Thankful

Well I have survived my first couple of shifts "on my own" at work. I am grateful and thankful that those that I work with are easy to get along with, after all I went through with the last job, it really means a lot. Also, Mighty had his follow up appointment at the vet and she told us that because his improvement was so drastic, we will "write this off as an infection"!! We went from thinking we were going to loose another pet before the end of the year to having one who it seems feels much better than he has for a while.

Back to work...

Well, I got a job! Super excited that I will be back to the world of the employed! I have really sort of enjoyed my time off and in some ways I'm sure I will miss it, but having money is always nice! I actually don't know when I start yet, they are waiting on the results of the drug screen from today which they said would take a few days to get back. I was sort of surprised after they offered me the job then they said they would need to contact references and do the drug screen...seemed a little backwards to me but I won't complain!

Horrible Bosses

No, not the movie...real ones! I realize it has been forever since I have posted here; I'm going to try and get better at that. I tend to have a lot on my plate and certain things I enjoy suffer for that. Anyway, back to the title of the post. Ever had one of those horrible bosses? One that always has to be right and is so intimidated by the thought of someone else stealing their thunder that they truly can't see another persons point of view? I have one. Well, I guess I should say had one. If you have read any of my previous posts you know that "by day" I am a nurse. This is my livelihood and I take it very seriously. I love what I do and I'm good at it. Am I wrong? Do I make mistakes? Of course! We all do, right? Nope, not my boss. NEVER. I had a discussion with her last week regarding a policy on a particular class of medications. The policy stated essentially"will not administer (medication)..." I thought that was pretty clear. So when she asked me to see a patient for whom I would be administering said class of medications, I explained to her why I was uncomfortable with that. She did find a policy that was newer that said it was allowable, so I made the visit and it was not discussed further. Until I was suspended. Yep, that's right; suspended. For arguing with her. Um, hello??? I was trying to have a civilized discussion about something that I felt would put my licence, and therefore my livelihood in jeopardy. In said write up, there are numerous false allegations on her part (the argument about the policy was not all that was included). Unfortunately for her, I have been concerned about her ethics for some time and have kept notes and copies of messages sent. Because of this, I have proof in most instances that she is lying. Will it do any good? I don't know. But I can tell you, I won't go down without a fight!

Ever had one of those horrible bosses? What did you do about it?

Work stuff

I don't remember if I talked about my newest "real" job task or not but I'm going to for a bit now as a bit of explanation why I haven't been blogging much lately. I am a nurse in my "real" job, lampwork/jewelry/craft stuff are hobbies for me, a sort of stress relief (very much needed most of the time). For the past year or so, I have switched from working with developmental disabilities to working in home health and I really enjoy it. However, we have a "new" computer system that isn't exactly user friendly to say the least. The agency took on this system before I started and were to start using it the day I started. To make a long story short(er) it has needed some...tweaking for lack of a better term, to get it to work for us. For whatever reason, I picked up on the system fairly easily so I have been assigned to rebuild this computer system. As I said, I am a nurse...they don't teach software programming or whatever this would be called in nursing school. Not that I don't sort of like doing it, just that it isn't what I was trained to do. And sitting in the office, at a computer for 8 hours a day for the past 6ish weeks has made me not very interested in having much to do with computers when I get home. On top of all of that, we have had 3 new directors in the past year, each with different expectations and quirks that have made all of us in our very small agency a bit....edgy...ok, we are just plain bitchy! The most recent of the 3 started this week and seems like he is going to work out well, he has a lot of knowledge and common sense, not a combo you normally see in upper management, at least not in Small Town USA.
Ok, now that I got all that off my chest, I do have pictures of the beads I made with the Devardi glass, but I don't have them edited yet so maybe this weekend (hopefully) I will get them done and uploaded so you can see the pretty colors. I have been very pleased thus far with the results of the glass especially one of the bright pink shades (I forget the name of it, but you will see.)

Bad, then good, then bad.

Today was a very strange day for me. I had to go in to work earl today for a class given by a person with less education than me about a subject I already know, and needless to say I wasn't exactly thrilled about it. While there I learned that they have hired another nurse for the position that I was trying to transfer to which means that they didn't go through the proper procedure to do it (if they did, I would have had another "interview") so I was less than pleased with that too, even though I knew what was going on to some degree. Later in the day, my boss called me in to her office, which is usually not a good sign, but this time she wanted to tell me that she thinks I'm doing good. That is BIG for her to say something like that, and especially to take time out of her day to call me up there and tell me. I have had a lot of problems since I started back to this job (about six months ago), but lately things seem to be going a bit better, so I am hopeful that things will work out.
As the night wore on though, I started not feeling well and I still have a really bad headache. I would call it a migraine, but I think it is more like a really bad sinus headache. If it isn't better tomorrow, I will have to break down and go to the doctor. :( So, that pretty much sums up my day, bad, then good, then bad again!

The Bright Side of a Bad Day.

I had to work tonight and it was not a great night. I had to send two of my staff to the ER for tetanus shots after being bit and scratched by the individuals we care for. I still don't really know anything about the whole transfer thing I posted about before other than that it will be at least another 2 weeks before any decision will be made and that now I know they don't have to take into consideration that I already work there because I have been back for less than 6 months (the initial probationary period); they can hire someone from off the street with no experience and throw them over there with the one other nurse who had 4 months of experience there and only psych experience before that in a mostly medical building....makes since right? Well that is the state of Misery (yeah, I know it's spelled Missouri, but if you live here, you know) for ya!

Anyway, I won a bead! Not just any bead mind you a Marcy Lamberson bead! She makes the most amazing whimsical pieces you have ever seen! I have never seen a bead of hers that I didn't like so I am sure I will love what I get! Be sure and check out her blog and her Etsy shop, you will see what I mean! ;)

I have a pile of beads that need to be cleaned so I will have them ready to be able to take pics tomorrow if the weather cooperates, but am I doing that? No. I am blogging, and then I am going over to the abc.com website to watch last nights episode of Grey's Anatomy! It is the only thing I really ever watch with any regularity, but since I work on Thursdays I always have to wait until Friday night and watch it online. It works for me though! Maybe I'll clean beads after that....maybe.

Me, the KLUTZ!

So I have had the last 4 days off because I was walking up the stairs at work last week and had a really sharp pain in my back. At first I thought it was just a fluke muscle spasm or something, I walked around a bit and it seemed fine so the next time I was getting ready to go up to my office, I took the stairs again and got the same pain again. When I got upstairs, I called my chiropractor and made an appointment for the next day and went on about the evening (along with 600 mg of Advil). Went to the chiropractor the next day and had a few ribs out in that area which he put back in and I thought nothing more of it, it felt better so I came home and went back to bed (I'm not a morning person!). When I got up again later and put my pants on, same sharp pain. So, I called my primary doctor's office and made an appointment with the NP on call. I normally don't go running to the doctor for every little pain, but one this was a big pain, two I knew I couldn't work with it (as I have said before I work in a psych facility and you just never know when you are gonna need to run!) and three, I'm still on probation at work so I have to have a doctors excuse if I'm not there. Well, the NP wound up giving me two days off though she really didn't know what was wrong, it really isn't "typical" pain of anything...duh, I already knew that! But she did give me some antispasmodic medication and told me to "take it easy". The medicine knocks me out and today it still hurts. I am starting to think maybe I somehow tore a muscle or something. Anyway, it's back to work tomorrow. To make things even better, today I fell twice and twisted my ankle so now it hurts too! Good thing I'm not as clumsy with glass, I would have already caught myself on fire by now! :)

Busy week

This has been a bit of a busy week so I haven't been able to get as much done as I had hoped. Hubby and I celebrated our 1 yr anniversary Sunday, my Dad came down yesterday to take us for lunch, I had to work today which also happens to be my husbands birthday so we just got back from dinner at his parents' house. We have had a good week, just a very full week. I wanted to get some bead photos taken but it has been too cloudy outside and the ones I take inside never turn out quite right...
Tomorrow we are going to a "nearby" big city (about an hour away) to really celebrate our anniversary since he had to work on Sunday. We are going to do a bit of shopping and eat at Outback Steakhouse (thanks to gift certificates)...then back to work on Thursday! :(
I have four or five new sets of disks to put on Etsy once I can get the pictures done, and am still waiting on pictures for the release of my new series; I will get there, it's just taking longer than I had hoped!

The End of a Long Week

Well, it's my Friday, and boy am I glad! I spent 2 days (out of 5) at work as the only nurse in the building...I don't like that much. The position I talked about in an earlier post was put up, and I applied but haven't heard anything yet; and I finally got a chance to make a few beads tonight! I entered a Halloween bead exchage over on LE and I was a couple of beads short of what I wanted to send so I *think* I should have them ready to go out this week. I still have a pile of beads to clean and take pics of for my shop but, as I said it has been a busy week and I just haven't felt like messing with it. Anyway, I decided I'm going to just relax for a bit now before I head to bed, maybe watch a movie (great time to watch a "chick movie") because my hubby just started night shifts again tonight which means I won't be able to sleep well anyway! I probably won't get much done tomorrow either as I have agreed to watch a friends baby :)
I will try to post pics of the exchange beads when I get them done and before I send them out, so keep watching! ;)

Long Week..

Ok, so I know I haven't posted in several days, but as I expected it has been a long week! As I said in my previous post I only had one day off this week due to a class at work, but now my week is finally over! The class I was scheduled for Friday was canceled and moved to October...I'm not thrilled with that either because it happens to fall on my hubby's birthday but there isn't much I can do about it. Anyway, I have been able to get a few more disk beads done and if this rain ever quits maybe I can get some pics of them...

More classes and Differnt Beads

I just got home from another management class at work, and I think this was the worst one yet! The subject was motivation...hard to get me motivated by making me go to a class at 8am on my day off! Oh, and don't give me an extra day off to compensate for it either, I'll just work 11 days with only one day off, sure that's fine! :( (can you sense the sarcasm here?) I have one more class to go to on Friday and then I'm finished with these, but of course that just means more responsibility.

Some of you may have read in earlier posts about my time with the facility I'm at and how I had to leave when I finished school and then came back later but was put in another building; well it appears that a position may soon come available in the building I started out in. I work with MRDD (mentally retarded/developmentally disabled) people and there is quite a bit of difference between the two buildings, even though it is still the same facility. One building (I'll call it 'A' so it doesn't get to confusing) has more "medically fragile" and lower functioning individuals that require more care and the other ('B') has higher functioning individuals with more behavioral problems. As far as the individuals are concerned, I really like both buildings, there is still so much to learn and so much to teach them and I really like that aspect of the job. On the other hand, I don't feel like much of a nurse most of the time because I'm in building 'B'. The staff are a lot different as well, 'B' has more staff that are in my age group as a whole than the other does so there is more gossip and drama than 'A'. I did have some issues with a few people in 'A' while I was there, but I think I'm better prepared to deal with it now than I was a year ago; so I'm kind of hoping that I get to go back to 'A' and that things will get better. But I'm also trying not to get my hopes up too much in case it doesn't work out, I don't want to be disappointed!

Now, back to beads! I think I have posted before about the amazing "team" that I'm a part of on Etsy, the LEST Team (see our link in the upper right corner of my blog); anyway, they are an amazing group! Always willing to help out other team members with advise and promoting and encouragement..anyway one of the members "rosebud101" ( http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5181465 ) been making these beads for a while out of "shorts". They always turn out really cool, but they are usually disks which I don't normally make....well, I tried it last night and now I'm stuck on them! I must have made fifteen or twenty last night! She always says how fun they are and I though, yeah right, I can't make a disk to save me! But I've been practicing and she is right it is fun! I like that I don't have to think about it much, I just pile all my shorts on the table and start melting! Believe me, I got some strange looks from my hubby though when I told him I was making beads out of nothing but shorts! :)

Now what?

OK, so I get to work today and the lady I was talking about yesterday was sent called into the building supervisor's office, presumably about the issue yesterday; and came back to our area in tears and not speaking to anyone. My boss (one step below the building supervisor) called me later to tell me that she had discussed the issue with the woman and it was determined that she did not need to be written up for anything at this time! And, now she doesn't have to cover that area on Tuesdays (the only day the "new" lady works on our shift)! Now what do I do? I feel like I have been totally undermined. I am not kidding, I have never been yelled at like that by anyone before, and certainly not from someone I supervise! If I had talked to MY boss that way, you can bet I would have been written up if not worse! I don't really care that she doesn't have to cover, but isn't it a bit discriminatory that they are telling her that she can cover for everyone except this person? I feel like now nothing I say to her matters because she can just go to my boss and get whatever she wants...
I swear if I could figure out how to support myself through my Etsy shop or lampwork somehow, I would soooo quit my job right now!

I hate being a boss!

I have a total of 2 people that I directly supervise which I realize isn't as bad as it could be, but I don't like having to be the boss! The problem I have with it in this job is that I have to do the same things that they do, so I understand what it is like for them, the bad part is, I still have other people telling me what has to be done. Both of the women that I supervise are older than I am, and have been there longer than me and that makes it even tougher. Plus if everyone doesn't get along, we still have to spend 8 hours together in a tiny room and it can make things a bit uncomfortable. The problem I had tonight is I had to ask one of them to relieve a person in another area; it usually isn't a problem but she had applied for the job when it was available and someone else got it, the woman who was working tonight. The woman that I supervise had a FIT, yelling at me and saying that she wasn't going to do it, it's not in my job description, blah, blah, blah....and for the most part I agree with her. BUT, the lady in the other department still deserves a break too, and it isn't her fault she got the job, and it kind of is in her job description right at the bottom where it says, just like mine does, "and other duties as necessary". All of us disagree with some of the things that we have to do, and there are parts of the job that none of us like, but the problem is this woman is not licenced and the rest of us are, so there are things that she can't do and we can. (the place she had to cover doesn't require a license, it is basically an operator job) There were 2 other people in there while this was going on, and she finally did go do what I asked her to do, but I felt like I was the bad guy! I wound up having to call my supervisor at home and explain what happened so she would be prepared when the proverbial "poop" hits the fan tomorrow! This is Monday for me, and not a very good start to my week! :(

Another long day...

I just got back home from a management class at my "real job" and let me tell you it was a LONG day! Eight hours of someone reading to you, word for word from the paper that we all had in front of us...makes me want to scream! I am not a morning person anyway, and while being having to be there at 8am is not early to some, to someone who doesn't normally have to be to work until 3pm it is torture! I am hoping to get some time with my torch later this evening after we eat, but I need to finish cleaning the hot tub too as it has been getting cooler here in the evenings and it is my favorite part of our new home! :) And I really should clean up my "studio" a bit, things are piling up and I am starting to lose track of things...strange that I'm such an organized person at work but not in my own little space...

Anyway, here are some pics of a couple of the items that I have listed in my shop this week, another octopus and a couple of pendants.

Bad day.

It has been a really long and crappy day! I have't felt well all day, can't quite put my finger on it but I just don't feel "right". I had to work today and there were a lot of things going on and not enough people to handle them so I wound up having to do a lot of extra things and a lot of things that I haven't done before or don't normally have to do. Not that that really bothers me for the most part, but when you are dealing with medications and illness and things of that nature, it can be a bit stressful if you feel like you aren't well prepared to deal with it. I have two more days to work this week, but tomorrow will be better; it has to be!

Finally Friday!

Well, for me it is anyway! It has been a really long week for some reason, maybe its the heat. I'm looking forward to a couple of days off work and spending time with my husband and his family...and my torch of course! I have a couple of custom orders that I'm working on and then I'm going to just play. I have a couple of ideas in my head, thinking about a sale next week, or a give away...something.
Anyway, off to bed for now...