Working nights and a weekend of wedding planning

And I am now day one into my stretch of nights…nights aren’t that bad.  It’s just that …

a) it can take a couple of days for your body to adjust to the 12 hour shift in schedule, and

b) your life consists of work, sleep, and fitting in eating when you have time and think of it.  Any sort of socializing is pretty nonexistent.  For example, Dean was all full of energy just now trying to engage me this evening, and I was like, “leave me alone.  It’s like 4:30 in the morning for me.  I need my coffee.”  haha.  Poor Dean : )  I just yelled at him again for being too loud.

How do I adjust to nights?

-The first night is just long, there’s no way around it.  I’m not accustomed to taking naps, so I usually treat my day before my first night like any other day and just wing it the first night, staying up the whole day and night.

-I usually crash the morning after the first night, but starting with night #2, I usually try to workout when I get home.  I don’t shut my mind off very well after a sometimes very intense 12 hour shift, so it’s nice to unwind with a workout.  Some people ask me if workout so “late” energizes me and makes it hard to fall asleep…. trust me, you’re already pretty tired at that time after having woken up between 4-6 pm, worked from 8pm to 8am and then worked out from ~9-10 am.  Trust me, doing an hour workout won’t counteract the sleepiness for too long.

-Honestly, I think the hardest thing about working nights is the test it presents for my patience.  You’re tired and potentially working in a high stress environment if it’s a busy night…It can sometimes take a lot of self-control to not snap at someone and to remain friendly.  Like, for instance, me just telling Dean to leave me alone, or remaining friendly when another resident in the hospital wants you to review a study with them (as a trauma is coming in through the ED)–they have no way of knowing how busy it may be in the ER.  Or not taking our your frustration fo the busyness of the ED on the tech who is always bringing you the imaging requests to protocol.

-This next series of nights will present a little bit of a challenge, because there are some things I have to get done during the day, like meeting with a potential florist or a dental appointment I scheduled weeks in advance, or our premarital class on Sunday.  It’s easy to want to worry or complain about these commitments, but I remind myself that if I had a kid, that would be a 24 hour job, and I could potentially be waking multiple times when I should be sleeping, so c’est la vie.

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This past weekend, which I had off, was jam packed with wedding stuff, which my mom came in town to help me with.  We had a tasting with our caterer, looked through linens for the reception, discussed the schedule for the big day, went wedding shoe shopping, and ran around to some stores to look into registries.  I also had another appointment with a hair and makeup person.  Below are some pics from the weekend:

My mom and I at Whole Foods, sipping on some sparkles while we walk around.

Look at this chocolate-strawberry-making bar at whole foods! Brilliant!

Yummy.

Makeup trial number two. The lady came to our apartment for the trial. I liked her a lot better than the other place I tried last week, and for those who left comments about not giving up on fake lashes….I tried them this time and really liked them!

Hair trial #2

Deciding on linens for the reception. The coral color is the color of the bridesmaid dresses.

Wedding cake trial shots! Best shot ever : )

I was super excited to realize that my mom was just as (ok, almost as, but not quite as) addicted to Revenge as I am. What?? I was also very excited and proud of myself for figuring out how to record the show from iphone while we were away from the apartment.

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Amongst all the weekend activities, we of course made time to watch Bachelor.  Who’s happy to see Tierra gone?!

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