Dumb and Dumber

For some reason this week, I have been thinking a lot about the dumb things that I do. These thoughts might have something to do with the fact that my car's lease is up soon and Taylor and I need to come up with a down payment on a new car. Plus, my poor parents are having to bail us out with the repairs that need to be done on my BMW before it can be turned in. So here is a list, please don't judge too harshly. I am not really a dumb person, I just get led astray from the path of the wise every once in a while.

#1- The Beamer- When I was just out of nursing school, I decided I wanted to move to Uptown Dallas to live with all the cool, hip singles while I started my new job at Parkland. I found a reasonable one bedroom close to Hwy 75 in Uptown. Well, once I got into this fancy neighborhood with its expensive restaurants, stores and trendy bars, I decided that my FULLY PAID FOR 2001 Ford Escape was just not posh enough to be tooling around in. My best friend, Rochelle, had just leased a Lexus and my friend Tacovia had just bought this fully tricked out Honda Accord. I wanted a new car that would fit into my neighborhood. This meant BMW, Audi, Lexus or Mercedes. So my parents helped me find a deal on a BMW 325i as a lease. I was so excited that I looked so super cool driving around my neighborhood. Several problems with this car, however. First, it was a lease so I did have lower payments but I did not own it and had to keep it in perfect shape. Did you know that when people hit a BMW they just drive away? Yep, happened to me like 400 times. Second, there are limited miles on a lease, and my boyfriend at the time lived in Abilene. I put about 20,000 miles on the sucker in the first year, a little over my allotted 15,000 a year. Third, when you turn in a lease, you have no down payment to put on another car and while leasing is cheaper, this was still a beamer. Word to the wise, don't ever get a car just to be cool.


#2- The Puppy- Another dumb thing I did during the first year I was nursing was buy a very expensive puppy. Again, a couple of my friends had recently purchased dogs, and for some reason, Dallas made me a total wannabe. I am really not like that normally but when I was in Dallas, I just wanted to do everything my friends were doing, like live in downtown, have a fancy apartment, a fancy car and a fancy dog. So I bought this cute little 8 week old American Eskimo dog and he was white and fluffy and I named him Charlie. I just didn't think about the fact that I had never owned a dog in my life and had no idea what to do with him. I also neglected to consider that I lived in a third story apartment and had to walk to 3 flights every time the puppy needed to go to the bathroom. Finally, I neglected to consult my long time love and companion Moe (my cat)about his feelings on the matter. The puppy lasted about three days. It was the worst three days of my life. The puppy was totally not potty trained and kept peeing and pooping in his kennel and then smearing it all over him and the crate. I bathed that puppy no less than 10 times in those three days. Also, Moe did not handle the whining, barking puppy well at all and refused to eat, sleep or go to the bathroom for those three days. He just sat under the bed and watched the puppy constantly. The puppy also killed Moe's most favorite toy and he was very traumatized. To make a long story short, I begged the breeder to take the puppy back siting Moe's trauma as a reason. It was sad, but we didn't really have time to bond and if it was between the puppy and Moe, Moe was going to win out. You'll be happy to know that the second dog I owned has turned out much better, but I did have Taylor to help.


#3- Travel Nursing and Texas Medicaid- Okay, these two were pretty much a tie but for different reasons. First, lets talk about my travel nursing experience. I thought that travel nursing sounded like the most logical solution when Taylor and I first got married and decided that we wanted to move out of Texas. We wanted to travel and have some fun in a new place before we had kids and travel nursing seemed like a great plan. With travel nursing, you are sent to a hospital that is needing extra temporary help for various reasons. You usually get paid more than you would as a permanent employee and the travel company gives you money to pay for housing or sets you up with a furnished apartment. The assignments vary in length. The assignment I decided on was an L&D position at a hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota. Okay, I know that Minnesota is bitter cold but it is a pretty state and it has the second highest fertility rate of any state in the US (first is Utah, go figure), so I figured I would be able to take several assignments and we wouldn't have to trek all over the country if we didn't want to. Great idea, right, travel, good money, paid housing... The one thing I didn't realize about travel nursing is that you need to get accustomed to the unit you are on in about 4 1/2 seconds. I had three days of training, of which only half a day was spent in L&D. This position also required that I occasionally float to Postpartum, Antepartum and Nursery. Second, the reason that travelers were hired was because the hospital was going to computer charting after years of paper charting. Some of the nurses didn't even really know how to work a computer. And third, I didn't realize that the nurses union in St. Paul was also considering a strike due to benefit issues when all the travelers arrived. So there I am, in a cold, brand-new state where people have horrible accents and no one really liked me because they thought that I might turn into a scab if a strike was started. This was not my best nursing job, it turned out okay but I definitely felt overwhelmed at times and we high-tailed it back to Texas as soon as we could. Plus, I am not sure that the money and fun of travel is worth the crappy benefits, long hours and the stress of having to hit the ground running.


Second in this two-parter was my job working for Texas Medicaid. I worked there for about 8 weeks. I thought again that good money might hopefully equal good job. NOPE! My job itself wasn't so bad, I did prior authorizations for patient's who had inpatient hospital stays. I won't go into too much description because it is boring but I talked on the phone all day and made sure that the inpatient stays met the criteria set by Texas Medicaid. The company was horrible! They really don't want anyone to get approved for anything ever and tell you that in orientation. Also, the full time employees (which I was not, I had a 12 week contract) were making Authorization Based Compensation. This meant that they only got paid per authorization they completed. Some of these 20+ year nurses were making like $12/hr. Ridiculous! I don't like to work for a company who truly doesn't care about their employees. So I found my current job and quit.

These are just a few of the dumb choices I have made. I shared these because they are kind of amusing looking back now and at least I realize that they were mistakes. Feel free to share some of the goofy things that you do, we all make mistakes and have our doofus moments.