in my fortune cookie

trying to make up for the fact that i've been working way too much this summer

Some more photos of fun in the (urban) park with Cal:






Ah kids. They are fun and cute. Except when they are not.

Now I'm just including this next part to show you that I was not exaggerating when I told you before why almost all of our pictures are of either just Cal, or of Cal and Joe. Joe manned the camera for a few minutes today to try and get some shots of me and Cal together, and here's what we have:




MICHELLE
Hello world! I am having a petit mal seizure!

CAL
And I am picking your nose while you are doing it!



MICHELLE
Cal, now that you have finished excavating my sinuses, look again up my nostrils.
Do I have anything of note left in there? Do I? LOOK!

CAL
Do not call me Cal. My name is no longer Cal. Instead, you must call me Sippy Cup Face.

MICHELLE
Why should I call you...oh.



Luckily he managed to get off one OK one before I wrested control of the camera back. One could, I suppose, also blame the fact that I just may not be a photogenic person, but I prefer to continue living in denial and blame the photographer.

yesterday vs. today

Yesterday:



Today:



I dunno, maybe its all the bus exhaust that I've been huffing, but I think they're both pretty.


* * *


I just finished my cadiac rotation having met all the goals that I had set for myself at the start of the month. One, I made my numbers, which is to say that I fulfilled the number of open chest cases needed for graduation. Two, I finally did anesthesia for a lung transplant on the last day of the rotation, which I hadn't gotten a chance to do before. That was fun. And three, I got to meet one of the original flavor engineers of Kool Aid. True, I didn't know that third one was a goal until it actually happened, but afterward, I knew that I could die in peace. Possibly by running headlong through a fence and proclaiming, "Oh YEAH."

Public service announcement: I know you guys like these shirts too, so I just wanted to pass along the info that Threadless is having its $10 Back To School Sale through September 3rd. Their full-price t-shirts run $17, which is a little steep, so I usually lay in wait until they have their big sales, at which point I pounce. If you've been waiting too, now's the time. (I think they usually have another sale closer to Christmas too, if you're one of those delayed gratification types.)

pretending to be comfortable with nature

Add this to the list of things that are fun to do so long as you don't have to actually do them for a living: today, Joe and I took Cal to Alstede Farm to go peach picking. We almost didn't go, since it's an hour drive into New Jersey and the weather forecast called for rain, but in the end, we decided to just take the risk. It turned out to be a good choice, since it hardly rained at all, and we were practically the only people there. Which meant more peaches for us.





If you live in the tri-state area, I highly recommend this place. Basically, it's this giant farm with fruit orchards and vegetable patches that you can visit year-round and plunder. It's free to go visit the farm and pet the animals, and you just pay for whatever fruit and vegetables you pick. They have a farmer's market on site too, in case you don't want to actually do the work.



Here's me consulting the map, trying to figure out our plan of attack. Certain fruits and vegetables are in season different months of the year, so I was trying to plot which rows of the orchard we were going to hit.


Ah yes, also I should mention that there was a giant pyramid of hay for the kids to play on. Why a pyramid of hay? Much like the Sphinx, it is a mystery.



The above picture is just to show that we were wallowing in NATURE. See, natural. Being close to so much biology made me a little nervous (so much mud and animal poop and bugs, dear lord, the bugs), but I figured it was somehow enriching for The Boy, who is normally so City Mouse that he gets confused when placed on grassy surfaces or other things non-concrete.



They provided these little red wagons for our convenience, but this one was practically our undoing. Cal insisted on pulling it by himself all the way to the peach trees, which was probably half a mile from the entrance and partly uphill. And he spurned all offers of help from the stronger members of the party, which means that we were moving through the orchard at a speed approximately that between that of a dead snail and a slug going backwards.




Thankfully, we reached the peach trees before nightfall. Who knew that peaches grew in New Jersey? Who knew that anything grew in New Jersey? Most of the trees near the aisles were picked clean of mature fruit, but just a couple hundred feet deeper in, there were insane numbers of peaches just dangling in front of our faces.






Probably the mistake that most people make is that they end up buying too much fruit. It was so exciting picking our own peaches, though, and there were so many nice ones, that we could literally not resist. If anyone wants a dozen free peaches, let me know. Although you may not want them anymore once you see them. For some reason, by the time we got home, the peaches started cannibalizing themselves and all the spots where they were touching each other in the carton had gone soft and discolored. I blame ethane. (Edited to add: my intelligent readers have spoken! The actual culprit is not ethane, but ethylene. I was off by a double bond. Blast.) Joe's mom says we should make peach cobbler, but that is probably beyond the level of domesticity that I could plausibly achieve.



Oh yeah, there were berry patches too. I didn't take as many pictures of the berry-picking because I had my hands full, picking berries as fast as I could so that I could cram them into Cal's gaping maw. It was the only way that I could prevent him from eating all the berries off the floor, or hurling himself into the brambles. Who knew that he liked blackberries so much? Or that blackberry bushes were so pointy? So many lessons learned.

take two



Our follow-up attempt to get Cal's haircut met with more success, though not without tears, requiring various forms of enticement. Sweet candy eases the pain.

medieval times




Checking my e-mail from the lounge where the ortho residents keep their freaky old equipment.

golden ager

As I picked up my Rachael Ray endorsed Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee this morning, I noticed that I had paid less for it than I usually do. So I checked my receipt. Turns out they gave me the 10% "Senior Discount."

I am hoping that it was really a some sort of hospital employee discount and they just entered it wrong, because the alternative explaination is that I look like I'm 65 years old.

help me, dr. zaius

Sampling the wares at the gift shop at the Central Park Zoo yesterday afternoon.

I think the scariest part is that it's not so easy to tell that it's a mask.

five words

Adding insult to injury, the injury being the Saturday I had to spend on call for the cardiac service, I think yesterday's weather was probably the nicest its been for a month. But I can't complain too much. I was in the hospital basically all day doing two emergency cases, but was home by 6pm (cardiac is home call), and didn't get called back in for the rest of the night. Can't argue with being able to sleep in my own bed. And though I'm really confused how it was decided that cardiac should be home call while call for the pain service is in-house, I shant dispute it now.

Joe and I have recently started the process of applying for preschools. (For Cal.) I had originally envisioned Cal to start preschool at age two, just like every other kid in Manhattan seems to, myself included, but given that I totally missed the boat last year (who knew it was, like, a six month-long application process? Not me, apparently) I figured we would just apply for next year, to start right after Cal turns three.

The schools that we've decided to apply are just normal neighborhood schools. We decided for a variety of reasons not to apply to the big-name preschools that everyone talks about, for a variety of reasons. One is that we would never get in, for the same reasons that Joe and I will never be featured in the society pages of the Sunday Times. (We are not rich, we are not famous, and we are not related to anyone of note.) Second is that I just want Cal to go to school to have fun and play with kids, I don't want to get involved in The Scene, with crazy competitive parenting and extravagant and tawdry displays of money, playdates in the Hamptons and limos picking up three year-olds after school and whatnot. Third is that none of those schools are near us anyway, so it doesn't even make sense to want to go--I don't think a three year old should necessarily have a 45 minute commute on the subway twice a day to go play with some bristle blocks and sleep on a mat, even if it is a brushed wool Dolce and Gabbana mat.

However, even normal neighborhood schools have something of an application process, and we were wrestling with one such essay the other evening. I guess calling it an essay sounds a little too dramatic. (Not that some schools don't make parents write whole essays, because they do. But we're shunning those schools, remember? Or, if you would like to think of it another way, rejecting them before they reject us.) But anyway, on the application for this other school wasn't so much a full essay, rather one of those, "What words best describe your child?"


MICHELLE
How many words do they want? Three words?

JOE
It doesn't say how many.

MICHELLE
How about..."nice."

JOE
"Nice," "good" and "great."

MICHELLE
No seriously, what should we say?

JOE
"Loving?"

MICHELLE
No, don't say that, that sounds like something that crazy parents say. "He just LOVES his parents!" Meanwhile, the kid is sneaking out the back door to run away from home. We can't pick any words that makes us sound insane, like, "brilliant, genius...."

JOE
..."sexy."

MICHELLE
Ew.

JOE
OK, how about "inquisitive?"

MICHELLE
Yeah, that's a good one. Oh, and how about, "sensitive?" Wait, don't put that, that sounds like a euphemism for "crybaby." Put, "empathetic."

JOE
(Writing)
OK. Oh, I have one, "energetic."

MICHELLE
That sounds like another parenting euphemism for "My little monster is out of control." Like when they call an apartment "cozy" and you look at it and realize that it's basically a closet with a bathroom attached.

JOE
"Gentle?"

MICHELLE
Good one, and so true. Oh, and put "attentive." Because he is. Remember that time he was able to watch "Blue's Clues" for almost an hour because our toilet exploded and we had to keep him out of the way so that we could clean up the poop water?

JOE
All too well.

MICHELLE
Let's pick one more word. What qualities would you want for a kid in your preschool class? Think man, think. It's a classroom full of screaming three year-olds. You're the teacher. What kind of kid do you want there in the mix?

JOE
"Awesome?"

MICHELLE
True, but next.

JOE
"Smells good?"

MICHELLE
Again, true, but next.

JOE
"Cute?"

MICHELLE
(Exasperated)
There's already a picture attached the application!


* * *


And finally, a word of thanks for those who introduced me to the concept of using some sort of auction sniping service to actually win stuff on eBay. I signed up on this service and managed to buy this fairly large lot of Duplo blocks for about $34. Thanks for the help, Cal is going to go nuts when he sees these, that lucky, lucky boy.




Aside from the little ambulance and firetruck and police helicopter, there actually appears to be some remnants of a "Bob the Builder" Duplo set mixed into this collection, with actual wrenches and screwdrivers and spare parts that will allow us to build our own cars. Either that, or to maximally injure ourselves. Isn't that how Louis Braille went blind, gouging himself in the eye with a Duplo awl?

next stop, carnegie hall

Dude, I have to step back from the chasm of Duplo madness. Ever since I lost that auction (well, let's face it, given the price that the item went for, I was never really in the running--I just thought I was because I did not know about auction sniping and all that stuff you guys told me about after the fact) I have been obsessed with finding another lot of Duplo to bid on. There's nothing quite approaching the majesty of that other Duplo set (Two helicoptors! Sweet Jesus, there were TWO of them!) and quite frankly, most of the stuff being sold is kind of scrappy and is probably worth less than the eventual shipping price, but hell, I have to have dreams, or else I have nothing. And now I will stop saying the word "Duplo" before someone kicks me in the head.

Yesterday, I was working on putting an arterial line into a patient pre-op. To be fair, it was a difficult a-line placement, such that the attending and I were working concurrently, one on each arm, since the patient had had many radial sticks in the past few weeks so both arteries were probably thrombosed. I was in the middle of one attempt when the patient (who had been mumbling incoherently up until that point) turned to me and said, clear as day, "You can't do anything right." True, she was demented, and a schizophrenic on top of that, but man, you really know how to wound someone, lady.

That was kind of bad, but worse was this other time I was struggling with a difficult line on an awake patient, and when I finally managed to get access, high fives all around, the patient said, "Well, I guess practice makes perfect, doctor." Note heavy sarcastic emphasis on "doctor."

loser, in so many ways

When Joe's parents asked us what they should get Cal for his birthday, we told them that he might enjoy some Duplo blocks, because, well, he does. You know Duplo, right? They're Lego blocks, but bigger, for the under-six set. Good wholesome plastic-y fun. What they actually ended up getting him was a set of train tracks (apparently Joe's dad went to the toy store with the intention to get Duplos, but then he saw the train set and could not resist), which was fine, because Cal likes the train set too. He also likes balloons. And leaves. So really, it really doesn't matter what you get him, he will play with it. But I was still sort of interested in getting him some Duplo blocks.

The problem with getting Duplos new in the store is that they're kind of expensive. This zoo set with about 125 pieces costs almost $50 on Amazon. Plus, when you look at the picture, it's really not that many blocks. What are you going to build with that? A very small retaining wall? Not fun.

So I figured that the frugal thing to do would be to look for Duplo on eBay. Cons: slightly used Duplo, possibly chewed. Pros: Cheaper! Also, cheaper! Most of the lots of used Duplo being sold were what you would typically expect from families trying to jettison their used toy collections--small to moderate sized bins of between 100 and 200 Duplo blocks in various stages of wear, mixed in with cast-off Barbie shoes and stray buttons that somehow evaded the sorting process. Starting bids on these were about $5-10, give or take. Eh, nothing compelling, nor especially cheap for used toys, frankly. And then I happened upon this lot.




"HUGE LOT OF DUPLO BLOCKS!" the listing screamed. "1000+ PIECES!" The listing further explained that the seller used to run a daycare facility, but had just recently retired and was looking to sell all her old toys. This gigantic collection of Duplo was actually only half of her original collection--the other half was being sold in a separate, similarly huge lot, though, per her explaination, sorted to be more of a "girl's" Duplo set, meaning more house furniture, more pink blocks, etcetera. While I thought that Duplo was one of the few toys that didn't have boy-girl distinction, I admit that I did favor the "boy's" lot, which included many, many cool Duplo add-ons that I had never seen before, such as a shitload of construction vehicles.




And Native American Duplo figures. Have you ever seen this before? I had not.




Did I mention dinosaurs? There were dinosaurs in there too.




And other animals! Look, a mommy elephant and a baby elephant! Why the mother elephant has a perfectly circular hole in her haunches, I do not know. I suspect poachers.




Plus about a bajillion blocks and figures and train cars and whatnot. I had not realized how much I wanted "1000+ DUPLO BLOCKS" until I laid eyes on 1000+ Duplo blocks and envisioned how freaking cool our lives would be up to our eyeballs in plastic. Hell, we could build a separate bedroom completely out of Duplo! And no, I can't stop saying Duplo! Duplo duplo duplo!



There were still about two days to go on the auction, and so far, there had only been about four bids, the highest of which was $15. Fifteen dollars for 1000+ Duplo? I'd be stupid not to bid, right? I mean, Jesus, imagine winning that haul for $16! It was all very bargain-y and exciting. But if I bid, I had to make sure that I'd win. So I had to pick a high bid that was surely above and beyond what anyone else would want to pay. $35. Surely it would not come to that, for some old used Duplo that scores of kids had probably blown their noses on, but I wanted to be safe. I entered my bid. A little green check mark popped up next to the listing. "You are the current high bidder for this item!" eBay told me, with my current bid of, I don't know, $15.01 or whatever. I felt triumphant. I was WINNING. Now it was just a matter of time before the Duplos were mine.

I checked back in a few hours later. Someone had attempted to parry, place a bid a dollar higher, but I had soundly rebuffed them with my original offer, and the price was now up to $16.99 or something. Fools. Why do they even try? Don't they know I'm willing to pay THIRTY-FIVE DOLLARS for these Duplo? Do not fuck with me, durham53, or I will cut you.

The following morning, with less than a day in the auction left to go, I started feeling a little less cocky. I was still winning, but another bidder had come dangerously close to my bid, and now the price was up to $32 for the item. eBay warned me that at this stage, I was in jeopardy of being outbid, so I might want to re-evaluate my upper limit, and possibly place a higher bid. Hmm. More than $35? I didn't really want to spend a lot of money, that was the whole point of me buying crusty used toys on eBay. And yet, I had become somewhat invested in the idea of having these Duplo, and of becoming The World's Coolest Mom. So I nudged up my highest bid somewhat. $45. No, better yet, $46. I was willing to bid up to $46 to acquire these Duplo. Still well below market price for new Duplo, but surely well above what these other jerks were willing to spend. Who were they, anyway? Didn't they know I really really wanted these Duplo? That I would stop at nothing?

Later that afternoon when I checked in, I saw that I wasn't even the winning bidder anymore. Some jackass in Canada had bid $47 and was now winning the auction. "Does he know that he's bidding in American dollars?" I groused grumpily. My co-resident, apparently wise in the ways of eBay, advised me that I should not bid anymore until the very end of the auction, at which time I should swoop in, overbid the highest bidder, and then no one would have a chance to outbid me, because ha ha fuckers, auction over! I told him that this seemed like a sound strategy, although the auction didn't end until 10:45 that night, and I wasn't sure that I could stay up that late. He gave me one of those one-eyebrow raised looks, and I realized that not only was I bidding for Duplo on eBay, but I was basically admitting that I went to bed before 10:00pm every night. I'm AWESOME.

I spend the rest of the night thinking of how much I was really willing to spend for these Duplos. I mean, it was a no-brainer when I thought that I could get all that loot for $16, but now we were talking $50, maybe $60. Was I willing to spend $60 for those Duplo? $61? $75? Where would it end? "This is how they get you," I told Joe. "I bet they plant fake people to overbid the serious customers just to jack up the price."

"Wow, The Browns are going to have a good team this year," he said, clearly not listening to me at all. (He may not have said that, it just seems like something he might say--I wasn't really listening to him either.) But did he understand what was on the line here? Did he see all those Duplo fire engines, the Duplo helicopter? This was 1000+ Duplos! This was unprecedented!

But then, though it took some internal dialogue and discipline, I realized that I should give up the dream. I had already upped my bid beyond what I had originally thought I was willing to pay, and now that the auction was drawing to a close, the bidding action had every indication that the end price was going to skyrocket. And what did we need with 1000+ Duplo anyway? I just coveted it because it was such a uniquely huge collection of Duplo, and I felt obligated the same way I once felt obligated to buy a dress that was marked down from $280 to $39.99, even though part of me knew that I would never wear it, and the reason they marked it down so much was because it was ugly. Anyway, it's not like we're rolling in dough here, and while $20 for Duplo may have been OK, $100 certainly would not be. I deliberately decided not to stay up for the end of the auction, even just to spectate, and went to sleep with a heavy heart.

The next morning, of course I checked the listing first thing. The final price was $150, sold to an eBay customer in the Czech Republic. ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS? Dude, the shipping price from the seller in Indiana to the Czech Republic would at least double that price. Were they insane? Were they some sort of crazed Duplo fanatics?

Fuckers.

kid fears

Cal has developed an aversion to riding in the car. As it is, he is a good little Manhattanite and probably only sees the inside of our car about once a month (if that). However, on those rare occasions whenever that we strap him into the car seat and drive somewhere, he gets a little nervous, and insists on one of us sitting in the back with him, holding his hand while he keeps repeating "it's OK, it's OK" to himself like a catechism. As usual, I blame Thomas, as the first season's episodes are rife with vehicular collisions and accidents. Poor kid probably thinks we're going to ram into some tar wagons or spill face-first into a bog or some such thing.

why yes, in fact, i did

The hazards of getting dressed in the dark.

the demon barber of fleet street

Cal got his first haircut about seven weeks ago, and we got some good mileage out of that, but now he's starting to look a little bit like Ron Burgundy again, which is an especially unfortunate look in August, what with the sweating and matting. So Joe (who, with the easier work schedule, has recently been able to assume some of the kid-wrangling responsibilities that were heretofore solely my domain) made an appointment for him this past Thursday at the kid's haircutting place. This did...not...go over well. While he tolerated the whole haircutting ritual reasonably well last time, Call apparently decided in the intervening weeks that getting his hair trimmed was one of the most SCARRING EXPERIENCES OF HIS LIFE and as a result started freaking out when repeat attempts were made. Neither "Thomas the Tank Engine" nor the prospect of sitting in a chair shaped like a motorboat could placate him, and eventually, the mission was aborted.

"We could just hold him down," the kiddie hairdresser blithely told Joe, "we do it all the time." And in fact, that is just what they were doing to a one-and-a-half year-old struggling in the chair next to Cal, who was, per his parent's instructions, getting his scant hair shaved into a mohawk. (See also: using your kid as a billboard to advertise your own coolness. But who am I to judge, I got Cal a jean jacket and red Converse sneakers. The 80's! They're back! But I digress.) Joe, however, figured as I would that the best way to get Cal to submit to a haircut at some point in time is just to let him chill out and try again another day, as opposed to bodily pinning him to the chair and coming at him with shears. So they called it quits, though not, it should be mentioned, without charging us 50% of the price of the haircut for the two locks of hair they did manage to snip.

Joe actually needed to get his hair cut himself this weekend, so I thought that it might be a nice strategy to bring Cal along, so he could witness the experience, and reassure himself that, despite getting his hair trimmed, his father did indeed survive.




I'm not quite sure if we got the reaction that we were looking for. In my wildest fantasy, I was hoping that afterwards, Cal would clamor for a haircut himself, perhaps climbing into the salon chair and dictating the length of his own sideburns--though I would have settled for amusement or interest in any form. However, I think the expression on his face speaks for itself.




Sheer, slack-jawed horror.

highchair hijinks

Cal eating dinner last night, before his high chair tray devolved into a parking lot.





(Really, I just like to say "hijinks.")

bringing home the bacon

So even though on paper, Joe is getting paid more now as an attending than as a resident, we have done the math and it seems that in the end, our total household income is going to be about the same this year as last. True, an attending ophthalmologist with a private office practice could potentially make a buttload (I believe this is the financial term used in the Wall Street Journal), but Joe's stint as an attending ophthalmologist is more of a patchwork solution that he cobbled together to give him something to do while I finish my last year of residency and while he works on Plan B. He is working as an attending supervising residents at two academic medical centers in the city, and is the "consult attending" supervising residents seeing inpatient ophtho consults on the wards at [Downtown Hospital]. He can also staff surgical cases generated by these consults, and sometimes he can even get paid for doing these surgeries, but it's not consistent, and since he's not in solo practice with his own solid patient base, it's not like he's generating a constant stream of high-paying surgical cases or anything.

In addition, now that he's not a resident anymore, he has to start paying back his student loans. (You can defer paying back your loans while you're a resident, pleading "financial hardship," but after you graduate, you're fair game.) So that takes a huge bite out of his pay. And sadly, despite this, at the current rate of loan-paying-back (there must be an actual word for this), I don't think we're set to square away his tab with Uncle Sam until the year 2026. No, I'm not kidding. Hopefully, when I finish and get a real-ass job, we can step up this payment schedule and we can pay it all back sooner, maybe in five or ten years instead of twenty, but man, that's a big bill. Marry the man, marry his student loans.

But despite all this, Joe and I would still be making a net income approximately equivalent to what we made last year, when we were both residents. Except for one thing. Joe has been working for a month, and he still hasn't gotten paid yet. Apparently, [Downtown Hospital] only pays its clinic attendings once a month. I don't know how this is possible, but I guess for most attendings, who actually have private offices, their clinic salary is probably only, like, 10% of their total income, not 75% as Joe's case. It can easily be changed over to a once-every-two-week pay schedule, but Joe has encountered considerable resistance to this change from the administrative staff, as that would involve them actually having to expend energy above their basal metabolic rate. Also, there's all the paperwork and bureaucracy of starting a new position at a new hospital, each office blaming the other office for the delays in getting the proper information processed. So it has now been a full month, and my little resident paycheck is the only thing that is keeping our family afloat. And let's not forget that 95% of my paycheck goes to pay our nanny. (The remaining $50 a week is for buying crack. Or food. But mostly crack.)

I was almost inclined to be understanding towards the staff of the administrative offices at [Downtown Hospital], who insisted that it was out of their hands, and that there was nothing to do but wait for some mysterious higher-up office to process what they needed to process, but then this administrative assistant said to Joe yesterday, during his umpteenth query with regards to getting paid for his work, "Well, I was on unemployment for two years, and I was fine, so you will be too."

OK, so HOW DOES THIS MAKE ANY SENSE?

1. When you're on unemployment, you get a check every week. Or every two weeks, whatever. But the whole point of this is that Joe has not gotten paid at all. How are we going to feed our kid, woman? He can't eat stolen hospital Jello cups and reconstituted beef flavored bullion forever, you know.
2. Forgive me if I'm getting unecessarily insulted by this point, but Joe is not unemployed. He is an attending physician at an academic medical center who is, frankly, getting underpaid for his work. I mean, theoretically, if he ever got paid.
3. Is there any more complacent answer that indicates, I know it's my job to help you, but I would rather not because it would involve moving more that saying, "Don't worry, you'll be fine"? I thought not.

Joe has talked to her supervisor and to everyone he can think of to talk to, but everyone so far is pleading ignorance. And I would be shocked, when the paycheck finally materializes, if it were actually in the correct amount, as this piecemeal system of picking up clinic shifts does not seem conducive to the administrative office actually keeping track of all his activity. Joe himself is obviously keeping track, but we frankly cannot afford to have him fighting for pennies every single month because these administrators are allergic to doing their damn work.

For someone whose job it is--whose whole reputation hinges on being efficient and diligent and accountable for her work, this kind of bureaucratic inertia is beyond maddening.

not unlike asparagus

So I don't really drink coffee, but I've been drinking it recently, because it's summer, and having an iced latte heavily laced with sugar seems like a good way to simulate eating ice cream for breakfast. Also, the caffeine is helpful. But now I notice that on the days I imbibe, my pee smells like coffee. I only drink one a day, if that. Is this weird? I am not a coffee person. This could be normal, for all I know. Or I have a conduit straight from my esophagus to my renal collecting system.

I guess it could be worse. Someone once told me that they ate, like, six Krispy Kreme donuts at once, and afterwards, their pee smelled like donuts.

Um...moving on.