Welcome, Fellow Pinners!

 I see you've found me on Pinterest and opted to visit my corner of the internet. You've chosen well if you enjoy irreverent discussions of both heavy and lighthearted topics, peppered with information, silliness, and imagery.

This blog is still in its infancy, so bear with me. I love interacting with you nice people, so feel free to suggest likes, dislikes, requests, or just say hi.

I am Your Impatient Wife, So tuck in and get comfortable at this fckn house. 

Tales of a Cookie Crumbled

This post is actually a deviation from this recipe post. If you can't take this heat, get out of the post, abort!!! 

I actually discovered and perfected Nestle's recipe for chocolate chip cookies in high school. Had I been a little more entrepreneurial, I could have made a living off those. Any time there was a pot luck or birthday, people asked for Anna's cookies.

I've since learned it's an incredible tool for bargaining,brown-nosing, and most of the time, apologizing. I've made almost 15 batches in the last three weeks, trying to reconcile the bitchy, untreated insanity I had unleashed on Husband for many months.

He put up with me like a trooper, thinking I was just cranky from my knee pain.What the poor man didn't know is he was combating an untreated case of OCPD-induced anxiety. I've mentioned before that I really have been diagnosed in the past, but had managed my rituals pretty well with behavioral therapy.

 Husband and I worked well together on my compulsions, as I had learned to channel most of it into catharsis. I am really lucky most of my rituals look relatively normal. It's pretty nice, except the day Stanley gave me panic attacks.

Dry heaving and sobs were had that day. My imagination went to horrible places, knowing he was in the house, potentially doing some unknown horrors to my private spaces. Thank God for understanding friends (sort of).

With my life going the way it has this last year, as many of you have seen in this post as well as this other post, things have gotten much more difficult to handle, which made an otherwise manageable condition impossible to handle.

I  finally sought medical help when I started just hiding in bed all day, terrified to face all of the things out of my control. I've only been on treatment for a couple weeks now,  but already there's been marked improvement.

It's nice to be calm.

Since regaining small bits of normalcy in my demeanor, I've made many homages to Husband's incredible patience with me. And thus, we've come full circle back to my lovely cookies. Hope you enjoyed the ride!

Whatya Doin?

Here I am, constantly referencing my busy schedule and demanding job, but have I even told you nice people what I’m doing?

I am a dialysis technician with the hospital services group in good ole Sin City. What does that mean? It means any time someone receiving routine dialysis is admitted to a hospital, I am one of the people licensed to give them dialysis while they stay there. Sometimes I get to treat non-chronic care patients, but the bulk of my work comes from people who have been around the ultrafiltration block before. 

Since hospitals, emergencies, and renal failure are 24/7 issues, our group functions in a 24/7 format, with someone starting their shift at any given hospital every hour or so. We work one-on-one with our patients, transporting equipment bedside and maintaining peak infection control. This means one patient’s care can take anywhere from 4-6 hours to complete, with some rare cases taking even 8-10 hours. We’re expected in a given shift to care for two patients, making for a 10-14 hour shift that starts at your scheduled time and ends whenever you get done. 

I work four to five overnight shifts a week, starting around 1700, but with emergencies working the way they do, I’m often called in sooner than that. Loving what I do is a blessing and a curse, because it’s difficult to say no to any call for work. Of course I want to come in! With hospital care, there’s usually something else going on with the patient that requires them to be there, so every day is a chance to see and learn something. Inversely, when working with someone new to dialysis, or maybe with a healing kidney injury, I get the chance to teach them, which I’ll go into in another post. 

Start Over

I am frustrated with myself. 

For two years now I’ve done nothing but work, with the occasional break away from routine to bury a loved one. 

No art, hardly any crochet, and absolutely no writing. No Anna time. 

What made me really hit the brakes and question my routine was earning an award, of all things.One of my administrators at work had asked about some personal flair for when she introduced me before going into my work accomplishments. I was speechless. Probably for the only time in my life, so savor that. 

I can gripe about how demanding my work is, and the hours involved, but really the primary blame falls to me. I haven’t made or taken advantage of time to do those things I enjoy, and you know who’s suffering for it? I am, sure, but more importantly, you nice people!!

Long has it been since I’ve shared my struggles,embarrassments, and comedically framed observations about life, and that’s a damn shame. 

Luckily, Blogger seems to have caught up with technology and developed a phone-friendly app, which will help when I want to get drafts going or even completed during slow parts of work. 

So leave some comments for me, nice people, and let me know where I should focus my energies!