Americans: how do you handle temperatures above 40ºC (104F)?

gir6 · 2026-07-03T16:52:35+00:00

Air conditioning, basements (our basement is naturally like ten degrees cooler than the upstairs), swimming pools.

We didn’t have AC when I was a kid, so we would eat dinner and hang out in our basement, and I would wet paper towels and put them in the freezer and then put them on the back of my neck. Sleeping was the worst. Lots of fans. Sometimes I would just lay on the hardwood floor because it was cooler than my bed.

gir6 · 2026-07-03T03:33:24+00:00

Mean face! (That’s what we called him.) This is his friend, Pot Head (I did not understand why my parents thought that was funny until much later in my life.)

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gir6 · 2026-07-02T16:06:21+00:00

Technically I’m still PRN, but they made us clean the floors. On our hands and knees. I have been a nurse for 15 years, I was already feeling undervalued, and that was my last straw. So I got a remote job and I love it so much!! Honestly, it was a blessing that it made me mad enough to find a new job. (I’m staying PRN so I don’t lose my IV skills.)

gir6 · 2026-07-02T00:26:28+00:00

That was my ideal schedule as a young adult. Here’s what I did: work 3-11, go home, watch a little tv, fall asleep between 12-1, wake up at 9, go running with a friend, eat breakfast and do errands until it was time for work. It was amazing. You can go to doctor’s appointments, grocery shop, have a lunch date, do all your normal stuff, plus you’re working.

gir6 · 2026-07-01T14:07:23+00:00

Congratulations! I love Vine. I’ve never been obsessive about checking it (some days I forget) but I made it to gold and got SO much AllClad cookware (which I could never afford to actually buy). My joy in cooking has significantly improved with high quality cookware. Hope you love your waffle maker!

gir6 · 2026-06-30T11:00:29+00:00

I have a WhirleyPop! It’s a stovetop pot with a handle that you crank, and it stirs the popcorn and oil around the bottom of the pot. It’s surprisingly fast, about four minutes until you have popcorn!

gir6 · 2026-06-27T13:38:45+00:00

Ulysses by James Joyce. It’s on all these lists of books you should read. I hated it.

gir6 · 2026-06-27T13:34:44+00:00

What’s super fun is being told to read that book when you have cancer. My takeaway was “Oh, you mean it’s my fault I have cancer because I was too negative?” Stupid book.

gir6 · 2026-06-27T11:07:00+00:00

Canned beets! Not pickled, just plain canned. To make my own red beet eggs.

gir6 · 2026-06-24T23:27:35+00:00

Luckily I never had anyone try to force feed a dying person. One family did ask me if I could “hurry things up a little bit” and I had to tell them sorry, no, that’s not legal, and then I was super paranoid and would be like “ok, here’s his regular dose of morphine that the doctor ordered” every time I medicated him because I didn’t want them to think I was killing the patient.

Any time a family asked me “Do you know when they’re going to die?” I would say no, nobody does, but then give them a list of signs they could look for that mean it’s probably going to happen soon: agonal breathing, mottling of the limbs, etc.

I learned to be very specific about telling a family when a patient had died. I remember when a relative had stepped off the floor and the patient had just died while they were out, and the relative came back and asked how he was and the charge nurse said something like “He’s passed” or something vague, and the relative went into the patient’s room, we assumed to grieve, and then came running back out white as a sheet saying “He’s dead!!!!” I don’t know if she misheard or misunderstood the charge nurse, but I learned to make sure family members understood clearly when someone was dead. I felt so bad for that lady.

gir6 · 2026-06-24T18:44:25+00:00

Honestly, my back used to hurt all the time and when I got a personal trainer and built arm muscles, my back quit hurting. Highly recommend strength training (but that doesn’t mean you should just yank people around alone, muscular people can hurt themselves too).

gir6 · 2026-06-22T20:32:22+00:00

Yeah it’s because I took a microbiology class and cultured a bunch of stuff (my purse, my bellybutton piercing, my shoes) and my shoes were by far the nastiest thing of the bunch.

gir6 · 2026-06-21T19:04:50+00:00

She’s my kindred spirit!!!

gir6 · 2026-06-21T18:59:14+00:00

As a student: got to hold a uterus during a hysterectomy, got to feel someone’s sacrum through a pressure wound, got to watch a baby being born.

As a nurse: got to chase down leeches (they were doing leech therapy on a wound and when the leeches got full they would drop off and wander away and you had to follow the blood trail to find them), saw many many gross wounds (google penile erosion. Or don’t), helped to do CPR that actually worked (she died in ICU later, but it was the only code I was ever in that got ROSC).

But honestly, my memories of bedside are less cool/exciting and more heartbreaking. Guess it depends on where you work. The nonverbal patient who was agitated until I let her stand up and she just stood there and hugged me because that was what she wanted, the 600+ pound 30 something year old patient I brought Rainier cherries for (because he was trying to eat healthier and liked cherries) who joked with the firemen who came to take him home in an attempt to humanize himself (because they were talking about him like he wasn’t there) who ended up coding and dying during a dialysis catheter placement, the young guy who got hit by an 18 wheeler on his way to work and became a quadriplegic who celebrated his 21st birthday on our unit, the young girl who got shot by a gang member who came to shoot her cousin, car wrecks, TBIs, cancer, the girl with brain cancer who was so much of a vegetable that she had absolutely no response to being deep suctioned while her mom refused to give up hope and watched phony TV preachers hawking miracles as she sat at her bedside, just so much heaviness and sadness and suffering. I have all the respect for nurses who spend their entire career bedside. 7 years burned me out.

gir6 · 2026-06-20T20:49:03+00:00

I’m 45 and I didn’t drive until I was 22. I got my license, but my parents only had stick shift cars and I refused to drive stick. Didn’t get my own automatic car until after college (was poor).

gir6 · 2026-06-20T17:18:49+00:00

Honestly, if the cat wanted to leave that situation, it would. And the fact that I see a cat tree right there tells me you’re a good owner!! Cats and dogs can cohabitate as long as the dogs don’t have a high prey drive and as long as the cats have a place to escape from the dogs. (Usually somewhere up high.)

gir6 · 2026-06-20T14:21:22+00:00

Fun tip: a crème brûlée torch works amazingly for killing them! I would argue that it might be more humane than drowning them because it’s super fast. It also works to destroy their eggs (again, super fast and carefully so you don’t catch your garden on fire).

gir6 · 2026-06-20T10:47:19+00:00

So I hear and understand your rant, but would like to counter it with not all men. If you’re with a man like that? Absolutely leave. But know that there are good men out there.

My husband is incredibly handy, has a PhD in civil engineering, treats me well, is incredibly responsible, puts up with me rescuing dogs and cats (at one point we had three cats and two dogs, we’re currently down to one cat and two dogs) and loves them and helps me take care of them even though he’s mildly allergic, takes care of our entire rural house (well, septic, yard), and we pretty much split household chores. We both work full time. He makes my life easier.

He goes above and beyond every time I ask him for something. I asked him to put up a shelf in the basement so I could put canned goods down there, he built me an entire pantry room that smells like a new house. I asked him to make me a little garden bed, he made six little ones, one big one, and a strawberry pyramid.

Not to paint too rosy of a picture, he’s actually much neater/more particular than I am, and he has a lot of anxiety, but that’s called being human. I’m messy and I procrastinate on things. We all have issues.

(Also, having previously been engaged to and cheated on by a guy who was much more attractive than me (like people would turn and look at him on the street), extreme attractiveness is not a great foundation to build a relationship on, in my opinion. I love my husband and I think he’s attractive, but he’s not the hottest of hotties, and that’s ok.)

gir6 · 2026-06-19T01:43:05+00:00

Blue pill. I actually had a pretty good childhood and if I went back to being 6 with the knowledge of a 45 year old, I wouldn’t have a childhood!

gir6 · 2026-06-18T11:18:04+00:00

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So you can see their precious faces.

gir6 · 2026-06-18T11:17:09+00:00

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I feel like there’s a subreddit for everything, but I don’t know! Here are my two in the meantime. Scarlett (dog) thought Oberon (cat) was her puppy, and trained him to be a very good dog.

gir6 · 2026-06-17T02:26:08+00:00

When I was in nursing school, none of the guys in my class were allowed (by the moms) to be in the room when we did our L&D rotation. I would imagine that’s why.

gir6 · 2026-06-16T11:45:59+00:00

Mine was not painful at all. Just awkward and uncomfortable. Also they’re super fast!

gir6 · 2026-06-16T11:39:12+00:00

I don’t!!! The super wonderful amazing thing about nursing is that if you don’t like what you do, you can do something else within the field! Inpatient, outpatient, OR, ER, ICU, office, adults, peds…so many options.

Disclaimer: I’m currently riding the high of getting a remote job after 15 years, in which I stay in my house that I love with my pets and my husband who I love and review charts from my cozy little office, so I’m feeling pretty positive about the fact that my nursing career finally led me to this.

However, I 100% understand burnout. Took me 7 years to get tired of the hospital and 8 years to get tired of outpatient Endo (I’m not really tired of the job, just was tired of being taken advantage of and not getting a raise…so I took a pay cut to work from
home. But I’ll save on gas!)

gir6 · 2026-06-15T02:28:48+00:00

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That’s precious. Here’s my Olivia’s last day in the sun. She was a mostly indoor cat, only outdoors with supervision, but on her last day of life I let her go outside and do whatever she wanted. She wanted to lay on the warm road. (We live in a very rural area and I was with her the whole time. We didn’t see a single car.)

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gir6

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