WARS (WARS!!!!!)

I heart Family Medicine. At least for the next ten days.

So, every year at the holidays, they do this thing called WARS, which my co-intern insists you have to sort of growl, all loud and baritone, sort of like, WARRRRRRRRRRRRS! It allegedly stands for Work At Reduced Staff, or Wives Against Resident Slavery, or We Are Really Short, or We Are Really Screwed, or Work's Always Really Shitty, depending on whom you talk to. What it amounts to is that half the staff gets the whole week of Christmas off, and the other half has the whole week of New Year's off. But on the alternate week, they're on call like every other night and work their butts off.

But we don't. Because we're not really part of WARS, so, we're just gravy for them. Pretty much every morning, my cohort Mike and I go in at 8 am, which is an hour and half or so later than we usually get there, and see whatever patients are assigned to us, and then whenever we're ready we round with the attending. And then as soon as whatever work we have to do to take care of those patients is done, we go home. And while I still have Saturday State Hospital call duty, Mike takes no call at all until after the first and has both weekends off. It's a sweet deal.

I had a lovely day today. I actually had to pick Mike up on my way in this morning because he was having car trouble. We were both woefully unprepared today - we both forgot our ID badges (which of course give us access to the unit we're on) and he forgot his pager. Which, no matter, we still wandered in at 8 and managed to get onto the ward and all was well. I had three patients to see, chatted with the attending, called a consultant or two, and was done before 11. Mike finished around 11:30, and offered to buy me lunch if I drove him to Borders to pick up the rest of his girlfriend's Christmas gift. And you know how much I simply hate going to bookstores. I wandered around and read a few pages of a few different books and got a little giddy off the book fumes while he picked out a travel guide for her upcoming trip out of the country. And then we went to this nearby Indian place and I had very wet daal and vegetable curry and we had a leisurely conversation about our program and our coworkers and I clued him in on medicine at State Hospital, which he's doing after we're finished with Family, and we had a very nice time.

As a sidebar, he also told me that he's doing State Hospital Medicine with another of our classmates (obviously), one of the two other male full-time residents in our class, whom we'll call Fang (for reasons that have nothing to do either with his dentition or, say, a preponderance of tattoos. Just trust me, it makes sense). Mike can be pretty laid back, generally, but I think he still may not take especially well to all the power jockeying. He's also very tall, which will make Dr. Asshole feel even shorter than, say, I did (Mike's probably close to a foot taller than I am). And Fang...is a bit more hot blooded and occasionally lacks a filter between his brain and his mouth. And both of them are pretty smart guys, seem to have a pretty good sense of people. Which, can be very difficult when Dr. Asshole starts pretending to know anything at all about psychiatry. But then again, they both have Y chromosomes, which our infamous Med Unit attending tends to equate with intelligence (or rather, he tends to equate the lack thereof with a lack thereof). I think that's going to be an interesting little bit of behavioral sociology, right there.

Anyhow. It also happens that Mike lives about three blocks from the good yarn store. So, darn it all, I just had to stop in. I bought a book of very cool baby blanket patterns and another one about dyeing yarn with plants. Because really, I wanted to sit and knit for a while, and none of what I'm knitting with currently could possibly have been purchased at their store. So I had to buy something. And then I did sit and knit. It turns out that they have a Wednesday afternoon knitting group. Ohhh, which was so nice. I mean, not my group from back home (you guys are irreplaceable), but it was just so very lovely to be among knitters. And to sit and knit in the presence of strangers without anyone looking at me like I was doing witchcraft. Ah, it was wonderful.

AND, it turns out that many of these very nice people I met today are part of a knitting group that meets every Tuesday night at 7pm at a bookstore near the hospital. I think...I think I might have found a knitting circle! Do you know how exciting that is?! Knitters! And a social group of non-hospital folks (not that I don't love my fellow doctor types, but, you know how sometimes stay at home moms need to have conversations with adults? It's kind of like that. Sometimes it's nice to be able to talk about something totally unrelated in, you know, English. Instead of Latin and/or acronyms). I'm all a-twitter. And, almost done with my revised Tapestry hat.

My Christmas was wonderful, by the way. I spent both Christmas Eve and Christmas evening with our family friends that live here in town. Their eldest daughter, who's a few months older than me and with whom I veritably grew up, was in for the holiday, which, it was so nice to see her, too. And, she and I kicked some serious ass at Trivial Pursuit. It was just such a nice time.

Oh, and for those who are worried, fear not, I won't let Maggie get cold, even if she is naked. I actually didn't have her clipped all that close, so she still has SOME fur. And also a nifty red coat. And a little sweater, if absolutely necessary. But really, the fur was so out of control. She's on really top-shelf food and has really soft, healthy fur, but, it's that husky undercoat. No amount of brushing has seemed to curtail it, either. I normally have her clipped in the spring and then in like, August, not this time of year, but she was miserably itchy, and the loose hair was getting in her ears and making them itch. And, I'm allergic to dog hair. Plus, there were like five other dogs getting clipped at the groomer that day...it's not like winter in Chicago.