two totally unrelated things

Have you noticed that ever since M&Ms started to come in colors again (whose crazy marketing scheme was that anyway, black and white M&Ms?) the colors are much more vivid than before? Don't believe me? Buy a bag and check it out. Not only has the packaging changed (they now feature a more rounded "dynamic" font and cut-away window to simulate peeking into the bag) but the colors of the Ms are all ramped up. You'll especially notice it in the blue, I think. It's gone from navy blue to neon crazy blue. I just hope the dye in it doesn't contain arsenic or some damn thing.

They just started work on our leaky balcony Monday, which means I returned home post-call to find three workmen outside my bedroom window jackhammering up the foundation and pouring hot tar all over the floor. Lovely. No, seriously, it was really loud, and totally vibrating the entire apartment besides. I wished at that point that I didn't throw out those free neon orange earplugs they gave us when we took the Boards, although that's kind of a gross idea, keeping old nasty earplugs around for years and years. Finally I went all the way to the back of the apartment, lay down in the guestroom, and put little bits of kneadable eraser in my ears to block out the noise. And you know what, it worked pretty well, and I was able to sleep for a couple of hours. I always knew that old kneadable eraser would serve some kind of a purpose. Good thing, too, because it sure doesn't erase very well.

services

Dr. Garvey's funeral services were quite nice. Is it OK to say that about a funeral? But it was. The church was beautiful, and I loved seeing her family and hearing them tell stories about her. I don't know why, but I just got such a kick out of thinking about her as a kid in New York circa the 1940s, or as a young college student at Wellesley in the white-glove days.

The service was packed, and scanning the faces was like a Who's Who of important players at [University Hospital] and the med school. I kept craning my head back to see who was sitting behind me and who was walking in, and every few seconds, I was like, "Wow, that's Dr. _____!" or "Look, it's Dr. _____!" It was like the All-Stars. She was important to a lot of people, that much was obvious.

The mass was held at a Catholic church, and, despite the solemnity of the affair, I could not help but have my standard Church Anxiety throughout the service. I never know what I'm supposed to do at these things. I maintained a good front, I think, but my internal monologue was going haywire. Clearly there is something very wrong with me.

Wait, what page did that robe-lady say to flip to? Man, the acoustics in this place suck. Oh now everyone's singing. What page? Where's the damn bible or hymn book or whatever? Oh wait, it's "Amazing Grace." I know that one. Was bliiiind, but noooow I seee. Wait, there are more verses? Shoot. What page? Oh, sit down now? Good. Wait, people are talking back to the preacher guy. First he says something, then we're supposed to say something back. How are we supposed to know what to say? And when? Oh, stand up again? Another song. Uh-oh, I don't know this one. Maybe I'll just hum along. Hmmmm. Hmmmm. Oh, sit down again. Wait, kneel? On those little cushion things? Maybe I'll just not do that. Is it rude not to pray when they say, "let us pray"? But wouldn't it be rude to just pretend to pray when you're not really religious? Oh wait, stand up. Now everyone's shaking hands and hugging and kissing each other. Is it over? Oh, we're just supposed to be loving our neighbors or whatever the guy said. Now everyone's lining up to eat the bread and drink the wine. Body of Christ, Body of Christ. Should I line up too? No, I probably shouldn't. But I wonder what it tastes like? I wonder what kind of wine they have? Box wine? Is box wine sacrelidge?

After the service, I rushed back across town and went to clinic. Not too bad today, maybe because the weather's starting to turn warm again. Maybe it's really Spring this time, not fake Spring like a couple of weeks ago, right before it started snowing for five days straight.

new scutmonkey

Hey all, the newest strip is up at the "Scutmonkey" archives. It's about my Ob-Gyn rotation as a third-year med student.

Don't get mad if you're an Ob-Gyn or Ob-Gyn enthusiast. Though all things depicted are 100% true (even the chair-washing thing), they are obviously milked for comic effect. But I'm sure you're all very nice.

dr. garvey

Dr. Garvey passed away yesterday morning. It was news that we'd all unfortunately been expecting, but that fact didn't mitigate the fact that it was a sad loss that came too soon. The Au-Walrath household loved Dr. Garvey, and we will miss her.

At graduation this past May, she looked incredible. A tad thinner, maybe, and a little pale, but still such a force of Garvey-ness. Her hair was perfect, and her suit so chic. She looked strong, and her voice was firm. As we filed in to take our seats, I gave her a little wave and a grin from the first row. From the stage, she nodded and smiled back.

The preceding Spring, I had run frantically into her office, in the middle of a career crisis, desperately needing guidance. Residency applications were looming, and I still couldn't figure out what field I wanted to go into. Pediatrics? Or Medicine? Or Pediatrics? Or Medicine? I was running circles inside my own head and giving myself vertigo. This was clearly no good. So one afternoon I e-mailed Dr. Garvey and asked if I could come to her office for advice. Well, what I asked for was advice. But what I really wanted for her to do was sit me down and, in that no-nonsense way of hers, just tell me what to do. At that point, I felt like whatever she told me to do, I would do it, because Christ, she was Dr. Garvey, she knew everything, didn't she?

But she didn't tell me what to do. She just listened. And asked me questions. And then she listened some more. Then, finally, she did give me some advice, and this advice was so good that ever since then, I've been giving it out myself to every third and fourth year medical student with similar indecision trauma. Except before I give the advice, I always say, "Well, Dr. Garvey once told me..." You know. Just so you don't think I'm not citing my sources.

The advice, to paraphrase, was this: "In the end, you're going to decide what field of medicine to go into based on the types of patients you want to treat. Do you like treating children? Or do you like treating adults? It's about the patients you most enjoy. So try a little bit of both. Do a Medicine elective, and do a Pediatrics elective. And, if while working in one dicipline, you find that you keep thinking about the other dicipline, How would we approach this problem differently in Pediatrics? How would the differential be different in Pediatrics? then you know that's where your true interest lies, and you know that's what you should do.

Just when I was about to have another mini breakdown, like, what the HELL kind of cryptic answer is THAT, just TELL me what what I should DO so I can just go and DO it, she looked at me and, with a small smile, added, "I would be be thrilled for you to do Medicine, but I have a feeling you're going to end up choosing Pediatrics." (Which, when I thought about it too much, made me paranoid that maybe she thought I wasn't smart enough to be doing Medicine, because otherwise, why wouldn't she be putting the heat on for me to boogie with adults like her? But I think that just speaks more to what a weirdly psychotic head state I was in at the time.)

Anyway, what she told me would happen was exactly right. I did a Pediatrics Sub-Internship. Then I did an Adult Infectious Disease elective. Or at least I started out doing an Adult ID elective. Halfway through the month, I realized I was doing exactly what Dr. Garvey said I might do. I started missing the Pediatric patients. I wondered how things would be different on the other side. I wanted to go back. So after two weeks, I switched. I may be the only person my year to have done a half-and-half Adult and Peds Infectious Disease month.

Dr. Garvey happened to be the course director for the Adult ID elective, and she, of course, approved my drop.

She cared for her patients and she cared for her students. She was brilliant and curious and dynamic and funny. She was amazing to talk to, and even more amazing to listen to. She was, and is, one of my all-time role models. And she will be missed.

back from kinderhaus

We had a fun time. I slept most of the time on the way there, so it seemed like the total drive time was only half an hour, but having stayed awake on the return trip, I know it was closer to four. We saw family, horsed around with kids, went to the circus, and then drove back home, all in one day. Talk about power weekends. Now I'm all tired, and we have to go back to work tomorrow. I wonder if I can get some gig where I can work from home. You know, examine babies with a remote-controlled robotic arm while watching from video camera relay. What, not a good idea?

I realized it's been years since I've been to the circus--maybe something like 9 or 10 years, now that I think of it. I stopped going to them because I realized the circuses I preferred were the smaller one-ring affairs like The Big Apple Circus, but I'm allergic to horses, and being that close to the ring with the horses kicking up dirt and shedding their horsey dander all up in my craw sent me into bronchospasm, so I started avoiding the ringside. I know, I know, next time, Cirque du Soleil, right?

Anyway, the circus we went to yesterday was Ringling Brothers, which I really haven't been to for a long time, probably on the order of 16 or 18 years. Wow, I'm old. I think the last one I saw may have been that one that featured the "Unicorn." I remember being really disturbed when I read later on that it was just a goat with a transplanted horn bud (Warning: link page plays annoying music). And even at the time, watching the show, I was like, "what? He's just going to ride around the ring on a float? The fuck? I thought the unicorn was going to run around and do tricks and shit. Gyp!"

Anyway, the circus yesterday was unicorn-free. It was fun and all, but the action was really far away, and it was a little scary-Vegas style with all the lights and pyrotechnics. Also, I feel bad for the animals at these big circuses. Ringling Brothers have all these flyers out saying how good they are to their elephants and tigers and whatnot, like, "oh, we have this full-time vet that travels with us, we give them massages and aromatherapy every day, blah blah blah," but whatever, you know they're poking them with some cattle prod in the back every time they don't grab the tail of the elephant in front of them like they're supposed to.

Also, the merchandising at these things is totally out of control. We were placing bets to see who could most closely estimate the cost of one bag of cotton candy. Jen (Joe's sister) won with her guess of $7. It was actually $6 for a small bag (and trust me, we mean small) and $10 for a "large" bag with "souvenier hat" in the shape of a tiger head. And then of course there's the Sno Kones and popcorn and magic wands and swords and glow-in-the-dark-light-up-flashing things, all of which we bought (for the kids) and secretly cringed over. A $9 Sno Kone? Christ.

Well, they had a good time, and so did we. We left early because the natives were getting restless and it was approaching the bedtime hour, but I could have easily stayed for the whole thing. It was all very flashy and attention-grabbing, so I was entertained enough. My favorite act were the Chinese acrobats. I feel a kindship with my people. I just hope they weren't getting poked with the cattle prods in the back too. Hey chinky, this one's for dropping the ball on that last act! ZAP!

off to kinderhaus

I was just on call last night, and now we're driving to Baltimore to visit Joe's sister and los dos ninos. (Oh yeah, and her husband too.) It's the younger kid's birthday. We're going to the circus tonight. Hey man, I get paid to hang out with kids all week. Now I have to do it for free? Gyp!

Just kidding. I like los dos ninos. And I'll like them even more once I get a chance to sleep for a few hours in the car.

Hmm, maybe we can stop at Cinnabon on the way...

the debut of "scutmonkey"

In lieu of an entry today, I give you this: the first strip in my new comic series, "Scutmonkey". Yeah, I know I had mentioned last Spring that I had done this comic about my Psych rotation in medical school, but now you can finally see it. Though I finished the strip about a year ago, it took a long time get my shit together, both because I'm out of practice and I don't have a lot of free time to do all this crazy flim-flam. (The children, you know. Think of the children.) But the good news is that the comic is finally up, and I have another one in the works. It's about my third year Ob/Gyn rotation, which, Andy pointed out about two years ago, he still can't believe I haven't written about yet. The Ob/Gyn strip is finished, theoretically, but I still have to ink it and scan it and crop it and the thought of all that work is so demoralizing it may be a long time before it sees the light of day.

It's no Jimmy Corrigan or anything, but hey, at least it's fun to be cartooning again.

match day

So tomorrow is the Match. In brief, it's the day that fourth year med students around the country find out which residency program they "matched" into. It's kind of a big deal. I can't believe it was only a year ago. A really long year ago.

Match Day is this very exciting day where, at least at my school, a million envelopes are piled neatly on a table in the faculty club in this special room off the main dining hall. There is someone whose job it is to lay out all these envelopes very precisely in alphabetical order by name. You can't go into the room until a certain time, preordained by, I don't know, God or someone. And when the gun is fired, everyone rushes into the room trampling everyone and everything in sight to get the envelope with their match results. Outta my way, grandma, I gotta see where I'll be working ridiculously long hours for slave wages! And I must know NOW! Or, if you're too cool for school, you saunter in in a very blase way after the crowd clears. (I was only moderately cool for school, moving in with the tail end of the hoard. And I strove for blase, though really, I probably just looked hung over.)

There are two schools of thought for finding out your match results. Most people open their envelopes right there, so they can start celebrating, hugging their friends, getting drunk on the free booze provided at the event. And others take the envelope and abscond, revealing their match results in a secret little hidey-hole because the pressure is too much and if they're disappointed with their match, they don't have to put on some big brave face in front of the entire class. I say whatever for the stress (though I acknowledge that most matches are more suspenseful than that for Peds), but I think this mass envelope run is vastly better than the Match Day tradition in the days of yore, where they would call people up to a podium, one by one, where they would open their envelopes and read it out the the assembled auditorium of their classmates. Or, they could chose not to read it out, but then you would be conspicuous. Or, if they didn't call your name at all, people would know that you didn't match at all. Ooh, burn! And another reason that the faculty club way is bettter because they provide food for the event. It's a buffet, but they cost-control by only putting out really tiny plates. Saucers, really.

You can see how this would be a big deal for fourth year med students. But apparently, it's a big deal for the programs too. Most days of the week, we have a didactic "noon conference," but on the schedule for tomorrow's noon conference is "Match Day." I don't know what exactly we'll be doing at this conference other than going over the list of who matched at our program--largely meaningless, since I don't know who the hell those people are (yet)--but maybe there will be cake. Maybe it's kind of a celebration. The year is almost over! The new interns are coming! Your relief crew is here!

I was really excited on Match Day last year. I was totally psyched to have matched to such a great program, and thrilled at the idea of being a doctor, working at the hospital, doing all the things that (I thought) I had gone to med school to do. Now I have something of a different attitude. Not cynical, so much, just less fuzzy-pink-cloud. I look at the fourth year med students, all nervous an excited for Match Day tomorrow, probably well on their way to getting totally obliterated with cheap booze tonight at the Supernight celebration, and think, just wait until you see what you're really getting into.

call girl

I'm on call for cardiology tonight. I'm actually writing this while sitting in the Team Room on the 6th floor of the hospital. Things are quiet right now. Stay well, little heart transplant children! Also, can I tell you how much I love the fact that the one EKG machine on the floor is broken? The EKG machine on the cardiology ward? Ha! Oh, this life. How jolly and yet how terrifying.

So Friday night was fun. I'm always surprised by how close Williamsburg is to our house--who would have thought we lived a 2 stop train ride from Brooklyn? Every time I go to Williamsburg, I think how cool and edgy it is, and how cool and edgy I would be if I lived there. You can just see it, everyone getting on or off the train at Bedford Street is all, "We're not gonna paaaaa-ay, LAST YEAR'S REEEEENT!" And they have all those cute restaurants and shops and Ye Olde Brooklyn Pharmacy storefront that now sells used books or Tibetian artifacts or something equally bohemian. Also, there are internet cafes, like, every block. I passed by a big laundromat that actually had two pool tables, a cafe, a bank of old-school 80's videogames with two internet kiosks and thought, wow, that's a really awesome money-making scheme. Plus, trendy. But then you walk, like, 2 blocks over and it's like this totally cased out warehouse zone with trash billowing like tumbleweeks and scary bodegas selling crack pipes and then suddenly it doesn't seem like it would be so much fun to live there anymore.

Anyway, we had a fun night. I think the restaurant was overrated (clearly a Zagat's 27 rating in Williamsburg is not the same as a Zagat's 27 in Manhattan) but it was fun, and we got drunky but funky on some overpriced sangria. It was a tapas place, and I ordered a really good appetizer and a really bad entree. (Does it count as an entree if everything on the menu is tapas? It was expensive like an entree, but it came in a really tiny dish.) As promised, Brendan and Narges were there, as were Guillem and Jenny. We talked and laughed and ate and laughed and drank and laughed and when we looked at the clock, it was suddenly quarter to one. Props to the restaurant for not pointedly bringing our check as we were lingering over desert or having them bring us basket after basket of bread to soak up every last drop of sauce from our various dishes. And props to Williamsburg for having restaurants that stay open that late.

I'm sad that Brendan and Narges are moving away. I want them to stay. Who lives in Phoenix anyway? Old people. And cactuses. But mainly old people. Maybe you have to get those special wraparound glaucoma sunglasses when you move there.

eyestrain

My eyes have been so tired lately. Maybe I should get them checked. Or maybe I need to stop looking at stuff.

We're heading out in a few minutes to Williamsburg to have dinner with lovely newlyweds Brendan and Narges, as well as with Guillem and Guillem's Famous Girlfriend. It only takes up probably 10 minutes to get to Williamsburg once we hop on the L train, but we still have to walk to the L train, which will take probably another 20 minutes. I don't really know where we're going. I hope Joe does.

the e stands for "electronic"

My mom is a little behind the times, and she just recently started using e-mail. Only when she says "e-mail," she places a peculiar, slow emphasis on the word, like it's this new technology that not many people know about. I'm glad she's entered the 90's, but man, could she stop forwarding me all this junk? It's all like "Fw: FW: fw: Useful info!" and the text of the message will be some inscrutable "advice" or inspirational whatnot that I would delete immediately, except I feel bad, because it's from my mom. I don't know who's e-mailing the crap to her in the first place, but I would like to meet this person. And then I would like to kill them.

My favorite subject line from one of my mom's e-mails? "Subject: I just called to say I love you, in the words of Billy Joe." OK, so many things wrong with that right there. First of all, it's Billy JOEL, not Billy Joe. Secondly, it was Stevie Wonder who sang "I Just Called To Say I Love You." Third, she's not calling me, she's e-mailing me. Remember? E-mail? The bold new face of computer technology?

Now her new thing is that she's discovered how to change the font and color on AOL e-mail. Suddenly I'm getting e-mails in 14 point neon blue Comic Sans. Oh, the humanity.

the babies, they are well

Another 4 weeks, another new block. I'm working in the Well-Baby Nursery now, which means that for the next month, what I do all day is examine newborns who just popped out from the womb (Day of Life #1) or are ready to go home (usually Day of Life #2 barring C-section or some other complication). Nobody's sick, or they wouldn't be in the Well Baby Nursery. All the babies are kind of alike. Sleeping, crying, peeing, pooping. Things I've gotten quite good at in my two days on the job so far:

* Changing diapers. Every diaper I open when I do my exam is another little present. When I got to my tenth dirty diaper I considered just quietly and sneakily closing it back up again and walking away whistling, hands in pockets (picture of pure innocence I would be!) but then I felt guilty. The worst is those meconium diapers. (Meconium is the first stool that the babies pass, hopefully after they're born, as opposed to taking a dump in the amniotic fluids, which can cause some problems.) That shit is like tar.

* Swaddling the babies. Or, as I call it, making a baby burrito. Wrapping them up in the blankets all crunched up and tight-tight-tight with only their little fat heads poking out to replicate that calming "I'm back in the womb" feeling. The first day I was a swaddling dunce. Every baby I would swaddle would end up busting out of his bundle and crying his damn little head off, limbs flailing and clawing at the air. But I think I found a good technique now:

HOW TO MAKE A BABY BURRITO by Michelle Au

1.) Lay the baby blanket diagonal, so it looks like a diamond
2.) Fold down the top corner about 8 inches. That's where the head goes.
3.) Put down baby into the blanket, feet pointing down towards the bottom corner
4.) Left corner (your left) up and over the baby's left shoulder. Be sure you pin those little arms down by the chest or it will be all for naught.
5.) Bottom corner up and also behind the baby's left shoulder. Pull up all the slack. If the baby's legs get all crunched up, that's good. They like it like that.
6.) Right corner (your right) up and around the baby's back, approaching from the baby's right shoulder and side.
7.) Garnish with some salsa and sour cream. Serve immediately.

* Getting peed on. I'm excellent at getting peed on. Some might say I'm gifted.

Honestly, the babies are cute and all, but I wouldn't want to work in the Well-Baby Nursery for too long. Even one month is pushing it. It's kind of boring in there. I considered bringing a Walkman, so I could listen to an Audiobook or something similar, but I realized that might not be quite professional.

In other news, Joe and I had quite a nice weekend. We both had the weekend free, so we took off Friday night and headed up to this B&B up in New Jersey called The Woolverton Inn. It was one of the nicest B&Bs I've ever stayed it (well, it's only the third one I've ever tried, I guess) and our room was amazing. Very rrrrrrrrrrrromantic. (Imagine me saying that like Ricardo Montalban. "Drebin!")

Funny how getting out of the city for even a day and a half can make such a huge difference. We stayed for two nights and one full day and it felt completely refreshing and restorative. Also, I think that a day an a half is more than enough for Quaintsville, New Jersey. After your obligatory visit to an outlet mall and tooling around the cute little antique-y knick-knack shops around town (there was actually a store in nearby Peddler's Village called "Knobs and Knockers" that sold...knobs and knockers. Some discussion ensued if the shopkeeps knew how funny they name of their store was or if they were oblivious to the double meaning. I tended towards oblivious. You should have seen this town, it was all like, "Ye Olde Cheese Cuttery" and "The Enchanted Footstool") there wasn't really that much to do. We ate out Friday and Saturday nights and I had steak both times. So now I feel restored and I'm guiac positive. Good weekend. We just may go back one of these days.

Joe's in the kitchen now making dinner. Either that, or he's just moving pots and pans around for no reason at all. I don't have to be at work until 8am tomorrow. I'm post-call today, and not on call again until Sunday. I just started a new book, The Fasting Girl. We're going out with Brendan to celebrate his birthday on Friday. I just got paid. Sometimes, life is just good.

waiter = intern

I have this theory that I've been cultivating, and the theory is this. Being an intern on the wards is a lot like being a waiter. Consider:

* Many different customers/patients, all of whom think that they are your one and only duty in life. They want what they want and they want it now. Other tables to wait on/patients to take care of? Who? Wha? (Actually, from the medical standpoint, this probably holds more for the attendings and fellows that need to enlist your scut more than the patients themselves.)

* A thousand different things to keep track of at once. You definitely need a pad. And a system. You're on your way to do one thing for one table/patient, and you get summoned to do something else. "Could you bring us some more bread?"/"I think little Jimmy is bleeding from his ostomy site, could you come take a look?" Yeah, I'll be right with you. Wait, what was it that I was on my way to do again? Shit. Should have written it down.

* Pressure from above to clear tables/discharge patients. The intern version of bringing the check to the table before the customer asks for it is getting all the discharge papers ready the night before the patient is actually ready to go. We gotta move them out or the boss/chief will strangle me. The maitre d's list of parties waiting for a table is equivalent to the list in the ER of patients waiting for beds.

* Patients who are frequent fliers are the medical version of regular restauraunt customer who comes in and says, "I'll have the usual." Line infection again? I'll get the vanc for you, sir.

* Occasional free food.

Ways in which being a waiter is not like being an intern:

* Tips.

* Probably don't hear this too often: "Yeah, I'm working as an intern now, but what I really am is an actor."

* I doubt very many waiters go home and stay up all night worrying that they brought the customer the wrong kind of salad dressing, thereby killing the customer. (Or do they?)

finished!

I finished my sweater! It is the most normal sweater I ever knitted, meaning that it looks like something I might actually wear someday. But look! Look at the pictures! I am feeling more than a little bit awesome for knitting up this mighty pile of yarn into something useful. This must be why people go into carpentry and things of that nature. At the end of the day you have something to show for your work, other than a pile of charts and some vague notion that you "helped people," whatever that means. Honestly, so much of outpatient pediatrics is telling parents that, in fact, they don't need us at all. Go home. Hydrate. Tylenol. Your kid's going to live. You want a prescription? Refuse to leave the office without a prescription for something? OK, nasal saline drops it is.

Anyway, tomorrow's the last day of my outpatient month. It was a good few weeks while it lasted. What a difference it makes to work a regular nine to five day. I actually feel somewhat well-adjusted and sane on this schedule. People who have real jobs don't know how good they have it.

shaken parent syndrome

You would be shocked (SHOCKED) to find out how often I have this exact conversation:


PARENT OF PATIENT
Yeah, he be taking some medicine at home.

MICHELLE
What medicine, exactly?

PARENT OF PATIENT
I don't know.

MICHELLE
OK. What is the medicine for?

PARENT OF PATIENT
I don't know. They just give it to me.

MICHELLE
Who's "they?"

PARENT OF PATIENT
(Vaguely)
The people at the place.

MICHELLE
Ah. Them. How many times a day are you giving it?

PARENT OF PATIENT
I don't know. It says on the bottle.

MICHELLE
Do you have the bottle with you?

PARENT OF PATIENT
No.

MICHELLE
And you don't remember, even though you've been giving him the medication yourself.

PARENT OF PATIENT
(A little annoyed)
No.

MICHELLE
What does the medicine look like? Is it a pink liquid? Clear? What color is the bottle? The cap?

PARENT OF PATIENT
I don't know. I don't look at it..

MICHELLE
OK. Let me just sum this up. You're at home, giving a medication to your child that you don't know the name of, don't know what symptoms its treating, how often you're giving it, don't know who gave it to you or what the actual medication looks like.

PARENT OF PATIENT
Yeah.

(Silence.)

I ran out of the medicine, though, could you write me for a refill?

hobbit love

So even though it took me an hour and a half to get there, I was pleasantly surprised to see Riverdale, which is this surprisingly upscale suburban neighborhood tucked up all the way in the Bronx. It was all cobblestones and houses up on high with slate shingles and ivy crawling all over the place. Funny thing is, isn't Riverdale where Archie and Jughead lived?

So Joe and I were talking over dinner (Tibetian food) and we have decided that Sam and Frodo are gay.


MICHELLE
I think they were in love. Why are they always together?

JOE
(Frodo voice)
"We will see the Shire again!"

MICHELLE
And what about those other two hobbits? Maybe they were gay too. What were their names? Winky and Blinky?

JOE
(Continuing Frodo voice)
"Do it Sam! Do it!"

MICHELLE
Seriously, I bet if you did a Google search on "Frodo Sam gay love" you'd have, like a hundred sites pop up with all this fan fiction about Frodo and Sam rolling in the hay.

JOE
(Sam voice)
"Mister Frodo, did you bring your Bilbo?"

MICHELLE
Heh. "Put your Bilbo in my Baggins."

JOE
(Frodo voice, cracking with emotion)
"Saaaaaam!"

MICHELLE
I would totally test this fanfic theory, only I don't want all those popup ads on my computer.

JOE
(Sam voice)
"Mister Frodo, let me hold the ring...with my cock."

MICHELLE
OK, stop doing the hobbit voices now, it's getting scary.

JOE
"Saaaam!"


In other news, I finished the pieces of my grey split-neck sweater! I almost wish I had picked a different color, because it may end up looking exactly like a sweatshirt from afar, but what are you going to do? I'll sew the pieces together tomorrow, and show the finished product here.

lactation

As part of my outpatient rotation this month, this morning I'm scheduled to go to the Riverdale Lactation Center in the Bronx. I've never even taken the subway up that far--the instructions tell me to get on the 1/9 train and take it aaaaaaaallllll (...) the way down to the end of the line, Van Cortland Parkway. And there's a good deal of walking after that. This had better be the most lactiferous center ever, or I want my money back. Or at least my morning.

burn, baby, burn, knitting inferno!

Worked another 12 hour ER shift Sunday, getting home in time to catch the tail end of the Oscars. Yes, I watched the Oscars. What? WHAT? That's why they're on TV. Because people want to watch! Dammit, but I guess it means that I'll have to watch "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" after all. Just to know what the hell people are talking about. Frodo who in the what now? And does he die in the end or what? Well, maybe I can avoid seeing it, actually. They showed enough clips before each award segment that I think I could pretty much piece together the whole movie.

So not to change the subject from the all enthralling subject of Elijah Wood, the human leprachaun, but I want everyone to know that I am an awesome knitter now. OK, maybe not awesome. But decent. I have progressed beyond scarves and other square, flat things. I made a hat! And sweaters! Yes, sweaterS, plural. I even wore one of my sweaters to work once, so you know it can't be too busted-looking.

OK, the first sweater I made was a little funky. And by funky I mean "crappy". I guess in making sweaters, like pancakes, you just have to resign yourself to ruining the first one. I used a really thick yarn to save time, so it was really quite bulky, and I didn't knit the body long enough. So think of a really boxy belly-tee, except in turtleneck sweater form. Yeah. So that'll be staying in the closet.

The second sweater I made was actually the one I wore to work. It's a V-neck sweater with ribbed bottom and cuffs, and it looks pretty normal, shape-wise. The only thing is that the yarn I picked for it was this self-striping yarn, all rainbow and gorgeous, but it doesn't really match the rest of my wardrobe. I may have to get a pet ferret and a bong to wear that sweater. Either that, or I could pass it off as a gay pride thing. It's very over the rainbow. But it looks good.

The third sweater is a blue and white slubby cardigan which looks pretty decent from afar (if somewhat like Cookie Monster), but whose fatal flaw will reveal itself the second you don it. I knitted the armholes too small. I mean, I can get my arms into it, but it's a little tight under the arms, is all, and one side is tighter than the other. And my arms aren't even that big (I know, you're shocked) so you can imagine, the armholes must be, like, the diameter of a baseball. The worst is that as I was stitching together the sleeves to the shoulder, I knew I was committing a fatal error, because I had overlapped a piece of the armhole thus making it too small, but I so desperately wanted to finish this sweater (which I started on a Saturday and finished that Sunday) that I just went ahead and did it anyway.

The fourth sweater, which I'm still working on but almost finised with, is a grey split-neck sweater. Only I kind of improvised the design instead of following a pattern exactly, so we'll have to see how it all looks when I stitch it together and put it on. Stay tuned here for the latest in my knitting escapades!

And before you start thinking, "Christ, she's an old woman," don't knock it until you've tried it. Then, please, knock away. I may be old, but I'm warm, dammit!