Some things never change...

Yeah, so, I was planning on being in bed an hour ago... For some reason, I had no problem going to bed at a reasonable time when I was on vacation, and woke up bright and early. And yet, coming home...

My 7am cancelled tomorrow. I was going to get up and go to the gym like a good girl, but, we'll see when I wake up...

I have a lot of things I want to change over the next few months. One of these is, I really want to work harder on my yoga practice. Which means I have to actually start doing yoga more than just sporadically. Plus, I have like a million other things I want to do. Which means I have to extend my day to at least 26 hours...maybe 30...

One thing I am doing - for the next two weeks, I'm going gluten-free. It's something I've been thinking about for years. Look, I clearly have a dietary intolerance to something, which is probably actually an allergy (rather than a strict intolerance, like lactose intolerance; there's no immune response, just a failure to break down lactose. Which, still is hell for uncomfortable), given how I can't quite get my asthma or my allergies under control. It's an experiment; we'll see how it goes.

Okay, okay, I'm going to bed...

Aaaand, we're back...

I'm home!

I'm still a little sad not to be in Hawaii anymore (and a little jealous of my parents, who are there until Monday), but I'm quite glad to be back, flopped on my own bed, watching the shows that have accumulated on my DVR in my absence. With my dog, whom I missed so (she was SO EXCITED that I was home. But apparently her means of showing me she missed me was to pee on the floor of my bedroom. Ah well....).

On the whole, my trip back was pretty uneventful. Maui to Honolulu...a three hour layover in Honolulu (I went to Starbucks)...then to LA, where I had about enough time to pee and then board the flight to Chicago. I slept pretty restlessly on the red eye - I felt kind of bad for my seatmate, as much as I was tossing and turning, but she didn't seem to mind. I actually did manage to get a little bit of sleep, though. I had another three hour layover in Chicago, but I have to say, O'Hare is a much more interesting airport than Honolulu (although....I went to Starbucks again). And finally I made it back to NC, where Sparrow graciously scooped me up at the airport. We had lunch and visited a while (between her travel and my travel I haven't seen her in over 3 weeks), then I came home and hung out with my dog (SOEXCITED). We watched House, and Bones, and CSI, and SVU, and Dollhouse, which had accumulated on the DVR, until I finally gave in to the nap that overtook me around 5 or so. Then we went out and got some dinner (I was a little worried the car wouldn't be too thrilled about moving after sitting in my spot for two weeks, but it started right up). And now a little more TV, and my plan is to go back to sleep around 11... Generally, the trip back was good, I suppose. It was freakin' long, but I got some knitting done, I finished the book I'd been reading (Hawaiian ghost stories) and started and finished a new one by an author I'd not read before, but plan to read more of (Paulo Coelho; weirdly, I randomly found him in the Mythology and Supernatural section of the Borders, although I see nothing particularly mythologic or supernatural about the story I read...). I wasn't feeling so hot for most of the trip, but I did okay. And my suitcase even made all the connections and got back to NC with me! I was really convinced that I wouldn't be seeing that thing for a couple more days. And, because I left it with the curbside porter in Maui, they apparently didn't weigh it and thus didn't charge me more for it (I'm pretty sure it was over 50 lbs). So, on the whole? A win.

And, time for bed....

Bloggage claim

Check out this nonsense - I'm in the Honolulu airport, in the middle of a three hour layover from Maui. And I'm blogging by phone. Well, via the web browser on my phone. It's not the most pleasant way to enter text, given my annoying Blackberry touchscreen and the fact that the text just keeps going in one long line, but hey, what else have I got to do right now?

I'm fairly sad to be leaving Hawaii, as one might guess. I can't believe it's been two weeks already. Spending that much time contained with my parents (or anyone, for that matter) always has its moments, but overall it's always good to spend real time with them. I'm starting Monday as the ECT consult resident, which means I have only three patients on the unit, but also that I have off-site clinic responsibilities and have to do any ECT consults, plus there's the expectation that I actually go do ECT a couple of times a week. Which, is all fine, of course, but is just more responsibility to deal with, ultimately. Plus, have I mentioned recently how I find Hawaiian culture fascinating? I'd love to have a little more time out here to investigate that more.

All lovely, valid reasons to not want to leave. Plus, I seem to have contracted some random, smoldering stomach bug over the last couple of days. Believe me, my immune system and I are going to have words about coming down with that when I'm doing this super awesome, 20-hour, five-flight extravaganza.

But, I have to go home sometime. I still have work and notes and whatnot to do tomorrow (er, Sunday) that I couldn't get done on the trip because of limited wifi. I really miss my dog, who probably thinks I'm never coming back. And, you know, as much as I've enjoyed the time away, there's a reason I have the job I do. It'll be nice to get back into the routine.

Well, the Blackberry typing has sufficiently annoyed me enough that I'm going to shut up now and go knit a while. See y'all on the flip side.

Sorry, y'all. Blogger's acting up tonight here in Paradise. Will try to post something useful tomorrow from one of the many airports in which I'll be....

Hawaiian training wheels

Obake

So my folks and I went to dinner at this cute little Italian place tonight, and afterwards wandered over to the Long's Drugs next door, which is apparently something of a Hawaiian institution. I got a bunch of stuff for people back home who did nice things to make this trip possible for me (nothing says, "Thanks for doing extra work so I could go sit on a beach in paradise!" like chocolate covered macadamia nuts). And I picked up a book of Hawaiian ghost stories.

Dude.

I think I shouldn't be reading that shit before bedtime.

The Hawaiians are a very superstitious culture. There are lots of mystic, supernatural kinds of things that are alleged to go on around here. And for some totally non-rational reason, I completely believe this is the case. There is a distinctly preternatural vibe about the islands. I think there are places where mystical energies tend to coalesce; I find this to be true of several places I've been: Savannah, Georgia...Charleston, SC...NOLA...to name a few. I think if you are still and quiet, often you can feel the undercurrents of these places being a little differently charged than, say, Winnetka.

Now, does this mean I believe any ghost story I hear, or buy into every superstition anyone presents? Of course not. But, let's face it - the Greeks are a pretty superstitious people themselves. So it's kind of in my blood. And I think there is so much that happens on this plane of existence and others that we can't even comprehend...I'd quote the line from Hamlet, here, but that seems a little trite. Still, Horatio...

Honestly, even the most conservative organized religions have quite a bit of mysticism and supernaturalism about them. Transubstantiation, the choirs of Angels, stigmata, pretty much anything from the Old Testament, even the belief in a higher power itself is a kind of mythos and superstition. So why do we so easily dismiss that which we can't immediately explain? When my father was born and, let's face it, he's not that old - the suggestion that DNA was the heritable material of life, the code for every single aspect of who we are biologically - that would've been sneered at as preposterous. The entire vocabulary of existence reduced to four letters? Please. And yet, now I can send a Q-tip and $60 off to Utah and get a full profile of Maggie's lineage. We can cure some diseases with gene therapy. Every woman who gets prenatal care is offered testing to determine the likelihood of certain heritable illnesses. Heck, when *I* was born, ultrasound screening in pregnancy was mythical. Now, three decades later, you can get 4-D images of your unborn child at a shopping mall that are almost as good as having a window in one's uterus.

So why is it that we so easily discount some of the oldest lore? It's kind of weird, when you think about it...

Oh! Also weird? Some woman in her 60s was attacked by a shark right down the beach from us yesterday (we're staying in Kihei). Thanks, Jenn, for alerting me to that! Fortunately, the most dangerous thing I've seen around here (aside from the sailors) are the jellyfish I encountered on my beach walk this evening.

More pictures up tomorrow. But right now, it's 11:20pm local, and y'all, ghost stories or not, it's time for bed...

Maui no ka 'oi.

So we're on Maui.

It was one long-ass and arduous day. Somehow the inter-island flight was more hassle than the trans-Pacific one. And, the TSA stole my mustard.

But my day started out very lovely. I got up before dawn (because I do this) and hoofed it down to Waikiki Beach, which is a mere 6 blocks or so from our condo in Honolulu, and yet, I hadn't made it down there through the whole week. So I wandered over there this morning, and spent like two hours taking 700 or so pictures of surfers, and sunrise, and water, and then after while I just started shooting people (in a snap, snap kind of way, otherwise you'd be hearing about this on the news instead of on my blog). I tend mostly to take environmentals; I'm all about depth of field and perspective shots and still life, I think because this is what translates best from my brain to my lens. Which at this point is mostly a matter of skill, which is of course a matter of experience. So I've decided I need to spend more time shooting action and people and life life.

I sat for a while at the beach and then on a street corner and just watched people. I tried to stop thinking technically and start thinking with my grander sense of life, my more ineffable, artistic sense. And I got some pretty darn good shots. And had a very good time feeling more connected to humanity in general.

The rest of the day was a series of fiascoes. Did I mention that the TSA STOLE MY DAMN MUSTARD?

So, I'm giving up and going to bed. Fortunately for me, my parents were very kind and let me have the bedroom with a window, which happens to be the "master" bedroom (there's some feeling that I may have earned the upgrade, but that's another story for another day). So I'm going to go take advantage of that...

Guess where I am.

Go on, guess.

Yep, I'm at Starbucks. How I wish we had wifi at the condo. This twice a day habit could be hard to break once I get home.

So today is our last real day on Oahu. There's a tiny plane in my future tomorrow, which will take me to Maui, until Friday, when a tiny plane will bring me back to a series of big ones. A long series of big ones. This makes me sad.

Got up and shot the sunrise this morning at the Somethingwithalotofvowels Blowhole. It was less spectacular than some I've seen, but still quite beautiful. Then came back and napped. Went to Starbucks, wandered a little, ate lunch, napped again. Then the folks and I drove out to Pearl Harbor, although we've been to the memorial before (and it was kind of late to go to the museum), but there was a shopping mall we needed to find. Not that we went into it (well, I did run into the Borders), but mostly my parents wanted to prove that they weren't misremembering it (and the one we went to Thursday, which we thought was it, really, really was not).

So now we're in a different Starbucks. My parents are reading the Sunday Honolulu newspaper. And I've just been informed that my father is a sleepy head, so I guess we'd better get going...

Clearly, he should've followed my lead and napped more today.

Hawaii By Night

(...is actually the name of the strip club across the street from where I'm sitting. But it also seemed like a fitting title...)

I'm sitting outside the Starbucks at Kuhio and Seaside on a lovely, breezy, Honolulu evening. There's a couple of street performers down the way, and the low rhythmic drumming pulses like a heartbeat as the nightlife flows by. This really is a very pleasant city. Beautiful scenery, lovely weather, wonderful people. Hawaii has such a unique and adaptive culture. I'd love to know more about what goes on when the tourists aren't looking.

I get the sense, though, that I wouldn't actually want to live here. I'm not really sure why I think that.

When we were in medical school, one of my colleagues was in the military, and discovered that if you didn't match into any of the military programs, you could go through the general match process and get into a civilian one. He thought, no problem, and just didn't interview at any of the military programs, so that he could match into a civilian program closer to his family. Great idea, right?

Except...

He was one wicked smart guy. In the top ranks of our class, good CV, excellent board scores. He looked so good on paper, in fact, that at least one of the military programs ranked him without even meeting him. And he matched in Hawaii.

I always have felt kind of bad for him in that Hawaii and Iowa are a long way apart. And that was the same year I matched into a program I wasn't expecting (although, I ranked them third, it was kind of my fault. Or, at least I had a hand in it). And I can imagine being stuck on an island in the middle of the Pacific can be daunting for a Midwesterner. And certainly one person's paradise can be another one's hell.

But still.

I have distinct memories of a weekend sometime about January. I was in the middle of a q2 weekend, which meant I hadn't slept all night, and was due for another sleepless night of call the next day. I already hated my life and my program and felt for all the world like the worst resident ever. And I dig my damn car out of where it's been plowed in, and I drive home, and there's four fucking feet of snow in my driveway.

I thought of my friend from medical school at that moment. I thought of the night we'd spent out drinking with a bunch of our other friends during Senior Disorientation Week, and we talked about how we were both trying very hard to accept where we'd been sent, were trying to be optimistic, but when the veil of denial was lifted by a large bucket of something rum-containing and fruity with eight straws and half a bottle of maraschino cherries in it, neither of us was really very happy with the way things turned out.

I felt like FedExing him four feet of snow.

In the end, I lost touch with him, because I lost touch with almost everyone during that year, and he's not on Facebook (which is how I've managed to reconnect with a lot of my classmates). I still think about him once in a while. He was a good guy, and a good friend, and I hope that in the end, his misstep worked out as well as mine ultimately did. I thought about asking if anyone knew if he was still on the island, but his residency should be over, and I expect that he isn't.

Besides, how would I explain that big soggy box he got intern year?

Breathtaking (= Wordless Friday)

Wordless...or, you know, not...

My folks and I drove up the coast today, circled back and hit the Pali lookout, then doubled back towards Pearl City. I kept stopping and shooting like 100 pictures at a time. I shot a total of 600 or so (well, since we got here, but mostly today).

But do you think I remembered to put the SD card back in my netbook before I came to Starbucks to check email? ::sigh::

Tomorrow. Pictures. Really.

This morning started out kind of poorly. I got an email from my dog sitter saying that my electricity had been turned off. So, apparently, when we thought we'd fixed the billing problem last month, we were mistaken. Fine, fine, so I tried again to pay it online, and couldn't get my bank card to work, which I discovered was because my apartment complex cashed both the check they said they lost as well as the check I wrote them because I lost the first one. And apparently, also, Gomer's former employer (he got a new job when the gym closed) has started billing me for my training contract again, despite the fact that I was told it was nullified in May.

Do you know how hard it is to handle that sort of shit from like 5000 miles away?

But we got it taken care of. Or, at least the power is turned back on. And apparently Bank of America will credit back the check amount (although not the resultant overdraft fee, bastards). I'll deal with the gym tomorrow.

(PS - Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" is playing here in the Starbucks, which is of course the song that gave my dog her middle name (although we spell it Mae). I miss my dog.)

And the day got better. We piled in the Subaru and wandered around, as I said, stopping like every ten feet so I could shoot the equivalent of a couple of rolls of film. I so totally heart digital. And especially my Rebel. I'm still working out the finer points of dSLR photography ("Wait, the f stop means what, again?"), but I'm rather pleased with the results.

And in typical fashion for my family, there was much getting lost and trying to read maps and - Claudia, you'll appreciate this - many, many, many U-turns. Then we came home for naps. I wandered around the main street for a little while, looking for whatever caught my eye, and found a really very neat little pendant that I bargained down to $10. Now I just need to find a chain, but then, I did need a goal for tomorrow...

I fly back a week from tomorrow. I'm a little sad about that, frankly.

Oh, and I need someone to pick me up from the airport. I guess I should start asking people about that....

Patchy

So, I have pretty patchy wi-fi here. Not at all sure how the timeshare DOESN'T have wi-fi access, but now I know where the Starbucks is. So I might be doing a little more blogging by text in the coming few days, or I might be coming here a little more...we'll see.

So far, so good, though. It's lovely. I shot a few pictures. We spent most of today getting settled...and my mom and I spent a good deal of time in the car being lost...but, lost in Hawaii is still awesome!

We've got to go eat dinner now. Will try to say more tomorrow...or, you know, Friday or something....

It's only 9pm here, but that means it's 3am back home. Y'all, I'm freakin' exhausted. And blogging by text bc I don't have reliable wifi. Oh, and I'm also 31.

"In 20 years, there will be a pork roast in your luggage."

So here's a funny story.

I've been to Hawaii a couple of times before. My parents are big fans (understandably), and so whenever they have enough frequent flier miles accrued and can finagle the timeshare, we go. This has worked out to I think four times in my life (they went once without me. I think this is my fourth trip, although I'm not entirely sure...). And having done this a couple of times, they've learned a few tricks. Not the least of which is that everything on the island is expensive, so we tend to pad our suitcases with some staple items that we can buy cheaper here. The timeshare always has a kitchenette, so we eat what we take and then have room in the suitcases to bring stuff back that we acquire there. Makes sense, right? For this trip (which is really the first time I've gone as an adult), I have spaghetti, sauce, peanut butter and strawberry preserves, etc.

About 13 years ago (holy shit...), we went after I graduated from high school, and we took Claudia along (because what 17 year old wants to be stuck on an island with her parents for two weeks when she could be exploring the city of Honolulu with her best friend, boarding surreal buses full of people who don't speak English and having sketchy guys offer them weed on street corners?). Which, great, we fly in, we get there, and we're at the condo unpacking, and my mother produces from their suitcase...a pork roast.

Claud and I were like, what??

They'd frozen it here, packed it in a cooler, and dragged the frozen hunk of meat like 6000 miles. Which had more or less thawed by the time we got there. Which was, apparently, the plan.

Claudia was fairly baffled by this. I kind of rolled my eyes - after all, they were *my* parents (I was a little more used to them. Suffice it to say, neurotic apples do not fall far from their trees). Although...in retrospect...I'm not sure I actually ate the pork roast. I don't think they ever did convince me that no food safety rules were breached by letting the thing ride in the cargo hold...

I had a really nice day in Chicago today. I bought a new 75-300 zoom lens for the Rebel. Claudia and I drove out to our favorite restaurant from my college days, just over the Indiana border, and then we drove around my college campus for a while (wow, have they made some interesting architectural choices...). And then we met up with the whole crew for dinner, including my two completely adorable nephews, who are now one and three (again, holy crap). We ate, we laughed, we talked, we had a good, good, good time. And they made fun of me for packing food in my suitcase, which led to the comment that became the title of this post.

Gosh, I miss y'all up here.

And then, in like 7 hours, my uncle (the actual, genetic one) is coming to take us to the airport, so we can all spend a really long time on a plane. And then be in Hawaii.

I don't think there are any pork products stowing away in our luggage this time, though....

Brr

Okay, it's not that cold. I'm still running around without a coat, here...

I get off the plane this morning in Chicago and walked outside into 41-degree weather. Thanks, guys. I'm guessing you ordered that up special, what with me coming into town and all. Fortunately for me and my lack of real cold-weather anything in my luggage, this is more or less an extended layover.

Currently? 84 degrees in Honolulu.

As is typical when I'm here on a Sunday, I met up with my old knitting crew today. I am consistently struck by how familiar that group is, including the people that have joined since I left. I can plop down in that Panera, pull out my needles, and it's like I come every week. For all the irritating moments and bad credit that came out of working (for yarn - hence, bad credit. Funny, my loan company wouldn't accept that in payment...) at the yarn shop, there were some seriously awesome things that came of it.

Clearly, the best thing I gained were the awesome people who might not otherwise have made it into my life. We were a motley little group, there. Sarah (of Theories of String fame, see the blogroll) and I used to joke that our shop had a weird concentration of the most over-educated knitting teachers, ever (she's a PhD candidate, I of course had my MD by then, and the other woman who taught a lot had I think two masters degrees). Add in the group of regulars that hung around, the quirky shop owners and their even quirkier families, the hired help that actually worked for money rather than store credit (mostly in the dye shop; I'm not sure they actually "paid" any of us that worked up front), the Man in Brown, my lovable and goofy mutt, and the dyer's ridiculous five pound Italian Greyhound puppy who used to escape and run up to the front of the store and pee on things...

That place was really something. Usually in a good way.

It was also nice for me, because as the yarn-dyeing enterprise gathered steam, they more or less let me run the day to day stuff in the store. Which was really eye-opening, and I gained a lot of insight and interesting skills that I think could be really helpful if I ever run my own practice. And convinced me that if I plan on running anything bigger than a two or three person practice (say, a residential treatment center for trauma related disorders. On the beach, maybe), there's probably some merit in getting an MBA...

...and in having a facility dog. The tiny one was...well, kind of evil. But Mags, man, she had a blast there. She did so well. And I think she sold more yarn than any of the rest of us, to be honest. I should've had them put her on commission...seriously, though, I so miss being able to take her to work. Having that energy around, that soft peace and unadulterated enthusiasm, was so wonderful. She misses the opportunity to be that social, too, I think. And she also knows good people when she meets them, so she was a huge, huge fan of the Knit Night group. Plus, you know, people would feed her things....

I miss very few "things" from my old life. But I greatly, deeply, often miss the people.

Wagons ho...

I think I'm packed. I mean, mostly. You know, except for the stuff I actually have to use in the morning.

Maggie's all depressed. She gets really anxious when I start pulling out suitcases. Currently, she's asleep on my pillow. I don't have the heart to make her move yet.

So, it's 11:25. I have to get up at 5am tomorrow, because my aunt is picking me up at 6. I think I've finally got everything together. I have two carry ons and one bag to check. And a freakin' lot of yarn. And two clinic notes and seven discharge summaries left to write, despite the amount of stuff I actually did get accomplished today.

Maybe the plane to Hawaii will have wi-fi....

Done! (Well, almost...)

I'm on vacaaaa-tion. I'm on vacaaaa-tion.

You know, except for the pile of work I need to finish first.

And I think there's some snoozing that needs to happen before that.

I left things pretty well organized at work. I think. My away message is on my voicemail and my email. I left a ten-page annotated census of my outpatients for Mikaela (who's covering my voicemail). Peng is covering my inpatients next week, Sparrow the week after. I turned off my computer. I put myself on "Not Pageable" status and ::gasp!:: turned my pager physically off. I left it on my desk (amazing!).

I did some laundry. I balled the yarn I finished spinning last night in a bout of insomnia. I pulled out my suitcase.

Tomorrow is going to be a lot of work...I need to do laundry. I need to pack. I need to tackle that giganmous pile of overdue paperwork. I have a couple of things I need to buy, still. I have to decided if I can get there and back in one suitcase or two.

Today was, of course, long. And hectic. And weird in a couple of ways. I got into a couple of really good conversations with coworkers. I got really frustrated about one particular interaction, still feel kind of conflicted about it. Oh, but I had an awesome hour with my supervisor today. Wow, did I mention how much I just really, really like him?? I got some stuff done, I left at 6:30 or so... all in all, not a bad last day before a good long vacay.

Because, regardless....it's still VACATION!

Makes me feel better about what I've been finding online...

(PS - thanks, V!)

It's 6:40pm...

...and I'm thinking of going to bed.

I had candy corn for dinner. I mean, like, a handful, not a bag, but it's still not so good. And my stomach hurts now.

I'm so completely wiped out.

Got my flu shot today. Took both days' worth of our inservice exam. Got home and had a very fucking obnoxious voicemail from one of my cohorts. So I'm passive-aggressively ignoring what they asked me to do because a) it's ridiculous and 2) it's all I can do to stay awake.

I had such plans. Winding yarn, starting to pack, reading, dying my hair, working on a discharge summary or two. Y'all, I seriously can't keep my eyes open...

The point of all this: Wordless Wednesday has been postponed to Wordless Thursday.

Yeah, so clearly not wordless today....

The pitfalls of Facebook

This cracks me up...

Enjoy. And hope for less crazy tomorrow.

I keep getting upset with myself for having so many things to discuss on here, thoughts to share, blah, blah, blah...and then posting crap. Expect better in the coming days of vacation, I promise...

Hello, Monday

One day down, four more until vacation.

Have I mentioned this? I'm headed to Hawaii for the next two weeks with my folks. It was originally supposed to be a somewhat bigger family trip, including my aunt and uncle that live nearby and maybe their kids, but in the end it's just us. Which is cool.

I'm actually more than a little anxious about this. First, there's all the damn flying. Sunday I fly back to Chicago. I have a day and a half there, and then Tuesday I spend like nine hours in the air with a brief layover in California. We're in Honolulu for five days, then there's a turbo prop plane involved in our transfer to Maui. Where we stay for another five days, and then I leave Hawaii on that Friday. Because I figured I should be home a couple of days to deal with the jet lag.

But get this - here's my trip home. So, Friday morning at like nine-ish, I get back on the flying tin can and go back to Oahu. Then around 1 I get on a plane back to the mainland. I spend four or so hours crossing the ocean, and then have a seven hour layover on the left coast. Fortunately, I also have friends there, so they're planning to whisk me away for a bit. But then I go back to the airport, and somehow spend nearly seven hours (according to the airlines. I mean, but....really?) flying the red eye back to the Chi. And then, I bum around that airport for about four hours and catch yet another damn plane back to NC.

I'm never going to see my luggage again...

But, meanwhile, I have a crapton of stuff to do between now and then. I haven't even located my suitcase, much less pack it. I realized today that it's probably going to be a lot warmer in Hawaii, and I'm not sure I really know where my lighter clothes are right now. I have books to buy and have to locate some sunscreen and I really wish I'd thought to buy a swimsuit this summer when stores were actually selling them. And I'm actually quite anxious about not being at work for a whole two weeks, despite the fact that I'm leaving them in good hands. And I'm still working on finding a place for Ms. Mags.

Meanwhile...I was driving out of the parking deck tonight, and was like, oh, well, at least today wasn't a very long day.

And then I looked at the clock, and did the math, and realized that I'd pulled in to the same parking deck almost exactly 11 hours earlier.

::sigh....::

Not tonight, honey...

I started a little blog post about some nostalgic fancies I had today about the great Northeast. And started reading back over it, and realized it didn't make a whole lot of sense. Because my freakin' head is killing me.

I've had a headache pretty much every day this week. Most of them have evolved into migraines. I don't know if they're starting as tension headaches, or sinus headaches, or...whatever. I don't care.

My head hurts. I'm going to bed...

Calling Dr. Kate...

Yeah, so I covered the first half of the intern psych call today, because it's Intern Retreat weekend. I was supposed to be done at 8. It's 11 and I'm still here. But hopefully leaving shortly...

Lots o' crazy out today....

Girly

Today was...wait for it....long.

I got to work around 6:30am. Of course, my 7am patient cancelled while I was on my way in. So I putzed. I wrote a discharge summary. I wandered around and talked to people. I burned pictures onto a CD for Mikaela. I fussed with the patient distribution on the unit ("No, if you give him to me and her to him and then the right resident will have an open spot for the patient who's coming in and needs to be on that service..."). I did some actual doctoring.

One of my patients fell last night, which turned into a 4-hour fiasco for me trying to get him down for a procedure he was supposed to have today (nobody read the xrays. And then they wouldn't take him. And then they decided ortho needed to see him. And he needed an MRI. Except ortho was like, "That's crap." And on and on...). I had a new patient to see. I got interviewed for some graduate students' research thing. I had supervision with my new psychotherapy supervisor, whom I like very, very much. He's like a million years old and this totally old-school analyst, and just knows, like, everything. And is much more constructive than critical when I screw something up (which I always do, because, that's the nature of being human). I appreciate that.

Scott called me an "invited nuisance" today. I had stuff to leave on his officemates' desks, so I knocked, and no one answered, so I opened the door and went in. Because I do that in their office. And of course, he was like, uh, you're in my office. I said, yeah, sorry, I'm intruding (notice that I did not actually stop intruding...). He countered that I was welcome to do so, which sort of made it hard to intrude, what with my being invited and all. So, really, I was more of an invited nuisance. I observed that this might say something about those who invited me.

The whole thing cracked me up, because, this is what Scott and I do. He tries to push my buttons, and generally fails (outwardly, at least, because I can actually tolerate a lot of button-pushing), which makes it more of a challenge to find my buttons. Which amuses me, and this continues. And, notably, on the couple of rare occasions he's actually found a button, if it's a significant button, he backs the hell off. We're both a bit contrary, so this whole thing is not especially bothersome to me. Mikaela, however (one of said officemates), does not tolerate these tendencies of his very well at all. So I'm relaying the above story to her later, and she just sort of rolls her eyes and says, "I think that's actually a term of endearment. Seriously."

Most people would go more with something like "friend" or "hon" or "pookie." I'm just sayin'.

One of the patients coded today on our unit. Don't ever try to die on a psych floor. It doesn't go well. Fortunately, there happened to be a bunch of consultants on the unit at the time. And a giant pile of people show up for an actual Code Blue. And ultimately, she was fine (and on her way to the medical side of the hospital). But it was way more excitement than we're used to having up there.

Did I mention the day was really, really long?

But, it was capped off with a Girls' Night Out - Peng and some of our wine friends went out for dinner at a local fondue place. The food was overpriced and not spectacular, but the company was awesome. We had so much fun we scared our waiter a little.

He was pretty hot, actually. And has a degree in mechanical engineering. And currently stirs cheese for a living. So, really? Between the two of us...I kinda think he had the worse day.

Fair October

Long day. Again. Of course. Happy October.

Read this.

Love it.

Know what else I love? My new Ashford Traditional spinning wheel, which I bought used from one of the nurses at work. I spun for an hour tonight, this roving that I got on the farm tour a couple weeks ago. It was cheap, and it turns out that it's not especially well-carded, but hey, it was $1/oz. And the wheel needs to be oiled, and isn't as steady on the carpet upstairs as it was downstairs on the tile (or the no-pile carpet in my office, which was the place it ran the best), so the thickness isn't super consistent...but what it's produced is this high-lanolin, slubby, thick-and-thin yarn which is just totally and completely gorgeous (at least to me). It's very folksy. I see mittens, or maybe a whimsical scarf.

And so I'm sitting there tonight, fussing with the wheel, watching House, and spinning yarn, and my dog is curled up next to me on the bed (the chair I was using ended up sort of up against the foot of my bed), and every now and then she'd lean over and nuzzle or lick me, and I was just like...hmm. This? This is pretty darn close to bliss. And once I get the motion of the wheel evened out...

Quite zen. Very therapeutic.

I bought this thing (and some cards and combs, etc, that are coming later) for about what the hospital bills for one of my therapy sessions. So the way I see it, after having put in a solid hour on it tonight, it's already paid for itself.

New Traditional

Slipping

What a long day.

I meant to go to bed at 8 last night. I tried to go to bed at 8 last night. Things kept happening, the phone kept ringing, and I got to sleep around 1am. I then promptly woke up at 4 with a completely evil migraine. And subsequently cancelled with my trainer so that I did not vomit on her shoes at 5:30am.

But, I got my ass to work. The pain had more or less subsided (after a handful of Motrin), but I was still having weird visual things and was right queasy. It was a rough day. Crazy people, lots of yelling. One of my clinic patients needed to be admitted. I still made it out roughly at 5(ish) and got a bit of reading done before my class tonight.

Class, however, was late, but very enjoyable. It's on Freud, right, and Freud's models of the mind. Tonight's topic was his three lectures on parapraxis - more commonly known now as "Freudian slips." We had a good academic discussion, but we also had a good bit of storytelling and anecdotal humor. Not the least of which was this:

Rainy night

Mags and I are listening to one heck of a fall storm. I really do love a good thunderstorm. Maggie? Notsomuch.

Today was really long. I didn't sleep well (so what else is new?). My 7am therapy patient forgot we had a session. It was a long day on the unit. I had a migraine and a family meeting with lots of yelling.

But I also got to see the end of a Bones on TNT tonight that I'd apparently missed; where Zach tells Sweets that he didn't actually kill anyone. How did I miss that? That seems important...

My head still hurts.

Bittersweet day

So, it's a day of good things, and one particularly sad thing.

First, the good. Today is both Claudia's birthday AND Annie's birthday.

Claudia, I'm reasonably certain is 29 (still).

Happy birthday to you both. Love you both, miss you both. Hope it was a great day.

In less happy news, my friend's 15 year-old completely awesome black Lab died. Barney was a good friend. He purred - no kidding! It was the darnedest little noise he'd make when you scratched his belly. And you could not leave a glass of beer unattended long, and especially not on the coffee table. Love you, too, Barnes. Have fun chasing squirrels in heaven.

Not at all painless

I still just don't even know what to say.

Tuesday night, someone I care about very much tried very hard to take her own life.

Except, here's the thing - "she" didn't...my cousin, whom I love so very much, struggles with something called Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID. It used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder. Very, very bad things happened to her when she was in her most formative early years. When significantly traumatic things happen during the development of one's personality, if the predisposition is there (and we're not really sure what that is), the personality structure can fracture. It's a complicated and confusing situation, and more than it's worth getting into here. But the thing is, while a few decades ago this was the diagnosis du jour, it's now one of the most hotly contested diagnoses in psychiatry.

I feel like people often try to diminish things they don't understand. Even the people who have this don't understand it. But bigotry and bias, as always, will not make it better.

I'm not going to argue the validity of the diagnosis. I think it's ridiculous that we even have controversy like this in a scientific pursuit. The "because it's weird and I don't get it" defense doesn't hold up, folks. And anyone who doubts the existence of this disorder needs to spend a couple of days with my cousin, or my ex, or my good friend in Florida. Herschel Walker, football great and Heisman Trophy winner, recently wrote a book about his struggle with DID. It's out there, folks. And no, it's not a "convenient excuse" that allows you to disavow responsibility for your actions ("It's not my fault, my alter did it"). Yes, it can be malingered for some sort of secondary gain, but so can every other psychiatric illness, or for that matter, most medical ones (factitious disorder, anyone?).

Imagine for a moment that you wake up tomorrow morning, and walk into the kitchen, and pour your coffee as usual. And on the counter you find a bag full of things you don't remember buying. Maybe they're clothes that are so totally not your style, or expensive electronic gizmos you really can't afford. You wonder who bought them, and look at the receipt, and the name on the credit card is yours. Except the signature doesn't look quite right. Imagine how confusing that would be. Did someone steal your card, break in, and leave the stuff there? Maybe one of your family members bought it with your card? You look at the time on the receipt and try to remember where you were at that time yesterday, and...strangely...for the life of you, you can't. And you wonder why this keeps happening...

Now imagine what you find is cocaine. Or cuts and bruises all over your body. Or you wake up in jail. Or in the ICU.

Imagine you wake up safe in your own bed with overwhelming feelings of guilt, shame, depression, worthlessness, and have no idea what you've done. Imagine people coming up to you on the street and seeming to know you, including details of your life, except you have no idea who they are and they're calling you by a different name. Imagine losing big chunks of time, finding yourself in places you don't remember getting to, or hearing voices running commentary on your life while you're trying to live it. Imagine feeling like the only way to end the chaos was suicide. Imagine not thinking that and waking up in a puddle of blood or with a tube down your throat.

Not every case is this extreme, or dramatic, of course; these disorders all exist on a continuum, like depression, or schizophrenia, or anything else. People with DID (or any disorder on the dissociative spectrum) can be very ill and still remarkably high-functioning. Remember that the whole point of the disorder is survival. It's a very primitive but powerful form of adaptation.

I gave a lecture on DID last year to the interns, and the take-home point I tried to make to them was this: the real myth is that we have one cohesive, integrated personality. Think about it; you're constantly altering what parts of yourself are most prominent. I think of myself as generally consistent within the circles of people who know me, but at work, I'm more reserved and professional. I don't drink at work, of course. I don't wear my pajamas. Even the difference in closing our office door reveals a much more sarcastic, silly, sassy version of me than my patients will ever see, but if you ask those same patients about my personality, many of them would cite sarcastic and sassy. Some of them wouldn't - some of them see the more overtly maternal traits that I have, and think of me as soft and supportive and positive. Some of them would call me a hard-ass bitch. None of the above things are not who I am, all the time. They're just not always who I am in the moment.

DID is an extension of this process, as I conceptualize it. Most personality-related pathology is just an exaggeration of normal traits, right? We all have our moments when we're particularly narcissistic, or borderline, or avoidant, especially in times of crisis when our defenses are strained. When it becomes the defining aspect of our interactions, when it severely impacts our ability to function in a healthy way, psychiatry calls this a personality disorder. DID is no different - it's an exaggerated expression of a normal structural phenomena, in response to an event or series of events that exceed the capacity of the existing defenses to protect the psyche from painful or destructive emotions.

And, in case you were curious, the above is a lovely example of the defense mechanism of "intellectualization."

My own painful and destructive emotions? Too numerous to count in this instance. The dominant one is, I'm so terrified for her.

The other point of this post? Again, I hearken back to suicide. It's never just you that you're trying to kill. Even though my cousin survived, and is expected to be medically fine, and is finally in a safe place (finally....well, that's another story for another day), a little bit of all of us who love her died on Wednesday. It sounds overdramatic, but it really isn't; any sensitive person who's been in this situation can tell you.

But, we all do what we can, you know? We try to help, we mobilize the resources we have, both internal and external. We hope that someday we can look down at the well-healed scar and appreciate it as a memory of damage overcome. We try to learn what we can and move forward. I deal with suicide every day at work, and know this provides me an invaluable perspective. I know it strengthens my own resolve not to ever go down that path, regardless of how bad my own internal chaos might get. I know it makes me all the more grateful for the time and interactions and moments I have with people interspersed within the minutia of my life. It fuels my academic interest and professional development. And it makes me hope that I never, ever, ever have to deal with a similar experience again.

Diatribe, interrupted.

Thanks for all the support, y'all. I was going to divert some mental energy to composing a post about all this today, but the day tried to kill me a little. I left the hospital about 13 hours after I got there, ran home to let the pup out (the dog walker makes a point of not being gone on holidays, but this means he takes his "holidays" at other random times during the year, so he's gone this weekend), and then backtracked about halfway to have dinner with Ruthie. Which was lovely and restorative and a very nice diversion. And now it's 11:30 and I'm ridiculously tired and I have a large mountain of clinic notes and discharge summaries to occupy my tomorrow, so, I think I'm going to go to bed. Will post actual explanation tomorrow and not loser-y "sorry, I have to go to bed now" post.

But...well........sorry, I have to go to bed now....

Defenses.

Yeah, there's something going on. I'm fine, my folks are fine, Maggie's fine. I spent a long time tonight trying to compose a post, but I'm just so confused about the whole thing that I can't quite put it into words.

It's one of those occasions in which something is so unreal that I don't really know what to do with it. I keep saying, yeah, yeah, I'm fine, because, well, I am, but mostly because, there just aren't words. I keep trying not to tell people, because that's what I do, I just go on quietly when my life is falling apart. Actually, a number of bad things have happened to the people around me lately, and it's definitely taken its toll on me, but only a few close people know anything about it. I'm always "fine."

Truth is, I'm not sure I know how to let myself be not fine.

I got into a little tiff with Scott this morning. I walked in, ridiculously early, as always, and was bantering with him and Sonia for a while (they were the overnight call team). And we were talking about this patient we all know a little better than we'd like to, and he makes this sarcastic comment about a subject which is sort of a running thing between us. It was standard fare; we've debated this rather jocularly on multiple occasions. Unfortunately, this just happens to be the topic related to the recent badness in my life.

So today there was no joking or debating. Today there was me, sniping, which wasn't fair. He didn't know that today was not the day to confront that. But instead of "Not now, man," what came out was, "Oh, you can fucking bite me."

He dropped it, we moved on, things lightened. And I felt bad about this all day. So I texted him before I left work and was like, I'm sorry. Here's why I snapped at you this morning. In truth, it was maybe 10% of the reason I actually snapped at him, but that was the best explanation I could give. He was like, I didn't even think of it as a snap. Figured you were tired. Really sorry I went there, and about what happened.

My first thought about that was, great, I love that I'm even blowing this out of proportion, that I (as always) made the assumption it was as bad outside my head as it was inside, but apparently I can't even let that kind of stuff show very much. My second thought was, God, I so incredibly HATE that I told him. That I let him see even that tiny crack of vulnerable and crazy. Hate hate hate.

But, it is what it is. And what it is, is that I'm way too defended.

I know this about myself. I know why it's there, and I'm not sure how to make it not so.

So tomorrow, when I don't have to be up at 5am after another night of tossing and turning, I'll have more to say about this. Meanwhile, I have some unsettling dreams waiting for me...but that's pretty much the same as every night.

Needed

"Why do you think people would treat you worse if they knew the truth?"

I'm watching last night's episode of House.

(Don't worry, no spoilers.)

He's in the psych ward. Several of my patients today were really upset about this episode, and I'm trying to figure out why. My conclusion thusfar (I'm maybe halfway through) is that it's just the State Psych Hospital feel of the set. Which...I have a lot of trouble believing someone like House would be in a place like this. But, okay.

I really like the lead psychiatrist (or at least, I did until the boundary crossing). I identify with him, I'm not sure why. I wonder what it says about me (I'm kind of wondering why it's not House I identify with). Maybe it's the stubborn. Or the interpretations. I've had a lot of patient visits and family meetings over the past few days in which I've spent a lot of time being way more directive and interpretive than I normally tend to be. So far, it's worked out, although there's one case I'm a wee bit worried about.

Okay, that's not true. I'm worried about most of them. It's what I do.

I dunno, y'all. I'm tired. And my stomach hurts. And I don't feel so good in general. I'm unsettled, and I'm pensive, and...I...yeah, I dunno....

So, episode over, and my opinion of it is overall positive. Although I think the catatonia girl storyline was pushing dramatic license a bit.

And, there was one line in there (not the title line, which I also like) that I think very eloquently sums up my own ideas about therapy:

"You've got to make things better, you can't just keep talking and hope for the best."

Funny how many people don't get that.

Monday amusement

Here, check this out.

Read. Laugh. Enjoy. Meanwhile, I'm going to bed. Nothing like a 13 hour workday to kick off the week.

How did the week go so slowly...

...and the weekend so fast?

Hmm.

Today was not as productive as I'd hoped, but wicked enjoyable. I went to the 'Bucks this morning and spent like three hours writing a ridiculously long letter for a patient of mine. I grabbed some lunch, and then I met up with my aunt and uncle for the Local Farm Tour. We only made it to two farms, actually, but they were pretty awesome. The first one had goats and sheep and ducks (ducks that eat fire ants, how cool is that?). I ate some goat cheese, picked up a lovely bar of goat's milk soap, and - of course, the real prize for me - procured four ounces of very pretty white Border Leicester roving. We also bought some yarn from her sheep for my cousin, who's a relatively new knitter. Seriously awesome yarn. One of the farm folks was knitting a thick wool sweater out of it, and wow, was it gorgeous.

On #6 straights. I was like, seriously? Who knits a sweater on straight needles anymore? But I digress.

The second farm we went to was just so beautiful. Unlike the first farm, which was still sort of being restored, the second was like four generations deep. It was so lovely. They had sheep and goats and a pair of llamas. They also had two really gorgeous horses and all these hilarious chickens. And, Guinea....um....are those chickens? Guinea fowl. They were hysterical. And apparently really like to eat ticks. Way to go, Guineas. There's also a lovely patch of gardens which grow things including cotton, which becomes more relevant in a minute.

On that farm, the woman had this whole building where she spins and weaves. The building itself was made from trees that were uprooted during hurricane Fran. It's a gorgeous little studio, and she has this antique wheel that's like taller than me. She also has a Schacht that's much more functional. I bought another half pound of roving from her - four ounces of something brown and soft that I don't remember what kind of sheep it came from (something that started with a T, I think), and four ounces of this unbelievably awesome Cotswold roving. It's pin drafted, so all you really need to do is just fire up the wheel (were that I had one...soon, soon. This lady also gave me some good ideas about where to find used wheels). And it's just totally...I'm so in love. I need to get me some Cotswold sheep some day.

I also really like Cotswold cheddar. Maybe what I need to do is just move to Cotswold. It sounds like a magical land...

We were going to go to a local vineyard as well, but spent way too much time talking to the spinner lady (and, really, North Carolina wines....), so we diverted and just went back to their house and made pizza. And I took my drop spindle over to illustrate what I'd been babbling about on the farm, and gave my uncle a brief lesson in spinning on the drop spindle. He did really well with it, actually (he's an engineer, and gets the physics of all of this). We had a very good time, as we always do.

Today definitely fueled my little pipe dream of being farm people. I come from farm stock, after all (I got very nostalgic today, as the second farm smelled a lot like my great-aunt's). I frequently have this bucolic little fantasy about living out in the country with my alpacas and a few sheep and a couple of goats. Not as any real sort of means of self-sustenance, but I imagine we'd make a little extra money from the alpacas and whatnot. And chickens. I'd also like a little coop of laying hens. And maybe a cow. And a husband who really liked to garden, and we could grow all of our own produce and maybe we could trade stuff with our little farmer neighbors (maybe I'd let them have the cow) and grow berries and have those freakin' hilarious little Guineas running around. And dogs. We'd need a couple of really huge dogs and then a couple of indoor mutts. And definitely some cats in the barn (although, no cats in the house). Ooh, and a horse. A really nice old mare that I could ride around the farm on. I don't think it would have to be that big; maybe 15 or 20 acres would more than suit us just fine.

And then I remember that this little agrarian utopia conflicts with my pipe dream of living on the beach. And also that there aren't a lot of Starbucks near farmland.

Meanwhile, I stayed out way too late on a school night. And, I still smell like farm.

How is half my weekend gone?

I wanted to be in bed over an hour ago. ::sigh::...

I slept in this morning (until 8). Went to Starbucks and did some work. Spent an hour there before I actually DID any work. Stopped for lunch, came home, and sorted through the nearly 800 photos that I took last weekend. Copied, sorted, filed, uploaded, annotated. I was pleased. Then Peng and I went to wine tasting (always a good time) and had dinner at this new Italian place which was overwhelmingly mediocre. Home, a bit of futzing....and a lot of wondering where the heck today went.....so how is it 11 pm?

Could I have a bit more weekend, please?

Friday!

We made it.

I'm not yet sure what the weekend looks like, because I'm just too tired to even try to plan for tomorrow. I have things I need to do, things I want to do...and mostly, I just need sleep.

It's been a long week.

Today, though, I spent two hours trying to teach my peripartum patients to knit. Either I've lost my touch or the crappy plastic circular needles the OT gave me to teach them with sucked. But we had fun. And then my one patient (who's just doing so much better)'s kids came and we had fun with them. I really like having kids and babies on the unit.

I have one more week as the peripartum resident. I'm going to miss it.

Is it Friday yet?

So I didn't leave the hospital until 7:30 tonight. I got there at 6:30 this morning. It was a long ass day. So long in fact that this afternoon I was talking to my boss about an email I'd sent her when I got up this morning and referred to it as "that email I sent you last night."

I'm in dire need of a weekend.

And a good night's sleep, since I have to meet my trainer in the morning at quarter past dark.

Did I mention that it was a long-ass day?

Monochrome

Fatigue

It was such a long day. Crazy, lots of running around, lots of fighting with the neurology service, of all things. Actually made it out right around 5 and had a little time to do most of the reading for my class tonight. Class was a lot of fun; good discussions, rousing debate, wonderful collegiality, and a little bonus girl talk with Mikhela afterwards. My trainer kicked my ass this morning. My sunburn is blistering, and Peng has been kind enough to help me keep my back slathered in this fancy yogurt after-sun lotion that is essentially tzatziki sauce in a Korres bottle.

But I'm still not quite caught up with my sleep from the weekend. And I was sleep deprived before that. So, in the absence of any significant or substantive posting, I will instead give you another gratuitous beach photo. This one is from sunrise on Sunday.

Tomorrow's Wordless Wednesday? My very favorite picture of the whole set.

G'night.

Coolness

Check this out:

"Unashamed" music video

My cousin's band made a video.

It's a good song, although not especially one of my favorites. The video is clearly low-budget and fairly unimaginative. But, still, really pretty cool.

My cousin is the bassist.

They really do rock.

Spent

So we're home. We had an AWESOME weekend. Julius and Scott and I got there midafternoon on Friday, had a very amusing grocery shopping trip (Scott was postcall and had been awake like 34 hours at that point. Scott is usually pretty loose and sarcastic, so you take away what filter he has...), at the end of which we found Faye.

The house was amazing. 5 bedrooms, the master suite of which had a bathroom big enough to be another bedroom. Two queens, two rooms with 4 bunkbeds each. I got one of the queen rooms, not that I slept much (the mattresses, incidentally? Not awesome). It had a nice living area, a big kitchen (with ridiculously dull knives), a table that most of us could fit around at the same time, a little breakfast bar at the island for those that couldn't. Two decks, oceanfront, beach access, totally stellar views. I took 760 pictures, most of which were of sand or waves or birds or some such nonsense (I got some totally great shots, though). Fortunately, Mike often had my camera when it was out of my hands, and he got some good shots of people.

Friday night everyone started to trickle in between 7 and midnight, and it was nice to watch the progression as people kind of came together. Julius, Scott, Mary and I took a beach walk around 11, which was totally gorgeous. I got bitten by a crab (and still have the mark to prove it - he got me good!), which was mostly amusing. Apparently it was a big drunkapalooza after I went to bed at 2, though. The boys went through a bottle of tequila and like three cases of beer (I kept finding empties the next morning as I was cleaning up, like, are you kidding me?). Which explains why I ended up poking my head upstairs at 4am to tell my dear loved ones to shut the fuck up.

Yesterday I woke up at 5, watched the sunrise (of which I took a crapton of pictures until my damn battery died right before the actual sun came up over the horizon), and spent like three hours on the beach before I went back and woke Mike up, who was sleeping on the couch (I can respect not waking him at 5, but by 8am, if you're sleeping in the common area, it's fair game). Gradually the rest of the crew trickled up, we made breakfast, hung out for a bit, and then spent more or less the rest of the day on the beach. We bodysurfed, we laid out, we swam, we walked and walked. Scott has apparently been trying to get into kiteboarding, the first part of which is learning how to use the kite, so he brought it along and we all made lots of disastrous flights with it. The boys (and Faye, who incidentally throws like a girl) tossed a football around for a while. Peng and I beachcombed a bit (okay, she beachcombed, I went along and was neurotic).

Tyler and Scott rented surfboards and these paddleboard things, which you stand on what looks like a large surfboard and paddle around with these very long, thankfully buoyant paddles. I took lots of pictures of them falling off the paddleboard things. I went out for a while and was trying to get a shot of both of them standing up at the same time, but, um, that just wasn't happening. It was actually pretty amusing to watch - Tyler would get up and wobble for a minute before falling, but Scott would be straight upright and looking like he was totally fine and then just suddenly be in the water. So I got bored (not board! Ah, I crack me up...) and started shooting more environmentals. There's a bunch of really great houses around where we were which produced some great photographs (and also some crappy ones. Part of the 800+ photos I actually shot - I deleted a bunch - was about learning how to actually use the new dSLR like a real camera, not like a very overpriced snapshot camera). I chased this bird around a sand dune for a while. And then I looked over and there they both were, standing up, paddling along. I actually managed to catch the moment on film before they both promptly fell off again.

I also spent a good 45 minutes that evening upside down on a sand dune. It seemed like a darn good place to do a yoga inversion, so I plopped myself down into a good pose, listened to the waves, watched the horizon, watched the clouds, and was finally laying there just sort of breathing and listening and being still when I suddenly found Scott and Tyler standing over me, back in from surfing, being very amused that I was upside down. I convinced Tyler to join me for a few minutes, but he doesn't get the "still, quiet" piece of it very well and so we chatted for a while and then wandered back up to the house, completely coated in sand. It was amusing.

Mike made his famous Low Country Boil last night (shrimp and sausage and scallops and corn and...I don't remember, other things, all thrown in a pot and boiled), which always goes over well and when combined with some scrambled eggs made excellent leftovers for breakfast. I, of course, don't eat seafood, but we had enough leftover whatever that I did just fine. I also made Painkillers, which are a rum-based drink I learned from my Aunt and Uncle, and are also apparently the national drink of the Dominican Republic. They were very tasty, and I now believe are best ingested on the deck with a cool ocean breeze and a brewing storm.

I was also not feeling super well at this point, because by then I'd developed what's turned out to be the single most painful sunburn I've ever had in my life. It's predominantly on my back, and does not pair well either with long hair or wearing of a bra. So I was cranky, and decided another evening beach walk would maybe fix some of the cranky (and not make me crabby again. Ha! I'm just so punny...). Meanwhile, Scott had wandered off down the beach several hours previous, and didn't take his cell phone, and although he's totally the type of person who would just wander off, go farther than he'd intended, and find his way back eventually, he's also not above falling and breaking his leg, getting mugged, or perhaps being attacked by a giant octopus or something (they have those at the beach, right?). So the general consensus was that I'd point my own walk in the general direction of his last known location and if I happened to stumble across his cold, limp body, would alert someone to that.

As it was, we somehow passed each other in the dark and Peng called me when I was less than a half mile away to say he'd turned up (tangentially - because THAT's unusual for me - he was the second member of our party we'd lost that day. Mike went off for a run or a bike ride or a something earlier in the day and was gone for like 6 hours, and was of course not checking his cell phone. But he eventually came home, too). So I continued to wander along the beach a little longer, until it suddenly occurred to me....wait...I'm a woman, alone on a beach, at night, having gone out (in part) to look for a friend who'd been out, on a beach, alone, at night, and disappeared....I've seen this slasher movie...

So I turned around and headed back to the house. We watched "Old School," which I'd never seen in its entirety (funny), and SNL, and made microwave S'mores (because we'd also discovered at lunch that we had charcoal but no actual grill). I finished another baby blanket square. Peng crocheted on her afghan. There was...I hate to admit this....beer pong (Tyler had texted me Friday to ask if there was a table big enough for beer pong. I said, "No. We're grown ups." I got vetoed. And on top of that, Faye and I lost to Mike and Tyler). We all went to bed earlier (and some of them significantly more sober) than the night before. It was nice.

This morning I got up and shot the sunrise for real, which was obliging and completely awesome. I was back in the house dozing in a comfy chair when Tony got up, and we chatted for a while before we gave up and started making noise and coffee. We had the latter brewed and the kitchen mostly cleaned when the rest of the house started trickling upward. Tony and Mike pulled out a little "ghetto breakfast" (we made do with what leftovers we had, and had things like hamburger buns as toast). Tony and Scott got a little more surfing in, Julius wandered around on the beach a bit longer, Mary and Cleo caught a wee bit more sun. I avoided the sun like the damn plague and Peng rubbed cocoa butter on my back while I swore at the numbers for the weekend and could not make the accounting add up. But we all pulled it together, and left by the time we were supposed to be out, and did all the stuff we were supposed to have done, and the boys and I made great time (as in, two hours, which is almost an hour less that it's supposed to take. Which is not because I was speeding, but apparently my GPS actually DOES know where it's going on occasion). We were all pretty worn out and had far less spirited discussions on the way back (Scott and I have a tendency to debate almost anything pretty hard).

It was a really good weekend.

So that's sort of the journalistic report of Beach Weekend. I have a lot of more interpretive things to say, but I also really need to go to bed, so I'll save them. The moral of the story, though, is that we had a hell of a good time. I really like my friends. And I totally love the beach. This was such a fun time, and as those things often are, it was both completely exhausting and tremendously restorative. What else can you ask for?

Oops.

I didn't actually manage to get a post up for Saturday. Partly because a bunch of people were using my computer. Partly because we were having a LOT of fun. Partly because I was getting the single most painful sunburn of my entire damn life.

Part II tomorrow.

(PS - Sunburn? Ouch. But totally worth it.)

At the beach.

Yes, yes I am.

Packing

It's what I'm doing.

Beach tomorrow!!! Beach! Beach! Beach!! We finally reserved a house. It's going to be a little more expensive than the one I'd initially planned on, but it's a lot nicer as well. And still not exorbitant.

I am feeling a wee bit guilty, because I was going to take Maggie with, and now am leaving her at home. But the dog sitter will spoil her rotten, so...still. She would've enjoyed it. And I'm going to miss her.

Scott and Julius and I are hitting the road midday tomorrow, which means I have to be at work super early to make sure I'm done by noon with absolutely anything that needs doing (we're planning to leave at 1, so I'm aiming for noon). Peng is a goddess and said she'd cover anything that had to be done in the hospital (i.e., orders written), since she has late afternoon patients and has to be there anyway. So the boys and I will get to the coast, get to the house, get things settled, and most of the rest of the crew will come after work.

It's going to be lovely.

Beach! Beach! Beach!

Not easy

Oyyyy.....

So, four people, maybe 5, have now backed out of our beach trip this weekend, leaving us at potentially 12-13. Which means it's going to be somewhat more expensive, since, after all, we're paying for it ourselves this time. I have yet to determine how much more, though, because, of course, we still haven't picked a house.

I'm completely amazed at how many people involved have said something along the lines of, "you should just not even go." Seriously? First of all, it's like you people don't even know me. Finding solutions at the last minute is one of the things I do best. And beyond that, there's still 12 or 13 people going. Why shouldn't we still go and have fun? I'm just sayin'.

Scott's pissed. I? Am strangely less worried.

Wow, I wish that made sense...

It was really the icing on a very long, very stressful day. I can't even begin to tell you....

Still life

(Hardly.)

I do love a good holiday weekend. I got next to nothing of what I actually wanted to accomplish accomplished, save for like nine hours worth of clinic notes and discharge summaries (I still have one left of each, plus like eighty three bajillion therapy notes, but those are quick, because they say nothing). And I bought new pants and a vacuum cleaner, but the latter is still in my car (I bought it this afternoon). I unpacked exactly one box, although I did rearrange the furniture in my bedroom into a fashion I think will actually be better.

So, the to-do list may not be much shorter, but really, looking back at the weekend, I actually did get quite a bit accomplished.

Not the least of which was having a very lovely time with friends and family. Saturday night Peng and I went to wine tasting, and then I skipped over to Cleo's, where I met a very fabulous friend of hers from the Chi and we all ate way too much pork (Mike had cooked literally half a pig. There were 10 of us. Needless to say, lots of leftovers). And then tonight I went over to my aunt and uncle's, where we made Margherita pizza from scratch and my aunt and I finally fixed the hem on my pants (for no apparent reason, the hem on the right leg of all of my pants keeps falling out. I do not know what this is about. I'm thinking my left hip must be higher than my right or something....). I also finished square #1 (of 16) of the four baby blankets I have to knit in the next 20 weeks (why are they all due at the same time?!?!!).

In a few short hours it'll be back to the grindstone, but at least it's a short week. And then there's beach this weekend!! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. I think I mentioned that we're recreating our intern retreat, except this time we have to pay for it ourselves and we're taking the second years with us. And also one of the fourth years, and a couple of other people we like. Scott, who's the other half of the Planning Committee, is being extraordinarily male about the whole thing and driving me absolutely crazy (I recognize, that's a short trip), particularly in that we're leaving Friday and we still haven't settled on what house we're going to rent. I picked one, he suddenly developed an opinion, he may have then finagled us a whole better deal, but we're not sure yet...I totally heart Scott, and we generally work very well together, but he's kinda making me nuts, here. And honestly? I'm not entirely sure why. We're going to have a place; if his falls through, mine won't. So I don't know why I'm so worked up about this. Because either way, it's the BEACH. Beach! Beach! Beach!!

Have I mentioned how excited I am about the beach?

Lazy Sunday

In response to the question apparently raised by yesterday's post, no, I don't have anyone specific in mind with that reference. It resonated, though, for reasons I'm not sure I can verbalize, except to say that I've always felt like we have a path in life. That we're given the challenges we are, put in the situations we are, encounter the people we do, for reasons beyond our understanding. Our job, then, is to learn what we can from each one, take whatever data we can gather from each interaction, observe and synthesize that information into what informs us as we move through the rest of our lives.

It's not an uncommon philosophy. It's fairly fatalist, I suppose. But, it's the way I make sense of my life, you know?

Today was a relatively low-key, minimally productive kind of day. I went to the Starbucks, got some actual work done. Then I went to the gym, where I spent a little too long, I think (but, there was an SVU marathon on and the episode wasn't over, so I just kind of kept going on the treadmill.....), after which I came home for a little puppy lovin'. Little Maxine was visiting us overnight, and I got such a good double dose of snuggles, that I put my head down...you know, just for a moment...I didn't actually get any real restorative sleep, but it was good for the soul. But I finally got myself motivated enough to get up and get in the shower, with lofty goals of taking Little Maxine back to Sparrow's, then going to Ulta (I need sunscreen and hair dye), Lane Bryant (I need pants), and Target (I need stuff. Not the least of which is groceries). And I feel like there was somewhere else I was going to go, too. But then I get out of the shower and find my dog happily devouring the end of my bottle of melatonin.

I thought...hmm...

So I Googled, and it seemed to be fine. And, just to be sure, I called the vet. Who couldn't really say definitively, so they gave me two phone numbers to call. One turned out to be Carolina Poison Control, whom I talk to not infrequently and was most certainly NOT going to call and be all "so, about my dog..." The other one was the ASPCA poison control line, which seemed appropriate. And, apparently, charges $60 per consultation. Which...you know what? Fine. It was worth the peace of mind to hear that it would probably just make her sleepy.

Which...well....duh.

So, I aborted the errands mission to keep an eye on the pooch. Rene came and picked up the small one, and I got to meet the future Mr. Rene, who was very nice. And then I spent a few hours scouring over the photography books I bought a couple of weeks ago, one of which is specifically about my camera. I took some pictures on the various settings, and made some notes, and then flipped through the other one, which is "for teens, by teens." I'm thinking the teens had some help, because it was the most useful and accessible book I found when I was sitting on the floor at the Border's sifting through every book I saw that looked mildly useful in the photography section. And had the best pictures. Which is kind of the point, isn't it?

I didn't take anything super exciting (I pointed and shot at whatever was sitting next to me on the bed), but I got a couple that were kind of cool. One was of yarn.

But for the shots in which I was fiddling with the shutter speed, yarn just wouldn't cut it. Fortunately, I had a willing subject....

Says it all....

From this week's Sunday Secrets....

Mufasa and Darth Vader agree...

Since it is, of course, National Suicide Prevention month, I thought I'd share this great new PSA by James Earl Jones, supporting Hopeline, as well as two other organizations I love, PostSecret and To Write Love On Her Arms.



We've spent the past week on the unit talking in the groups I run about secrets, and the way secrets will fester and become shameful and toxic when, had you just let the information see the light of day in the first place, it would've been just fine. Secrets become like monsters in the closet; when you turn on the light, you realize it's only the vacuum cleaner. Privacy is one thing; but secrets destroy.

Start talking, people. Everyone thinks they're the only one, but they're not. If we talked openly about things like depression, self-injury, sexual abuse and assault, and suicide, if we splayed them out to the light of day, we'd probably end up with a lot less to talk about in the long run.

Love Thursday

I haven't done a good Love Thursday post in a long while, so, I thought maybe tonight I'd do 10 things I love...in no particular order whatsoever.

1. My job. No, really, despite the long-ass hours (left at 7pm tonight. Awesome), the endless paperwork, and the emotional tumult, I love what I do. I love that I get to do it. And I love where I do it. There's always room for improvement, obviously, but I'm really glad I'm where I am.

2. Babies. There's a sudden abundance of them. And somehow, the ones who require blankets are ALL due in about 20 weeks. I'm not sure I have the time to knit four blankets between now and then...

3. Babies on the unit. This is quite possibly my favorite part of being the peripartum resident.

4. And since we're on baby-related topics, I miss obstetrics, and endoscopic surgery, and I think I'll always mourn the loss of the nice little life plan I had mapped out, but in truth? I love that I left OB/G. For so many reasons, not the least of which is that I finally stood the hell up for myself.

5. I totally love that I don't have to fight like that anymore for my very survival.

6. I love my dog. So much. I know this sort of goes without saying, but I was talking to my friend Paulie today about her, and the story of how I got her and whatnot, and I was just sitting there thinking, wow, I'm just really so blessed to have her as my furry little sidekick.

7. The beach. I really, really, really love the beach. And we're going next weekend!! I'm starting to get really excited about this trip (even if the planning committee still can't quite get its shit together). There's going to be about 17 of us, I think. 13 doctors, two spouses (well, one spouse, one spouse-ish), one pharmacist, and a Tyler. Friday night to Sunday. I just hope the weather cooperates...although, honestly? I'm not sure I even care. Rain at the beach is still at the beach.

8. Something that's brewing that I can't quite tell you about yet. Not sure it really qualifies as "love" as much as "scared shitless," but, I love that I'm even entertaining the idea of it. Not to be cryptic or anything.

9. I love that you people still read this drivel I write.

10. I so totally love that there's a three day weekend in my immediate future. It may well be filled with unpacking and note writing and cleaning and gym time (and SLEEP!), but, that sounds like a good three days to me.

Chameleon

May we all see many more.

Welcome to September.

In case you weren't aware (as I wasn't, until recently), September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month.

I've talked on here several times about suicide, and the devastating effects it has on families, friends, and society at large. Because it really does. No matter how inconsequential you think you are, someone is going to know that you're gone. Someone is going to miss you. Someone is going to wish with all their heart that you hadn't taken your own life.

Suicide is an everyday thing in my job. Now, actual completed suicides are fairly rare, as the statistics go, but every last one of us knows a patient who's died by their own hand. And it touches us all. I wish people could see how the sadness ripples through our department when this happens. But every single day, we deal with people (usually multiple people) who express some wish to take their own life.

On my inpatient service right now is probably the single most suicidal patient I've ever worked with who hasn't actually killed themselves. And what we're holding on to right now is that ambivalence she has, that there is a part of her that desperately wants to live. I've really learned so much from her. We were talking one day about how she views her life and herself, and I sat back, and made this interpretation: I said to her, it seems to me that you're coming to the table with all of these messages that you're useless and worthless and horrible, gathered from childhood experiences and projections of other people's pathology. And then, now, you're in this situation you desperately don't want to be in, but you don't see a way to change it. It's like you're standing in a corner and see no other way to go. She nodded, suddenly awash with tears. I thought about this for a minute and said, "I can see why you want to kill yourself."

This caught her a little off guard. Which, honestly, it shouldn't, because how many times had we made lists of ways to cope with a situation, and I always told her "Well, cutting or killing yourself is a way to deal with it, we'll put it on the list. And then let's come up with some better ways." But that always catches her a little off guard, too, it seems. So I say this, and she looks up at me, and I shrugged. I said, I get it. You genuinely feel like there is just nowhere to go from here. The only thing you can control in this churning sea of misery is whether you live or die. So why wouldn't you cling to that like a life preserver?

The thing is, I told her, that there are other ways to go that you just can't see, because you're facing that corner. My goal for you is to get you to turn around, see the rest of the room. Look at what's here, because you have a lot to work with. She argued that last statement with me, because she, of course, thinks she brings nothing to the table. But I'm awfully stubborn, and kept insisting she's got a lot of potential.

I actually discharged her a bit ago. I knew she wasn't safe, I felt it in every cell of my body. But she insisted that she felt safe, and wasn't thinking those thoughts anymore. She made it 36 hours, and then downed a bottle of sleeping pills. I saw her in the ER afterwards. I walked into her room, and she looks at me and started to cry and said, "I lied." And all I could say was, "I know." Later I hugged her and told her I was so grateful she'd come back in, that she was safe again. It totally broke my heart that she'd fallen so hard when she left, but I slept better after that, honestly.

I have another patient who comes in to my clinic and constantly insists that he has the right to take his own life. We've gone back and forth about this, and on a logical level, honestly? I can't argue. His claim is that he is in so much emotional pain it's unbearable, and that he's tried meds, and more meds, and ECT, and none of it has relieved this pain. So, he says, it's his right to end that suffering. I don't argue that point with him. What I argue is that he has not, in fact, failed everything.

And I find it interesting that the one thing he refuses to try is therapy.

Recovery is a program of brutal honesty. To yourself, to those who are helping you, to the people around you. If you are really honest with yourself, you will always find hope. And if you can't find hope, borrow some from someone else.

If you're thinking that ending your life is the only option, tell someone. Talk about it. Hold it up to the light of day. Seek help. I promise you, suicide is only one option, and it's the most destructive one of all.