New Toys

I was actually going to have David buy me this knitting bag for Christmas, but I wasn't sure he would order it and I couldn't wait, so it's here. It's green suede and is just so cool - if you like that sort of thing of course. The cotton sweater is finally going well after multiple attempts - but now that I have the pattern down it's going great guns. David is currently tearing the kitchen apart, there will be pictures tomorrow. He's repainted the cabinets antique white, replaced the counters and will also be redoing the floor in the dining room and kitchen. Oh, and he tore down the wall between the two also. He's finishing up that project he's been working on for clients  this week, we've had a bit of rain so it's been hit or miss all week which is really frustrating for him - he only has a day and a half to do and it's been tough trying to get it finished. Yesterday morning it was raining again and by the time it cleared up he was too deep into the kitchen to stop so he'll be going to the job today. The On Call Wars continue at work, the nurse from Bridgeport has handed in her resignation which is totally stupid - I mean you have to figure if this woman has been working for Interim for almost a YEAR and didn't realize we were oncall during the week, that kind of speaks to how often you get called out during the week....it's all baby crap if you ask me. I just do my job and don't get into it, I'll protest if it gets too unfair but for most part it's not a bad job at times. My boss has been suspiously nice to me for two weeks running - I have no clue and don't care to. I spend as little time in the office as possible and do most of my paperwork at home, thereby staying firmly under the radar.

All The Animals In The Zoo

Jackson will be 18 this year right after Christmas, can you believe that? Mr. Lee will also be 18 this year and it's starting to show. Her latest is jumping - and missing, but not entirely missing - just enough to hang on with her claws and drag herself the rest of the way up. This is a problem as her claws tend to embed themselves in your leg and last night after the 3rd time I was tired of it and yelled at her. I've also had to hide my ONE plant as she loves to bury herself in it and bat it around. David worried it might be poisonous but I pointed out she'd eaten about a 1/3 of it with no ill effects so I wasn't worried. Pearl has been a whining pest, she doesn't quite get the season is over and yesterday brought me her little hunting vest and dropped it on the floor next to me. You have to be a bit desparate if you're asking the vegetarian to take you hunting. Work has been funny - since the 4rth nurse broke her leg it changed the oncall schedule and all hell has been breaking loose ever since. I ended up oncall Christmas week - the other nurse had invited her whole family down and she would've been oncall, but that would have put me on call for Jackson's 18th birthday - so I figured switching would benefit everyone. The 3rd nurse thought the other office had switched it out and she was mad so she told the boss we were BOTH mad which I thought was hilarious ( I was like "Really? did I stomp around and break things? Would you like me to?") - but then they switched it around again and I made them put it back. That made the 3rd nurse on call for New Years (she'd already been oncall for Thanksgiving) and made nurse #2 on call for NO holidays so the boss tried to make 2 &3 oncall for half a week. Since #2 was happy being on call for no holidays she took another tact claiming she thought we were on call for only weekends and not the entire week and if that was true she wasn't getting paid enough.......At this point I took some Excedrin out of Susan's desk and left the state feeling I would be better off in Pennsylvania for the afternoon. And I was since no one in Pennsylvania was concerned with the oncall schedule.

End Of The Season

David took the pictures I have posted today - that's the preserve that they've been hunting on all season. Yesterday was the end of pheasant season - and they got skunked. But they had such a good time no one was complaining. Poor Pearl is all beat up from the heavy brush and cover but she has the rest of the year to recover. Yesterday was quiet for me, no phone calls so I pretty much cleaned the house and then parked myself on the couch and knit for most of the day while watching BBC America. I have a morbid fascination with How Clean Is Your House and You Are What You Eat and then of course Dr. Who and Torchwood were on last night. I finally got that cotton sweater started for real, there are few little spots I might need to eventually fix but they'll be on the bottom so it's no big deal - I absolutely will NOT frog it again. And then I worked on the afgan for awhile, that's at the boring and endless part of the border - when projects get to that huge and repetative part of the program it's hard not to get distracted. I see I got a call from my job last night but I can call this morning so I guess I'll be working this morning. I really can't complain though, the last time I was on call I didn't get one and this time I only got one, so not so bad. I am on call the weekend before Christmas and for the entire holiday which most likely will be bad, but I was off for the entire holiday last year so I guess it's only fair.

Baby It's Cold Outside!

The tempeture has remained low, in the 20's - since it rained the other day the grass is frozen and feels wierd to walk on. The other morning I noticed that where I stepped it left a very definate footprint - so with nothing else to do while Pearl did her rounds, I very cheerfully wrote my name out in the grass, very big. When I came home yesterday afternoon my name was still there - I guess since the grass was so frozen I must've broken the blades and it looks rather permanent - oops. David has not noticed as of yet and it should be gone by this spring so I'll try not to lose any sleep over it. Today is the last day of hunting season so they'll be heading off this morning to get thier last licks in. David has taken Jackson every day this week since he's off and they've been having a grand time. I'm on call for the weekend so I can't go too far, I'll just be doing the grocery shopping and pottering around the house this weekend. Tonight they'll be having the Thanksgiving leftovers, we don't have too much though so it won't be an endless march of reheated mashed potatoes and dry turkey. And of course there's Christmas on the horizon, I think we'll be doing gift certificates again this year as mailing becomes rather nightmarish when you're doing in en mass. David will be working on the house after the holidays and we're tentatively planning on him taking about 6 weeks to complete most of the inside work - there's just no other way around it.

A Pretty Quiet Thanksgiving

David and Jackson went hunting this morning as they had planned - Pearl was along to point out various and sundry things, which she did quite well I understand. There are only two more days and then that is It. This left me to man the turkey -actually the turkey breast as there are only three of us and only two will eat it. We made the traditional Too Much Meal and ate until we neared explosion. For the rest of the day we just hung about which is always on my list of things to do. I'm finishing up the afgan and have started the next project, a sleeveless cotton sweater that I've started a total of three times so far due to the fact that some of us cannot follow directions. Luckily I'm smart enough to throw in the towel before it gets too far and I alternate working on the afgan when I start to get too frustrated. It poured like crazy first thing this morning, then it was warm and then the temp dropped so it feels like fall again. My neighbor has been setting up his Christmas decorations since a week before Thanksgiving, that's pretty big here. I find it a bit unsettling at times as a lot of people haven't taken down thier fall and halloween decorations - it's disconcerting to be driving down a road surrounded by witches, tombstones, elves, santas, turkeys, sleighs and  haybales. I had problems making it through Mannington the other day as NO ONE seems to be able to agree on what season they're celebrating.  I'm hoping it will all be straight by New Years.

Is It Dark In Here - Or Is It Just Me?

Daylight savings time takes a great deal of getting used to, doesn't it? Since we're up at 4 am we tend to be in bed early too so it take awhile  to stop waking up at 3 am. I'll let you know when it happens, sigh. And you have to be VERY careful to stay perfectly still as Pearl will detect the slightest bit of movement which means Let's Get Up And Start Racing Around to her. I had an easier day today, not too much drama (or driving) and even managed to get all of my paperwork in. I got done a tad early and headed off to Jiffy Lube to get my oil changed as I'm about a thousand miles past due. I called David from there to let him know I'd be home soon and asked what they were doing. He informed me he was just getting ready to put the turkey in. Hmm. I told him that would be impressive if it was Thanksgiving and he was like Well! That explains all the strange looks he got today when he told everyone he had to be home to start the turkey - thank goodness I called or we would've been celebrating twice.  The guy at Jiffy Lube saw I had a CRV which his girlfriend has and that lead to the Picnic Table discussion which everyone with that model has when they meet another owner. My car has the most useless feature in the universe - if you pull up the rug in the way back there's a square cut out looking thing - it's a removable picnic table with expandable legs - no kidding. The reason it's so useless is A) there are no secret chairs to sit on, B) it's under the rug in the back so I would have to dig through a ton of medical supplies to get it out and C) how many people would pull off the side of road, haul out a picnic table and have lunch?? But it's so bizarre everyone that has one likes to talk about it and show it off. It's even better than the billion secret compartments and doors secreted all over (Jackson and Adam used to joke I could be a drug runner in that car). I do admit I love my car. I'm off tomorrow,back on Friday and then on call for a week. Oh well, it had to happen sometime.

Tooling Along

Today I have to sit down with the other nurse and get our patients traded off - in the course of the past few weeks for some reason I've been getting all the patients that live near her and she's been getting the ones in my neck of the woods. I mentioned this last week because I actually drove past Deb's house last week going from one of mine to the other so hopefully we can do a bit of trading today and cut back on our driving time. We're off for Thanksgiving which I love - major reason NOT to work in a hospital - I mean even if you're oncall you can at least spend part of the day enjoying the holiday.  I spent years working the night shift and even when I was off (which was rare) I usually worked the night before and got home around 8 am. I would sit around rather bleary eyed while the kids opened thier presents, found thier baskets, etc, etc and then totter off to bed in order to get up in time to sit down to the various holiday meals. Most of the holidays with the kids is a bit of a blur. It'll just be the three of us for Thanksgiving again, Adam has to work so he was unable to come but hopefully we can spend Christmas with him.