Month: June 2021

Work Stuff

Here We Go …

Karen

Nearly 200 staff members at a Houston-area hospital were suspended for not following a policy that requires employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Their suspensions followed a protest by dozens of workers on Monday night against the policy.

The hospital, Houston Methodist, had told employees that they had to be vaccinated by Monday or face suspension. Last month, 117 Houston Methodist employees filed a lawsuit against their employer over the vaccine policy. Source

The Houston Methodist Hospital deadline has arrived and 117 employees were put on a two-week suspension without pay – they have two weeks to “come to their senses” and get the experimental injectable …. or else.

I feel like healthcare across the country is watching this case. I know I certainly am because I’m QUITE sure that the hospital where I work is watching it very closely as well. And why wouldn’t they? If Houston Methodist wins it will only embolden hospitals across the country to pull the same stunt.

Including the hospital where I work.

On one hand, I get why they would require vaccines – their argument is to protect the patients. And I get that. They already mandate the yearly flu vaccine though the percentage of effectiveness is pretty low most of the time because it’s a crap shoot whether the drug companies “predict” what that season’s strain will be. And of course, I have a huge problem with this but I’ve gone along to get along for years. I don’t like it, but it was necessary to keep my job.

And now, here we are with COVID. Again, it makes ZERO sense to me to get an experimental injectable, that hasn’t been fully tested for a disease that has a recovery rate of 99% for most people. Not to mention, the really weird incentives that states are throwing out there to encourage people to get the vaccine. You mean, people are not scared enough of the disease? Shouldn’t the disease itself be motivation enough for people to get the vaccine if they so choose? Why do officials feel the need to bribe us to get the vaccine?

Is risking my health really worth a donut? Or a beer? I truly don’t understand how people can be so easily bought.

But whatever. Get the vaccine, don’t get the vaccine, I could give a shit, but DO NOT make me inject God knows what against my will. I’ll take my chances with the disease. (If I haven’t already had it).

Which by the way, health care workers have been not only exposed to COVID this past year, but likely a whole slew of diseases and will continue to do so while working at a healthcare facility. Just because you mandate a flu vaccine or an experimental injectable does not guarantee you will not contract the disease and take it to work with you. All you can do is take every precaution not to infect the patients you take care of and believe me, the hospital takes PPE VERY seriously. (Personal protection equipment). Not only to protect the employee, but the patients as well.

My point being, getting a vaccine does not guarantee anything. And since we don’t know what the long-term repercussions of this experimental mRNA can and/or will do to a body, I’m not willing to play that particular game of Russian Roulette.

The comments on this news story, and on Twitter, are alarmingly hateful. But then again, what did I expect? As with most issues, people are not seeing the big picture here. I daresay Houston Methodist is not seeing the big picture, either. Here’s why – we have been SEVERELY short staffed for a while. Even before COVID hit. Healthcare demand is going up but the supply is way down. I just don’t think a lot of people are going into healthcare right now, for a number of reasons. Can these hospitals really afford to lose 1/8 of their staff by mandating an experimental injectable? Or any other injection, for that matter. And if hospitals lose staff, that means the people that remain will be overworked to compensate.

When does it end?

All I know is, I DON’T want to lose my job. I love it, I love the people I work with, I’m confident in what I do but I’m mentally prepared to walk away if backed against a wall.

Let’s see what happens.

Podcast

28: Would You Pay Thousands of Dollars for an Invisible Piece of Art? Would You Believe That Someone Did?

Karen
peace
 
I forgot to talk more about the invisible piece of art, but I swear, this was not a joke, see the show notes below for more details. AOC makes a some (more) stupid comments this week and it’s all I can not to insult her, screw it, she’s stupid. Concealed carry weapons may be the norm and schools can’t make students leave their constitutional rights a the door – the secret? Don’t let them tread on your rights, yo. Book review of the week is Black Coral by Andrew Mayne and I go over an hour again – dang it!
Mentioned in podcast:
 
 
Intermission music:
 
It’s Done by Electronic Senses | https://soundcloud.com/electronicsenses
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US
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I upload a new podcast every week. Thanks for listening!

*TALK” to you soon!

Here is our Podcast “Right From Us”

General

Writer’s Block? Here is a Great Method to Generate Story Ideas

Karen

If you’re not a subscriber to Abbie Emmons’ channel, why not?? She is young, but she has a lot of great writing ideas and advice. I like how she approaches writing from a more practical standpoint and a lot of what she says makes sense to me.

When I saw her latest video about generating story ideas, it was like a light bulb went off in my brain and suddenly, I had so many ideas!

Anyway, I think it’s definitely worth a watch and with July’s Camp NaNoWriMo happening in less than a month, I thought it might help any writers out there struggling for ideas. (Like me).

So for me – my three story ideas are:

  1. Serendipity
  2. Alias
  3. Verity

Let me stew on these a bit and break down why they resonate with me and I’ll follow this post up with my ideas, like Abbie does in her examples, in another post.

I really like Abbie’s ideas and I feel inspired every time I watch her videos. Her ideas make me excited about writing fiction again.

In the meantime, what three story ideas would you like to mash together?

Bullet Journal

June Bullet Journal Cover

Karen

May was busy. But ya’ll knew it was going to be. If you’ve been reading my blog you’ll know that we are down three MA’s, (medical assistants) at work this month and one nurse retired. This means I have volunteered to take one of the doctors that lost her MA, Dr. S., along with my normal doctor, Dr. M., and now I am taking care of two doctors. One is a full time job, two is over time.

So, I haven’t really done much outside of work/sleep this month. But let’s be honest, I don’t normally do much outside of work and sleep anyway, it’s just been amped up a few notches this month.

And honestly, it will be like this for me this whole summer.

We interviewed a few MA’s this month, only two, because no one is working right now, they’re all staying home and enjoying the money the government is giving them under the guise of COVID relief which the rest of us working stiffs are paying for, and the fact that there aren’t very many people going into healthcare right now so it’s slim pickings.

The first MA was very young, just out of MA school and had zero experience. We’re not opposed to training on-the-job, but we would prefer someone who has SOME work experience – this girl was green-green.

The second MA was older, a breast care survivor, has worked for the hospital for 29 years and was very sweet. The reason we turned her down … she’s not a quick thinker. She couldn’t answer a few of the interview questions. Even if she gave some bullshit answer, it would have been preferable to, “I can’t think of anything to say.” To me, that is someone who doesn’t think on her feet and this job DEMANDS someone think quick on his/her feet.

Even though we’re short handed, we don’t just want a warm body, we want someone who will be worth the time and training investment – so – it looks like I will be Dr. S’s MA for the foreseeable future – unless they mandate the experimental injectable, i.e. COVID vaccine, and then they will REALLY be hurting for people because I’m not sticking around for that.

But I digress … let’s move on to my May journal spreads. As always, prepare to be IMPRESSED.

My May cover and steps page. I’m not crazy about the color combo this month, but I thought they were a good match to the flowered cover page so …

Weather and sleep – I don’t feel like I did very good on my sleep this month. In fact, according to my Garmin tracker, I consistently only got about 3 hours of deep sleep every night. No wonder I’m a zombie. Also, I had a lot on my mind this month so that probably accounts for that. Also – I was “trying” to write sleep in a fancy font – as you can see, I failed miserably.

Wow – terrible tracking this month. And yes, the journal tracker is correct. I just didn’t have the energy to journal. However, I have decided I am going to sum up the month instead of writing daily every once in a while in my journal so I’ll take that tracker off next month. And yes, the cleaning tracker is correct – I cleaned one time this month. Okay fine, I’m keeping track of deep cleaning on this tracker, not cleaning up after myself and making sure we don’t have to wear swim shoes in the shower clean. Walking tracker is also correct – I was already getting 8-10 thousand steps during the work week, I didn’t want to do anymore.

(Go back to sleep tracker results).

I did something different with my mood tracker this month and I’m digging it. I wrote out a sentence that summed up my day to explain the mood I selected for that day. I will definitely keep this tracker. This also likely explains why I didn’t journal this month, I already summed up the day, I didn’t have enough energy to go into details.

My podcast titles, (pretty proud of myself, didn’t miss a week this month) and zero videos. I swear, I’m working on that part. In fact, I filmed myself three times this past week but didn’t want to post it because I didn’t finish the week and felt like a failure so I will tack them on to this week’s video. (Don’t hold your breath on getting that video – I’m a little wishy-washy on videos – I’m sure you picked up on that by now).

The books I read.

And my writing tracker – against, a colossal fail.

My blog post tracker/idea page. Funny. I write these down and then never look at it again. That’s super helpful!

And I tried something else different this month – wrote down some songs I was digging this month along with headlines that I want to remember/memorialize.

And that’s it! I know I make fun of myself on these journal spreads, and let’s face it, there’s so much to laugh at, but honestly, I’m having fun with them and I figure they will be fun to look back on someday, right?