Moving on from my previous post about my great schedule, I am reminded of WHY I appreciate my working schedule so much...I've DONE the dayshift routine. Now, I had worked nightshifts for roughly 5 or so years and I didn't have much of a problem with them. I loved to go home and sleep during the day...weird, but true. I can do it! Anyway, I started out working Mondays through Thursday nightshift as the weekend supervisor (same place I am working now) and I had done that for about a year or so...really enjoyed it, but there was one CRITICAL incident that caused me to make probably the WORST career decision ever. Thinking about it now, it is actually sort of hilarious, and I really even sort of thought so when it happened about 4 years ago, but I also realize that it must have been VERY traumatic to me.

At this time, TB/NH and I lived in a small condo in a smart little T-stop west of Boston. When we first rented the place, we rented it from the original owners, but a few years in, a Heartless Corporation (tm) came in and bought out all the private owners (within another few years, our rent would nearly double!) So, the above mentioned HC decided that a total renovation was in line for these 20 little buildings and they were going to finish them. All. In. A. Month. Things were not so bad to begin with, I dealt with the noise of drilling,and hammering outside my window while I slept, and only ONE worker was able to surprise me changing my clothes in my bedroom with the blinds partially open. Then, they had to replace the windows. They made an appointment with me to have the guys come and install them, so I came home from working nightshift, took a quick nap, then woke up and let the window installers in to install the windows. This didn't take much time, maybe 45 minutes, and when they were done, I undressed (an important detail here) got back into bed and went straight to sleep.

I don't know how long it was, but it couldn't have been more than 20 minutes or so, I hear a loud knock, the door opening and about 3 or 4 guys were back in the apartment!! Before I could react, they were actually IN my bedroom going to the window!!! We had a waterbed at the time, so I guess I managed to sink enough into the mattress that they didn't notice that I was there. I pull the covers up to just over my ears when I sleep, so I just pulled them up over my head so they wouldn't see me when they turned. They were there arguing about the installation for a few minutes, then they went to compare it to the window in another room. On the way out of that room, one of the guys turns to speak to the other guys behind him, and he caught me peeking out from under the covers. He didn't say anything, or even react...just turned and walked out with the rest of them.

A couple of things happened after this. One of them was, I started wearing frigging PAJAMAS to bed. The other one was much more bizarre. It was like some old gypsy had reached out a gnarled finger to curse me...I stopped sleeping! I would come home in the morning from work and I would just...NEVER SLEEP. I got tired, and I know that I had a lot of those just barely conscious-y type naps when I would get totally exhausted, but there was NO real sleep. I started to get that "Haunted" look that they talk about in the bodice buster type novels. I was nervous all the time, couldn't relax, was popping benadryl like it was going out of style. One day, I took a look in the mirror and I realized that, although I had previously enjoyed a "Looks younger than her age" type status, I had now MORE than caught up. My hair was falling out, I wasn't eating right...I was just a big mess. The next morning as I was leaving work, I heard one of the dayshift girls announce that she would be moving to the south and getting married in a month. I went straight to the director of nursing and told her that I wanted that position, which she granted me. LUCKY ME.

Dayshift was a disaster for me, but I stuck it out for 2 years. I hated my job every single day of those 2 years. Now, this is also acknowledging the fact that I LOVED the people I worked with. Not just liked, LOVED. These were people that were near and dear to me, and we had a LOT of fun together; even on the job! However, I was desperately unhappy. A co-worker and I had an ongoing elaborate plot about how we could make a lot of money doing something else...ANYTHING else...HOOKING or even HOUSEKEEPING for God's sake...just NOT nursing. We would arrive in the morning, get report, then the conspiring would begin. Finally, after two years, a loathesome bitch who worked weekends walked out on the job and they called me at home to tell me about it. I had my request printed up in 5 minutes and drove straight in and put it in the Director's In box so she wouldn't miss it. I have never regretted it a minute since. Never more so than getting a call one Thursday morning (a few weeks after I went to weekends) from the supervisor, "Um, the state is here to do their inspection, can you possibly come in to help us out?" Pure comedic gold, that was....