NOT as PLANNED!

(this post was condensed four days after it was originally blogged)

What a weekend. It began with insomnia most of Friday night. Saturday morning I was excited that my best friend (a senior nursing student) was going to get to shadow me at work. We car pooled in together and the day held so much promise in spite of my sleep deprived state. Little did I know it would be the WORST shift I have ever had to pull at the V.A.

Lisa and I had PLANNED on eating out at one of our favorite Chinese restaurants after the shift. We had never in our wildest dreams suspected we would be getting out almost an hour late. We decided to go ahead with our plans, anyway...we both needed time to decompress from all the stress of the workday. At Lisa's house, we separated into our own vehicles since the restaurant was in the next town south of Lisa's town...closer to my own town. Lisa thought I was right behind her. I should have been...but, traffic was horrible on her busy street and it took me almost five minutes to back out of her driveway...she had long since disappeared into the black of the night. Then, not having a cell phone and not wanting Grant to worry about me being gone so much longer than expected, I stopped in at the church where he was with the kids (Christmas program practice) to tell him what was up. He hadn't eaten yet, so he said he and the kids would meet us there, leaving in about 15 minutes from then. The stop was right on my way to the restaurant and only took me a couple of extra minutes, but, coupled with my delay getting out of Lisa's drive, it was enough of a lag to make Lisa, waiting for me at the restaurant, to begin to panic and think that maybe she had misunderstood and I had gone to the Chinese restaurant in HER town, instead of in the next town down the road. So, she left and doubled back to the other Chinese restaurant. I got there moments after she had left (some of the customers had seen her). I am not a cell phone owner and didn't have the presence of mind to ask to use the restaurant phone to call her on her cell phone. I forget people HAVE cell phones! And I hadn't had any sleep the night before and was frazzled from the day at work. My first thought was that Lisa might have thought I was at the Chinese restaurant on the other side of the highway...so I went to that one...no Lisa...then I came back to the other one and waited a bit...no Lisa. Then, the light bulb finally came on in my befuddled brain and I remembered she had a cell phone, so I went into the restaurant and called her. By that time, she was almost to the restaurant in the other town (I hadn't even thought of her thinking I might be there!). The easiest thing would have been for me to meet HER there at that one, BUT, Grant was planning on meeting us at the restaurant I was already at and I had no way of reaching him to change plans. So, Lisa said she would come back to where I was...but, meantime she was wondering if she could bring her puppy over to our house on Sunday instead of Monday for us to puppysit while she was out of town. I knew Grant had lots of plans for Sunday and didn't know when we would be home, so, realizing she was now back in HER town, I suggested she go on home and grab her pup before doubling back to the restaurant I was at and that would save her an hour round trip to our house the following day and would be more convenient for us to take the pup then, rather than try to figure out how to connect up with her the next day. So, by the time ALL of us wound up at the restaurant to eat, it was about an hour later! (Did I mention I hadn't gotten to eat hardly any lunch? I had brought cereal rather than ordering Chinese food out (my usual lunch), since we were planning on eating Chinese food after the shift. I had forgotten to put my milk in the refrig, though, so it was warm by lunch time. I ate half a bowl of cereal with the warm milk, then put the rest of the milk in the deep freeze to quickly cool it down while I ran to take care of a couple of quick tasks on the floor. It was over an hour and a half before I got my next chance to try and grab a bite, but, by then my milk was frozen solid! Besides, I didn't have TIME to eat, anyway, even if it hadn't been frozen.) My stomach was GROWLING by the time we finally sat down to supper! Then, Lisa and I were both so stressed out from the day that we made three trips back to the ice cream machine. So much for the diet I had planned on beginning back up that day! Lisa told me that she will NEVER work on my unit again. She has put in over 300 hours at the VA so far this year, and she said that this was the absolutely worst day, by far, that she has EVER had. It was her first time working my unit. At least now she understands why my attitude about my new job at the VA has been rather lukewarm. (She LOVES the VA and thinks it is absolutely the greatest place to work. She has never really understood my lack of enthusiasm...she does now, though!) For my part, I have decided I am going to investigate the possibility of pulling hours on a different unit in the VA. Up til now I have just stuck with this unit, assuming that the entire hospital is probably about the same. Lisa assures me that no where else in the hospital where she has done shadowing has been anything at all like this unit. She was appalled at the culture of our floor. (Granted, she saw it at its worst...but still, it isn't any picnic there, ever.)

I was so stressed from work Saturday, that I was awake almost all night Saturday night (on top of my insomnia the night before). I checked on little Violet (Lisa's three month old German shepherd pup) almost every hour. By 4:00am, she and Rivie had become great buddies and were curled up together to sleep in the yard (instead of little Violet sleeping by herself against the front door). The next morning, all four dogs were running together in a tight pack. It was so sweet to see little Violet keeping up with the big dogs. I saw them off in the distance, down the gravel lane, turning into Mom and Dad C's drive (they are our nearest neighbors and the dogs patrol the entire 40 acres of woods that our two houses are on). I should have called them back, but, it didn't dawn on me that little Violet might lose track of the big dogs. (The big dogs NEVER leave the 40 acres. They know right where the boundaries are and they stay within those boundaries.) Twenty five minutes later, as we all walked out to the van, I noticed that the three big dogs were back on our porch, but little Violet was no where to be seen. At first I headed off in my Sunday dress thinking I could find her quickly. Maybe she got locked in Mom and Dad C's garage by accident (I had seen their van leave for church a few minutes earlier). I even checked in their house, knowing that little Violet is good at dashing through doorways undetected. She wasn't in the barn, either...or the tool shed. She wasn't down the road (beyond our private quarter mile drive). By then, I was in a panic. Grant was too. We sent the kids back in the house (from where they had been waiting in the van) and changed into jeans so that we could scour the woods. I called Lisa and caught her just before she left for her own church. She headed over our way immediately and called her mother and stepdad to join in the search. We scoured the two nearest neighborhoods, our forty acres, the adjoining umpteen acres calling at the tops of our lungs for little Violet...all of us going in different directions and the big dogs all ranging way out from us and looping back between us. No little Violet. Lisa had to say good-bye to her husband at noon on Thanksgiving Day as he caught a plane to Mexico, knowing they will be geographically separated for a year or more. The last gift Iran had given Lisa was little Violet to keep her company. And now I had let little Violet get lost. I felt so horrible. And I was just plain scared that maybe something bad had happened to little Violet. There were deer poachers on our land last Friday.


We searched and searched. After an hour and a half, I came back in and ran off some flyers to put up along the road and to leave at each house within a several mile radius of ours. I had the printer programmed to print 40 copies. About six had been spit out when the phone rang. Lisa had found little Violet on the doorstep of one of the homes that is behind our 40 acres...quite a ways away by ROAD, but pretty close if you are a lost puppy wandering blindly through the woods. I think what happened was that little Violet was busy investigating something and hadn't noticed whten the big dogs left to come back home. Then, finding herself alone, she didn't know how to find her way back to our home and so she had just kept moving forward deeper and deeper into the woods, until she came out into a resdential area on the other side. Alone and bewildered, she had climbed up on someone's porch and was huddled against their front door staying out of the way of the unfamiliar dogs in the neighborhood.

That is how our Sunday, began unplanning itself! We missed Sunday School and church (what we had planned), but were so relieved to find little Violet and get her safely back to Lisa (who is now just going to take her along when she leaves town Monday morning). (Lisa had been absolutely devastated when little Violet was missing. So had I. I was secretly relieved that Lisa didn't even consider our offer to keep her, but lock her up in the garage and just let her out on a leash. I would just be scared silly now, that something awful might happen to little Violet while she is in my care.) Grant and I decided to pick up with our Sunday plans from the point of church onward. So, we headed into the city to eat at our favorite Mongolian Grill. Oops. Come to find out, it isn't OPEN on Sundays! More, un-doing of our plans! We went instead to a really great Mexican restaurant...and got to have our nephew, Aaron, with us (which was a good alteration to our plans!). Then, Grant had planned on taking the kids to Union Station to see the Santa Claus train. It travels all around, but was only going to be in KC this one day. One of Grant's long time co-workers is Mrs. Claus on the train and her husband plays Santa. Grant had his heart set on bringing his kids over for her to see them. (We don't really "do" the Santa thing, normally....the little kids have never been to see any Santa and, in fact, Rayna didn't even KNOW the character's name! Someone sent her a delightful Santa letter in the mail last week (complete with snow, a personal letter, and a photo of the big guy himself) and our littlest, cried out exuberantly, "It's a picture of 'Ho Ho'!" And that is, indeed, what she thought his name was..."Ho Ho"!) But, anyway, we were going to do the Santa thing today. Grant patiently drove in circles for half an hour trying to find us a parking place in front of Union Station...then, we found a parking garage behind Union Station and, enduring much more slow traffic, we finally were able to park the car. We got out and walked to the Santa Train only to find that there were hundreds and hundreds of people in the line. I have never seen such a long line...not even at Disney land, Silver Dollar City, or World's of Fun. And the line didn't seem to be moving at all. It would have taken us at least two (maybe three) hours to wind through that line. Unplan that plan! Doug and Rayna were a bit wistful...they really had wanted to see "Ho Ho". Later I heard Rayna explaining to Doug, "Ho Ho was hiding inside the train, that's why we couldn't see him!" Glad she blamed him and not us! That mean Ho Ho...HIDING from our kids like that!

We wandered through Union Station a bit, though, and checked out the Science City gift shop there (running into some old friends!)...and looked at the model trains winding through elaborate miniture towns...then we killed a bit of time at a Super Target and got a snack there before heading on to church where the kids were in the Christmas program (the FIRST thing since Friday evening that DID go according to plan)! And, now, for some silly reason, I am typing away on my blog at 11pm when I have gone two nights straight without any sleep and I have an incredibly busy week ahead!