Nurse Crankybritches

Blame it on the full moon, or even the alignment of all of those ones in the date yesterday, but I am one ill tempered woman this week and I think I know the cause: Inability to knit. Whenever I'm annoyed or overwhelmed, I sit down for a spell and knit my troubles away. This small act helps me cope with whatever the cosmos has sent my way. I've had this addiction with this particular anti-anxiety coping mechanism for about 8 years now. Knitting is what I do to get by. With bilateral hand injuries, I've been thwarted in the coping department and minor annoyances have become thorns in my side.

Today I was abruptly awakened at the butt crack of dawn by two babies crying. They sounded like they were being beaten and there was no way I was going to let that happen. Dressed only in my pajamas (thank God I don't sleep in the buff), I ran out the front door--barefoot in freezing weather--to track down the culprits beating their helpless offspring. I was in the mood to garrote someone with a sturdy cabled circular knitting needle or more likely, throw some well aimed verbal barbs at those vicious parents. Never mind that this scenario made no sense at all to my sleep deprived brain since none of my neighbors have babies. I was convinced that this was indeed what I was hearing. Now outside and frozen solid, reality was setting in. I wasn't hearing babies, I was hearing caterwauling. Really...my neighbor's cats were under another neighbor's truck (right next to my bedroom window) and they were crying...like babies being beaten. What caring parent can ignore a baby's cries for help? Now wide awake early on a Saturday, it would have been perfect for me to grab my wheel and go to spinning circle, except I can't pick up and carry two cups of coffee in my hands, let alone a wheel and project bag. Ugh.

After the feline incident, I turned on my phone to see how little the midnight shift nurse worked. Talk about a thorn in the side--this woman never gets a call and because she works nights, she earns more than the rest of us and primarily sleeps through her shift. Around midnight last night, I sent report on my busy, busy shift, including information on an emergency hospice admission I did late last night. This morning, she reports she got a call regarding the same patient and thought he needed an emergency hospice admission. If she'd bothered to read my report, she'd have known it was already done and the facility was likely calling for some other problem. I texted her as much and she texted this back: "I'm never sure what's going on." WHAT??? Now I know for certain that not only does she rarely get patient calls, she doesn't read reports she does get about patients the rest of us handle. If I could, I'd reach through that phone and stab her in her apathetic eye with one of my idle knitting needles.

See? I can't cope. I.Must.Knit.

Even though my hands hurt, I've been searching for a way to knit without pain. I've discovered purling continental style hurts my left thumb the least and my right hand not at all, so I cast on Wurm. So far I'm still knitting the brim of the hat and though it's taken me 2 days to knit a mere 26 rows, I'm nearly done with that and soon I'll be purling several rows between the knitted rows and that, I'm hoping, should bring some solace, or at least raise my bullshit tolerance up to a more manageable level.

It's either that or I'll have to open a Paypal account so together we can start raising my bond money. Y'all would have my back, wouldn't you?