Yet more snow mis-adventures

Today was another one of those frustrating days that I seem to have had quite a few of in the last month - snow destroyed.  As I mentioned, I was due to go to Hereford this morning, for the whole day for clinics.  I duely got up at silly o'clock and as I was munching my brekkie, I looked out the window and start muttering about the rain bucketing down.  And then, as I was finishing my tea, I looked out again and thought, "hang on a second... that rain is different... (squint against the dark gloom)... that's not rain, that's snow!... mmm... interesting, well shouldn't settle following all that rain".  And off I trotted to go get dressed and ready to head off. 

When I was ready, I opened the blinds in my room, and was greeted with white everywhere.  And there was massively reduced visibility.  A glance downwards to the road revealed the worst - slushiness covering the roads.  Cue internal debate.  So I decided to check the weather forcasts for Cheltenham - snow at 9, sleet at 12, snow at 3.  Mmm, checked Hereford's forcast and it was snow more or less all day (switching between heavy and light and then back again) with tempertatures hitting freezing or lower for the afternoon/evening rush hour.  So after debating it with my flatmate, I decided I really should be safe and not drive through it. 

To make up for the lack of clinic-ness, I walked into the hospital here with my flatmate, gettting all soggy and cold feety to go to a library session which I was going to miss in favour of Hereford.  At least I now know where the hospital library is, and I got out and about for a bit and got to have a walk. 

Following this, I came "home" and have mainly been knitting my sock all afternoon, interspersed with lots of tea, and the odd bit of prep for a tutorial tomorrow and sitting around getting to know my flatmates better.  So, all in all an okay day.  Nothing wildly exciting, not for me at least.  I'm very proud of Sarah who is making the most of her time off her feet by learning with amazing speed how to crochet, using some of the goodies I had sent her on Monday.  Hehehe!  I've corrupted her with my devious crochet/knitting addiction.  :)  So going to have to start a crafting group when I next am in Derby where we can sit and do stuff and natter!  Can you tell I'm excited about having a friend join the world of crochet?  Someone I can share the experience with!  Tis truely awesome!

Sock progress for today:

Did the heel and about half of the foot today

It's definitely the second sock - next to the first for comparison

And this is me... being bored by all the stupid snow keeping me stuck, mostly infront of the computer. (and yes, that is my South African rugby jersey!)

Deja Snow-Vu

It's just like a few days ago, this being the sight to great me on this chilly morning.  I swear it's a new photo (you can tell, there's less snow this morning, honest!)

Well, in terms of time management today, I think I more or less stuck to it.  Alarm at nine, and up and about by 9.15.  Although, technically, I got back into bed, but mainly because it was cold, and I could grab my laptop and do some reading and be a little pro-active.  And then, as I had to go to a meeting I had pre-arranged with a GP to discuss my project that I'll be doing in a few weeks.  I had looked up buses, nasty winter weather stopping me from doing the easy thing and driving.  And also taking into account the bad weather, I gave myself extra time.  I ended up getting there twenty minutes early, even after taking a leisurely walk through the local park to admire the falling snow and the beautiful calm. 

 

 

How can something so bleak, so harsh, so cold, so extreme be so beautiful and awe inspiring?

And then it was back to the hospital for some teaching then home in the slush.  It may have snowed for about 16hours nearly non-stop, but it was much warmer than last week, so really didn't last.  So the journey home was slushy, dirty, slippery and completely unmagical.  The bad side of snow!

So todays action plan setting is for food.  I know that this one, in a way will be harder to implement, especially as from Monday I'm no longer in one place.  I'm off to Cheltenham on placement, and I know from experience that being somewhere strange, with unknown, unpredictable facilities always make it much harder.  But here are the aims, for what it's worth!

• Plan meals for at least a whole week at a time and stick to it.
  
• Create a shopping list, stick to it and do only one food shop a week.
• Eat healthier (I'm not talking about being a food Nazi, just better than I have been recently!)
• Cook proper meals, not just throw it in the oven and remove thirty minutes later.
• Shop local, especially fresh produce, and get more locally sourced and organic food, thus doing my thing for the world I live in.
• Less snacking, less junk, less chocolate, fewer sweats.
• Prepare (and take in!) my own lunches for most days (say 4 days a week) - I'm spending too much money buying unhealthy junk.

And that's it.  I know what will be more difficult, especially when just cooking for one, when I spend half the week in one place and the other half in Bristol, is the planning and buying of food.  I always end up buying fresh produce that ends up going off because I can't eat it in time.  The answer to this will mainly lie in the careful planning.  Which I suppose makes my excuse just pure laziness!  Lol, oh dear!  It really shouldn't just boil down to that, should it?

Anyhows, must head off to bed, I'm already slightly over my 11pm bedtime, so must head off.  Nighty-night everyone.

Slippery Saturday

So work... well, have to admit wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  I thought I'd do the responsible thing and research bus routes and timetables this morning and was happily surprised to find out that there was a bus that runs from just outside my flat to about a minutes walk from the hospital.  Yipee, minimising time spent shivering at cold icy bus stops.  And quicker home.  The ice was something crazy.  Down Gloucester Road, the pavement was fairly clear, but near the hospital they were nightmarishly slippery.  Really thought I was gonna end up on my bottom and covered in bruises.  Fortunately, somehow managed to regain my balance and continue on, paying even closer attention to my steps.

Work was interesting as only work can be... confused old man proclaiming very loudly "You are detaining me with a clamp... on my face" repeatedly much to the irritation of the other patients.  And there was very little we could do.  When ever we tried to talk to him or console him, he just got more aggitated.  And then there was the patient who wanted me to help ease his constipation in a somewhat manual way... they don't pay me nearly enough to even have that conversation let alone do it!  Yuk!  And you thought it was only kids that say weird things. 

I'm a bit conflicted with my knitting at the moment.  I brought myself a new hot water bottle, with the intention of making a cover for it.  But I'm so busy with the socks (not huge amounts of progress there today, but some!).  I decided to kinda make up a pattern (basically it's a couple of rectangles with some cables thrown in for good measure) and use up with some of the wool left over from RoRo's aran cardi.  But what do I do?  I obviously wanna use the hot water but not likely to finish the cover anytime soon.  Maybe I'll finish the first sock then quickly do the hot water bottle cover.  Anyways, this is hardly world defining stuff, so I can't belive that I managed to write a whole paragraph about it.  My life is really that mundane at the moment!

And finally, today's sock progress, taken again with the webcam due to pure laziness!  I have done quite a bit more, all things considered, although it doesn't really look like a huge amount.

Another quiet day

Not much to say about today.  I spent it in a very similar way to the last couple.  I'm getting very bored of this rubbish cold weather, although being forced to not do very much is a bit like having the holiday break that I missed out on over the Christmas break through being ill.  It's been lovely and relaxing, and for a change my flat is actually looking fairly neat and tidy.  Well, I did say fairly! I still have masses of paperwork everywhere that I really do need to sort through and file, which I've been putting off for ages, despite the best of intentions to keep on top of it all!  But I did vaccum, I'm on top of dishes, the wool and various other crafting stuff is neatly packed away (besides the current project clearly!). 

I did wonder out for a little while, as I thought a walk and some fresh air would do me good.  I decided to go to a local oriental market on Gloucester Road that usually does fresh sushi on Friday afternoons, but they had either sold out really early or didn't do it today, which was frustrating.  And ultimately I really should have gone out as I ended up buying some more wool.  It is sock/4 ply and is hand dyed and absolutely gorgeous.  Couldn't be bothered to take a photo, so here is an idea of what it is like (an image I knicked off google image search, so sorry if this has offended anyone).  It was too gorgeous to resist and I found it quite cheap somewhere (well cheap compared to prices I've seen on American websites).  But that's it, I really am going to resist the urge to buy any more yarn until I've used up all the stuff I've brought recently, and perhaps even made a dent in some of the stash I was showing off yesterday!  This is an expensive addiction which has to stop! 

Tonorrow is going to force me to really face the world again tomorrow, I've got a shift booked.  And I'm really annoyed about it.  It's not at the hospital that I usually HCA at.  It's at one that's at the other end of town.  And it's going to mean two buses, in each direction, with no simple connection linking the two.  Which will be wonderful at 9 o'clock at night after my shift in sub-freezing temperatures.  This particular hospital is one where I've refused to work at for a few years now, following some awful shifts there, and due to the extra effort that it would take to get there.  It just never felt worth it.  But work has changed the way we book shifts, and I no longer have a choice.  Which is very frustrating.  They've taken out all the flexiblity that made the job so useful.  I really wish I was in the situation where I could tell them where to shove it.  But I can't.  I need the money, now more so than ever before, so that I can be organised and not have to work too near exams.  This sucks!  Grrr!  Part of me has really wanted to cancel this particular shift, but I would feel somewhat guilty as I know in this bad weather, people are struggling to get to work, and I really shouldn't make such a fuss as we are there for the patients.  And I really do need that money.  Oh why, oh why do we have to be slaves to money?

Progress on the socks?  Well, again since I couldn't be bothered to photo it properly, I found an alternative by taking a rubbish-ish photo using my laptop's webcam.  But here is how sock number one is coming along:

I've finished the leg bit, done the heal flap, turned the heal and am busy working on the "gusset" (all these new terms that I'm learning!)

Packing up Christmas, stash sorting and sock making

Another day of being effectively snowed in.  In fact, when I first looked at the weather report this morning, it claimed that the current temp was -7 degrees.  I found it a little hard to believe, but then again, I was inside under lots of clothes and blankets with the heaters firing up.  The snow is still lying around thickly (well for the little patch of the world that I could see out of my window).

Since I was skiving another day, I decided I should be pro-active around my flat.  I took down the Christmas tree (only a day late!) and it was sad in a way to be packing away everything that I had spent so much time making, but I'll be able to dig them out for this year's Christmas too.  And maybe make some more if I have the time.  So here they are, tucked away for now:

I had a bit of a desperately needed clean of my flat, unpacking my suitcase properly (only took two shameful days!) and did some putting away.  It's still a tip, and I never got round to vacuuming like I wanted, but ooohhhh well, it's nearly the weekend, and that means a little more time for these things.  I also had a good sort out of my yarn stash.  It's almost a little shameful to see what I have accumulated in just a few months.

pre-sort

mid-sort

the wool I brought on Monday in the sale, which I'm thinking of (eventually) making a lace shawl with

I also made a bit of an effort with my dinner tonight.  I was going to make some soup, roasting some sweet potato and butternut squash.  But as it was roasting, I had a change of heart, and I went for shoving it in some pasta with some pancetta.  It was very tasty and un-soupy!

And my final activity of the day (wow, it's been a fairly lazy day!) was to make a start on my socks, the first of which looks a little like this:

I'm loving the colours of the wool, a bit brighter than I usually go for, but it's so pretty and I love the combo.  Really excited about them :)

Snowmen and skullcaps

This was the picture that greated me as I looked out of my window this morning, having listened to the radio about how the city had ground to a halt and buses weren't running.  My first instinct?  Curl back up in bed.  But decided that this would be too lazy.  Gave it lots of thought whether or not to try and trek into uni today, but decided that it wasn't worth the possible 2hour, potentially dangerous, slipping walk in, just to find out that it had been cancelled and then have to come all the way back, cold, wet and uncomfortable.  I think that if I didn't live so far away, I would have attempted it. 

So I curled up in front of the telly instead, with my knitting.  I've now completed my new hat which looks a little like this as a work in progress (trying to gauge the length, hence the needles sticking out of my head):

And it looks a little like this when finished:

It's a beautiful varigated pure wool yarn, which was lovely to work with (not too harsh on my hands, some of the pure wools I've used before have left me with dreadfully dried out hands) and I'm very happy with the outcome.  Thanks very much Sarah and the Clarks for your wonderful Christmas pressie.

I also ventured out briefly to get some food (all lovely warm, wintery things - rice pudding, hot choc, pies, breakfast oats) and was amazed by the winter wonderland that greated me.  And the fantastic spirit of the community, such as cheeky little kids throwing sneaky snowballs at me, and everyone all bundled up and in their wellies (would have been useful things!)  And there was beauty everywhere and wonderful art creations.

Just out my front door, reasurring me I did the right thing not attempting to walk in on those pavements!

Snow sticking, somehow, to one side of the trees.  Very pretty effect.

A true masterpiece watching the world walk by down Gloucester Road

And this one was huge.  I bumped into his creator too, who was busy trying to figure out the hair do (pet bedding straw, held in place by long pieces of metal bent into u-shapes).

I've just checked the current weather conditions, and apparently it's about -5 out there, so very grateful to be snug inside with good heating and cosy blankets.  I really need to make the effort to go into uni tomorrow, but I just don't think the weather will be much better than today, although they aren't predicting any more snow over night, they don't think it'll be warmer than -1, so the pavements and transport links are just going to be hideous, but hey, wouldn't life be dull without these little challenges interferring with our attempts to just get on with things?

The kindness of strangers

Sometimes I'm just peeved at all the rubbish that life throws at me, and have to fight very hard to not do the whole "why me?" thing.  Other times, I'm just continuously touched by the kindness and good will of others.  Maybe life really does just balance out... eventually!  Or maybe there is such a thing as karma.  Or maybe it's just really dependent on my mood how I end up seeing things, some days concentrating more on the positive, and other days, more on the negative.  Or maybe, just maybe, it's just human nature to see patterns and trends when they don't really exist.

Last night, I duely caught the bus and left the car safely parked, and avoiding ice skating it down Gloucester Road.  And if I'm making confessions, I think that I've thought of a New Year's resolution - SEEK HELP FOR KNITTING ADDICTION!  Joys of public transport and waiting for it to arrive, meant that I had a few minutes waiting around, so I unashamedly got the needles out, stood at the bus stop and did some rows, even getting on the bus in the middle of a row and without dropping a stitch.  I did some knitting on the bus, but it was bordering on sensory overload and it made me feel a little queasy, so I didn't push it too much! 

I left later than planned, but it ended being spot on, I was there on time, even after changing into my uniform out of my layers and layers.  I was working on one of my favourite wards, and it was a night like last night that reminded me why I like that ward, and dare I say it, sometimes even enjoy work.  I had good company, the patients were all really nice and friendly, and I managed to have time to have some lovely chats with some of them.  And all in all, nice, smooth shift.  Whilst we were waiting for handover last night, we got to talking about the horrendous weather conditions, and I mentioned that I had played it safe and bused it in.  And one of the nurses immediately offered me a lift home for the morning.  She lives in vaguely the same area as me, although I probably doubled her journey time.  I was so amazed.  Hot off the heels of the lovely shopkeeper and his advice and offers of tea, another kind deed was offered me.  I don't think I've ever been offered a lift home, and I was very grateful, as it meant I was home nice and early after the shift, and now, I'm tucked up in bed, eyes beginning to feel heavy, and able to have a nice early bedtime.  I'm hoping this will mean I'm more up for driving back to Derby later after a nice long snooze.  Although I still have to pack properly, I'm hoping, weather permitting to hit the road by mid-afternoon...

Snowed in at work! Arggggggggggggggggh!

I have broke tradition.  Well, the "longstanding" tradition that was blogging every day.  But there is a fairly valid reason for this, I had to prioritise sleep, after a very hectic "day".

I should have known that it was gonna be "one of those days" from the start.  Having being messed around with my shift on Saturday night, I decided my first action of Sunday would be to confirm my shifts.  So I did, and my shifts for the rest of the weekend were the same.  So, with relief, I got myself ready for work, and headed out to work in my car (this will be relevant later, in case you were wondering why I'm giving such a blow by blow account!).

I got to the ward and introduced myself, to which the nurse pulled a face, and then carried on doing whatever she was doing.  Because of all the hassles I get, being moved, I always introduce myself and confirm they're expecting me.  After a couple of minutes (during which time, I'm thinking to myself, "oh no, I'm missing handover, maybe I should go find it") she finally gets to me, saying that she doesn't think I should be there.  I got rather annoyed by this statement, so I point out to her that I confirmed it just a few hours before hand.  Then she gets distracted again, and ignores me for another couple of minutes.  I mean come on, if I'm not supposed to be working there, then I should be finding out where I was supposed to be, to minimise the lateness to that ward, or horror of annoying horrors, heading home if they couldn't find anywhere for me.  Then perhaps sensing my growing annoyance and frustration, she grabs me and takes me to their handover room.  Noone there is any the wiser, but all there seem to think that they aren't expecting another HCA.  So now bordering on anger and getting ready to fight with someone over this mess, I phone the bank office (people who allocate shifts and work as a liason between the wards and the temporary staff like me).  I confirm with them that I'm where I'm supposed to be, and they ask to speak to someone from the ward, to which they all refuse to do so.  So the bank office say that they'll phone the ward directly (I was phoning them on my mobile).  So after a few more minutes, I get the confirmation that I'm supposed to be there, and I can stay, even though this effectively makes the ward overstaffed - how I do wish people would communicate with each other, as it's always us bank staff that get the recieving end of the fallout.

So, I settle down, after the nurse giving me a piece of her mind with some crappy curt comment about how it's not all about me, that we're there to look after the patients, and it's all about patient safety and if this means I'm inconvienenced, well tough.  Hello!  She totally missed the point of why I was so annoyed, and in my defence, if I'm not meant to be there, somewhere else, there are other patients who are not getting my care and their safety is being compromised!  Annnoying **** of a woman!  So I had handover.

Then on the last few patients in the handover, one of the other nurses comes in and says "Is there an Ashleigh here?  You have been moved to ward (let's anonomise it) X.  Sorry".  I hate ward X, and usually avoid it like the ruddy plague.  Just perfect!

Ward X is a cohort ward (people who know the BRI now know where I was!  So much for keeping it anonomous!) which means they grab everyone with infective diarrhea and put them together.  Ok, so it is more civilised than I just described, but it does automatically make one think they have a night of buttom cleaning and bed making ahead of them.  And when I arrived I found out that I was there to one-on-one babysit a patient who was very confused, aggitated and unsteady.  Poor chap looked like he was on the loosing end of a heavyweight boxing match, so covered in bruises and cuts and scraps from his many falls.  In the end it wasn't too bad.  He slept most of the night, becoming a bit restless every now and then, and there was only one occasion when I thought we were about to come acropper (we didn't, phew!).  So I sat on an uncomfortable chair at the open door of his cubicle most of the night, knitting away whilst he serenaded me with this snores!

The other downside to this ward is the fact fact that I was working with two very loud nurses.  Nothing against them, they were nice and friendly, but shouted their way through drool topic after drool topic for most of the night.  I really wanted to tell them to shhhhhh! as it was a night shift, people are trying to sleep, and my poor chap didn't need a series of excited exclamations continously rousing him from his peaceful and much needed slumber.  But who am I to tell off nurses, when I'm just a temp HCA?  So I kept this to myself, until one of them went to the loo, then came back shouting extra loud into the momentary silence that accompanied the two of them being split up that it had started snowing.  To which I went "ssshhhhhhhhhhhh!  You'll wake everyone up!"  Response?  Nonchalant shrug!

Mmmm, snow.... it was around midnight, and it was night a snug inside, so I added snowfalling watching to my routine of "glance at knitting, glance at patient, listen out to patient's snores, glance at knitting and pick up stitch droped whilst looking at patient".  For two hours!  I couldn't really see much of outstide, but on the roofs and carpark area that I could see, the snow had settled a little, but over the course of the morning the snow piles seemed to shrink, so I assumed that this meant it was melting, and that the drive home would be ok.  How wrong could I get!  This is what I found when I eventually got to Ernie (my car), all frosty, hungry and tired:

There's my Ernie, the blue car, looking extra blue under his snow blanket and a very icy road. 

And after several minutes hard, cold work, with no gloves, I got to this:

Wipers still frozen solid to the windscreen, far side doors iced shut and all my deicer used up.

At this point, I have to talk about how the kindness of strangers has affected my life.  When I first got to the car, I was horrified by the extent of iced snow on it.  And I remembered seeing my ice scraper when I was packing at the end of last year, so I didn't think it was in the car, so I nipped into the newsagent next to where I had parked, just on the off chance that they sold them, but he didn't.  He spent ages looking around for his, incase he had one in the shop, then he kept an eye on me as I attempted to use an empty 2L plastic bottle (fairly effective in a push!) and then I eventually got fed up and search my car, turned out, Ernie was hiding my scraper under one of the chairs.  Then once I got it all cleared, I took one look at the road and the few cars attempting it.  I wasn't feeling too confident about driving, but oh, so hungry and tired and cold.  The chap came out of his shop and started to give me advice about driving in such icy conditions.  Then I told him that I was toying with the idea of leaving the car and getting a bus.  I then asked if he knew what the rest of the day was forcasted to be like.  He didn't know, but he took me back inside the shop and we looked through teletext (surprisingly unhelpful!).  Still torn, but with my need for food and sleep getting greater, I was resigned to leave it.  Then the sweetest thing - he offered to make me a cup of tea or coffee.  He was so sweet and gentle about it.  I was so touched and by that point in the day, I almost felt like crying.  Thank you kind kind man.  But I felt bad from distracting him from his shop, so I declined. 

I eventually decided to trapse back to work, and get some breakfast and wait a little while to see if conditions improved, and toyed with the idea of nicking a blanket and crashing on one of the sofas in the common room.  I didn't in the end, I wanted my bed!  So I climbed the crazy Cardiac Hill for the second time, back to the car, in the hope that it would be better to drive.  It was, slightly.  So very carefully, taking heed of what my new friend had told me about driving in snow, I eased Ernie out and started on my way home. 

Wow, I've never driven in such conditions, and even though I was on roads I've driven down a thousand times before, the feel of it and the strange commeradery of the other drivers made it feel like an exciting (if not very much on edge!) adventure.  Listening to the radio, I found out that the street I live on, one of the busiest in Bristol, hadn't been gritted (! ooops Bristol City Council!) for a large section, so I carefully planned a new route home to miss this, and thinking about which roads were considered "main enough" to have been gritted and driven a lot.  And off I went.  Much of the journey in first gear, and never more than second, and never going faster than 15mph, I crawled home, via the petrol station (something I had always planned to do, and was getting paranoid, although the light hadn't come on, I was running low, and had been idling the car for ages) and got more deicer.  Then hit awful traffic.  So a journey which yesterday took less than five minutes, today took nearly an hour!  And no, buses wouldn't have been faster, as they would have got stuck in traffic. 

In the end, I got to bed just after 11, having been awake since 3:30 yesterday afternoon.  I'm normally in bed by 9 after a night shift. 

And here I am, sleep deprived but safe and sound.  And I'm definitely getting the bus tonight!  Even though it's less than ideal, it will be best.  I'm just starting to get worried now about getting back to Derby.  Was aiming for tomorrow, and was thinking it would be tiredness dependent.  Now it's going to be weather dependent. I've just heard they've issued a severe weather warning for Bristol for tonight with more heavy snow expected. But I'll worry about it when I need to.  I just need to stick with being safe for now.

Finally, despite the dramas that was this day, there was calm and beauty everywhere, especially at 7:30 in the morning.  Only had my phone, but still some lovely snaps.

 

The last one was the local Christmas tree sale lot.  This close to Christmas, it's somewhat depleted, but the snow on the trees made it seem wonderfully seasonal!

P.S. this has been an epic post, sorry, and well done if you managed it all.  And I normally proof read before I post, but couldn't be bothered tonight.  So forgive typos, non-sense and bad grammer!