Works in Progress

And unexpected sweet revenge in a blast from the past

Six in progress. Floral/Botanicals Top,three are on canvas, lower three are on wood panels.

This week was another video week, still in the process of editing the video footage that Heather and I shot last week. I got it down to 8 minutes from 27, which was a huge deal. Lots of work. I sent it back to Heather and when she gets back to me with her thoughts, we will be almost done.

I didn’t get to paint until Wednesday, but I’ve been working on six different pieces. Five are new, the other one has been in progress for a while. If I can finish any of them this week that would be good, but it isn’t necessary. I have plenty of art to sell at the Centennial show.

I’ve found myself thinking existential thoughts, nothing dark or scary, but just about life in general. This is an intense time in my life, having reached a point where it’s really hitting me that I am retired and thinking about how I want the rest of my life to be. I retired from nursing without formally retiring, it wasn’t like I worked in one place for all 19 years of my nursing career. I decided to choose my mental and physical health over suffering through the unhappiness of employment and the joke and scam that used to be called the American Dream…not that I ever fully bought into it. All the crap that was fed to us about how our lives “should” be, while holding that carrot out of reach, all the while beating us with a stick. The lessons shall be repeated until they are learned.

These days, I feel like the only thing missing is traveling. I feel so drawn to Mexico and I also want to check out places in South America, Scotland and Ireland, and Ukraine. I’m hoping I can get to most of those countries before I’m too old to travel.

I would love to leave the U.S. if we could. It’s not practical right now with the girls, and Dennis still working. After the Pendejo croaks I hope we can somehow get our shit together in this country, but I think we have too many ignorant, overly conservative and backward thinking people who have no knowledge of how much better our quality of life could be if they got off their cultlike obsession with guns and bootstraps and crappy food and consumerism and celebrity and wealth worship. And apathy, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and just fear in general.

I wish we could be honest about the whitewashing of history we’ve done. I wish we could be honest about how evil our presence has been in the world, how we have refused to admit that no, Murikkka is NOT the greatest country in the world, I might even call it the worst country in the world because of our hypocrisy and our coexisting wealth and the poverty no one will admit exists. The immorality of how we exist among the world’s citizens. We are wealthy in so many ways but it is wasted. We don’t take care of our people, we only prioritize those who don’t need anything, but continue to feed their own insatiability. I’m so disappointed in this country. It has failed us because we have failed ourselves.

Okay, enough of that. This is May, and Nurses Week happens to be this month. For nurses, it serves as an annual reminder of just how little nurses are respected or appreciated by their employers. This year, thirteen years after leaving the hospital where I worked, I had all but forgotten about Nurses Week. Until I went to Facebook tonight. In my feed there was a video by a character called Nurse Erica, and she was going through the annual worst nurses week gifts- sort of like a hall of shame for corporate healthcare. I watched part one her her two part video- I guess there are so many bad nurses week gifts these days that she had to make two videos to call them all out.

But I almost did a spit take with my water when she mentioned one of our local hospitals- it made the list! This is one of the hospitals in the system where I worked, and where Dennis used to work in management. If you want to watch the video, or both parts, you can find it on Facebook at the link below, and I included a screen shot that calls out our local hospitals in Loveland, just down the road from here. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

The Worst Nurses Week Gifts of 2026!

Nurse Erica showing the actual flyer that went out at Medical Center of the Rockies. I forgot that they don’t even call it Nurses Week anymore, they just lump nurses in together with “Health Care Week”.

I guess nurses don’t deserve their own week? Probably just because it’s cheaper this way. Keeps those admin bonuses higher… But the activities are: cleansing of the hands!??? puppy visits with service dogs???! Forest bathing!??? WTF!??

THIS is how you show your employees that you appreciate them!? Definitely belongs in the Hall of Shame. Used to be they gave us a $5 coupon for the cafeteria. Or pizza. Or free ice cream. If you could get away from your patient assignment long enough to get any of it…

Anyway, it gave Dennis and I a good laugh. Well-deserved, Medical Center of the Rockies. Sometimes it just feels good to see corporate healthcare get called out for exactly what it is, part of the Great Big Greed Machine.

Good night all, see you in the next post. Thanks for reading!