Snapshot

Ok, so it's 4am, I've just been pottering around but now I've run out of things to do and my crazed mind needs to keep itself occupied, dispite the way the sleep deprevation is being reflected by the downhill slide in my typing skills (the backspace key is my friend). Here's a snapshot of where I am at this point in time:

Reading: Tomorrow when the war began, John Marsden. We had to read it for English way back when, and I remember that I liked it and always meant to read the rest of the set. When I helped Fi set her new place up a couple of weeks ago I was unpacking books and found them, so I've borrowed the whole set.

Watching: Chris is trying to get me into Prison Break, watched the first episode last night. Liked it but not a good one to go to sleep to since you have to pay attention.

Listening: Triple M is on in the background, they were playing "Zombie" by Cranberries before - not sure if thats a statement about the state of mind of people who listen at this hour. In the car I have a new MP3 disk with 10 hours worth of music. I had a fair bit of time to kill when I made it so I numbered the tracks so that multiples by the same artist are spaced out - theres quite a few of Evanescence, Green Day, Live, Chili Peppers and some others.

Loving: My toe socks

Hating: My hair colour. Ok, so hate is too strong a word, but its gone blah after a few washes. It was meant to be dark violet, but it's come out brown. I'm going to go over it with red, which on hair as dark as this will just give a reddish tinge, nothing over the top.

Anticipating: Going to Queensland next Tuesday for a 2 week holiday, and to my housemate moving out.

Dreading: The final hour of my shift when everyones awake, I have a feeling its going to go badly, based on the events of yesterday evening.

In the next hour: I'm going to go make a cuppa, do the ironing and assist the first of the clients to get up and ready.

Later today: I'll go to bed around 8.30am, get up whenever I wake usually between 3 and 4pm, 5 at the latest, Visit the chiropractor at 6pm, Then Chris is making me dinner.

Feeling a bit more alert now, I always struggle around 3- 4am, but aparently thats pretty common. 'What's Good For You' had a segment about night shift workers the other day, and came to the conclusion that most people hit the wall around then. They also gave the increadibly useful advice that there is no ideal way to handle them, just don't eat junk food during the night, or have too much caffeine, and do what you feel like in terms of staying up or sleeping the next morning. Mind you, most of the conclusions on that show are blindingly obvious, they never tell you anything usefull. Among the other incredibly mind boggling finds this week, as the result of involved studies with a complete lack of controls: balanced diets more healthy than extreame vegan or meat- only diets! and, toilet seats best left down! Woah, who'da thunk it?

I said I was feeling more alert, I still reserve the right to ramble.

Wednesday Night Rant

It's that time of the fortnight again and I'm at work on my allnighter, my second last shift before going on holiday. I came on to find a very stressed and flustered casual who had a rant about the day she'd had and then as she was leaving told me that one of the ladies had not had anything to eat and had gone to bed without putting pj's on because she had been aggressive earlier in the afternoon and the casuals didn't want to risk going near her incase it set her off. I am extreamly ticked off about this as apart from anything else it is a breach of Duty of Care. Its fair enough not to ask someone to the dinner table when they aren't safe to be around but at the very least she should have been taken something to eat in her room. She wasn't even displaying behaviour by dinner time! I had to send the incident report to my supervisor and manager as the staff that were here didn't know how to use the email, so I included a note about the client having been left in her room all evening with nothing to eat. They can do with the information as they see fit. Meanwhile I have a plate of food ready incase she wakes up during the night, but she usually sleeps through.

I can't wait to finish my shift on Saturday, I swapped from my regular 8 - 3.30 shift on Friday, which I find really hard to get up for as my sleep cycle is still out of wack from tonight, to a 12 - 8pm shift on Saturday, which gives me a sleep-in, an extra 30mins work and Saturday rates. Also fits in with the boys schedule better than my Friday shift. So a winner on all counts, and after that I'm off work until the 4th of July! On Sunday I'll be heading up to mum's to leave the cats with her, coming back Monday afternoon and then Tuesday flying to Townsville via Brisneyland. Can't wait!

This week is an exersize in using up the perishables before going away. I mentioned in my last post that I got some lovely fresh meat and seafood from the Vic Market. On Sunday night I looked through my recipe books and picked out a few I wanted to make, then on tuesday bought everything I needed. Sunday night we had salmon cutlets grilled with soysauce and served with a rice pilau. Absolutely beautiful! Today I made Trinidadian lamb curry, which is lamb marinated in lime juice, fresh coriander, chilli, garlic, cumin and curry powder, then slow cooked with tomatoes and onion until really tender, served with basmati rice and sambal (sliced banana tossed in lemon juice and dessicated coconut). Tomorrow night Chris will be taking over the kitchen with a rice meatball bake and veges. Friday lunch will be chilli calamari (half made with lime juice, half with lemon to use up the halves left over from today. Fresh coriander in that recipe too so should use that up without any trouble), and Monday night good ol' steaks and roast veges. The nights we haven't planned to cook either we won't both be home, or in Saturday's case will be finishing work too late to cook. We should have plenty of leftovers to go through on those nights, we already have some of tonights curry in the fridge, which I think will be one of those things that improves with time.

Since we have all this beautiful fresh food, I've been making an effort to eat well in general this week. There is fruit and unpopped popcorn there for snacking, and I made pumpkin scones today because the hunk of pumpkin I got from the market was way too big to use up in main meals. I haven't bought any processed junk this week, and I'm not getting any take-away if I can help it. I prefer fresh food anyway when I have the time to cook, so its not like its a hardship. Chris was tempted by Maccas on the way to the station after work tonight just for the sake of getting out of the cold, but resisted. I want to see how big a difference cutting out the processed stuff makes to how we feel, I suspect it plays a big part. I imagine we'll be eating out alot while on holiday so just as well to start fresh. Unfortunetly It's much harder to eat well on the other week of my set roster because I have four 3-10pm shifts in a row, so I don't have any illusions about keeping up the healthy eating.


Anyway, I'm going to go do stuff, I'll read over this tomorrow some time to make sure it makes a kind of sense other than crazed early morning sense.

To market, to market

It's been an interesting weekend. Yesterday I changed my shift times to take a client to the footy. This had the potential to be a great outing despite the fact that I really couldn't have cared less about the match itself. It was actually a complete disaster which won't be entered into here. Moving on. Finished work at 6.30 and headed home. Chris had wanted to cook me dinner, I suspect as much to prove he could as anything else, but as we desperately needed to do a shop he settled for taking me out to a nice Chinese restaurant.

After dinner we headed round to Fi's parents place, who were away for the long weekend, for drinks and general carry on around the fire pit. It turned into a really fun night, despite Ross going home early. I was expecting Chris to pike fairly early on given he had to work today, but he actually got comprehensively drunk and stayed on until we all crashed around 3.30. Chris and I wound up sharing the single bed in the spare room, so needless to say neither of us slept particularly well, and the following morning he dragged himself up, rummaged in my bag for my car keys and somehow made it home and then to work

About half an hour after Chris left I made it out of bed, freshened up and headed off with Fi and Dan to the Queen Vic Market, which has become a regular haunt of theirs on a Sunday but which I had never been to. The reasons for never having been to this integral part of Melbourne life are varied. I suspect having a mother who has an intense dislike of crowded shopping centres and markets bordering on mild phobia has something to do with never having been as a child. Of course she was usually busy with my Autistic brother so it might not have made any difference. As an adult I simply don't as a rule spend that much time in the city, although Fi having moved to Fitzroy is changing that.

The apartment Fi and Dan have moved into is a stones throw from an abundance of pubs, cafes and trendy little boutiques, but lacking in anything resembling a local supermarket, so hitting the produce section was a focal point of the expedition. First though, general browsing of the stalls. It was fairly crowded because of the long weekend, and we got there late so we didn't browse many stalls closely, however from what I saw I know where I'm doing my Christmas shopping, and have earmarked several stalls for a closer look next time. I did make some totally unnecessary purchases; This floppy hat was my first purchase for the grand sum of $18. It's a bit big but sits nicely on my ponytail.



Next stop, $7 for toe socks. I've always liked them but never found the right pair. Fi got the same socks in hot pink stripes.












Finally a funky bag. The writing is a much clearer blue than it looks in the photo, and again, Fi got the same bag in pale pink. The damage: $5.

After the stalls it was on to the fruit and veg, where I grabbed whatever looked good that I was likely to use, then meat where I got some lovely fresh salmon cutlets, steaks, mince, diced lamb and for something different, calamari. I then followed along to the deli section, but as I don't eat cheese or much in the way of cured meats I didn't get anything there. Some of the dips and the sun dried tomato looked nice, but by that stage I was laden down with bags and not inclined to get more stuff on a whim.

All in all, a good way to spend the day. Dan dropped me home around 4, and since then I've just been relaxing, debating whether to shower, have a nap or look through my recipes.