First day of spring? Really?

As my horoscope reminded me, this is the first day of spring. Not that the weather would make you think that as overnight we had snow, ice pellets, freezing rain and now rain. This would've been Mom's 94th birthday if she was still with us. As the horoscope also hints this is not a fun work day for me either:

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22.): The first day of spring might not seem as encouraging as it usually does. There may be extra responsibilities on your schedule that prevent you from looking for buds on the trees. Chin up!

The day began with surveillance to try to gauge how the bug battle is going. Trust me you do not want to be working in Infection Control if there is a gastroenteritis outbreak. The only thing worse than being ICP is being a direct care nurse - been there, done that and it's exhausting!

While I was checking out charts and sick calls one of the staff updated me on a terrible situation at the nursing home next door last night. One of the 52 yr old LPNs came to work for a night shift and was giving meds when she collapsed in a resident's room. She was unable to be resuscitated. I had worked with her for a few years and she was always very good to Mom, treating her as if she were her own mother. In fact she often used to leave a message on my office voice mail if I wasn't over to visit, perhaps because I was working off site, saying "your Mom is a having a good day, very bright and we're having a cup of tea and talking about you, just wanted to let you know". She was one of those remembering others with a small gift over the holidays or if you were having a tough time. She was expecting the birth of her first grandchild within the week or two and was over the moon about that. Her poor family both by relation and her work family - must be devastated. We never know how much time we'll have do we?

One of the better things which happened to me was winning a digital tire gauge from Biomedical Engineering week. There was a survey to complete about all the team members and submit for a prize - I only knew one on the list so it sure wasn't for having the most correct answers - this made those who had 100% a little testy. I am thrilled with the prize as I think one of my tires is down.

I'm kind of fragile today anyway as I'm sleep deprived as the new wall oven was being installed by the man home from his cusk (fish) meeting at 11:30 p.m. as he picked it up in town, with me assisting him to remove and wrestle into place the new one. When I asked if he knew how to wire it in and he assured me (as he does regularly) he's got things under control, I thought....well the life insurance is paid up and this would be accidental.....However, it appears to work fine and will be good for cooking Easter dinner. When I protested the dead oven couldn't stay in the front hall as the cleaning lady was coming he said "does she have to clean everything?" The obvious answer to that is "hopefully" so we wrestled the defunct oven (which he didn't want to put out in the rain - not sure why or what he hopes to salvage from it as it's dead as a nit) with him with a knot in his face, onto the spare bed temporarily. He was really pushing it to even protest this morning, I was in too much of a hurry to deal with him.

When I was reading the Chronicle Herald online (as I didn't stop in the monsoon to pick up the paper copy out of the box this morning) as I can do with the high speed here at work (during my lunch break at 1:30 with the door locked and a Cuban jazz CD up at a fair volume) I noticed one of the blogs was called Soulseeker and it is a feel good place - think Chicken Soup for Everyone so enjoy:

http://myconnect.ca/read/93/23334

I'm off for an outbreak teleclass session - talk about timely! Happy Easter if I'm too busy baking and visiting with offspring to update for a couple of days.