All In A Night's Work (5-17-06)

So I worked yesterday. I got to stay at The Closet for once... I wish I had taken a picture of our quarters there, you can't possibly picture how tiny it is. It's a 10X10 ft. room with a couch and a recliner, but I still don't think that's doing it justice. Tonight if I'm lucky enough to get stuck there again I'll be sure to get a good pic. In two short weeks I'll be stuck there indefinitely. YAHOOOO! At least I get free coffee and non stop action courtesy of the Local ER (10 feet away from The Closet).

It was a slow night. We got one call around 2am... It woke both of us up.

Let me backtrack a bit. I should probably mention that the overhead lights in The Closet are controlled by a motion sensor. We had it rigged with masking tape several layers thick in an effort to keep the lights from coming on whenever someone coughed. It worked just fine until OCD Partner for the night decided to "redecorate" The Closet. (I should probably add that OCD Partner for the night normally works in a much more spacious station.)

OCD Partner managed to move every piece of furniture in The Closet (ALL THREE OF THEM) to a different wall. In addition to that she decided to peel the several layers of masking tape off of the light sensor in order to apply "a more uniform" layer of tape.

Needless to say every half hour or so the blinding lights would come on, waking us up. This was unacceptable to my partner for the night. She was on the second half of a 24-hour-shift and really just wanted to crawl into her nice bed back at HER quarters. Which I might add (once again) are palatial compared to MY quarters. I digress.

So we had just fallen asleep for the third time when the phone rang with our county call. My mind just doesn't jump into high gear when I'm woken up yet, which is partly why I have such a hard time sleeping on my shifts. So anyway, the call is literally three blocks from my mom's house.

We're lifting the cot into the back of the rig when *HOLY CRIPE* my hand gets caught in the cot once it's collapsed. Ow ow ow ow OWWWWWWWWW. It's not broken, thank GOD. (Mental note... my hand does not go *there*... It goes *there*).

At this point my partner tells me she's heading home, she can't sleep at our quarters due to the slippery leather couch and lighting issues. So I'm going to get to sleep the rest of the night because we'll be out of service. What the HELL? Seriously? OCD Partner is going to go home for the night because she was stupid enough to take our intricately applied layer of tape off of the motion sensor AND NOW SHE CAN'T SLEEP?

A postscript: I did discover that when tired enough, one can sleep through the lights coming on and turning off every half hour or so.