Being thankful is like being relieved, right?

Right now, I'm sitting at home with a cup of Candy Cane Lane tea, keeping company with two sleepy yet mischevious cats (and Hawkeye and the rest of the gang from the 4077th), trying to remember what all I thought would be a good blog topic.

While I could rant about how Christmas has come even earlier this year (a post I've been planning since Oct. 31st when Walgreen's put up their Christmas tree display), or about what the holiday frenzy reduces people to, or stupid drivers, or what a small town this is (because I discovered this morning that I graduated nursing school with my new neighbor), or present you with an abbreviated but hilarious list of what not to name your child (Teretha, Mista, Bonita).

But I'm a little distracted by my relief at having survived last night.

It really wasn't an awful shift. It was a fair bit more chaotic than usual at shift change, and I for sure had a patient in contact isolation for who knows what, and another in isolation for the flu. And one with no IV access and a jumpy family. And a few who needed their "nerve pills" more often than they could have them.

After I got them all tucked in, it was pretty good, and I had time to peruse the newspaper and a few holiday catalogs. I was mostly worried because I keep hearing stories about how really weird, really intense things happen on the holidays. Like people coding on the toilet. The worst thing we had was one woman who busted a stitch on her arm (which she busted while drunk) and bled a bunch before the doc came and stitched it up. The, well, the funniest thing we had was a rather confused woman who stripped down naked and laid spread-eagle on her bed, one leg flung over the side, and carried on adamant conversations with herself most of the night.

I just hope tonight goes as well.

And that the boys don't tear down my new curtain in their quest to stalk the birds outside the window.

Um, yeah, I think I need to go avert disaster...