Snow Day Again

A (nother) snowy winter day which is good for laying on the couch reading your library book – the next thing on my to-do list for today. Since one of my summer neighbours mentioned ‘missing the blog’ and I have missed posting so often myself I have settled in front of the computer at least until I have to get out my snow boots.

The shore captain (who arrived home at 5 a.m. on Friday after spending 28 hrs – most of it driving – to attend 6 hours of meetings) has been plowing the driveway with his 4-wheeler and moving the mess around inside his 4 wheel drive crew cab truck to make room to drive three nurses in for a 12 hour night shift this evening. And this is a good thing as it means the support staff strike is on hold with the walk out only having lasted two hours this morning. Apparently the walkout happened at 0600 as planned but by 0800 they had settled wage parity and so returned while the other issues were dealt with. Yes, you read that correctly – wage parity – which means that a local Licensed Practical Nurse would earn the same pay for the same work as an LPN in the city. And I should hope so considering that rurally we work without the benefit of all the additional supports that our urban counterparts have come to expect. And don’t get me started on how we drive everywhere including to specialist appointments or pay living expenses for offspring who study in urban centers as well. And a darned good thing the walk out was settled as the fairy tale numbers which were being tossed around for patient discharges did NOT materialize so it would not have gone well. Yesterday was a pretty intense experience! I did have to smile as one of our newest additions to the medical staff, who originally hails from Kenya via USA phoned for an update on his patients and asked how my day was going and I told him “not so great” and he said “well, you just have to decide that it’s going to be a good day and it is” so I explained “I’ve been trying to do that since 7 a.m. and it’s now 10 o’clock and it’s not helping so I don’t think that’s going to work”. His parting instructions were to “give it a try, think it’ll be good”. When I shared his philosophy with the Irish physician who I’d called in he said “no one is more laid back then him, I think it has to do with originally living in the tropics and not hurrying in the heat or worrying about the small stuff - just a different approach then us rushing everywhere.” I told him our Cuban friends have advised us to ‘walk like Cubans not Canadians because it’s too hot to hurry’ and he chuckled as he trotted off at his usual clip.

On Saturday, a friend and I participated in the photography workshop and the second time around was much less stressful and more information was absorbed. Maybe third time will be a charm. The instructor mentioned that she’d had five students who had repeated the class already so we didn’t feel like we were in the special ed section. The instructor has been making photobooks from some of her collections of pictures and she had a gorgeous one of her trip to India last fall. She traveled with a yoga group and although she doesn’t do yoga she had a wonderful time as she spent her time taking photos. The group leader has moved to India for part of the year and leads these trips annually, needing at least five to do the trip and of course has built up contacts and the ability to move around India easier. They traveled for five weeks, visited all the major areas of India, traveled by rickshaw, local train, flew from north to south for one of the longer legs of the journey and stayed in beautiful surroundings. They all put $200 into the pot for meals, accommodation and transportation and when that was gone they all put in $200 more. The total (including airfare) was only $3000 each. I asked for the contact info because although I’m not there yet….with my 2012 plans of semiretirement hmmm.

Had a chat with a member of my former work team who has (as well) moved on with his last day on the job just a week or so away and he is very pleased to have landed a 40% position in long term care and will be doing casual shifts in the ER. He is as glad as I was to be leaving all the in-house hassles behind or at least trading them for new ones.