bookofmirrors | Randomness

Currently,

lunenoire is making breakfast and clearing the living room so we can watch a movie together while we eat - Sin City, which I haven't seen yet. Earlier,

blckwngdorcl and I went out for water (I have one of those 5-gallon water cooler things with hot/cold running water - coolest appliance ever) and milk, and also got some Starbucks goodness while we were out. (Damn

elephantankh, anyway, for addicting me to French press!) Anyway, we came back and kinds simultaneously worked on the kitchen and the garbage, so it would be clean enough for

lunenoire to cook. We had some good discussion about expectations (mine and his) and apprecation (my lack of expressing such), and that went well. Now that we're done with that, we've been kicked out of the kitchen to let the maestro work. :) He makes the bestest poached eggs. Note, this is a skill I never learned, because when I was young, my parents had this egg cooker that you could set up to cook eggs just about any way you wanted, just by putting the stuff in and hitting the right button. It was kinda like this, I think. Anyway, I had no idea how to poach eggs. I'm still not sure, although I get the impression it has something to do with boiling them. At any rate, the eggs I can actually make well without fucking them up are scrambled, but I despise scrambled eggs unless

lunenoire makes them. Actually, there are a lot of things that

blckwngdorcl and I typically won't eat, but when

lunenoire makes them, we like 'em. He's an awfully good cook. :)

Anyway, I kinda feel like posting, but don't really have anything to say, nor am I in the mood to expound on any deep subjects. Plus, y'know, I don't wanna get in an introspective mood, to be interrupted by breakfast, no matter how good it is. :) That and Sin City, from all accounts, isn't the most ...introspective... of movies. *grin*

So... yesterday I spent over 16 hours at work. I worked the usual 6-hour Saturday shift, then started in on what I've been saying I was gonna do on Saturdays for about a month now. I was kinda on a roll, but it was the first time I was doing it, so there was a lot of stuff to do before I could do anything, if that makes sense. The laundry/storage room was a mess, and I cleaned that up, and that took a while. Then I took a bunch of supplies to distribute to the rooms. This took forever. I got all the rooms fully supplied, and the drawers and cabinets organized. Which is cool, 'cause now I know exactly how much I have of each type of supplies we need. I didn't go so far as to order anything, but I now have a clear visual. I've also set myself up for it to be much easier to refill things next ...er... the Saturday after next. (I have a class this coming Saturday, so I won't be at work.) Anyway, the idea is that it'll be easier on subsequent Saturdays to get this stuff done, so I won't spend 10 hours doing it. The upside to being there that long is that I was able to get almost all the laundry done between all the other stuff I did. I had all the rooms FULLY stocked, with the exception of the prep room, which was mostly stocked, and there was still laundry drying in both dryers when I left, and that should take care of the prep room, plus leave us more laundry left over. I might go in Monday early (8:00am) and make sure that gets finished and distributed. Partially, 'cause I just like the idea that it's all DONE, and partially 'cause it'll also give me a clear picture as to whether or not we're as short on linens as we think we are. The fact that all the rooms are FULL of laundry right now, and the prep room needs very little to fill it, leads me to believe that we actually have plenty of stuff, we just aren't usually caught up enough on laundry for that to be obvious. We used to have someone to do laundry for us (a co-worker's daughter), who did a FABULOUS job, but she's back in school now. Unfortunately, the owner won't hire men, so my repeated offers and suggestions of

blckwngdorcl working there have been shut down. Would have been great... no extra gas money, laundry done, and a few stolen smooches here and there. It also means that

lunenoire won't be able to get a job there as a consultant. Both would be good at those jobs, and that would work out great... but, c'est la vie. Anyway, I also made enough copies of all the paperwork for all the rooms. My evil plan worked perfectly, except for the fact that, at about 1:00am, I completely depleted the toner in the copier. I'm used to copiers that, when they say they're out of toner, you can pull it out, shake it up, and glean several more copies out of 'em. No such luck with this one. And I couldn't find another one ANYWHERE. (Well, I found a toner, but it was for the printer.) So, I sent emails to people who I figured would want to know that sort of thing, called our answering service to let them know that any messages they sent weren't actually going to be coming through (the copier doubles as a fax), and left a message with the company that apparently supplies the toners to send us one ASAP. Hopefully, this will cover all the bases. However, I've been told that we need to get Kinkos to do our copies, and I hadn't gotten around to giving the appropriate parties the doctored masters I've set up. Also, it would seem that I can't find a master copy of the treatment logs on the computer, so our copy-of-a-copy forms are starting to look pretty bad. Everything else I can print out a shiny new version.

I also set up all the laser shields in each room, putting the correct glasses in each room (some glasses protect against different kinds of lasers, so you have to make sure you're using the correct shields for the type of laser you're using - something I've been banging my head against the wall to get people to do). We're at the very edge of having enough glasses to go around. We have exactly enough for one nurse and one client in each room. Which means that, if there's a nurse training, or there's a parent with a minor child going into a room, and all the rooms are full, we don't have enough glasses to go around. I've been begging for approval to order new ones for over a month now, and about a week ago, put in this 3-4 page proposal as to WHY it was so important to have them, and our current inventory, prices depending on how many we buy, why I think we should buy a certain amount and whatnot... The owners are out of town right now, but I'm hoping they'll come back soon, and approve the purchase. (The laser shields/glasses cost anywhere from just over $100 to just over $200, depending on how many we buy at once, and I'm wanting us to get at least 20, so it's a fairly large expenditure.)

I'm not sure I've mentioned this in previous posts, but the owner made it official that myself and two of my co-workers were now, at least temporarily, co-charge nurses. I'm in charge of supplies, and was supposed to be in charge of employee charts (although that got commandeered by the other nurse, who ended up in charge of training - most of the stuff in the charts relates to training, anyway, so that makes more sense; more power to her, 'cause that's SUCH a pain in the ass...), like I said, the other nurse is in charge of training and is a laison with the doctor, and the third nurse is in charge of scheduling and whatnot. It works out pretty well. All the stuff that a charge nurse should be doing, though, the extra stuff... none of that is getting taken care of, 'cause we're all still expected to work on the floor, too. But, y'know, until that changes, or we get a real charge nurse...

Anyway, the other day, our medical director came in and wanted lasered. She requested me to do it. (How's *that* for an endorsement?) So, of course, like I do with all my clients, I chatted with her. Some of the chat turned to work, of course. We talked about the recent holiday pay debaucle (which she didn't know about), the setting Sona corporate is currently recommending for the lasers (she didn't know about that, either), etc.. I also asked her about the charge nurse situation - if the three of us were gonna keep doing it this way indefinitely. She said she thought we probably would end up doing it that way. I mentioned that I had offered to be the charge nurse, but that I had told the owners that whoever the charge nurse was should NOT be on the floor, 'cause there was just too much to do otherwise. (Of course, if I were charge nurse, I'd be on the floor a lot anyway, 'cause so many people request me, and I want to honor those. Plus, of course, any charge nurse should be prepared to deal with clients who have special needs.) Anyway, she said she totally agreed with me, and had been trying to tell the owners that from day one, but since corporate recommends that the charge nurse be on the floor at least 40% of the time, the owners have been going with that. *sigh* They ignore a lot of corporate's stuff, so I'm not sure why they stick to that particular dictate, since it's so clearly NOT worked in the past. They've been through 3 (4, if you count the assistant manager that became the manager when 3 quit; and then she quit, too) in just over a year... that oughta tell 'em something. Anyway, I told the doctor that I had offered to be the charge nurse. She was like, "Oh, yeah, but 'cause you're an LPN......" and kinda let it trail off. Then, later, like she'd been thinking about it, she asked if I didn't think the RNs would be resentful of working under an LPN. I told her that I doubted it, especially since most of the nurses there (some RNs, of course) have already asked repeatedly why I wasn't already the charge nurse. She said, that, well, she wouldn't mind if I was... Which is a huge thing, 'cause the owners have always said that it was the doctor who insisted that it be an RN that be charge nurse. Which, y'know, makes sense, really. It's just that laser hair removal isn't really very medical, and I've got lots of management experience. Sooooooooo.... I'm hoping that she'll express this to the owners when they come back. *crosses fingers* That would be a boon, for sure.

Anyway, that's it. Nummy breakfast has been served, and the movie awaits!