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Thursday, December 22, 2005

Spring is coming!

I got the Johnny's Selected Seeds catalog today! Now that I've got most of my wrapping done, I can sit and flip through it and dream of summer...

And tomorrow we get one more minute of daylight! Enough for the chickens to take another step...

But today it's still winter, and I've got panettone rising in the kitchen. I figure it's a good holiday substitute for fruitcake (which I refuse to produce) since it has raisins, candied orange and lemon peel, and candied pineapple in it. But it's really more akin to brioche -- a yeast bread liberally enriched with butter, sugar, and eggs. It's an all day project, since it rises three times before you bake it. In our old house, I used to start by stoking up the woodstove in the morning, because the house was never warm enough for the bread to rise in our lifetime.

The thing that bugs me about the panetonne is that when you knead it, the pine nuts and raisins tend to rise to the surface and pop out. It means I always have a burnt raisin on top of at least one loaf. Panetonne also makes the most killer french toast you can imagine.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Oh. My. God.

I got home this morning after working an overnight (probably my last overnight ever) and was feeling pretty good. I was idly flipping through the paper, when I made the type of noise you usually only hear if S. is climbing on me and has inadvertently delivered a swift kick to my spleen.

"What is it?" asked J, concerned that a trip to the emergency room might be in the offing..
But no, it was just THIS.

Will it never end? Will that great sucking vortex that is downstate continue to drain the life out of us for all eternity? Proof once again that life (as a Red Sox Fan) is suffering, and the only path to the extinction of suffering is non-attachment... C when she heard the news said "I will never root for anyone in sports EVER AGAIN."

Saturday, December 17, 2005

where was I?

I really should make more of an effort to get over here and write something every now and then.

Officially resigned at work -- I'll be working through Christmas weekend, then heading out for a couple of days in MA before I start the new job on Jan 3. I've been hearing a lot of "it's always the good ones that go" which is very humbling. Also getting thanks for not bailing before the holiday. Hey, I can use the holiday pay...

So I'm down to two more overnights to work. I've been pulling 2 or 3 all-nighters a week since C was a baby -- nine long years. I don't know how much permanent brain damage I've done to myself, and how much is reversible. I really don't know what the world will look like after I've had a couple of months with adequate sleep. I don't know what I'll look like -- I might evolve or something, maybe grow wings. My hair will probably stay gray though.

The sad thing is, I love almost everything about working nights. The people are the best -- we really bond and work as a team like no other shift does -- much less of the politics you get on days. I love the tasks, which are more baby-focused at night -- kids come out to the nursery while moms (hopefully) sleep. Working 12 hour days kill me, because you can do two assigments worth of work -- you can start out with postpartum patients, discharge a couple, then hand off to do labor, or pick up more admissions. Working 12 hour nights feels much easier. If you start off with posties, they're not going anywhere in the middle of the night, so you can settle in, get some legwork done early, then retire to the nursery to hold babies, catch up with coworkers, set things up for the next days' discharges... Really the only thing I don't like about nights is staying up all night. Not that the nursery is all fun and games either. If you get a night where no one is sleeping, you leave in the morning just a little bit crazier than when you came in. Then there's that special sense of frustration that comes with being in the nursery by yourself (well, by yourself with a bunch of babies) and not being able to get out to take care of your patients. If you've got a couple that's a breastfeeding challenge, you don't just run a baby out to mom to eat, you run a baby out to mom and spend half an hour in the room leaning over the bed trying to get the baby to latch on. Meanwhile, everyone else is waiting for you...

But enough. Every job in the world has its frustrations, even if it's the thing you most want to do. Even if I got to stay home with my kids...

Saturday, December 03, 2005

odds and ends

So I ran my 5K today, didn't see my friend there, but there were a couple of hundred people... I finished in 33:03, which, oddly enough, is the same exact time I took to finish my first race three years ago. I looked up the race results this evening, and looks like my friend skipped it completely -- I didn't see her name in the finishers. Well, it was 27 degrees, snowing, and pretty windy. If I hadn't preregistered (and shelled out 15 bucks) I probably would have slept in today too.

It looks like I got my NP job. Now I have to think about getting some work clothes. I've been wearing scrubs so long I don't have anything office-appropriate. Someone should nominate me for "What not to wear," and quick!

Someone asked me not long ago if I planned to make any Christmas gifts, and I said no -- then proceeded to go out and buy supplies to make a bunch of things. Crochet has been my drug of choice this weekend. I just finished one project, and am about a third done on another.

Went to a baby shower of a friend from work this past tuesday. Made a gift for that too. Pregnant people nearly outnumbered the rest of us at this shower -- well it was even -- 5 preggos and 5 non. But one girl is having twins, so we were definitely outnumbered by fetuses. We took a group shot of all the preggos, lined up by gestational age, side view.