rats

I had to quit my job working for the disabled client. My shift ran from 1am-9am, on Fri, Sat, and Sun nights, and when I first started, they said that I could nap in a recliner at the clients bedside and set a timer once ever 90 minutes to check on her colostomy bag, and make sure every thing else was ok - oxygen, urine bag and such.

After two weeks, they changed their mind, and said that I needed to stay awake until 4am, then I could nap until 5:30 when the client woke, get her what she needed, and chat with her 'till it was time for me to go. So we did that for a week. I have classes every day, and get up with the kids to get them off to school even before that, then home to make supper and do things like laundry and grocery shopping, so I'm pretty much going Monday through Friday from 7am to 9pm. Staying up till 4am on the weekends was very tough, but I could do it.

Then they said that I needed to stay up for the whole shift. There was just no way that I could do it. I don't really know why I needed to stay up during the whole shift. Some nights the colostomy ran very slow, so I emptied it twice in a shift. Other times it ran very fast, needing to be emptied once an hour.

In any case, with my weekly schedule, it was just impossible to flip my sleep cycle 180 degrees every weekend. A cynical part of me feels that perhaps the client made it intentionally difficult for me because she wanted a different aide; she and I had very little in common -- she loved to talk about make-up and scents and lotions, and what her soap opera characters where doing this week, and I would rather lamely say things like "uh-huh, oh, really, that's nice." There were no hard feelings, though I was really disappointed that it worked out that way.

I've got a couple interviews for some waitressing jobs this week; I'm sure I'll have something else by next weekend.