A droopy day

There has been one word to describe Seattle in recent days:  Cold!  And also one word to describe me:  Overworked!  Holidays are a difficult time for in-patient nurses, and I imagine for hospital doctors as well.  One might think that there would be fewer patients during these times, and indeed that is true.  But there is also less staff.  Most people would rather be basking in the love of their families at Christmas time, or rooty-tooting with their friends on New Year’s Eve, than cleaning up poop (or worse), and caring for  super sick patients.  For that is who is in the hospital during the holidays – the desperately ill.  Any basically healthy person getting elective surgery – my usual patients – elects to get the surgery at some other time.  So four work days with no meal (or any other) breaks, and run, run, run the whole eight hours.  Then charting when one is too tired to think, making that task take twice as long.  Staggering home with my uneaten dinner, and then being too tired to eat it.  Yuck!   Yesterday, my day off, I drooped around the house recovering, and didn’t do a single productive thing. I barely even read or knitted.  (I count reading and knitting as productive things, by the way.)  I did, however, make up for missed eating.   And later today, back to work for more.  But I think my work routine will have returned to normal, now that the Year End and Year Beginning festivities are over.  N.B.  I love my job, but sometimes it is too much work crammed into too little time. 

The photos are of the Seattle University fountain, which was left on for the first super frigid day, and produced a giant icicle.  It was most beautiful, and I’m afraid my pictures didn’t adequately capture its magic.  The fountain always cheers me on my way to work because it is so lovely and is generally surround by studious students, happy families, and Frisbee chasing dogs, and on my way home from work because I know that when I pass the fountain that I am almost there.