When C&M Trains You.

Trains you in what? Pharmacy, of course you crack heads! (Speaking of crack heads, an interesting past week in the pharmacy, I caught one of our regulars stealing over the counter items. It’s a little obvious though when you swipe a whole shelf. So if you’re going to steal guys, don’t take the whole fucking shelf.)

Things are finally calming down a wee bit but the next couple of days I have to dedicate my evenings to writing a new technician training manual for the pharmacy. The new tech starts Friday. (I’ve been attempting to get this manual done since we got back from Nashville but with all the overtime since firing The Great Tampon Thief, I just couldn’t squeeze it in.) I’m going to make myself look really good as lead technician and be late that day. Samus has an appointment with a new vet we’ve seen in town for Ozzy. It’s just for her yearly things but she’s a very fearful dog so vet visits are always stressful for her and I both. The on-duty pharmacist knows of course so I’m sure it will be fine but first impressions and all.

Other than that, not a whole lot going on. I’ve finally been able to squeeze more reading in again and started Beyond Redemption which is so dark, it’s juicy. In the beginning of August, Ignited Moth and I begin a buddy read on A Plague of Giants. You’d think we did buddy reads more often but it only happens every couple of years. Probably should change that Ms. Moth. 😉

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July? WTF.

How did we get here already? And why the hell is it so fucking hot?

I only finished (actually am still technically working on) three out of the four books I planned to read in June. Life just won’t slow down right now. We fired one of the technicians at work so it’s been busier, mostly because one of the pharmacists has also been on vacation since this happened. We were going to hire another technician anyway but now we just need to do it a little sooner.

What did previous technician get fired for your wondering? Well, among many things over the years, the final straw was stealing over the counter stuff. Tampons, sunscreen, sun tanning lotion. Stupid shit. Now they’ve earned the monikor, The Great Tampon Thief.

You might be wondering, Were they poor? Could they really not afford these things? The answer is no. Financially, they were just fine. Either it was the thrill or they thought the company owned them these things or a combination of the two.

Besides being extra busy, the atmosphere in the pharmacy is much better. They brought a black cloud to hang over the workplace every day. They will not be missed.

So what can we expect from C&M in July? 

Not much of fucking anything. Maybe cleaning up some reading and hopefully going to back to being free to read whatever I want. I feel like reading some non-fiction here soon. My brain craves knowledge.

Oh I might bake something this week. Doesn’t happen enough anymore so that’s exciting.

Pharmacy Lady C&M

I will be scarce this next week. If you’re just tuning into this blog, I work for an independent pharmacy. I helped open it 6.5 years ago. Every once in awhile, a conference comes up that will help continue to grow the business. I’ve been to Pittsburgh to learn how to set up a medication synchronization program. (That’s been a big success.) I’ve been to Atlanta to a vitamin/supplement conference. (We barely use the vitamins anymore but their probiotics are on point.) Now I trot off to yet another state to see what pharmacy wonders we can learn. This time, it will be pharmacy software related. We’ve used an advanced software program since the day we opened but now we’re going to learn about some of the features we haven’t even tried to touch yet.

So I won’t be posting until I return but you can follow my shenanigans on Instagram as it’s easily accessible.

 

5 Ways to Make Your Pharmacy Hate You

1. “Can’t you do it faster?” – Well of course I could. I could just pick some random ass bottle off the shelf, throw it in the RX bottle, not even look at your other meds in case they interact and just hand it to you. Hell, you don’t even have to pay for it!
2. Drop off compound, expect it done in 15 minutes.  – Why no, we don’t have to combine all of the raw ingredients and use special procedures to mix them together.
3. Hand us your used tube of vaginal cream. – Even if you didn’t touch your vagina when using this, we’re still skeeved out.
4. “Why isn’t it on the $4 list?” – This isn’t Wal-Mart.
5. Insist that the LACK of blue dye in your oxycodone 30 mg upsets your stomach, so could you please swap these white ones with blue ones. –  No, and way to out yourself that you’re selling them on the street.

 

That Holiday Hustle

Woooo. I am tired. That week leading up to Christmas was crazy at the pharmacy. Everyone wanted their meds, not only before the holiday but before the end of the year. Everyone crams as many meds as their insurance will pay for before the beginning of the year when their deductible resets. That being said, the next four days before the New Year are bound to be chaos once again.

But I have today off and plan to spend it recharging my batteries. Of course there are things that I should get done, but I most likely won’t. My only real agenda is to write a review for The Hero of Ages. I’ve lost my husband for the foreseeable future to Pokemon Sun, Watch Dogs 2 and completing FFXV, so I should have plenty of time to write.

I was going to hold off reading any more books until the New Year but decided to throw one more book in because I can’t go more than a day or two without reading. So I borrowed House Rules (book #7) in the Chicagoland Vampire series from the library because I could not decide what I felt like reading. The series started out strong but began slowly teetering downwards. I have a feeling that this may be the last book in the series that I read but we’ll see how it goes. If there is one more relationship flip-flop with the two main characters, I’ll have to resist throwing my Kindle at the wall.

Baking. I hope you’re ready for some extreme baking in 2017. My husband and roommate/friend went in together and bought me a stand mixer. They watched me struggle mixing various recipes the days leading up to Christmas, all the while knowing a solution to my problems lay waiting 10 feet away. They are now referring to it as my ‘last trials.’  No more straining my puny human arms making tasty treats!

I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday and got some really sweet stuff. What was your favorite thing you received this year??

Bah Hum Bug

Oi, the holidays. And aren’t we just getting started? Usually I really enjoy the holidays, this year, especially after Thanksgiving, I’m feeling pretty Grinchy. All I really want to do is prepare for winter to hit. Prepare meaning, I have a sufficient supply of books, coffee, cocoa, and blankets because I’m not leaving the house unless I absolutely have to. I can handle any amount of snow the universe wants to throw at me, but bitter cold is another thing altogether.

I literally just spent 10 minutes trying to find an appropriate coffee addiction meme. However, every single fucking one of them was not an acceptable file type. Coffee meme people, get your shit together!

So, ahem, I’ve been absent thanks to holiday crap. Now it’s time to add coffee to an IV bag and get caught up on things. Including all your lovely blogs, I’ve been a bad blog friend and I intend to make things right! I made a bomb ass bread recipe that I’ll be sharing here soon. The new kid at work was finally was fired. I can’t even tell you how happy that made me but it does mean that I’ll be working a lot more weekends until we hire another pharmacy technician who can handle their shit. I have high standards so it may take awhile.

Forthcoming book reviews:

 

  

One Lovely Blog – 100 Followers

In celebration of hitting 100 lovely followers, I finally filled out my facts from winning the One Lovely Blog Award a few months ago from The Shameful Narcissist and Ignited Moth. (Thanks ladies!)

The Official Rules of the Award:

1. Thank the person who nominated you and provide a link to their blog

2. List the rules and display the award.

3. Nominate 6-10 bloggers to receive this award.

4. State 7 facts about yourself.

Grumpy Gus

Yesterday was rough. It was one of those days where you’re just in a shit ass mood and nothing is really going to change that.

It didn’t help that we had to start the day with a work meeting to discuss our issues with the new kid at work. In reality, we should not have kept him past his 90 days but our boss likes to give people approximately one million chances. I can’t stand people who cannot take constructive criticism as the new person, twist incidents to make themselves look better and straight up deny the shit that they do. I’m positive that he’s sexist as well so you know just how high he ranks in my books. So of course, I had to shut that shit down and I left the kid dumbfounded. That felt good. But, it was first thing in the morning and I don’t like arguing as soon as I get up.

This coffee mug accurately represents me first thing in the morning:

The rest of the day was boring as fuck. We were dead at work and the new kid made it awkward all day. Boss sent me home early which should have lightened my mood but it didn’t. The rest of the day I was stressed about financial things and couldn’t let it go. My sister-in-law told me to go take a bubble bath, light some candles and read a book. I should have listened to her but books near water make me antsy and I couldn’t find my bubble bath. *Cue extra cranky*

Alas! Today is a new day and I will grump no more! Lots of cleaning to do as we’ll have the sister, brother-in-law and nephew over tomorrow. (Cleaning is not fun of course but needs to be done) There is baking in my future and that always pleases me now. It pleases me even more when people are excited to eat the things I bake. I told my sister-in-law that I would make her any bread she wanted (lemon blueberry) and I am excited to try a new recipe.

Today I will be as the praying mantis that was waiting for me on the hood of the vehicle the other day; patient and wise. Should that fail, the mantra will change to ‘fuck it and eat it.’ Look out husband.

 

 

 

Pal’n Around

The day is always better when you start it with an adorable coffee pal.

Making the Benjamins

So, we talked about how going back to work after a vacation sucks yesterday. Maybe that made you wonder (or maybe it didn’t and I will tell you anyway) what a Cupcakes and Machetes does to pay the bills. Or the only things my dogs care about, buying the biscuits. I keep telling them to get jobs and buy their own biscuits but well, they rebel by simply laying around being cute most of the day. A job that I feel I should have, but my husband keeps saying things like, “Then how will we keep a roof over the dogs heads?” and, “How will the dogs have nice things?”

Valid points but I don’t have to be happy about it.

I count pills for a living. Just kidding! I’m a spoiled rotten pharmacy technician that doesn’t even have to count those little bastards because my boss bought a machine that does most of the work for us. I still do all the other things pharmacy technicians do like forward patients to pharmacists to ask things like, why is my poop this color and that shape? Don’t laugh. It’s true.

Or, will you please look at this, what I think is an in-grown hair? And they proceed to pull down their pants to their pubic area. There was the patient complaining that his suppositories weren’t working and come to find out, he wasn’t taking them out of the tin foil. Or, the woman who wanted a refill on her birth control and when she handed the pack over, there were only 5 pills missing sporadically across the pack. Turns out, she thought you only had to take them on the days that you have sex….This one happens more often than I’m comfortable with.

When someone in pharmacy tells you that there is never a dull day there, you now know that you should probably believe 100% of what they say. It may sound far-fetched but this is really how people behave.

So with that, I will probably dedicate a section of this blog to pharmacy stories, because sometimes they’re just too good to not share.