THe FooLS oF aPRiL HaVe aRRiVeD

Normally I'm not one to whip out the GiaNT BooK 'o' PRaNKS on APRiL 1st. In fact coming up with any sort of shenanigans like that usually involves me calling someone else, picking their brain, and then carrying out the plan the other person came up with.

Well this year, APRiL 1st was spent at work. Breakfast was served and cleaned up, beds were made, water was passed and my vitals were charted. So there I sat with CRiSSy, ERiN, JyNeLLe, and a new volunteer DaNieL, at the nurses station. It was friday, and the stresses of the week had clearly eaten away at our sanity. That's when the idea hit me.  On the counter in a little caddy sat this bundle of highlighters, which are frequently used items at our little building. The next shift would be the next group to use them, and they would never see it coming.

It was then that I realized that you could take the bottom off of each highlighter, and take the ink out. Switch them up and green highlighter writes blue; yellow highlighter writes green, etc. You get the  idea.  Only I had no idea how I was going to get the bottoms off. Well since our Director of Nursing, JeFF, can solve just about any problem I ran over to his office and asked if he had any kind of tools to get the job done. Luckily he found me one giant pair of pliers; we had success!

Only it was much easier said than done. Switching the cartridges, thats a breeze! Getting the ink to actually soak through the tip so that it'll write a different color; not so much. By now all us girls were scribbling on paper, shaking highlighters and making sure that when we set them down bottoms faced up. Isaac Newton discovered gravity, and now we were going to use it to our advantage. 

Just take a second to really picture this though. You've got four girls sitting at a the nurses station. Each one has a highlighter in their hand. The only way to get the ink down the tip was to whack it down. So we're all sitting there shaking highlighters, hitting them against our hands (which eventually began to hurt), our legs (which hurt a lot faster than our hands), and eventually our shoes (at least we got smart at some point :) ). We're all laughing hysterically because we all look like we have tourettes. We'd hit the point where everything was hilarious :) After a good two or three hours later (with time in between for answering call lights and eating staff lunch and such) we finally got all the highlighters finisherd. Once again we had success :)

In the meantime, STaFF LuNCH! Our administrator FReD had grilled all of us up some burgers and hot dogs. Unfortunately we had a lot of pickups and a couple of doctors appointments, so they had to pull Crissy from the floor so drive people around. But the rest of us girls, and JaNNeTTe from housekeeping quickly made way to the break room. The smell of burgers had quite literally filled the building. So yummy! 

The laughter didn't stop there! Erin, Jannette and I were already back there eating, and Jynelle had been out getting one last light. Well you see, the kitchen had stacked all the toppings into little individual piles. All i wanted from my stack was a piece of lettuce. Erin and Jannette didn't want all their toppings either. So Jynelle, helped us out and took all of our leftover toppings. It was one big ol' burger! So here sits Jynelle, trying to stuff this huge thing in here mouth, and we are all dying of laughter as grease drips down her face. It was all a big joke, Jynelle doesn't normally eat like that :) Then out of nowhere she says "I'm a divorced woman who's been on a diet for 4 weeks! This is the most pleasure I've had in a long time!" and digs back into her burger. By now we are all laughing so hard we're crying!

Meet JaNNeTTe :)

Next thing we know we're cutting open the cake one of previous patients had brought over. Only we are cutting pieces smack dab out of the middle, and now it's being shoved in peoples faces! Now we can't breathe cause we're laughing so hard. Maybe you had to be there, but man oh man, it was such a great day! 

That there is what I absolutely love about my job. No matter how rough of a day, week, or month it's been we can still manage to put a smile on each others face. I am so so grateful for the girls I work with. Never before has the place I worked at felt so much like a family!

The next shift didn't even notice the highlighters were switched. But you know what, it doesn't even matter! It's exactly what each and every one of us needed to make a rough week great :) 

And...Crissy, if you read this, 

We SuRe WiLL MiSS You!!!!