Fiasco

It was a long day. I saw some patients. I did some stuff. And I started moving into my new office.

Yep, that's right. I'm moving into Chiefs' Office South with Cleo. Today was the last official day of the Pink Office.

It's the end of an era, people. I'm pretty sad.

So then, I went and got my head shrunk after work, and I got stuck in this.

While I was sitting on the I-40, a "motorized robot" (as opposed to, what other kind of robot?) was spraying the alleged bomb with water. Really? Really? THAT's your solution? A pressure washer. But my favorite line in the article is this: "The device turned out to not be an explosive device.  It appears to be some foam that was wrapped up together, possibly something that fell off of a vehicle or something."

You know. Or something.

Something that turned my 10 minute commute into a 70 minute fiasco involving me (and several other cars) exiting the highway via an on ramp and driving the wrong way on the shoulder of NC 54. Which, I can't really complain about. I'd rather they take this stuff seriously and it be nothing than someone manage to detonate a dirty bomb because no one was paying attention.

Meanwhile, look what else they found on a different road in Durham.

Yeef.

Grindstone

Back to work today. It was one crazy, busy-ass day. And of course I had to run out in the middle to get my mom to the hematologist, who was also, of course, running late. I ended up bringing several hours of work home, which I finally just finished.

Whew. What a day.

And oddly enough (and believe me, there was plenty of "weird" that I can't talk about on the blog), the weirdest thing, I thought, about today was when the hematologist asked me if I was in a relationship where children were imminent.

I...what? A, um, no I'm not (hello, IUD. And, you know, crappy taste in men). And two...what? What does that have to do with anything? If you think genetic testing is relevant, let's do it. If not, then, why ask me weird questions like that? Especially when I'm like the only one in my world who isn't pregnant right now...

Bad moon waning

Looking back on my day...I may need to rethink my concept of "vacation day," but it was really productive.

I slept in until 7:30. Had a languorous time at coffee. Went back to the old place and cleared out that aforementioned closet. Went to hh gregg and got a new router, and - and! - my 30th birthday present. Yes, yes, I know I'm 31, almost 32, but when I turned 30 my parents had just bought their flat panel TV and wanted to buy me one, too. But, I was having a moment (I don't need that many TVs! TV must be rotting my brain!), and declined. I finally gave in, and found a cheap, off-brand, but nice one today (along with my router, which was on clearance. Woo-hoo!). I came home and hooked it up, and I'm in loooove.

Yeah, I've totally gotten over my hoity-toity moment of anti-TV-ness.

I unpacked a couple of boxes and rearranged the living room. I showered (I was stinky) and changed and then I took my mom to the oncologist, and he's pleased (me too). We picked up dinner and I hung out with them for a little while. And then my aunt and uncle came over to the new place and we got the washer/dryer hooked up, a bookcase moved, some pictures hung, and a couple of other things fixed. And then I started another load of laundry and moved the TV in my bedroom and then I FINALLY got the router working.

Whew.

I'm starting to feel like the bad juju of the old place is clearing. I've started reading books about feng shui (it ties in with my psychoanalytic bend towards energetics, as it turns out). I may yet be getting my groove back.

And it's about damn time.

All moved out

 Most of my stuff is finally in the new place (turns out I have to go back tomorrow to clear out a closet the movers missed).

Here's how it went:

That white thing behind all the boxes is the fridge. I had sweet tea in there for the guys. But, um, I couldn't exactly get to it....

All porked out

It's been a long, long, long day.  Which culminated in a very nice time at the third annual installment of Porkfest. This is what I brought this year:

It's a bouquet of bacon roses. Which is basically cooked bacon wrapped around asparagus stems.

A good time was had by all.....

Guess who should be in bed

Me. Yeah, you totally got that one, didn't you?

I have to be awake in like 7 hours. I have one day of weekend coverage left, and it's tomorrow morning (it's so weird that we're splitting the weekend...). Then I hoping to make it to coffee (if late), then I have Molly's baby shower. Then I have errands to run, and then - then! It's Porkfest 3. I'm excited, but need to not stay too late (read: this year, I have to be sober enough to drive home fairly early in the evening) because the movers will be at my old place by 9am on Sunday.

It's going to be a busy weekend.

I took today off. Got some stuff done (not enough, obviously) at the old place, and the new place. Had a nice relaxed time at coffee this morning. Spent too much money at Target. Tried (and failed) to take a nap. All in all, not a bad day.

Try some oregano

It's the end of an era.

The Pink Office is breaking up next week. PenguinShrink, Ruthie and I have been together for two years now. We definitely have the most fun office in the group (and probably the least productive). But over the course of the next week, Ruthie is moving in with Sparrow and Molly, Peng is moving over to the child fellow offices and in with the Fresca-addicted JD, and Cleo and I will get Chief's Office South up and running (also in the fellow offices). Change is inevitable, I suppose.

PenguinShrink, however, is missing from the Pink Office this week, off visiting family and doing the vacation thing. But this made me think of her - and also made me giggle a little - so, this one's for you, P.

In the (new) doghouse

Wicked cool

Today was another cranky day. Good crew at coffee today ("a flurry of friends," was one description) AND I got my second baby hat finished. But I kept looking at my watch and swearing...

I had a difficult consult this morning (well, the psychiatry wasn't so difficult, but it was rather emotionally wrenching...). I discharged two of my favorite patients from my clinic today. And then I stopped at the PetSmart on the way home and promptly locked my keys in the car. Which turned a 15-minute errand into a 90-minute ordeal in 92-degree heat. Frickin' awesome.

But.

I did have a nice lunch with two of my friends who just graduated. And I came back from lunch, and there was a homemade donut on my desk, courtesy of the same medical student who brought me roving a couple of weeks ago. It's such a shame that we can't convince him to go into psychiatry. That was one tasty donut.

Also in good news today - check this out. Our clinic ROCKS.

Cranky

I'm suddenly really cranky. I don't know why, either. Today was a nice day.

We had a great crew for coffee this am. robin joined us (yay!! Hi, robin!), which was hilarious when she walked up to the coffee shop carrying a can of Mountain Dew. Work was pretty laid-back for me today. And I had a nice chat with Robin this evening, even if Skype was acting stupid and we had to convert to old-fashioned cell phones.

Come to think of it, there was a flock of Robins in my day today. That's nice.

And, and! Olga talked me in to finally using these gift cards I had on a nook. Which, if you're not aware, is one of those electronic readers, like a Kindle. It's like a book, but it's electronic, and you can download like over a million books to it. So you can carry a whole library around with you! And it's flat, so one could, say, read it on the treadmill or the stationary bike without having to figure out how to keep it from closing up and falling off the little shelf. And I sprung for the cute pink case. Plus it has internet access! Anywhere! Who could possibly not love that?

....so where's the crabby coming from?

It's not a tie, but...

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Thanks for teaching me things (like, say, how to make theples). Thanks for letting me drive you crazy. Thanks for good stories, good ideas, and good advice.

Thanks for being my dad, Dad. Love you.

Juju

My life is exceedingly strange.

I'm generally okay with that - it's never boring. But it does sort of beg a question or two.

Last night, Jen and Bill were kind enough to help me move my bed from the old apartment to the new one. The movers are coming in a week, but since I can't sleep in the old place without having some sort of allergic catastrophe, I really appreciate being able to stay in the new one without having to sleep on the floor (although, as I told my mother this morning, I almost think the little nest I've been sleeping on at their place is more comfortable than my bed...). So we get everything into the trailer, and are about ready to leave, and we're all sort of standing around the trailer when a woman I've never seen before comes out of my neighbor's doorway. She backs out, and is trying to shut the door when she falls back and bonks her head on the concrete. It was one of those moments where you see the inevitability of what's about to happen and are completely powerless to stem the flow of events. So, okay, down she goes, smacks her head, and starts SCREAMING, "I need 911! I need 911!!" I, of course, being as snark-tastic as I am, was like (in my head), relax, lady, you didn't hit your head that hard. But then she starts yelling, "my finger is off!!!"

Your...I...what?

She sits up, and is clasping her right hand in her left, and there's blood running down her hand because she's severed the tip of her finger. I ran in and got her some paper towels. She didn't want those. Bill sends me back in for a cold, wet rag, which I got, as well as a bag of ice and a couple of plastic bags (tip - never, ever put an amputated part in a bag of ice. Put it in a bag, insulate the bag with a towel or something, waterproof that - i.e., put that in a bag - and then put that whole mess in a bag of ice. Otherwise the digit in question will get frostbitten or macerated or something equally unacceptable). Jen called 911. Bill sat with her, held pressure, and tried to keep her calm. Jen and I had the enviable task, then, of looking for the finger amidst the bushes and pine straw mulch. We saw a piece of jagged glass on the ground, figured that was what had severed her finger, and so we looked and looked and searched and fussed in that general vicinity. No luck.

Finally, a little exasperated as to how the finger had come off anyway, I asked, "How in the world did you do that?" And it turns out she'd shut the door on her finger, which had sliced off the tip of it, down to the base of the nail.

First? Ouch. Second? I worked out the physics of that in my head. Severed while shutting the door. The tip of her finger wasn't in the bushes, it was in the house.

I looked at the door, and thought, aw, shit. My neighbor has these two horribly-behaved little dust mop dogs, who were at that very minute undoubtedly sitting on the other side of the doorway licking their little rat-dog chops.

Crap.

Her mother says, let's look in the house. The bleeding woman on the ground is insistent that her finger isn't in the house. Don't go in the house! she says. I say, "Okay, well, can *I* go in the house?" But the dogs are going to get out! they say.

Lady, that's the least of your problems.

And of course, no one is considering that the neighbor routinely lets the dogs out, off leash, to poop all over the neighborhood and they always come back. Unless they come in my house, but that only happened a handful of times, I mean really.

Bill assured them that he and Jen have a dog who LOVES to get out and run around and terrorize the neighbors, that they can handle it. I, meanwhile, have headed into the house with the woman's mother. There is, of course, no finger in sight. Nor is there even a spattering of blood on the floor. Which, of course, you would expect if the finger was severed in the door.

I looked at the dogs. They...well, were just being dogs....

So then the paramedics show up. They go to bandage her finger, and the medic looks at me and says, "Ma'am? You might want to turn your head before I take this towel off."

I managed not to laugh at him.

So they get her all put together, send her to the ER in her own car, and the other paramedic and Jen and I are cleaning up, and the paramedic sighs and says, "Well, if you see a little dog running around with a finger in its mouth..."

Jen and I had already had the opportunity to look at each other and mutter under our breath, "Dog? Yeah, dog." So were both like, "well, yeah, they have two dogs, so..."

The poor paramedic looked at us and went, "Oh. Ohhhh...."

But, on the plus side, here are five things I learned from this adventure:

1. The bad mojo in the apartment that I've been feeling for the past year and am feeling even more acutely now is definitely not just mine. Which makes me feel better about leaving, that I'm not the source of the bad juju (and thus the wheel of fortune may be turning for me. Here's hoping).

2. My friends are awesome. (Okay, I knew this.)

3. My life is weird. (Yeah, I knew this, too.) As is Ms. Stumpy's, or at least it is now that she collided with my weird life and the Evil Apartment Building.

4. I consistently keep getting reminded that the universe is conspiring around us. Five minutes earlier, Jen, Bill, and I were all inside the house. Five minutes later we would've been gone. There were reasons we got there later than we wanted to. But we were definitely supposed to be there right then. Call it fate, karma, synchronicity, whatever you'd like, there are most certainly forces at work here greater than ourselves.

5. It turns out that when you freakishly slice off your finger in a door frame, there's no one better to have around than a doctor, a social worker, and a convicted felon.

Okay, so suddenly I suck at this.

Cable guy is coming tomorrow. Will have home internet again. And can get back into my blogging routine (I think the disruption of my previous routine has actually been the problem, moreso than the lack of access, because I have the Verizon wi-fi).

Moved my bed into the new apartment tonight. Mags and I will be sleeping here until the rest of the stuff comes on Friday. And, well, after that, too, but with stuff.

The new place is great. I'll try to post some pictures one of these days. But in the meantime? I'm going to bed.

Needs more weekend

Oh, I really, really do.

So I worked last weekend, right? Which makes this weekend even more important. Because I haven't had one in way too long. My big plan for the weekend, of course, was to clean out my apartment and start packing.

Yeah, that didn't exactly work.

I can't tolerate the apartment.

A, I'm just completely overwhelmed by the task. The place is a mess. There's stuff strewn everywhere from both the chaos of my life prior to going back to Chicago and the chaos that's been my life since. There's actually not that much to do, but, it's enough that in the stressed-out state that I currently am, it seems like an insurmountable task.

Which, frankly, is in part informed by B: the...something. Pollen? Dust? Dog hair? Cockroach nastiness? Probably a combination of everything.

I discovered yesterday, of course, I'm wretchedly allergic to the apartment.

I spent about four hours there yesterday, and left with a running nose, itching like a fiend, and was all red and blotchy. It was....not at all awesome.

I seriously don't know how I'm going to get this done...

Ooh! It's another funny video!

I'll have some real content to post soon, I promise.

But in the meantime...apparently this group of soldiers had a little time on their hands and made this parody of the Lady Gaga video for one of the soldiers' wives who really liked the song. And Ruthie shared it with me this am, so now I'm sharing it with you.

Overflowing

Oh, Don Piano!

So, Sarah walks into my office today. We're having a seemingly normal conversation, until she replies with: "Oh, Don Piaaaaaaano."

I....what now?

She then tells me, oh! It's my new favorite expletive.

I looked dubiously at her, and she showed me this:

No, really, I'm working.

Well, okay, I could be. Perhaps even should be.

But no, I'm blogging.

My silence of the last two days has been about stress and pinkeye and working the weekend, but mostly it's been about poor internet access. My little netbook, which goes back and forth to work and home, has been living at work. Today the big one gave up running our EMR software, so the little one is now hooked in to the mouse, the real keyboard, the big monitor, etc. It's all Frankenputered up and looks a little like it's on life support...but I'm taking the big one back to my folks, so, maybe there's hope. Although it's the one that has to have the power cable jury rigged juuuuust right, so who knows.

It was kind of a rough weekend. I worked. I ran some errands. I drank some coffee. I napped in spite of coffee. Oh! And I found a new apartment. Close to Shady Pines, bigger than my current one, for not much more moolah. It seems like a nice roachless townhome in a fairly quiet neighborhood. Or at least, that's what I'm hoping.

I started on the consult team today, which is a lot of apprehensive waiting. And I think we just handed off the pager. So I'm going to stop being apprehensive and go home.....

I can't really see to blog tonight....

Pinkeye. Contacts out. Can't find my glasses. Ouch.

Caged

Tomorrow

Eight years ago today, my sweet, brilliant, awesome little Goddaughter was born.

Eight years ago tomorrow, I got to meet her.

Eight years ago tomrrow, she was a tiny peanut of a thing, or at least that's the way she looked sitting on her six-foot-five Chicago cop father's shoulder.

(Eight years ago last week, she looked to be about the size of a linebacker inside her tiny-torsoed, five-foot-something, way-too-adorable mom's belly.)

Eight years ago tomorrow, I learned the value of my Doctor Walk, when I waltzed into Maternity Care unannounced and without a visitor's pass, said hello to the nurses, and walked into her mom's room like I belonged there. Which we then finagled into her getting an extra visitor, when I took her abuela's visitor's pass down to her uncle on my way out.

Eight years ago tomorrow, I was studying for my boards, and got the best study break ever.

Eight years ago tomorrow, my heart found a little more room.

Happy birthday, Alej. Your Nouna, te ama.