Cookie Thursday that wasn’t 1/22/26

For the first time since January 2024 I have burnt the cookies.

Well, not cookies, peanut brittle.

I was making chardonnay peanut brittle. This was inspired by a peanut brittle I had out of California. It was so good.

This is tied to the malfunctioning stove/oven saga.

Everything was going well, the candy was candying and the peanuts were in. I was just waiting for the mixture to get up to 300 degrees so I could add the vanilla and the baking soda.

The thermometer was getting close and the candy was turning a nice pale tan, like all good peanut brittles must be. I picked up the baking soda to add it when all of a sudden the candy was dark brown and started to smell burnt.

I took the pot off the burner and added the baking soda and vanilla and the candy turned nearly black.

And then the fire alarm started going off.

I carried the pot to the front porch and left it on the cement.

I returned to a smoky house.

I opened the screened porch door and turned on the microwave vent. I turned on the overhead fan. I fanned the house using the front door and the back door and the alarm stopped.

This was not ideal as my husband was still asleep and it was before 0800.

I took the prepared pans out to the porch and stirred the morass.

The candy turned lighter and I held my breath as I poured it into the prepared pans. Still dark and smelling burned.

I took my pot inside to soak it, hoping that I hadn’t just ruined one of my favorite deep pans and left the cookie sheets with what I was sure was ruined candy on the porch to cool.

I had received a phone call on Tuesday about my new stove. It was due to arrive at the store on Monday and the installers would expedite me on their schedule so I could put this nearly 2 month saga to bed.

I’ve been functioning and baking and cooking with 1 burner, an unreliable oven, and a crockpot. I am ready for my new beautiful stove.

Fingers crossed. That it does get here on Monday and the installers can slot us in next week.

I really hope the coming winter storm doesn’t delay things. Fingers and toes crossed.

BTW, the pot was fine. It washed up beautifully.

Not the candy, I pitched that.

Normally I would buy cookies for the department as I have in the past on the rare occasions I couldn’t get anything baked. But there’s a storm coming. North Carolina doesn’t do well with snow and ice. And everyone is at the grocery store buying milk, toilet paper, bread, and eggs.

I gave myself permission to miss this Thursday.

I’ll think about what to make next Thursday.

Maybe I will have my new oven by then.

Call Secrets of the OR- Full moon chart 2026

Medical personnel are, as a whole, superstitious.

I’ve worked with orthopedic surgeons who had to do hammer strikes in multitudes of 7. If they accidentally did 8, they had to do 14. Every damned time.

I’ve worked with nurses and techs who give away their Friday the 13th. Yes, every Friday the 13th. Or they would just call in sick. Even if it left their department short.

One year for the Christmas tree contest the department tree was the Lucky Tree. We had shamrocks, and fortune cookies, and horseshoes, and wishbones, and Hamsa hands, and rabbit’s feet, and gold balls signifying the gold at the end of a rainbow. This was in 2020 and I decided we needed all the luck we could get in healthcare. In fact, that was the name of the tree. The Good Luck Tree, and the caption on the sign was that we needed the luck we could get. I believe this was the last Christmas tree contest tree that I helmed.

I’ve worked with nurses and techs who swear at the sight of a full moon.

That’s me.

I have been surprised more times that I can count when I am driving up the out for our neighborhood and I see a bright, juicy full moon.

I always swear. And cross my fingers for good luck.

When I get home, I remind the pager to be good.

I wanted to be a little more practical about it. So I pinned a full calendar to my Facebook page. According to my calculations March, April, June, July, October, November, and December will be on my normal work week of Monday-Thursday. 7/13 ain’t too shabby.

I do get to miss the double barreled month of May.

By the way, there are 3 Friday the 13ths in 2026. These are in February and March and November. There are 13 full moons in 2026. Lucky May gets 2.

Plan your schedule accordingly.

And be mindful of the request windows.

And February’s is the first. And it’s a Sunday!

Tuesday Top of Mind 1/20/26- Batten down the hatches

This is a nautical term meaning to close all the doors of a ship at sea.

Why?

Because there is trouble a-brewing.

For us in North Carolina it means that there is a fearsome winter storm barreling down from the Canadian north.

It’s gonna be cold.

It’s gonna be precipitous. By that I mean there will be some sort of rain/sleet/ice/snow on the ground.

It also means there will be no bread or toilet paper or milk to be found in the stores.

This storm is due to sweep into the area, along with drastically colder temperatures this weekend.

That’s just ducky!

Best to think about preparation now.

Go out now and buy salt for your steps.

Go out now and buy milk, toilet paper, and bread. If you need to.

Prepare to check on friends and family.

Don’t forget about our feathered and furry outside friends.

In the worst case scenario, from the models that I have seen, we get ice. A lot of ice. So much ice that our energy lines may be compromised and a lot of people will lose power.

Check your windows for leaks and stop them up now.

Double check all the little windows leading to your crawl space and make sure they are shut. Yes, all of them.

Make sure on the coldest nights to leave a faucet dripping, just a little, and all of the cabinet doors open so your pipes do not freeze.

Make sure your car has a full tank of gas. And always have proper winter gear on if you venture outside.

Make sure you have candles and flashlights and batteries. And matches.

Your gas grill is not appropriate for indoor use.

Check your carbon monoxide alarms.

Make a winter trouble plan.

Ugh.

Fingers crossed that it’s going to be just water, maybe a little snow. Snow over ice is no fun, ask me how I know.

It’s been a hot minute (several years) since we’ve anticipated such a winter storm. Make preparations now.

Be safe. Stay warm.

And do not lick any frozen flag poles, no matter if they triple dog dare you to.

FFS Friday 1/16/26- Final straw

I wrote about the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by a masked ICE agent on Tuesday.

I am outraged and you should be too. This was a final straw moment.

The final straw is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as the “last in a series of bad things that happen to make someone very upset, angry, etc.”. Seems to me we are at the final straw stage with the ICE bullying bullshit. And now that bullying bullshit has been fatal.

I wrote on Tuesday about the bystander who was yelling that he was a doctor and was pleading to go to her side. They said no.

I wrote on Tuesday that the 6 minute delay from the shooting to the time that local EMS arrived can be deadly. Because the golden hour still stands for something. Even the golden minute.

Do you know how long it takes to die when you stop breathing? The consensus seems to be 2 minutes to unconsciousness, 4 minutes to permanent brain damage, and 4-6 minutes to death.

Get a timer, dial to 6 minutes. Start the timer and wait. Try to wait without breathing. You can’t, your body won’t let you.

Imagine the drag of the minutes if you are bleeding and have just been shot.

No one can know if Renee Nicole Good was aware after the shooting.

But we know terrible things that happened beyond the fatal shooting.

We know that there was an on-site physician, who identified himself as such.

We know that this physician was denied the chance to check on Renee Nicole Good by the ICE agents on scene.

We know that it took SIX excruciating minutes for EMS to arrive to begin treatment.

The first thing you are taught about on site treatments after, well, anything, is that the scene has to be secured before you can treat the wounded.

There were records, obtained by the The New York Times, that show Renee Nicole Good was not breathing but had a pulse. The report is that she had a pulse but it was thready. This means that her heart was beating quickly and was probably lightly felt.

This is known in the medical field as not being dead.

The ICE agents on scene wasted SIX minutes of her life. Minutes that could have been used to treat her. To comfort her. To save her.

Instead they denied that. They denied her and her wife.

I am not saying that Renee Nicole Good could have been saved after the shooting. No one can say that, especially with the 4 gunshot wounds that have been reported, one arm, 2 chest, and one head wound. We can’t know that.

But it certainly feels like a final straw moment.

Cookie Thursday 1/15/26- Red wine infused fudgy cocoa no bakes

By any kitchen science, this recipe should not have worked. Recipes are rather finicky that way.

Especially candy. Which is what I categorize fudgy cocoa no bakes.

The new theme for January 2026 is an oldie. I did this theme in January 2021 and January 2022. Remember those pandemic days from a hospital nurse perspective? Yeah, brutal. We needed all the comfort we could get. So booze was the theme and the general feeling about the hospital.

yay we survived. But did we?

The new theme is going to be booze, hootch or likker, however you think of it.

Alcohol.

I did a red wine syrup in a different type of cookie in 2021 but I wanted to see if it could work in a candy as well.

I started off by making the red wine syrup. Red wine, sugar, application of heat at a low simmer for 20 minutes. Cool to room temperature.

Cool.

Now, I am not a drinker so I don’t know if it was any good but I have more if someone wants to try it.

The genesis of the idea was that I have dark cocoa powder and what is purportedly amazing with dark chocolate? Red wine.

Now that I had the syrup I had to turn my attention to the candy.

As mentioned before, candy is very finicky. A half step in the wrong direction leads to failure. And I anticipated failure and I was mentally reworking my morning to add a stop to a store.

The no bake recipe is simple: sugar, butter, milk, cocoa powder, peanut butter, oats.

In my experience, the simpler recipes do not take to having them messed with.

But, hey, CTIAT is all about experimentation.

I decreased the amount of butter by 3 tbs and decreased the amount of sugar by half a cup. In order to accommodate the syrup. No scientific rhyme or reason here, I just winged it.

I made this recipe when I got home from the hospital at 0430. Why? It is a very quick recipe that takes less than 10 minutes. The rest is drying time for the candies. And I wanted to give the candies their best shot at a good drying time.

In reality, I could have made the candies at 0800. Which is when the White Whiskery Wonder (Dot) wanted me out of bed. There was definitely going to be a nap in my future.

I use a cookie scoop to approximate the candy size when I am ladling it out of the pot onto the cookie sheet. I then place the cookie sheet in the oven to dry. No real reason for that. I just wanted them out of the way.

My morning was moderately busy. I had a hospital meeting at 1200 and my husband leaves for work before that. I ate breakfast, put a load of laundry on, and opened the oven (that doesn’t work) to check on the candies.

Mentally I screamed “This should not have worked!” as I looked at the rows of dried candies.

I put them in the carrying tub and took them to the hospital. I mean, I tried one. Because these should not have worked.

I am not a drinker so I cannot swear that these are a good representative of the red wine infused candy. There is a different mouthfeel to them, a subtle flavor shift. One of my coworkers tried them and sent me a text on my way home. And I quote “omg, the cookies are soo good… love them,”

Okay, so the idea wasn’t so crazy. I wonder if adjusting the butter/sugar ratio is going to work with the Chardonnay Peanut Brittle I have planned.

We’ll find out on Cookie Thursday is a Thing.

Tuesday Top of Mind 1/13/26- This is why we choose the bear

As I am sure you are aware of, last week what we have all been warning about with the lawlessness of ICE came to pass. And a mother and a wife and a writer is dead.

On Wednesday morning, January 7, at 0937 CST, a masked ICE agent stepped forward so he could have some sort of self defense claim, see through like 1 ply tissue paper, moved his phone to his non dominant hand, pulled out his weapon and shot Renee Nicole Good through the windshield.

One shot.

The car kept moving forward and he stepped forward and shot again through the open side window.

Two shot.

Third shot.

The car crashes.

Her wife, who had been screaming, rushed to her side.

A bystander, who was yelling that he was a physician, offered to check on her. The ICE agents said no, help was on the way. Well, gunshot wounds don’t care that “help” was on the way. It took more than 6 minutes for first responders to be on scene. I know that not everyone is medical or technical but a 6 minute delay can be deadly. Hell, a one minute delay can be deadly.

He murdered her in cold blood.

Not because he was in any danger of being struck by her car. Although there was a specious report that he was, after he shot the windshield. uh-huh. sure he was.

Not because he was afraid for his life.

Because he could.

She was a woman and in his way.

She was a woman and not immediately following the confusing instructions that several officers shouted at her.

She was a woman.

The consensus was that she was murdered because she was not afraid of him and he desperately wanted her to be.

A white, blond woman was murdered in her newly adopted city. Leaving behind children and a wife.

Because she was a woman and she was not afraid. She tried to reassure him prior to the shooting that she wasn’t mad at him.

And the blood on their hands right wing media rushed to fill the airwaves with lies and half truths and bad AI. To try to cover it up, to try to blame her.

It is always blame the victim with these clowns.

I purposefully did not write about this on Friday or even through the weekend because I was sitting with my thoughts and my reaction. I stopped listening to the breathless news accounts and even throttled down my reading of the tragedy. But I still could not get it out of my mind.

Renee Nicole Gold, a prize winning poet, a mother, a wife, should not be dead. ICE should not be in Minneapolis. A woman should not be widowed and a 6 year old child orphaned.

None of this had to happen.

But it did in this officer’s mind as he pulled his gun and murdered her.

This is why women choose the bear.

A bear doesn’t take out his misogyny and hatred on women.

A bear doesn’t say with utter contempt after murdering a woman “fucking bitch”.

A bear just wants to be left alone to do bear type things.

Cookie Thursday 1/7/26- Feta spinach scone-lets

Welcome to the first Cookie Thursday is a Thing of 2026. The theme is “Why is there so much cheese?”. This is a repeat theme from 2023.

That’s all right. This is a repeat make.

When Pinterest parted ways with me in December I lost all my recipes. All of them. When I last checked I had over 3,000 cookie recipes. Some I had tried, some I wanted to try, themes I wanted to explore. All neatly categorized on a board.

Of course my appeal for reinstatement was denied.

But I know something they don’t. Y’all know something they don’t. My attention to detail is impeccable and my recall is above expectations. And my note taking and note retention is also none too shabby.

I will begin anew, aided by my notes and my memory and my newly developed research skills. See, the PhD program was good for something even as I struggle.

And Pinterest is just a place to dump and organize the data. Which I do. Well, did.

As the bible says in Ecclesiastes 1:9, What has been will be again.

Or as the US government said of in 1974 Steve Austin in the 10Six Million Dollar Man, “Gentleman, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, faster.” However, that might not be the best analogy in this technocrat moment.

The point is I can find recipes and my recall of past recipes is immense.

Enter this month’s first make, The feta spinach scone-let.

I actually have this one written down on a gown card.

This is an easy, quick make. Which is good because my ovens are limping their way to tomorrow’s finish line of new stove installation. Good, because it’s been chilling in my garage for 2 weeks.

I find using the bottom oven to be inefficient. It’s too big and takes too long to come up to temperature.

But these sconelets were amazing!

Bit of green, bit of cheese via scone delivery. There is a reason it ranks among the top 10 of CTIAT.

Call Secrets of the OR- Call shift is great until you can’t find a supply at 0200

Job is still cool.

There are still a lot of positives. This is a post about the second negative- when day shift makes a massive floor move, ignoring why the rooms are set up nearly identically, and gets rid of half the shit that isn’t used every day but when you need it you need it.

Yes, the rooms are set up nearly identically. I am referring to the supplies in the supply cabinet.

But, but, we never do general surgery in room 1, it is an ORTHO room.

Wrong.

You have never done a general surgery case in room 1.

Lots of us have.

In the before times, long before you were a nurse/tech/surgeon at this hospital, room 1 housed the robot. And even then the cabinet was identical to room 2, room 3, and room 4.

This is the before times when the hospital only had 4 operating rooms. You wouldn’t’ve recognized it.

The cabinets were all set up to be identical.

And that was so that any case could be done in any room by anyone.

This is to decrease the amount of out of room time a nurse might spend during a case. Any case but especially a call case or an evening case when we don’t have the wherewithal to scream out the door for “somebody” to get us something.

By wherewithal I mean other people.

In the daytime there are lots of people rushing about cleaning rooms, turning over instruments, opening rooms, giving breaks, giving lunches, helping out.

Yeah, no such luck at night or even during the evenings.

I count that as a positive for evenings or nights. It makes you think on your feet and prepare your room better for the case at hand.

When I train people for the evening charge role, this is big selling point that I make. No managers, no charge nurse besides yourself, nobody is around.

When I train people for the call nurse role, this is a big selling point. No one is immediately around to help. There are people you can reach out to in a pinch and I’ve written about that before.

Day shift is just too… Too busy, too loud, too many people. All wanting to go home unless they want to ride out the clock.

Nights/evenings get it. It is mano a mano with the OR team. Except it isn’t a competition with the OR team, it is a competition with the reason the patient needs surgery in the middle of the night.

But I digress.

Day shift has all the time in the world to make changes to make the OR in the image of their last hospital.

Things get moved. A lot.

Things get deleted from stock. Things that are rarely used but are used all the same and is the only thing to work for scenario X. A lot.

The now 9 rooms are siloed into specialties.

But not every case is that specialty and not every case “fits” in that room. I do except the robot room. The robot room is highly specific to the specialty and the robot. I agree with this. But the rest causes me to run at night.

And don’t get me started on the dismantling of the identical suture carts that had been in every room. The suture on these carts are basic suture that every specialty might need. And an emergency sutures like 3-0 silk for a stitch to stop bleeding.

This entire post boils down to “If you move it/delete it/there has been a change in supply” tell the night shift call team. Because how else would they know except for when a surgeon asks for it in the middle of the night?

The operating room recently changed out some of the GI staplers. And didn’t tell us. Which led to me running around like a chicken. In an emergency.

I am not asking for much. A friendly “hey they got rid of X and replaced it with Y” would’ve sufficed. Instead of making the call team look like idiots at 0200.

Yes, yes, there are communication papers everywhere. In the elevator, at the desk, in the year binder. But did you write it down? So that the call team could read it and be prepared?

No?

That’s what I thought.

Pretty, pretty please stop making changes to the OR supplies and not cc-ing the call team with the information.

With sugar on top.

That would really help us give better care to the patients. They deserve a circulator that is present for the surgery, not off fetching and carrying because you couldn’t be bothered to inform us of changes.

TTYM.

Tuesday Top of Mind 1/6/26- The fifth anniversary of J62021

Groucho Marks has been credited with the line “Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes?” to his wife. Of course this was after she caught him in bed with another woman.

Evening shift on January 6, 2021 started like they all did.

It was the 1st pandemic winter. There was good news. The vaccines were flowing into peoples’ arms. Schools in North Carolina were still mostly remote.

We were all masked. Even in the operating room core and the hallways.

Children under 14 were still not permitted to visit family members in the hospital.

However things were looking up. Most of the hospital had had at least 1 covid vaccine with a lucky few having both shots. There was talk of the expansion of the vaccines to those who were most vulnerable. The operating rooms had opened and were operating at a full capacity.

This means we were busy, busy, busy. As the fall into winter rush showed no signs of abatement.

The first Cookie Thursday is a Thing was set to happen the next day on January 7th. I was very proud of that month’s theme. The theme was Boozy Cookies. To celebrate us and the crap year we had just gone through.

Just an ordinary Wednesday.

A new president of the United States had been elected on November 3, 2020.

With the attendant denials and bluster from the current to the time president.

Rumblings of refusal to leave were being heard and drum beats filled the media and news stories. The far right was gathering their forces (the people who stormed the capital) by filling their heads with more lies.

January 6, 2021 was supposed to be the vote to certify the election. The best thing that Vice President Pence ever did was to stand by the Constitution and refuse to bow the knee.

Instead it was chaos as the supporters of the current to the time president stormed the capital.

They were high on the idea, carefully fed to them, that the election outcome had been a mistake, that their man could never be voted out. That there was a election theft happening right under their noses.

And they marched and rushed the capital. At least 2000 of them

It was chaos.

Around the same time I clocked in for my shift rioters were breaking the windows of the Capital and helping themselves to the inside.

More chaos.

They were stopped.

In the aftermath there was a protestor dead. A United States Capitol Police officer died later that day after being attacked and sprayed. There were four suicides of other USCP officers within the next year.

It happened.

No matter what the current White House and the current President would have you believe it happened.

There was violence at the capital.

Five years later the same President is back in office through a series of unfortunate events. And pardoned the nearly 1600 people who had been convicted of crimes related to January 6, 2021 on his first day back at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

And still causing chaos.

The most recent scapegoat on the White House’s newest sham website are the police. The violent protestors who broke windows and assaulted officers and smeared shit on the walls of the capital were “peaceful protestors”.

This is not correct. This is a LIE and we all know it.

Well, most of us are aware of the white washing of history going on in our very own White House.

The horrible events of this horrible day happened.

No matter what they are trying to cram down your throat.

We remember and do not fall for their lies.

Up the rebels.

FFS Friday 1/2/26- Facade of USPS changes

First For Fuck’s Sake Friday of 2026!

This has been slightly delayed because the cat was sitting in front of the keyboard.

No idea why, just cat things I guess.

But the fuck’s sake must go on!

Have you seen this nonsense?

There has been a new USPS rule change that piggy backs onto a 2017 nonsense change where the USPS, supposedly a non-partisan body, closed half of its distribution centers. All the way back in 2017.

Under you know who.

These jokers think that the USPS needs to turn a profit. As if we the American people and our business are the commodity.

New year, same bullshit.

But the new bullshit is that there is a new rule that the mail that you mail on Tuesday may not be postmarked on the day you mail it, you know the day that they take possession of your property. Instead the postmark will be affixed as soon as the piece of mail gets to a regional professing hub.

You know the one that was impacted by the bs 2017 rule.

This has the potential to impact your tax return.

This has the potential to impact your prescriptions.

This has the potential to impact your ballot.

All extremely time sensitive pieces of your mail that impacts your life.

Especially those who live far away from one of the remaining post-office regional processing hubs.

Education is always the cure for all that ails society. This is vital information that needs to go out. But of course this was announced on Christmas Eve. It is as if they don’t want us to know.

Of course.

Fuck that. Tell your friends, tell your relatives who live in far off place. Tell them often and definitely tell them weeks before April 15 and weeks before the midterm elections.