the underwear drawer

in abstentia

Yesterday, in the Anesthesia Lounge, where a group of residents were sitting eating lunch:


RESIDENT 1
Well, she wanted to wait a year before getting married, that's what I heard.

RESIDENT 2
A year since what?

RESIDENT 1
A year since his separating from Jen. And now it's been a year. So she wants to get married soon, that's what I hear, anyway.

RESIDENT 3
From expert sources.

RESIDENT 1
I know everything. I read all the magazines.

RESIDENT 3
OK, where did she adopt her first kid from?

RESIDENT 1
Cambodia! Easy.

RESIDENT 3
What's the kid's name?

RESIDENT 4
Mad Max?

RESIDENT 1
Maddox!


(If you have no idea what or who this conversation was about, congratulations, you live in a pop culture vacuum. Now shove aside that boulder and leave your cave so that your pasty skin may see the light of day.)


* * *


I had a Good Call last night, the kind where it's pretty busy into the late evening (makes the time pass faster) and then, suddenly, not busy any more (allowing for sleepytime). The best thing about being on call, of course, is being post-call, which means I get to go home and play with Cal in the light of day. With sunshine and everything. Just like a real person.

Unfortunately, from the tersely typed missives e-mailed to me from Joe as late as 10:30pm, Cal did not seem to have a very good call night. The past two times that I've had to work in the hospital overnight, in fact, Cal has had a hard time. I think the problem is that he has really gotten into his bedtime routine, which consists of bathtime, a little bit of playing, nursing, and then sleep. He knows and is firmly entrenched in this routine. WOE BE IT to he who takes Cal out of his routine. And since I figure largely in this nightly ritual (especially in the role of "best supporting boob"), it makes it difficult for Joe to replicate when I actually can't be home for bedtime, which unfortunately happens with some degree of frequency. It's not that he doesn't take the bottle (because he does all though the day) or that he doesn't love his daddy (because they are BFF), it's just that...the boobs. He likes his nocturnal boobs.

What am I supposed to do about it, though? I'm not going to start bottle-feeding him at night just so he gets used to the concept of Boobs in Abstentia while I'm on call--I mean, I have overnight call maybe once a week (interspersed with short call, where I can usually, though not always, get home for his bedtime), and it's just so much more work to heat up the bottles and clean them and all that, not to mention all the time-sucking (heh) extra pumping that I would have to do every night to keep up the Strategic Milk Stores. He'll just have to get used to some irregularities in his routine, I guess. Either that, or we should get Joe that man-boob prop from "Meet the Fockers."

Currently reading: "The Year of Magical Thinking." Almost finished with it, actually--I started it during Cal's nap on Sunday and made my way halfway through before he woke up. An excellent read, made all the more enjoyable (for me) in that there's a fair amount of medicine in it. [University Hospital] even makes it into the story, which I guess makes sense, given that Joan Didion lives in New York. I had only read one other piece by Didion (an essay for my AP Logic and Comp class in high school, the title and topic of which escapes me now) but maybe I should check out some of her other stuff.

Next on deck, "Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea."