer to it if I get bored. We have a list of offenses that if you do one, you will be Terminated. There's the usual stuff - apparently I cannot boost cars or terminate another person in any way shape or form - but then there's the odd ones. I cannot Traffic In Infants (are older children ok??), I can be fired for Stealing An Unpublished Drama or Musical, and my absolute favorite - there will be NO Involuntary Deviante Sexual Intercourse which will probably never happen as so far  no one has been able to figure out what that entails. I kind of think that it means if you're walking along and accidently have a sexual encounter with a cow or something that would qualify. This theory made everyone really laugh as I recieved a CowBear from David for Valentine's Day,sent to the office. And the kicker -this list only pertains to Pennsylvania, in West Virginia anything goes!

Can You Feel Me Dancing?

When I went into work yesterday as my boss walked by me she told me she needed to talk to me. I had a slight moment of panic as she didn't say why - and being a secretly Very Paranoid Person ran over events of the past few days. I've only been at my new job for a short period of time, not long enough to create too much mayhem but you never know. Had I known what she was going to discuss with me I would've put my shoes on. Instead I was forced to accept ANOTHER PROMOTION wearing pink kitten socks. Yep - another promotion!! That would be with ANOTHER RAISE.  I was rocked. They did another interview for the director position, Delia, one of the big bosses came down to do it. Apparently after I left Tammy and Delia decided to stop looking for a director and called off the headhunter. I'm not the director - haha, that would be scary but they've decided I can run both the visit ends in Morgantown and Bridgeport. That looks like a lot more responsibility written down, doesn't it? They still have to hire nurses to fill my position so I'll be doing visits for at least a few more months which is fine with me - I'll probably keep a few as I would hate to be out of that end entirely. But I am so excited! I'm heading out to Pittsburgh for training and will start taking managing seminars, I'll also be getting incentive pay which Susan says is 1% of our gross I think, but as the agency gets bigger(and it is daily) the incentive will be growing along with that. Whoo hoo!