"You've been away too long Craig"...mAn FRoM sNoWY RivER kNEw tHe DEaL!

 

I left Justin at the Palmerston North airport 3 months tomorrow. 

We both cried then, and inside I continue to cry now. 

This has been the single hardest challenge of my life. 

If I hated money before, I loathe it with a passion now.

I am exhausted, over worked, overtired, over night shift. 

My body involuntarily sleeps now when I fall on to my dorm bed. 

I am unable to enjoy anything except breathing while sleeping; even that's an effort.

I am completely over rude, obnoxious Australian women 'slinging shit' (literally) and with aggresion in the labour ward! I have never been so disgraced and dishonoured as a Midwife as I have in the past week. I am ashamed of my fellow country-women. 

Let me remind people of the enormous responsibility that Midwives take on every shift that they drag themselves into such merciless maternity units. Midwives are trained birth experts; NOT servants! 

It is not our fault, but it does become our problem when you have not been compliant during your pregnancy, and when you have continued to smoke or take drugs despite the warnings. You put our careers and our livelihoods at risk every time we greet you at the door with a non-judgemental smile. 

Neither is it our duty to accommodate your 15 family members, and to turn a blind eye when your 16 year old boyfrined decides to hop into bed with you at 2200 hrs hoping we'll never notice. Private rooms - Maybe. Four bed bays - No! Wake up to yourselves and grow a brain!  

You also have an average of 37 weeks to pick up a book and read "BABY! I'm about to have one; the hard facts". There is no excuse. If you attended your antenatal appointments like you should have, you would have been able to ask any questions you like, and chances are you would have been educated without even knowing it by your trained birth expert.

And for those that have already had 13 children to 6 different fathers...you still need to attend your antenatal appointments, have tests done, and ask questions. There is no excuse! You are not an expert just because you have punched out a bakers dozen from your vagina. 

I would keep ranting and venting but I am falling asleep over my computer. It's too much effort. I can't be bothered.

  

sLeEP dEPriVAtiOn; wHat i'D ReALLy lIKe tO do tO yOUr faCe

I am doing many a night shift,

And all I hear is you shuffle and drift. 

You're making noise near my lair, 

I'd like you dead, to be fair. 

Keep going Mr talks out loud,

I assure, your body will never be found.

And lady with the hideous cackle,

For you I will acquaint with gag and shackle. 

Far from being reasonable without sleep;

You will not see or hear me creep,

Up behind you with such stealth,

And take away your living health.

-cHeRRy

 

 

HoW tO suRVivE DorMitORy LiViNG

O.K. first of all I'm not even sure if it is possible 'tO suRVivE DorMitORy LiViNG', but there are some important facts you need to know before you try, and definitely some things you should avoid.

I have been blessed with the opportunity (lets just say science experiment) to coexist and live in a dorm; with other people of both sexes. Well all women and one other person of the opposite sex...lets just give him the pseudo name "Black Stallion". Let's all feel sorry for him. Black Stallion has gone now and despite being a good spooner to most - he was loyal to his girlfriend back in Sydney; what a good boy. So I guess Tip Number One is  'make sure you are aware that the dorm is unisex before you move in' ...it can take you by surprise if you are on the toilet and then a man walks in and uses the cubical next to you. You never get use to that. 

Also, it's important to be social, even if you usually aren't. No matter what, you must make an effort to get to know you dorm mates. This is paramount to survival because there are times when you want to talk the ear off someone and it doesn't really matter who...if people kind of know who you are this helps. You can't just walk out of your room after a month and a half and start up a conversation with someone who's never laid eyes on you other than in the shadows. That's just creepy. And people will start to speculate things about you. It's best to be in with the crowd and doing the speculating. Tip Number Two 'make friends, learn to speculate'. 

You must be patient and peaceful with group television viewing. The important thing to remember here is that no one person owns the remote or has the right to choose the programs that everyone watches, but unfortunately there's always some control freak who seems to break this rule continually. My mantra is 'I can just go to my room when I've had enough of this bullshit; screw you guys I'm going to my room'. You will never get to watch what you want anyway, so don't expect to. If you are super cool like me you will go forth to the linen closet and find an old dormant mini TV and hook it up with a $20 Dick Smith set-box and DVD player and learn to hide away in your room for hours watching all your favorites from The English Patient to the TrueBlood series. Tip Number Three 'expect to share or become independent but risk being speculated about'. 

Eating food is an important factor to survival no matter where you find yourself. It is interesting that I should bring this up...because it is the one issue I struggle with the most. Perhaps I shall learn something from my infinite wisdom. Firstly, everything is communal. You rely on others to be clean and tidy; and they're not. You trust that others won't use your milk; but they do. You compete for fridge space, freezer space, cupboard space and 'get the hell out of my space' space. It's a free for all and it's dangerous. Especially if you haven't been able to cook a decent meal in over a month because all you've got to work with is an over-sized splade, a rusty cheese grater and a deformed Tuppaware container. The trick here is to buy frozen meals, pray to God that the 'convection oven' doesn't cark it and pretend that you really just want to lose weight. Tip Number Four 'TV dinners are better than eating raw goanna and drinking squeezed elephant dung' (by a small margin). 

Everyone is equally as pissed off as you are for being away from home and loved ones. It doesn't matter here if you are a nurse, midwife, physio, doctor or a lab technician - you are all here because you need the money, not because you want to be here. Everyone hates having to share the one shower, the two toilets, the one telly, the one washing machine. But it also binds you with a common hatred of all things institutional. Conversations often start with 'have you just finished work?' or 'when are you working next?'. Then you move on to how 'shitty and cold the weather is in Dubbo today', followed by...some good old fashioned 'speculating' about the new people moving into the still warm beds from the two physio's that just left. Tip Number Five 'One for all, and all for one', you can't escape it, and neither can anyone else - so just go with the flow. 

And although you might be lonely and pining for your husband, boyfriend, lover or friend, it is also important to remember to enjoy the quiet times around the dorms when no one else is here to annoy you. Instead of wasting your time blogging, you should be raiding everyone else's food stuffs, using the toilet in peace, watching what you want on TV or just channel surfing mercilessly. So the last Tip of the day is Number Six 'when you find time to yourself, own the MF dorm like a Boss!'. 

       

4 mOnThs iN a LEaKy BoAT

Hi Everyone, long time no blog. I know some of you will have been 'watching this space' for some rare glipse into the life of cHeRRy and all my marvelous travel stories. You've all been disappointed, until now. Now you shall be rewarded for your loyalty. Here is a chance to go make yourself a hot drink, preferrably caffiene enhanced, and settle in to your iPad (if you are as cool as I clearly am now), and try to keep up with my exceptional blog genius mindset. *actual coffee pause* Ok, so here it is...this is the blog you have all been waiting for... I am indeed back in Australia, the main land, the land of OZ, miles away from my beloved Justin. Iam attempting to fulfill two midwifery contracts that equal four months. The only reason someone would decide to do this is for money, and lots of it. It's not hard to figure out why Kiwi's are leaving NZ at the speed of knots. I'd suspect they'd row themselves out if they had too, and some do and win medals (and some have perished trying), that's why Kiwi blokes are fit when they hit Aussie shores. Also not hard to see why so many Aussie gals are swooping in for some ripped Kiwi action - I was no exception 12 years ago. Anyway, how did I get onto this... So I have come back (but not home) to my native country to earn some actual money, real currency in the real world. Earning money in $AU dollars again has the added advantage of providing our Australian Mortgage with some much needed sustinance. It was getting a bit malnourished from the pitiful $NZ diet we had tried to feed it. So what have I been up to?... Well firstly, being an agency midwife/nurse is a lot like going to Summer camp, when you really didn't want to go. You find yourself sending letters back home begging for your hasty release; Justin just ignores mine. You stay in accommodation which is substandard to say the least. You make friends with strangers you ordinarily wouldn't give the time of day too. You eat crap and eventually find yourself less hungry, and then you notice you are losing weight and then you stop fighting it. I have to say I have some days when I really miss home and Justin, and then other days when I am coping better with it. I think on those good days I am working and keeping busy. It's when you stop and think about things that it all comes crashing down. I have almost changed my tickets home several times already. I never really even expected to make it this long. I'm almost half way. Two months down. That's 61 days of living camp hell. And another 61 days to go. Some of the highlights, in point form... * being the sole accoucher for breech twins and both being born in 'the caul' (waters intact) six minutes apart. That was an exciting shift on Anzac morning. The pink scrub shirt I was wearing has now been nicknamed my 'lucky twin shirt'. I may never get that opportunity ever again, with any luck. * I ended up in Cairns overnight when I had only expected a day trip, with a curious little malaysian midwife who was 65 years young. I had a great time, despite being force fed fruit from the woman every 10 mins. I don't think I've eaten fruit since my kidnapping. * I have been out 'clubbing' with a physio and a crazy ED nurse and danced so hard I crippled myself with a seriously unhealthy haematoma on the ball of my R)foot. I sung so loudly I almost lost my voice. And no night out is complete without a wholesome three-way spooning on a skinny dorm bed and laughing to boot. It was clean fun. I spooned the ED nurse actually. She was soft and cuddly. * I have done some interesting shifts in Special Care Nursery and the Children's Ward. I have had some privileged cuddles with some very beautiful babies. Many sets of twins. * I have been grocery shopping with the crazy ED nurse and we decided to look professional by taking our stolen shopping trolley through the drive-thru bottle-o. I have never laughed so hard, or looked more like an irresponsible and unprofessional ward of the state. We were on fire. * I have discovered 'TrueBlood'. And, yes, it is just vampire porn. That's why I love it. It's nothing like Twilight, but I am now a big fan. There has been so much more going on than this small list, but I feel it will suffice for now. And because I now have my very own swanky iPad I can now blog a little more routinely...so I will try to fill in some of the gaps soon enough. Stay tuned my pets.