Wordless Wednesday

We, meaning mom-in-law, Melinda, the bambino and I, headed out to the NEW! Target. It was a nice experience. The store still had the new, clean smell. All the racks were nicely organized. Everything was fully stocked.

This one, we hadn't gone anywhere, except to send a letter and check the mail. I put him in the sling in the first place because he wouldn't sleep for more than 20 mins by himself. He slept in the sling for about an hour and a half. Enough time to go visit the office people who were dying to see him again, and to put BamBam's clothes away, and to make some cookies. But as usual, the cookies cooked a little too long...oh well. Maybe one day, I'll be a good cookie maker.

I have a wrap too. I even got a picture with BamBam in it, but I'm not sure where that picture is. It might be on my camera, but my memory card reader went kaput the other day, so it'll just have to sit there until I can find another reader. While the bambino is sleeping, I think I shall take a nap too. It's time.

The Plight of the Shortage

There I was, going through Wal*Mart getting dinner food, when I got the phone call telling me that census was down on our floor and I didn't need to come in. Because of that I'm sitting here, blogging, eating lunch, and watching movies with the good intention of folding clothes and later, making cookies. We'll see. I think I'm going to be looking for another place of employment soon, unless the atmosphere at SCH improves.
Sunday was just awful. There were only two of us, with 6 rooms apiece. No secretary to do chart stuff and all the paperwork that comes with arriving/discharged patients. The CNA we had was new and unaccustomed to computer charting, though I hope she'll catch on quick.
Think of all the bad things that could go wrong in a hospital-just about all of them did! I started with 6 patients, while the other nurse had 3, though one was coming. That one that was coming, came about 10am. We discovered that she had discharge orders written at 8am...so she didn't have to come, she could have been discharged from her previous room.
The docs came around and discharged like 2 of Kim's remaining 3 patients, at the same time she go 2 more assignments to her empty rooms. In the hussle and bussle of sending out patients, she accidentally grabbed the prescriptions for one of *MY* discharged patients. Fortunatly, I was able to run down the halls, exit the elevator and catch the ex-patient just before she left. We got it all straightened out. Then, my patient that was going home, decided she liked the hospital and the attention she got, that she didn't want to be discharged and kept making excuses as to why she couldn't go home. First, I don't have a ride, then I can't go to the bathroom myself, then I don't have any money. We finally got her out of there by 630pm. One of my patients was having trouble, right about the time I was gonna go to lunch. Bummer. I didn't get lunch until about 345, and I had to tell Mark to go home and eat by himself :(
All day long, I had no time to chart, or enter orders (something the secretary would do), so I had to stay late, like 815 to finish charting and enter those blasted orders.
If we had a secretary, like we're supposed to, I could have gotten other things done. If we had more nurses, I wouldn't have had all 6 of those patients. One had fallen twice, a little foggy in the head. One was getting a unit of blood, had a private sitter (such a blessing, I tell you what! She did potty things, food things, keeping-in-bed things). One was an alcoholic with pancreatitis. One was another alcoholic with pancreatitis. One was a big woman with breathing problems. One was another alcholic with pancreatitis. Hmm, something sounds skewd. I guess the 4th of July sent everyone's pancreas on edge from their drinking and now it's rearing its ugly head.
The staffing issue isn't just today, or even just recently. Since they've opened 3 James and took half the staff from 3 York, we've been struggling to stay afloat. The general medical-surgical floor has that kind of ratio 6 to 8 patients per nurse, but the type of patients we get (normally) are more serious conditions-heart attacks, cardiac caths, strokes, and the like. The ICU have 2 patients apiece, and our floor is considered a step-down from ICU, so it stands reason that we should have a lighter patient-nurse ratio, no? Anyways.
The clothes are chanting my name, cheering me on. I must go

Cookies and Pictures

I made cookies the other day. My feeble attempt to get into the spring season. I have to work Easter Sunday, and I'm bummed about that. So I made cookies, one of my favorite pastimes. You would not believe the trouble I went through to make these. First, I had been planning on making cookies for a while, so I had picked up some writing icing at Target in the 'See Spot Save' section. I love that section. You can get inexpensive cheap things for a buck.




I mean, how great is that?! I also picked up a pair of cookie cutters, since we had none. They were little flimsy things, a flower and something else. Anyways, I obviously needed more than that, because the little edges of the flower would have burned, or something like that. I don't remember, it's been a long day at work. I first went to Wal-Mart, then Target to find my perfect cookie cutters.





I saw these little weird looking things, but I couldn't see how they worked for making nice looking cookies. Until I looked at the back. The four cookies fit together to make two little stand up things. All I wanted was some simple cookie cutters. Nothing complicated like those things. The saleswoman/shelve stocker/whatever told me they didn't sell cookie cutters. Nothing else except what those funky looking things were. What the-?!




So I decided that Wal-Mart was definitely not the winner of my money today. I went to Target. Cha-ching! Well, kinda. I had to scrounge high and low to find what I found. I know you're expecting me to come out with this big thing of every holiday cookie cutters. Nope. I even had to go the bake-ware section. Imagine that! But guess what I found there...no, really, go ahead and guess...I found a measly little three-pack.





There was a star, a circle and a square with wrinkled edges. They were really brightly colored, like made for a toddler to play with. But they got the job done. Now for the recipe. I opened my Betty Crocker Cookbook, and the first thing on the ingredients list...powdered sugar. Who puts powdered sugar in roll-out sugar cookies?!?! Not me! I searched the web for my good old recipe from Better Homes and Garden.




I had to go through many subscription refusals to find it. But I finally found it. No problem, until I got to the 6 cups of flour. Six cups?? I wasn't sure if we had six cups. We did, barely, and I mean barely. Like with the bare scrapings left in the bottom of the cannister bare.
Smart me, I made sure I measured out the flour
before I started making the cookies. Smart me, now my biggest bowl was full of six cups of flour.





The recipe said add it at the end...so I restarted the recipe in the next biggest bowl. When it came part to hand mix the rest of the flour in, I took my rings off so they wouldn't get all messy. And what would you know, I just managed to drop them both into the nasty of the nasty. Fun, huh? But I got the rest of the stuff mixed in with fairly no problems. Smart me, I also bought a rolling pin the other day. Rolled, cut, not baked. I read somewhere about painting unbaked cookies with food coloring (which I also had happened to pick up :D). I revealed my artistic abilities, voila!I really had fun making the cookies. And most of them takes pretty good. The stars, the dark ones, got a little tan, but the pale, pasty ones are the best. Still softish and yummy. I was going to bring some to work to share, but everyone there is on some sort of diet or another. So I didn't but I did bring some for my lunch. Those vultures, they spied my cookies, and jumped on them. Almost ripped them out of my little fragile ziploc baggy. Well, not really, but when I mentioned I thought about bringing them, the first thing verbalized was 'Yeah, but most of us are on diets!' But they said bring them anyways, so I will. Tomorrow.But for tonight, it's bed time, and cuddle with Mark time. Then it's back to work with the cookies tomorrow.