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This last week was a vacation. Scheduled back in December because my job requires that we turn in our vacation request by the December 15 of the previous year. I looked at my calendar back then and looked at the dates for Romantic Times, Romance Writers of America and Dragoncon. December was before my novel was going to be published, but I was looking out for ways to get published and set down those three weeks to definitely attend at least one of those conventions.

I made it to Romantic Times, (loved it, by the way! and I’m planning to attends next years.) But, it chewed my wallet and spit it back out again. Empty. I wanted to attend RWA, but just could not do it this year.

Instead, family came to visit. My nephew is 15, this week. He left last Tuesday, after a month visiting. It was treat, he changed before our very eyes. No, seriously, he grew form 5’9” to 5’10 ½” in one month. He has a wicked sense of humor and blessed with parents that taught him exceptional manners, and how important a sense of humor can be in all things. During his visit my niece, who lives about an hour away also came to stay for short periods.

I managed to turn them on to Die Hard & Die Harder. They enjoyed it so much they wanted to see Live Free and Die Hard before Transformers. Die Hard was pretty wonderful, by the way. They, in turn, hooked me on Ninja Warriors.

Teenagers are great to be around for writers. They know the language; the latest “words” and I get a chance to see the world from their snarky eyes, and don’t try to tell me they are not skewered in thier perspective. They can also scrabble decently and try desperately to beat me

I felt a little stressed that my time was not my own and I wanted an extended time period that was just for me. (Yes, there was a definite whine there.)

I returned to work today, thinking I had not really had the ideal vacation, you know, the one where I could sleep in and small, quiet fairies cater to your every whim. I asked one of my favorite nurses if anything happened while I was gone. The usual question, anyone quit, get fired or transfer from our department.

For years I have considered the staff of my emergency room a microcosm of the world. Anything you see on TV has happened to someone that has worked there over the last 16 years and what I was told was all part of that theory.

One of the nurses came home to find her thirteen year old son carrying in her two year old, who he’d just found floating face down in the swimming pool, she was blue. She started CPR while her son called 911. When the medics arrived she had a weak pulse back. She took one look at the medic, one we all know and trust and allowed herself to finally become a stunned and tearful mother. She held it together long enough to save her daughter, but when she knew she could turn her over to others that she trusted, she was just another mother scared out of her mind and heart that she was loosing her child. That was four days ago, her daughter came off the respirator today and they are hopeful for a full recovery.

It is the lesson that it doesn’t happen to the other guy, it’s you and me, it can happen to anyone. It was a reminder that we can be handed any possibilities, and must be strong even when we want to crumble. It is why we want to read fiction, because life is so real and unforgiving.

I was whining because I didn’t get my perfect vacation. I got over it.
I just gave you a reality, wouldn’t you prefer it was an excerpt from fiction? I know I did.

In my head it all seemed to have something to do with why I write. Why we relate so much to characters that have things thrown at them and they rise to meet a challenge or overcome some great sorrow. Or how God is in that nurse, who brought her child back. We read to step out of reality. Or is it to hold a mirror to reality, so that we can see through others eyes, the voyeur, who can be separate of the pain of reality?

Well, I’m just rambling now. (Okay, for a while now.)
What do you think? Is a vacation a week away from the reality of life? Does our desire for the perfect vacation reflect our lives or are they a fiction that we can live for a week or two?

Rhianna Samuels
“Let you laughter be bright
and your love incandescent.”

In order to keep a hospital and emergency department prepared for the event of a biologic or chemical disaster, it must be drilled, until like any new skill set, you become proficient.  And as part of the group that helps set up these drills, I can attest to the fact that it is not done by magic and must be set up with all contingencies addressed.

The last drill was completed recently and I can give you the short comic version of our set up and the results.  Two of my colleagues coach soccer teams and these stellar 12 year old athletes were asked to participate in our drill as volunteers. They were told that they would go down on a soccer field, be bused to the emergency department, be scrubbed down in a decontamination tent and then passed through the emergency department.  The reward for this was a lovely certificate of participation in community service, (part of my duties) doughnuts, and chocolate milk. I have no idea if they jumped for joy, but I think they were intrigued. So with signed parental consents in hand our planning began.

We drilled continuously at all manner of hour, day or night, in donning and doffing different level of hazard gear. And the large decontamination tent was also popped up and down to within an inch of its portable life. Infection control built chemical terrorist scenarios and soon it was only days away. 

I sat in my office working as my colleague who shares our office and is one of those soccer coaches, plotted over the phone with our best moulage nurse on how to prepare realistic snot and vomit. (KY and pea soup, if you were wondering).

She went with the team to the soccer field and came on board the bus, apparently waiting until only blocks from the hospital before smearing KY on thier faces so that it would not dry up too soon, grossing out all the girls and most of the boys. I stood by at the hospital and when the mock 911 call came in, set about pulling out the suits and hooded respiratory equipment and supervised the donning of bodily equipment.

All proceeded as you would expect. After going through the decon tent our swim suited and shivering victims were taken to an exam area, given warm blankets and then allowed to dress. They devoured their doughnuts, filled out an evaluation, got their certificate and were picked up to go home, the adventure completed.

So what helpful things did they write on the evaluation forms?

·         Lack of actual soap in their scrub down. They used the blankets to clean off the fake snot.

·         Not enough hot nurses.

I went to work Thursday as if it were any other office day. After fifteen years of working in the same department, and by virtue of outlasting every other reasonably sane nurse out there, I managed to fall into the sweet job of following up on quality in my ER. I still do bedside nursing, but I spend more time in the office now. the staff has learned to cringe whenever I come around. I am either handing out education materials and post tests, or explaining why they scored poorly on a chart audit that was translated from chicken scratch to Greek in one fell swoop.

In an effort to simplify my life, my family decided to brighten up two spaces by moving furniture around in the rooms that I use the most. Since my days off and my sisters days off seldom meet, but more importantly because she had off last Thursday and Friday, she decided this would be a good day for her to move my things around. Now, I have to say, she did call me in the middle of a particularly sticky audit and the distraction was welcome. And when she offered to move the computer desk and printers nearer to the window it sounded like a good idea.

 Did I mention my things got moved around?

What I discovered when I came home was that every piece of paper in the file cabinet drawers were now laying on the bed, and or in plastic boxes. Every cord or wire was thrown together into a pile on the floor. My bookcase with all my favorite books, many of which contain explicit sex and erotica was now in the guest bedroom, just two weeks before the arrival of my fourteen and fifteen year old niece and nephew for a month visit. Yes, I am the cool aunt, but after hooking my eldest nephew on Anita Blake back before she was doing every thing that had a pecker, I try to turn them more towards the less explicit. He still calls me to tell me what a whore anita is, and we do comiserate on plots and characters. But I am the first one in line for her books, only now I send a copy down to him also.

(Heavy sigh,) I spent Thursday night separating cords and wires and reconnecting my computer. I lost sixty hours of research and print outs from every regency site available, in preparation for the regency historical that is halfway on paper and in my head.  I just frowned at my bookcase. Instead of the cool novelty items I had on it, now it has a fat and lumbering TV perched precariously where my official Lord of the Rings gollum statue should be, right next to my singing nun statue.

When I arrived at work the next morning, I became aware that my left eye was twitching. Not once or twice, but intermittently all day long. Some small part of me thought it was kind of quirky and funny that I expressed my frustration by mimicking Popeye the sailor man. I mean it was almost comic how I was filled with dismay at what they had done in my absence and my family just shrugged their shoulders, with that “get over it” smile.

I’m not crazy about spinach, but I don’t hate it. I don’t smoke except from my ears when my family decides to do me a favor. I loved to wear funky hats back in the day and still wear a fur lined aviator hat every winter; but wearing a pea coat is as close as I get to navy wear. Popeye and eye, oh sorry, I mean -I- only have the funky eye in common and mine stopped twitching by the next day. I feel I must end this comic episode in my life as only the newsprint can. “*#@%!!”

Rhianna