sometime in mid february it got warm enough to hang out outside in a t shirt, which i of course assumed was the spring false alarm we get in the midwest sometime in late april. actually, that was spring, and within days, trees were covered in white, pink, and purple blossoms, the daffodils and tulips were out, and families started emerging from apparent hibernation and populating the parks again, because people here think 60 degrees is cold and have been hunkered down the last 3 months. seriously.
by late march, the daffodils were dead, blossoms had given way to young fruit, the trees on the greenbelt are lush and green, and the hot sun gives off a delicious aroma of drying pine needles. any given day we can expect to be comfortable in short sleeves, and by midday it's already quite warm--not so hot that we have to stay inside, but shade and/or sprinklers are preferred. my instincts are to call this summer, but i vaguely remember the sweltering heat of july, and the abundance of tomatoes, neither of which have yet occurred. so, i suppose it's still spring. i'm just glad several of our neighbors are putting in pools!
what next...david continues to love his employer and his career in general. many friendships have begun to develop outside the hospital with various poker nights, play dates, dinner dates, etc. it really is a nice group of people. in only a month now, he'll be taking his last board exam for ten years. i'm not sure who between the two of us is happier about this (and i get a free trip to chicago out of it to boot!).
there are many perks to his schedule, particularly when the kids aren't in school. it's nice to do weekend activities mid week, with fewer crowds and lower costs. however, being home all the time, i find it's irritating to be on different schedules. people are charmed by the "16 shifts a month" stat, but when half of those extend into the wee hours and he has to sleep late the next day, it's not that great a deal, because i will always be up with the kids by 7. if he's home in the morning, that guarantees he won't be home at night, and vice versa. so, unlike most stay at home parents who can rely on having a spouse for those taxing rituals i refer to as am and pm care (seriously, have you tried dressing and feeding two toddlers? i'd honestly rather herd cats), i'm lucky to get one and often get neither. as a result, it takes approximately 16x longer to complete these two tasks, which leaves no time to cook, clean, do laundry, etc, if i want to engage in any sort of active playtime with my children (i do) before it's time to eat and sleep again.
i'd say that most of the time, the overwhelming feeling i have is that i never have a break and i never have help. which is too bad, because when david is home he does help. it's just not often. especially when he has a career determining board exam to study for in his few waking spare hours. which is why i think it's probable i'm more excited for the conclusion of this annoying chapter of his life than he is, and he's the one taking the tests!
the kids. the kids are so great. really, they are so great. bean's phase of miraculous wonderment and perfect behavior has somewhat ebbed away, and we're seeing a resurgence of defiance and rage that reminds me of a year ago. however, she is also much more mature and developed now, so it's somehow easier to ignore and allow her to get over herself, and it's not too frequent. also, it's rarely an issue if we're out of the house. we're definitely lucky in that regard--i know many parents of toddlers who can just never go in public, and we pretty much take our kids everywhere.
bean continues to astound with her intelligence, and her memory. while her concept of time lies in another dimension, she recalls stories, anecdotes, and facts from longer ago than i can possibly remember. daily, i find myself saying, ohhh that's right, that *did* happen, or something along those lines. she's a sharp kid and nothing gets past her. she has her first funny story that she loves to tell people now, which goes like this:
"the other day at nap time we were changing diapers and nani said, 'reesey, where'd you get that belly?' and he turns around and looks at her and he says, 'at costco!'"
my understanding is this conversation actually did happen when nani was visiting a few weeks ago, but it's the first that bean has framed like a true story with dialog and everything. it's pretty hilarious.
reese has really excelled verbally and has almost as much of a vocabulary as bean. it's really cute, because his brain clearly forms thoughts faster than his little baby tongue can articulate them, so it takes him a long time to vocalize a full thought. david likens this to a southern drawl. he continues to be incredibly sweet and sensitive (though he can spit fire at times with a firm NO or even a slap or bite when his sister really pisses him off), telling his sister during her fits, "don't yell, nana." in the morning, while bean is screaming and bouncing in her crib to get out, if you listen ever so closely outside his door, you will hear a soft voice repeating, "please get me out. please get me out." he's just amazing.
it seems that between the ages of 1.5-3, people start to love asking about potty training. i have never been in a huge rush to potty train, since i know my children's personalities and would prefer to wait until they can do it quickly rather than fight and have accidents and be rushing into public restrooms on outings for several months. we have broached the subject with them, and are met with a lot of resistance by bean. reese loves to sit on the potty and will incidentally pee and poop there, but seems to have no idea how or why that happens sometimes. conversely, his sister hates the potty and will avoid it maliciously at all costs. so, we're still waiting for it to be easier, and if you disagree, you are welcome to come potty train them yourself. good luck!
other than that, they continue to enjoy their music class and the extended daylight hours allowing for evening trips to the park. we're hoping to get them into some swim classes soon, since by davis standards, they're years behind already.
we are also finally starting to landscape the backyard! wisely, we're leaving it up to the professionals, but are very excited to watch it all grow. in addition to things that are just pretty to look at, we have 6 fruit trees and a few big veggie planters, so hopefully we'll get a good homegrown harvest going. you can grow crops outdoors year round in davis, a huge selling point for us to move here.
so, we've covered david, the kids, the yard, which leaves only one major outstanding topic...me! as i noted earlier, i hoped this entry would bring news of some much needed forward motion. unfortunately, i've continued chasing my tail in circles for the past several months, which is starting to really piss me off.
where to even begin...first, let's set the record straight.
1. there is no nursing shortage. every time i tell people i can't find a job, they balk and say, "BUT THERE'S A NURSING SHORTAGE!" not so, friends. not so. maybe this shortage exists in weird places that nobody wants to live. but in places that people do want to live, like sacramento and the splendid surrounding areas, i'd call it a nursing surplus. chicago is another such place, and it took me 8 weeks as a new grad between passing my boards and starting day one of orientation. i have had a nursing license in california since october, a year of experience, and a few more letters after my name from advanced nursing certifications. this means nothing to anyone.
2. nursing unions. not my friend. in the midwest, we don't really have nursing unions. i thought unions meant that i would be guaranteed breaks, patient ratios, and double my chicago salary. actually, unions mean it's even more impossible to find a job because the longer you stay employed the more you are paid and and rewarded. so many nurses don't want to retire. it also means that unions negotiate job descriptions. in chicago, you could apply for anything, and someone might take a chance on you if you seemed promising. here, it doesn't matter that i have two masters degrees with perfect gpas, an advanced certification, charge experience, icu cross training or outstanding recommendations from nurse managers. all that matters is years of experience, and until you have three, you might as well be a new grad. except i'm not a new grad, so i'm not eligible for what few new grad programs exist. awesome.
3. because of unions, the economy, california's bankruptness and obamacare, it doesn't *really* matter who you know. i figured after we moved here, david would be able to sweet talk someone into getting me an interview. in fact, several people have promised me jobs. people who are in a position to reasonably do that. do i have a job? no i do not. the first day i ran with my club, i happened to meet the nurse manager of an er. he was very interested in hiring me. he forwarded my resume to everyone possible. i contacted him every time i applied to a job in his system. no job. the nurse manager of david's er told me the first time he met me at a welcome dinner "we'll get you a job, no problem! just forward me your resume." and after months glued to the job boards, several conversations with the nurse recruiter and anyone else who will listen, i still have no job there, either. one of david's coworkers wives in october told me her department was looking to hire a new nurse. she put me in touch with her nurse manager. that position also never materialized. i keep hearing, we'll get you in, we'll get you in! i am not in.
in the meantime, i have spent hours searching job boards, filling out profiles, updating my resume, networking to a degree that makes someone as introverted as me frankly uncomfortable. it's exhausting extending myself constantly, trying to exploit every possible connection i have, maintaining them. and every single application i send in? automated rejection within 12 hours. every. single. one. i get rejected from jobs in outpatient clinics. jobs doing research. jobs that based on the description, i am at worst perfectly qualified for. i can say with confidence, no nurse recruiter has ever seen my application. and no, there is no phone number to follow up, no email address. you just send it into the quagmire, and it's out of your hands.
people hear this, and say to me, "well, just stay at hooooooome! you don't neeeeeeeeed the money, right?" fortunately, we did budget based on only david's salary. however, this approach has several flaws. first, we can pay our bills with david's salary, but we really can't save much or have much of an emergency or leisure budget. i'd like to have both. second, i only worked for a year. i've now spent almost as much time out of work as i spent working, doing nothing to keep up my skills (and the only thing that counts in this state is hard time on the floors, anyway).
every day i don't work, i'm less desirable, and apparently i'm extremely undesirable at baseline. staying home with the kids when they're so young has many perks--i'm only looking to work two days a week anyway! but if i want to have any sort of career when they do get older and no longer care if i'm around or not, i need to work at least minimally now, or i'll never get rehired, and the investments i've made in this career will be totally lost.
and so, in my desperation to just get a few hours on the floors and get my foot in the door, i applied for travel nursing, hoping to score a 13 week assignment in the sacramento area. that was in december. nothing came up. and so, i began jumping through the hoops to work as a registry nurse. it's like a temp agency, where i get loosely qualified to work through several hospital systems. a lot of more experienced nurses love registry--you pick your own days and shifts, and everywhere except apparently california, you get paid handsomely (here, you make half of a staff nurse, thanks again to the unions). sounds great right? let me enlighten you to the reality of registry nursing, which has helped me to actualize all of my worst nightmares as a nurse.
i am not an experienced nurse. i worked in one small community hospital with a rather homogenous patient population. the patients were demanding, but not particularly ill. mostly, they weren't even true cardiac patients. just really old, sick people. here, i might get sent to huge hospitals, trauma centers, to work on surgical units. i've never had a surgical patient, but for a few hours of my life i floated in my previous job. i go to sleep the night before i work not knowing where i'll be the next morning, what city, what hospital, what floor. every shift is potentially a new place, new faces, new computer charting systems, new equipment, new codes to get into rooms, new ways to obtain medication. and i get no orientation. zero. i just show up, put my lunch in the fridge, and really, really hope i don't kill anyone while i'm looking for supplies or trying to figure out where to read lab results or how to page a doctor.
after six weeks of sitting through non clinical orientations, taking drug tests, knowledge tests, compliance tests, filling out stacks of paperwork, hours of obligations and none of them compensated, i finally got the green light to work. except i didn't. for another month, every single shift i requested was cancelled. you request the days you want to work, but get a call at 5 the morning of telling you if you're working, and if so, where. i'm not a highly anxious person, but that is incredibly anxiety provoking. i'm not exactly a paralegal. my first day back to work after an 8 month hiatus means i could very easily accidentally kill somebody if i'm not on my game (or even if i am). so, i toss and turn all night, only to get awoken at 5 am morning after morning telling me, not today. that is really, really uncomfortable and frustrating.
as this was going on, i finally got offered a travel contract, for the kind of nursing i was doing in chicago. it would offer higher pay, overtime, some stipends, and a legitimate clinical orientation, all at a prestigious hospital. after three weeks of unclear negotiation, it fell through. a few days later, another agency called me offering the same position. negotiations began again, and then to summarize, this led to a two week battle between the two agencies over who would represent me in the contract, a battle of wills, of politics, constantly putting me in the middle and demanding i confront this or that person, put this or that in writing, contact this or that supervisor.
this bizarre and wholly inappropriate situation persisted through my two first days of actual work, where i was shipped to a major trauma center, assigned 5 patients (in chicago, we have only 4) with diagnoses, wounds, surgeries, drains, and equipment i've literally never heard of, 2 beginning nursing students, and set off on my way to try desperately not to kill anyone. every mandated break, i was fielding calls arguing about this contract, or trying to set the record straight over email. the alternative is to conduct such communication at home with the kids screaming in the background.
that first shift was 15 hours long. FIFTEEN HOURS LONG. three hours of overtime. that is unheard of as a nurse. it's probably illegal in this state. i was in so much physical pain when i finally sat down to document 13 hours in that i seriously considered stealing motrin from a patient because i couldn't even concentrate. i got home at 11pm, spent an hour and a half answering a disaster of emails pertaining to this contract, went to bed at 12:30, and got called in to work again at 4:30 am. i just received my paycheck for the shift, and the three additional hours over the 12 i was scheduled have mysteriously disappeared without reimbursement.
that contract, if you're wondering, fell through two more times, the last being terminal. but not before i spent several more hours conducting nanny interviews for a job that now i'll never get.
and so, for the past 8 months, all of the energy i have put into to nursing, a career i loved, was committed to, identified with, and worked really hard for, has led me to a series of disappointments, rejection, broken promises, let downs, deceit, lies, bullying, and overall just a ton of negative energy and stress. all of these countless, wasted hours i spend seeking jobs, writing emails, making calls, and doing a large part of other people's administrative work for them appears to have no positive gain. if i'm not going to actually be nursing, at least i could perhaps spend that time reading about medicine, or doing one of the other million necessities i don't have time for during the day. i just don't have the luxury of sparing time right now for this incredible amount of bull sh*t.
i look back on the last 8 months of unemployment, and all i have done is become a less desirable candidate for hire. i am a person of certain business etiquette and professionalism, and when i attempt to advocate for myself in a situation where nobody does that for me, since nobody is truly my employer, strange things start happening, like receiving menacing voicemails on my answering machine, or missing a few hundred dollars from my paycheck. it's not that i've always been treated perfectly. i've just never been in a position where i'm totally unable to remediate that in any way. it's degrading and demoralizing, to say the least.
the worst part about it is that, i really love nursing. and i'm damn good at it. it's just absurd to think that here is a nurse of my qualifications and attitude who wants to be a part of an institution, to improve her workplace, to enhance work process (with the education to back it up), and ultimately just wants to take care of people, and i can't! i'm wasting my time, energy, and brain power just begging people to let me be good at my job, and never actually allowed to do my job. there is a major breakdown in the system here, and i'm powerless to fix it.
unfortunately, i'm not quite ready to wave goodbye to any chance at a nursing career, which is what would happen if i just removed myself from this whole perplexing disaster. i'm not far enough removed from all the reasons i pursued nursing, how hard i worked to become a nurse, how much i enjoyed being a nurse, and all the plans i had for my future in nursing to just quit right now. but, i think you might better appreciate after reading how rewarding the career has been for me since moving to california that it's a difficult decision every single day to keep going, particularly when i have so many other important things occupying my attention. as a nurse and a mother, i'm necessarily a doer, a fixer, and a master prioritizer. it's thus profoundly disturbing to me that i willingly remain in this position where i can be none of those things, and that it takes time from activities clearly so much more worthwhile.
that is the major ongoing saga. i continue to aim for forward motion in other aspects of my life, with relative success. obviously, the kids are growing beautifully and provide all sorts of delight. i've been dealing with some very frustrating running injuries since december which are far from resolved, but i am working on it, and i'm still able to get into the woods alone a few times a week. interestingly, my mandated hiatus from science has allowed a lot of creativity to creep into my life. i've always had creative outlets like cooking and then knitting, and my most complex study guides for science courses are composed entirely of construction paper and markers.
but, in the past months, i've been able to focus a lot of attention on developing new skills. i've always enjoyed art, but coming at it as an adult, with more refined taste and fine motor capabilities, with the advent of blogging and pinterest and social media, it's a great time for diy. the inspiration and instruction is totally limitless, and relative novices like myself can take on pretty major projects with so much guidance available. i just finished a fabulous online course in sweater design (knitting), and my newest endeavor is to sew from japanese sewing books. like, written in japanese. i love the simplicity and elegance of japanese garments, but nothing could be more foreign to me than japanese characters. yet, with all of the resources available on the web, i stand a fair chance of doing so successfully.
i've been quiet over here, but very active on my other blog, where i enjoy recording my projects and getting feedback from the blogging community. i am flooded with new ideas daily for projects, or new skills i want to learn. i have loved reconnecting with this part of myself and embracing that even before i was a scientist, i was an artist (as all children are), and that it continues to bring me joy and a sense of accomplishment.
you just read a summary of the last 8 months...if you were to advise me on rerouting my path a bit, what direction would you suggest? while i'm not ready to quit nursing, i have found other endeavors that bring me far more peace and fulfillment at this time. i have exhausted every outlet possible to serve the human race as a nurse, and i have suffered greatly for it. i think the universe is exclaiming quite loudly that that's just not the place for me right now. so, while i'll continue to keep one foot in the rat race just to hold the door open a crack, i'm making a conscious decision to honor my principles as well as my creativity, and revise my life a bit.
online classes are great, but there's an abundance of in person classes in college towns as well. i've purposely avoided them to keep my schedule as free as possible in case i get a job offer (as well as offering to work my kids' birthdays, mother's day, our anniversary, my birthday...etc. i'm taking it all back!). just a few days ago, i signed up for a serger class (a type of sewing machine for professional finishing), and a jewelry class, just for the heck of it! both are late in the evening, so won't impinge upon my time with the kids, but will force me to leave the house, which is hard for me to do. maybe next time i'll try pottery or drawing, i don't know! i'm just excited to expand my skill set.
i also, on a total whim, submitted an application for a booth at the annual holiday art sale at the davis art center. it's apparently a pretty big deal in the community, and while it's probably not profitable, it would be a great motivator to continue developing my taste and aesthetic and to create an actual line of goods, and a nice way to connect with local artists. creating a line is an idea i've been toying with for months now, so when i saw the call for applicants, i figured, why not? even if i don't make the cut, it's a big step forward in how i view myself as an artist vs. a non artist who sometimes makes stuff.
so now you know everything! you have more than enough information to hold you over for several months. but if you're ever looking for pictures of the kids, i do post regularly at everythingelsewedo.wordpress.com, and they're often featured there.
hope you are all doing well and we'll check back when we can!
