I have been completely lazy this holiday season. I haven't cut any wood. I haven't even brought wood in. I haven't fed any animals. I didn't salt the drive so we could get out. And yet the wood got cut and split, brought in, a fire was kept going, and the driveway was salted.
Wait a minute though. I worked on Christmas Day, a 12-hour shift. There were only 3 of us nurses, and 7 patients. The person being charge nurse left early for a family emergency, and so I ended up being the charge nurse on the cardiac floor I work on for 4 hours while carrying a very light patient load. Then I worked the next 2 days, 12-hour shifts also. In the midst of this, I came up with gifts for Christmas Eve, even though I didn't shop for them. (We can be creative here). I motivated my family to get washed and dressed and to the church service on time, and went to my in-law's annual Christmas Eve late dinner and party. I took 3 vegan dishes so my vegan college son would have nutritious food to eat. I guess that means I spent most of the day cooking on Christmas Eve. Beans - garbanzo beans for hummus, black beans for Texas caviar, and Anasazi beans for stew and homemade veggie burgers. I got 3 hours of sleep that night, before working 12 hours Christmas Day.
I took care of two patients who were positive for acute MI's, and started both on heparin drips, and one on an Integrillin drip. I got heart cath orders ready for the doctors. I made the assignments for the night shift nurses coming on, and figured out staffing with the house supervisor, and called and gave two very happy nurses time off. We still had a lot of time to chit-chat.
The night before my 3rd 12-hour shift, our 3-year-old daughter awoke at 3am, and needed to pee. She has gone 2 weeks being night trained. I knew my husband was as tired as I was - feeding, bringing in wood, getting his broken-down pick-up fixed, helping his brother with cattle - so I got up and helped her to the bathroom. And then I couldn't go back to sleep. I ran on caffeine that day at work.
3 days in a row, or should I say 3 nights in a row, the most sleep I got on any of those given nights was maybe 4 hours. I awoke with a headache on Monday morning.
Monday, my brother came to visit from Iowa. He is vegetarian. After 3 days of work, most of the vegan food I had made on Christmas Eve was exhausted, and my mother was out running around and didn't know what to cook for dinner. So between tending my neglected Facebook farms (Farm Town and Farmville), I made some new Anasazi bean soup in a big pot and some fresh cranberry sauce. Some hunters came by and asked if they could hunt rabbits. They had family in town and wanted to spend the day out together. We heard a burst of gunshots once, and figured they were all shooting at the same rabbit. They left us a rabbit, just before we drove 20 miles with our newly cooked vegetarian food to my mother's, where we had a very nice and long overdue visit with my youngest brother and his family.
Yesterday, (Tuesday), I spent the entire day on the computer building my virtual farms. I guess I did spend a couple of hours playing school with Eilidh. I did manage to entice my teenagers out of their rooms to play elementary Bingo with lower-case letters, feigning excitement with each letter called out, a game of Flinch, and a game of Go Fish. That was all a 3-year-old could tolerate in one sitting. By Go Fish, the game board was being repeatedly disorganized with resultant giggles, and it ended before it was finished. The 17 and 20 year-olds had more fun than they thought they would though.
Today, I feel as though I've been lazy. There are no excuses for the things I haven't done.
