So we got this air mattress. The air mattress is for the move, after we arrive at the new house. Do you call a town home a "house?" I guess technically it is not freestanding, but I even call apartments "houses," probably dating back to childhood when I'd go over to a friend's "house" or they'd come over to play at my "house," though really, we all lived in apartments. Anyway, end digression. Like I was saying, the air mattress is for after we arrive in Atlanta, but before our moving truck gets there, since there will likely be a two week lag-time between the two. It is this queen-sized air mattress that Joe found on Amazon, and it has a built-in pump and some sort of dual-chamber anti-leak system that will prevent it from slooooowly deflating during the night, so that we wake up smothered by a puddled pile of vinyl. I don't know how you can guarantee that anything air-filled will be leak-proof, but I assume there is a science to it all. Joe and I inflated the thing the other night, sort of a trial run while Cal was watching "Finding Nemo" (his new obsession), and it seems comfortable enough.
I am starting to get kind of excited about the move. While I am a little dismayed that the density of child-friendly venues is significantly less than we are used to in Manhattan (we currently live within walking distance of about ten reasonably maintained playgrounds, whereas in Atlanta, I think we will be able to make a long walk to two, one of which is the scary death playground), I am starting to get used to the idea that we will be living there for two years at the least, and getting revved up about the adventure aspect of if all. Some of the things I am getting excited about are fairly ridiculous (the convenience of having an washer and dryer included in our rental, for example. A laundry machine IN OUR OWN HOUSE? It boggles the mind! What will I do with all my hoarded quarters now?) but some others are monumental--the mixed thrill and apprehension of starting my first attending job, for instance. It's just exciting that, after three years of pretty much the same old thing, we're all going to be starting something completely new and different. It's scary in some ways, the unknown, but with most major variables locked down (save childcare), it leaves us a little room to be cautiously optimistic about things. And at least we're all doing it together. Family is handy that way.
So, purely for self-interest, I ask you this: for those of you who know Atlanta, what are some fun family activities that we can look forward to? We know about Piedmont Park and the Aquarium and the Children's Museum, of course, but what's the insider scoop? Any good playgrounds in the area, indoors or out? Any good places to visit that are off the beaten path? Any good pick-your-own-fruit orchards within an hour drive of the city? I think we are moving at the height of peach season, so I have hope that we will have able to have some fun with that. Hell, if we've gone peach-picking in New Jersey, there's got to be some good places in Georgia. Any not-for-tourist guidance would be appreciated.
And if anyone wants to visit, we have a great air mattress that you can sleep on.
Despite the beautiful weather all last week, my post call day was rainy and cold, so Cal and I had to consider our various options for indoor activities. In the end, we decided to take the subway to FAO Schwarz, on the one condition that despite the fact that I am a total pushover, and despite the fact that I was visiting a toy store with an almost three year old child, we would not be buying anything that would require boxing and moving in July. The following playlet as we were waiting for our train to arrive:
MICHELLE Too bad we just missed that other train.
CAL We want the train to come here. (Indicating near platform)
Not over there.(Points to downtown platform across the divide).
MICHELLE What train do you think will come next? We just missed the N train,
so I think next will be either the R or the W train.
Whenever I stumble home from work after being in the hospital on a weekend (this particular weekend I had the much dreaded 24 hour Saturday in-house call), I walk in the door to see our living room transformed as though by some toy chest detonation. Train sets, block towers, markers, puzzles, corpses of half-built Duplo structures strewn about. And while I'm certainly glad beyond all else that Cal and Joe had fun during my weekend at work, there's another part of me that walks in, sees the mess, and goes uuuuuunnnngh.
Though the memories rapidly fade, I still recall the era pre-child, when post-call days used to be a decadent orgy of naps, off-hour meals, and daytime television. And while I would not trade Cal and his messes for anything, there are moments where returning to the domestic fold after working all night feels less like rest and more like playing a double-header.
After a trip to our local wholesale club earlier this week. I am pretty convinced that all you really need to know about people can be divined from their shopping carts. In our case:
So you know how there are ads down in the subway station? Well, there are. Usually there is a series of, like six ads that sort of repeat along the wall as you walk down the platform. There is the standard graffiti, of course--off-color observations scrawled in Sharpie, drawing penises on people and the like, very Perez Hilton--but there has been this one sort of ingenious graffiti artist who has been working around my neighborhood lately. I don't even know that I'd call it graffiti, because he (she?) doesn't really write on anything. What it looks like he does is use a razor blade to cut away part of one ad, and then to transpose that cutout onto another, identical ad. For example, a few weeks ago, there was a wall of ads for the movie "Leatherheads," that olden-timey George Clooney football film. Well, for that poster, he cut out a bunch of John Krasinski heads from other ads in the station, and pasted them all up on this one ad, so it looked like there were a half dozen John Krasinskis all lined up next to each other in football uniforms. Pretty funny.
It looks like he has since moved on to political commentary, however.
We had someone from the moving company come over to do an in-house estimate of what it would cost to move all our stuff from here to Atlanta. Initially, we had been trying to get an estimate remotely, but halfway through listing our items, the guy stopped us and told us it would be easier just to send someone over to make an assessment, because we had too much stuff to reliably guesstimate over the phone. It had never occurred to me that we were people with too much stuff, but I guess once you've been to med school (x2) and had a kid, just the number of boxes that you need just to contain your books and toys starts getting out of control.
I also never realized just how messy our house was until we had someone not related to us come over to look into all of our closets. I wanted to make some excuse, like that the reason I had clothes all over the floor was in anticipation of packing, but really, those clothes have been on the floor since way before we even found out about Atlanta. And the worst of it is that despite realizing this, motivation to straighten up has reached an all-time low. Why bother? It's all going into boxes anyway! Might as well just keep everything out for easy access, and to avail us of the opportunity to do quick assessments of what comes with us and what goes to the Salvation Army.
(Aside: I used to think it was called the "Starvation Army" when I was a kid. Which, you know, is not entirely unreasonable for a kid to think, except for the fact that so far as I know, you don't actually donate any food there.)
Seriously, if you know anything about how anal I am at work, you would be absolutely floored by the messiness of our actual home. But once we move, we will be neat, I promise! We will pick up our clothes and put away toys in the appropriate Ikea flunkerfloorgen containment systems and our closets will be organized and we will no longer have a dining room table that we use solely as a platform for things we are too lazy to put away! It will be awesome! Awesome, I say!
Arguably one of the most difficult parts of negotiating this upcoming move to Atlanta was having to tell Cal's nanny that we were leaving. Not so much for the employer-employee aspect of it--we have been making provisions for a few months now, and there is a fairly long list of families willing and eager to hire her, if she's interested in taking any of those positions. The difficulty is the same as with any family situation in which attachment is followed by separation.
Over the past few years, our nanny has become like a third parent to Cal. Probably this is galling to some who feel affronted by the notion that parents who cannot take care of their children full-time should not reproduce, but honestly, it is such a peace of mind for us to know that she knows and cares about him almost as much as Joe and I do. She spends her entire day with him, talks to him, is full of stories when we come home from work, knows him inside and out. She has become family. We trust her with him implicitly, over everyone. And there's a terrible guilt that you feel when you realize that you have put someone in the position to love your child so much, and that there comes a time that you eventually have to move that child away from them.
There was, of course, the fantasy that she would be able to move to Atlanta with us. It was just as much of a fantasy, ill-formed and childish, I suppose, as thinking that the good things never have to change. Our nanny even brought up the suggestion herself, more of an idle wish than anything else, as we all realized how untenable such a move would be. She has her own network, her own obligations, her own life. But it didn't stop us all from wishing.
There's something about nearing the end of your residency that changes things completely. It's like suddenly, you realize that this is it, this is your last chance to learn all this stuff under such close supervision before being trusted to do it alone, so if you don't get a chance to learn it in the next few months, you're on your own. Nights on call suddenly become much less about getting through the next few hours and more about getting your hands on everything. Yes, I want to do that. Let me take care of that. Epidural in Room 6? Yes, I'll do it. Don't you know I only have two and a half weeks left before I may never do Obstetric or Pediatric anesthesia again? Crikey. This is like the bachelor party of my career. Bring on the strippers!
Not to jinx myself, but I seem to have rid myself of the whammy, mostly all in one night last Thursday when I did ten epidurals in a row and didn't even have time to think about screwing up. It was really just one epidural fairly early in the night that found its way into the epidural space seemingly by itself, and after that I stopped second-guessing myself so much and trusting my hands. Also, I realized that I proably have to stop drinking coffee in the morning, or at least start to drink less, because it causes my hands to shake, and screws up my fine motor skills, at least until the caffeine wears off mid-morning. Actually, I'm not sure if it's just my fine motor skills, it seems at times like the jittery coffee feeling robs me of my ability to accelerate and decelerate with any degree of sensitivity--I end up working in this jerky way, like a student driver putting on the brakes every fifty feet. Very disconcerting. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way--I know that Joe doesn't drink coffee on the mornings that he's operating, and for him, that's saying a lot. He would mainline Peet's coffee if given the chance, but, barring that option, is just as pleased with a flagon of Starbucks' sludgiest sludge three or four times a day.
Strangely, it's only the coffee from those sidewalk coffee carts that causes this autonomic hyperdrive on me. A tall cup of that Dunkin' Donuts brew seems to have none of these coffee-related effects at all, aside from its diuretic features. So either Dunkin' Donuts coffee is one weak brew, or the roadside coffee is steeped in cocaine. Take your pick.
Hi there. I was taking a little break from blogging. Not quite sure why, I just kind of felt like I didn't have anything to write about, and this pressure I was putting on myself to update every day (including weekends--not that I should say that like some sort of virtue, since honestly, it's easier to update on weekends) started to feel a little like the sword of Damocles swinging over my head. The sword! She is swinging! MUST UPDATE WITH INANE OBSERVATION ABOUT THIS AD I SAW ON THE SUBWAY ABOUT HAMMERTOE REPAIR! Anyway, it started feeling a little strangle-y, this edict to update daily, but then I realized that this edict was self-imposed and therefore just as easily revoked. It was a relief for a little while, but then Joe came up to me today and asked why I hadn't updated my blog for a week, what, was I in some sort of catatonic depression or something? So I felt the need to set the record straight.
Honestly, I have also been just a little bit stressed about work. Did I tell you I just started another month on OB? No, I guess I haven't, because I've been on a break. Anyway, pregnant ladies, ho! It is not OB itself that is stressful (though the intrinsic high-stakes nature of the place is unavoidably adrenaline-inducing), but the real reason I have been stressed is because I have just not been on my A game lately, and it is kind of psyching me out so close to graduation. Specifically, with procedures, I have had a rough few days, and I'm starting to think wonder if I don't have some sort of degenerative neurological condition that is causing me to fumble at every single turn. Sometimes it is not my fault (difficult anatomy, equipment being mysteriously broken) but the problem is that sometimes it is, and every time I make another little mistake, I just get myself even more stressed, because I think, shit, I'm a senior resident, I'm going to be an attending in a few months, and I'm not supposed to be making mistakes like this anymore. Not to belabor the sports metaphor, but some of the things I'm doing are pure bush league (having trouble with epidurals, contaminating myself accidentally during procedures by doing something completely STUPID like touching a patient's shoulder while wearing sterile gloves), and it's messing with my head, and making me fumble even more.
I think this "psych out" phenomenon is something that probably everyone can relate to, but especially stressful in medicine, where even little mistakes can lead to grievous harm for your patient. I definitely haven't strayed into "grievous harm" territory, but still, there's no reason I should be having the problems that I'm having, no matter how inconsequential, and it's freaking me out. It's been a few days of this now, and I know I just need to take a deep breath, get out of my own head, and just start fresh tomorrow. But I think about it, you know? I just think and think and think about it. The perils of a Type A personality. You can't just let it go.
Anyway...updates! So! Cal got into the school that we wanted him to go to! I know this will inevitably incite some snorting from the dissidents about us being the crazy parents that had to get our kid into THE PERFECT SCHOOL, but there are no apologies here about wanting Cal to go to a great school with superb teachers that is a ten-minute walk from our house. (Maybe eight minutes if you didn't have to actually walk with a kid who insists on stopping to jump off every stoop along the way.) So, we are really, really excited about this. He's going to love this school, and we're going to love being poor! (Ha! This is called a "joke." And yet...that tuition. Wow.) The three big things related to our move (home, job, and school) have all fallen into place quite nicely, and now we are moving to the second-tier stressors, which includes filling out paperwork for hospital credentialling, starting our search for childcare, that kind of thing. Know of a good nanny looking for work in the Atlanta area? Feel free to e-mail me, send smoke signals, whatnot.
There are probably some other things of import (and of minimal significance but nonetheless amusing) that happened this past week, but I can't think of them right now. It'll come back to me, though. Just like my dexterity and professional self-confidence, right?
There are a lot of moments that make you realize that your kid is growing up.
Maybe for you, it's when they started talking a lot, telling you stories, making you realize that they actually do have a whole world and a life that will be growing increasingly separate from your own. Maybe it's they day you look at their hands, and realize that they've lost that baby chubbiness, that those dimples over the knuckles are getting shallower, that their feet no longer look like little blocks but are instead getting leaner with thicker skin over the heels and toes. Maybe it's the first time you drop them off alone at school, leaving them to fend for themselves in that cold, cruel world that occasionally includes other thuggish children that may steal their toys and push them down without you right there to scoop them up and make it all better. And while all of these things are good indications, I will tell you the one major thing that makes me realize that Cal is leaving his babyhood behind and slowly joining the ranks of the mature and aging everywhere.
Coming home from work post-call and realizing upon greeting him that Cal had morning breath bad enough to peel paint from a car.
