No rest for the wicked

No, no, I haven't fallen off the bloggy wagon. I've just had a very full few days. Claudia came down to visit this weekend and we had a blast. She got to hang out with a lot of my local friends. We had a very good time.

The highlights of our weekend (as I see them, in no particular order):
- good company and catching up
- fabulous dining out, and a lot of it, including trying several new-to-me places
- losing at 3-on-1 pool
- gluten free brownies made of awesomeness
- coffee
- Claud Meets the Village
- a new - and fabulous - vacuum to replace the one that died in the Unfortunate Catnip Mouse Incident of 2011
- breakfast with one of my favorite four year olds
- Cabaret. Or should I say, "cabaret."
- drunken Waffle House with the boys at 2am on a Tuesday.
- Claudia Learns Crochet
- so many moments of "now you see what I've been talking about, right?"

Fan-freaking-tastic.

I dropped her off at the airport tonight and then went to say goodbye to my aunt and uncle, the ones that moved here nine months before I did. They've been such an incredible source of support, and they're moving back to Chicago on Thursday. It's tough for me, to be honest, and all of that saying goodbye in such a short period of time while running on three hours' sleep is even a bit rougher. So, my bed is in my near future, even though I have SO many more things to say.

But I will share this piece of completely awesome news -

I PASSED MY BOARDS.

I am officially a fully-licensed, board-certified, ready-to-roll General Psychiatrist. Cannot beat that.

Monday, Monday

So I'm back home.

I have stuff to say, actually, and will try to say some of it in the next couple of days. But I got an hour and a half of sleep Saturday night (first moonlighting shift at New State Hospital) and last night I got home late (Rhonda made me and a couple of friends an awesome home-cooked Sri Lankan dinner), and I really want to go to bed early tonight. So for now, I merely leave you to ponder this:

And back to Monday

Today was just long. And tiring. And that damn time change really screwed me up. Could NOT get out of bed this am. Grrrrrrrr....

Didn't help that the cat decided that 1:30 am was a reasonable time to start talking to us from her perch on the bathroom sink. Not okay, kitty. Neither was the 4am serenade. But then of course, we haven't seen hide nor hair of her yet today.

I figure she'll come out eventually...

Cats. Go figure. 

Exhaustion

It's been a long, stressful week. I promise to update the blog tomorrow, possibly with pictures. But for now? Bed.

Do. Not. Love.

Tonight is the third night in a row I've gotten home from work after 7:30pm. Today was very, very long. I had a lot happen on the unit this morning. I left for State Hospital a lot later than I wanted to. Today was my day to present the Thursday afternoon resident lecture. One of my afternoon therapy cases was a circus. And I slept like 5 hours last night.

I'm so tired....

What a day

Every now and then, you have one of those perfect storms of things that keep you in the office until 7:30pm. Today was one of them. I discharged my whole service and admitted my whole clinic.

That? Is a whole lot of paperwork. And in my discipline, storytelling.

Which may be why I'm so short of words for telling my own story today...

Tonight's rest brought to you...

...by Ambien.

I slept like crap last night again, worrying about Olga and the other things going on in my life. Today dragged its ass and mine as well. But I finally got my research proposal written and sent it to my program director and my advisor (well, one of them...the other one is Olga) for input. So hopefully they can get it back to me tomorrow and I can get the official version submitted. I may also be able to get something else in my life submitted in the morning which will take a huge load off.

But suddenly things have started looking really trippy and typing is somehow suddenly very hard.

So me and my Ambien, we're going down for the night. Please do not disturb.

Hmm.....

I'm not dead. Honest. I'm just exhausted. And I actually wrote a whole post for yesterday...which didn't post.

Ah well.

So for the second weekend in a row, I was not out riding on an absolutely gorgeous day because I was under the (great) weather. I appear to have caught the plague my med students are spreading around the Adolescent inpatient unit. If I had any control of their grades, I'd fail them both (no, not really). But on the whole, it was a good weekend.

Today was looooong. 7am therapy case, work, supervision, therapy, gym.

Oh, and funny videos on YouTube with the plague-spreading med students. Here, watch this:

Gratuitous Thursday "I'm going to bed instead of blogging" Photo

(I promise to get better at this soon...)

Gratuitous photo again

Because I've already stayed up too late.

More tomorrow.

But in the mean time...

Zzzzz

Yeah, this "no caffeine" thing is not going to be an easy adjustment.

Even my med student said to me today, "You seem...slower."

Thanks. There went your grade.

(I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I don't get to grade them...)

And THEN my attending was waiting for me so we could interview this one kid, but I kept getting tied up with my other two, and so she was like, okay, I'm going to go get some coffee. You want some?

::whimper::

Anyway. I made it through work with a lot of yawning. I then went and met up with my mom at the Shady Pines Christmas party, which was amusing. Visited with them for a while. Came home, ate some dinner, finished my notes. Read Facebook. And now....it's a quarter till nine and I'm so ready for bed...

Fun on a Monday

Coffee. Work. Supervision. Therapy. It's Monday, alright.

I did come across this, however. Which I find kind of fascinating.

Enjoy.

PS, I'm so going to bed at 8 tonight....

Squawk!

I had this incredibly ridiculous, headless chicken kind of day. Early therapy patient, then breakfast with the applicants, rounds, team, family meeting, applicant interview, resident support lunch, family meeting, supervision, therapy...filling the occasional spare minutes with phone calls, notes, emails, and one sticky bun that took me four hours to finish.

All on an inexplicable four hours of sleep.

I don't care if it's 8pm. I'm goin' to bed.....

Oh, what a tiring day.

I wish I could come up with some moving words of wisdom tonight. Instead, I give you the song that's been rolling around in my head all day...

Monday

Back to work. Back to therapy. Back to the weekly grind. But back to reality?

Not just yet.

Meanwhile, my throat feels like I gargled with acid. I blame Jen (the index patient in our Village, who are all sick or recovering at this point). Or maybe I still blame Peng (although she seems to be feeling better these days).

I need more weekend.

Bleh.

Dad back in the hospital. Feeling better. Will probably come home tomorrow. I'm exhausted.

So this is what it's like to be well-rested...

I slept twelve solid hours last night. And STILL nodded off for half an hour this afternoon watching NCIS.

God, I love a weekend.

So, I'm sorry it's taken me this long to blog again. I was at the hospital overnight on Thursday, and was planning on blogging from work, but then I didn't get to it. And then I was going to blog Friday and I fell asleep at 8pm. And so, now, it's Saturday....

Today was great, though. I got up, went to coffee, hung out for a long time. I really like my coffee friends. There were a couple of different waves of them today, which was nice, to see a few people I don't often see. I stayed there until noon, which was great. I went to the gym and saw a couple of friends and a GREAT workout. I picked up lunch and hung out with my folks for a while. Came home, had a nap, cleaned the house a little. Jen and Bill brought dinner over - Egyptian something made by Jen's ex-husband's mom. It was so good, and way healthy. And then we took Maggie out and got her some TCBY. Maggie made lots of friends at the yogurt shop.

Today made me happy. And there's a whole other day of weekend tomorrow!!

Glub. glub, glub

People think shrinks have all the answers. And, of course, like anybody else, it's easier to see patterns and offer solutions in someone else's life.

I'll tell you the truth, though. I'm so overwhelmed these days. I'm struggling a lot with limit setting and the number of people in all areas of my life that are demanding a lot of me. I'm trying really, really hard to take care of myself, which is something I don't do so well.

I'm so tired.

I was going to write more about the move tonight...

...but then my dad fell and gashed open his arm and I had to break off and take care of that. He's fine - I stole supplies from the ER and fixed it up. It's not pretty, but it'll heal better than it would've otherwise. And, we didn't have to sit in the waiting room for like six hours just to get  it steri stripped and be sent home.

But, meanwhile, it's now late and I'm exhausted. More tomorrow, I promise. Really.

Rock Lobster

Today the stuff arrived from Chicago. I'm totally exhausted. The move that was supposed to be over around noon turned into a nine-hour chaotic affair. Stuff is missing. Stuff was busted. Not the least issue - they forgot to put the beds on the truck. But a lot of stuff made it just fine. My house is much more full of very nice things, not the least of which is a real bedroom set (well, most of it...one of the dressers was broken and then erroneously ended up in storage. But regardless, it's the first time I've had a dresser in, like, five years) and my great-grandmother's piano.

I also acquired one hell of a sunburn standing outside directing the movers. I'm a total lobster. It's really unfortunate...

Nonetheless. I'm so very grateful to all the people who helped pack, and especially to Robin and Claudia, Brett, Ali, and Jer, for being so un-fucking-believably awesome. Love you guys.

More tomorrow. Did I mention the exhaustion?