Contrary to how I might sound here,

I am rarely in a mood to authentically injure somebody.

Yesterday was different.

We've had staffing changes and new responsibilities added and a whole bunch of other bidness I won't go into; suffice to say that things have been tense and difficult for the last couple of weeks.

It was 1430. I'd spent three hours trying to keep an insufficiently-sedated patient from crawling out of an MRI tube, then gotten gut-punched. People on ventilators, even if they're sedated, can come up with a surprising amount of will and strength and coordination.

I wanted a cup of coffee. Correction: I was dying for a cup of coffee. The floor manager had recently cleaned out our station, preparatory to The Great And Terrible Joint Commission coming for a visit. I figured, since I keep my coffee pods in a cabinet that's designated for personal effects, that they wouldn't go anywhere.

Our floor manager is great. She's skilled, hard-working, empathetic, and determined. We're very lucky to have her. I admire her a lot.

But she moved my coffee. I opened up the cabinet, saw that it was gleaming, clean, and empty, and immediately said, "I will shank the bitch who moved my coffee."

After looking for the coffee pods for fifteen minutes, I gave up and had a cup of the elderly, stewed stuff in the breakroom. (Is there some physical law that prevents breakroom coffee from ever being fresh?)

Note to everybody, everywhere: You don't just move a woman's coffee without warning. Doing so might invoke disciplinary action, up to and including termination. With extreme, undercaffeinated prejudice.

Oh, hai.

It's been. . .a month? Six weeks? Seven weeks?

God, who knows. All I know these days is getting up in the dark, working under artificial lights, going home in the dark, and praying for the sweet, sweet release of death.

Not really. But close.

In the time since I last caught up with you guys, I have survived The Annual Music Festival That Makes My Commute Home Even More Unpleasant, three more checkups with various CANSUH doctors (all clear!), and a staffing reduction.

Because when you win awards and have fantastic patient outcomes and get featured in advertising campaigns, with pictures and everything, that's how you're rewarded: with staffing cuts.

And it's rained a couple of times, which is kind of a big deal, because our county usually breaks up and dissipates large thunderstorms. I think it's a function of having so much hot air here every couple of years, when the Legislature is in session.

But anyway, yeah: Manglement decided that we were just too damned efficient and fantastic, and so cut our staffing by a third. One of our nurses is out taking care of an aging/sick/dying parent, so that meant that I worked, like, all the time. I barely had time to eat something that wasn't fast food, let alone write.

It's frustrating to be managed by a person who has no critical-care experience. It's equally frustrating to be managed by somebody who hasn't laid paws on a patient in, oh, at least fifteen years--and it's worst of all when those two people are combined into one. I feel sort of like a character from "Savage Chickens"--there's this robot with a board with a nail sticking out of it who comes around whenever somebody Important is about to tour the facility, but otherwise never shows up.

So we're all trying to focus on the positive. Two of our nurses recently had babies, which is always nice if you like babies, and I am, so far, not going to have to have more surgery to chop malignancies out of my head. Boyfiend's foot-drop has completely resolved. The cats and dog are making a habit of cuddling together, a la A Peaceable Kingdom. Nobody's tried to punch me lately. (Well, they tried, but they didn't connect. Much.)

I have a couple good stories to tell. I also have some eyebrows to pluck. You can tell, by looking at my eyebrow game, which takes priority today. Tonight, I will be dining on white wine and scrambled eggs and biscuits with sausage gravy, oh fuck yeah.

My trainer brought in a new piece of equipment today: the big yoga-whoozit ball:

Little did she know I'd already found my spirit animal.

My Boyfiend's Back.

I go back to work tomorrow after ten days off. Why, you ask, did I take ten days off in the middle of what is decidedly not vacation season?

My boyfiend's back.

Specifically, his two-level microdiscectomy and associated recovery time.

Boyfiend had worked really hard all late summer and early fall, getting the brewery where he works up and running (yes, Boyfiend makes beer for a living. It's a perfect match.) and had started, just before Thanksgiving, having some pain in his knee. He'd messed up the knee years ago in a bike accident (yes, he rides bikes. Yes, he has a fixie. Yes, he has a beard and skinny jeans and flannel shirts.) and we'd thought it was just overwork. . .

. . . until the day that that leg was so numb he nearly fell getting out of bed.

I'll spare you the fun and games involved with the diagnosis of his problem, except to say that about six weeks into it, I said, "Honey-Bun, Snoogums, Sweetie-Pie, this shit is for the birds. I've got you an appointment with a neurosurgeon at Sunnydale General."

Whereupon he had a myelogram and various other things done that made the surgeon say OMG WTF, and then he went into surgery, where the surgeon opened him up and said OMG WTF EVEN WORSE THAN I THOUGHT OH NOOOOEEEES, and then the surgeon fixed him and closed him up and he's been pretty much fine.

I told him before surgery that he'd take less pain medication recovering from the surgery than he did prior. He did not believe me. I was right.

So for ten days I've been on light nursing duty. Boyfiend is not a whiner, he doesn't moan for attention, and he doesn't get in the way. Mostly he's been sleeping and reading and eating entire pints of ice cream late at night.

Monday he'll get his staples out. Then he can begin, very carefully, to be slightly more active. It'll be months before he's allowed to throw kegs around like Hulk Brewer again (if ever he can), but at least he'll be further away from surgery.

I have to say: it's been nice, after years and years of taking care of back-surgery patients, to get to see one get better.

Hey la, hey la.

Me working yesterday, after the time change.