Light at the end of the tunnel

So... life continues to move on.  The routine is finally becoming routine.  Yesterday at work is a great example of that.  Our normal staffing level is to have two med room nurses (generally LPNs), and two RNs.  The RN's stay in the clinic and handle their list of call outs, the new transfers, and any urgent or emergency cases.  The LPNs stay in the med rooms and have a couple call outs but mostly handle the daily operations of handing meds out to several hundred inmates.

Yesterday though, we only had a single LPN and two RNs.  We can't have one of our med windows be empty so the other RN was assigned med room duty.  I had the clinic all to myself.  I didn't have many call outs, and the 'emergencies' are few and far between as the cold weather inspires the inmates to stay in their housing unit instead of coming up with fake symptoms and visiting the clinic.  Initially I thought I had six new transfers, but they turned out to be for the following day.  Later I actually DID get six new transfers so I had to work fairly fast to get them all processed.

If this happened a couple months ago I would have been nervous, scared, and probably late in getting everything done.  But now?  Now it's just another day.  I leaned into the work and got it all done without any extra fanfare.  There's no way this could have been qualified as a 'hard' day, but that's the point.  A normal (albeit short staffed) day isn't anything to make me worried.



Something else is happening at work that has me scratching my head.  I seem to be getting the 'choice' assignments.  I'm sure everybody remembers me crying and complaining about being in the med room all the time... well I've now been in the med room three or four times in the last few months.  I wasn't even assigned to be in the med room on those days... I volunteered to switch with another RN that was assigned the med room.

There is a nurse that has almost two decades of experience, most of it at the prison, that got assigned to four block.  Not just for a day (that happens to everybody on occasion), but for an entire six week schedule.  Ouch.  Four and five block assignments are used for punishments.  Yes, there is a small handful of nurse that prefer to work those assignments, but they're already scheduled there for the regular shifts.  So why was this nurse assigned over there as opposed to me?  I'm the bottom nurse on the totem pole... why am I getting all the 'good' assignments?

One of my colleagues, and to be honest he's one of my mentors at the prison, says that there is no way that they'll want to transfer me out of the south side clinic.  That they (the nursing supervisors) are working hard to keep me happy here.  All so that I won't want to move on to another job.

That just goes against most things that have happened before.  Or does it?  I feel like I had to beg, plead, and crawl over broken glass just to get this job.  If they assigned me permanently to four or five block I'd simply nod, smile and take the assignment happy just to have a job and be working.  But all (o.k.... most) of my previous jobs have shown that I quickly adapt, learn my job, and become a star employee.  Maybe I'm just under-selling myself.

On the other side of my life, things are going well and most certainly falling into a routine.  The work schedule works out like this... work for three days, have a day off.  Work for three days, have a day off.  Work for four days, have a weekend off.  Rinse.  Repeat.  I generally have a few tasks to do on the days off (today it's shopping for my diminishing grooming supplies, getting a haircut, and possibly start Christmas shopping).  I also try to do something 'special' on my weekends off... visiting with friends or fun with the family.

This past weekend I loaned my brother my couch.  This couch has been in storage for going on seven years now and is great.  It's about three foot longer than a standard couch and is comfortable as all get out.  It's only problem is that it was made in the early seventies... and it's a plush goldenrod in color.  If you are having trouble imagining that as a color, just picture it fitting well in the Brady Bunch.  Yup... it looks awful.

Anywho, we had to get the couch out of storage.  I haven't visited my storage locker for years now, and it took some doing just to find the place, get all of the small boxers off the couch, and get it loaded up into my other brother's truck.  While driving back to my brothers house I told him that he could use it for as long as he wanted... hell he could toss out his old broken couch and keep it permanently as far as I was concerned.  My brother balked at the idea saying that he didn't want to keep the centerpiece of my furniture set when I was obviously going to be moving out soon.

That started the whole conversation of me moving out of my mom's house.  I had to explain that first and foremost, I didn't have any plans on moving out.  I'm in a good position and I get to help out Mom.  But second.... I really can't afford to move out.  I know I've said otherwise before... but I've now had almost six months of checks to spend and I've come to the conclusion that I just can't afford to live on my own.

Once I was hired in by the state, my annual pay moved from roughly $54,000 to $58,000 a year (and that's not including any holiday pay or overtime).  But my bills eat up most of that.  After taxes, insurance, 401k contributions and union dues, I end up with just a touch over $3000 a month.  Here's a breakdown of where my money goes:

$70 for storage
$400 for Fiona payments
$15 for my NPR sponsorship
$170 for insurance (renters, car, liability)
$650 for student loans
$160 for cell phone (mine and mom's)
$100 for credit card
$250 for rent*
$150 for cigarettes
$200-$300 for gasoline

*rent is what I pay mom each month.  Between graduating in December of 2011 and getting hired in June of 2013 this is what I borrowed from her to pay my bills.  She also covered my cigarettes and more often than not, my gasoline.  If I"m fair I owe it to her to pay that amount for at least 18 months.  With all that she's done for me, however, I plan on paying that to her for a long LONG time past 18 months.

Going with the higher gasoline estimate that's just under $2300 a month in bills.   Now consider what I'd have to pony up to move out:  Actual Rent.  Food.  Utilities.  Internet/Television.  If I lined up all my cards right, I could probably squeak by, but it would easily eat up the entire $800 that I have left over now.  I'd have to cut all corners though... cheap CHEAP rent, minimal amount spent on food, cheap internet/television.  And at the end of the day, I'd have almost NO money to spend.  If anything ever came up, I'd probably have to put in on the credit card or borrow money to pay for it.  Christmas gifts... they'd be lucky to get anything from me.  Visiting with friends?  I'd be back in the place I was... I really couldn't afford it.  Savings... HA!

Sure... I could probably squeeze some out of my bills down.  I wouldn't be paying for my storage area.  I could stop paying mom.  I could dump her off the cell phone bill.  But I get honest joy out of helping mom financially.

Obviously the biggest thing holding me back from affording to move out is the enormous student loan bills.  Over the next 10 years I'll end up paying just under $80,000.  But that's the price I pay for taking so long to find my life's work.

So... for the foreseeable future I'm going to be living with my mom.  It came as a surprise to my brother that with as much money as I make, how little I have left after bills.  To be honest, it came as a surprise to me how MUCH I have left over.  If I'm really honest, until my student loans are paid off I'm staying right here.  And if I'm chillingly honest... Mom probably doesn't have 10 years left in her.

I hate thinking about this, but it's been flitting around in my head for awhile now, and it's best if I put these random thoughts down into some sort of structure.  Mom isn't well.  She's not at death's doorstep, but where most people her age (she's currently 66) can live and do most things just fine, she struggles with the activities of daily life.  Watching her prepare for Christmas is hard to do.   For the past week or so she's been busy baking all the Christmas cookies and doing that in the morning completely wipes her out by the afternoon.  As I get ready for work or am sitting on the couch watching television I can hear her breathing hard just portioning out the cookies and swapping out fully baked ones in the oven for ones ready for the 15 minute cook.  I helped  her do some shopping the other day and just hitting two stores took all of her energy and then some.  She told me that she couldn't have made it, if I wasn't with her.

I'd love to think that there's some therapy or procedure out there that could add to her vitality... a heart stent, or bypass, or transplant... but all of her doctors agree that this is as good as she's going to be for the rest of her life.  Deep down I believe my mom knows this, but she will push and push to get every bit of life out of her body.  She refuses to downsize Christmas in any way.  The same meal that used to feed between 15 and 20 people is still made even if it's only feeding five or six people.  The same effort goes into decorating the house and baking goodies as was done when my brothers and I were children.  We don't even host Christmas events at our house anymore... but mom will still spend days setting up the tree, putting up the boxes and boxes of decorations, putting out the Christmas village she made years ago, and decorating our big mirror.

And it's not like this is the only time of the year that she struggles.  Every day is hard.  Every week she pushes herself.  If she were in her late 70s or early 80s I'd say she was getting along just fine.  But then again if she was that age it would be easy to accept that she wasn't going to live much longer.  66?  She should have a decade or more in her easily.  That's just the order of things.  That's just the way it should be.

As much as she struggles against her body, Mom also does as much as she can to prepare for her eventual death.  I think she's shocked that she's lived for so long.  Her mother died when she was in her late 50s (breast cancer).  After Dad died, she expected to follow him to the grave within a year or two... and with how rapidly her heart started having problems it seemed that she might very well meet that timeline.  But here she is... 10 years older than her own mother's passing, and almost seven years past Dad's passing.

When I say that she's preparing for her own death, I mean it in very concrete financial ways.  She set up a family trust and put ownership of the house and all of her belongings into it.  That way when she passes, the house will go to me and my brothers without going through court.  She's set up a life insurance account so that we'll be able to afford her funeral.  She refused to put money into the house as she can't afford it without a loan and is afraid to leave my brothers or I with a debt.  This summer it took almost a month's worth of debate to convince her to replace the old broke furnace when she had to also replace the recently failed AC unit.  She just doesn't want to acrue any debt that she won't be able to pay off before she dies.

When I started working, one of my first goals was to stop being a financial burden on her and to direct money toward her.  I already spoke about the $250 a month that I used to 'borrow' from her every month.  Well now that she no longer has to pay that, and the fact that I'm paying it back gives her a $500 a month difference.  I also took over the cell phone bill which used to cost her an additional $100 a month, so she now has a $600 swing toward the positive each month.  I've been trying to convince her to get a new vehicle.  She owns the same Chevy Astro Minivan that she's had since just before Dad died.  It's only a 2003, but much like Mom, it's older than the years or miles show.  It's constantly breaking down in one way or the other (the AC unit, the fan, the battery, the transmission, the rear gate, the keyfob....).  Not only is it old an in almost constant need of repair, its a gas hog.   I think it gets about 15 miles per gallon.  So I've been trying to convince her to take at least some of that extra $600 a month and put it toward a car.  With only a $300 a month payment for five years she could get a really nice car.  Say a Chevy Cruze.  It would get her a LOT more gas mileage, would still have some of it's warranty left, and would be something nice for her to have.

But so far she's refused.  She says she wants to put that money into the home loan she took out.  Or her credit cards.  Or... anything else.  Really though, I think she's just worried about dying before the five year loan is paid and therefore leaving my brothers and I with her debt.

Five years.  She's worried about not making it for five years.

There is something to be said about personal outlook when it comes to longevity.  I've heard about it from many MANY nurse and have seen it first hand.  When someone has lost the will to continue living, they don't last long.  Their body finds one way or another to give out.   Mom's been feeling like this for years now.

So if I'm really cold-hearted and honest.... I won't ever have to move out.  Mom will die, and I will get the house.  I may have to take out a small mortgage to pay off my brother's shares, but it will be far less than renting a cheap apartment.

God... I feel like such a shit hole for even thinking that.  It's not as though this is what I'm looking forward to... I'm not rubbing my hands together and mumbling 'mwa ha ha' as I wait for my mother to pass away and for the house to become mine....

...but that more than likely is exactly what my future  holds.




You know, writing this all out is enough to put me in a sad mood.  But it's as if the God or Goddess want's to emphasize the point.  While writing out "So if I'm really cold-hearted and honest..." I had to stop and rush down into the basement.  Mom was down there getting more decorations and lost her footing.  She's fine... but she didn't have the strength to continue standing and fell up against some other boxes.  I helped her (and the boxes she needed brought up) up the stairs, and she apologized saying that 'this cold' was really taking it out of her.

It isn't a cold... yes she does have the sniffles, but it's the fact that she's pushing herself way to hard.  Gotta go... I'm gonna spend the day with her.