Yesterday I engaged in shameless money grubbing, despite being exhausted I drove for an hour and a half after a revoltingly early wake up call, to go work in St. Marks Hospital for the Feverish and Sickly. I’ve done one shift there before – a night shift months ago – and bizzarely some of the staff were on again. And also somewhat confusingly we’ve had so many agency staff at the trust in which I work over the last few weeks that I knew a whole load of people who were at St. Marks yesterday – all of whom looked very confused when they realised I was out of my normal location. Not only that, but a member of the Ambulance Service who I thought seemed interesting, but never got around to working out how to say ‘hi, shall we meet up for a coffee some-time’*, and who recently left our area to work closer to home, happened to be on duty too. So it was kind of like working in my own department.
I even knew how the system worked and were the drugs were… which was nice. It wasn’t that harder day, although being one of the agency nurses I got shuffled from one place to another through the morning, ended up doing admission assessments, having my own bay, looking after an observation ward… It was all fine though.
Unfortunately, it has left me exhausted. The 3 hours of driving after how ever many days on shift has left me feeling drained. I slept in ’til nearly 10, which is incredibly unusual for me, and even now just ache. I need to sort out the exhaust on the mog, the front manifold of which is leaking like….well…something. Although I’ve asked (at long last) about the abandoned garage a couple of houses down, so if I’ve got access to that then that’d make all the jobs that need doing much more pleasant. Unfortunately, it also requires time; time which I don’t currently have. ONe would think that you’d either have time or money, and though this month through a process of working a ridiculous number of extra shifts I’m able to actually look at my bank account and not wince, which is nice.
There may even be some to pay off the overwhelming debts that lurk on my credit card. And perhaps there’s the possibilty that Charles Ware’s Morris Minor centre might respond to my statement that I’m going to have to take them to court over the ‘restoration’ of Rebecca they did 7 years ago – in which case – the debt incurred fixing that restoration will be somewhat ameliorated.
Anyhow, I need to get on with doing Kathryn’s present, the coffee doesn’t seem to have kicked in in quite the way I’d hoped, but I am at least upright.
In other news I’ve sorted a place to sort the gearbox – so the new gearbox is off to them to be reconditioned (later today if I get off my arse) *and* I’ve got the clips to hold the trim in place on the DAF. Woo yeah!
* I’m always faintly worried that it’ll (a) sound odd, particularly with the techs/paramedics because I barely know ’em, and (b) sound like some sort of come-on, when all I want to do is make some friends**
** Yes, I really suck at making friends.
