We had a very low-key day here yesterday. Since most of the family is 1500 miles away, we just did our usual and customary ‘not getting back for the Holiday’ dinner here.
I dawdled this year.
Instead of just fixing everything the morning of (except the dips), I went ahead and put a few things together the night before, with the exception of the bird, the potatoes and the gravy. Usually, I just throw it all together Thanksgiving morning and can have dinner done from start to finish in about 4 hours.
Now I’m not sure how I can do that but, to me, it’s easier cooking ‘big’ than ’small’. I think it’s genetic.
The weather in Arizona yesterday was almost ‘holiday-ish’. No snow here, of course, but we did have clouds and rain. I snapped this picture on the way back from picking the Geek Boy up to bring back to the house:
I just thought that Saguaro looked a little bit sad….like he was reaching out for some pumpkin pie. Perhaps a little Audrey II ….FEED ME! Or something.
While dinner was finishing up, we played Scene It and I won. Again. And again. And again. It’s beginning to become a problem. If this keeps up as it has been, I think The Geek Boy will be listing that game on Craigslist soon.
Really……I think by the 4th or 5th game, both The Geek Boy and the Hubby are seriously considering wrapping me in a wool blanket and beating me with socks filled with pennies. (note: hide all loose coins in house)
But wait! There’s more! A good friend of ours told us about her Thanksgiving Day via e-mail last night and it’s just too hilarious not to share. (yes, I have her permission)
Without further adieu….I give you Deb’s Thanksgiving….(copied word for word and with the only alterations being adding of spaces for easier reading)…(For reference,Papa has Sundowner’s Syndrome, he’s not just ‘crude’)…
Enjoy!
Ahhh yes…another Holiday has unfolded in my family.
It started off with running TWO HOURS late getting over to my mother’s to come to find out we are not eating at 3pm but hope to eat by 5pm.
Ahhh and it starts.
Not that big of a deal as I sit down at her table with a cup of coffee…my mother’s coffee…after two cups of her coffee I get up and make a fresh pot of coffee… My coffee…you could remove wall paper with my coffee…three cups later I’m bouncing!
Now as this is a holiday of family and friend’s an old friend stops by out of the blue… Time for the wine!
Now this Old “friend” has done it all! Knows it all! And so on.
So far I have had a whole bottle of wine…and the holiday just keeps going! such joy & love from my family…As my mother yells at the kids,Poppa and everyone else…Have I said just how much I love the Holiday’s?
As I uncork yet another bottle of wine I turn to see flames coming from the turkey in the oven…FLAMES! And a to high pitch of a scream at first I think to come from my sister…umm no…it was from my son!
My mother then starts blowing OUT the turkey! As someone starts asking “where is the fire extinguisher my mother turns and looks at them as if they have spoken in another language and replys “No I don’t own one.”
GREAT! Ahhh yes… again another family holiday unfolds…my six year old nephew spills another drink across the already damp table clothe… I get another glass of wine… shocking even myself you really can shotgun wine!
As we set round my mothers table & someone starts to chokes on their food I can’t help but laugh at the face they make along with the colors their face turns! Then it is MY turn to start choking as my youngest son says “Hell yeah we got turkey pass me some turkey, Cracker!”
(Now this coming from a very white, very Jewish boy)
And then my Poppa looks around and says “We have crackers? I thought we were having rolls with dinner?”
I have yet another glass of wine…As we all quiet down and give thanks for what we have my Poppa says “Hold on I have to take a shit” and gets up from the table…I have yet another class of wine…
Now don’t get me wrong… I love my family very much! And in all truth I wouldn’t know what to do with the Holiday’s if I didn’t have them around to spend them with!
So the next time a Holiday comes around and you try to think of any and all ways to get out of having to go… Don’t! Go and enjoy your family with all the missed up things they do but don’t forget the wine!
So on this Thanksgiving this is what I’m most thankful for…My Family… and WINE!
This has become my annual Christmas picture ever since Spike and I went on our Alaksan cruise 4 years ago.
We didn’t participate in ‘cruise activities’ while docked, but did our own thing. I’m certain that we had WAY more fun!
Anyway…this picture was taken in Palmer, Alaska. While we were driving from Anchorage to our little shack up near Denali Park, I noticed the sign that said “Reindeer Farm” and wanted to go, so we made note to stop by on our way back.
Yea….I’m sure we passed through Wasilla, but <shrug> whatever. Obviously, they had no reindeer farm. Pffhhhtttt.
It wasn’t just reindeer. There were all sorts of cloven hooved critters that you really wouldn’t want to mess with. And, it was during rut season….so…yea….the bull elk were a bit testy. Still, I had a blast!
Here I am…..keeping Santa’s Posse fed and happy!!!
This particular fellow liked me and followed me all over the yard. Shoot…they ALL followed me…even after I was out of snacks. I think the critters know that I love them….so they love me right back.
We’ve all heard the stories on the news about someone who’s gone off the deep end and terrorizes, shoots and/or kills former co-workers / bosses. While I’ve never experienced it first hand, I have second and third hand.
It happened back in the mid 90’s and I was working the 1230-9 p.m. shift in the OR. Things were still pretty busy as the smaller evening crew was coming in to work and we got the call that a trauma case was coming in. A male patient, GSW x 3 to the abdomen, shot by a former, but still, disgruntled employee. He was her former supervisor at the local Coca-Cola plant (Chesterman’s).
At that time, there was a lot of dissent going on in our department. A lot of apathy, which was really sad. So, it was just myself and my surg tech (who was and still is, one of my very best friends) trying to hurry and get things ready for this case that was due to roll through the doors at any moment.
As I mentioned, the OR was busy that day, so the only room available for us to set up in was the Neuro room which was primarily used for brains, backs and donor retrievals. Luckily, it was right next door to one of the open heart/vascular rooms, so I knew I was covered there, but not knowing the extent of the injuries, we scrambled to grab instruments, suture and staplers from the General OR area.
It was a complete mad dash and then we discovered that the only available general trauma surgeon was one known to be a pain in the ass. Oh…and he was a ’sweater’ too. Yuck. Just one more thing to do…..keep an eye on the surgeon to make sure he doesn’t drip onto the field. Swell.
The time spent in the ER was very limited, as would be expected. Just enough time to remove the field leads, and grab some blood for labs and a Type and cross match, then up the elevator a floor to us.
The surgeon hadn’t arrived yet, so when we got the crashing patient, it was just myself, the tech and the CRNA (Nurse Anesthetist). The tech broke scrub to help with the transfer and the CRNA and I were working at high speed to get the patient ready. I was placing leads as quickly as I could and she was already starting her induction. She did a slam dunk intubation, everything was good there, so I grabbed a bottle of Betadine solution, squirted it all over his abdomen to let it ‘cook’ while I was inserting the Foley catheter. I switched out my sterile gloves and started my surgical prep. I decided to cover all my bases and went ahead and did a ‘nipples to knees’ prep, because in a trauma case, you just never know.
I was helping the tech drape when I saw the surgeon at the scrub sink. By the time he was done (quick scrub), we were so ready that all he had to do was cut. (yea…..we rocked the trauma cases like that)
As was expected, he got into the abdomen and it was full of blood. It was a mess trying to figure out where the bullets still were, what paths they’d traveled and which organs were hit.
Meanwhile, as I mentioned previously, it was change of shift time. The oncoming tech that was assigned to scrub in and help was, literally, standing at the scrub sink, but refusing to scrub until exactly 3 p.m. Holy shit! I went out to tell her that she needed to scrub in NOW…..but, she argued with me saying “I’m not on the clock until 3″, to which I replied…..”get your ASS in here NOW or I’m writing you up for patient abandonment!!”. Apparently, those were the magic words as she started to scrub immediately.
While she was looking into the window, refusing to scrub, the scrub tech was pulling double duty. She was passing instruments, retracting and first assisting. Heck, I’d even called out to the desk to see if another RN was available to I could scrub in to help. Actually, I called on the ’sqwak box THREE times’…..and finally another RN came meandering in.
Great! Ummm yea…not so much. Not only was she a fairly new grad with her BSN who liked to look down on us lowly ADN Nurses….she had absolutely no concept of anatomy. None. Zip. Zero. Nada. Apparently, she slept through those classes.
So there I am….no paperwork has even been started, but I told her to just document what she could and I would catch it up when the case was done. I was opeing a pair of gloves and flipping them on the backtable in anticipation of my scrubbing in when she peeked onto the field and asked the Surgeon where the bullets were. The tech told her that the area they were working on was the liver, as a bullet had really done some major damage there and they were frantically trying to control the bleeding.
I swear to God and all that is holy, the ‘Clueless Anatomy’ Nurse said….”Well…..can’t you just take it out?”
AACCKK!!!!! No sooner did those words escape her lips and I flew across the room to the sqwak box to request another RN STAT, when the surgeon lashed into a verbal tirade that could have melted the paint off the walls.
That was when help came flooding into the room. Magically, people appeared out of nowhere. The anatomically incorrect Nurse was banished from the room, another tech scrubbed in and 2 more RN’s came to help me out. Magic!!
Oh, but it wasn’t completely calm, don’t think that for a minute. We were still scrambling. And then? The icing on the cake. Really.
We’d been calling for blood. And calling. Finally, a tech shows up with a cooler and the bags of red cells we needed. YAHOO! Yea…..well….not so much. See, she was a new tech. as in brand spanking new….and didn’t understand that things in the OR work a little differently than things in other departments. She REFUSED to give us the blood until she could come into the OR and read the patients Blod Bank Band. I shit you not. No, really……I’m not kidding. I mean it.
So, not only was she uninformed, she’d managed to come through the back hallway (by the urology rooms) and was wearing her ’street’ clothes with a white lab coat over the top. And, no hat.
I had to get tough on her and tell her that she is never, ever to cross a red line in the OR without first having stopped into the locker room to change into scrubs, put on shoe covers and (as ugly as they can be) put on a scrub hat.
Even better, she refused to leave the cooler with the blood while she went to change. Seriously. She wouldn’t budge on that one….no matter who told her to leave it….including the surgeon.
Luckily, with the extra help I’d gotten, I delegated a Nurse to call the Lab and she was in the process of speaking with the Blood Bank Supervisor when the cooler gal came back from changing. But THEN…..she refused to turn over the blood until she’d seen the patient’s Blood Bank ID band. Seriously, at this point, I wanted to just punch her in the face and take the blood.
So, I told her that the only way she was going to see that band, was to come into the room, get down on her knees, dig around under the drapes to find the armboards, find the band, read it……and “Oh here….you might need this flashlight.” (at that point…..we were just sick of her and told her that she could only go under the drapes….and that if she exposed the patient’s hand….it would be a break in the sterile field and she’d get into major trouble. But, really, I was being nice in offering the flashlight, dontcha think? <ha>
She did all that and just to torture her a little bit, I wouldn’t allow her to leave the OR until the CRNA and I had checked all the blood. It went something like this, “John Doe - O Positive….John Doe - O Positive…..John Doe - O Positive….John Doe - O Positive, etc”. Then we hung bags. We can pull stickers off later.
After the ass kicking she took, she was still indignant until her Supervisor came and pulled her out of the room. She was fired shortly thereafter because she pulled the same stunt on another trauma case.
Anyway….it was a horribly bloody case. We ran like idiots for hours, but we manage to save the majority of the patients liver and all of his colon and he made a full recovery. WOO HOO! After we got him all settled in the ICU, we took half an hour to sit down and eat. Cleaning up the OR suite could wait. And, it did….it was right there when we got done eating. Shocking, I know!
Several years after leaving the OR, I accepted a position at our local Community Mental Health Center. During my first week of orientation, I was just trying to get a ‘feel for things’, but I did notice that the only door that wasn’t locked at all times, during the business day, was the front door to the lobby. So, I asked the Nurse that was training me what that was.
This is what she told me:
“Well, several years ago, one of our clients went to her former place of employment and shot her Supervisor. After she did that, she came here, walked into the back hallway and was threatening all the staff with a loaded gun. One of the Social workers was able to make a call to 911 and she was arrested right over there” (she pointed out to me).
I was floored and asked her….”What that the Chesterman’s shooting?”
Why yes….. yes it was.
After that, I guess I was a bit of a ‘new hire celebrity’. Then they gave me my very own key for all the doors.
When it comes to disgruntled employees….I doubt there has ever been one at that community mental health center. I LOVED that job, even though the pay wasn’t that great. It’s the only job I miss. Granted, I may miss the work I’ve done in other jobs……but this job was the whole enchilada. Hmmm….perhaps they’ll hire me back when we make our move back to Iowa? Ahhhhh..
That whole ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ thing? I’m more like 2. It’s kind of freaky and happens a lot.
Ask anyone that knows me…..I’m a bit freaky that way. =)
I admit it, some of the bloggers I read are ‘Mommy Bloggers’. I mostly read them because they’re great writers, but I also read because I’ve been there and done that and allow myself a chuckle every now and again.
During my morning reading, they were up in arms about this advertisement put out by Motrin:
I found it to be condescending and MY baby is 20!
What I absolutely loved was that the Motrin.com site was down for a better part of the day, and when it came back on-line, this is the message they posted on their home page:
Nice way to reach out to a customer base there Motrin people. Heck, even the babies are mad!
