She Makes the Best of What's Around

I am having...not quite a recurring dream. Let's say I'm having a series of dreams with the exact same theme. In them, we're living in a house. It might be this house, might be a different building, but in the dream I know it's our house. In these dreams, every time, I find an extra room or maybe an entire extra wing that we didn't know about, even though we've been living in the house for a while. I might find them behind a hidden door, or behind a wall when I discover some sort of chip in the paint. A few times I've found them behind something we were using for storage, and in one we were USING an extra room for storage because the doorway was filled up with shelving, and I decided to tear down the shelving & use the entire room, at which point I found 3 more rooms behind it. In the very first one I can remember, Bryan wasn't excited about it at all, but in all the subsequent dreams we've started talking excitedly about what we were going to do with the extra space. In last night's particularly meta episode, I dreamed I was talking to Bryan about these dreams, and THEN found an extra room in the house when I scraped at a hole in the paneling!

I am not much on the idea that dreams mean something, but I do know that we believe scientifically that dreams are probably our brains processing something. The fact that I'm having a continuing series of dreams with the same theme...does that mean I'm continually processing the same thing? That there's something my brain is trying to wrap itself around, or something I'm cooking up & I'm not even aware of it? It's happening often enough & going on for long enough that I'm starting to really wonder.

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I'm taking Sam to the vet today. I'm the nurse, but I have no feel for doggie body language, & Bryan does. Sam does yelp sometimes when you bump into him, and he tenses up when you go to touch him. I can't find anything obviously wrong on examination, but I don't know the first 2 things about dog anatomy & physiology, so off we go to Dr. Doyle.

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Our weather has turned to fall for the moment! When I woke this morning to see Bryan & Ganon off to school, it was 57 degrees. :) I had my oatmeal & coffee out on the back porch like a little old lady & I was over the moon about it! I love my porch so much, and having an iPad makes it even better.

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Work is okay these days. Except for a major snafu in staffing/scheduling about a week ago, things have gone relatively smoothly. I'm feeling very confident & happy in my skill level & the trust people have in me. Two of the physicians I respect most have shown a great deal of trust in me recently, and that was a major boost. I've gotten comments recently about how long I must have been a nurse, and when I ask for guesses, my patients have guessed anywhere from 8-15 years (though at the age of 33, I think 15 years is a bit far out). When I tell them it's been 3 years since I passed boards, they usually go on to tell me I was born for this profession. I feel like that's true, actually.

Now. On to a doctorate. One of the APNs at work pointed out that I could work in a capacity as a DNP that hadn't occurred to me: DNPs are certified to perform certain procedures. I could work in an ER or interventional radiology if I wanted to. I still think I like the idea of a hospitalist program, though.

I am in the middle of an poop schedule though. 2 shifts on, 1 day off, 2 shifts on, 1 day off, 2 shifts on. I am on that 2nd day off right now, and I am headache-y and tired. Only 2 more. I can do this. I swear, centralized staffing might be my least favorite thing that's happened since I started work at my hospital.