Bigotry, homophobia, and all manner of hatred.

I consider myself a good person.  I try to fight against hating anybody, anything, and any group of people.  In fact I try to never consider a person part of a group, and instead try my best to look upon them as an individual first.

Are they black?  Are they a woman?  Are they homosexual?  Are they young/old?  While any and all of these will tend to influence me to one degree or another, I try to always push these labels aside and see the real person underneath.

Sometimes people ARE defined by these labels.  And old person that constantly reminds everyone that they are older than them, that they've experienced and done more than any body else.  That they have already heard every argument, and therefore they know all the answers and if you'd only shut up and listen to them, that you too one day might be wise.  Or a person of color that sees everything in the light OF their color.  They see discrimination everywhere and will constantly remind those around them that they are being prosecuted for nothing other than their ethnicity.

Those are the type of people I try to avoid.  If their world is constantly and utterly defined by one fact in their life, then how can I possibly fit in without being a supporting player or a villain?  I'm not saying that they are completely wrong... but there is far more to life than any one thing.

Work update

I just wanted to write a quick post about how work was going.  No major drama either good or bad... just an update.

I've been told that we were going to be moving to 12 hour shifts 'soon' ever since I got hired.  Hell, they mentioned it during my first interview in March.  One of the nurses I worked with was told during HIS interview that they would be going to 12 hour shifts and that was the final selling point to him.  You see, on 12 hour shifts we'd work three 12 hour shifts one week and three 12 hour shifts plus one eight hour shift the next week.  Those extra days off allow nurses to take on another job that will give them one or two days a week at a hospital or some other facility.  He wanted that.  He is extremely upset that it hasn't happened in the 18 months since his interview.

I found out that they had been on 12 hour shifts years ago and had been on them for a LONG time.  It seems that going to 8 hour shifts was an experiment that was almost universally hated.

In the time before 8 hour shifts the nurses worked only one out of three weekends (although I honestly don't see how that's possible as staffing levels don't change and currently half of the nurses work each weekend).  They also had very little overtime as evidently they were better able to cover every shift.  The big benefit for most nurses is that the extra days off left more room for trading shifts.  So once the schedule was posted, nurses began lining up the days they really wanted off and finding people that were willing to trade with them.  The eight hour shifts don't really let that happen as the other nurses only have a single day off during the week meaning that there is a good chance that nobody on your shift has the day available to trade.

Oh what a year!

I will freely admit that I completely stole this idea from Joanna (of Happiness blog fame).  She claims she came across this on her facebook feed, but I'm not going to discount the idea that she came up with this entirely on her own.  For the most part, it's a question/answer series about the past year (yea yea, I know... still 8 more days).  While I was reading the questions and Joanna's answers, I realized I was occasionally pausing and thinking about how I would answer a particular question.

After about 10 of the 40 questions making me pause and think, I figured it would be a good idea to go ahead and write up my own 'year in review'.

First, let me set the stage.  In December of 2012 I was at a very low point. I know I shared some of this on my other blog, but I was feeling lower than I let on even then.  I believe at one point while chatting with greatgooglymoogy I contemplated suicide.  Not that talking to googs was making me want to off myself, but I couldn't come up with anything positive to say.  I had graduated nursing school over a year ago, and had my licesne for about six months, but was still finding very little traction on getting a job.

Instead of killing myself I started to hide away the negative feelings.  I tried to be a more positive person on the outside.... and that was a really hard mask to wear.  But I was afraid that if I would blurt something out lie that to googs, then I might just lose control and say the same thing to someone in real life.  Someone that could do something about it.  I figured though that if my internal self was that close to pulling the metaphorical trigger, then all I would need is another thing to weigh me down.  Like going to counseling for being that close in the first place.

So was Fiona worth it?

So it's been almost five months since I bought Fiona.  I never intended to do a 'review' of her until this most recent snow storm (more on that later).  After driving her though that I mentally started comparing her to other cars and I realized that I now had a long enough driving history with her through almost all types of driving that I could compare and contrast her.

Let's face it, win or lose I'm driving her for the next several years (three if I trade her in while still paying her off, five if I pay her off first).

Like most things in life, that new giddy feeling wears off fairly quickly.  In August I was driving 'A NEW CAR'.  In September I was driving 'MY new car'.  In October I was driving 'my car'.  And in December?  Well it's just a car.

That's not to say that I don't like her... the short review would be a positive one.  But with eight thousand miles under my foot I can now really find what I love, what I like, what I can stomach and what I dislike.  And yes, there are things that I dislike about Fiona.

First, lemme go over what I love.  I LOVE that this car still stands out.  When I step out of a store or work, I never have any problem finding my car.  I've seen maybe two or three other yellow focuses since I bought Fiona, but I've never seen one anywhere near mine.  When I step out I take a quick glance, and when my eyes spot that sparkling yellow jewel, I know I've found my car.  The only thing that ever stops that is if I park behind a van... she is small enough to hide!

Blog or Journal?

I wanted to take a moment to work through what I'm doing with this blog.

Originally I intended this to be a place that I could continue to communicate with my 'Caitlyn' friends.  I could be open and walk in my Calvin voice and keep you up to date with what's happening to me.

And for awhile, that's exactly how I treated this space.  But over time it's changed.  First... I found that I still visited other blogs and even Rachel's Haven.  I'm not all that vocal everywhere, but I do still comment on blogs and even occasionally post on the Haven.

So while I don't share the details of my life, I DO still keep in touch.  I've even found that I can still cap... although not with the same kind of passion that I did before.

With that level of communication and the fact that talking about every thing going on my life is kind of dull... I've unconsciously changed directions here.

Maybe part of it is simply that I have such a small audience.  Sure, I never expected that hundreds of people would want to join up and see behind my mask, but I did think that it would be more than a dozen or so people.  So when I write here now, I'm more often just talking to myself.  I think I mentioned that I used to keep a diary or journal of sorts called my 'Ramblin Notes'.   Writings where I would just talk about things going on or an area where I could work out random ephemeral thoughts into beliefs and truths.  This has more or less transformed into my new version of Ramlin Notes.

Getting Healthy

When I graduated high school I weighed about 220 pounds.  I remember hearing everyone saying that they'd love to have the body they had in high school and thinking to myself that I'd never dream of the same thing... I'd get my body into better shape and keep it that way.

I'd also be married in a couple years, have a big house, two loving children, drive a sports car to work read as many books as possible and....

Like all those other dreams, my 'fit' body never materialized.  Now at nearly 40, I'm wishing I had the body that I had in High School.  I'm sure you've heard of the 'Freshman Fifteen' referring to the fifteen pounds that many freshman put on when they go to college.  Well... I had the 'Freshman Forty'.  That's right... I ballooned up to over 260 pounds.

While it's not a goal to return to 260 pounds, I'd certainly like to be 'down' to that weight again.  You see in the 20 plus years since high school my weight has continued to grow and grow.  My 'high' point came several years ago when I was tipping the scales at closer to 320.  I didn't make any specific changes then, but I did lose my sweet tooth.  I just stopped enjoying loads and loads of sweets.  I DO like an occasional cookie or piece of cake, but that's it.  I can no longer gorge myself on sweets.  I'd much rather eat a good sandwich.  In addition to cutting out most sweets I refocused on what 'full' meant.

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.

Christmas Music

I talked earlier this year about how much I love music, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that I really enjoy a good old fashioned Christmas Carol.

Before I go into talking about that though, lemme catch you up on a few things that's been going on.  I'd mentioned earlier that I got hired in by the state and was wondering if I'd get holiday pay for Veteran's Day.  It turns out that I did NOT get holiday pay for that.  You see, as a State Employee I did not work my previously scheduled day.

Let that sink in for a moment.

I did not get the holiday pay for a state recognized holiday because I DID work my previously scheduled day but not as a State Employee.  Just a little bit of 'Bah Humbug' to welcome me to the group.

I also talked a bit about my upcoming hunting trip.  The trip was a blast, and like any good adventure turned out completely different from what we planned.  We ended up going to the Manistee National Forrest in northern Michigan and stayed in a Cabin that a neighbor owns and rented us. Our original plan was to use the Cabin as a base of operations, but to actually spend the night outside.  My friend is into a lot of survivalist 'stuff' and one thing that has his interest is sleeping in Hammocks.  Yes... cold weather Hammocking.  You see when you sleep up off of the ground you don't have to fight against the cold COLD ground.  You add in a lot of insulation, a great mummy style sleeping bag, and a tarp above it to keep the wind out and you can sleep outside at temps well below freezing.