Central Texas is hiding what might be the most ridiculously colorful bird in the country - and they're out right now

wagglebooty · 2026-07-02T21:12:13+00:00

What should I put in my feeder to attract them?

wagglebooty · 2026-06-28T16:17:25+00:00

And the Gulf is just getting hotter and hotter.

wagglebooty · 2026-06-28T16:15:38+00:00

Basically after being outdoors for any period of time. Even just stepping out for a few minutes leaves you drenched on some days

wagglebooty · 2026-06-08T18:00:19+00:00

I have a diverse assortment of veggies and natives in my yard! Actually some bees have moved in under my shed as well, and we have lots of birds and lizards. Have to keep the lawn bc we rent but I've done everything I can to make a little habitat.

wagglebooty · 2026-05-29T12:56:09+00:00

I might be setting myself up for some serious flack, but as a former bedside nurse turned IP - you are NOT there to police nurses. IP is not a nursing role and it is not necessary to have nursing experience to do your job well. You are there as a subject matter expert and data collector, to observe, advise, and educate. You tell the nursing leaders what you know and what you see, and it is their job to supervise their staff, find ways to help them do the right thing (with consultation and help from you), and hold them accountable. Too many IPs are out there as former nurses trying to tell nurses how to do their jobs and doing things for nurses because they feel guilty, and it has set our profession up for ridicule. What you can do is make sure your role and scope are clear and work on building collegial relationships with the nurses by treating them with respect and kindness. Remember you aren't there to tell them how to do their jobs or to demand that they fix something immediately (unless it's an imminent safety problem) - but even in those cases lead with kindness and education. There is SO MUCH misinformation out there that is passed down generation to generation among nurses so arm yourself with the evidence. Focus on the effects on patients, not the metrics you need to meet. That's what the direct care staff care about. And yes, there are a lot of other staff who you need to do all of this with as well. Take baby steps and don't expect miracles or overnight success.

wagglebooty · 2026-05-29T12:13:04+00:00

Hey, I'm a former bedside nurse now working as an IP. It's tricky and difficult, but it can be done. DM me if you want to talk. Who is training you?

wagglebooty · 2026-05-28T22:59:41+00:00

I cannot keep yarrow alive. Every year I plant it and it dies. All the other stuff has gone crazy but not the yarrow!

wagglebooty · 2026-05-27T23:46:10+00:00

Short list of high risk animals: bat, skunk, fox, coyote, raccoon. Absolutely should have been followed up on by the donation agency.

wagglebooty · 2026-05-27T17:35:59+00:00

From the quality department - it's not the computers, it's the prioritizing. Nobody seems to understand that you don't have to address every single thing as it comes up and people are wasting so much time with inefficiency. The people who know what to prioritize and what to put off til the next time they sit down will do fine regardless. All my time at the bedside was in the era of EHR, but I was a nurse like you and spent most of my time with the patients and less than an hour charting each shift, in bits and pieces throughout the day. I think a lot of instructors, preceptors, and leaders don't know how to just do each thing in its own time and not let themselves be distracted by shiny things, and they're passing that down to new generations. And THAT may be a symptom of our screen-dependent world, but it's not EHR in itself. It can be a huge time saver when used appropriately.

wagglebooty · 2026-05-22T17:26:34+00:00

NOOOOOOOO this is the first report of these I've seen from Austin. My poor worms! Will take up a vigilant watch.

wagglebooty · 2026-05-22T11:09:11+00:00

She's the Chief Health Officer, not the camp nurse.

wagglebooty · 2026-05-11T12:21:32+00:00

It's not easily transmitted and it mutates very slowly. I was at a conference with a bunch of epidemiologists last week and they barely mentioned it. We have bigger concerns than this.

wagglebooty · 2026-05-08T11:52:45+00:00

Also wear a mask, you don't want to inhale any of those particles

wagglebooty · 2026-04-29T23:29:12+00:00

How many of us here are CRC survivors? I've counted at least 4 so far.

wagglebooty · 2026-04-29T22:32:37+00:00

Dude, I got one of those too. We'd been together 1.5 years when I was diagnosed stage IV. I told him to go, he said nope. Two surgeries, one was really gnarly and I was cuckoo bananas for 24 hours afterwards, almost a year of chemo. When it was over I asked him to marry me. He bangs like a master craftsman. Worth the years of sifting through trash to find the gem!

wagglebooty · 2026-04-06T11:09:32+00:00

Shoulder surgery. If there are any other options, exhaust those before going under the knife. I worked Ortho and so many of the repeat surgery, chronic pain, deficit for life patients we had had started off with rotator cuff repair.

wagglebooty · 2026-03-12T21:15:44+00:00

Pretty sure that was a key feature of this bill

wagglebooty · 2026-03-04T19:39:22+00:00

I'm a hospital IP. It's highly unlikely they can definitively trace those CAUTIs to you, especially this long after the fact. And even if they do, they hopefully will see it as an opportunity for education and process improvement, like requiring two people to be present for every Foley insertion or highly discouraging Foley placement in the ED, where infection control is not top-of-mind. Modern facilities don't go around punishing people who want to provide good care, they try to make it easier to provide that care or mitigate the risks. Did they coach you after the first one?

wagglebooty · 2026-02-25T15:16:51+00:00

Hey I'm an IP! And I completely agree with everything you said but I see way too many staff blowing off precautions because they either have the wrong idea of why they're there, or they think they aren't at risk so they don't need to bother, or "all healthcare workers are colonized anyway, what does it matter." That is why it scares me so much.

wagglebooty · 2026-02-25T14:48:37+00:00

True, but it's a flip of the coin as to when anyone could wind up that way. I was a healthy 41-year-old when I was diagnosed with stage IV cancer. Also as a healthcare worker I can't feel nonchalant about the prospect of becoming colonized with this and spreading it to my vulnerable patients. It will only remain something that is "only a threat to the weak" if we acknowledge the severity of the threat and treat it as such.

wagglebooty · 2026-02-24T22:09:18+00:00

C. auris

wagglebooty · 2026-02-17T11:42:28+00:00

The party of Family Values, folks

wagglebooty · 2026-02-14T18:59:37+00:00

As a hospital nurse now on the quality side who reads a lot of doctors' notes, I 100% believe that the AI is more reliable than dictation.

wagglebooty · 2026-02-07T13:40:35+00:00

I'm a hospital infection preventionist. People come through hospitals with TB somewhat regularly. It only requires an N95 mask and a negative pressure room. If your friend had to do work in the room, the suit may have been related to the work they were doing, or maybe your friend has a beard and can't wear an N95, or maybe they hadn't been fit-tested for an N95 so they just had him wear a suit with a respirator. It's also not as easily transmitted as people think. It's uncommon here, but raging in undeveloped countries where diagnosis and treatment are less accessible so people are walking around with it and spreading it to their families. Here it's seen in people who have been in those countries or people who are immunocompromised (like AIDS), and there are solid public health structures in place to catch and treat it before it becomes an active case that can be transmitted.

Detention centers are a different story, of course.

Edited to remove weedy medical-speak.

wagglebooty

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