Theisen Trio: keeping it real, tears and a total brain dump

These last few weeks have been hard. Work has been emotionally and physically draining. What's that you ask? What exactly do I have to do going in at such an obscene hour?

Basically I am an air traffic controller for phlebotomists around the cities. I go in at four and get the routes set for the morning runs. We outreach to nursing homes and in order to be efficient it is required of us to beat the nursing home staff getting residents up and about so we stalk them early and get most of our work done before they are at breakfast or bingo. The state requires us to draw blood in a private area and our insurance company requires us to not transport patients so as soon as they have left their room we are at the mercy of the staff to transport them back to their room which is alot easier than it sounds. Every nursing home we serve has a "lab day" where they try to get the majority of the tests for the patients done that morning. PT/INR's and fasting labs are always given morning priority and then there is timed draws for medication administration and the obligatory STAT's that come in when the NH staff forgets to put in an order for the morning. It's dispatching 15-17 phleb's and another 5-6 couriers who deliver medication to hospice patients and pick up samples and making sure everything comes in before it goes "bad". It's training all the new staff and going out with the current staff to make times faster and help with hard sticks. It's making sure that everything is tight procedurally speaking and that we are upholding and keeping with the Hippa, CLIA and CAP regulations. It's researching the numerous problems that come up everyday and catering to the picky customers while listening to them eat our people alive and then giving into their demands. We have homes everywhere including the notable Buffalo, Waconia, Woodbury, Forest Lake and my personal favorites Anoka and CR. Most of our staff run 5-9 a.m. so we cram alot into those early hours and hope for the best. It's alot of knowing who you have on and making everyone happy. It's starting at 4 and hoping to get a break at 10:30. Lately we have been running on empty between not having a supervisor present for the last 11 weeks to having a manager "resign" because of budget cuts. Our team lead was stepped up to interim supervisor and I was stepped up to team lead. It doesn't mean much except that I appreciate the token and have always cared passionately about the office running smoothly and in turn appreciate that they have noticed. I don't do anything with half my heart and this office is no exception. To make the staff happy we granted one too many vacays over the last 3 weeks so our 17 routes has been manned by like 10-11 people. In layman terms: STRESSFUL. Add in the nearly everyday sick call and you have yourself a scheduling nightmare, every.single.morning. Bored yet? haha, I wish it was boring!

I haven't taken a break in more than 2 weeks. I run on a Mt. Dew and granola bar everyday. The upside? I only have to pack my lunch for Monday and it's still sitting there waiting for me to someday actually eat it. The downside? One can only run on a Mt. Dew for so long before the proverbial $h!% hits the fan.

I have a sidekick. Her name is TJ. We don't even have to speak, mostly because who wants to speak at 4 a.m. but anyways we work insync without words spoken to get the work done. We run, we don't walk. We laugh and pick eachother up. She has become a dear friend and we may or may not consider ourselves the "A" team. She has been gone for 10 days and her ying to my yang finally gave way Thursday when I opened my inbox only to discover once again that everyone asks everything of TJ and I and I could simply not do it all on my own. I cried, big fat alligator tears and I slowed down to a crawl. I dropped a few unflattering words and when one of my phlebs walked in whining over the fact that she only slept for 4 hours the night before I might have started giggling. Giggling in a way that only crazy people who never get more than 4-5 hours every.single.night. do. Eventually I collected myself and by Thursday I finally got a break. I love it when my co-workers say "just take a break" unfortunately I am not wired like that. I cannot leave things hanging or people waiting. I am always striving to do more, work faster, be more efficient and on top of everything. It's always been like that. In school I was always the first the one to put their pencils down 10 minutes into a 70 minute exam. I would rather push through and be done than sit down and have anything staring at me. I also might have a touch of OCD but nothing has been diagnosed. : )

This last week or so we have watched both the RNC and some of the DNC...we are equal opportunity in this house ; ) Mostly we watched the DNC just for Michelle Obama. You can't not like her. She seems so nice and so perfect. Futhermore, after hearing Mitt praise his wife for staying home all those years with 5 boys while he was away and then seeing Michelle and how much she does for her own kids I realized that I am a complete and utter failure.

We are so hard on ourselves aren't we?! I wished and wanted more for my kids in those moments and then I went to work to the next day and just got pounded on again.

It was also a combination of Daddy being gone so much and me being the everything at home. I done good but I tired. Nice English eh? I like rising to the challenge and being successful as the "single" mom but every "super" mom has an event that within seconds can break them. Mine was, once again, feeling like a failure of a mom. I served pizza for the second time this week and after an emotional day of dropping Riley off for yet another first day in turn catapulting him toward leaving the house for college I lost mine marbles. I had a good, old fashioned, soul cleansing, ugly cry. It was crying over how big my baby is (she is saying new words everyday, today was "jump" and "cup") to crying over how big my other baby is ("mommy I loved everything about today") to missing my husband so much to dreading the weekend because honestly it's way too busy. It was remembering Aeon and how pitiful my own problems are. So we put on pj's at 5:24, snuggled up and sat together on couch cushions awaiting Daddy. I vowed to be a better mommy tomorrow. I started a checklist in my head of what we needed to do before the snow flies. I started a list of things we can sign up for this winter to keep us busy and then I lost my marbles again.

We spend so much time pinning and googling new and cool ideas to make us the ideal, picture perfect mom and for what? Cause all I see when I look at my Pinterest page is a whole bunch of super cool stuff that I have never even come close to attempting. My husband sighs when I explain and yet he still doesn't understand "pinning" and I gawf at his ignorance. But tomorrow I promise to be gawf at myself for being as ignorant as thinking pinning will make me a better mom. I will gawf at thinking signing Riley up for swimming and Awana will make me a better mom. Once again, tomorrow I will be better...I swear we just can't win.

So I throw up my hands and admit that we eat pizza alot and when I am too lazy to cut up fruit I hand my kids gogo squeezes. It's how we roll.

As much as I/you can pick apart everything we/others do, deep down we must know we are good mommies who love our children dearly and even in those moments where we just want to scream. All of this is so much easier said than done but eventually, maybe, someday it will sink in.

If there is one thing that is good about Pinterest it is finding little gems like this...