the underwear drawer

"sick" call

I got paged at 11:30pm Thursday night by one of the Chiefs, which is never, ever a good thing. In fact, pages from the Chief are almost always bad news. They never call just to say hi, or tell you that you won an award, or that somehow, they scraped together some extra money to put towards your next paycheck. It's always "Listen, would you mind working an extra ER shift? Or two? Or ten? On Christmas and New Year's? Thanks." Sure enough, I was being called in to work in the PICU the following morning. The ignominy of it all was that I wasn't even getting called to cover another resident (which is sort of the point of the resident sick call pool)--I was getting called to cover an NP who had called out "sick" at the last second. (And not to be bitchy about it, but I have plenty of sources that lead me to put "sick" in quotes--and yes, three day weekends are quite nice I hear, I would love to enjoy one myself sometime in the next five years.) Since when is it my job to cover random staff throughout the hospital? What's next, them calling me to cover the respiratory therapists? The guy who restocks the supply closet whilst mumbling to himself? Lunch Lady Doris in the cafeteria?


* * *


The reason that I was still awake when my Chief called me at 11:30pm, though, was because I was working on this. You know it was only a matter of time before Cal got his own website. We mainly set this up for family and friends; we're also sending out official "we're expecting" announcements this I've posted on this page already in one form or another, but there is a very cute picture of a baby chick up on the page, so there you go.

People have been asking me lately if I'm planning to have a baby shower. Is it bad to admit that I don't really want to? I didn't have a bridal shower either. Just something about the girliness of the tradition turns me off. Also, I don't like having that much attention focused on just me for that period of time. I barely survived my wedding as it was. I know a lot of people have co-ed baby showers nowadays, and make it into more of a normal get-together, but still, I don't want to be remotely associated with a function where people are expected to play games like these.

Currently reading: "The Nursing Mother's Companion." It seems like breastfeeding should be this totally easy thing, because it's natural and all that, but the more I read about it, the more I realize that it's totally complicated and hard.