Awesome. Awesome Day.

You ever have one of those days where your brain just can't connect the dots?  Where tasks that should be mere muscle memory become like a monkey doing a math puzzle and even those that know and love you want to call you Blonde?  Everything I did today had me feeling like a complete airhead.  I was near to asking someone to blow in my ear so I could get a fill up.  I don't know if I am more sleep deprived than usual, suffering from the effects of sunspots or incipient senility, but I had problems today. 

One of the nurses came and asked me to evaluate her patient who was a post-op C-section with calf pain.  I went to the bedside, queried where the pain was, what it felt like, if she had been wearing her TED hose and SCDs, felt for heat, unequal swelling and checked for Homan's sign.  All were negative except for pain with gentle palpation.  I looked at both of her calves and they didn't appear to be any different in size/swelling, but, being the experienced high risk obstetric inpatient nurse I am (with the certification to prove it...HA!), I measured both calves.  And I measured them again.  And then a third time.  Then I did equal measurements on both legs from ankles to knees.  Now this was a large woman.  Her calves were nearly the size of my thighs, but I knew, just KNEW she couldn't be measuring 460cm on her right leg and 420cm on her left.  They didn't look that big or that different.  So I measured again.  And got the same result.  The clinical picture didn't fit the imperial evidence.  Hmmm.  Nonetheless, I paged her physician and told him of my findings.  He said, "There is how much difference between the two?"  I repeated my findings, adding, "I measured three times.  But she has no, and I mean NO symptoms other than the slight pain. "  He said he would be down in a few minutes.  I hung up and my synapse fired. I realized that since this tape measure was different from the one I'd used for the last 12 years, something was amiss. Back I went to the room and re-measured, this time looking closely at the numbers and realizing the line for the centimeters is where the decimal point would go.  So what I was reading as 46(line)0 cm would actually be 46(point)0 cm.  Could I be a bigger asshole?  Or a bigger airhead!  I knew what I was seeing and what my brain was perceiving could not be accurate.  (lets not get into me not saying, "gee, this doesn't look like an abnormally long tape measure...say one 4 meters long.").  Holy crap.  I'm retarded.  I beat cheeks out to the phone, re-page the doc and clarify my findings.  He replied, "I was hoping you read that wrong."  He proceeded to call me "460" for the rest of the night.  There are worse nicknames, I guess.  And at least it wasn't the middle of the night that I unleashed my stupidity on him.  I still can't wait until his ass graduates in July though.

Then, I came home to find my flag wrapped around the outdoor light fixture and the pole bent, tinfoil that the dogs got out of the recycle bin in the pantry chewed up all over the carpet, and a house at 53 degrees and a non functioning furnace.  So here I sit, blogging in a house only 10 degrees warmer than the November night with the gas fireplace trying to warm my children as the emergency furnace fixer guy tries to get me heat so at least my pipes won't freeze.  Again, awesome.  Awesome day.


ADDENDUM:  That no good, lousy, waste-of-space, ain't-worth-the-powder-it-would-take-to-blow-him-to-hell, motherfucking contractor of mine screwed me over AGAIN!  There is water in the bottom of my furnace from his half assed fitting job on the vent pipes.  There's not supposed to be water in the bottom of my gas heated, electronic ignition furnace you fuckstick!!  Yet again, I have been Corey'd!  That's what I'm going to use in place of the f-bomb from now on: "Oh, Corey!"  or "mother-corey-er!"  If it wasn't worth dragging his ass to court and the ensuing fees after 8 years in this house, I'd have to do it.  Shitballs.