All change

It's all change for the New Year around here:

• I'm working. 
• The car only gets used once or twice a week, now that we no longer have a school run to do. 
• I'm earning money. 
• After a very late night out and a slow bus ride home, I awoke at 9:30am to find that Cam had unloaded the dishwasher, made a big pot of coffee and was frying bacon for breakfast sandwiches for everyone. 
• I no longer travel to work by tube.
• We are going to go to Switzerland for our summer holiday this year.
• I'm wearing bright blue scrubs at work, and a name badge that says 'Staff Nurse'.
• There is a hipster-run new bistro in our local neighbourhood.

I absolutely love this time of year: the crisp cold, the white skies, the sense of clarity and energy after the velvet-luxury, over-indulgent, laziness of Christmas.  It makes me want to run, to clean, to sing, and to organise.  Starting a new job fits perfectly with this vibe.  In the dark early mornings I warm myself up with one of the (many) hats I knit over Christmas and walk briskly up the hill to work, marvelling at how much I enjoy this new life I've chosen.  On my days off I make plans and lists: where to walk next, what I need to learn next for work, what I'm going to buy with my first month's salary (a new printer, most likely), what my sewing plans are for this year, and which bag I don't need to buy in the Cath Kidston sale.

There's still cake though.  There's always cake.

Lemon and blueberry syrup loaf

The new normal

I am back at work; charging so very fast towards mid-December when I will qualify.

It is good to be working again, and to feel useful and skilled, but I'd forgotten how busy and chaotic everything can seem when I am working.  I am trying to remember to use my commute as a way of easing in and out of the working day. 

These past three weeks, I've been working in Hackney - very close to home.  I commute by bus, which is far more frustrating and unreliable than taking the tube, but has more interesting views.

 

I'm tired, energised, busy, constantly carrying around a heavy bag of books and clothes, losing track of which day it is, spritzing hairspray on my up do, texting the children to remind them to do their chores, feeling full of purpose...and also starting to feel a little bit as though this is the new normal.  And this is A Good Thing.  

Back to it

These days I don't feel as bereft as I used to when the children go back to school in September.  The silence in the house is still deafening, and I miss their wild enthusiasms and crazy logic spinning through my day, but these days they really need to get stuck back into school by the time September comes around - and more importantly they want to get back to it too.  

Olivia has left primary school and is now at high school with Cam, which they are both very pleased about.  I am delighted too because the days of the school run have finally come to an end.  To celebrate, I have waved them off to school each morning this week still in my pyjamas - standing on the doorstep, with a cup of coffee in my hand, as I watch them walk up the road together.  Utter luxury.

In one more week I go back to work too.  I'm really looking forward to it.  I have just fourteen more weeks of placement, and then I will be qualified - so exciting.  Yesterday, my parents-in-law sent me these tiny little nurse figurines to mark the final stage of my training.  They are sitting by my desk, reminding me of everything that is still to come.

         

Exam food

The children both have exams this week.  Olivia has her Year 6 SATs - four consecutive mornings of maths and English exams - and Cam has his first two biology GCSE exams; his third exam is in a few weeks' time.  They're taking it all in their stride, but I know that they're tired and tense too.  This feels like the start of many, many years of exams-in-May as they each work their way through GCSEs, AS levels and A levels (and beyond).

Cam, flopped on the sofa after a day at school and two hours of revision

I expanded the family rule of "When someone has a birthday, they choose what the family has for supper", to "When someone has a birthday or does an exam, they choose what the family has for supper".  Tonight we had Olivia's choice of beefburgers (nice, juicy quarterpounder steak burgers from Waitrose), oven chips, and rather specifically "carrots cut like coins, not sticks".  Very nice.  I don't often cook burgers so this felt like the treat it was meant to be.  Much ketchup was applied.

Cam's choice, which we are having on Friday, is lasagna, garlic bread and sweetcorn.  I don't often make a lasagna as it feels like too much faff at the end of a long day, so again this will be a special treat.  I love how both their choices are simple, slightly retro and not at all the sort of thing I normally cook.

My contribution has been to make them orange-scented buns for after school - I think they definitely deserve a sweet treat this week. 

Do you have any exam rituals in your house?  Any pre- or post-exam food favourites? Personally I don't really care what I eat after an exam as long as I have a big breakfast involving oats and bananas for breakfast beforehand.

Evolving appetites

Graham is training for a marathon again.  He came home last weekend after a long (over two hour) trail run, and his Garmin showed that he had burnt nearly 1,800 calories while he was out.  Which is an eye watering amount of calories for a single run - over two thirds of the recommended daily amount of calories for a man.  Unsurprisingly he parked himself down at the kitchen table and devoured vast platefuls of food, washed it all down with a banana and oat smoothie and then took himself off for a long nap.

The children too are eating vast platefuls of food and sleeping a great deal.  They are growing almost in front of my eyes...Cam is now within a centimetre or so of being taller than me, and Olivia already taller than her grandmother.  Teenage appetites have arrived in the house with a vengeance.

And so suddenly I find that my years of experience in cooking for four people don't count for much.  My previously precise quantities are all out of kilter, and what used to feed us all comfortably with second helpings and leftovers now barely feeds the children.

Toad in the hole

Baked oatmeal

Potatoes - ready to be roasted for a corned beef hash

Would you like some porridge with your syrup, Olivia?

Cherry and almond cake

I have gone back to doing a big brunch on Sunday mornings, which gives me a break from what sometimes feels like endless cooking and feeding of squawking baby blackbirds.  While Graham is out on a run, the children can lollop on the sofa watching tele, and I can leisurely potter about in the kitchen listening to Radio 4 in peace while I cook and bake.  I try and make at least three big, filling dishes that everyone can help themselves to, and come back to during the day if they feel hungry.  I don't bother making anything for lunch, and then we have supper a bit earlier than usual.  It makes the whole of Sunday feel lazy, indulgent and slow, which is just what I want.

Here's what has made it onto the brunch menu during January:

• corned beef hash
• herb omelettes with spicy tomato sauce
• Amish baked oatmeal (recipe here)
• banana and apple muffins
• huevos rancheros
• lemon and raisin pancakes
• savoury bread-and-butter pudding (grated cheese and bacon instead of the sugar and raisins)
• soda bread
• breakfast pizza (homemade pizza with breakfast-like toppings eg. mushrooms, bacon, tomatoes, eggs)
• spicy burritos
• oat and raisin muffins

We eat brunch at about 11am, but the children can't last that long without food.  While they are lolling and tele watching they are also eating fruit, toast or porridge - whilst waiting for brunch to appear....so basically they have breakfast AND brunch....

Where I was 2013

This year was a busy year.  I got used to working again.  I started to feel like a nurse.  I started to run - and I kept on running.

In March I had a lovely day with blogging friends, and Kristina gave us all handmade socks!

My parents and I took the children to the Cutty Sark over the Easter holidays

I knitted socks that matched my surgical textbook

In June I had a picnic in Victoria Park with some nursing friends

In August we went to see my parents in France, and I spent most of the time dozing in the hammock

I won some new running shoes!

I knitted some pink socks - started in the spring, finished in the autumn

Still running - I bought myself a running skirt and some fancy socks

Walking to university for lectures in October

Graham and I do parkrun every Saturday morning.  In almost-matching blue shoes.

A morning on the sofa after a long shift the day before

November leaves in London

Excellent, forgotten tights - found at the back of my sock drawer

Heading into university for the last time this year - to hand in my second year portfolio right before Christmas

Seasonal tights!

It was a good year.  A year of consolidation rather than new beginnings.  I tried to keep family life more or less the same, and incorporate work and study into it rather than let nursing dominate everything.  I didn't always manage it but it got easier as the year wore on.

It has been a peaceful but productive year, which is how I like it.

Ending the year in Norfolk with my brother's family

New Year's Eve beach walk in Norfolk

I ended the year with my brother and his family, who we don't get to see very often, in Norfolk.  We walked along sandy beaches under the vast empty skies, chatted, laughed, and eased into each other's company.  It was a perfect end to the year - with family... outdoors...relaxed.  Just how I like it. 

Graham and Cam - the same height now

Happy New Year!

~~~~~~~~~~

See all the previous Where I was posts here:
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012

The night shift - 10 things

Trying to get to sleep at 10am, the day before my first night shift

Commuting to work from an empty tube platform - unheard of

A nearly empty train - another novelty

Reflections in the window of an empty tube carriage

Break time - 4am in an empty, silent staffroom

Heading home to bed - still in semi nurse mode with my hair up and my glasses on

I have to do a minimum of six night shifts as a student nurse before I qualify.  This week I did my first two.  There was much to learn - I didn't expect them to be quite so different from a day shift, but they were.  At the hospital I am at right now, the night shifts are the same length as the day shifts - twelve and a half hours, from 8pm to 8:30am.

• How any patient ever gets any sleep in a hospital is a miracle to me.  If it's not the sound of the other patients snoring or shouting, then it's the hum and hiss of the pressure-relieving mattresses, the beeps of the drip pumps or feed pumps, the call bells, the clatter of the nurses' medications trolley, the phones ringing, the lights turning on and off.  We try our very hardest to make night time feel like sleep time, but it's not easy in a hospital environment.  No wonder so many patients look tired and have naps during the day.
• I loved my commute to and from work for the night shifts.  A guaranteed seat on an empty train.
• On a day shift we have two or three small breaks of 15 or 30 minutes each.  On a night shift we have one long break of an hour and a half.  Some nurses have a quick nap during their break, others stay awake.  I tried both and much prefer staying awake - my body clock was less confused that way.  I did some knitting and listened to the radio on my break the second night, and arrived back on the ward feeling really quite refreshed.
• It's not the night shift itself that's so exhausting - it's the enforced jet lag you have to put yourself through.
• I liked having the time to talk to an anxious patient, chat with the matron who did rounds of the wards, or make a cup of tea for a family member sitting up with a dying patient.  There's generally more time for everything on a night shift.
• The crash trolley and the controlled drugs register must be checked every single night.
• I still haven't worked out how you eat normally during a run of night shifts.  I slept through mealtimes during the day, and didn't fancy eating a proper meal in the middle of the night; all I could manage was a couple of clementines and some cheese and crackers.  I was permanently hungry but it never felt like the right time to eat.
• One patient vomited all over my shoes thirty minutes before the end of the shift.  I just stared at my feet in surprise and then the patient and I both burst out laughing.
• I realised how many different people are on the wards during the day: visitors, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, porters taking patients to x-ray or theatre, pharmacists, social workers, speech and language therapists, nurse specialists, couriers and ward clerks.  During the night shift it is just the patients, the nurses, the healthcare assistants and the occasional doctor popping in to check on a particularly unwell or unstable patient.
• My children were amazing at keeping quiet when they got in from school.  I slept right through and never even heard them come home.   

10 things about a new placement

I am back on the wards.  I've started a six-week placement in a rehab unit, which marks the end of Part II of my course - after this I will go from two to three stripes on my epaulettes, and have less than a year to go before I qualify.  It is both scary and exciting to write that.

I have only done two shifts, but already I am:

• missing being able to wear nail varnish (this post on A Cup of Jo just makes me swoon with desire);
• remembering how long a twelve or thirteen hour shift is;
• remembering how a long shift just flies by in a flash when you are busy, busy;
• enjoying working with gentle, kind nurses who have decades of experience and still take the time to teach me new skills and enthuse about their career;
• appreciating the colour and vividness of a day off;
• enjoying a nap on the sofa under a quilt, once the children have gone to school on my days off;
• getting back into the swing of constantly washing and packing uniform;
• wondering when I might do any Christmas shopping or planning if I spend all my days off asleep on the sofa?
• wondering when I might also write the essay which is due in on the 23rd December? 
• remembering how I end up eating and drinking at such odd times of the day when I am at work (lunch break at 4:30 pm and supper break at 5:45pm on Monday);

    

I am also missing my nursing friends who are on placements at other hospitals, and hoping they are getting on well.  This course...this profession...it asks so much of us, but it gives more back.  Each time I go on placement I realise I have forgotten how tiring it is.  But I also forget how much I love this job; and it's good to be reminded again. 

These are a few of my favourite things

In this final week before University begins again, I've managed to fit in an energetic end-of-summer visit to Kew Gardens, and a long anticipated trip to the British Museum to see the magnificent Life and Death in Pompeii and Hurculaneum exhibition.  Flowers, pumpkins, a tessalated glass roof, ancient artefacts and good friends - some of my very favourite things.

And now I am rubbing handcream into my hands, in anticipation of going back to University next week.  A nurse's hands are very dry and sore from all the handwashing and disinfectant alcohol handrub they have to endure, but mine have recovered somewhat over this long, lazy summer holiday.

I've done what reading I can, found a new notebook and printed off my timetable.  I've been baking every day and have filled the freezer with muffins and loaves of bread in anticipation of days when there's nothing for breakfast and I haven't even got the time or energy to eat a slice of soda bread, never mind bake one.  I can't believe it was a whole year ago that I started my course.  I've loved and needed the summer off, but I'm so pleased to be going back now.  

Along with going back to University, comes commuting once again, and therefore the return of sock knitting, which I can stuff into my bag and do on the tube.  I am obsessed with sock knittingat the moment, and I have come to realise that it is a cyclical enthusiasm - as soon as it is cool enough to wear hand knitted socks again, I remember how wonderful they are and feel compelled to knit more.  Stay tuned for sock updates!