"Take a right by the porta-potty, then a left after the second backhoe."

If you were to come to Casa Del Doghair, those would be the directions you'd get.

Every five years or so, Littleton's infrastructure guys decide it's time to replace the gas lines/sanitary sewers (that's how they refer to them: "sanitary sewers." I would hope there's no other kind)/water lines/electrical distribution system/various bits of asphalt in my neighborhood. This month, it's the sewer lines.

Do you have any idea how big sewer lines can be? I did not until this week. Apparently, replacing several thousand linear feet of sewer lines requires backhoes, something The Boyfiend calls a backtracker (on reflection, I think he made that up), a crane, and a whole shitload, pun intended, of disturbingly large plastic-and-metal tubes. These things are large enough to get lost in. And right now, five of them are piled up on what used to be my side yard.

So be careful if you come visit. Don't climb on the equipment. And for God's sake, don't cut that left after the second backhoe too close, or you'll end up ten feet underground in a big hole, with a bunch of men in orange vests staring down at you.

In non-sanitary-sewer-related news, nursing, both as a job and a concept, is eating my lunch. Mostly as a job. The concept of nursing is fine and dandy and I'm still all up in its metaphorical grill, but the practice? is leaving some tread marks across my back.

Part of it is the new residents we've got at the moment. We trade out residents more frequently than just once a year, so every four months or so, it's like July all over again. Not all of 'em leave, of course, but we get enough new post-grad-twos and threes to make things exciting. Here's an example:

SCENE: Interior, day, conference room. Six doctors are milling about, drinking coffee and PSLs and munching on PowerBars.

DOCTOR ONE: Okay, you guys. We have a full house today, so we've got to move somebody out of the unit. Who've we got that can go to the floor?

DOCTOR TWO: Um. . . .let's see. We have three TIAs that are stable and almost done with their workups. We have that patient with the left MCA stroke who's waiting on rehab placement, and the lady with the cerebellar stroke who needs a cardiology consult. Oh, and then we have that one guy with rhabdo, in status, with an insulin drip, who we're working up for DIC. He's four hundred pounds and in four-point restraints, too.

DOCTOR THREE: Sounds to me like we ought to move out the rhabdo.

DOCTOR ONE: Great idea. You write the orders and I'll let bed control know. Oh, and listen: be sure you write an order for strict ins and outs and put in the notes to nursing that they have to d/c that Foley immediately, okay? 

I'm spending Thanksgiving with the weirder half of The Boyfiend's family, in a prepper compound, with feral-hog hunting as part of the weekend's entertainment. At this point, I am looking forward to it.

And maybe, before I go back to work, I'll end up at the bottom of a deep hole under a backhoe with a bunch of men in orange vests staring down at me.