i lived in south dakota for a few years when i was first a nurse. this was back in '93-'95. i'll put a bunch in here today, perhaps more tomorrow. it's supposed to rain again tomorrow. these first pictures are from the badlands. an amazing place. always wish i could return to places i've been with better camera equipment! these really don't do the place justice and i know i would totally take different pictures now all these years later.
you don't realize how you've evolved in your photography until you look back at some of the older stuff. still there are a few nice shots in here and it was just a great place to walk especially on a day like this with blue skies and amazing clouds.
just finished 3 nights of work. i worked adult icu all three. they have been busy. haven't been to er lately..hopefully again soon before i forget it all.
had a chat with one of the peat nurses the other day. she had been the one who was initally very excited about me joining them which actually kinda freaked me out as i was sure i'd joined the float pool and i ended up having a chat with the new boss right after that first chat to clear up what my job was going to be.
after i started though i was finding out that i was scheduled for this peat role and it looked like i would be scheduled more and more. when this girl asked me how it was going in peat we had a pretty frank discussion about it.
peat isn't terrible, but it was never my intention to be spending half my shifts each month doing peat. nor was it my intention to be put on peats schedule. anyway....today i chatted with my boss about it all. people have been telling me what a great boss she is and i am one to totally believe that at this point. i didn't even have to say things and she totally was ahead of the reasons why i wasn't liking peat, even mentioned how that prehire phone call weighed in. so i will be taken off the peat schedule and just do float pool, which i told her i'm fine floating to peat if they have sick calls and what not. i know it's a matter of semantics and i'm probably kind of a freak for being so fixated on this. it could be that a year from now i'll love peat.
there are a few things about peat that don't suit me. for one...i'd rather be in the thick of the mess than waiting in some room for the mess to happen. sitting in that office with a pager and phone waiting for crap is annoying, boring and stressful. odd i know, as i can run around in an icu room with a totally sick patient and it's just fine. i also find the paperwork that they do tedious and kind of depressing. they transfer all this information from the hospital computer system to a word format...you do all this and then 24-48 hours later all that information will just get deleted and you start over...it's like writing an essay every night and then deleting it before it ever gets graded.
must say as well that i am not one of those people who are nosy. some people would love having the okay to peruse any patient chart in the entire hospital. of course as i write this it probably makes me better suited for the job being that i'm not nosy.
it's a bit of a relief though.
i slept much of today. woke a few times, sometime around 10 am there was a super loud noise next door. no idea what was dumped into the big truck in their driveway, but it seems like it left and i went back to sleep. i'm a pretty sound sleeper but that thing made me jump.
we had all these mandatory classes for work. they do an annual hospital wide thing. the times didn't really work for me. there was one on tuesday, but i didn't realize you could come and go and it started early. in the end i stayed after my 12 hour shift wednesday morning to do the adult icu skills fair and then head to the main hospital one to do as much as i could get done before 9 am.
then thursday i woke up early walked dogs up patterson and went to the skills fair from 4-5:30. i thought i may have to blow off some stuff, but i think i got it all done. grateful to all the people at the tables who rushed me through once they knew i did the icu's and didn't need as much detailed training. i must have given this one guy a look as i never said where i worked and he kept looking at me, saying, "you probably already know this". it could be too that he's seen me wandering around the hospital doing that peat thing. you do meet a lot of people doing that. i'm terrible at remembering names. faces better, but then i get confused as to which unit the faces were seen in.
this morning after work i met with my boss, anna. bottomline...i got less sleep than normal. i did crack open a cherry dr pepper this morning. i've really cut way back on any soda drinking and i haven't had a caffiene drink in ages.
to show how late i got up i had to feed the dogs their dinner at 5:30 before walking.
we did get out though. i took them up patterson through the neighborhoods to cheney lake. then back down baxter to the bog and home. no tennis ball tosses, but i think it was good enough for the girls.
blossom should be itching to get to her tennis ball. yesterday i headed south on patterson with them and the day before i hit university lake. blossom had to stay on leash as the lakes are pretty bad right now. u-lake was a mess. puddles, mud...break up!
nice to see the green here from south dakota. it was a nice place to live. can't complain....i think i could have stayed longer, but i got itching to get to alaska and try it out. didn't want to not come here and then spend my life wondering if i should have. no regrets at all. alaska is amazing and i feel it suits my personality. on the radio the other day they were talking about being "native alaskan" but they were just talking about being born here. they were also questioning what it takes to become alaskan? someone said, some people don't know they are alaskan until they get here.
i find people either love alaska or they hate it. if they hate it they do everything possible to leave, if they love it, they may leave, but they will return or wish they could return for the rest of their lives. the place does get in your blood. long ago i decided if you are quirky and independent you will fit right in here. probably more so in the bush than anchorage but still true. in ketchikan this new girl had started there and this came up. i told her i thought she would do well there as she was quirky and independent. i think she took offense at first to me calling her quirky.
several months later she came to me and understood what i'd been saying to her. she's still there!! it's been years.
the badlands are just an amazing place.
i like those red rocks in utah too and wish i had spent more time exploring those area's.
these loaded the right way...may have to try another again for my more recent photo's that i take with the camera turned longways. perhaps blogger has fixed that issue. it could just be that i scanned these in though.
a great thing about the central plains is the flatness and how you can watch the weather roll in for miles and miles. the sky does just go on forever.
in the summers it seemed like every day the sky would darken in the afternoon and we'd get thunder and lightning storms. this is rare up in these parts.
i try to scan in an album every so often. break up is a good time to do that. nice to get the old photo albums put on to disc's. it's a slow process though. eventually i'll have to get these onto shutterfly as well.
here is my little apartment in rapid city, south dakota. i was in the lower unit. there were tons of windows though and i used to turn out the lights and watch the lighting flash all over.
my little toyota corolla. i traded that in for the dodge dakota not to long after this was taken and headed north to alaska.
baby huey joined my little family in south dakota. i worked with a nurse who bred yellow labs and her husband ran the family buffalo ranch. huey was born on a buffalo ranch. he sure was a cute puppy!!
may have to post more puppy pictures of him another day. he has passed away as has butch...all the great dogs i've had in my life.
me out in the badlands.
huey and i out hiking.
my friend michelle joined me in the badlands.
these are out in the blackhills and surrounding area.
custer state park i believe it was. they had all these buffalo. used to just watch them roll around on all the prairie dog holes and the little prairie dogs would be squacking and squealing.
no close encounters with buffalo that i can remember out there. lots of wide open space so maybe it was just easier to get around them than the moose here.
there is butch...another great pup. he's gone many years now. i got him in california. i was in vet tech school at the time and wanted a sweet pup. my friend knew of a 6 month old lab that needed a home. he already weighed over 60 pounds. big puppy!! he was an area rug and went blind at a fairly young age. don't come as sweet as butch.
a few more of butch. he developed a skin condition in south dakota. eventually i got it under control. he traveled north to alaska with baby huey and i and he is buried there. he developed cardiomyopathy...no surprise that he died of a heart to big.
i think these are actually more around rocky mountain state park in colorado. lots of great places to visit near south dakota.
a co-worker, sue, owned a ranch in newell with her family. she took me horseback riding a few times and i even joined in one day when we rounded up these little guys...i'm thinking herefords. can't recall all my cattle breeds.
always enjoyed my time out on her ranch. beautiful out there.
this last one was in wyoming. devils monument..at least i think that is it. hiked around there a few times as well.
it was always funny as there were people who grew up there that i worked with that were always amazed that i got out and did all this stuff. much of which they'd never done and they lived there. some people had never left south dakota. the patients who were ranchers were in bed early and awake early....many had old farm injuries that had never been set right or fixed properly. such a major change for me from my life in california.
guess i will crash for the night. hope you enjoyed my stroll down memory lane....i always enjoy it
No comments:
Post a Comment