Spring, Hook, Line & Sinker

So far this spring sucks! We're already 9 days into it, and I am going to absolutely lose my mind if we don't start getting some consistent sunshine, enough to at least melt the ice off the sidewalks.

It's slicker than snot out there, and the Great Antarctic Ice Sheet is back, thicker than ever, filling the street up over the curb, with big fat chunks that have solidified to the point of making the sidewalk ice rinks ankle twisting hazards too. It's crazy. I can handle the cold, I can handle the snow, but ice and continued gray skies drive me bonkers!! I can't go out to run or even walk. That's how bad it is.

Yesterday was the most halfway decent day we've had so far, we did get sunshine, with a cold wind, but it was just enough to melt things to the point where they didn't evaporate and overnight it froze again and a light dusting of snow fell, just enough to coat everything in a fine layer of ice.

Then this morning I tried to step out the door to the woman cave, just to go out and turn the heat on before I started working, and two steps out the door I almost fell on my ass on the patio- the entire surfaces outside-concrete patio, gravel path, snow-covered yard, and flagstone leading to the steps of the woman cave- were an ice skating rink.

I went back in and had to put on my Yak Trax just to walk across the freaking yard!

Plus it's cold, and gray. No sunshine. The sun did seem to be trying to come through the clouds for a brief time today, but never quite happened. It hit maybe 25 degrees.

And of course the girls don't understand that I can't walk them in these conditions. I would be okay if I had my Yak Trax or Microspikes on, but the girls wouldn't be safe. They are older and it would be too easy for them to twist something or fall on the ice. Not worth it. So Iris has been pouting on the couch all day, in between brief games of hedgehog toss.

Wednesday was the only day I went out all week to run, so far. I might get out this weekend, but honestly, I don't care right now. I met Cat at the fire station on Wednesday morning and we ran 9 miles on the icy bike path, in the freezing cold. I wouldn't have gone if she hadn't called me. I have been an absolute slug all week. The weather is definitely affecting my moods and motivation.

I texted Wheaties Boy to see if he could go for a run this weekend, but he's off to Florida to run the 2/3 Goofy Challenge, as a pacer in the Disney Marathon, Maybe next week we can do a few miles.

Meanwhile, my fitness takes another slide. I am just not in the mental place to sit on the bike and pedal. That's just where I am. I don't care.

This past week I had an interesting conversation with someone I used to work with, about healthcare and nursing leadership. He quit and moved on about a year after I did, and it was excellent validation to hear that the same things really do occur at all levels of an organization and hear echoes of the same sentiments I've had, about the need for professional nursing reform, about the profession dropping the ball when it came to health care reform, the failure of any overarching organization to support nurses, the higher education scam in nursing, and the inability of different players in the organization to communicate with each other at all, in any language, of business, medicine, nursing, or whatever.

It also reinforced the point that I needed to hear, which was, that good, strong leaders help to nurture people and their ideas and bring them along, but if you're in an organization that has leadership who fail to recognize or value the potential of their people, you are sunk, and you might as well get out.

I've been working on an idea recently that has to do with blogging, and this blog will not change much from what it does now, but I am seriously considering taking my health care vents and rants to a separate blog with a completely separate agenda. That blog would have a different character from this blog. When I do it I will announce it, and I hope that readers will check out the new one.

After over a year away from the corporate world, I'm still so passionate about changing the nursing profession, and I hear it from so many other people, the same thing, from nurses all over the world, and nurses need an outlet for their voices to be heard, because they aren't being heard in the workplace or by any organization that even slightly supports nursing. For all my snarling and bitching, I do have some ideas on how things could be changed. Lots of other people do too, and those ideas need to get out there in a visible way.

Otherwise it's just like being at work, everyone puts on a happy face for the powers-that-be and for the patients, but behind the nurses' station they're bitching and moaning and miserable. You can't make change within these entrenched institutions so it needs to be done from outside. So it's time to get the ball rolling. Stay tuned.

And stay warm.