Week Three.

Week three is no longer a vacation.  

I have been off three weeks for surgery 4 times, childbirth twice, and was once unemployed 3 weeks after being fired.

It doesn't feel quite like that.

It doesn't feel real either--like it's permanent and planned---it feels like I'm waiting for something, a call or a letter or an email saying--"oh, by the way, you have to be at work at 0730 next Monday."

My sister, who has said she was retiring at 59 1/2 told me after I retired that "it's not like you, I don't hate my job"

She used to call daily griping about her job, moaning and cursing and.... then, without the educational requirements or much notice, they made her the manager and all that moaning and cursing left---it's still the most stressful job in the world.

It used to annoy me and crack me up that she thought her job was always more stressful than any job I had---most people see nursing as stressful: people dying on you and all that.  But no, the stress is in the banking industry.

So, she isn't retiring in 6 months at 59 and 1/2 years. She is waiting till she qualifies for Medicare, which is funny because she hasn't seen a doctor in 10-15 years.  

I get it.  I waffled a few times, Thought I should wait till I could get Medicare at 65.  Thought I should wait till the end of 2018 so I didn't risk having any tax glitches.  Thought I should wait till September 30 so I could (potentially) see a social security check within a month of my last day of work.

Ultimately, I left because I was afraid if there was not scheduled date of retirement, there would be an unscheduled last day brought on by my inability to shut the hell up.

I didn't hate my last out-of-home job.  It was actually my favorite of all them.  But the place was doing "groundhog day" and I couldn't keep nodding and smiling.

Every new management company came in (so far at 2 year intervals, the one previous to the last had announced a 99 year lease, but was gone in 2 years, so when the last one, the one that had offered to "take the resident program off their hands" while closing the hospital when the whole thing destabilized--read that as "we bought them as part of a larger purchase, with the intentions of shutting them from the get-go".

That was a full 13 years ago.  So, every two years, a new group comes in, gets rid of the excess employees, remodels the lobby, talks about the parking problem, talks about the elevator problems, talks about the roof leaking, and promises they are there for "the long haul".....and two years later, we have a new managing company and it all begins again.

What I have learned from this is:

     It is no wonder that countries with destabilized governments just keep having coup after coup until all the people try to flee the country.

     Progress is not possible if the leadership never tries to find out what is causing the problems in the first place.  We all have pet "fixes" that we think will make things better, but all the mustard plasters in the world will not heal a broken leg.

     Carpetbaggers always appear when it looks like they can improve their own lot while doing nothing.  In a hospital, those that were known by the previous management team to be butt-kissing slackers, can seem really helpful to the new team, I saw one of those go from "new grad" to "CNO" using that method in 10 years flat--and she said "I seen it"(no have, no had, my English teacher would have been horrified) all the time and couldn't write a complete sentence.  

So I'm in week three, and most of the work dreams or nightmares have stopped (other nurses also have nightmares about having too many patients and being unable to do everything to take care of them, so it's not just me).  

I painted yesterday.  Something from pinterest for decorating my new "greige" living room.  I would post a picture, but I'm having technical difficulty this morning.  

And I may get to finish mowing.  I don't remember ever having this much rain in August, but was counting on a nice dried up and dusty yard by now.