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November 23, 2005
THANKSGIVING
I spent last Thanksgiving questioning my decision to retire. This Thanksgiving, I am going to revel in it. I have SO much to be thankful for this year. All the pieces of the puzzle have come together (only one left!).
I had an interview with the local community health clinic. I had been told that there were two nursing positions open. That wasn’t true. They were hiring dental assistants. However, the manager said, "I do have two positions coming open that I have to advertise (by law) for nurses". So she decided to get ahead of the game and interview me before she listed them. What did I interview for? Clinic nurse with a heavy slice of risk management. I am sure that giggling in an interview is a no no, so I quickly explained that I just left a position as a risk manager. By the end of the interview, I felt like I had made a friend and landed a job. She then asked me what I wanted for salary. Ugh. I truly hate this question. The home health job had already shocked me (about ten bucks under national average) and made me realize that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, Toto. So, I told her that I didn’t expect to make anywhere near my Navy salary and told her what the home health job had offered. She then said that they would be offering LESS than that, a full thirteen bucks below national average. One thing that I had already decided (to justify the pay cut with the home health job) is that this area has a much lower cost of living and furthermore, working at the clinic would significantly cut my travel time/expense and childcare costs. This would make up the difference. So Monday, the clinic manager called back to offer me the job and to tell me that they would match the other job’s salary offer! Wahoo! I am happy. Let me count the ways: No more on call, no more driving thirty minutes one way, no more nights, no more weekends, no more ten or twelve hour days, all holidays off… Oh my, I am extremely happy. AND I get to keep doing risk management and dabbling in patient care. I told her all about my love for patient education and she said that she may end up sliding some of that my way depending on how busy I was with the other stuff. The icing on the cake? My nurse friends will love this: they dumped JCAHO after their last inspection last year. Can you imagine? Risk management without all the bullshit regulations and make work junk.
I opened up the yellow pages and the first preschool I called turned out to be such a cool program. So Seth is now enrolled in daycare/preschool for the first time in his life. We are going to test the waters tomorrow by dropping him there for two hours while I run errands. I know that he will love it.
So happy.
I have put a ton of pictures in the Gallery – click here.
p.s. I don't know why my blog will not allow folks to add their names to the mailing list. If you want me to add you for notifications just send an email to dlcodding*at*yahoo.com (fix the middle part of that of course).
p.p.s. Those kind souls that are EXPECTING an email back from me - I promise to respond soon (no, really, I promise).
p.p.p.s. HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!
Posted by DebC at 04:57 AM | Comments (4)
November 09, 2005
The Secret
The secret to getting boys in bed without any fuss at a ridiculously early time... drumroll please... get rid of the TV. We did not bring our TV back from Italy because it had a 220 connection and our old TV is in permanent storage. We have done without TV (on purpose) before and I always forget just how nice it is not to have one around. It is amazing just how much work gets done when you don’t have the line up of shows to watch each night. A few nights ago, the boys asked if they could go to bed... at 7:30. The only thing we do TV-wise is go over to my Aunt's house on Thursday to watch Survivor. The bad thing is that the world could be coming to an end and I won't know anything about it because I am fairly disconnected from everything out here. I think that is good though – I am so sick of being told what to think by the news media. There is so little truth out there today. Nothing is as black and white, or as bad as they make it out to be.
Anyway, I am still totally happy with living here. It is just gorgeous with the fall colors. I keep promising myself to put the camera in the van so I can take pictures. Speaking of pictures, I have a ton stuck on my camera waiting for me to dig out the cable. Maybe tomorrow.
My best news is that I now have a job. I have not yet started, but hopefully, I will get some orientation done this week. I have wanted to get out of inpatient nursing for quite sometime now and I have certainly done that now. I am going to do pediatric home health nursing. The pay is crap and the benefits suck so I can't see it going on for very long but at least it adds to my resume while I am waiting for my dream job to happen along. I am going to put resumes with the Public Health folks and with something called rural health as well as with the local hospital (for doing home visit type stuff). I really would like to get a family practice type clinic job that allows me to do mostly patient education (my true love).
UPDATE: I wrote this post out two days ago! Then I decided a lovely thing to do would be to defragment my computer while updating my Norton Antivirus program and doing a complete scan (first time in about a year). Uh huh. That task took FOUR hours. Then, yesterday, I was going to put the post up but my sister called and we yakked for nearly an hour (as always - everything is her fault and never mine).
So anyway, I put a resume in with a public health clinic today and was told that they would be interviewing next week for two positions. Keep your fingers crossed (is it pathetic to be hoping my resume so dazzles them that the forgo the interviewing and hire me now? teehee). Meanwhile the job that I WAS hired for has not bothered to call with my orientation shifts yet. Hopefully they won't call until next week either, LOL.
I have other things to tell as well such as about the ladybugs infestation and a couple of orange tabby kittens that we adopted but I will save it for tomorrow when I get the pictures up - I found the cable to my camera, woohoo!
Posted by DebC at 04:37 AM | Comments (4)