Talking with my bro.

I call my brother a lot. He is a smart guy and his opinion matters to me. I have this imaginary book and in that book is a list of people whose opinion matters to me. It was actually part of a comeback if a person was trying to force their opinion on me, I pull out this imaginary book and I tell that person while I open the imaginary book that I'm looking at the list of people whose opinion matters to me and he is not on that list.

A nurse taught me that when I was in Rockingham, North Carolina. She was a strong person and was a mentor. She was one of the few persons I've met in life who taught me so much about nursing.

The talk was made over cell phone. My brother was in the end of a mile walk from the Kite festival and there I was bugging him about my financial concerns and work related worries. He had experience about short term unemployment. I was unemployed after a layoff but I qualified for unemployment benefits. This time, no such thing as I am a nurse and nurses can always find work. I did have work but it's registry so its a bit irregular.

We talked about spending and how to go about my plans to move to the Bay area. I decided to stay here in the LA area for now until I get the experience I needed for travel nursing. The traveling industry has different standards than hospitals. Traveling agencies wanted 6 mons experience in the specialty you want to work in. I worked 2 years in rehabilitation nursing so I can only work in rehab and nursing home. That was a bit degrading considering I had 9 years of critical care experience. What ever, that is the industry of travel nursing.

I have a few leads for permanent work and was working on them. I had to be patient for the good jobs comes to those who wait.

Brother also reminded me to stay positive with my attitude. Thinking of good events so that they will manifest themselves to me. I believe in this as it has happened to me. I think of owning a home and being patient about it. The home manifest it self and it will be ten years now since I bought my home.

As we talk about work, my registry called and told me they found a hospital closer to me than the one in Orange County. There it is again, manifesting itself while I was being patient with getting an assignment closer to home. Amazing isn't it.

He told me that leaving the former employer means the universe is telling me to change. This change can be challenging. The cahnge I am thinking now will be changing my situation for the better. Trying to reach my goal for that past three years of moving to the Bay area. There will be a lot of letting go of material things, the few friends that I have in the LA area, the familiar places that I enjoy visiting. I am now open for new places, better things, healthier air, better social connections and closer to family. Changes that will bring a better life. Okay universe, I am ready. Let's do it.

Cleaning house Part 2.

The next morning I headed back to Granada Hills to finish up the cleanup. I started with checking on the touch up paints and found out that the colors are different for two of the rooms. We need to make a trip to the paint store later today.

First up is steam cleaning the carpet in the bedrooms. There are three rooms so this will basically be a simple job. I tried to keep the time tight scheduled but as the heat get s to me, I slowed down a bit. The rooms were not the same sizes so time spent on each room varied. The carpet cleanliness was apparent. The buckets of dirty used solution was proof that the carpet were dirty. I can now see the pattern on the dark brown colored carpet. Even V and C commented later that I did a good job. I used my own professional cleaner and my own machine. V owns a steamer too but I know my machine better. I don't feel like having a class on carpet steaming at this time.

Next up was touching up the trim and painting the front door white. There are a lot of shoe scuffs along the front door and down the hallway to the bedroom. The front door didn't take much work but it took some time as there are designs engraved on the door. It's not like my front door at home which is plane design from the sixties. V took out the hardware so that it has a clean coat of paint without brush patterns. It was a good decision as it came out good.

Prior to the door painting, I also cleaned the fireplace area and painted the shelf with semigloss paint. It was real nice after the painting, looks new.

Lunch was spent at a Chinese chain restaurant. It was nice as I was hungry. After lunch we hit OSH, and bought paint, caulk, and other supplies.

V started his day painting the over hang in the front door. The paint was peeling off and he and C cleaned the area up yesterday. Today is paint day with thick primer. It came out real nice. The front house' shrubbery were also cut by C. We can actually see the house now. We repainted the trim around the windows after washing the windows with soap. This took a while but made the house look great. Stucko were also applied to broken wall around the house. This spots will be painted tomorrow Monday before V leaves for San Francisco.

After dinner of pizza, we cleared off the cut brushes. I was a lot of green debris. We used tarp and tied the bushes down with twine. We wrapped about 6 of this bunches and left it in the front sidewalk. We discussed that fact that there are a lot of debris to be picked up and the collectors might not pick them up. It was mentioned that it only happened once in the last three years os they better not complain.

I was totally wiped out. After picking up the bushes and wrapping them up six time, I was really exhausted. I had to stop and rest. It was a long day and it's already 9 p.m. I left that night at 11 p.m. I left V there and wished him good luck and safe trip back to SF.

The next day I talked to V over the phone. He just left the house and he started early that morning to finish off the house painting touch ups outside the house. We talked about the hard work we did and the other work that needs to be done. The good thing was that all the major clean up was already done.

The following day, V called me and told me that C talked to the garbage collector and apologized profusely on the amount of trash. The guy was understanding and C paid him $8 tip. All the garbage was collected.

House Cleaning.

My sister's house is vacant for rent. I'm in to help my brother-in-law, V, clean up the place. It was Saturday and the weather was beautiful. Sunny and warm.

I got there around 11:00 a.m. I could not sleep the night before. I went to bed at 2:00 a.m. that morning only to toss and turn. I was really tired when I arrived. I went straight to work unloading the carpet steam cleaner. A couple bottles of cleaning solution. One was a degreaser and the other one was carpet solution. Both were purchased from a janitorial service store. This stuff is serious cleaning power, professional grade.

I started washing the walls from my neices room to the office. This was hard work. It was just muggy inside the house and my little fan was not sufficient to deliver comfort for me. I sweated like I'm in a sauna. V stayed outside to do yard work and to disassemble a stage built on their pation. It was used by a band once for a party. The idiot renter thinks it's useful and left it there.

After washing the walls, we decided we only need to touch up the walls with paint. Holes were patched up and sanded for a fine finish. It looks good.

Lunch was in a Thia restaurant not from from their house. We each ordered curry style food. V ordered yellow curry and C, a neighbor who helped a lot with clean up, ordered another style of curry chicken. I on the other hand ordered Panang curry. It wasn't like the ones I'm used too, but it was good none the less. i was tired and hungry. We did rinsed from the nastiness of hard work so we were pretty clean and presentable when we went to the restaurant.

We sat there to talk about the cleanup. I also ordered a large order of Thai Iced tea. It was great.
After that we headed to the supply store. Got some drop cloth, actually plastic of 0.7 mil think. We also got some plumbing supply, caulk, and custom paint. All in all good stuff.

Back to work, I started touching up the paint on the three rooms. As I applied paint I realized that something can be wrong. The rooms are not the same color. We will wait till it dries but it's not looking good.

Dinner was at a Chinese restaurant. I ordered hot pot of pork and oyster. Yuuummy! I was stuffed. We went back to more painting. V and C did other things like cutting the plants in front of the house. Now that was a lot of work. They cut 3 years of growth. These plants grew a lot. They covered the house a lot. After the cutting was over, the windows are now visible from the outside.

I got home at 12:30 am. I moved the cars for Parking wars, a game on Facebook. I went to bed and woke up at 9:00 am.

Med/surg at FHP.

Last night was totally unexpected. Being a Wednesday, I thought the census will be low and no work will be available. The Registry called and I'm going to Foothill Presbyterian Hospital in Glendora, Ca. It's only about 7 miles away from home. Unfortunately, I woke up at 9:00 a.m. that morning and has been up all day cleaning up the house. Oh well, I'm going to be tired but I also have to work.

I was assigned to the Medical/surgical unit. This is the lowest level of medical care in the hospital. The patients are mostly walkie talkie. Meaning they walk and talk. No constant monitoring. Little stress for me. Charting here is like charting in Intercommunity Hospital in Covina. I worked there a little more than 2 years ago. The computer charting came back to me easily.

The great thing about this place is they have soda fountain in the nurse's pantry. I can get Coke, Diet Coke and Sprite. Coffee is free at the cafeteria. The machine will dispense java 24/7.

I found two former co-workers from Intercommunity Hospital, a sister hospital of FHP. They have transfered to FHP for various reasons. One favors the 12 hours shifts and the other to leave ICU and become a supervisor. The supervisor also complained of the heavy workload in ICU, heavy fat patients. She said she's getting older and can't take lifting heavy patients.

Work load in M/S can get heavy. I had 4 patients until midnight when we lost an LVN and I was assigned an extra patient. The nice thing about this unit is that the rooms are small so the rooms are packed close to each other. I don't miss the large rooms of Casa Colina and the large sprawl of rooms. It can get tiring walking back and forth at Casa.

The night went by a bit slow for me. I took a break around 1:45 a.m. and called a friend at Casa who works every Wednesday. Stephanie is a LVN at Casa, she is a good worker and I miss her. We used to work days and she switched to nights about a year ago. I then followed suit as work on days was getting tough. We chatted a bit and agreed to keep in touch with each other.

One of my patients got real confused and agitated about 4:30 a.m. his wife was there with him. This dude is 84 years old and the wife is a Filipina about 30 years his senior. Oh well, gotta do what you gotta do to stay in this country. I called his doctor but the surgeon said it's not a surgery issue. I called his other doctor who ordered Ativan, a sedative. The doctor told me he doesn't know the dosing as he hasn't given it for years. There you go, I'm very impressed now. God, don't admit to me that fact, I don't need to know you don't know your trade.

The wife of this patient was a pain. She kept the patient on bay as he wants to leave. The Ativan kicked in and now she wants to know if he will be awake for breakfast. Shut the fuck up!! At this time, I was keeping my cool. The steam is already coming out of my ears. I just keep thinking to my self this is not worth losing my cool, she's scared and that is understandable. Fucking drama at this time of the morning. FUCK!

It got real busy around 5:00 a.m. Two patients need to be weighed, a blood sugar needed to be done on another, one wants pain medication, pills need to be passed, arrgh... LOL. I made it though and I was outta there on time.

Back on track.

I went back to work last night with a nursing registry. It was a late call, meaning someone didn't show up for work so the hospital needs someone to cover their staffing. Scheduled work for this hospital in Montery Park is 6 pm to 6:30 am. The registry called me at 6:15 pm last night and I need to show up at 8:00 pm. It's like working 10 hours for 12 hrs. pay.

I saw one of my former workmate there. We kinda laughed when we saw each other. Work was not too bad. Busy at first and got behind real fast when I got the first admission. Fortunately they don't do much narrative charting here. We just check a bunch of boxes and that is the assessment tool. Great time saver.

I took a break with the charge nurse and my former workmate. I learned that the hospital provided noodle soup for the staff daily. Wow, free food. Not bad.

The drive to work was 29 miles. Not bad, I was going opposite heavy traffic both coming from and going to work. I got my former workmate's telephone number so I can keep in network with her. She's a potential wedding photography customer.

I was glad I'm back on track. I met another LA County School of Nursing graduate. He finished in 2000 and got free tuition after working for County for two years. That option I didn't have since nursing work was hard to get back in 1995. I don't envy him, I had a great experience in North Carolina, something I can't equate to anything money wise. He also work registry after LA County failed him in their critical care course. This is actually the second person I heard this from. Another friend of mine also failed County critical care course and never worked ICU.

Now there is a pattern here. This guy is now the third person this past two weeks that I know who is not tolerating the crapthat goes with nursing. There is so much nasty politics and bullshit that no one wants to commit to anything. He works when he wants and takes 2 months off if he wants. Wait, 2 months? is he crazy? Oh well, I will not go there. He does what he wants and nursing can be that flexible.

Okay, time to rest. I'm scheduled to work again to night.

Moving on.

I left Casa Colina last Tuesday as a result of a confrontation with a supervisor on staffing issues. I was first suspended for 2 weeks without pay pending an investigation and while my boss went on vacation. I called human resources for help on this issue and no action was done on the suspension. I complained that it is not fair for my boss to go on vacation and leave me hanging for 2 weeks.

During that time I went and visited my family in the Bay Area and spent 4th of July with them. It was the best suspension I ever had. Not that I get suspended a lot, it's actually my first. I was also able to research the Sacramento area. I liked it and I am now deliberating if I will move there or not. The only issue is the air quality is poor right now due to the hundreds of fires in the region. I have breathing issues related to poor air.

I am weighing all the possibilities. Leaving my house vacant. Moving to a friend to rent out a room. Working per diem for a registry to see if any of the hospitals there are worth working for. Another friend suggest that I try nurse auditing, where I read charts of patients and making sure the doctors charge the proper labs and procedures for the patient. Justifying the payment made by the insurance company. There are a lot of possibilities out there without actually doing patient care.

There is also school for master's in medical informatics. Northwestern University has an online course where professions can take classes without attending campus classes. A good deal for self starters and may not be for a slacker like me. But before I decide I will interview with an admission person to see if I fit in this environment.

I also think that I need to move out of patient care and do support type of nursing. There are work available out there and I just need to find them. I like working with computers. Anything in that line of work will be nice., far from the drama of bedside nursing.