Christmas Fail from 2011

I haven't even read through this. It must have been from 2011, just calculating M and V's ages:

Well, folks. This Christmas was the Christmas for which we have "Done the least." The truth is, I am a Christmas fanatic (minus overspending). I LOVE sending thoughtful Christmas cards, choosing and decorating a real-live fragrant tree, making Christmas cookies, sending a few Christmas boxes to family with some fancy wrapping paper, making ornaments, baking Christmas cookies in sweet shapes...

But this year was different. I was just too too busy, and R was as well. We shopped for the girls on Amazon.com, and supplemented with some small items we'd picked up here and there in the past several months. We are so thankful to have family members who treat the girls each Christmas...Christmas morning has always been a very exciting and plentiful morning for the girls.

I have to admit it: I feel incredibly guilty and sad about not sending Christmas cheer to the people we usually send cards and boxes to. It tugs at me. Nobody I love would demand a card, gift, or craft...but I wanted to so badly. The timing of my rotations this year literally left me running on an average of 3-4 hours of sleep per night (or day) and profoundly occupied. I literally had nothing left over. What I did have left over amounted to several hours on Friday and Saturday that I spent making my 2 (of twelve total) stations of the Nativity - a project at church that I had committed to a month before in a fit of crazed ambition. I can't shake that bereft feeling of falling so far short of my Christmas goals. I'm not relating this to make myself out as some sort of Suzie Homemaker who just couldn't outperform her neighbors this year. I count my "Christmas efforts" on average to be a little unconventional, low on actual purchasing, and very home-made. But they mean a lot to me. They're my way of honoring the occasion of Christ's birth and celebrating with others.

We finally did actually make Christmas cookies. This week. I spent all day Monday studying and working on research proposal stuff, and by the end of the day sensed the closing-in feeling of school starting again. I put everything down, got out the Crisco and whole wheat flour and said aloud, "Who wants to make CHRISTMAS COOKIES?" And Some People did, ages 8 and 6! This is the kind of scheduling flexibility that keeps the show going around here.

But no cards, no boxes, not even an e-mailed link to a Christmas video. I ask your forgiveness.

Con Tiki is our soundtrack.

R and the girls have just moved in the Ikea kitchen that Jeremiah and Marcus just delivered. Jeremiah is from Brooklyn and told R that you can't see the water from Brooklyn anymore. Just the high-rises.

Irma has spent the day sewing another skirt using the Singer Slant Stitch 401 A - the finest sewing machine ever made - given to us (R actually) by Dylan. Thank you, Dylan! We love it.

R is stacking boxes full of kitchen, which is ironic because presently Indian simmer sauce simmers along on our dirty stove. Our dog is naturally tolerant, naturally soft-natured. sometimes he feels naughty but he still exercises restraint. Irma is arching an eyebrow at me and telling me she's never seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. So...don't I want to watch it?

Today was a great day at work. I had some sweet, sweet patients. That's all I'm allowed to say because HIPAA.

I get out of the hospital at 2 a.m.
The air is cold, colder than when I went in.
I breathe in, glance down upon a bloody loogie.
Looking altogether too private
for a public walk.
My fingers search for the zipper on my jacket.

I am doing my due diligence on the way to the deck:
     Looking ahead
     Looking behind
     Down the street
     Up the street:
     Nobody there.
As I leave the world of Grady behind, I think back upon the 1p-11p I just finished: That man's legs will never get better til heaven. They will always be like that until they're gone or he's gone. That woman will need to have her uterus out; it's inevitable. This other man - he will be lucky to be alive tomorrow. Or unlucky. But blessed, as we all are blessed tonight. The man who hollered his blood pressure numbers at me then, "You're on camera, woman, they're watching you walk away!" He could get better but he may not.

I feel so sad at those legs, that ill uterus, that man in cardiac arrest, and the other one just hollering like crazy.

I see a figure down near Hughes and I snap back to the night-
The city's lights are crisp. The night is quiet, even outside Grady. The chill has calmed it to a faint mechanized hum.
Another world indeed.

I have turned a corner, I walk to the deck all alone, not another Grady soul around. Surely I am on camera now. This camera is the normal type, lets me pass in silence. Lets me press "10" and be lifted to my tiny home on the top floor of this deck.

I step out again, this time onto a platform in the middle of a tall, bright city. I check behind corners as I walk, but mostly I am waiting to feel safe enough to stand, look, and breathe.

Everything is so bright, so clean. Even the top of the deck seems to have been scoured, whether by cold or sunlight who knows.

Who planned this bright night? Did the architects act in concert to give me this gift tonight? That would be a delusion as insane as you-are-on-camera, however, in a way they did. They calculated the time, the effort, the materials, the vistas, the PR, the building's contents and the lights each building would dress in. Tonight.

As soon as things seem too dirty to bear
I walk out into a new frost.
Frost on the subaru
Whose windows I left down
For no reason
Frost on the Chevy beside me. Windows up.

Happy Evening Blues at Lake Lanier

May

I don't remember the tipping point for the decision to make my blog private. Midway through residency I took down all the posts. Likely I was feeling the hard scrutiny of my professional role, feeling the value of privacy. Now that 99% of humanity has capitulated to thorough online connectivity, I feel somehow that I can now blend nicely into the din yet perhaps manage some connection here and there as well. Looking back at these posts reminds me of simpler times. I miss my people so much. You, if you are reading: I miss you.

It's spring, and I marvel at the leaves for long, long stretches of time. I drink in their shapes, their layerings, the textures upon textures. Shadows, too. Somehow, it all just keeps looking more beautiful to me. More beautiful every May.

Oh man, what has happened in the past six months?

This is a dog birthday cake for a 5-year-old who wanted to eat the eyes and nose first and whose mom said, "Of course, Josie!" Well played, Josephine.

In other news, we went camping a few weeks ago:

Car ride TO the Grand Canyon of the East

Overlooking the Grand Canyon of the East

About to get squashed by the Grand Canyon of the East

Down inside the Grand Canyon of the East. Yes, that is a waterfall.

JJ's job is to stare at us adoringly and wait for further instructions.

Fall is here and fall is good.

My current rotation is pediatric emergency medicine and that is good. I like kids. Occasionally I get really lucky and one of my patients will be five months old and happy and well. Pre-stranger-anxiety and super connect-y, these kids are some of my favorites. Tonight I went into a room and a 5-month-old with all her hair done up into little puffs just lit up with an enormous giddy soft grin. Straight to my heart!

March = MICU

March has meant ICU for me. I have a great team with which to take all-night call, a wonderful fellow who sends teaching articles every evening. The ICU itself has been an incredible place to learn. It's where the 30 or so sickest patients in the hospital come to see if they can gain enough physiologic ground to get back to the regular hospital floor. SBT's (spontaneous breathing trials), ABG's (arterial blood gases), PAD's (pain, agitation, delirium meds) have become a part of my daily lingo. The ICU has some of the most committed nurses and doctors in the hospital. I cannot overstate how much I've learned. It's also incredibly sad at times, but I can confidently say we do the best we can even in the toughest times.

Of course, I've missed my family. The time we've had together has been short and sweet. I did get to go to Mazie's science olympiad meeting and half of her choral concert...and I'm off on the girls' birthday.

Richie had an open house for his project. So many people turned out to see his project. I am very proud of him. I had finished a 15-hour night shift, but I was glad to attend part of it. Vivian is brushing up on the 7's family and working on her Google Doodle submission. JJ is just JJ - a big furry joy. I fed him a lump of chicken tonight on the sly.

Cindy almost got picked up today by a passerby, but she was too standoffish, so the guy left her alone. We all watched from the window just laughing at the situation because Cindy is very good at fending for herself. If he did happen to take her, we didn't expect he'd keep her for long because she tends to vomit on the carpet if she doesn't get her exact food. She habitually wakes her people between 4 am and 5 am every morning to be let out to play with other neighborhood cats. That's why we sometimes dress her up and laugh at her...she takes herself way too seriously. We feel we have a tenuous equilibrium with Cindy that we feel takes experience and finesse that he may not have the patience to achieve.

February: a blur

On our way to sledding hill

Made it to the sledding hill

Split pea soup on a cold night

3rd grade musical: frog and butterfly

Matching.

February is nigh done. It's been snowy at times - so much fun while it lasted. I have just finished a string of night shifts that has left me rather discombobulated. Yesterday I woke up in the afternoon before going in, and my lower back went out when I was climbing out of bed. Bwah. I think all manner of interesting thoughts when I'm driving home in the wee hours of morning, then they just don't seem nearly as interesting later. But above is photographic evidence that February existed.

Onward and upward to spring!

Tiny Monsters

Nana Monster. KidV Monster.

LJ Monster. BJ Monster.

LJ Monster and BJ Monster blasting off.

I am on ultrasound rotation right now where we get steeped in ultrasound (or rather the pekoe tea of ultrasound is infused into our mountain-caught and Bunsen-burner-boiled hot water so actually ultrasound is steeped in us...) by scanning almost every day and going through self-directed learning modules in our free time. Common ultrasound finding: monsters. You probably think I'm joking, but I am steeped in ultrasound right now and I am not joking. I'll try to find some monsters on the internets:

Body Monster. Couldn't be anything else.

I told you. Monsters.
Really? Really, I actually know what I am seeing when I scan now, which is nothing short of miraculous. Really, I had a little spat today about whether a sliver of black was free fluid and I WON. So that's really good. I'm pleased but not complacent. Must. Scan. Better. Monsters are more fun:

three not-cute chipmunks and one smug kidV

two cute monsters

PS Nana will KILL me if she finds out I put this on the internet.