*whew* *sigh*

No grabbings so far this week. No screaming family members with threats of suing and retribution, no codes called for patients who get out of control, no fires in the rooms, no weird semi-recognizable things in the cafeteria waving up from the steam trays.

Something's bound to happen soon, but I'll take calm and cheerful where I can get it.

This was an unexpected day off. I'm not quite sure what happened in the surgery department, but for once we didn't have sixteen more brain surgeries than beds, plus nephrectomies, plus belly resections and Whipples, so they called me off at five. At nine I called my charge nurse and asked, quaveringly, "Do I have to come in?" She told me to stay home. It was wonderful. Laundry was did, dishes was did, and soon my hurrr will be did as well--it's growing out into that unflattering Giant Q-Tip Look I try to avoid.

All of which leaves me tapping my fingers a bit.

This last year has felt a bit like Limbo. The feeling's been especially strong since about Christmas, when it became clear that I wasn't going to have to deal with radiation or further resections or anything like that. The CCU is up and running, though we still don't have the number of patients I'd like to see. The unit itself is mostly stable, though. I'm not sick, I'm not in danger of losing my job, the animals and house are running themselves, just as I set them up to do. . . .

I'm thinking of going back to school. Maybe for a BSN and maybe not, and certainly not this year, as I still have this prosthetic and one more to pay for. One prosthetic equals a semester of employer-subsidized work at one of the local universities, and my priority has to be speech. Nothing stops me from being a bookworm, though, so it's off to Amazon I go for texts on things like pathophysiology and organic chem--things I've gotten rusty on since the last time I was in school. And Texas government and English and Poli Sci and all the other subjects I could test out of to earn higher placement in a program.

Meanwhile, it's time I fed the dog and took the clippers to my head. This is the bi-weekly night of buffing, razoring, clipping, waxing, scrubbing, and tweezing, all the while hoping I don't uncover something Much Worse than I already have.

Limbo, limbo, lim-bo. It's a bit like brownout. It's also a little bit like the Doldrums in The Phantom Tollbooth.