Peep show

Okay, so technically it's a link to pictures, not a picture per se. And these are indeed words. But for this week's Wordless Wednesday, I send you here. Cracks. Me. Up.

Still way too tired

Although I did get one hell of a good nap this afternoon. Which is excellent, because I'm still not sleeping. I did get a referral to the sleep clinic yesterday, though...

Mags and I had a long but lovely day. We went to the coffee shop this am and then went and hung out with Maggie's boyfriend, Crazy Eddie, and of course his person, Jenny, who also made me wicked good breakfast. Maggie twisted her paw a little funny, but she seems to be fine now. We stopped and got hamburgers on the way home; I was a little disappointed in mine, so Maggie got a good chunk of it as well as her own.

I took a nap this afternoon (did I mention the awesome nap? It was almost as good as a post-call nap). Crazy Eddie obviously wore Mags out, because she's been sound asleep on one bed or another (mine, hers, the guest room, whatever) pretty much since we finished lunch. I also did some actual cleaning (I can see my kitchen counters for the first time in months). And I made plane reservations. My mom is a bit under the weather, and of course my dad is still recovering from their "vacation" down here when he got the insider's view of my place of business. So I'm going up north for the next ten days to sort stuff out (and mostly to reassure myself that everyone's actually fine). I leave Thursday at quarter to dark in the morning. My aunt down here is taking me to the airport, and then my uncle (my actual, genetic uncle, who is attached to a whole different aunt) is picking me up. I'm not sure I can do 10 days in just a carryon, but I might try.

One of these days, I'm going to have some vacation time that is actually less stressful than my job...

First real day of not being at work

And I am wiped. the hell. out. For so many reasons...

Weekending

So I've now frittered away the entire weekend. I had a really good morning - Jenny and her coffeehouse villagers are quickly assimilating me, I fear (and by "fear," I mean "love it"). It certainly helps their case when they all show up with these smart, adorable little children. This morning we conjured up a rousing game of Superball table tennis, using the little baskets the shop serves their muffins in. Much to the chagrin of the other patrons, I suspect, although who can object to peals of delighted laughter from a five year old?

The rest of the day? Not so useful.

And I'm up too late again.

Thank heavens I don't have to go to work tomorrow....

Day 1

Didn't get much done today. Stayed up too late again, in part because of the nap I took late in the afternoon, which turned my little sinus headache into a migraine. Good times.

Actual good times were had today, though. I spent a nice chunk of the day with some friends of mine and a gaggle of their assorted children, all of whom are aged four or younger. I was the only one who didn't have to leave to put someone down for a nap (although, see above, re:me putting myself down for a nap), but I have to tell you - I think it was the highlight of my month, when, having spent the previous hour juggling various infants, I was sitting on the floor with three toddlers climbing all over me, playing cars and learning about Chuck the Truck his friends and getting schooled in what various animals say in several different languages.

So, here's a little bit of trivia for your next cocktail party, courtesy of my learned colleagues of the Playskool set, their moms, and a little help from the interwebs...here's what dogs say....

Spanish dogs: guau guau
French dogs: ouah ouah
Punjabi dogs: bhau bhau
German dogs: wau wau
Korean dogs: mong mong
Arabic dogs: aw aw
Russian dogs: gav gav (actually, I hear they have a lot to say these days on the subject of nuclear arms)
Swedish dogs: vof vof
Czech dogs: haf haf
Iranian dogs: vagh vagh
Jewish dogs (the ones that speak Hebrew): haw haw
Greek dogs: ghav ghav

Although, actually, I suspect Greek dogs say something more like, "Why you want to leeeeeave me?" (a la Costa in My Big Fat Greek Wedding).

My favorite, though, my absolute favorite, though, was what the snake says. Which is of course "ssss, ssss," but if you're two, and adorable, this involves sticking your tongue out through your teeth and concentrating very hard on getting it right.

Kids are just the best, I tell you what...I can't think of a better way to have spent my morning.

Stay-cay

So, a couple of months ago, I recognized that I had some unaccounted-for vacation time. And I originally had planned on taking it all the first two weeks of July (because I'm off cycle, and have to start 18 days after everyone else, and this pisses me off so I was going to go be pissed off at the beach or something before fellowship started). But then I got talked into being the JAR on Consults the first week of July, since there's a lot of transition going on right then, and was like, huh. So when to use this...

And over the past couple of weeks, a few happenstance things aligned just so, such that I'm now working one day next week - Friday, for which I get a comp day, because it's Good Friday.

I am so...freakin....oh, holy cow, do I need some time off right now.

I'm going to hang out with friends. Clean my house. Write notes. Get my oil changed. Take Mags to the groomer. Maybe even get a haircut.

And apparently, I'm going to celebrate the start of Staycation by staying up until 1:30am playing Wii.

That does sort of seem appropriate, doesn't it?

Pardon me, now, if you would. I need to go get started on sleeping in tomorrow (although, I actually have a lot to do tomorrow. Perhaps I should've started celebrating a bit later...).

More awesome linkiness

Check this out. It's one of the coolest things I've seen in a while.

19 hours until vacation....I can hardly stand it............................

Simple goodness

(Click here)

Damn insomnia

So, I haven't slept well in like...I dunno...a decade or so. Actually, I used to sleep fairly well during naps, but even that's fallen off these days.

I was going to go to bed at 7. Decided that was too early. It's now nearly 10, and I have a 7am therapy patient tomorrow, so I really should be asleep. But what am I doing? Not sleeping.

This annoys me. Which is sort of all I have to say today. I'm grumpy and annoyed at so many other things right now, but this seems to be my issue of choice at the moment. Mostly because it's my own fault for not having good sleep hygiene, which I'm sure isn't helping the cause.

Whine, whine, whine...

Working pretty well, actually.

I was thinking this morning on my way in to work (aka the only hospital in the area that provides indigent care, fyi) about Sarah Palin's comment in a recent speech: "Hey America - how's that whole hope-y change-y thing working out for you?"

(And then, of course, Will Ferrell's George W. Bush on SNL saying, "Gosh, Sarah, you're just so darn folksy. I tried to be folksy, but it just came off douchey.")

I'm so glad the HCR bill passed. It isn't sufficient, in its current inception, to really fix the system, but it's a step in the right direction. And we need to take some serious steps. The system, as it stands, cannot sustain much longer. It is going to fall apart, soon, and dramatically. Medicare and Medicaid are imploding (Medicare reimbursement was supposed to be cut this month by more than a quarter, independent of any such reform measures, because old and disabled people are just so gosh darn expensive! Yeah, that's the solution. Cut their access to care even more...). And folks, don't think you aren't already paying for the uninsured and the illegal immigrants - we got ourselves in this mess because everyone who IS insured is paying more because the uninsured are sucking down resources. And they're using expensive ER visits instead of primary care offices, long medical and psychiatric hospital stays that could have been avoided with early intervention. People are sucking the system dry - not because they refuse to work and want to be taken care of. The irony is, THOSE people have coverage. Instead, the vast majority are doing so because they have no other choice. They need care, they are sick. As a kind and ethical people, we cannot just throw our hands up and say, oh, sorry, you're just not important enough to society. Which - news flash - in a pure, orthodox, strictly Capitalist model? That's exactly what would happen.

Remember this?

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

I'm so proud to be an American today. And so ashamed of those in my country who would rail against what ultimately amount to basic human rights, who stoop to violence and slinging harsh and hateful epithets, who would deny and exploit the vulnerable in our society. I invite them to spend a day in my ward, or better yet, the state psych hospital. I invite them to sit with any one of our social workers, struggling to find placement, housing, affordable medication, or even just follow up for some of the people that are in the most dire need of good care. I invite them to spend an hour at the homeless shelter on Rosemary Street, or at the Spanish-speaking mental health clinic down the road. I urge them to spend a morning in our Geropsychiatry clinic for a full-on view of how the current Medicare system works. And if they possess a soul, if they retain even a glimmer of compassion and humanity, I challenge them not to want to change the system.

And if that makes me a Socialist...well, so be it.

Seems appropriate for a Sunday....

Listen. This post got a little too long and wound up being all about religion and faith and the philosophy therein. This is my blog, my belief system, and my external processing. Please, if you feel the need to leave some comment about how I'm going to hell or have missed the point, just....leave. Now. Quietly.

Thanks, The Management
_______________________________________________

It's been kind of a rough day for me today. I slept poorly, which isn't new. I couldn't quite get my shit together at any point today. In truth, this is a smaller representation of a larger truth for me.

It's been kind of rough lately, period.

And there are a million and twelve reasons why that is, but I struggle daily nonetheless with things I never thought would become this important. Or maybe still aren't important but feel like they should be.

One of our patients came into the ER a couple of years ago, high on who knows what (he said he'd been smoking phone books. Nobody believed that as the literal truth, but also, none of us knew of any common substance of abuse that got referred to as "phone book"), requesting detox from ghosts.

That is primarily how I feel today. I feel toxic, I was realizing, as I drove home from meeting Matt for lunch. Matt himself I do not find especially toxic (nor, say, breakfast, which was yummy today). But Matt and I get into these deep, personal debates about such trivial things and the purpose of life and the true place of scripture in religion, not to mention the place of religion in faith. I love having these conversations with Matt because we can; we're both well versed in many aspects of what we speak. We're respectful and polite but engaged and can disagree easily. And it's rarely true "disagreement" as much as exploration. Having come from a strong Orthodox Christian background, a militantly Lutheran undergrad, and a very Jesuit medical school - not to mention that I have an undergraduate degree in a theology-heavy view of Humanities. It was somewhat more polytheistic in its spectrum than his MDiv, but, see above, re: militant Lutherans. We both talked, and we both listened, and had useful discussion of things like the overlap between the Christian faith and Wicca, Judaism, Islam, etc. Given all of the name-calling and hell-sending and hypocrisy and righteous indignation and fear (above all, fear) in that my view of "religion" is so steeped...given all of that, it was absolutely fabulous today to sit at an outside cafe, surrounded by beatniks and people from all strata, basking in the newly arrived spring breeze, eating tasty organic hippie food, with a good friend who can have these discussions with me in a non-judgmental, non-secular, non-threatening way...it helps.

It also brings up a great deal of pain, which I realized about halfway through our lengthy discussion that in large part what I was doing was (if you'll pardon my digression into psychoanalytic babble) discharging a lot of my intolerable affect and painful energy around this stuff, giving it to him to contain, hold, detoxify, metabolize. In lay terms, one might use a word like "dumping." In realizing this, I also realized just how much pain, confusion, disappointment, conflict there is in this for me. I'd not been aware of the extent of this before today.

The interesting thing, to me, I was thinking on my way home, is that God is never the pain, confusion, disappointment, conflict. God and I are on solid terms. It's people that I can't seem to grasp.

Apparently my faith, which is a different entity than my religious affiliations, is something a bit more mystical than I'd realized until the past few months or so. I believe in the existence of God because I know God. I just do. I see God in the faces of my patients, the laughter of children, the brilliance of spring daffodils, the sweet and complete affective honesty of my dog. I see God in my life, and my family, and believe firmly that I was created in the image of God. Do I believe in the dual nature of Jesus and that He was the son of God? Of course I do. I think we're all children of God, and Jesus of Nazareth had a particular path, and investment of divine energy to understand and reclaim the bond to these creatures that had done exactly what God wanted them to do - develop autonomy. Truthfully? I believe Jesus saved us. All of us - not just the Christians. And in a way, I believe Jesus saved God. Jesus struggled, he was tempted and tortured, and did not always make what contemporary humans thought to be the right choice, but made the "mistakes" he did because they were so important to understanding humanity. This, I think, was his deity. He was the man he was to help us understand God, who through the passing of the Old Testament times had become less vengeful, more loving. Jesus not only told us what he saw as the desires and ideals of God, but showed them to us as well.

I bet Jesus was tired.

I align myself with the Greek Orthodox church, for reasons of culture more than reasons of doctrine, but that doesn't mean I ignore the dogmatic. But when it comes down to the truth of my relationship with God, I draw from countless traditions that are full of good ideas. Various inceptions of Christianity. Wicca. Islam. Buddhism. Hindu. Kabbalah. I've read the Q'uran, the Mahabharta, and the words of the Buddha. I know a lot about voudou and Santeria and Wicca. I get what we're all trying to do here - understand that which is incomprehensible. We don't all do it in as different ways as we might think, truly. I have my own interpretation of scriptures that at times may seem incompatible with things I endorse, but they aren't. Because it all makes sense in how I understand and relate to God.


But - and this is what struck me later, and is ostensibly why this rant has gone on so long - where we get ourselves into trouble is when we insist we've got it "right." This is why wars are fought over belief systems. I'm right, you aren't, and unless you see that you aren't, I'm going to have to annihilate you because I can't tolerate your dissent. And that can manifest itself in a lot of ways - torture, imprisonment, whatever means it takes to break your spirit; actual death; or, simply dismissing you as not being one of the chosen. I, having the one and only very correct answer to this, will spend my life in servitude to something greater (usually very apparent, loud, and obvious servitude, lest you should miss it) and be rewarded with the privilege of Heaven, because I am better and you are not. Poor you, condemned to fire, brimstone, and endless congressional filibusters.

You'll notice that the people who truly live their Christian (or whatever applies) faith rarely feel the need to rub your nose in it. They'll engage you about it if need be (or want be). They'll model it if you watch them closely. But they won't announce it every thirty seconds and smack you in the head with their well-worn religious tome. They will not condemn, they will not disdain. They will love, they will try to understand, they will do their best to accept.

Humanity....we all want to be special, chosen, elite. Christians...Muslims.....hell, have you met a Jungian lately? It's part of our inherent narcissism - the key to which is always poorly structured self identity and the inability of the ego (self) to defend itself from rejection, because it feels so inherently fragile that at any conflict, even relatively minor, it will be destroyed. The Buddha, though, who was self-identified as a philosopher and not a prophet, the Buddha makes all sorts of observations about self and non-self. About how we are nothing.

I've started to come around to this idea. Because it isn't as nihilistic as one might think. My interpretation of this is, we are nothing, precisely because we are everything. There is not one of us on this earth - future, past, and present - that is not connected. As parts, we are amazing, but the sum of those parts is something so big and all encompassing and important that it is simply unfathomable. It's like, consider the fibers of flax or cotton, cleaned and combed and laid just so...spun into a thread with a tensile strength well beyond that of an individual fiber. The thread is dyed a vibrant color, and delicately, painstakingly woven into its place. When you look at the great and impressive tapestry, the individual thread may not be noticeable, but it is of tantamount importance to the design, not to mention the structure - if you pull on that one scarlet thread, the whole tapestry will be altered and may well unravel.

I am special precisely because there is nothing special about me. This is the conclusion to which I've come today. There are many things about me which are good, many less good, many that are defining and I am as unique a creature as one could imagine. But I'm part of some greater whole, and that is truly the amazing thing about me. Life, humanity, the Holy Spirit, a Higher Power...the echoes are endless. I am but a scarlet thread.

And I, too, am tired. But also feeling better about getting that down. I might read it tomorrow and disagree with it some, but you know, if that happens, it is what it is.

This is the crap that goes on in my head all the time, ps. All. The. Damn. Time. This is part of my perpetual exhaustion...

More weekend, please.

I had such a lovely day.

It's the first day of spring, of course.

Mags and I had a nice lie-in, enjoying the sweet spring breeze coming through the window. We snuggled, read email, eventually I dragged myself out of bed. And then we went to Jen's for brunch, which was wonderful. Jenny has this remarkable group of people with whom she surrounds herself, and I'm really honored to be a part of it. There were almost 40 of us there this am, and I stayed a lot later than I'd planned. I always get kind of anxious in groups of people I don't know very well; there's a core group of her friends that I know, but being me I generally forget people's names (I remember stories, ideas, faces; I suck with names). And then there's always a bunch of different, if fabulous, people who I don't know, and that always makes me a little nervous. But it was lovely, of course. I met some great new people, had good conversations with ones I'm coming to know, and had a generally very good time.

So did Mags! She got to come with me today. She met Jen's puppy, Crazy Eddie, or as he is sometimes also known, Eddie the Neurotic Dawg. They were instant BFF. Like, seriously.

Picture it: Durham, North Carolina. A glorious spring day in 2010.

Eddie: Let me in!!!! Let me innnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!! I'm trapped outsiiiiiide!!! I can't see you if I'm outside!!!!
Maggie: What's with him? 
Eddie (clamors through the opened door): Helllllooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! You smell like a dog, strange new redheaded woman I've maybe met before. Wait! Wait! You smell like THAT dog!! Hi, Dog!!
Maggie: Hi. I...wow. You smell fun. 
Eddie: You're my new best friend, okay? 
Maggie: Okay!! 
Eddie: Let's play! Let's play! Let's play!!!
Maggie: Tag! You're it!! 


And then much wrestling and wagging and joyful tap-dancing ensued.

Jenny's ex-husband's new girlfriend came over later, with their three big dogs. There was a lot of sniffing and marking and jubilant giddy play, until everyone got a little overstimulated. New girlfriend and I distracted them for a while and wore them out a bit more. We went in, and poor Maggie was at the back door being all "save meeeeeee!!!! They're crazy!!!" so she got to come in and hang out with the humans, being that she is all calm and dainty and respectful of small people who are scared of her but end up making friends with her before too long.

I so very love my dog.

She was totally worn out by the time we got home. She's slept like a big furry log pretty much ever since we got home.

I had an agenda for the afternoon - work out, shower, blow dry, go to Starbucks and do some work until it was time to meet the crew for dinner. The residents have been going out monthly for whomever's birthdays are that month, which is mostly an excuse to go out to dinner. We had a really good turnout, and a heck of a lot of fun. There was a good mix of folks, good conversation, and a lot of tomfoolery.

Tomorrow will have to be more productive. But today was really quite lovely.

Happy spring, everyone!!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-kend!

Wow. What a long-ass, freaking damn never-ending week.

Which always ends in a what? A weekend.

I haven't made it to bed before midnight any night this week. I'm so off to bed....

Less stuck

I finally made it home (it's quarter to 11), safe and sound. And don't worry, sadly enough there was no TWD involved in the last post. It was a lot of typing while parked on the I-40 (they do a lot of road construction at night, here, which is great during rush hour. Less great when you're stuck for-EVER when you don't expect to be and are already getting home late).

Maggie was excited. And I so totally love our dog sitter. I left him a note that today was her birthday and she was nine; he wrote back saying she got extra treats and he sang her happy birthday.

She really is the best dog ever. It worries me that she's getting up in years. Not that she knows that, so don't tell her. She still acts like a crazy puppy.

One of my patients had a great moment in therapy today. It was really phenomenal. 

Sparrow is an aunt!! Her little niece hatched today. She's very cute in pictures. Sparrow's flying south tomorrow to snuggle her in person. I'm a tiny bit jealous.

Oh! And! Today was Match Day, so we got a whole crop of new soon-to-be-interns. I think we got a really good group of incoming colleagues.

Tonight was also my last Mindfulness class. That course wound up being better than I expected from the first few sessions. It turned out to be an interesting bunch. I wish it had been a few weeks longer, because I feel like we were just starting to really hit our dynamic.

Today was actually kind of rough, but on the whole, I kept being reminded that I have really good people in my life. Which is what I'm choosing to take away from today.

Stuck.

I'm trying to drive home.

i left my house well over 16 hours ago.

And it's Maggie's birthday today! My baby, she's NINE today! that's crazy...

i do so love that dog.

The fact that I'm driving slowly enough to blog from my phone should be kind of telling....oy....

Blargh.

Ooh! Wait! Progress!

Stuck.

I'm trying to drive home.

i left my house well over 16 hours ago.

And it's Maggie's birthday today! My baby, she's NINE today! that's crazy...

i do so love that dog.

The fact that I'm driving slowly enough to blog from my phone should be kind of telling....oy....

Blargh.

Ooh! Wait! Progress!

Stuck.

I'm trying to drive home.

i left my house well over 16 hours ago.

And it's Maggie's birthday today! My baby, she's NINE today! that's crazy...

i do so love that dog.

The fact that I'm driving slowly enough to blog from my phone should be kind of telling....oy....

Blargh.

Ooh! Wait! Progress!

Happy St. Pat's from Scenic Butner, NC

Happy Kate

Today was a long freakin' day.

But, there was a celebratory dinner (happy birthday, S!!) with some good friends tonight. Good people, good food (I was unaware that The Melting Pot, while still overpriced, could be so damn tasty), a lot of hilarity. We had lots of wonderful, irreverent, often outright inappropriate conversation, with much cackling. It was a wonderful and direly needed evening.

It really has come to my attention over the past few days, what wonderful people I have in my life.

I really am blessed. I just need to take more time to see it.

Changing time

Yeah, so last night...I finally got to sleep about 3am.

Stupid time change.

Plus I got actual sleep this weekend.

But I still had to get up at 6am (which actually is late for me).

So y'all....I'm going to bed.

Another week comes to a close.

So it's Sunday.

My house is still a mess.

I'm still way behind on my notes.

But I had a very pleasant day.

This morning I met Jenny and her crew for coffee and conversation. Jenny is part of this large group of people who call themselves The Village. I'm not exactly sure how it is that they've all come together, but it's this fairly diverse and generally lovely group of people who aren't from the hospital (mostly). The company and the coffee were both fantastic, and I hope they let me come back. Afterward, she and her boyfriend and his friend from church and I went to lunch, and then I ran errands, and stocked up on such exciting things as shampoo and toilet paper and dog food. I came home and had a really good workout (I so heart my Wii). I did some laundry, and some dishes, and spent some quality time with the pup. I had way too much fun with my new phone (I so heart my Droid) and my unlimited text plan. I'm once again up too late on a school night. And am going to regret tomorrow not doing more work this weekend.

But, well, when don't I? And in the grand scheme of things...

Half a weekend

Gone already. ::sigh::

It was a lovely day, though. Beautiful weather. I got a new phone this morning! I've been getting a lot of propaganda from Verizon and how they can save me money and I'm ready for an upgrade and blah, blah, blah. As it turns out...I had to upgrade my texting plan because my dad was going over his allotment.

I heart this so much.

So I did. I also got him a free phone with a keyboard, to make all that texting easier. And I upgraded myself to a Motorola Droid. Which, I still haven't completely figured it out yet, but so far...love, love, love.

Had a very wonderful dinner with Sparrow tonight. Good food, good company, good conversation, and fried ice cream. Does it get better than that?

Meanwhile, y'all....I'm exhausted. I think it's left over from the week, because I slept pretty well last night. I woke up from one of those dreams that's all pleasant and comfortable and full of that symbolic imagery that I could just interpret for days and days. I'm aiming to do that again tomorrow...here's hoping.

Oops.

So I had this great blog post all composed in my head...which I then decided to rest on my pillow for "just a moment" at 8:30 or so...and then promptly fell asleep with about half the lights in the whole world on in my apartment and before I actually ate any dinner. I woke up about 4h later all concerned about having to get up for work in just a few short hours, when I realized...wait...

Either way, though, I'm going back to bed, y'all.

Whew. What a week.

Mindful

Long-ass day. Discombobulated. Some very good news. Some heady concerns. Class tonight ended up being kind of a train wreck, although it was mostly good. Managed to not spend hours in the parking lot afterward and get rained on. And now I have got to go to bed....

Real blogging this weekend, I pinky swear.

Solitude

"You're my big handsome."

Watch. Laugh. Enjoy the scenery.

You can't fix stupid

So I'm in Starbucks yesterday.

And there's this guy.

Who, incidentally, appears to be the LOUDEST PERSON ON EARTH.

And he's talking to the barista, who is a fairly recent immigrant, but works at Starbucks, so has good health care (they have GREAT benefits). And the LPOE is going on and on about what crap it is that the government wants to take ALL OF OUR HARD EARNED MONEY and give it to people who refuse to work. I roll my eyes a little...and he of course keeps going. Damn those Democrats. All they want to do is take money from working people and give people health care. He's totally against this, as someone who works. And, you know, health care is just fine.

I so wished I'd brought my iPod and could turn it up right then.

Listen, people. Health care is fine for many. Health care is NOT fine for the people that ACTUALLY need it. Medicare and Medicaid are disastrous. Private third-party payers are exploitative. Nobody gives a damn about the people that can't afford their medications or can't get the care they need because they're not people who matter anyway - you know, like old people, poor people, sick people, actual disabled people, etc.

And let me tell you, people don't even want to talk about the mentally ill.

Really, some people in this country would be just so much happier if the above demographics would simply go away. But they won't. These are the people that need support. These are the people that suck the money out of our system, yes - because we set it up in such a wasteful way, not because they themselves set out to do so. These are the people that no one wants to consider until it's a member of their own families - or worse, they themselves - who become part of that demographic. Then, then they're outraged. And suddenly find themselves shouting at the bottom of a deep, dark well.

And then they get why those of us in the trenches are constantly looking worn down, haggard, and jaded.

Health care reform isn't an option. The system must change, it will change, and we'd damn well better step it up to figure out how to change it into something that works before it implodes.

Over the past year or two, I've been completely bewildered by the "controversy" about health care reform. Really? Is this a question? What the hell is wrong with Capitol Hill?

And then, today, I read this.

And became a little more outraged, and a little more jaded...

Little gold men

I know it's been a week of short posts...but it's 11:30, and I need to go to bed.

Today was industrious. I am now completely free of unresolved discharge summaries (rahoo!). I went to Target. I played a little Wii pool. I made a dent in cleaning out my closet. And I had dinner with Cleo, who cooked something very fabulous. She invited me over to watch the Oscars. Cleo was a theater person, once, and I think she might even have a graduate degree in something production or direction related. We had a lovely time.

And now I'm full, and tired....

Lazy Saturday

Well, sorta.

I slept in. So did Maggie. I wrote about half of an over-inclusive discharge summary. I cleaned a little. I tried to nap. I made some dinner. And I had a lovely, lovely, impromptu lunch with Sparrow. We went to this Greek-Lebanese place that's just opened up across the street from my house, and it was very tasty (although...not so much Greek, except for the tzatziki). We spent a couple of hours lingering over good food and good conversation and strong Turkish coffee (right?! You can't serve "Turkish" coffee in a Greek restaurant!). It was a bluebird day in NC.

Still. I have to plan tomorrow better....

Weeeeeeeek-END!

Oh, I'm so incredibly glad it's Friday night, finally.

I'm so unbelievably tired. This week has been long. And stressful. And I'm less sick, but still not feeling awesome.

And tonight we had this soiree with the analytic people which was....stressful in it's own right, in several ways.

Whatever, I'm going to bed...

Because it's too good not to share.

And because I had the longest day on record - I got in to work at 6:30 this am, because I had a 7am therapy patient. I had a veryextremelylongday at work, grabbed some dinner and then had class, and then, of course, made the repeat mistake of having a ninety minute conversation standing in the cold parking lot with one of my classmates. So I got home roughly 19 hours after I left...

And I'm still sick, obv, but I'm actually feeling better than I was even this morning, so that's a bonus.

I didn't realize it until we were doing our mindfulness practice in class tonight, but today wound up being quite emotionally stressful...

So, I give you this piece of wisdom, noted by The Pasta Queen and passed on by my dear friend Barb:

I'm with her. Who's in?

Sepia

::whimper::

I'm so sick.

I'm rather done with this. Please and thank you.

Fat chicks rule.

So, I don't know who's heard about this, but Kevin Smith - director of such fabulous films as Dogma (my all-time favorite movie), was told by Southwest Airlines that he was too fat to fly on their plane and removed from a flight last month.

And, he's pissed.

I, frankly? I'm with him. I'll be completely honest. I really hate flying Southwest. I've seen them be not nice to several people, fat or otherwise. They've been shitty to me a couple of times. They once told me I was too fat to sit in the exit row, but never that I couldn't be on the plane.

I did have a different issue with them this weekend, when they refused to let my dad on the plane with his oxygen concentrator. I had to go back to the airport and sign some form (as an MD, not as his kid. I was in very doctor-y sweatpants), despite the fact that they let him fly with it many times before - most notably, on the flight down.

Morons.

And, beyond that, there was another fat girl on the plane. She tells her story on Kevin's podcast here. It's heartbreaking.

One of the things he said really stood out to me. He says, "You spend so much time, when you're fat, just trying to be out of everybody's way."

God, that's just so true.

Mr. Smith has called for a boycott of SWA, which, I've already been flying United lately. They've been just as cheap if not cheaper lately, and have been so much more pleasant. And I really like having an assigned seat.

Come on, chubby folks. Let's stop letting people be hostile and hateful and hit 'em where it hurts.