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Tuesday, May 31, 2005

red dirt girl

The patio continues apace. Well, actually, at a snail's pace. Being too cheap to rent a truck or pay for delivery, and not wanting piles of gravel and sand waiting on the lawn, we just bought our first 500 lbs of gravel for the base of the patio and trucked it home in the station wagon. (we will spring for delivery of the actual patio stone, neatly packed on a half pallet) Dumped it all out in about 5 minutes flat, and were disappointed at the amount of hole it actually filled in. To make myself feel better I also planted a couple of strawberry plants we had picked up. There's still a mess of gritty dried clay pellets in the lawn -- they don't want to wash away, be raked up, or be stomped into powder -- nothing works!

Had a lovely 12th/20th (that's married/together years) anniversary despite having worked all day. Came home to presents, went out to dinner (with the kids) at a local microbrewery/restaurant which was fabulous (except for multiple bathroom trips and a diaper emergency deftly handled by J) then came home to watch the Sox whomp the Yankees on ESPN. Doesn't get much better than that.

Then back to work, work, and more work. Given that I alternate 12 hour overnight shifts (7P to 7A with assorted day and evening shifts, even though I work a 40 hour week, I never manage to string together two days off in a row. My last full day that I didn't spent a few hours at the hospital was Sunday, May 22. My next full day without an appearance on the birth center will be Friday, June 3. Today is what we refer to as a "fake day off." I spend the day at home, eat dinner, then go to work, not to return until after breakfast the next morning. Today we were set to discharge almost all of our patients, so it will either be a night full of labor, floating to another unit, or having to turn down a holiday because I don't have enough time in my bank.

Monday, May 23, 2005

not where I should be tonight



I'm working a 12 hour overnight and my husband is home trying to sleep wearing a Holter monitor. I should be home tonight-- I don't like to think of him being by himself right now. It's not a big deal (but it is a big deal).

Sunday, May 22, 2005

22 May 2005

So how did we spend the weekend in advance of the cardiologists appointment? Excavating a great hole in the backyard -- after ripping up a decaying ground-level deck, we decided to lay a flagstone patio, so we dug out a 75 foot square area to 6 inches deep. Our soil is all red clay. You know what bread dough is to a piece of toast? That's what our soil is to, say, a brick. Much worse than the heavy, wet heart-attack snow we're used to shoveling from our native New England. J dug it up, and I moved it to our garden beds in the back and the front of the townhouse. I don't know what I'll plant in it -- maybe dynamite. I dragged C around to the garden centers on Saturday, looking for ideas. I know we're going to get some silver mound artemisia at her request, since it's soft and fuzzy. I'm going to get a bunch of varieties of thyme to plant in the cracks of our flagstone patio, and maybe chamomile. And any other low growing, perennial things that could withstand a little foot traffic. Saw red currant bushes at one place -- will have to go back and get one. I'm a big fan of landscaping you can eat.

Speaking of eating, that's what else we did in advance of the cardiologist appt -- eat great heaps of really bad for you food. Friday was fish fry night, Saturday was pizza and wings, chased by bucket loads of ice cream. Popovers for breakfast this morning. I've been trying to eat mostly vegan for the past couple of months (in preparation for having my own cholesterol levels re-checked) but... I don't know, cheating just looked really good. Back to the straight and narrow tomorrow...

Friday, May 20, 2005

20 May 2005

J. went to the doctor today for the first time in years; certainly over a decade. Thought it would just be a quick getting up to date, BP check, tetanus shot, blood work, whaterver. But yesterday he had a bit of a scare (that I didn't hear about until today) where his heart was racing at about 180 beats per minute for a brief period. So instead of even getting a full physical, he got an ekg, an appointment with a cardiologist on Monday (with a guarantee that he'll be wearing a Holter monitor to watch his heart for 24 hours), and a prescription for a beta-blocker. He is not a happy camper right now. So they'll try to figure out why he had the arrythmia, but more than likely the episode won't repeat itself for the monitor. He'll probably wind up doing a stress test as well. All of this is a little hard to swallow -- at 38 he's not wanting to hear about stuff like this, and I'll bet he's wishing he hadn't said anything to the doc. For my part, I'm glad they're being thorough and checking this out, and I'm trying not to get too worked up about it at the same time. Could be a real blessing that it happened as it did the day before his appointment -- if it had been a week ago, he probably wouldn't have mentioned it. Always something to be grateful for.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Oh, god, not another blog!

























I honestly don't see why people think that anyone might be remotely interested in their lives, thoughts or opinions. But I guess there's just so much random stuff floating out there on the ether that people realize the bar has been lowered -- the relative importance level you need to attain to be worthy of an audience is not what it once was. Oh well, you can always change the channel, click the next link, or otherwise tune out. I don't know what you're doing here anyway -- I never invited you. How did you get to this page, anyway?