Winter is coming...

...and I stacked a full cord of firewood all by myself today.  I feel like a superhero.

The end of a very long week.

This past week wore me out.  I worked my usual three 12-hour shifts, and each one of them was a living nightmare.  I don't know what is going on around here lately, but not even a Saturday morning is quiet in that ED anymore!  Lots of really sick, really injured people coming through those ambulance bay doors.  Which I don't mind, when we have the staff to handle it... but we're running with a skeleton crew and it shows. 

In addition, I attended an all-day Advanced Burn Life Support course and got my certification, and went to our ED's Emergency Care Conference (a full day of continuing education lectures on anything from strokes to vicarious trauma). Tuck in a little schoolwork and the bare minimum of housework, and I'm cooked. 

However, I had today off!  It was glorious!  Autumn has arrived in all her glory, and today was as close to perfect as it gets... sunny, breezy, and cool enough to need a sweater and cozy socks.  We lit our first fire of the season in the woodstove tonight to ward off the chill (we might be rushing it a little, but it's just so cozy). 

I baked two loaves of extra tangy sourdough bread, the dough for which had been in the works for nearly three days by the time it got into the oven this afternoon.  I fed the starter Friday night, mixed in the rest of the ingredients Saturday morning before work, let it rise in the fridge until Saturday night, punched it down and let it rise again until this morning, then formed the loaves and completed the final three-hour rising. 
It was worth the wait, oh yes it was.

One of those days

I worked a 12-hour shift one day last week that turned out to be one of those days.  It's always busy in our ED, and we are chronically understaffed, but this was a particularly crazy day even for us.  There were only two nurses in our pod, which meant that each of us had four patients to care for. 

That is never a good thing in the acute care areas of our ED. 

I found myself caring for critically ill and injured patients that ran the spectrum... from a 8-day old, 4 lb. infant with sepsis, to a 39-week pregnant trauma patient whose baby's heart rate started to drop, to a 40-something man with chest pain and a history of "7 or 8, I forget..." heart attacks, and everything in between.  As soon as I would I get one stabilized, another one would be ushered into one of my rooms needing my urgent attention. 

I was overwhelmed, sweating, with a full bladder and an aching back and my hair in a disarray. 

And I was happier than a pig in poo.

I came home, and I was THRILLED to be home... and thrilled that it was my last day of work for the week.  I rambled on to my husband about my day, about the horrendous mess of it all, about how hungry and tired I was... and I found myself saying, "Honey, there is something so very wrong with me... why do I love this so much?!  Why am I at my best when things are at their worst?!"

Days like that exhaust me and leave me physically, emotionally, and mentally drained.  But as it is all happening, something clicks inside of me and starts running like a well-oiled machine.  My thoughts clear.  My hands become miraculously steady... steady enough to get an IV line into a 4 lb. infant who hasn't eaten in two days.  The more my patients need from me, the more I have to give.  I get this euphoric feeling that I am exactly where I need to be, doing exactly what I was made to do.  Eventually after I go home, the fatigue, hunger, and body pain hit me... and I hit the wall. But even so, I sleep better than I ever do otherwise.

When I was younger, I never would have guessed that immersing myself in a world of stress, chaos, pain, and death would be the key to my self-actualization.  Sometimes I wish I were one of those people who discovered that they were ultimately engineered to be a yoga instructor, or something like that.  But I wasn't.  I was made to be in the middle of the storm.  Part of me knows that someday, I won't be able to do this anymore.  The stress and physical wear and tear of my job will eventually become a hazard to my health, and I'll need to adjust.  It's only been a bit over a year since I started this job, and I've already found my first gray hair (I'm only 25!). 

But I know this... I'm going to keep on doing this as long as I'm able to.  It feeds me, and I'm good at it. 

Saved her life...

...like a boss.

Expertly intervened and turned a cardiac arrest into a MICU admission today.  I felt a little swagger in my step, with this song running through my head for the rest of the shift.

Warning: not safe for work, offensive, lewd and profane... proceed at your own risk.  But enjoy, if you're into that kinda thing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NisCkxU544c

Kitchen work

I spent most of my morning yesterday laid up in bed with a killer migraine headache... but when it finally let go of me, I tried really hard to make up for my lost time. 

The garden has devolved into an unruly mess, typical of what happens here around September.  The tomato plants were pretty much done producing... a few little green fruits left on them, but nothing that would be ready to pluck before frost comes.  Plus, stinkbugs were enjoying them a bit too much for my comfort.  So, I pulled 'em all out and into the compost they went.  The sudden absence of all of that disheveled greenery revealed the five gigantic basil plants that I've been neglecting over the past two weeks.  I pulled two of them, and plucked their lovely fragrant leaves. 

 

I always make a lot of pesto with our basil harvests, frozen in small portions for pasta, pizza, and other endeavors.  But I really wanted to make something that showcased the amazing flavor of the basil when it is this fresh.  So I improvised a tomato-basil soup that turned out pretty damn delicious.

 

I typically don't make my own pasta sauce or soup because of that labor intensive prep.  Every recipe calls for skinning and removing the seeds from the tomatoes, then putting them through a food mill (which I don't have).  However, yesterday I decided I was just gonna try my own thing. 

 

So I chopped up some onions and garlic and sauteed them in olive oil, then tossed in handfuls of the basil and sauteed them as well.  I cored and quartered enough tomatoes to fill the pot (seeds, skins and all), tossed in some veggie soup base, thyme, black and white pepper, and a little can of tomato paste.  I cooked it all down until soft, removed it from the heat, pureed and tasted it.  I thought it needed a bit more zip, so I added a splash of lemon juice and some garlic salt, a splash of milk, more black pepper, a teaspoon of sugar.  Then another few handfuls of fresh basil added in and pureed with the stick blender.  Served with a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. 

 

It was incredible.  The addition of the skin and seeds of the tomatoes give it a hearty, chunkier texture than the super-smooth tomato soups found in the store... but I like it better that way!  It turns out that sometimes taking a shortcut works out nicely!  There is still a big bowl of basil and two more plants out there, so I think this afternoon will be spent making lots more pesto.

 

I also made a new sourdough starter.  Mine died ages ago after we moved, and I never got around to replacing it.  I forgot how delicious, and beautiful, homemade sourdough bread can be.  This first batch has just a hint of sour, being made from such a young culture... but I can't wait to see how it evolves and deepens as the culture grows in complexity.

Up until this point, I have not put up any sweet corn in the freezer.  We love adding corn to our favorite Mexican dishes, my sweet corn bread, soups and stews... and the crap you can get in the frozen section of the supermarket doesn't taste like anything.  So having a good supply of fresh, delicious, local sweet corn to carry us through winter is a big deal.  When I went to a local farm market yesterday, the fella behind the counter made me an offer I couldn't refuse for 100 ears of their beautiful corn.  As a result, I doomed myself to an evening of husking, blanching, and cutting!  By the time I was finished it was near midnight.  This morning was dedicated to bagging up 18 quarts of kernels with my Foodsaver for the freezer, plus a quart or two more for fresh eating over the next day or two.

Happy Labor Day!

 

I don't know about you, but I really enjoyed being able to sleep in until 0900 this morning!