Wrapping Up and Shipping Out...Where 2011 Is Taking Us

One shot of our new place...

Dan and I were married on August 21st. By the end of August, we were living in Watertown, South Dakota on our next work contract. It is now nearing the end of December...and indeed the year. 2011 will begin in South Portland, Maine...in a little beach cottage right on the coast. In a wrap up of our last contract, I've discovered a few things about myself...life...and even Dan and myself. Every contract leaves you with a chance to learn a bit more about this life and what you want and need from it.

Perhaps yes, we were living in the suite. It was actually, in fact, larger than the cottage that I had when living in Pennsylvania even. However, ohhh...we NEED a full kitchen!!! I can't wait for Maggi fried potatoes, BACON, tossing a pizza in the oven...everything that I've missed for 4 months. We'll have a washer and dryer. Our own. No need to share with anyone...and you don't know the value of that unless you've never had the experience of laundromats and shared laundry rooms. We'll be 3 blocks from the ocean...I'm looking so forward to where I can really expand my photography site and business. These are things that I look forward to.

Portrait Sarah took of me...Dec. 2010

These are the people...and things...I'll miss.

Sarah Kay Pekelder: You have truly become one of my best and dearest friends (family)...and I'm so happy for that. You have truly made my stay (and I know Dan's as well) easier. You are an AMAZING photographer...your work speaks for itself. You keep on believing in yourself...working hard...and following all your amazing dreams, and someday you will be a force to be reckoned with! I can't wait to see how far you are going to go...and I'm so proud of how far you've come even since I've met you. You are an amazing friend...and I love you. Always remember you are worth that.

Paul Waldner: I'm STILL not used to having a housekeeper, but I could never have asked for a better one...or the friend you've become. You likely mean more to me than you realize...and I love hearing your stories, picking on you, being picked on, and the amazingly compassionate person that you were in helping Dan and I fulfill a Christmas for 3 little kids...and a very deserving family. You give more of yourself than you take. Remember to spoil yourself a little. You are worth it.

Shirley: Your family...and you...are beautiful. You are raising a loving daughter whom even I find myself proud to have gotten to know. You have overcome adversity in your life...and yet find fun and humor in every little thing. You are a great comedian with a blossoming career. Don't give up on your dreams, because you are going to really headed places. I believe in you...and hope to stay in touch.
There have, of course, been others who have come into and out of our lives...and I thank all of you for that.

Breakfast always prepared for us?! Where is the bad in that? I'll miss stumbling downstairs half asleep...and eating my breakfast hot pockets and english muffins with Dan as he came home from work (usually bearing Starbucks in bed for me!) I will miss Watertown...for what it is. I've learned to crochet and knit since being here...we've found a few favorite haunts and taken some amazing photographs. Spending Christmas with a family (for you are not just staff) was perfect...and our holidays were perfectly amazing. Thank You.

And now...we leave. Suite 303 will no longer be home. South Dakota will no longer be my environment. New places, new people, new chances with every contract...and I must take them and enjoy them for all they are worth for the time we are there. Is it hard to leave people and places we love? Every time. Is it worth it for this lifestyle? Always.

And now, we pack. In a week and 3 days, we'll live in Portland, Maine. Stay tuned friends...and this strange gypsy journey shall continue!!!

Time Zones: Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, CLEVELAND...

If someone asked you the time zones of the United States, you'd likely list off Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, and Hawaii. You'd only be partly correct. You'd be missing Cleveland...which seems to have decided that it is going to just split from the Eastern Zone and create it's own. There is nothing in Cleveland that makes sense when it comes to time.

We lived on the 6th floor overlooking the House Of Blues...

4th Street in Cleveland, OH...it's ALWAYS like this...FUN.

Dan and I got a contract in Cleveland and lived in a loft downtown. When I say downtown, I mean DIRECTLY downtown. We were right in-between the 2 stadiums, next to the House of Blues, around the corner from the happenings of 4th Street, and down the street from Tower City...which is one of the 2 malls within walking distance from where we lived. Across the street was a building called "The Arcade" in which there was a hotel, several shops, and a little food court. We moved there just before Thanksgiving and lived there well through after Christmas. Now, I lived in NYC. I'd been to more cities than I can really count up until that point. I THOUGHT I understood how cities in general worked. Cleveland, however, had not received that particular memo. 5pm seemed to be their idea of appropriate closing time. This included the CVS, the local drug store. This included the corner deli, Starbucks, and the mall. THE MALL. It was right before Christmas and the mall closed at 5pm. On the weekends, closing time was even earlier...with them shutting the doors at 3pm. Now, maybe it's just me, but that's downright stupid. Dan working at nights made it even harder. Coming home at 7am, he would wake me with Starbuck's Coffee each morning, eat breakfast with me, and then go lay down and sleep until 4pm. It was then a mad scramble to figure out dinners or shopping needs in the hour we had until things that hadn't ALREADY closed DID. Should I want milk after 5pm, I had to drive out into the outskirts. There was even a sub shop across the street that took this to even harsher levels. They may have said they closed at 5pm, but I assure you...they lied. They closed when they ran out of bread. No ordering more. No stocking up in advance. They just decided that when the bread was gone...so were they.

At this time, I was having a full Crohn's Disease flare-up...and was seldom able to get out of the loft for long. 4th Street wasn't too hard...and on good days, I'd be able to head out to dinner with Dan. However, I was so sick much of the time that my doing the shopping before things closed was seldom possible...leaving Dan to have to scramble for us both. It was not ideal in the least...particularly in winter. Had it been almost ANY other place in the United States, it wouldn't have been an issue. Even in Mt. Vernon, IL...a town of fewer than 10,000...there is a 24-hour grocery store and CVS.

We aren't certain WHY Cleveland operates this way...although several reasons were explained to us. None of them, by the way, made sense. Least of all was the explanation that a local politician believed that if things should close by 5pm, it would in effect "force" families to be home together in the evenings...thus enforcing stronger family values. That all sounds perfectly lovely until you also realize that as the CVS was locking down their doors, the "Porn Van" was driving down Euclid to pick anyone who wanted up...and drive them out to strip clubs before later dropping them back off. So much for family values. Maybe Mr. Smith DID get out of work at 5pm. He may have wanted to buy his children dinner or his wife flowers...but no. He had 2 choices. Go home empty-handed or hop on the "Porn Van" and tuck those family values into some panties. I won't pretend this makes sense to me.

Cleveland did lend itself to quite a bit of strange types of experiences...but those will wait for other days and other blogs. Now living in South Dakota, I rest comfortable in the knowledge that I can go shopping at 3am...and there has never been an issue. For all those in Cleveland who are reading this...it's 3:30 Eastern "Cleveland Time" right now...better snap up those last few hours you have!!!

Rotting Chicken and Q-Tips...How It All Began

It began with rotting chicken and Q-Tips. Or, if you want to go back even a bit further, it started in the hospital.

I get asked quite often how I began this life of traveling, if I'm ok with moving so often, and even sometimes judged for Dan and myself's lifestyle. And so, for my part, I will now set the record straight.

This was my cozy little Bedroom...

I have always enjoyed traveling. I had also, in my life, moved quite a bit simply for the joy of new places, people, and experiences. Being a gypsy by blood, I guess maybe it really IS just in me to love the gypsy lifestyle. Then, due to unforeseen (my Crohn's fell back out of remission) and tragic circumstances, I found myself living in Erie, Pennsylvania in a little cottage all my own. I loved that little house. For the first year. Then I found the itch to leave was too great, and yet I had no ability to do so because of my Crohn's really causing so many issues. I lived in that little cottage for almost 3 years. Then along came Dan.

We met online casually. I had no interest in dating, as I was sick and not comfortable with putting that on anyone. So, we struck up a friendship and wrote for awhile. Then, I found myself in the hospital...yet again. Dan offered to come visit me. I didn't want him to see me like that, so I told him, "Sure. You can come. If you can find me." Now, I knew full well I was under a protective order that meant hospitals would never confirm or deny if I was a patient. What I did NOT realize is that Dan was intent upon this challenge. So of the 4 hospitals in town, he walked in...showed his medical badge...and said he needed to know which room his patient (me) was in. Sneaky little bugger. Next thing I know, there he was...tucking his hair behind his ears, Affliction shirt, motorcycle jacket...bearing flowers...shy as could be. I, for my part, was 89 pounds, bald, and laying drugged up in a hospital bed. We talked for 4 hours, but I was convinced I looked so horrific that it would be the end of him.

It wasn't.

Dan's Living Room...

Dan...against all odds...LIKED me. Despite my opposition to dating AT ALL, he finally got me over to his house. That's when I knew. In his living room, there was a broken futon, a milk crate as a side table, a little bookshelf, a lamp, a lawn chair, a box fan, and HUGE Flat Screen TV. He knew I liked Reese Cups, and there...in the fridge...were 3 things. Rotting chicken, a 48-bulk pack of Reese Cups (for me!), and 2 Q-Tips. I just knew it. He was going to be the man for me. I LOVED how he had the house set up. It wasn't, say, MY style...but it was endearing.

His concern was how I would take the traveling lifestyle. Most women want that home...to nest...to travel for vacation, yes, but to return home. Even owning furniture and choosing your decorating style is often just taken for granted but something that most women WANT. I won't say I didn't enjoy setting up my own little home. Whether my places in NYC or my little home in Erie, I was a bit of a Suzy-Homemaker (almost much to my horror...Hehe). However, I am NOT most women. So, I'm sure there was question in his mind if I'd stay with him when it came time to begin traveling again. I'm sure he was concerned about my health and traveling...whether or not I'd be able to physically handle it. (I am now in remission, and have been for 8 months now) However, after having lived together for a time and getting engaged, it was time to make that choice. To decide whether or not it was something that I could (or indeed would) do. So, away went the furniture. Off came the art and photos from the walls. A storage locker was rented and suitcases came out. It's still always somewhat intriguing to me how little one ACTUALLY needs to live for a 3-4 month contract. The rest remains in storage.

The offers for permanent jobs come and go. It's not that we can't take them. It's simply that when we discuss it over as a couple, we still go back to this traveling gypsy life. Top of the line cars are provided for us. Housing is arranged and provided for us. To a degree, we get to pick where in the country we will take contracts. Sometimes only one contract is open, and so that is the place we go. However, no matter where we go, it's an experience...and we soak it up the whole time. Now, a year and a half later, we are married and still chasing the dream across these United States. I am a professional photographer now, and take photos of all we see and do...and in fact now sell my prints online. It's a profession that lends itself well to constant travel...although I attended college for Criminal Justice, Social Work, Sociology, and Psychology, and went to NYC to join the NYPD once upon a time.

Our loft Living Room in Cleveland...

Some say my husband and I do this because we can't keep a job. Some have said we can't keep a house. Comments have been made that demean my being on disability and thus becoming a photographer. Our motives are constantly questioned and then judged. People simply don't understand it and oftentimes even get cruel because of it. I will tell you this. We OWN a house. We OWN a car. Anyone can get a job and a house...and "live the American Dream" as they see it. This just happens to be OUR American Dream...and whether it's a 3-story townhouse in Montana, a 6th floor loft in downtown Cleveland, or a hotel suite in South Dakota...I'm not looking to have my life any other way.

To think it all started because 1 guy took a chance on a girl in the hospital, and 1 girl took a chance on a guy with some rotting chicken and Q-Tips. Love can't be explained, but we love one another...and we sure as heck love our crazy little life...

When I think about you...

Everyone seems to think that I have an odd sense of humor, and well, maybe I do.  I suppose if enough people say it, I have to assume that if I'm the only one that finds something funny that must be because I'm thinking of it differently than others.

One of my favorite things that I ever was around was a little on the dark humored side, so bear with me.  It was about 2 AM one night and a tech friend of mine had a patient with a noticeable heart murmur going on.  We worked as partners so that if one person would step out of the room, the other would go ahead and cover for them.  So my friend decides that she needs to go to the break room, get some food, maybe smoke and come back.  No problem.  So she heads out and the rest of us are keeping an eye on her patients when all the sudden we realize that her patient no longer has just a heart be irregularity, it's a full blown a-fib attack with long - I mean long - pauses in heart rhythm.  So one of us heads into the patient room to get them sitting up and awake while the other calls the Dr to find out what they want to do.

The Dr knows the patient and tells us to hang up and get an ambulance over there to pick them up and take them to the ER while he calls a cardiologist to meet up with them at the hospital.  We have to scramble to run in and pull all the equipment off of the patient before the EMS people get there.  We get everything but the heart monitors off and hand the patient over to them.  They get the patient loaded up onto the gurney and rushed out the doors and into the ambulance.

As the patient is going out the door, 1 of the EMS starts doing chest compressions while the other starts getting the defibulator unit charged, the original tech comes out back, face flushed, wondering WTF is going on.  We let her know that it was her patient that was headed out and she turns this amazing bright shade of red but goes back into the control room to monitor the others while the rest of us take a deep breath after rushing around so much.

A few days later, the tech calls me and wants to apologize for dropping everything on me that night.  I told her it was no problem, but she insists that she really owed me on that one.  The last thing I remember hearing before I dropped the phone from laughing was her saying "I always knew that masturbation was bad, but I never thought it would be like that..."

Legendary Patients, vol. 1

One of the things that I love most about my job is some of my unusual patients.  Obviously, I'm not about to name names or even give away anything even so much as which contract area I was working in, but there are some stories way too good to not share.  This is one of them.

I had a patient that came in, small little guy, that complained that he never felt rested, his partner said that he moved alot in the night, and that he had an odd problem with his breath / taste in his mouth in the morning.  Now, usually any time that someone comes into the sleep lab that is skinny, athletic, and twitchy at night, I'm not thinking they have a breathing problem, I'm looking to see if there is something else, usually neurological, at work.

So I hook the guy up, he heads to bed and he falls asleep fairly quickly.  As I'm watching, he all the sudden lifts his arm, scratches further and further down his back and in one brief moment, all the sudden jams a finger into his ass.  Not just the ass area, not just into the crack, but YAHTZEE, right in the bullseye, more than knuckle deep.  A few minutes later, he snores or moves a little and whips his hand out of his ass and in one of those hand movements that most of us know from frustrated people, he wipes his hand on his face.

I was both horrified and vastly amused.  This didn't happen once, this happened every 20 minutes or so ALL night long.  I mean, in the morning, the white tape on his face wasn't so white any more.  This easily explained the foul smelling breath and bad taste in the morning.  (oh, trust me, I know - I went there).

Now, as a traveler, and only having been there for a few days in that area, they had the chief tech going through the study in the morning and the next day I came to work and everyone bust out laughing.  "I see you had a crappy patient last night" and "Seemed like they had a shitty night" and "I bet he feels like crap".

Now, the mockery was fun enough, I mean, I would have done it.  But what did fascinate me would have been to have been in the Dr's office when he had to tell the patient what kind of issue he had in his sleep. "Well, sir, on a good note, you don't have sleep apnea.  You do, however, have an easily treated condition of medical Asshat syndrome."  I mean, think of the horror when the guy gets told what he does, possibly shown a video of his actions, and then he remembers that one of his major complaints was the bad taste in his mouth in the morning...

Take the Challenge

People are always asking me about what it takes to travel, why do I do it, and ironically, I constantly hear the question on what did I do wrong that I can't get a permanent job.  Even more amusing to me is that people turn around and ask Erica about why her husband isn't good enough to find a job and settle down and have the 2.2 children... ect.  Apparently people don't actually understand what I do and how it works, so for those that are out there that wonder what my job really is and for those that are curious about living a different life.

I trained as a sleep tech for almost 2 years working 40+ hours a week learning about how the job is applied before I started travelling.  I had a permanent job and could have easily stayed at it, the same as most everyone out there at the job that you are at now.  I had a few friends where I was living, but no family, no reason to be there other than for work and to hang out with friends.  I had heard about travelling medical jobs and realized that I was exactly the type of person that they look for - good at my job, no reason to stay where I was at, looking for a raise in pay and benefits.  It was a rumor at the time, people always talked about travelers but no one ever seemed to do it, like some ninja skill you had to learn.  So I went and researched and now, years later, I can explain it...

So here we go...

Hospitals, private sleep labs, VA medical centers and other facilities occasionally have to deal with a staffing change, either from them having to fire someone, a pregnancy, or any other reason that jobs become available. Now, it's not like they can take someone off the street and instantly train them to do the job, training can take months to years, and there are only a limited number of actual registered technologists for sleep, if they can't find someone in the area to come work there, then they have to hire someone like me to come in and help them.  They contact either a traveling company or a medical firm that puts the word out to find a traveling tech and they wait for resumes of those available to go through before they figure out who would be the best fit.  They always have a choice between multiple technicians and they get a full copy of their resume.  Now, this isn't some 1 page form showing where you lived and the imaginary list of skills that we all just put down on an application to fill in our rough job duties.  They get a list of all jobs, printed transcripts of what my references have said in the past, post contract questionnaires fill out by the managers or doctors of EVERY place I have ever been, good or bad, drug screenings, a test showing my competencies in my field, criminal background check, and more.

So, they narrow it down to 2 - 5 people that they feel had good enough information on those forms to interview over the phone, either by the manager, the doctor, peer interview, or all 3.  You have 10 minutes to 'wow' them on why they should pick you to fill in knowing that you are going to get almost 0 training.  In fact, when you show up to the job, you have 1 night, if that, to learn all of the paperwork needed which can be vastly different from location to location, how they want everything done, all the important information that they think you need to know (scrub color, what type of patient, are you working alone).  Now, you have to reassure them that you are good with ANYTHING that they can throw at you and better than anyone else that they are going to call.

If they are happy with you and you are happy with them, it goes to a mediator / representative to negotiate what the pay would be.  I am most likely responsible for reporting to work within 1 week of getting the phone call.  This means that I have to arrange my bills, figure out where I am going to live without seeing it, take another drug test, PPD, sign and fax forms to those that need them, pack, and be on the road in 3 days or less to drive either 1 state over or across the entire country even in winter.  I get there, sometimes I have to go through hospital orientation for 2 days, then turn around and go right back to working nights the end of the second day.  Many times I just have to show up that night to meet with another tech to work for the night, most of the time with my own patients.  That means I have 30 minutes to learn the location, see where everything is, and then have 2 people that I am responsible for to hook up with new equipment and sometimes even entirely different software.  From day 1, I am fully responsible for whatever happens after this with a full report that goes to the next location at the end of the job I'm on...

No stress right?

Now.  How many of you would function OK if they changed from Windows to Linux overnight at your current job? How about told you to drive to a new job in a new city with changes in what type of people you work with as well as that change in software?

People think that I am a 'temp' worker.  This isn't like that.  This isn't taking a person who is untrained to fill it, they only take the best of the people in the field.  So tell me, after all that, are you up for the challenge?

Come see the country, live in a new town every few months, meet exciting people, never have to deal with on the job politics, make decent money all at the risk that if you don't bet out up to 100 people out there also applying for that one travel position, you become instantly unemployed.

I travel because I can, not because there is some reason I can't do something else.  The next time that you go to the hospital or doctors office and they have a traveler, be happy, it was the best the country had to offer, not just the local community.  Don't look down on them just because they found something different.

BTW - shout out to Cyndi, the best recruiter ever and who made me believe I could even start traveling.