trying to get my butt geared up to head outside and take a little drive. it's -16 here by my house so that makes it more difficult. the aurora forecasts are at a level 5 on my app as well as the news mentioning it. have no idea how i'd take pictures of it, but i could play a bit and see what happens. i may not be the only person out there so i may find a kind soul who will take pity on me. would love to get a few pictures of northern lights. the lights of anchorage are too bright for a really good display here. above are the dogs on the monday walk. manny, blossom and boddhi. we were joined by karen, tanya and lena. rio came along, but opted out of todays walk. it was warm and lovely out yesterday, teens i'd guess. today those temperatures dropped again. rio's got it figured out and settles in on the couch more these days.
here is rio out enjoying the relative warmth of the day. 
today lena and did the rovers run loop. i was sleepy. she was sleepy. seemed an easy way to get the dogs out and walked. she worked last night. i worked all weekend. peds and the adult icu are all busy. i went back and forth a bit between the two units. was pulled to peds icu on thursday to take care of my little pumpkin and got her again on sunday night. hopefully, she was extubated today. i stopped by last night after my epic class to fix my time sheet and it was mayhem up there. the staffing has been horrible and nobody seems to look at the numbers at all. it's not enough to just have a number of nurses, you have to look at skill levels and abilities. lucky for them lena worked and lucky as well that michelle looked ahead and saw that monday was going to be a mess. it was. i'm thinking less and less of the current administration running providence hospital up here. all the talk of the core values are just words thrown at us. obviously, these words have no actually meaning to those in the tower. they all seem to have totally lost site of why we are here and what happens in all those tiny rooms below thier offices. sadly, it will probably take some horrible mishap to clue them in that we all have a responsibility to those people who are staying in those tiny rooms hoping to feel better. i stayed a bit until the house supervisor was able to get them some further help and i watched over the little pumpkin for a bit. since it was monday walk i hadn't had but 3 hours sleep since probably 1:30 the previous day. i wouldn't have wanted to stay there all night. happy i could help for the time that i was there though. it totally sucks to have patient numbers that you know are dangerous and it really sucks when you call your management team and they are totally useless.
the monday walk was great though. it's not easy waking after so few hours sleep, but it is good to get moving and to get out there in all the beauty. my walks were a bit curtailed last week. with me starting back at swimming i suspect my muscles tweaked on me. i could hardly move my neck wednesday. i decided to schedule a massage that afternoon with whoever was available at my usual massage place. was hoping a good massage would work out my muscles and i could start work without the pain. i'm thinking i'm done with male masseuses. totally spelled that wrong i'm sure. not sure if it's that they are men and they think they know what is best for you or if they just have a massage routine and find it hard to go off thier routine. i explained to him a few times why i was there and what i needed. i just wanted a 1 hour massage on my upper back and neck. 
i had to keep redirecting him. nope, not my arms, my back, nope not my gluts, my back. in the end after i paid and i was drinking my little water he mentioned to me that i hadn't had any problem areas at all. now this really makes me angry. does this mean i'm crazy and just imagining my pain. i'm never without problem area's as far as knots on my back. needless to say, by the time i was pulling out of the parking lot i could feel whatever tenseness that had left returning. by the time i got home my back was just as bad as it had been when i arrived. the next day i tried all my tricks to try and break up the knots. heat wraps, drugs, tennis balls, dog toys and even throwing myself at the corners on my wall to break up those knots. they loosened enough for me to manage work. the wonderful monitor health unit clerk gave me a little chair massage on friday. she is awesome. swam again today and i can feel my backs a bit tense. we'll see. with my winging scapula it's always a battle. i'd rather do activities as much as i can and deal with the pain that follows. 
the dogs having fun out there on the big loop at north bivouac. 
snowed a bit on sunday. beautiful though. i love to watch snow fall. the girls and i just did the bog here. rio made it out. tried to get pictures of her, but she's usually too close on my tail for photo ops. she was coated in snow though. 
oh, i forgot to mention another strange happening with my massage. for the second time i had one climb on the table and straddle me. i find this quite odd and uncomfortable. this guy didn't ask or anything, just climbed on the table. is this a new thing? has this ever happened to anyone else? am i a freak because i find it a bit strange and uncomfortable? maybe i'm just more sensitive as i've had a few incidences happen through my many years. anywho...female massagers from now on. 
great story this week up here. a elderly guy and his wife were out walking thier two retrievers. the one retriever is older so the husband hung back with the dogs while the wife headed to the car to warm up i think. anyway, she starts hearing the dogs barking wildly. turns out a moose had run at her husband and the dogs. there weren't any trees to hide behind (what one does when i moose chases you as they tend to kick forward and can't kick around a tree) so the old guy threw himself into a big snow bank. smart move. he got pounded, but the softness of the snow probably saved him. he got a huge gash on his head and had many fractured ribs. the wife though grabbed a shovel from the truck and went after that moose with it to save her husband and dogs. she tototally rocks!! the lady is 5 ft tall and weighs less than 100 pounds. pretty brazen move, but it eventually worked. i loved this story. hear it's a national news story at this point. i figured it would go viral. totally entertaining tale!
everyone looks so happy to be outside. lena, tanya and karen...
as usual the dogs can make forward motion tough.
a few from the bog the other day. as we were finishing up the snow stopped and it looked quite pretty out there.
haven't heard from my plane people about our flight out to round island. i may try and get a group of us out the night before and we could just camp out a night. i think bob, tanya, scott and i would have a blast out there beach combing. that would just get us there on the first run to round island. came to me today. may make the whole thing run smoother. we may add 2 more, gail and a doc from the icu who want to come. probably sent them through togiak. let the planning commence. always fun.
blossom is loving her blue frisbee. since it was just manny and her today she got to chase it. he's not as much of a toy stealer as some other dogs and so she can romp with him and chase toy too.
the rest i took at the dog park. went there friday i think. beautiful day as you can see. denali in view. i love the frost.
haven't brought my macro out that day. just the basics. 
happy i went to the epic class through the adult unit. they jsut seem more organized right now. bummed as i discovered i'm working the day we go live, again. that can be a messy day. computers will be down and then you do catch up charting or paper charting which will be put back online. not a day to look forward to. i should be in the adult unit too though so that will help. again. they are generally better staffed for these events and more organized. 
did watch a net flix movie last week as i rolled around in misery with knots. hehe. "mao's last dancer". it was based on a true story. interesting. they selected kids in china and took them for tests to determine if they would be good dancers or gymnasts or whatever else they needed. this one kid was selected for ballet. he was then taken from his family and raised to be a dancer. under mao's government of course, the dance productions needed to have a military slant and story line. his one teacher was punished for having them dance one of the usual ballets. no guns and no mao spin. he sneaks a vhs tape to this kid that showed a real ballet and it inspires him. he ends up getting an opportunity to dance ballet in the united states and train at a US ballet academy for a few months. he opts to defect. a difficult choice as he has no idea if his family will be punished. always interesting to see what happens when people from nations that are so repressive get a glimpse at the other side. he was told all sorts of things about americans and it takes him some time to understand that he's been spooned a load of crap.
guess i should get on some warm clothes and get out there. i'm a little worried i'm getting a bug. on my swim today i felt oddly tired, which is why i only did 15 laps. that and it was open swim and the kids were unusually wild today it seemed. 
okay...layering up for a trek out to the cold, clear night in hopes of watching lights dance across the sky!!
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