Man, I did not sleep well last night.  Just about the time I’d drift off, Chris would start to thrash and flip sides, slapping the mattress and scaring me half to death while sending my heart rate through the roof!  He did this several times, till finally at 5:28 this morning I loudly told him to cut it out.  What a way to start the day!

At least we had a fun weekend 🙂  My younger brother L drove up from my hometown and arrived Friday night.  He and Chris rented “Wolverine” and watched that.  I made it through maybe the first 20 minutes before getting up to do something else.  It just wasn’t all that captivating.

Saturday, the boys did work (L had some homework, Chris had some revisions he needed to make to a paper) while I went grocery shopping.  I hate the fact that I can never seem to find everything that I need at one store anymore.  Why is that?

Afterward, Chris and L played PS3 and Wii for about 3 hours while I worked out and did some laundry.  When that was done, we hopped in the car and headed to the South Bend Chocolate Factory for some “Almost Perfect” chocolates (translation – not quite as pretty so not quite as expensive).  Chris loves it when we have company because they inevitably want to go there, and he gets to buy yummy chocolate.  We went home and sort of goofed around for about an hour and a half, till my older brother D and his wife B arrived.  We were going to a corn maze!

L and I were the only ones who’d ever done a corn maze.  Chris is from St. Simons Island, GA, and so he hasn’t had much experience with corn.  I’m not sure why D and B hadn’t ever done one, but I was glad that they were game.  We drove out to Thistleberry Farm and did the trivia maze, which I have to say was a let-down.  It was really great to be outside and the weather was perfect, but the last corn maze I did was fun.  It was in the dark, the questions were really tricky, and my group was racing against another group.  This maze had questions like, “Who was the first President of the United States?” or “What is the chemical name for water?”  Puh-leaze!  We finished that thing in about 30 minutes.  However, we did get to see some adorable baby goats.  They were so stinkin’ cute and B and I kept feeding them grass.  I don’t think the boys were all that impressed, but I’m convinced that I need a Nigerian Dwarf Goat:

After that, we headed out to dinner using one of my Restaurant.com gift certificates that I got for a steal ($50 gift card for $1.10), and then headed back to our place to play “Mental Floss” with D, B, and L while Chris watched the South Carolina game upstairs.  All in all, it was a very fun Saturday.

Sunday was more relaxed.  After church and Sunday dinner, L headed back home and Chris went to play putt-putt with some of the Notre Dame fellows and grad students while I worked out and started studying for my ACLS class next month.  We ended the night by watching a movie.

Today is my first actual day in the ER.  I’m not going to be doing anything related to patient care, so I’m a little less anxious than I normally would be.  ER nursing is so different from working on a unit.  I’ve had some moderate exposure to it while in nursing school and then while working Triage at my last hospital in Boston (Triage was the precursor/screening area for ER, and we dealt with the less serious stuff), but I’ve still got a lot to learn.  I’m very excited, but I have this worry that the staff there are going to be rude.  Nurses in any sort of critical setting (ER, ICU, CCU) have a reputation for being particularly gruff and curt to their colleagues, and I hate that.  However, I think that I’m pretty good at saying, “Now that’s enough” and sticking up for myself, as evidenced by my hand-washing police post.

Oh, and another thing – I’m going to be working five 8-hour shifts per week on days for the next 4-5 weeks, no weekends.  No weekends is a plus, but the flip side is that when I orient to nights, I’m going to have to do five 8-hour night shifts a week for I don’t know how long.  Ugh.  I did not know that when I was offered the job.  Hopefully I won’t have to do 5 nights a week for too long before they switch me over to the schedule that I hired for – three 12-hour night shifts a week.  We’ll see!  Either way, I’m glad to have a job, and another perk is that I make a shift differential working nights, so the extra $$$ will be fun.

Alright my lovely readers, I’ve gotta get going.  Have a great Monday!