Martha's So-Called Life

i fail to understand...

Will someone please explain to me how 10/10 pain a person has experienced for 3-4 weeks suddenly becomes something that they need to do something about at 2am on a Tuesday?  Or how a headache that someone has had for a week requires action at midnight on Saturday night.  Or why people decide to address the bleeding that they've had for six days at 9pm on Sunday.  

These are all things that I deal with at work on a regular basis.  I try to give everyone the opportunity to prove to me that they legitimately need to be seen at the hospital for their issues, but more often than not, they don't.  Please keep in mind that most of these people have doctors that they see on a regular basis while they are pregnant, so it baffles me as to why they want to come see us at the hospital when they could wait for 4 more hours to see their own doctor.  None of these visits are usually fast because I have to wait for labs to come back before I can call the physician to tell them what is going on.  So often times they sit in a tiny room for an hour or more waiting to hear that they need to go home and call their doctor's office when it opens in the morning.  

Do these people seriously have nothing better to do in the middle of the night?  Shouldn't they be sleeping?  That's what I would be doing if I wasn't at work taking care of them!  

Don't get me wrong, there are certainly people that come in with legitimate issues, and I am more than happy to care for them.  I'm even happy to care for those who come in thinking something is terribly wrong and it turns out to be nothing.  But, I find it very hard to muster up compassion for a person who just decideds that they want to come see me at 3am for something that could easily be dealt with at 8am by their doctor.

I think my all time favorite is the weekend emergeny yeast infection.  It never fails that in the middle of the night on a Friday or Saturday someone comes in with an emergeny yeast infection (or something similarly ridiculous).  My guess is that the FOB (father of the baby) is out partying at the bar and mom wants him to come home...so she goes to the hospital with some ridiculous complaint so she can call him and tell him she's at the hospital.  Then he will look like a total ass if he doesn't stop partying to come make sure she's ok.  People are awesome. 

the decision is made...

I have decided that this will be the new home for my little blog.  It's much easier to manage here than it is on WordPress.  

I'm working on getting the www.marthaflorence.com to bring you here instead of the other site, so if you follow or subscribe, don't change anything just yet!

what we're eating 1/30-2/5

Monday: Spinach and Feta Casserole (we didn't have this last week)

Tuesday: Quinoa & Chicken Greek Salad (we didn't have this last week either...)

Wednesday: Spaghetti

Thursday: Bean Burritos

Friday: Beef & Lentil Chili

Saturday: Leftovers

Sunday: Chicken Parmesean (I'll make extra spaghetti sauce for this on Wednesday)

the coldest run

Today I went on the coldest run ever.  Since I am attempting to train for a half marathon in what is shaping up to be one of the coldest January's on record, I had to lower my standards a bit.

Other than attempting not to freeze to death, it was a pretty good run.  I was definitely cold by the time I was done (I had a harder and harder time moving quickly enough to generate enough heat to keep me warm), but I still have all my fingers and toes (for now).  

I think this is definitely the low end of my temperature threshold, I think it would be pretty miserable to run at anything much colder.  The whole time I kept thinking about how nice it will be to run at 70+ degrees.  When I told John that he said, "but you hate running when it's hot!" This is true.  It's just hard to remember that when you are trying not to freeze to death...

a new home?

I'm testing out what could become a new home for my blog.  I switched to WordPress just over a year ago and I like it, for the most part, but it is very difficult to make things look the way I want given that I have no experience with CSS.  

I did and experiment and set up my blog over here (I got a 14 day free trial), and it was MUCH easier to get it to look the way I want.  If I decide to stay, I will be linking my domain name to this blog, so you (hopefully) won't have to update anything if you are a subscriber.  

As always, feedback is appreciated.  Leave a comment or send me an email if you have any opinions about my move!

fitbit

Recently, I purchased a new gadget called a FitBit.  At first, I thought it was just an overpriced pedometer (which it kind of is), but it actually does quite a lot more than that. My favorite part is the website that accompanies the tracker (free to use for those both with and without trackers).  It has info about how many calories you should be consuming (based on your gender, height, and weight) and it updates the amount based on how active you are.  You can track what you eat and it gives you a running tally of how many more calories you should consume as well as how many were added to your daily allotment based on your activity. Obviously I haven't done much today...but to my credit, it is only 1:38am and I have been sitting at my computer since before midnight.   Also, please note that my daily calorie allotment starts out at 900 cal/day (I have it set to make me lose 2lbs/week), it almost always increases to 1200 with just normal daily activity...I don't want you all to think I'm starving myself...although if you know me, you know how much I enjoy food. It also translates your steps into miles (the default stride length is based on your height, you can calibrate it if it is extremely inaccurate for you), and determines how many flights of stairs you've climbed (10ft of elevation gain = 1 flight of stairs). My favorite is the graph of your activity throughout the day. You can use it to track your sleep (I don't), which is why it says "excluding sleep" under activity breakdown (that's also why it looks like I sat around and did nothing for 20+hours). I slept from 2am until noon, was running errands around 2:30pm, and went running around 4pm.  I love how it looks on the graph.  Next time I have a busy night at work, I will have to post the graph of how that looks too. I just saw that Nike is coming out with something similar that is a bracelet.  That might be a better design than the FitBit because I wear mine on my pants and I have almost sent it to the laundry at work a couple of times, that would be harder to do if it were on your wrist. I haven't been at work in a week (that's where I have been weighing myself), so I don't know if it's actually helping me obtain my health and fitness goals, but at the very least it's a fairly effortless way to count calories and keep track of exercise.

thoughts on running (when it ' s 3 degrees and snowing)

Here's what my last run looked like in graph format It was approximately 3 degrees (yes above zero) with a slight breeze. First of all, I need to remember that 30 minutes out (and uphill) does not equal 30 minutes back (and downhill).  Note to self: Run longer. This run was especially painful.  My butt got really ridiculously cold (I am attributing this to the 0.5 mph wind that was blowing at my back on the way out...at 3 degrees even the slightest north wind is frigid).  This might not seem important, but it is.  My cold butt made it feel like I was running while trying to hold a penny between my cheeks.  Ouch.  By the time I was done, my legs were barely moving.  I don't know if you knew this, but you need your glutes to move your legs.  Just saying... On the way back the wind was in my face, which made my eyes water, and given that it was quite cold outside my watering eyes (combined with the fine snow that was falling) made my eyelashes freeze together which made it hard to see.  It's a good thing I was running on a relatively straight path with relatively few obstacles with my highly trained seeing eye dog. Sadly, the run I went on the day before this one, when it was -6 degrees, was better. Now that I've thoroughly overanalyzed 52 minutes of my life...I think I'll try to do less thinking and more running next time.

hibernation

Apparently I've been hibernating.  Given that the temperature has barely made it above zero degrees, this is not unexpected. Not much has been happening around here.  Annie dog came to stay with us over the weekend.  Her parents and grandparents were out of town, so she got to come and play with Kiva for a few days. This week I've had seven days off (currently at day seven of seven).  My first two days off I attempted to be productive and ran errands.  Then Saturday, I stayed in bed all day (minus the hour I spent having coffee with my dad and Paula).  Annie was more than happy to keep me company during my day of napping. Sunday John and I hung out...and went to Costco.  Then I took a nap...for three hours. Oops! Monday was equally unexciting.  As was Tuesday.  Although I did manage a run with Annie (my friend, not the dog) in below zero temps.  She's running the Disney Princess 1/2 Marathon too...sometimes it's nice to have someone to suffer with when you are forced to run in the freezing cold. I'm also working on a few new things for the shop which I should be able to get listed sometime tomorrow.  Here's a sneak peek... More info coming when I get them listed!  

what we ' re eating 1/23-1/29

Monday: Dinner out Tuesday: Chicken with Leeks & Sun-dried Tomatoes Wednesday: Spinach and Feta Casserole Thursday: Cheesy Zucchini Enchiladas Friday: Tortellini Saturday: Leftovers Sunday: Quinoa and Chicken Greek Salad

my routine sucks

I'm currently working on day five of seven off this week.  Usually by this point I am able to get more sleep at night and function on a more "normal" schedule.  Such is not the case this go around. I keep waking up at 2am and not being able to go back to sleep until after I get up around 7:30 and have some breakfast (because I'm starving), then I sleep until noon, or later, and the cycle repeats itself.  It's rather frustrating.  Especially the part where I'm dead tired by 10pm and can't keep my eyes open...so I go to sleep...for four hours. Now I'm at the point where I just have to deal with it, because in three days I have to stay up all night so I can go to work anyway! On the plus side, it warmed up and snowed so I am no longer risking life and limb when venturing out of the house!