When it rains, it pours.

I know it’s been awhile, and I’m sorry!!  My last week with the twins was fun, except for when I stepped (okay, I was running around, I rarely just walk anywhere) on a toy.  Ouch!  Major bruise.  That same day, I found out I had been beaten out for an ER  job by an internal candidate, but otherwise did very well in the interview and the manager wished he had another position.  Booo…

Blooody

After a few days... bruised!

I took a ventilator class so that I could start more home health cases.  Last week, I oriented in a home of a vent patient who had a spinal cord injury.  He’s a teenager and has several siblings, 2 of which are largely responsible for his care when a nurse isn’t there, which shocked me!  It was a distracting environment to learn in, but this position will be a night position and I have 2 orientations at night to do (one of which is tonight).  The family has a dog that jumped on my car and scratched the paint.  Since this is a new car for me, I’m pretty upset by that. : (

The weekend started off okay, then got downright devastating for me.  I worked my weekend nights job on Saturday night, but I packed all my hiking stuff because we were leaving at 7:30am to go to Mount Rainier to climb to the base camp, Camp Muir.  We got a little behind schedule, so we had to rush it a bit so I could get back to work in time.  I’ll write a detailed post about the trip, but we made it!

We all got very sunburned, and I suffered on the ride home.  I debated for a long time about whether to call in sick, even waking my parents at 1:00am to talk about it.  Eventually I decided to just suck it up and go, mostly because I knew the family’s day nurse had called out sick that day.  I thought I was just being a good person!  Boy did I learn my lesson!  Over the course of the night, my face swelled up and started to grow leaky blisters.  It was painful, but it kept me awake!

This is 24 hours post-hike... lesson learned!

I returned to my car to find the passenger window smashed and my ipod missing.

nooo!!!

Later in the day, I realized that my Timbuktu messenger bag full of hiking clothes and showering stuff was also missing.  It was just one thing after another… scratched paint on the car, a horrible sunburn, a broken window and stolen ipod, and now a bag full of sentimental and essentially value-less (to anyone but me) things stolen.  I felt violated!!  Here’s what was in the bag:

• My favorite blue North Face hiking shirt from volunteering for an ultramarathon
• My favorite blue sports bra
• Patagonia Capilene long johns
• My favorite pair of underwear
• My new Smartwool socks from Christmas
• My yellow “Where the Wild Things Are” t-shirt from Second Nature
• My toiletry bag with Nalgene shampoo bottles, my glasses case and my contact lenses
• My cell phone battery (good thing I have the bulky spare one!)
• My yellow towel from a triathlon I did in Puerto Rico
• A small Snapware container from my lunch the night before
• My favorite stone necklace from Derek that I never take off (and only did because of my sunburn!)

Here’s a photo of me in my shirt and necklace for the last time : (

On Mount Rainier (Derek took this photo)

My Timbuktu Messenger Bag: RIP

It has been hard to deal with this.  I keep wondering why this would happen when it seems plain to me that I chose to do the kinder, more generous thing.  Maybe because I was also thinking of the income when I chose to not call in sick… and I was getting punished for being selfish.

It was the right decision: If I had gone home sick and I did not have this happen to me, then I would continue to be careless with items left in my car (for example, my wallet was often stored in the console).  And then at some later date I would lose something much more valuable and/or non-replaceable than the items above.  This was a hard path to take but I think it was the right one, so I don’t make mistakes down the line.

I’m no longer working on that case, since my employer refused to pay $7 each way for a taxi for me.  It’s unfortunate – I had finally gotten into a groove with that family and I think they were really nice.  Oh well, not worth the risk of another break-in.

This week I’ve been taking care of my skin and trying to recover.  I got the window replaced, and some gouges were left in my door panel from their poor workmanship.  Wish I had a photo of how it previously looked, because it’s my word against their’s.

Anyway, thanks for reading through my huge rant-fest.  I hope your week has gone better than mine!