the underwear drawer

cancun

I'm on vacation.

(To be said with all the intensity of mid-life crisis Billy Crystal in "City Slickers" during his showdown with Curly, pre-calf birthing.)

Well, technically, I'm not on vacation until Monday, even though my adolescent Medicine block ended yesterday. Technically, I'm still on sick call up through Monday, so I can't be more than two hours from the hospital until then. So I'm just going to hope that the other interns stay as healthy as they have been so far this month at least up through this weekend.

The thing that's hard about vacation as an intern is that there's no one to hang out with. It's all well and good if your husband (significant other, life partner, what have you) has a normal job and can take off from work to coordinate with your break. But when your husband is also an intern, you're shit out of luck. I've been trying to convince all manner of other people (family, friends, random people I see on the street) to take a trip with me, any one of myriad last minute trips to Mexico or the Carribean advertised on Orbitz, Travelocity et al., but for one reason or another, no one can come with me.

So I'm going to do something I've never done before. I'm going to go on vacation by myself.

Would I rather go with someone else? Hells yeah! But would I rather go to Cancun by myself for four days or stick around the city my entire break, only to start a miserable strech of night shifts in the ER, Oncology over christmas, followed by a month on the wards in January? Seems like this could be my last chance to see sunlight in any form (temperate zone or equatorial) for months. And if you think I'm kidding, you've clearly never had a job where you had to arrive at work before sunrise and leave well after sundown. If I don't take a vacation, and I mean a real vacation, involving climate and scenery change, I might flip out.

Four days, three nights. A five-star resort and spa on the beach in Cancun. Stack of good books, frosty drinks, some postcards to write to the folks at home. Mayan ruins and massages by day, some Pay-per-View movies and non-take-out dinners by night. And home in time for Thanksgiving! Sounds good to me.

I wish Joe and Coop could come of course (well, maybe not Coop), but still, I'm pretty excited.