To say I am tired is an understatement. Tonight is night eight of nine nights of twelve hour shifts for me. Normally the max I am on shift is five days, or in this case nights, but I took a couple of shifts overtime so that one of my fellow shift supervisors could go to Hawaii. Lucky guy!
The hardest time is 5:00AM-6:00AM. That is the slowest hour of the night, or the hour that lasts decades. I am sure you all are familiar with this shift in the space-time continuum. Nodding off is hard to fight off and I do a lot of pacing. After 6:00AM all is cool turnover to the next shift is near and I can get busy getting turnover stuff done. Last minute reports and paperwork that could not be done earlier.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with my shifts (I know you’re on the edge of your seat in anticipation of learning this factoid), I work a 5/5/2/2 shift. Five nights on, five off, two days on, two off, five days on, five off, two nights on, two off, repeat forever begin. Is this confusing you may ask? Heck yeah it is. If it were not for my pocket brain (smart phone / PDA) I would be lost. I reference it to see if I have to work and whether it is nights or days.
Back on subject. It is night eight of nine. Every twelve hour shift is energy draining, and I passed empty three nights ago. My reserve is sputtering and I have one more night after tonight. Pray that I make it through the rest of shift.
My job is such that it is like a baby sitters job. Nights are boring as heck. If the kid gets sick or has nightmares you get busy, Otherwise it is SLOW. I get a lot of my supervisory paperwork done at night that I can’t get done on day shift because, well its night shift. During day shift the kid is up and running around, making messes,tripping and falling, and generally driving the sitter ragged. Add to all that the plumber and electrician showing up to fix the house and requiring the sitter to show them what is wrong.
Eight nights on shift the paperwork for the most part is done, so here I am blogging my miseries away. 
