8 Rooms

I'm going to apologize ahead of time. The following might seem very confusing, but I want to record it for the future so I can remember some of our busy times and some of the pluses (time spent with the kids) and minuses (being so darned busy).

There has been a lot of recent construction at the hospital where I work. This month, they began work to renovate four out of the usual twelve operating rooms. The phrase "OR of the Future" pops up occasionally. Apparently some equipment will be installed on the ceilings and walls so that they can be pulled out and down when needed. Usually we run the 12 rooms until 3PM when we go down to no more than 6 rooms because of staffing. Because we start with only 8 rooms, they have extended the hours until 7PM when we go down to 4 rooms, again because of staffing. This is supposedly going to continue through the summer.

As a result of these changes, our work hours also changed. Before, I could expect to be able to leave by 3PM on most days. Now there are days when I can't expect to leave until 7PM. Luckily, there are lots of "regular" days also when I can leave by 3PM (although I don't leave yet because Anthony has soccer practice until 5:30PM). Luckily also, I haven't yet had to stay past 5-6PM. We get extra days off to balance out our work hours, and I'm looking forward to a few of those.

Wednesdays can be tricky because Patrick is busy taking Alex to guitar at 3:30PM then Faith Formation with Natalie at 4:30-5:30PM then Natalie's soccer practice moved to Mondays and Wednesdays at 6PM. Today is Ash Wednesday, so they didn't have Faith Formation class. Instead they went to mass at 5PM then straight to Natalie's soccer practice.

Tonight Anthony also had a home game, so he didn't get out until after 6PM. He didn't have to wait too long for me since I was able to leave by around 6PM. In short, the timing worked out for the best tonight. I know it won't always work out this way.