Health
Dr. C finally gave up on getting me the Elyxyb and admitted that my insurance simply wouldn't cover it. The new med the he gave me, indomethacin, is more or less a super Motrin. A very strong prescription level pain killer and anti-inflammatory, but nothing really special when it comes to migraines. I tired it on a couple different migraines and no big surprise, it helped with the pain and nothing much else.
Mental health is still going well. I still plan on reducing some of my meds the next time I see my mental health NP, but that's not for another month yet.
I got my supply of Emgality and for the first time, I got a three month's supply. That was one of the last meds that only came in a single month supply before.
Then comes my weight. I've talked in various places and at various times about my weight. In high school I was about 220 and thought I was fat. My first year of college I blew up to like 280. Over the years I went up and down and at my heaviest I weight in around 320. When I got back to working as a nurse I settled around 260, but it creeped up as my diabetes got worse. I went on Ozempic and that dropped me down to a low of like 238. I then went back up to high 250s low 260s and was happy.
That's where I stayed for several years and even included several changes in Ozempic. But the last time I went to the doctor's office I weight in at 235. A new low for me, post high school. The weight loss I've seen in these past few years has been a kind of 'normal' Ozempic weight loss. Yes, it's taken away a lot of the fat. My face, my chin(s), my neck... even my arms and legs, have all dropped a lot of fat. My central core has lost a lot of fat but has kept the same general shape. I still have manboobs and a belly but they're not filled or solid feeling any longer. In fact, when I'm lying on my back on my bed my belly almost inverts. I can feel my hip bone, move my hand DOWN to my belly, and then a sharp curve back up to my ribs.
But it's also deleted a LOT of muscle. I've never been a BIG STRONG MAN, but I had the strength of a man my size. Now? Now I'd say I'm weak. It doesn't really affect me day to day, but I do notice it when I have to lift something heavy or do anything strenuous.
At work our patients have to get weighed when they get back to the unit. If we have the time and are feeling nice, we can get the weight up in admissions but our scale is like 5 pounds off. So, recently we got a new scale. A big one. One night when I was working alone I hopped on and almost laughed out loud because it was obviously SO far off. It said I was 222 pounds. That would put me in my high school weight range and I'm two inches TALLER than I was in high school.
The next morning when the day shift nurses came in I told them about the scale and how much it had to be off. One of them jumped in and weighed herself because she said she liked to see scales tell her she'd lost weight. She came back in a little angry as it said she'd GAINED weight. When I came back that night my co-worker went and weighed herself and low and behold... she said it was accurate.
I decided to compare it to my home scale. I don't keep track of my weight at home but we have a pretty good scale. It's off, but it's consistently off. 5 pounds too light. If the doctor's office says I'm 263, I can bet good money on my home scale saying I'm 258. When I weight my self at home it showed 217.
that means I've lost roughly 13 pounds in just a few months. That is NOT good. Sure, it's when I started work so it could be mental health, it could be moving around more, it could be just upping my metabolism several days a week. But even with all of that in consideration, it's still a lot of weight to lose.
Finances
Money is good. I'm staying well within my budget, am able to pay R his money without breaking my budget, and can even afford a new hobby. More on that later or in its own post.
I finally got the first part of my sign on bonus and was happy to be able to share a big part of it with R. The rest just went into savings as I'm getting a nice little nest egg.
The check that included the sign on bonus also had holiday time, some extra bonuses, and some weird overtime. None of which made sense. So, I gathered up all my questions and send them into HR. They've gotten back to me on most of the items, so let me tell you about them and then we'll get to the remaining question.
We get paid a shift differential. $3 an hour. The way they've set that up is that 2nd shift, 3pm to 11pm and third shift, 11pm to 7am, gets the differential. And since they break down their shifts that way, our hours are counted that way. Every check I get some 1st shift hours (for when I work past 7am), 2nd shift hours (from 7pm to 11pm), and third shift hours (11pm to 7am).
Holidays work more or less like they did at the prison. They put 12 hours of time onto the pay period for the holiday. If the holiday lands on my scheduled day but I don't have to work that particular holiday, I get the day off without losing any hours (though I do lose the shift differential). If I DO work the holiday, it's paid out at 1.5 times.
Overtime is only paid out after 40 hours worked in a week. It doesn't matter if I end up working 16 hours in a row, none of that is overtime if I don't exceed 40 hours in a week.
Punches at the clock are rounded to the nearest 15 minutes. If I clock in at 7:07pm, I'm clocked in at 7:00. If I clock in at 7:08pm I'm clocked in at 7:15pm.
The two other bonuses on my check, both for $50 ended up being leadership bonuses. They thought I did a particularly good job in the admissions department and also thought I did a good job by going to the units and lending a hand. I think this may be the most stupid thing ever because if I hadn't asked about them, I'd have never known why I got them. They were just random.
The last thing on my list, and the one thing that hasn't been answered yet, is the overtime. I didn't work over 40 hours in either workweek. But on the 2nd work week there was 11.75 hours of OTC paid out at my hourly rate plus my shift differential. $50 an hour. But next on the itemized list was another OTC line for 11.75 hours paid at -$47. So... I got 11.75 hours of shift differential? You'd think so, but later down the list there was a line of 11.75 hours of Overtime 1.0 paid at $79.45 an hour. Then another line of 11.75 hours of Overtime 1.0 paid at -$79.45 hours. So... how did they get 79.45 an hour? Why give me that overtime only to take it away? it makes no sense.
The HR rep said she'll get back with me.
And one last financial note, my 401k won't be updating nearly as fast as I'd like. I ended up giving 16% of my check to retirement. The company's matching is TINY compared to that. For this check I paid $745 to my 401k. The companies 'match'? $145.
Family/Friends
I haven't heard from E except for a joke here and there via WhatsApp. About the same for A, though I did joke with him about living in Dallas as they're hosting a bunch of the World Cup matches.
I guess I have work friends now. Not just friends AT work, but friends FROM work. S. Up until recently we worked the same night shifts (they've changed our shifts around just a bit but we still work 2 out of 3 days together). We're both similar in that we like to work and don't like to sit around. We'll complain about stuff that warrants complaint, but won't complain just to complain. She's about 7 or 8 years younger than me and has lived quite a different life, but we get along great. Well, it turns out that she and her husband J want more friends. So she invited me and our coworker C over for a 'game night'.
We brought snacks, she made up some quesadillas, and we all brought out own drinks. We ended up playing a board game that I've heard a lot about but hadn't ever played before... Catan. It came out like 30 years ago as The Settlers of Catan but has been shortened to just Catan. I won't go into a lot of detail about the game other than to say it's fun and very randomized and I'm going to recommend it to my brother and nephews.
Everybody that was there was fun. I obviously knew S and C. I'd heard of both their husbands and they'd both heard of me. There was also another couple of S's friends who were cool.
Family wise, B is about in the same place. Still struggling to get control of his mental health but striding along. R has just left on a two week vacation up north. I'm happy that he can have the time away as it lets him recharge the batteries and all... but damn it that honestly makes my life much harder. It's not easy taking care of Mom. For instance, my first day off is often spent catching up on sleep. But I had to take Mom to a doctor's appointment at 2 in the afternoon. I got a few hours of sleep but not nearly enough. I then stayed up the rest of the day and in fact stayed up quite late that night. That means I slept in late the next morning. When I got up it was time for lunch and I always want to encourage Mom to eat so I forced myself to eat even though I wasn't hungry. Afterward I did a bit of shopping and then went to take a nap. That nap ended up lasting seven hours. I slept right through dinner which isn't good as Mom should have someone helping her.
Yesterday she said she wanted to get up fairly early and go to the farmers market to get fresh strawberries. Fine. I'd rather sleep in and have a lazy day, but fine. I set my alarm as I again stayed up late the night before. I got all of 3.5 hours of sleep that night. And what does Mom do? Sleep in. I can't be angry that she doesn't feel well enough to go out, but damn it, I'd have liked to sleep in too.
On top of this, Mom asked me to get a new bulb for the oven. I took a look and saw that it had a glass cover that was screwed into the back of the oven wall. I got a screw driver, took the screws out... and shorted out the oven. Turns out I didn't need to unscrew that part and it had loosened the wires. I got a repair guy to come out and look at it, but he couldn't get here that day or Saturday, meaning it will have to wait until Wednesday when I have another day off. Which thoroughly throws Mom off as she uses the oven just about every day.
Anyway, it's been all of four days leaving me just another 10 to care for Mom alone. I'll probably be ready for my own vacation sometime after that.
Work
Work is going fine. I've fallen into a good routine and am getting used to those that I work with. The two nurses I mainly follow (meaning they work the shift before me) are A and L. L is more or less an easy going soul but she gets overwhelmed VERY easily. Put two things on her plate and she freezes. A is better at multitasking but she's also negative. Not when it comes to patients... she's good there. But when she's telling you about something, or even just hearing about something herself, she's negative. It's bad and it's going to be bad and that's just before it gets worse. Not exactly pleasant. As we work in 12 hour shifts, those are also the nurses that follow me.
The nurses I work with are S and C. S is the one that hosted the game night and whom I'm starting to consider a real friend. Now, we all have mental health issues, but she has more than her fair share. I haven't gotten too deep into it with her but she's open enough for me to realize she takes 'something' that helps her get up and concentrate at work. Later she'll take something that helps her get down. I'm not talking about caffeine and melatonin, I'm talking about possibly Ritalin and trazadone. She also has a weirdly innocent upbringing. When she first married she married a completely controlling asshole. She didn't know how much money she made, what it was spent on, or any thing about her financial life. She's not that way now, but she still defers to her new husband quite a bit and lets him 'take care of her'. Thankfully after meeting her husband, he does seem like an honestly good guy that loves her.
C is an odd duck. She's older than me but not by a ton. MAYBE 60. She used to be the director of a hospital department but left that for... a hospice position? And then after that was eliminated, came to this job. Her only real problem is that she wants to work first shift. She currently works 3p to 3a, and that fucks with her sleep schedule. I don't think she'll be a colleague all that much longer which is a real shame. She's a good worker. All three of us, S, C, and me, are workers. We don't shirk away from doing something and in fact seek it out.
I'm still making up my mind on the rest of the nurses in the admissions department and am barely getting to know anyone in management and the back of the house (the units).
One big thing that happened at work is that we voted on unionizing.
This requires a little backstory which goes back further than me hiring in. I'm not sure exactly how it started as our location is only about three years old but I'm guessing just less than a year ago, bad things started to happen. Schedules changing were one of the bad things. That pushed a LOT of nurses out. Which made the schedules worse. Much of that turned into a simmering desire for a union. I guess around the time that I hired in, February, they started to organize with a local union. Or rather, a local branch of a large national union. Once it became clear that there were enough nurses willing to sign on for a union vote, they had to announce it to the corporation. That's when everything sped up. The union could start to talk to us en-masse and the corporation could start talking to us about unions.
The corporation fired the COO, the guy that actually hired me, and then started having these 'town halls' where they could say that they're listening to us, they're changing, and they've already started changing. I didn't exactly cheerleader for unions but I was a voice of reason FOR unionization and had nothing to say about all the 'bad' stuff that had happened before. I simply talked about firm staffing levels. Firm vacation and paid time off levels. Firm promotion and reviews and raises.
The vote came and it ended up being 27 for the union, 12 against. I'm honestly surprised that there were 12 nurses that voted against. The vote was on my last day of work, so I haven't been back to feel the mood yet. I'm honestly curious about how both the nurses and the management feel.
Oh and BTW, I never heard anything about my smoking. No direct complaint and no request to do anything about it.
And one last thing about work, I'm getting used to the schedule. I know that from the first day I work until the day I get home from my last day of work, I have nothing. I'm going to work tomorrow night, so I took a little nap today in order to stay up all night. Around 7 AM I'll go to sleep and sleep through the day. I'll get up at 4, have about an hour to wake up, then get ready and go to work. I'll work, then return home round 8 AM. I'll eat, watch some YouTube videos, then go to sleep. That will repeat until my third shift. When I get home that last morning, I'll still eat, watch YouTube, and go to sleep, but I won't sleep all day. I might get about a 3 or 4 hour nap in and then try and assess what's happened in the world over the past three days. I'll then go to sleep at a far more normal time, and get up in the morning.
I don't love it... but it works. I seem to be one of the only people at work that think a 12 hour day is just too long. As for days off, five days off in a row is too much. Three days off isn't enough.
Entertainment
I finished the Rookie and moved back to For All Mankind. Then I slowed down as I seem to spend a lot more time at my computer just staring at it. I put YouTube on and watch random videos there, but can't seem to get into new stuff.
New Tech
I got a new monitor. I had a 48" OLED TV/Monitor that was pure joy. It looked great and went up to 120hz. Its only problem is that it was about two sizes too big. I have a built in shelf above my desk so the monitor had to push close to me in order to fit under it. that pushed my keyboard closer to the edge of the desk than I like and just ate up so much damned space.
In all honesty, since I bought the monitor, I'd wanted to get the size smaller. a 42 inch monitor of the same brand/type. BUT, price seemed odd and expensive. I paid about $1,400 for the 48 inch monitor as it was at the end of the year sale. The 42 inch goes for $1,349 when brand new. I figured I'd wait it out as I didn't want to throw away $1,400 and could then get the 42 inch for a reduced price at the year end sale.
Then I forgot about it. For like two years. I finally, FINALLY, remembered it this year and got the 42 inch for $800. And it has made a HUGE difference. First, it's still so damned big that I can barely see the edges without turning my head and that's with pushing the monitor like 4 inches further back than the 48" sat. It's let me push EVERYTHING back, from my speakers, my keyboard, my headset, and even move my phone charger from atop my speaker to the desk itself. The saturation, already amazing on OLEDs is actually BETTER. Brighter, more 'in-your-face' amazing.
I got a smart watch for Mom. It was R's idea actually. Since he was going on vacation and new there would be a string of days that I just would only barely be around (sleep, work, sleep, work, sleep...) that he wanted her to have something on that allowed for better communication. He thought she could just use one of my old smart watches (lets face it, I've had like 7 at this point) but I knew those were all old, kind of janky, out of date, and where I always want the big, chunky, heavy watches, I'd want Mom to have a small, svelte, light watch that she could wear all day every day.
There really wasn't much of a decision to make here since I love my smart watch. The Pixel Watch 3. I got mom the smaller version of the Pixel Watch 4 with the LTE connection. That means while it can and does connect to Wifi, it also connects to a cellular service. It will have connection ALL the time unless cell function goes out (in which time we have bigger worries).
I set it up for her with the basics intact. It has fall alert, car crash alert, and heart monitor alert. If Mom is in a car crash, falls down, or her heart stops, the watch will sound an alarm and try to get her attention. If she doesn't respond, it will call emergency services. That's a big relief. I even got her a comfy yet stylish band and set it up with a pink watch face. Mom seems to like it so far.
Writing
I've hit a weird block. I know how to do the chapter I've been stuck on for weeks (months), but I just can't get into it. For instance on this past five days off, I've tried to write this and another post up... and just couldn't get into it. I WANT to continue writing You're Not The Boss Of Me, but I just don't know when that desire will be strong enough to push me back into it.
Michigan College Football
So the quarterback at Texas Tech, Sorsby, got a five million dollar contract to come play his last season. After spring practice it came out that he went into treatment for a gambling addition. It seems that he mad THOUSANDS of dollars of bets on college football. Including on games he was playing in. Going into treatment or not, that's a huge no- no. There are dozens of athletes that had their career destroyed because of the same thing with the biggest example being Pete Rose. So naturally the NCAA threw the book at Sorsby and more or less suspended all of his remaining games. He could still be on the team, could still practice with his team mates, still be with the coaches and learn and get ready for the NFL next year... he just couldn't play.
Naturally, he sued. Unnaturally... he won. He's suspended for two games and be eligible to play in the last ten (plus the post season).
FUCK THAT!
Spotify
I've been on Spotify for awhile now and can say that it's good. I LOVE that it starts right up when I sit down in the car. It doesn't have to hook up to my phone or anything... Tatiana just logs in directly. It works fine on my phone and my computer and the Google Home devices.
A few problems, none of which are deal breakers:
I forgot how much of a problem it is to upload music to the service. It's basically impossible. I CAN upload a song form my computer to Spotify, but it won't download or play on any other device.
After its done playing a playlist, it just picks up and keeps on playing songs that it assumes you want to listen to. That mostly doesn't happen except for my sleep playlist. I try to have that playlist go for an hour and then stop but unless I tell that to my Google Home directly, it doesn't happen. In that instance, it will play the full four hour playlist and then keep playing. All Night.
It knows its one account and it forgets where I want it to play sometimes. For instance today I listened to some music on my phone while doing the dishes. When I got back to my computer and hit play on the Spotify Player there, it started right back up... on my phone. I had to specifically tell the player that I wanted to listen to it on the computer.
Finally, the damned mini player stays on top and I haven't figured out a way to stop it. 70% of the time or so it doesn't bother me as I specifically put the mini player in an area that I rarely use. But when I watch something in full screen or actually do move a window over that area, the mini player stays on top. I've kind of gotten used to just closing it, but it's still annoying.
Roll Out!
I'm now a Transformers collector. I'll end up writing a whole post about this as I'm going pretty deep, but after finding a single Transformer figure (not even a real transformer), and then finding a unique and fun transformer... I got addicted and kept buying. I now have six on my shelf (technically 11, but six of them form into one big robot), and two more on the way. Admitting I'm collecting them is the best way I know of controlling the urge to just keep buying and buying and buying and buying.
I'll make a post about it later to explain more and share my love.
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