Pilgrim's Pride.

Let me just make the following statement outright. Granted, it will not make me a very popular person on this day of bountiful feasts and happy family reunions nationwide (ending in a rash epidemic of drunken all-out Hatfield and McCoy type clan warfare as a prelude to that old holiday standing tradition, The Post Prandial Family Emergency Room Visit) but I don't care.

Here goes. I hate turkey in any form (especially the pressed, cubed turkey parts molded into slab o' meat that is unconvincingly fashioned to look carved turkey and will constitute a good portion of my free holiday meal courtesy the hospital today). Also, for the record, Thanksgiving is a lameass holiday, especially when you have to work said day, because then what am I supposed to be thankful for? Being stupid enough to choose a job in a facility that never, ever closes, not even for one single minute, unless bombed or otherwise completely obliviated?

What are we thankful for, today, working our little scut jobs and having patients throw food at us when they're not happy? The fact that holidays make people fatter, stupider, and more apt to eat sodium and purine rich foods, washing it all down with vast quantities of ETOH, thereby throwing themselves into congestive heart and acute renal failure and buying themselves a bed on our floor?

Don't mind me.

I'm just bitter because I've had a massively shitty two weeks at work and I somehow have to go back again today, all bright eyed and bushy tailed (as my mother would say) and pretend it's actually not part of my job description have to obtain C-diff stool cultures from diarrehetic patients, when really, it is, plus a sputum culture and a urine culture while I'm at it.

And I have to admit, the whole Sandwich Incident 2005 last night really threw me off. I try really hard to be understanding, but at the point patients start chucking perfectly good food around their rooms and throwing temper tantrums, I start to lose patience. I mean, wouldn't you? It's a hospital, folks, not a five-star spa/hotel, and throwing Camille-worthy fits (and your sandwich) every five minutes isn't going to make your life any easier, or make magical plates of gourmet food appear any faster, either.

Especially when I have real nursing work to do, like write up your admission, chart, make sure you have all your orders intact, and figure out what your plan of care is going to be, chart, check and re-check your MAR to make sure we aren't going to kill you by giving you incompatible or wrong doses of medicine, chart, call Pharmacy half a dozen times to get your meds, pass your meds, chart, change dressing, change IV fluids, take down IV fluids, call IV team at get the IV line restarted because you either pulled it out or it got occluded, give your pain medicine through said IV line, collect specimens, chart, assess and reassess your condition to make sure you are stable, chart, and help stabilize you if God forbid you aren't, and you know, stupid shit like that. And did I mention I can have a total of five or six patients throughout the day betweens discharges, admits, and picking up patients at change of shift?

So, uh, just to clarify: a goddamn sandwich is way down there on the list of nursing priorities, especially when you've refused to eat your perfectly fine hot meal tray minutes beforehand.

Okay. Think I've just about gotten that out of my system.

Nonsequitar now:

It snowed last night, and now it's all melting, which means Winter is Here. I'm bitter about Winter, too. It's just a damn inconvenient season up here in Yankeeland, in my opinion.

And now, to change the emotional scenary up a little bit, how about some Thanksgiving Madness With Jamie And Ibrahim to cleanse the palate? To preface, Ibrahim has the day off today, and brought home a chicken last night to bake.

JAMIE:
[seeing frozen chicken on the counter]
Is that a chicken you bought?

IBRAHIM:
[evidently very proud of said poultry purchase]
Yes; I'm going to cook it for Thanksgiving tomorrow!

JAMIE:
[gently, so as not to burst his enthusiastic bubble]
Honey, you know we cook turkeys for Thanksgiving, not chickens, right?

IBRAHIM:
Yeah, but what the hell are we gonna do with all that turkey, right?

JAMIE:
[sensing it's time to concede the point]
Yeah, I guess so.
[eyeing chicken again]
You're going to be the one cooking the chicken, right?

Any way, to those in my American audience, Happy Thanksgiving, for whatever you've got to be thankful about (or not).