Mushy

I think my brain has liquefied and is now dripping out my ear...yesterday was horrendous. I had eight follow-up consults and saw a lot of patients in the ER and was up until 2:00 writing notes and then blissfully I got about four or so hours of sleep (thanks, Peng! Such a good Night Float) until Family paged me to try and dump a patient on us.

We had the world's longest checkout and then I had to call back one of my patients. Who called from the hospital. Which was weird, but at least he wasn't calling from the psych ward.

I was going to go to the gym after I left work, but, of course...I forgot my pants. Which, I can't work out without pants, at least not at the gym (no pants!). So I went to Target, where my weird headache turned into a full-on migraine. I was queasy. Things were loud, and smelly. Bleh. But 800mg of Motrin helped. All of the caffeine I drank finally kicked in. And so I ended up taking a very meandering trip to the yarn store (through two bookstores and an eco-stuff store) and lost about 45 minutes somewhere in the yarn store, so I was two minutes late (i.e., their pickup time is 5-6, I got there at 6:02) picking up Maggie from the daycare.

She's tired, too. There was some whimpering when we left the daycare - she looooves the daycare - but she's done nothing but sleep (and beg for cheese) since we got home.

Come to think of it...she's got a good idea.

Technical difficulties

I can't get blogger to work tonight. So I'm trying this blog-by-text thing. Which of course means I only have like 140 characters...nevermind, I'm going to bed...

Brain mush

I got two hours of sleep last night, which was not the most restorative. And then, true to form, I didn't sleep all day today. And now it's 10 pm and I'm pretty sure my brain is running out my ear and dripping onto my shoulder.

It was a nice day, though. I went to the yarn store this morning, and then to the Fleet Feet store, which, Gomer and I got into a discussion yesterday about my ankle pain and returning shin splints and whatnot, and he was like, hey, why don't you go to that store Claudia's been telling you about forever? (Okay, that might not actually be how he said it, but it's what I heard.) And there just happened to be one next to the yarn shop. So I went in, and they kind of gave me this look like, uh, why are you here? You realize this is a shop for like, runners and athletes and such, right? But, eventually my sales guy got into the groove, and wow, it was a great experience. I got new shoes and better insoles for less than my last pair of New Balance (before the fancy insoles, damn high arches). And then I went to the gym, and had a kickass workout. Came home, snuggled the puppy, shower, shrink, Target, and then got the world's best strawberry milkshake from the Cook Out for lunch (yes, just a milkshake. It's what I wanted, bugger off). And then tonight Rene and Peng and I went to this Indian place in town (Mint. Awesome) for dinner and it was sooooo good. The daal was awesome, and spicy, and now I can breathe through my nose again. And then I picked up Little Maxine (Sparrow's out of town; Rene and I have shared custody this week), and now we're all snuggled up on the bed and the girls are asleep and, frankly, I can't quite figure out why I'm not....

A noble holiday worth celebrating.

Happy Doctors' Day, everyone.

Hug your favorite doctor. Wait, no, maybe not....

In honor of same, I'm going to take my very tired, overworked, underslept ass to bed. At 8pm. Because I'm a loser resident. And I was so post-call hypomanic-y last night I tossed and turned until midnight, and then of course had to get up at a reasonable hour this morning (see above, re: loser resident), and so I'm waaaaaaaaaaaay underslept, and have a 7 am therapy patient tomorrow who probably wants me to stay awake for his session.

One more reason...

...I'm glad I love my job.

Read this.

Are they kidding? The Eagles really "r" retarded.

(And yeah, Gigi, I'm totally thinking of you, here!)

It's been a lazy Saturday here. Last night was wicked. My intern and I were both up until like 4:30, and of course, I woke up at 4am on Friday for no apparent reason and couldn't go back to sleep, so I was dragging all day to begin with. I had a rare hole in my schedule yesterday afternoon, so I tried to go take a nap in the call room, which was cold and noisy and housekeeping tried to come in and it smelled, very weirdly, like institutional lunch. Cafeteria Salisbury Steak, to be exact. I don't know if that's really what they served yesterday, or if it was, like, the new paint in there or whatever, but regardless, sleep just wasn't happening. I tried to sleep there last night, too, but it was similarly awful. And the paging system went down, so they were doing all of this overhead paging....bleh.

But I did manage to get a little nappage in today, which was nice. It was one of those cold, rainy, nasty days, perfect for snuggling up with a puppy, watching Dollhouse, and sleeping. Sparrow, Ruthie and I went to this Turkish restaurant for dinner (it's a good thing my Greek grandfather is dead; that might have made him have a little stroke). It was tasty, but it was on Greek time - er, Turkish time - for sure. A fairly simple three course meal took over three hours. Good company, though, which was very nice.

Still. More sleep still needed. Gonna do that...

Troubleshooting

So I spent most of my day fixing stuff. Fortunately, I was on with Sparrow last night, so I got some sleep. I left the hospital and went to see my shrink (self-troubleshooting, as it were), and then I went to the Verizon store, where they promptly decided they had to do a hard reboot on my phone, because my voicemail wasn't working. So they erased everything off my phone (fortunately, they managed to back up my contacts...), and I spent much time over the rest of the day getting my phone back to the way I had it before (including a second trip to the Verizon store because I lost my email). While they were rebooting my phone, I went to the New Balance store because my shoes were loud and squeaky. I walked in, they all looked at me and were like, oh. And this guy disappears into the back and comes out with a bottle of baby powder and a bottle of hand lotion. And the manager is like, "no, use that Body Glide stuff!" (which I, um, totally misinterpreted, although fortunately only in my head. Apparently it's for runners and such). So they slathered that on my insoles, and finally, I'm able to sneak up on people again.

I got home around 12:30 (Maggie was SOEXCITED!), and left again about an hour later (much less excited) because the home inspector was coming. Whom I ran into on my way out, and told him about a bunch of stuff to look for (was that in bad taste?). Went back to the Verizon Store (see above, re: email), went to Starbucks, spent some time reading, some time trying to configure the phone again, went to the gym, went to the Whole Foods, and then succumbed to the Burger King for dinner on the way home (sigh). And I came home, and my spare key was in the door. So I swore a lot, went in the house, and discovered the inspector was still here. He gave me some tips, we had a nice chat, he left. I showered, did the dishes, talked to my folks, watched some TV, and now it's 9:45 and I meant to be asleep an hour ago. Except that the sooner I go to bed, the sooner tomorrow comes, and ugh, tomorrow's going to suck.

But! I did have fun with the camera phone today.

More daffodils.

And the silly new gym accessory I've acquired. It's a little pocket thing for my water bottle. Maggie has a hiking pack that looks suspiciously similar to this....

Alright. To bed...

Tired...

So last night was wacky, of course, but as always, it ends. And I'm down to a mere FOURTEEN in-house calls left. In the entirety of my career. Oh, man, that's...dude!

So I left this morning, went to Starbucks, went to the gym, went to the grocery store. Came home and hung out with the pooches - Little Maxine is over, since Sparrow's on call. We took a nice nap, we watched some TV.

And so I find myself watching this stupid Lifetime movie with Jennie Garth that I've seen a couple of times before. And then, before long, I find myself watching another Lifetime movie - they're kind of like potato chips, really. But this one...you know, every now and then, they do a pretty good job.

I mean, it was a Lifetime movie. And I'm post-call, and more emotionally labile these days in general. But shortly into the movie, I found myself just enraged - not at the crappy ridiculousness of the movie, like usual, but because people actually used to think this way. And then more so, because they still do. Because I still know these people.

It's that whole thing about how if one man isn't free, none of us are.

So it's the story of this kid, Bobby Griffith, who comes out to his Religious Right parents, sometime in the late 80s, I think. They become convinced that he can be changed, "healed". His mother takes him to a psychiatrist (one of the lower moments in our profession was the number of shrinks who thought they could "cure" homosexuality. Wasn't entirely their fault, it was a listed disorder in the early versions of the DSM... ::cringe::). She beats him over the head with religious propaganda. And ultimately, they drive him to suicide.

By the end of the movie, I was just sobbing outright. Because it's a true story (sadly, it's a story that's all too true, all too often), and the really amazing piece of it is, it ends up becoming the story of his mother, Mary Griffith, who ended up becoming a gay rights activist, running a chapter of PFLAG, and working with gay youth and their families. It really is a heart-wrenching and amazing story, and I encourage you to find it (you know they'll be airing it for years, but I'm pretty sure it will also be downloadable on iTunes, etc), and watch it, even if you don't usually watch Lifetime movies (ahem). I'm thinking of reading the book the movie's based on - you know, in all of the spare reading time I have. If it's any good, I'll let you know (but I wouldn't hold your breath on the time frame...).

Alright, go forth and watch. Be mad. Be outraged. Be moved.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go be sleepy...

Brr.

Naturally, I get the dog clipped, and we head into a cold snap...

So Mags and I pulled out her coat today.

She hasn't objected, and is, in fact, still wearing it in the house (I figure that makes sense - in case she needs to run out in the middle of the night to bark at a squirrel or something). I really should find her a sweater. And if it gets any colder, I'm going to toss her back in that silly reindeer costume - it's incredibly silly looking, but very warm!

Last night was long. Today was also long, but by my own hypomania choice and really pretty productive. I think I made a bad judgment call though, today - I had my introductory personal training session yesterday, right? So this very tall, hot, good-smelling, big, buff, bald, black man tries to kick my ass a little and promises it won't hurt in the morning. He lied, of course, but then again, I also slept in my office last night, and spent most of the time I spent in bed getting up and down and up and down, but my quads were pretty sore today. So I figure, cool, I'm awake enough, I'll go do a little cardio after therapy, I'll get my sore muscles working. Because I know I'm probably not going to go tomorrow, and, well,that's what's supposed to make them less sore, right?

Yeah. If I can walk in the morning, it's going to be only by the grace of God.

Here's hoping tomorrow doesn't suck. I'm finally going to bed (hush, Peng).