I'll confess, it's not my first trip of the day. The mutts and I headed out early this morning for the one in Durham that has a drive-through. Obviously, Maxine needed her coffee...
Sparrow was on call yesterday, so Maxine spent the day (and night) with us. She was terrified during the storm last night and stuck to me like velcro. After she tried to burrow far enough under the blankets to maybe hide under the mattress, I'm thinking. Poor thing. Maggie was our valiant protector, but if Maxine hadn't been there, I suspect she would've been holding nearly as tight.
Maxine felt better this morning when we went out to get coffee. She'd never been in my car before, and it was exciting. My car is, of course, a mess, so there was lots to explore.
Poor girls, they had a rough night. Mine was more along the lines of amusing. Like, I own something like six flashlights (don't ask) but could only find one, which would of course be the one with the dying batteries. And when I moved, I threw out all but one of my candles. Which, I finally found, but then couldn't find a match to save my damn life. On the bright side, though, I did solve a problem that I've been trying to figure out since they turned the gas on, which is how to shut off the pilot light for my gas log. Unfortunately, I figured this out while I was trying to light a birthday candle with it (as a spillikin for the bigger candle).
Crap.
Ultimately, though I did find the fancy Zippo candle lighter (it's just a lighter, but it's long and thin). In a suitcase. Where else would one keep it?
Last night was one of the few times that I'm sorry I don't smoke...anyway, though, I got the candle lit, and then promptly found myself sitting on my bed with the dogs thinking, it's 10pm. What exactly am I going to do, now? Why don't I just go to bed, already?
Ah well. Apparently there's a 70% chance of storms tonight, too, so it still might come in handy.
Like I said, things were fine this morning. I was going to get the girls up a little earlier but I figured it was best to just let sleeping dogs lie (aren't I funny?).
.JPG)
We tried to go for a walk this morning and canvass the neighborhood, but, it ended up being a giant disaster of knotted leashes. Which is particularly funny, considering they started out on the double leash. Maybe some other time, when there isn't as much chaos to sniff at.
So we went to Starbucks instead.
Maggie was not pleased when I decided to go back after Sparrow came home and Little Bit went with her. I actually closed the door to her crate on her feet before she'd move them.
She does this in the mornings sometimes, too. Or at the old place, she'd stay in bed and refuse to come downstairs if she knew I was getting ready for work.
I did get a lot done yesterday, though, which was nice. Because I'm not sure how productive today's going to be.
So to catch y'all up...this week has been weird. Wednesday was my last day at State Hospital. I was there for the morning so I could disorient the heck out of my poor intern (Oh! And here's this. Oh! And don't forget that. Oh! And then there's this. And this patient's crazy. And this one's a pain in the ass. And this one, well, don't get within striking distance of her. Oh, and...). The staff did a good job of scaring them for me ("Think of our patients as a female prison population." No....), so I could cross that off my to-do list.
And then I dashed back to the big house for the first half of Second Year orientation. Which was less disorienting and just total information overload than last year was. But then, it was also four days shorter.
I'm excited about this year, in general. Because y'all know what a therapy junkie I am. And I'm looking forward to clinic. And I'm glad I got to go to orientation with the rest of my class, even though I'm not starting for a month. We've been so scattered, that it was nice to be together for a while. Ruthie, who's starting in September, and Faye, who starts in November, unfortunately weren't able to join us, because they get their own little orientation later.
One thing that's going to be anxiety-provoking about this year, though is that we start applying for Child and Adolescent fellowships. And there's only 5 spots. And I think there's more than 5 of us who are interested. I'm considering one, maybe two other programs (the only one I'm likely to seriously look into is University of Maryland, because it's possible I would LOVE to go work at Sheppard-Pratt, where they have a whole unit devoted to trauma patients). But I'd rather just rotate up there for a month, because when you get right down to it, I really want to stay here for fellowship. I like the people. I could keep my therapy patients. I like where I'm living (a LOT). But I'm really unhappy to be competing against my classmates, primarily because a few of those going into child happen to also be a few of my closest friends. That's uncomfortable, unless we suddenly pare ourselves down to five or less. But, that's my own neurosis to manage.
Call, this week, was also weird. So, the way weekday call works here, there's a second year on overnight who has worked all day, an intern on until 10 who has worked all day, and another second year who comes in at 10 to relieve the intern who's on Night Float, which means they work 10p-8:30a Sunday night through Thursday night. So it's like shift work. But typically, after the intern leaves, it's you and one of your classmates.
But I'm still in the intern call pool. Which means I was on with Curly until 10, who was doing her very fist second year call (the typical division of labor is that the intern/NF resident covers the ER and the crisis pager, the second year covers direct admissions to the floor and consults. So it's different, although, sometimes when it's busy you just get shit done no matter what you're assigned to). Which, was nice for her, because she didn't have to train her intern. And then Fang came on at 10, which was also nice for him, because I'd seen five people and had one patient left to be seen in the ER and a minor task to sign out to him. And they were both fine, but it's weird to be the "underling", and you know...and I know they'll get this the next time they're on call and have one of the real interns...but I don't think some of our classmates get what it means to have Faye and me - who, you know, generally know what we're doing - in the intern call pool in July. I'm just sayin'. I'm on call Monday with Mike, with Benny as my relief. We'll see how it goes. I'm thinking it should be better - I've worked with both of them a lot.
But, I do love me a three day weekend. I think I'm going to blow this pop stand and maybe go get some new tires and a bag of dog food before I go home and see if the power's back on. Here's hoping I'm posting from home tomorrow!!
No comments:
Post a Comment