Being a nurse, I work a lot of weird hours. I've worked days, nights, and everything in between. I've done 4 hour shifts, 12 hour shifts, and my share of 16 hour shifts. I did a double the night before our oldest son was born. It comes with the job.
I think I average about 3 hours of sleep a night, when things get really nuts. This week, I'm working 11pm-3am whilst our night nurse is on vacation. She is living it up in NYC, whilst I take calls. Every night, hubby looks at me and says "what are you doing?" "Working," I reply. "When are you ever gonna live a normal life," he mutters. I'm thinking probably never. It's been this way for 23+ years as an RN, and even before, so maybe this is normal for me, I don't know.
There are some bad things about working nights. Back in the days before direct deposit, I got a speeding ticket after working nights, because I had forgotten to put my check into the bank, and tried to do it with no sleep--that cost me about $100 bucks. When we first moved into our house, our cat got angry with me for closing the basement door where her box was -- so she peed on me. Talk about the ultimate disrespect: that cat climbed right up on me, kneaded around a little like they do, then peed right on my hip. TWICE. And then there was the drunk who used to call me and sing "Strangers in the Night" on a pretty regular basis.
Hubby cut a hole in the basement door that's there to this day.
One of the worst experiences I had when working nights was when I had a serial obscene phone caller. He must've figured out that it was fun to talk to someone who is nearly in a coma, because he would call me every Sunday morning. I had no idea, till I work up actually talking to him. Happened several times before I learned to leave the phone off the hook when I sleep.
So here I am, till 3am, killing time, but hopefully not killing any callers.
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