two situations and a funny.

Ohh mercy... this life. Honestly, I have always thought that eventually crazy random things would settle down, but the longer they go on the more I realize this is just everyday life so I might as well embrace it. Some days, all we can really do is laugh [after we fake a smile and filter out dirty words and grit our teeth and maybe pound our fist on a table or something]

As of late, two situations I found myself in and a funny things that happened.

First of all, I have recently started working some night shifts at work. I'm still doing days too, which makes it even more interesting as far as a sleep schedule and social life outside the hospital. Anyway. I worked this past Tuesday night when we randomly had a tornado warning in the middle of January, of course. We were doing fine, relatively calm night, until about 3:30am when "PHASE GRAY, WARNING." rang out from the overhead and the supervisor came pacing through muttering "A tornado! This is giving me chest pain!" Well, here we are on the 4th floor and the best we can do for the safety of our patients is take them out of their rooms and away from the massive windows in them. So the protocol is to get everyone in the hallway and close all the doors, easy enough. Unless of course you're me and 5/7 of your patients are over 80 years old, can't walk, and have no idea where they are. Needless to say, we spent about 20 minutes rushing to pull beds out of rooms and organize them in the hall so we could still walk through, all the while explaining repeatedly "Don't worry! You're in the hospital. We're having some weather! We're going for a little ride! It'll be fun!"

It was almost entertaining at first, but 2 hours later when we were all still sitting in the hallway looking at each other, 2 hours behind on meds and lab work, it wasn't really that funny. Anyway, no tornado touched down or did us any damage, so all is well [except my arm muscles are sore from pushing beds].

Second event.. I drove home Wednesday morning to Lawrenceburg with the specific purpose of getting my driver's license renewed because it expires on my birthday this year [which is in 16 days, btw] and I desperately needed to get a new picture made because the current one was made a few days before I went on Senior trip when I was 18. Somehow it slipped my mind that I was coming back to Podunk, USA, where everything is 2 years behind normal civilization. This is a short synopsis of my adventure to accomplish a seemingly simple task:
Before I left the house, I ask my mom "Do I need to take anything with me? Birth certificate, social security card, anything?" "No, just about 20 bucks cause it'll cost ya." Great. I leave the house and drive to the DMV. They give me a number and some paperwork, and I sit down in a waiting room of about 6 people. I wait 30 or 45 minutes. Finally, they call my number. I give my paperwork and check card, she asks for my current license. Type type type on the computer. A frown.

The lady: "Hmm.. it seems we don't have your birth certificate on file. We'll have to have that before we can renew this. Sorry."
Me: [Exasperated look] "I brought my birth certificate last time I did this. It should be on file."
Lady: "Oh, we have changed systems and some of them didn't pull over, sorry."
Me: "My birth certificate is an hour and a half away in Murfreesboro."
Lady: "Ohh... well, you can drive right down there to the health department and they will print you a new one for about 8 dollars!" [guess that was her attempt at being helpful?]
Me: "K."

So I leave, and I drive to the Health Department. Go inside, explain what I need to the lady at the desk. She hands me paperwork, again, and tells me to have a seat and wait. I fill it out, they finally call my name. I sit and spell my Daddy's name, she looks me up, yada yada yada, prints my birth certificate. Just before handing it over, "Oh, I almost forgot. That'll be $8." I pull out my debit card and slide it across the desk. A frown. "Oh.. we only take cash or check, no cards." I grope around in my purse reaching to all corners before I come up empty-handed and remember my checkbook is in my bag from work. I open my wallet and count my cash... $6.00.

At this point [in my mind] I'm like "OH MY GOSH if this lady does not give me this paper I'm going to burn down this whole town!!!!!" [I can be dramatic, I know]. And then, low and behold, my neighbor works at the Health Department and she offered me the two bucks needed to complete my payment. I told her I'd bring her $2 by the house later, to which she responded "Oh no, I'm sure I owe your mom two bucks in ketchup or sugar or something." It was in fact this small towns fault that they have just now updated systems at the DMV and no debit card system at the Health Dept, however it's also to this small towns credit that I knew the sweet person working where I was trying to get what I needed. Catch 22, I guess.

Anyway, back to the DMV with birth certificate, two hours after this saga began I finally had a new license in hand[aaaand the picture isn't even that good].

Alright.. if you're still hanging in here with me, bless you're heart.. I ramble, I know. There's this crazy guy that I been knowing for a while now [and his name's John Dansby-- yes, we broke up, we're through the awkward "what are we" phase and are now friends again, in case you wondered], and he's forever been telling me about travel nursing [among many other things] and how I should do it. Nearly every time he brings it up I veto it declaring that I would feel like a gypsy living out of a suitcase and moving all over. Lately, however, I've taken a liking to it and have been doing some research just to see what the options are and such. I talked with this crazy guy today, and this is how this part of the conversation went:
Me: "So, guess what I stayed up til midnight researching last night? It's something you're forever telling me I should do and I always say no."
Him: "ummm.... Umm....." [thinking, thinking] "um.... Ummmmmm...... Oh!! A water birth?!!"
Me: Laughing so hard I couldn't breathe. "No, crazy! Why would you say that??!! I'm talking about travel nursing!"

Geez Louise... now I'm laughing all over again. I tell ya, there's nothing spectacular about my life compared to anyone else's, except that I write about it. You should try it. Until next time... love youuuu!

Lets go somewhere warm, want to?