and my eyeballs. just got back from palm drive. scary patient with scarred-up back from prior surgery and likely bacterial meningitis, made worse by a spectacularly unhelpful ICU consultant. but Dr. J. (normally infuriating ER doctor) did the spinal tap for me, for which i promise i will never ever be rude about him ever again, at least until the next time i get cross at him. if i can get through the next three days without killing someone, i will count that as a triumph. (my hospitalist week lasts three more days, plus three clinics and a 12 hour ER shift. wednesday night at midnight i will be a free woman, with nothing to do but pick my nose, think about food for christmas, work on my van eyck rip-off, and go running.
i made marzipan this afternoon. to make marzipan my way, first you make a pan of burnt sugar, filling the kitchen with thick grey smoke, and THEN you make something that sort of looked like marzipan but which is a little bit too dry, so then you slosh in some amaretto, which may contribute to subsequent texture problems (too sticky), but definitely does excellent things for the taste. delicious, slightly funny looking (i don't think i ground the almonds fine enough), but good enough for cake decorating. then i cleaned the house (it looks terrific, if i do say so myself), and then i went to M's house to play a board game (some variation of victory points, building things, trading in money/wood/coal/cattle/bricks/steel/ships... they all sort of start to run together after a while) and then out to sebastopol in the pouring rain to go see scary patients with meningismus and fevers up to 103 F. and now back, having showered to get the meningitis bugaboos off of myself, and into bed. i think tonight might be a harry potter night to get myself to sleep. i hate scary hospital stuff. it makes me feel totally impotent. blech.
Monday 15 December 2008
Saturday 6 December 2008
red velvet cupcakes = bad idea disguised as good idea
ER shift last night until midnight; I am a ravenous food-hoover when I am in the ER, especially when it is late towards the end of my shift and I have been running around for twelve hours without time for a proper meal. I had two cupcakes, and oh, oh, oh I am paying the price in intestinal unhappiness now. Luckily it meant I was semi-awake anyway when the lab called with a critical bilirubin level on one of my babybabies - drawn YESTERDAY MORNING and they call me at 5 a.m. ?!? this morning - who is going to have to come in to the hospital to get light therapy. blech. i am waiting to call the mum until seven, as i decided that the scariness rating of a phone call from a doctor about your kid at 5 in the morning is a 10 out of 10, whereas a 7 a.m. call is probably only a 7 out of 10 but not significantly more likely to result in medical complications.
M. is coming over in an hour or so so that we can take the tandem for its official inaugural ride; i hope it gets warmer out this morning than yesterday morning. my nipples might actually fall off if i had to go outside in skimpy bike-riding attire now, if the temperature inside my house is anything to judge by (i am currently wearing two layers of polar fleece and a duvet). then a choir board meeting (not looking forward to that. will be first contact w/ choir since coming back from france, since we have had two cancelled rehearsals, and there will be mega-planning to do for this germany trippy deal), then another ER shift tonight, and then down to la cite to see A. in the morning - sunday breakfast at tartine... ooh la la - followed (hopefully, although i have not had confirmation) by lovely lazy hangout day wif moy li'l sistah.
all my paintings from france are now stretched and looking slightly more like proper paintings; a few of them had unpainted canvas around the edges, so i did a little touch-up job on them two evenings ago, thinking that early evening light and the lights on in the kitchen would be fine, fine, fine to see what i was doing. of course i got up the next morning and thought, oh DEAR, the colourblind painting pixies came in the night and were painting around the edges of my paintings... it's amazing how hard it is to colour match exactly if it's not northern-facing natural light at high noon (in the sahara at the summer solstice, etc.). will try again today during the day. i have yet to make a start on painting the van eyck arnolfini double portrait; that painting is definitely more of a nemesis at this point, after my abortive semi-attempt in acrylics this summer, than an eagerly anticipated sensory delight. eh bien. time to go call a patient and sit on the loo for a bit.
M. is coming over in an hour or so so that we can take the tandem for its official inaugural ride; i hope it gets warmer out this morning than yesterday morning. my nipples might actually fall off if i had to go outside in skimpy bike-riding attire now, if the temperature inside my house is anything to judge by (i am currently wearing two layers of polar fleece and a duvet). then a choir board meeting (not looking forward to that. will be first contact w/ choir since coming back from france, since we have had two cancelled rehearsals, and there will be mega-planning to do for this germany trippy deal), then another ER shift tonight, and then down to la cite to see A. in the morning - sunday breakfast at tartine... ooh la la - followed (hopefully, although i have not had confirmation) by lovely lazy hangout day wif moy li'l sistah.
all my paintings from france are now stretched and looking slightly more like proper paintings; a few of them had unpainted canvas around the edges, so i did a little touch-up job on them two evenings ago, thinking that early evening light and the lights on in the kitchen would be fine, fine, fine to see what i was doing. of course i got up the next morning and thought, oh DEAR, the colourblind painting pixies came in the night and were painting around the edges of my paintings... it's amazing how hard it is to colour match exactly if it's not northern-facing natural light at high noon (in the sahara at the summer solstice, etc.). will try again today during the day. i have yet to make a start on painting the van eyck arnolfini double portrait; that painting is definitely more of a nemesis at this point, after my abortive semi-attempt in acrylics this summer, than an eagerly anticipated sensory delight. eh bien. time to go call a patient and sit on the loo for a bit.
Wednesday 3 December 2008
only one simulated patient away...
... from completing my board recertification thingymajig for 2008. won't THAT be nice, not to have to take the boards in 2012 but to have a luxurious seven more years of ignorance, malpractice, incompetence, etc. before anyone finds out.
complaints: i am ready to howl, i am so tired of my nose being stuffed up. i am officially a mouth breather. also i fell down yesterday while running and bashed myself up - i was leaping in what was intended to be sort of an acrobatic graceful way over a low fence that turned out to be about an inch less low than i had planned on, and splat! bruises on right leg, left hand, and ego.
celebrations: proud owner of a new dining room table and chairs, which i will go and pick up today. actually, i feel a bit ambivalent about this. it is Stuff, which in general i try and avoid accumulating, except i do accumulate it, and this is probably the largest heaviest Stuff i will have accumulated possibly ever, except for my house. and school loans, which weigh nothing in the material world, but carry some psychological heft. the last time i checked my loan balance online, the website listed it in british pounds (somewhere i had evidently put "UK english" as a language preference in my settings) which initially scared the crap out of me because i assumed that the website had been smart enough to do the actual currency conversion and that somehow my loans had doubled in size thanks to the crappy economy, but then i realized that the student loan website in't that sophisticated. i only mention it because it was sort of symbolic to see my loans expressed in weight terms. 20,000 pounds of loan. hm. better than 20,000 pounds of nuclear waste, that's for sure. anyway. my new table i think is very nice - i hope it fits in my house. the temptation will be NOT to start ripping the chair upholstery apart, because i have way better things to be doing with my time, like writing a blog at 4:30 in the morning.
complaints: i am ready to howl, i am so tired of my nose being stuffed up. i am officially a mouth breather. also i fell down yesterday while running and bashed myself up - i was leaping in what was intended to be sort of an acrobatic graceful way over a low fence that turned out to be about an inch less low than i had planned on, and splat! bruises on right leg, left hand, and ego.
celebrations: proud owner of a new dining room table and chairs, which i will go and pick up today. actually, i feel a bit ambivalent about this. it is Stuff, which in general i try and avoid accumulating, except i do accumulate it, and this is probably the largest heaviest Stuff i will have accumulated possibly ever, except for my house. and school loans, which weigh nothing in the material world, but carry some psychological heft. the last time i checked my loan balance online, the website listed it in british pounds (somewhere i had evidently put "UK english" as a language preference in my settings) which initially scared the crap out of me because i assumed that the website had been smart enough to do the actual currency conversion and that somehow my loans had doubled in size thanks to the crappy economy, but then i realized that the student loan website in't that sophisticated. i only mention it because it was sort of symbolic to see my loans expressed in weight terms. 20,000 pounds of loan. hm. better than 20,000 pounds of nuclear waste, that's for sure. anyway. my new table i think is very nice - i hope it fits in my house. the temptation will be NOT to start ripping the chair upholstery apart, because i have way better things to be doing with my time, like writing a blog at 4:30 in the morning.
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