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.