Jeremy is off to Seattle for a week. We are snowed in Monday morning (kids are off) – we got about 10 inches in Rockville, way, way, way above the 2-4 inches predicted when I left for work on Saturday morning. I was working both weekend days. I finally got assigned a “regular” weekend – every other, which makes it a little bit easier scheduling, but still not perfect. Jeremy – thank goodness – put our snow tires on the minivan earlier this week. Whatever money we spent on them years ago was worth every penny as I navigated 495 and 270 on Sunday night which were plowed, but the accumulation was really fast so I was driving in 2-4 inches of slush and ice. Both the house and the hospital are right off the freeway, so as long as I hovered around 25-30 mph, I thought I would be fine. As Jeremy noted – going at that speed on a slippery road, the chance of having an accident is high, but the chance of death is relatively low as everyone is going slowly and in the same direction and if you do by chance hit each other, everyone will just keep sliding.
The hospital is strange on a snowy weekend. There are nurses sleeping in rooms. I packed a bag in case I wanted to spend the night on Saturday. The staff gets a little punchy. All the “regular” patients seemingly have gone home – no scheduled surgeries and anyone who could cobble together a discharge skedaddled out of there before it really started snowing on Sat afternoon. This meant that for most of the weekend, I felt like it was me and my posse of misplaced souls. We are not an urban hospital – so our misplaced souls are different from the downtown misplaced souls, but still. Now that I’m assigned to a weekend, I have the coworkers I’ll spend most of my shifts with. Basically, it’s the half the staff that I spend the weekends with and usually see during the week because no one wants to work the Friday or Monday before or after their assigned weekend. I like my coworkers, it was fun this weekend. Nothing pulls a team together more than being snowed in together. Once you really get to know each other, it’s nothing to step into another patient’s room to help with admission paperwork or to hang a bag of antibiotics or check on a beeping IV when you are having a lull and you know that they are swamped when they’ve done the same for you. I think I’ve hit a turning point here at the six month mark. I know I’m going to miss it when I have to leave. And I will have to leave.
I want to thank Jeremy who got up early Sunday (45 minutes earlier than me – so that’s 5 am) to shovel the driveway so I could get to work on time and to also pack a nice lunch for me. He and Vince also shoveled during the day so I could make it back into the driveway at the end of the day. Jeremy also spent much of the weekend working – prepping for the summer scout trip and also prepping for his meetings this week in Seattle.
But they did manage some snow fun: