Last night, Cal slept in his own bed. It was the little pine bed we got him from Ikea a few weeks ago, and we've had it made up and ready to go for a while now, at various times enticing him with its colorful animal sheets and Baby Bear exclusivity ("This is a little bed! It's only for Cal! Mommy and Daddy are too big for this bed! But it's just right for Cal!") He has taken naps in his bed, mostly by accident, and we've been reading bedtime stories in his bed just to set the stage. But last night, after the story, he just stayed there. And fell asleep. And slept all night. Except for the parts of the night when he rolled out of the bed onto the floor. (Note to self: put cushions by the bed.) But other than that, it was solid gold, baby! Ye gods, he's out our bed and into his own!
This seems like as good a time as any to talk about how Cal ended up in our bed in the first place.
Let me say first that before Cal was born, and really, even after, I never subscribed to any particular parenting philosophy. I hadn't read the books, I hadn't done any research, and frankly, thought the whole idea of having some overarching "approach" to parenting struck me as pretty pretentious and annoying. Hearing about moms who were so damn fervent about organics and plastics and co-sleeping and baby wearing and selective vaccination--as though there were only one way to live, dammit, and if you didn't fall in line, you were a BAD, BAD PERSON--was enough to make me itch. I didn't think much about how I wanted to approach raising my kid, but figured that a reasonable mix of common sense and mindfulness of AAP recommendations would keep us all safe and sane. But aside from the obvious, I don't think there's any absolute right way. I still don't. It's whatever works for you and your family, you know? Who am I to tell others what to do? It's like those vegetarians that come up to you when you're eating a hot dog and get all earnest, looking in your eyes and asking, "DO YOU KNOW WHAT'S IN THAT?" Yes, I do, because I live in THE WORLD, now go away and let me eat my nitrates and pig lips in peace.
I will also say right here that I thought the idea of co-sleeping was for hippies. I never really thought explicitly about it, but before Cal was born, I just kind of presumed that we'd have him circ'ed (circumcised, you know), we'd breastfeed for a few months, he'd sleep in the Pack 'n' Play in our room for the first few weeks, move onward to his beautiful new crib, and that's just how it would be. That was what I knew, and it seemed to work fine, so that was what we were going to do.
I know some of you out there are parents too, so I hope you don't think I'm just stating the obvious when I say that you can never predict how things are going to be until after your kid(s) are born.* Joe and I had planned to circ, for example, though it was kind of a coin-toss. I was on the fence (given that per the AAP there is no established medical benefit to circumcision--population-based studies about HIV transmission in sub-Saharan Africa aside), and Joe was sort of leaning towards getting the circ, and I was like, "Whatever, you decide." But then Cal was born. And he was perfect. And both of us figured, hey, why tempt fate? Why have a medical procedure that he doesn't actually need? There's no real reason. So we decided not to circ. And it's never been an issue.
Ditto with the sleeping. We had Cal in his little crib for the first week or so, but gradually, he found his way into our bed, which is where he stayed for the next three years. It wasn't quite what we were planning, but it was the best for us, especially for those first few years, for a couple of reasons.
You have to remember that when Cal was born, I was just starting my anesthesia residency. He was born at the end of my third week of first year, actually. It is a challenge to be a working mother in any capacity, obviously, but when you're a junior resident and you've just had a baby, those challenges are amplified. I was working long hours, sometimes spending 30 hours away from my newborn at a time, I was very tired, I was extremely stressed out, I was breastfeeding when I was home, pumping when I was not. All these basically sum up the essential reasons that we decided (perhaps decided is too strong a word--allowed? conceded?) to co-sleep.
I don't want to squick out anyone who knows me in person, especially the guys, but Cal loved breastfeeding. (BOOBS! BOOBS! OK, now I got that out of the way. OK, one more...BOOBS! All right, now I'm really done.) We never ever had a problem with breastfeeding. He took to it right away, breastfed all night whenever I was home, it made him happy, and I loved it too because it was such a nice way to bond with him. Before I had Cal, I thought I would be breastfeeding for three months, maybe six. I honestly didn't think I would be able to keep it up--I even rented a pump because I didn't think that I would be pumping long enough to make the investment of purchasing my own worth the price. But I ended up breastfeeding for a lot longer than that. Again, if you had told pre-Cal me that I would be breastfeeding a kid who could walk and talk, I would have been, frankly, HORRIFIED (as I know many people are by that picture), but I ended up pumping for a full year, and breastfeeding for more than two.
But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. My point is that I was working a lot, and I was breastfeeding whenever I could, which basically meant all night. When you breastfeed, there's no, "Oh, it's Daddy's turn to get up to warm up the bottle," it's all on the Mom. I mean, obviously. But I was tired. I needed my sleep. If I did not get enough rest, I would basically be a disaster at work the next morning (more so than usual, anyway) and getting up two, three, four times a night to walk to the crib, pick up Cal, sit in a chair, put him back down...that would not have worked for me at all. But once we got the hang of co-sleeping, we could do this whole night routine and I would barely have to wake up at all. There was no getting up, no crying (from anyone), and all of us got to sleep through the night and be alert the next morning. This was very important for me at that point in my life, and in my training.
(I know this is the part where people are going to say, "There's no reason that he should have been getting up that many times a night! That's not good! You should read this book! Or this other book! You should have just left him alone, he wasn't hungry, he just needed to learn to XYZ! Blah!" And let me tell, you, I know those thing. Remember, I spent two years as a Pediatrics resident basically telling weary new parents the exact same thing. But you know what, when it came to my own kid, and my own evenings and nights, I DIDN'T CARE. It wasn't bothering me, it made him happy, we were catching up on things that we were missing during the day, whatever. It worked for us.)
The other part of it, and this may be even more of a factor than the breastfeeding thing, is that I really missed my kid. I was working a lot. Those early months, when Cal was really young, I might come home from work, see him for an hour or two, and then it would be time for him to go to bed. There were some nights where, apart from bedtime, Joe or I would barely see Cal at all. And call this softness or coddling or inability to separate or whatever, but the idea of spending 14 hours a day away from my kid, only to deliberately sequester him in another room for another 8 hours while his parents are home and he clearly wants to be close to us...well, that just didn't feel good to me. In fact, it felt bad.
I can think of many reasons that it would have been beneficial for him to be in his own room in his own bed from a young age too (and again, these were the reasons that I would give to my own patients are parents when they asked me at the Peds Clinic way back when I was such a TOTAL EXPERT despite the fact that I had absolutely no practical experience as a parent myself at the time), but having him close to us was the best solution we had at the time. It was nice. I spent enough time away from Cal during the day. It was nice to be near him at night, even if we were sleeping through most of it. I don't think I'm alone on this, either. If you start asking around (I asked mostly other residents who had, since those were the only people I ever talked to, apparently), and many of them, more than you'd think, also co-sleep with their kids for similar reasons. One of them actually told me that I was one of the few people she admitted this fact to, because she was embarrassed that it conveyed some sort of emotional weakness on her part, and besides, she was sick of getting lectured about it. I was like, girl, I feel you.
Of course, we took the necessary precautions. No one wants a smushed baby or a face-down-in-the-pillow baby, so when he was very young, we made provisions for an adequate no-smother zone, and learned to sleep around him instead of, you know, on top of him. As he got bigger and gradually learned to move around more, this became less of an issue, and then he just got a regular old pillow like everyone else.
This is just our story, of course, so not to draw sweeping generalizations about anything or anyone, but I think it worked really well. Cal is just great. I know lots of working parents (again, mostly other residents) who worry, get jealous, that their kid(s) spend more time with and are more attached to their primary daytimes caretakers than they are to their own parents. I don't know if it's the nighttime closeness or what, but honestly, I never worried about this. Additionally, the few times Cal's been sick (one time in particular I remember he had roseola) I knew really quickly, because I woke up in the middle of the night and felt him sleeping next to me, glowing hot like a little light bulb. That was comforting to me, to know like that, and I was able to see for myself that he was doing fine and tell his nanny the next morning, as opposed to getting a call in the middle of my work day and freaking out. He's curious, independent, outgoing, can be a little clingy at times in unfamiliar situations, but I think that's just his personality, and certainly preferable to running headfirst into oncoming traffic, you know? I'm not saying that getting to smell your kid's head little fuzzy head at 3am is the be-all and end-all of parenthood, but when you spend so much time away from that head, it's just nice to be able to snuggle up and night and let him do the same.
But we weren't planning on doing this forever. We weren't even necessarily going to wait for him to tell us when he was ready. Cal is three now, and he's big. He weighs 36 pounds, and he kicks. Sometimes he flails around like a pinwheel in his sleep, ends up upside-down, sideways, draped across your face. It was getting less comfortable for us, and probably also less comfortable for him. We have a Queen-sized mattress, but you'd be surprised at how small that can feel with three people in it, one of which sleeps like one of those chalk outline murder victims, limbs cocked everywhere. So when we moved (fresh start, we figured), we got the big boy bed. Cal picked it out. We made it look nice. We put all his animals along the headboard. We moved it into our room, alongside (but separate) from our bed, to ease the transition. And last night, we all slept well. Cal, as I mentioned, rolled out of bed a couple of times (the bed is only, like, six inches off the ground), probably not used to having a smaller mattress without the usual Mommy/Daddy bumpers along the side, but I'm sure he'll get used to that too.
So anyway, that's the story. I'm not telling you to do it. I'm not saying that's what we're going to do the next time around. It's just what we did with Cal. And now we're on to the next thing.
(* I will not concede on vaccines, though. Cal is fully vaccinated. I do not believe in thumbing my nose at one of the great advances in modern medicine. Sorry if this stirs the pot, but really, I feel strongly about this.)
Not to get too Ratso Rizzo, and not to belabor the point, but man, the drivers in Atlanta act as though they have never in their lives seen pedestrians before. Prime example: see the picture above? The railroad white striping is the pedestrian crosswalk, the fat white line at right is where cars are supposed to stop so that the pedestrians have room. If you are in a car, YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO STOP AT THE FAT WHITE LINE. I know this, because I took Driver's Ed, like, recently. (Don't ask me about the driving anymore. Seriously. No more talking.)
But the cars here act like there is no fat white line. They pull past the fat white line, through the pedestrian crossing, with the damn noses of their car poking into the perpendicular road so that they can pull out when the light turns, like, one millisecond faster. Which means that if I have to cross the street (on foot--yes, we humans have not evolved past bipedal locomotion yet, despite what ye motorists of Atlanta may think) I actually have to walk in front of your halfway-into-the-intersection car to get around you, which puts me (and my kid) in the flow of oncoming traffic. And yes, maybe I could walk behind your giant-ass car instead of in front, but then the car behind you is, like, right up on your rear, and even if there is by chance enough room, the fact that you can't imagine the concept of having a pedestrian cross in front of you kind of removes the, shall we say, trust factor that makes me think you would actually look over the dashboard of your GIGANTIC SUV to see short little me and my even shorter kid walking along your rear bumper in the rearview mirror and not crush us both.
That is why I am waving and gesturing at you when I'm crossing the street. Not because I'm trying to be friendly. Not because we know each other from somewhere and I just want to say hi. I am flailing my arms in the air because I need you to see me and know that I WANT TO LIVE.
I can tell I'm getting more anxious about starting my new job, because I've started having anesthesia dreams again.
When I started my anesthesia residency, I had anesthesia dreams for about six months straight. Some of them were clearly efforts to process what I was learning--some dreams were purely sensory, hearing alarms, pulse ox tones, that kind of thing, or brief motor sequences of me drawing up meds, spiking med bags, doing my machine check. And some dreams were nightmares.
Gradually, as I guess I became more comfortable with my job, as I learned the routines, I started having these anesthesia dreams less, and by my last year of residency, I don't think I was really having any work-related dreams at all. This respite continued until about a few weeks ago, when I had this dream about securing a difficult airway, after which point the patient started talking around the tube, causing the medical student I was working with to freak out and dislodge the tube entirely. Another night, I had a dream about a difficult case, and not being able to find the equipment I needed. I don't think it takes a Freudian to figure out that I'm feeling a little nervous about the new level of responsibility that I'll be facing, combined with learning the ropes in an unfamiliar work environment. (Though it probably would take a Freudian to tell me that the dislodged endotracheal tube represents my CASTRATION ANXIETY.)
I would not be nearly as nervous if I were starting a job at Columbia, where I trained. In fact, I think I would barely be nervous at all. I know how the system works there. I know how the ORs are laid out, I know the names of all the nurses, I know the surgeons, I know what to do when the shit hits the fan. Systems-based familiarity is so much comfort.
I started making preparations for starting work in a week. Giving our new nanny and Cal a full day together without me lurking downstairs like some damn stalker (THE CALL WAS COMING FROM THE BASEMENT!!), I set out for a full day of grown-up work this past Friday and practiced my commute on the subway. (Whatever, "MARTA." I will be calling it the subway for a long, long time, so just get used to it. I was in Boston for four years, and outside of a handful of occasions where I was really making an effort to be correct, I don't think I ever called the train system there "The T.") It seems straightforward enough, but the real test is making sure that the commute is as reliable at 6:00am as it was at 9:30am. Still, 45 minutes door to door for a commute that distance isn't that bad, and certainly shorter than the commute I've been making for the past five years.
The other thing that's feeding into my anxiety is the fact that my last day at work was June 29th, which means that by the time I start, I will have been away from the ORs for more than a month. Again, not as big a deal as when I was a first year (as a first year, even being off for a week vacation would completely throw off my game, exacerbated by the fact that I was inevitably on call my first day back) but still, it feels like a substantial amount of time away. I just have to hope that my game reflexes are still intact, though I'm not naive enough to think that I won't be a little rusty. It's just a little nerve-wracking to feel like you have to find your A-game again while starting something completely new, in a hospital at which you've never worked, where you know no one and you have no reputation to fall back on, and where you're taking care of real patients with real problems who don't care that it's your first day on the job, they need you to be good and fast and make the right decision NOW.
And honestly, even though I have given anesthesia to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of patients at this point, never has the act of inducing anesthesia seemed so fraught with gravity. I am giving medications to induce unconsciousness, that will drop my patient's blood pressure, that will paralyze them, after which point it's up to me to secure that airway, or...what? Or they're dead. No ventilation, you're dead. Forget B and C when you can't even get the A. Usually, the process of securing the airway is so straightforward I don't even really think about it too much anymore in routine situations--unless the patient looks especially difficult, it's a procedure that I will easily cede to the medical student, to the ER rotator, to whoever wants to give it a try--but we've all had difficult intubations, we've all had patients that are difficult to ventilate, and there is nothing that jacks up one's sympathetics more than that unholy combination of the two. See, no kidding, my heart rate is going up right now, just thinking about it. But as a resident, there was always the attending there, standing behind you. Not that attendings are infallible, and not that all attendings can secure an airway that an experienced third-year resident can't, but they were there. That was comforting. They were in charge. When the shit started hitting the fan, if you had a good attending, you could always (though as training progressed, I was more and more loathe to cede control) throw up your hands and defer to them to step in and save the day. Sometimes they couldn't. But they were there.
One of my attendings once told me that the learning curve my first month of being an attending would be steeper than anything I had ever experienced before during medical school, residency, ever. Initially, I thought he meant that I would learn a lot in the process of supervising others, learning to trust the hands and judgement of other people as opposed to putting my hands on everything myself, and bailing people out of difficult situations once they'd gotten to the shit/fan interface. But now I realize that he meant more than that.
As an attending, at least for the first few months, I will exclusively be doing all my own cases, which really isn't all that different from what I was doing as a resident. But I'm not a resident anymore. I'm an attending. I'm the bottom line. There's no one to fall back on. There's no one to bail me out. (Well, if there is a real emergency, obviously there would be 20 people rushing in the room to help, but let's all hope it's doesn't get to that point all too frequently.) Everything has more meaning, is more fraught with potential for the worst case scenario. I'm thinking harder about everything, even things I was cavalier about just a few weeks ago. The medicine is the same, and yet everything is somehow different. Your job is different. Your responsibility to the patient is different. You are different.
So I got my first editorial comments back for the book a few days ago. It was exciting at first, then a little overwhelming, and then back to exciting again. We are still in the "big edit" stage of things (meaning the edits are not, like, "take out this comma" or "you spelled this wrong," rather "you might want to rework this section" or "you need another section here to bridge the gap between these two, and you need to expand on XYZ") which made things a little scary at first--the first feeling was akin to that of having assembled an entire piece of Ikea furniture, only to find out that you put on one crucial piece backwards, requiring you to disassemble and rework the entire thing with that annoying little L-shaped Allen wrench thingy--but upon redigestion, is really sort of a relief.
You know, I submitted the manuscript a few weeks ago with some feeling of accomplishment, not quite fait accompli, but at least of having reached a milestone, though knowing in some vague way that there was Big Work To Be Done. It wasn't quite clear to me what needed to be done, but just some sort of indistinct feeling that some parts didn't sit right, flow right, and that there were other parts that needed to be built up, smoothed over, rearranged. So to get that actual editorial letter that actually gives voice to some of these issues is like, thank god, someone smart who does this for a living has some ideas. Because as we all know, when you live with something for too long, and look at it too closely, you kind of stop seeing it. The forest for the trees and all that. To have someone else take the time and read through the thing and give some suggestions of how to fix the things that you agreed were kind of wonky is really nice.
Not to perseverate on what needs to be fixed--overall, it seems like Emily (my editor) really liked the manuscript, is excited, and thinks it's going to be super-duper, blah blah blah. But my natural inclination when I read praise is to think, "Don't worry, you don't have to say nice things to cushion my delicate ego, I completed five years of residency, I have no ego left, JUST TELL ME WHICH PARTS SUCKED." So I tend to ignore the laudatory. But I am happy that she liked it overall. And I also think (despite the fact that everyone always talks about how PAINFUL writing and rewrites are) that doing the edits is going to be fun. It's been such a one-man process up to this point, it's just a relief to have other people reading things through, and confirming which parts work and point out which parts need a little something more. Thank goodness for other people.
doctors make bad patients, but their kids apparently are worse
Cal's Peds visit went...OK? I don't know how to classify it. We accomplished what we needed to get done (basically to get this form signed confirming that his immunization record is up to date, that for some reason could only be signed by a GA-licensed physician--which, it occurs to me now, typing this: couldn't Joe or I just have signed it? No matter, that's probably not allowed anyway, and if it's a hoop for school, I will jump through it) and the visit didn't take overlong, but man. Cal was...not compliant. I wouldn't say it's time to call in the behavioralist or anything like that, but he does not like going to the doctor. Or the barber. We still have not booked our first visit to the kiddie dentist yet for fear of what might happen, but given past experience, my guess is that there will be great unhappiness in the land.
As noted yesterday, we didn't even need to do anything this visit--no shots, no procedures, just the cursory check, and, of course, the logging in of the past vaccination schedule into the record. But oh, there was screaming. He screamed so long and so loud that there were actually petichiae scattered over his face when we left. I was, frankly, a little embarrassed. I kept seeing it from the other side, remember what it was like to be the pediatrician and land a screaming, writhing three year-old in the exam room, and these were...unhappy memories. We were That Patient. And Pediatrician was probably relieved to be rid of us, as indicated by her hasty retreat after two failed attempts at an abdominal exam (who knew Cal's abs were so board-like when he's attempting to escape from a two-man hold?) and exit line shouted over her shoulder, "OK then, see you when he turns four! Byeeeeee!" Translation: don't come back for another year. Believe me, lady, I hope we won't need need to either.
Someone yesterday asked what kind of patients doctors make, and I would say that it really varies based on the person. I've certainly had doctors as patients that REALLY wanted everyone to know that they were doctors, to the point that "Dr." was entered as part of their name into the chart, like you'd enter "Jr." or "III". I had one patient in the ICU that INSISTED (in kind of an asshole way, might I add) that EVERYONE address him as "doctor" when speaking to him, and...well, not be be an asshole back, but the guy was a general dentist. So that's one tactic that doctors as patients have. Making sure that everyone knows that they're an US, not a THEM.
However, I would say that overall, most doctors as patients are pretty low-key. I think I fall into this camp. I don't bring up the fact that I'm a doctor unless specifically asked, for example (though I do usually get asked--most medical forms make you state your profession), and I don't harass or nitpick or pimp my practitioners to make some point. That said, I don't try to pretend I'm not a doctor either--for example, when asked to describe symptoms or disease progression or a rash or whatnot, I will use medical terminology, not to be all Smarty McSmartpants, but because I think that medical vocabulary is more accurate, and that it's the best way to communicate that kind of information effectively. But I don't do it to be all exclusive or anything, or to prove some point. I think that most doctors would agree that they go to see other doctors because they need specialty care in one thing or another, and you don't exactly want to make the other person feel uncomfortable.
I do think that doctors take a little more care or pay a little more attention when taking care of other doctors or their family members (maybe because they know that someone is double-checking their work), but I still can't say for sure that that's a good thing. One of the strange phenomena that I've found is that if you need to be hospitalized and are affiliated with the hospital in some way, something will go wrong during your hospitalization. I don't know if there is a real increased incident of adverse events, or if it just seems that way, but I don't think it's crazy to think that when you start doing things differently from the way that you normally do them, things will go wrong. I'm not saying that I'm above pulling strings here or there--for instance, I'd already thought out who I'd request to do Cal's anesthesia in New York if, god forbid, he ever needed surgery; ditto for my parents--but I think that "special treatment" can bite you back sometimes.
Anyway. Thank you, Cal's new Pediatrician. See you in a year.
Usually Joe and I got to the movies about once or twice a year. This is probably in some way connected to the fact that Joe's parents also visit us about once or twice a year. So Monday, given that the grandparentals were in town, Joe and I decided to embark on our annual/semi-annual movie outing, and went to go see the new Batman movie.
(If you actually look at what movies we've seen in the past three years since Cal was born, you will notice that they are all overwhelmingly superhero movies--Spiderman, X-Men, Bourne franchise et al. The reason is because usually there's only one or two movies that Joe really really REALLY wants to see each year, and usually these are of the action/superhero ilk. There are other movies that I am interested in seeing as well, but I know that Joe won't really enjoy them, and anyway, it's not like I don't want to see Batman, so Batman it is.)
Anyway. The Bat Man. I liked it. I thought I would and I did. I won't be a big ruin-y ruiner for you, but I thought the plot was fairly well-layered and Heath Ledger was, as all the critics have been proclaiming, effectively creepy in his role. And BIG THUMBS UP to the replacement of Katie Holmes with Maggie Gyllenhaal in the role of The Girl, because man, I liked "Batman Begins" too, but every time Katie Holmes would show up on the screen, it would totally take me out of the movie and I would just think to myself. "Oh yeah. Katie Holmes."
The only problem with the movie (not a problem with the movie itself, more a problem with our movie experience) is that we got lost on the way to the movie theater. We went one way when we should have gone another, ended up circling around some residential neighborhood, and fifteen minutes later, were basically back at our own doorstep, having made one gigantic, meandering ellipse. WE'RE NEW TO THE AREA. Anyway, we got to the movie right before it started, and even though it was a Monday evening, the theater was full, and the only seats we could get were in the front row. It was fine once we got used to it, but the angle made it a little hard to figure out what the hell was going on during the quick cuts of the action sequences. "Wait, what just exploded? Who was that...where did...who punched that guy?"
Yes, so (new subject now!) Cal's birthday was yesterday. He likes cupcakes, so instead of cake, I decided that we would have cupcakes this year. And also, that Cal would help me make them. It would be our project. It would teach him about cooking. And math. And eating lethal amounts of frosting. All important lessons.
It actually went pretty smoothly. Of course, I had to teach Cal a few things, like the correct way to crack an egg (WRONG WAY: holding it in your chubby little fist and squeezing the shit out of it.) And of course, there were some miscalculations on my part, like not being able to mentally portion out the batter into 12 equal cups, such that we ended up with only 11 cupcakes in the end. However, I think that he had fun, and the results were tasty at any rate.
I'm taking Cal to our new Pediatrician tomorrow morning. Generally, I hate going to any doctor for any reason, but we have to go to get this form filled out for Cal's school. Ah, school forms, the bane of the General Pediatrician. He's not due for any immunizations or anything aversive that I know of, so hopefully, despite this being our first visit with a new practitioner, this will be a quick visit to the fomite factory. Every second I spend at the Pediatrician's office is one more second that I think about what my kid could be catching just by being there. I know what I'm talking about. I used to work in the Peds ER, for chrissake.
You know sometimes how you sit down to start and write a post, knowing full well that despite best intentions, someone is going to take something the wrong way and get all mad? That's the feeling I have right now.
What I'm going to write now is my comparison of being a "working mom" (that is to say, WORKING OUTSIDE OF THE HOME), and the experience I've had staying home with Cal full-time for the past few weeks. This obviously, is only my own personal experience with a single, reasonably well-behaved kid under unusual circumstances. We just moved, my stay-at-home-ness is more of a hiatus from the norm more than anything else, and in some ways, we are treating it as such, both in perpetuating the vacation-y "So, what fun things should we do NOW?" carnival-like atmosphere of our days, as well as knowing full well that I have a full-time job to start on August 4th. NONETHELESS, these caveats in place, I will aim to compare, and I'm just going to write what I've been thinking about and be totally honest with my experience. Because the results I have come to have surprised me, and therefore, I thought they might surprise you. Well, maybe some of you.
Before I finished residency and I was looking ahead to this month off from with Cal, I thought that my major issue to deal with would frankly be boredom. My boredom, I mean. Let's be honest people, it's fun to be with your kid, but lots of the things that kids like to do when they're not quite three are sort of boring to us as adults. That's why I was so frantically mining all my collective resources (internet, guidebooks, you guys) for FUN KID ACTIVITIES before we moved down here. The prospect of spending all day every day building elaborate Thomas the Tank Engine landscapes in the living room did not bode well for the prospect of me maintaining enough sanity to not be stripped of that newly minted Georgia medical license. A whole month with no scheduled activities? What were we going to do all day?
(You regular stay-at-home moms can laugh now, it's OK.)
I am going to be honest and say that whenever people told that staying at home with your kid was just as hard if not harder as going to work full time, I didn't really believe them. First of all, I was a resident, so I labored under the conception that NOTHING COULD BE HARDER THAN THIS. Secondly, I thought, huh, staying at home with my kid? That's what I do on weekends. That's what I do when I'm on vacation. That's not hard. Working is hard. And you know, I still see my own point, but what I failed to grasp was the fact of doing something every single day without a break makes it harder. The fact that I'm not coming home to my kid after work or spending my days off with him makes it harder. Because there's no day off from that. There's no change in routine to make it fresh. It's just the same thing all the time.
Sure, obviously with work, there were things, physical hardships that make the workday more taxing than spending the day with Cal. At present, I don't have to wake up before 5am, for instance. I'm rarely rushing with the same kind of urgency as in the hospital. There's not that same baseline level of adrenaline coursing through your veins. For the most part, I can eat when I want, pee when I want, even take a break when I want now that we finally got the cable hooked up and I've discovered the miracle/curse that is Noggin. So what makes it hard? pre-July me would want to know. Sounds pretty relaxed to me. Wake up late, play with Cal, go on fun outings to the park, to the Children's Museum, to the Aquarium, to überbouncehaüs. What's hard about that? Sounds fun to me! Sounds like a vacation!
And you know, it is fun. Cal and I have been having a really good time these past few weeks. Honestly, I haven't had this much uninterrupted time to spend all day every day with him since my maternity leave, and he's obviously a lot more fun to be around now, walking and talking as he is. I mean, I think that even when I was a resident, we spent a good deal of quality time together (considering), and I have never (despite occasionally working long hours and having a nanny and all that) doubted or worried about our closeness or the strength of our bond, because it has just never been an issue. Cal is just a very happy, well-attached kid, this much we have gleaned, and been told by others.
The ways that staying at home full time with your kid is different from working outside the home are sort of difficult to explain unless you've actually been in this situation yourself, and yet I will try. The ways that staying at home becomes hard is the endlessness, the relentlessness of it. When you have a young child, there is a constant sense of need, and when you are the sole caretaker of that child, you are the only one who can fill that need. So you are constantly, constantly attending to someone. There are obviously parallels working in medicine--substitute patient for kid, or in some cases, high-maintenance attending--but the difference is that in medicine, especially in the OR, you work as part of a team. You're not the only one there. Sure, each member of the team is concerned with a different aspect of patient care, but you're all working together, in synchrony, in harmony, towards the same thing. When you're at home with your kid (or kids--can't even imagine that), most of the time, it's just you. You dealing with all The Needs. And that can be tiring, even if you're not, like, lifting heavy boulders or doing CPR.
Also, when you work in The World of Adults, you are used to certain things. Like people obeying the rules of logic. Or being reasonable with their requests. Or having a baseline ability to follow direction. When you are with a three year-old all day, none of these things apply. How do you respond, for instance, when a three year-old tells you he refuses to go to sleep because it's morning, which means it's time to wake up? (It's 9:00pm.) Or when they request to be in two different places simultaneously? Or when they just sit down on the sidewalk and refuse to move for any reason, even though the bus is coming RIGHT NOW and that thunder and lightening means that it's going to start raining ANY MINUTE. There is no logic. There is no reason. There is you in Crazy Kid World. It's like playing Calvinball. There are no rules.
Additionally, I have noticed (and this may be more specific to my own situation) that being with Cal all day is also physically taxing. Most of it can be explained by the following:
1.) We are walking everywhere, or taking mass transit 2.) It is Georgia 3.) It is the middle of the summer 4.) Atlanta sidewalks are not exactly paved and maintained for strollers 5.) Where the hell did all these hills come from?
But by the end of the day, or even early in the afternoon, when we get back from one of our outings, I am DESTROYED. I am sweaty, I am exhausted, I need some water and maybe a cot to recuperate on. Probably things would be different if we were driving around in air-conditioned splendor, but let's not forget that Cal is almost 40 pounds. Sure, he can walk, but does he always want to? No. At least at work, after I lift the patient from the OR table to the stretcher (or vice versa), they're horizontal with wheels under them. (Aside: today, Cal turned to me and, apropos of nothing, observed wonderingly, "Wheels are kind of like circles." Yes, son, welcome to Mesopotamia, 3500 B.C. Behold, the birth of modern man.)
Third, I was not totally wrong in presuming that there would be moments of boredom. I mean, obviously, it would be the Perfect Parent thing to say that I am filled with wonderment and joy watching my child make their way through the world every second of every day--but the fact of it is that after my fifth visit to the Children's "Museum," which doesn't even have the courtesy of having any educational plaques or explanations or anything to read, I can feel my brain cells dying. Sure, you say, I could bring a book, or even my laptop, but those removed from the Lord of the Fly-esque microcosm that forms whenever more than three kids of preschool age get together need to know that CONSTANT VIGILANCE is the only think that will keep these kids from destroying each other. Cal especially is sort of a gentle giant, so I do tend to need to keep and eye on things or else next thing I know he's had his toy snatched from him, been beaten over the head with it, and then been pushed down a flight of stairs. These little hooligans! Quit manhandling my kid! HE'S A DELICATE FLOWER.
Plus, let's not forget all the other stuff you have to do when you're the parent who stays at home. Now, admittedly, I have it easy. I only have one kid, I don't have a huge house, my housekeeping resolve is, shall we say, minimal. But still, there is stuff to do, and when you're the one at home, you're the one who is expected to do it. (I admit that probably these expectations are internal, because I just have this notion that if I don't get any of the housewiffery done, my mother-in-law is just going to look at me and think, "What the hell is she doing all day?") But I am not a domestic person and I derive no intrinsic pleasure from cooking or cleaning or the like. It's just another thing to do while Cal is otherwise occupied.
Obviously, residency wears you out. The long hours, demanding environment, working overnight, all that kind of thing. No one is surprised when, as a resident, you fall asleep before 9:00pm out of sheer exhaustion. But what has surprised me is that these past few weeks, staying home with Cal, I've felt almost as tired, and gone to bed just as early. Maybe it's just the heat, or maybe I'm just, you know, elderly, but I can honestly say that spending all these days with Cal has really worn me out. It is tiring. It is not easy. And I have to say that until now, I underestimated these elements.
That said, again, I have to say: it's fun. Probably a lot more fun than most of the things I do at work on any given day. He's my kid, you know? I'm hard-wired to love being with him. Doesn't make it a piece of cake all the time. Doesn't make me not relish the two hours I had "off" yesterday. But there's such a bigger sense of purpose to it all, I guess. And maybe in the end, the stories that come out of it are more indulgent, more boring that stories that I have about work, and maybe even a little more esoteric in some ways, but I'm going to write them down anyway, so I can remember it all. If the end of residency has taught me anything, it's that life is transient, and things move quickly.
On Tuesday, Cal will be turning three years old. He won't be this age forever. But he's this age now. And I'm glad to have this chance to stop moving forward for a moment, take a breath, and just be with him.
One of the things I still haven't gotten used to yet here in Atlanta is the crosswalks. That sounds strange, so let me explain. We live in Midtown, which is fairly densely populated, reasonably commercial betwixt the residential streets, and certainly frequented with pedestrian traffic as much if not more so than any other part of town. But the crosswalks don't all reflect that. See, in New York, at least in Manhattan, every crosswalk had a pedestrian traffic light. You know, to tell you when to walk. Here, not so much. I have broken the crosswalk situation here in Atlanta to three main types.
1.) REGULAR CROSSWALKS. Red hand means stop, white man means walk. Sometimes the red hand blinks, or counts down numbers, to let you know that solid red hand is imminent. I like this. More information is good.
2.) PUSH CROSSWALKS. They look like regular crosswalks, but if you just stand there, waiting for the red hand to turn into the white man, you could be waiting forever. Look at the street lamp of telephone pole on the corner. Is there a button? A button which perhaps indicates it must be pushed in order for you to ever achieve a pedestrian walk signal? You need to push the button. Caveat: button does not guarantee that you will obtain a walk signal, because sometimes the button does not work. In which case you just need to dart across the street when perpendicular traffic is stopped despite a red hand signal, like the lawless heathen that you are.
3.) "HONOR SYSTEM" CROSSWALK. No pedestrian crossing signal at all. Sometimes there are little white railroad track-looking stripes indicating the path across the street, and sometimes (though not always) there is a sign dictating that on these crosswalks, Georgia state law indicates that cars must stop for pedestrians along these streets (emphasis mine). I hate this kind of crosswalk most of all, because some cars don't stop. They don't slow down, they pretend like they don't even see you poking out from the curb. I know everyone says that I should just start walking across the street, that the cars must stop, but forgive me if my instinct is to not push a stroller carrying my CHILD into oncoming traffic, when the SUV barreling 40 miles per hour down a residential street gives no indication that it gives a rat's ass whether you are crossing in front of its grill or not.
Anyway. Just had to get that off my chest.
So! Today I stepped out of the house for two whole hours without Cal to run some errands. I was able to do this because I finally found a cage strong enough to hold him. Ha! But I kid! Joking about child abuse is hilarious! No, actually, the reason I was able to leave the house was because (as some may have noticed, see sidebar), last weekend, we found a new nanny. She's someone that we've been in contact with for a few months now, found through Craig's List, and with whom we finally had an in-person meeting last weekend. She's been coming a couple of mornings a week now, as part of our "phase-in" period. First morning, she played with Cal while I hung around, trying to stay out of the way. Second morning, ditto, except I stepped out of the house for 15 minutes to drop Joe's shirts off at the dry cleaners (because I am the Great American Hausfrau nowadays, don't you know). And today, I left them alone for about two hours. They're doing fine, Cal is taking to her, we are building up THE TRUST, all that kind of thing. I even got a chance to run to our local breakfast place, chill out with an iced coffee and a copy of The New York Times, and relish the sweet, sweet peace of not having someone constantly trying to scale up the sheer face of my body like a miniature Sherpa. It was nice. And it was also nice to come home and see that both Cal and New Nanny were playing nicely together, as well as, you know, alive. So stressful to leave your kid with someone new.
The one other thing I got to do, aside from breakfast and errands (picking up Joe's shirts from the dry cleaners--oh, how I miss New York, where the dry cleaner would drop off your clothes at your house, FOR FREE), was walk around the neighborhood and take some pictures. I've been wanting to do this for a while, but between Cal and the stroller and the monstrous bookbag of provisions I have to carry everywhere (portable potty, change of clothes, wipes, lunch, snacks, water bottle, assorted miscellany), I simply don't have the strength to carry my big camera around. As a result, most of the pictures you've been looking at have been from my cell phone camera. Which, you know, is fine, given the crappy photos that I've been able to take anyway. However, it was nice to have chance to walk around aimlessly and snap a few shots. (Some of the pictures tend towards the, shall we say, more squalid corners, but let me assure you that it was my own gravitation towards those locales, and that the neighborhood itself is on the whole quite nice.)
My last day of residency was Sunday, June 29th, taking home call for cardiothoracic anesthesia, and I have to admit, I was hoping for a softball. I figured I would get called in for something at the very least, but maybe something small, like a washout or a chest closure. The moving van was coming the next morning, and so I needed to request to be on call on Sunday so that I could have the next day off to, you know, be around as burly men carted off all my material possessions on dollies. I was hoping, perhaps naively, that I might actually get a chance to finish some packing. I would have been perfectly happy with an anticlimactic end to my residency. The universe apparently had other plans.
I already knew the night before that they had scheduled a BiVAD for the following morning to start at 8:00am--essentially, the placement of a mechanical ventricular assist device, often used in failing hearts as a bridge to transplant. So I knew already that I would be going in for that case, which would take a good couple of hours, at least until the afternoon, but I hoped...I mean, there was always the possibility...that the service would be quiet after that. There was nothing else looking ominous up in the CTICU. The OR desk had a blank slate otherwise, as far as they were concerned.
The BiVAD was going smoothly, patient doing well, when we got word that the thoracic team had just booked a lung transplant. Then, moments later, further word, that cardiac had booked a heart transplant. Same donor, two different patients. And that, as they say, was the ballgame.
Once my attending and I realized that the whole day was basically written off, I actually started to enjoy myself. "Going out with a bang!" I kept saying for the rest of the day. My attending was not quite so happy at how the cards had fallen (he's one of those brilliant sarcastic-types) but I think was pleased enough that it was my last day. "Why?" I joked, "Because I'm leaving, and you'll never have to put up with me again?"
"No," he answered, "because you're almost an attending, and I can basically leave you alone and let you manage things." He turned to the surgeons, the perfusionists, anyone that would listen. "Hey, in about eight hours, she's going to be an attending!" Everyone cheered, congratulations were lofted about. I thanked them, and nervously hoped that I was actually ready for all this.
There was a point, I believe, where we were running four cardiac surgery rooms at once. (There was one more case that got rushed in while I was still in with the BiVAD--a post-op bleeder.) It was insane. Thankfully, the general surgery add-on schedule was virtually empty, another unusual circumstance, but this at least allowed the general anesthesia call team to pitch in, the second year residents teeing up rooms to start and occasionally actually starting the cases. We even enlisted the help of two of our first year residents (first years for the next two days, anyway) to help finish a case as the surgeons were closing, transfusing blood products and running blood gases as I ran next door to start one of the transplants. Neither of them had done their cardiac rotations yet, and as I signed out to them and explained the monitoring and told them what to watch out for before sprinting to the OR next door, I saw their hubcap-sized eyes floating over their masks and gave them this empty comfort: "Don't worry, you guys are going to be fine." I remember how many times I've been told that during my training, when I've been put in situations that I felt were completely beyond me, and how meaningless that seemed--"What do you mean I'm going to be fine? How about the fact that I don't know what I'm doing? What's going to happen to the patient?"--and yet, it was. Fine, that is. The attending popped in and out, the second year residents helped out, and the patient made it up to the ICU a few hours later, humming VADs in tow.
How fitting, really, to do a heart transplant as one’s last case of residency. Much like the process of medical training, an organ transplant takes the ordinary and transposes it into extraordinary circumstances—in this case, taking the heart of a freshly deceased patient and having it work in the body of a patient who still might be saved. The recipient that day was a 57 year-old man with dilated cardiomyopathy—with a sick and dying heart that did not beat so much as feebly tremble, barely moving enough blood through his body to keep his organs alive. The sight was quite impressive really, once the patient was anesthetized and the sternum was sawed open to reveal the chest cavity underneath. The patient's old heart was huge, congested, an angry and mottled looking purplish mass looking more like a dead thing in a butcher’s window than anything else. We worked together to get the patient onto cardiopulmonary bypass, the surgeons snipped the old heart out, and suddenly the chest cavity was huge, empty, a yawning expanse waiting to be filled.
For surgery scheduling, there is usually what we call a "send time" and a "cut time," the send time being the time that the patient should be physically wheeled into the OR, and the cut time being after induction of anesthesia and placement of all the necessary monitoring and lines, that the surgeons will be making initial incision. In organ transplants, this is all rigorously timed to coincide with the trajectory of the harvested organ--when the clamp the old heart from the donor, how long it will take them to drive (or in this case, fly) back from the harvest site, when they think the organ will be physically arriving into the hospital. All this is designed to minimize the ischemic time of the new organ, the amount of time that the organ needs to be on ice; basically, the shorter the ischemic time, the better the organ will perform.
However, as with anything in the hospital, the timing was not as precise as planned, and so after we went on bypass, after the old heart was out, there was some stalling. During the wait, which seemed interminable after all the rush, we exchanged stories of transplants past, one in particular where one member of the harvest team grabbed the Playmate cooler with the organ, jumped out of the ambulance, and simply ran across the George Washington Bridge as fast as he could to the hospital, rather than wait for the upper deck to clear. We laugh at this image for a little while, all the while noting how fucking cool it would be to be able to tell the family offhand afterwards that yes, that was me, I didn't want to keep you all waiting, so I ran your heart across the bridge.
Finally, with some fanfare, the new heart for our patient arrived, about 25 minutes later than predicted. The harvest team, we gathered, had been stuck in some traffic. The heart was double-bagged and floating in a slurry of ice, looking small and cold and waxy. The surgeons peered at it intently, turning it over in their hands, occasionally trimming small pieces away in preparation for the anastamosis.
As new connections were made, the patient, who had been cooled down for his run on bypass, was gradually allowed to warm up, and with him warmed his new heart. It twitched irregularly at first, then started to beat. Its waxy, clay-like appearance melted away as the heart filled with the patients blood, and it flushed pink, then bright red. It needed to be shocked once, twice, with internal defibrillation paddles, and the anastamoses were tested, checking for leaks, but by the time the surgeons started to close the sternum, the heart was beating vigorously, snappily, fairly jumping out of the chest like healthy hearts do. The heart looked like it knew what it was doing. As though it had known what it was supposed to do all along.
Inarguably, and despite the reputation that being a Spam eater is undoubtedly garnering, one of the things I worried most about in moving to Atlanta was the food. I like Southern home-cooking as much as the next person, and yes, I know that I should venture out to the Buford Highway or to Doraville (not confirmed, I'm just repeating what EVERYONE HAS BEEN TELLING ME) to find some good ethnic eats or marts, but...it's different, you know? In New York, it was so easy, there were so many restaurants so close to each other and all so very convenient to access at all hours. Now pickings are a little slimmer and farther between, though I'm sure they are out there. A good Chinese restaurant? A good Japanese restaurant? A good Korean joint? Still looking.
We did, however, find (of all things) a good Singapore-type restaurant just a few blocks away from us, and that was such a revelation that it made our whole evening. It is a trendy place, fusion of course, as many trendy Asian-eque restaurants are, and while I would prefer of course a tiny back-alley noodle shop with six tables and two old Japanese guys in the back, shrouded in steam, this is OK too. Cal enjoyed it so much he even decided to give it a go with the chopsticks. True, he used them on his pomme frites, but hey, he's kind of fusion too.
Now, to be clear, I am not talking about e-mail Spam and I am not talking about musical Spam and I am not talking about kitschy Spam, the kind that you buy antique tin signs of to hang in your kitchen, or ironic vintage T-shirts of to wear around your frat house. I am talking about Spam the food. To eat. In your mouth. Further, I am talking about what I made for dinner last night. Spam with fried rice, to be precise.
Before people get all crazy up in here that OH MY GOD I WILLINGLY FED MY FAMILY SPAM, let me further clarify that 1.) Cal had his own, separate, non-Spam dinner, and 2.) I have been eating Spam all my life. Maybe the Asian folks that read this page can back me up on this one, but in Asian cultures (well, I shouldn't be so blanket--in Chinese and Korean culture, maybe others too, though I cannot personally attest to this fact), eating Spam is OK. I've heard some people call it "a delicacy," the likes of which you would eat on payday, and maybe I wouldn't go quite that far, but it is a common and accepted mealtime staple, quite tasty with a nice bowl of rice. I've had Spam in quite a few menu items in my day--I even had Spam sushi once, but I don't know if that was a serious effort or just a joke (it was a college thing)--either way, it was good.
Many of you white people out there (Joe included), may not have ever had Spam before. My friends, never say never. Just try it once. If you don't like it, you can blame me. But if you do like it, well, enter the world of Spam. Welcome home.
SPAM FRIED RICE
You will need:
Spam (duh) Eggs x 3 Rice x 1.5 cups Vegetable oil Salt LOVE (the secret ingredient!)
Get yourself a big thing of Spam. Not the little can, the bigger one. I don't know how big it is, but the one pictured above, that looks almost square in front profile. So easy to purchase! We got ours at CVS. There is no shame, no need to hide it in your basket under the dish soap. There you go.
Bring the Spam home. Unroof the Spam and free it from its metal prison. Do not mind the thin scrim of clear gelatin that has pooled up on the surface, nor the moist squelching noise that issues from the Spam block as you work it free. These are all features intrinsic to Spam. Embrace the goop. Love the noises.
Cut the Spam into slices. Some might prefer cubes, but I think slices are nice. Cut them thin if you can, 1/4" or less. The Spam will yield easily, like some sort of meat gel. Never you mind about that. It's going to taste good.
Heat up a pan under high flame and plop the Spam slices facedown. You will not need extra cooking oil, Spam has its own oils. See how easy it makes it for you? Spam loves you! Allow it to cook for a good few minutes on each side, until brown and crispy, kind of like bacon. This is why you cut it thin. It's going to start to smell good at this point.
When Spam is browned on each side, remove from the flame and let it rest. Just kidding. Spam doesn't need to rest, it's not fussy like those other meats. You can just eat it right away, hot off the griddle. But you'll want to save some for the rice.
Get your rice. Day old rice is fine. Put it in a pot with some vegetable oil. Add three eggs. This is an approximation--usually I use two eggs for one cup of rice, so let's just say three for a cup and a half.
"But Michelle," you may be asking, "can I use egg whites with my Spam fried rice?" Now picture me shaking my head ruefully. Give it up, YOU'RE ALREADY EATING SPAM. Just use the whole egg. You'll be fine. Note that fried rice is ideally made in a frying pan or a wok under high heat, but I made mine in a pot because the movers took all our stuff and sold it off the back of their truck on the streets of the Bronx somewhere, so now we have NOTHING. But you should use a frying pan if you have such finery.
Toss the rice and the egg around, careful not to let it burn. Well, a little burned is fine. You can add some salt if you like, but remember, Spam is already very salty. Some people like to cut their Spam up into little cubes and toss it in the rice as they're frying it, but I do not condone this method, preferring instead to lay the Spam slices on top like a katsudon. Also, some people (not me) add vegetables and stuff to their fried rice, but why bother? You're already eating Spam. Just eat some vegetables tomorrow.
Remove rice from flame. Spoon into a bowl, and place crisped Spam slices on top. Eat with relish. When your gringo husband notes that the Spam is "really salty," shake your head in sorrow and pity. Spam. The others will never understand.
(Serves four, or one really hungry person for dinner and, subsequently, breakfast.)
After figuring out how we were actually supposed to receive oversized packages in a building without a doorman (I feared that it would requiring picking up the package at the post office or having the package received at The Workplace--but no, apparently if it's too big to fit in the mailbox, they'll just leave it in front of your door in the common hallway and trust that your neighbors won't steal it), I finally pulled the trigger and purchased these Flor tiles that we'd been eying for a few months. You can read about Flor if you want, I'm not getting paid by them or anything, but basically, it's modular carpeting that is very easy to clean, and I believe that they are made of recycled plastics or some such thing, though I have to admit that that matters less to me than the fact that they look good. That's right, I HATE THE PLANET. Not really. But sort of. You too, dolphins.
I originally ordered 25 tiles, figuring that I would make a 6-tile-by-4-tile rug over our future dining area (future because, as far as we know, our furniture is STILL IN NEW YORK...about which more later) with one extra tile left over in the case that if someone or someones decided to unload Bad Things on any one part of the carpet, so we could just swap out that square. However, upon laying down the carpet, I realized that it was actually a little small for the space, so instead of being one tile extra, we were three tiles short. Ah so.
Anyway, I ordered the three extra tiles (well, really four extra tiles for one to grow on, see above) and when they come, I'll actually install the thing with whatever sticky dots they included to make sure the carpeting doesn't go sliding all over the place. But I think it'll look nice. And hopefully keep the wood floors as unscuffed as possible, so we will not be losing our renter's deposit at the end of this thing. (Actually, with a dog and a three year old living here for the next two years, what are the chances that we will ever see that deposit again? Yeah, that's what I thought.)
I am really glad that we got that Aquarium membership the last time we went, because it make it much easier to leave when, after about forty minutes (twenty of which were spent eating lunch and engaged in the standard do-you-have-to-go-pee-pee-no-I-don't-I-think-you-do tussle), Cal asked to leave.
"But Cal," I asked, "don't you want to see more fish?"
"We already saw fish," Cal answered, totally bored. Which means that if we had paid full admission and were to calculate the actual amount of time spent enjoying the exhibits, we would have spent...oh, upwards of $2.00 per minute enjoying that view of the hammerhead swimming laaaaazily about. Well, anyway, let's just say that the price of a yearly membership has already paid for itself. Especially since this is the exact same stunt that Cal pulled the last time we went to the Aquarium.
We spent a little time outdoors after lunch, playing in the playground at Centennial Park across the street, but it was sunny and humid and ninety frillion degrees outside, so this was not to be a good option after the first, oh, ten minutes. So instead, we crossed the street again (all this stuff is very close to each other down there--call it Kidz Korner) and headed to the Children's Museum.
Now, let me be the first to note that it is a little indulgent to call this place a "museum." An awesome indoor playground, perhaps. But I think that to call it a museum is pushing the definition a little bit. For example, would not a museum have to have a little more in the way of teaching some art or history or basic scientific principles, like how a pulley works, or how forces are distributed in an arch, or how food grows, instead of just having a pile of toys just strewn about in a giant room? To be clear, though--not that I'm complaining. Because it was really fun and the toys were really cool toys, and did I mention that the air conditioning was phenomenal. However...museum? The New York Hall of Science it wasn't.
But believe you me, we will be back there. Probably tomorrow, if Cal has his way.
(Hey, remember when I used to be a doctor? Me too. That was fun.)
So I watched "Requiem for a Dream" a few days ago, because it's on Hulu and anyway, we don't have a TV. It was OK, I guess, but man, it is not a pick-me-up. I had heard so much about it, how it was this harrowing depiction of drug addiction and all that. It was, certainly, and I liked the little art film flourishes and the jagged cuts and crazy flickering cinematography and all that. And I thought Ellen Burstyn was good, as the Brooklyn hausfrau with simple dreams spriraling to a wretched end. But in the end, I felt like it was a little after-school special. I mean, of course, we all know that Drugs Are Bad, so I'm not saying that a movie that says as much is wrong to do so, but I guess I was expecting something a little more...nuanced? I mean, to sum it up (don't read this next part if you don't want to know the end of the movie), in the final scenes, the four main characters end up respectively in a mental institution electroconvulsive-therapied into oblivion (without anesthesia, I might note--NOT REALISTIC); in jail keening for his lost childhood; septic and hospitalized with his arm amputated above the elbow (JORDAN CATALANO! You still look good, even with one arm); and living the depraved life life of a prostitute cuddling a brown paper baggies of drugs like a kitten. I mean, obviously, there are not that many happy endings in real-life stories of meth addiction (was that supposed to be meth? I'm not sure, maybe it was supposed to be heroin), but this was a real slash and burn. But I guess I felt the same way about "Legends of the Fall," where, at the end of the film, I just looked at the screen and asked, "What, aren't there any more characters you want to kill off?" Seriously, who didn't die in that movie?
Anyway, it was OK. "Requiem for a Dream," that is. I just wish I hadn't already watched all the episodes of "Arrested Development," so I could have had a lighter evening.
Anyway, I had big plans for today, which involved taking the bus downtown and going to the Children's Museum (I think they have free admission the second Tuesday of each month), but our plans got screwed up because our real estate agent, who was coming by to do a "walk through," showed up an hour late. Which, you know, I expected, because there is no real reason (aside from, you know, professionalism) for him to show up on time--he's already made his commission, this part is just obligation. So anyway, instead of the Children's Museum, we spent the morning walking through the apartment, making notation of pre-existing scuffs on the paint and scratches on the wood flooring, so that when our lease is up on two years, we know what damage was our fault (hint: Cooper-shaped hole in the door, errant Play-Doh smears on the ceiling) and what was already there to begin with.
It turned out to be an OK-enough day, I guess. Cal and I just ended up going to the pool upstairs, and then we took a leisurely 2 hour nap before dinner at my instigation.
MICHELLE
(Lying in bed) Cal, should we take a nap?
CAL No, I'm not tired!
MICHELLE
Zzzzz....
CAL (Succumbing to peer pressure) Zzzzz....
In general, I think that Cal is mostly ready to outgrow his afternoon nap. Which, you know, is fine, because when he starts school full-time at the end of the summer, though there will be some sort of "rest on your mats" period in the afternoon, he certainly won't be napping the way he's used to napping, in a dark quiet room with Enya in the background. (Kidding about the Enya. We do have a white noise machine, however.) He'll just have to go to bed earlier in the evenings, I guess, which, now that I'm no longer keeping resident hours, is no longer as terrible a prospect as it may have been (whereas during residency, if Cal went to bed before 9pm, there would be many, many days where I just wouldn't see him at all). I'm looking to the rest of this summer as basically an adjustment period to life in Atlanta, as well as a trial run to get Cal reliably toilet-trained and on a good sleep schedule for school.
Cal and I are planning to do a lot of exploring this week. Today marks Joe's first official day of fellowship (though I think most of the day is non-clinical, rather involves him running from hospital to hospital dealing with administrative issues--IDs, passwords and whatnot), so we're on our own and ready to make the most of it. Since I told my new job that I wouldn't be starting until the first week of August, Cal and I have a good month together to party down, and towards the second half of the month, gradually phase in the new nanny. (We've been in contact with someone for a few months now, have an in-person interview scheduled soon, about which more later.) There are a lot of things we want to do (and a couple of things we have to do later this week--decidedly less fun, however, like the apartment walk-through with our real-estate agent, letting in the movers, etcetera) but today I decided that I was going to take Cal to one of these bouncy-house places that seem to be quite popular down here in Ye Land of Seemingly Unlimited Commercial Space. Do you know what I'm talking about? They have these gigantic inflatable jungle obstacle-course-type-things that you can climb on, slide down, moon-bounce houses, blow-up animals, what have you. It looked fun. So that was the adventure part for Cal. The adventure part for me was figuring out how to get there on the bus.
Now, even in New York, I would rarely take the bus unless I was going crosstown, opting instead whenever possible to take the subway, because duh, it is faster. However, I believe it is not an understatement to tell you that the New York City subway system is somewhat more extensive than that in Atlanta (the MARTA rail seems to consist of two perpendicular lines that sort of fan out slightly at the edges of the city), whereas the bus covers some, though not all, of the area left unserviced by train. So we knew that today, we were going to take the bus.
So now I've taken the train and the bus here, and I have to say that so far, from what I've heard of MARTA from the locals, public transportation in Atlanta gotten a bad rap. I mean, it's not most people's main means of travel like it is in some cities, so as such, it's obviously a little underserviced, but in general, I think it's OK. Partially, I think the stigma is cultural--the impression I get is that people take MARTA because they don't have a good other option (read: no car) so while many would rather drive, some don't really have a choice; as opposed to New York, where people take the subway because it is fast and efficient and having a car in the city is a big fat pain in the ass. Sure, the MARTA bus doesn't run on schedule (I think our line was running about 20 minutes late on either leg of the trip), and sure, it was a long time between buses (about half an hour, per the "schedule"), but once we got on it was fast and it was clean and there was a lot of room for Cal's stroller. And I guess the key is that we weren't really in a hurry anyway. I got a 30-day unlimited pass at the subway station yesterday, and I think we'll be getting some good use out of it.
Anyway, the Kinderbouncehaus was fun, and Cal got to expend a lot of energy without having to lose 50% of his body weight in sweat. (Seriously, what do kids do outside here in the summer? It is so unbelievably hot. Swim, I guess. Or play Wii in their rec rooms.) Afterwards, we had lunch at this sort of dodgy sandwich place near the bouncy place (Cal had his own food), and then caught the bus to come back home. It was a nice day. Plus, we got to do the public transportation thing, which, once I realized was a reasonable option here, gives us a lot more options of places to go and stuff to do.
I know, I know, the next thing you're going to ask me now is, when are you going to get your driver's license? People, I AM WORKING ON IT, but just remember that having two drivers in the family is not the same as having two cars, and since Joe needs our one car for work anyway, it's not like there'd be anything for me to drive around anyway, even if, you know, I was legally able to do so.
Anyway. We'll probably head downtown tomorrow to check out the Children's Museum or the Aquarium or some such thing. If Cal doesn't drag me back to Kinderbouncehaus, that is.
JOE So, honey, I think you should consider switching you cell phone number to a 404 area code number, because [ennumerates various reasons why a 404 area code cell phone number would be beneficial now that we live in Atlanta].
MICHELLE But...I have a 212 cell phone number! Do you know how impossible it is to get a 212 number these days? Do you know what it means to have a 212 cell phone number?
JOE Yeah? So?
MICHELLE It's a 212 phone number! A 212 cell phone number! You can't even get a 212 number on a land line these days! I would be crazy to give up a 212 cell phone number! It's like winning the lottery and then throwing away the ticket!
JOE It's just an area code.
MICHELLE Right, but it's 212.
JOE You're not making any sense.
MICHELLE You just don't understand the 212 thing. Look, if I can get two phone number on my cell phone, I'll make the second number a 404 number. But I will not jettison my 212 cell phone number. What am I, nuts?
JOE Yes.
Also fun for New Yorkers:This recent post in the New York Times blog, about kids and the subway. Quite amusing.
crazy things in our new place that i've never had in any place i've lived before
(Note: Cannot take credit for any of this, the guy who actually owns the house, from whom we're renting, tricked out the house with all this stuff before he moved out.)
1.) A refrigerator that spits out ice for you! And you don't have to keep refilling the ice cube trays! Or yelling at a certain spouse because he chronically underfills them, and what's the point of a sliver-sized slab of ice, I ask you, WHAT? Also, spits out water! However, water is not New York water and therefore tastes funny.
2.) A washer and dryer in some back closet next to the kitchen. A WASHER AND DRYER IN OUR HOUSE. Joe came up to me and asked me if I had some quarters for the washing machine, and I actually hesitated for a good five seconds before finally settling on the decision that he was joking.
3.) A garbage disposal in the sink. What is this magic? You shove nasty foodstuffs down the sink, flip and switch, and whrrrrr, all the nasty foodstuffs goes away? Where does it go? I looked under the sink, presuming that it was dumping into another garbage can under there, but there was not. The food was just gone. I asked Joe where the garbage from the garbage disposal went, and he just shrugged and said he didn't know either. MAGIC.
4.) Ceiling fans. The South is lousy with ceiling fans. At first, I was skeptical, because I was like, WHAT IS THIS, THE CIVIL WAR? CRANK UP THE A/C! They do work pretty well, though, I have to say.
Despite the perfectly natural assumption that having moved to Atlanta, we are now ensconced in Southern-fried suburban splendor, we actually ended up choosing to live in a very nice neighborhood in Midtown. This is probably all I should say about it, since Joe is already fairly paranoid that stalkers will one day show up at our doorsteps and kill us all, all the while screaming, "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DIDN'T INCLUDE INTERNAL MEDICINE IN YOUR 12 MEDICAL SPECIALTY STEREOTYPES!," I think I can safely say (because it is obvious for anyone who has access to Google Maps) that Midtown is in a fairly urban part of the city. I don't mean "urban" in that coded way that advertising people use the word "urban," like, This Fresca ad will appeal to the urban market because it features rap music and people dancing in the spray of an open fire hydrant. I mean "urban" in that it is already densely developed and inhabited, pedestrian-friendly, close to public transportation, and easily accessible to all other parts of the city. This choice of neighborhood was on purpose. Though we certainly looked at other neighborhoods that we rumored to be nice for families (and by all appearances, they are very nice--Virginia Highlands, Buckhead, Decatur, Candler Park and whatnot), we thought that moving to midtown would be the easiest transition from Manhattan. Cal can walk to school, I can take the subway (whatever, MARTA) to work, we can walk to stuff, there's a Starbucks one block away. You know, caffeine, laziness--the important things. The immediate area surrounding our place is very residential, a combination of condos and older homes with lots of mature, tree-lined streets, nice sidewalks, and easy access to the park. It's a very friendly neighborhood. We like it.
We're renting a townhouse within a bigger housing complex. The rental decision was practical--we entertained the idea of buying, just because it seemed like The Grown-Up Thing that people were doing, but in the end, it didn't really make sense. Given that in all likelihood, we will be moving again in two years, we didn't want to have the burden of having to sell a place, and potentially have all of our liquid assets tied up in a house if we were unable to unload it. As for the decision not to live in a free-standing home, that was an easy one. To me, and at this point, to Joe too, living in a bigger complex is reassuring. We're living in more of a townhouse than an apartment, but the front door opens out into a communal hallway (where the elevator and mailroom are), and there is a shared garden and patio between the five other townhomes in our entryway. I have no desire to landscape my own yard or fix my leaky roof, and the idea of having an on-site person that I can call if my toilet explodes at 2am is a huge plus for me. (In New York, we call these people "supers." I'm not sure what they're called here, "residential managers" or something like that, but anyway, there's one for this building.) I know that some people feel like apartment-type living is a huge pain in the ass--the NOISE, those CRAZY NEIGHBORS ALL UP IN YOUR BUSINESS, that sort of thing. But honestly, when I think about living in a free-standing house in the suburbs or somewhere more remote, all I can think is, if they get axe-murdered, how long is it going to take people to find the bodies?
Also, though this might seem like a lemons-into-lemonade kind of statement, I like it that the new place is not too, too big. Certainly, it is large by New York standards, but it is simply a modest little two bedroom townhouse, the size of which might be described by those used to more palatial digs as "starter-home" sized. It is not overwhelming, the scale of it. We can deal with keeping order in a house like this. Though I do have to say, the amount of storage space is unreal. Never have I seen so many big closets, so much shelving. There actually is a walk-in closet off the master bedroom (don't know why they designated that one the "master," it's basically the same size as the other bedroom) that is, without hyperbole, the size of a New York City bedroom. There's a picture of it just above, and I actually took the picture while standing in the closet off of the walk-in closet. THE CLOSET HAS ITS OWN CLOSET. How is that not a bedroom? And who knows, we may just turn it into such, were there such reason to need an extra bedroom. (You know, like if we find some adorable orphan scamp sitting out on the sidewalk and decide to make him our own. And that orphan scamp is Leonardo DiCaprio.)
When we got in early yesterday afternoon, we just basically walked around the place over and over. I obsessed over the lighting (I couldn't figure out which switches activated which lights, and why some light switches appeared to serve absolutely no purpose), and Cal alternately ran up and down the stairs and hugged his toys. "I love these toys! I missed the Magna Tiles so much!" he told us, and I can understand, having been separated from said tiles for, oh, THREE WHOLE DAYS. Then we took Cal up to the roof for a swim. (The pool is a community pool, just like Melrose Place. Joe and I can be the dual-doctor couple, and I can wait for the perfect moment to rip off my russet wig, revealing the bald pate and brain surgery scar of EVIL.) After that, a walk for dinner a few blocks away, and then back home for some reorganization.
It was a big day for Cal, tiring yet too exciting for a nap. After Joe went out for a quick run to the supermarket, Cal was lying down at the base of the stairs, playing with his trains, when he told me, "We can go home now."
"We are home, honey. Remember, this is our new home."
"But I want to go to my home." And at that, I got a little misty, because really, I felt the exact same way. Despite all the excitement and the vacation-like novelty, the thrill of the nice new house and fun new adventures, I do miss our home, our real home, and if someone offered me the chance right then to go back, I would say yes in a heartbeat.
"I know baby, you want to go to our home in New York. I miss that home too. But this is a nice home too, and we're going to stay in Atlanta for a while to do new fun things here. Mommy and Daddy and Cal and Cooper, all together."
He thought for a bit, then repeated back, "This is our new home."
A few minutes later, as I was organizing some stuff in the back, I noticed Cal was being especially quiet. Fearing treachery or mischief, I ran out to the living room to try and halt whatever I presumed was taking place, but instead found that he was completely asleep on the hardwood floor, his toys in an ovoid orbit all around him. Forgoing plans for bath and bedtime ritual, I scooped him up and carried him upstairs to the air mattress, which I had made up soon after we got in earlier in the day. (Old habit from college--the bed is always the first thing I set up. That way, if I get too stressed of overwhelmed with the unpacking, there's always a place to take a nap.) Cal protested initially, insisted that he didn't want to go to bed, until he actually saw the bed itself. I had made it up exactly the way we'd had it at home in New York, with the same pillow configuration, the same sheets, the same orientation in the room. "That's Mommy's pillow," he pointed, "that's Daddy's pillow, and that's Cal's pillow!" He seemed very happy, it all being so familiar. (Yes, Cal still co-sleeps with us. In our bed. Commence commenting...NOW.) And without any further protest, he climbed in, pulled up the blankets, and went right to sleep.
Not to make this seem like some sort of but-everything-turned-out-OK coda to the entry from yesterday, but...Cal did great last night. He was happy and chatty as always, actually requested bathtime at my parent's house (despite the change in locale from his usual), and happily tucked himself into bed at the end of it all. Kids are so weird. That said, I wish I were three again. Life is easier when you're three.
The transition is a little more traumatic in some ways for the adults, I reckon (note: SOUTHERN TALK), despite the wider perspective and the fact that we can rationalize the reasons for difficult changes. Joe told me that he was taking out some last vestiges of house-moving detritus yesterday evening, among them Cal's retired crib mobile, which has a broken motor. While he was wheeling the stuff down to ground level in our old lady cart, Joe accidentally activated the base of the mobile (which plays music), and the sound of that crib music actually got him little teary. Or at least I got a little teary when I heard the story. A lot of nice memories in that house of Cal (and Cooper) growing up. It's hard to leave.
Thanks for all the comments, by the way, and I do mean all of them. I respect and appreciate all the different points of view. I by no means purport to be an expert in The Ways of Children, but at this point, at least until he hits puberty and starts getting all secretive, I think I am sort of an expert in my child, and you know, I think he's going to do great. There is an instinct to want to shield your kid, especially your first, from all the world's hurts, and in the big scheme of his short, thankfully uneventful life, this move is a pretty huge event, and all I want to make it as smooth and easy for Cal as possible. This does not mean pre-chewing his food for him or covering him with bubble wrap, but it does mean making sure that he is not exposed to more than I think he can reasonably understand, and taking measures to ensure that he is out of the way when five burly guys are lifting heavy furniture overhead and pushing hundreds of pounds of boxes on poorly-balanced dollies. Probably the next time we move, Cal will be five and we will approach things differently then. (For example, perhaps he can actually help us pack up his stuff. PLEASE LET HIM BE OLD ENOUGH TO HELP PACK. Best case scenario, he can drive the moving van.) But for right now, he's doing an admirable job of rolling with the punches. Better than his parents, anyway.
* * *
The new first-year anesthesia residents started yesterday. I believe the first day is usually purely administrative, but the second day starts their training in the ORs, and it is (RECURRING THEME!) a difficult transition for everyone. The quantum leap from being a second-year to a third-year resident for the new seniors, the loss of the most experienced residents from the work pool for the attendings (means more oversight required and more fretting for everyone), and of course the switch into a completely different field for the incoming first-years.
Some of the scariest moments of my medical career I remember from my first few months as an anesthesia resident. Of course now, in retrospect, it's hard to remember how I could possibly be scared about some of the things that freaked me, but it's not difficult to remember that feeling of being pushed so completely out of my comfort zone and expected to take a lot of responsibility despite the fact that I didn't feel confident at all in my role or abilities. I think medicine makes you feel like that all the time. I'm sure I'll feel like that again in a month, when I start my new job.
Good luck, new gas-passers. You're going to be awesome, and even though I know you don't believe me, these next few years are going to pass by before you even realize it. I wouldn't have believed it either, but somehow, I blinked, and the next thing I knew, they were handing me this thing:
The moving company (they are called "Schleppers," very New York) showed up promptly at 9:30am, and proceeded, very efficiently and with good cheer, to dismantle our lives. First they took out all the boxes. Then they took out all the office furniture. Then the disassembled the crib and the dining room table and wrapped everything in layers and layers of moving blankets and plastic wrap. Then they took out the mattresses. And then, they drove away.
I hope they know our new address is all I have to say.
We tried to minimize the trauma for all involved--Cooper went to Doggie Day Care (their term, not ours) for the day, and Cal was fed, watered, and kicked out of the house before the movers arrived. I didn't want him to get stressed when he saw all our stuff being carted out. I didn't want him to feel scared when he saw the house all empty. He had a fine day out with our nanny, going to the playground and the zoo and feeding all manner of animals in Central Park, avian and rodential. (ducks and squirrels, people, not pigeons and rats--though honestly, I'm not quite sure why we think one pairing is somehow more hygienic than the other.) I met him early in the afternoon at my parents house, where he and I will be staying for the next few days before our flight to Atlanta on Thursday morning. He was excited to be there, excited to see everyone, happy to run around and jump on all the furniture and generally be fawned over.
Only later that night did he start asking to go home.
I think it is difficult to understate how little you can prepare a not-quite three year-old for a big move, and how difficult it is for them to even understand the concept. With respect to our old apartment, Cal has lived there all his life. It's the only home he's ever known. He knows every room and hallway, he knows the neighborhood, he knows the names of the doormen in the lobby and he knows where all his toys are. With the exception of some limited locations in the outside world (playgrounds, school, other people's houses), our home was his whole world to him. So it was a little difficult telling him that we wouldn't be going back there.
I've been telling him about the move to Atlanta for months, of course, trying to get him ready so that these next few weeks wouldn't come as a complete shock. I've been talking to him and showing him pictures of our BIG NEW HOUSE and THE SWIMMING POOL and the BIG PARK right nearby, and how we're going to a FUN NEW SCHOOL and how we can go to the aquarium EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND. In fact, I worry that I've been building it up a little too much, to the point that Cal told me blandly that there was going to be a castle with fireworks in Atlanta, making me wonder if he was equating Atlanta with Disneyland. However, I have to admit that I have been minimizing that aspect of the move that entails us leaving our old home and everything else that that involves. It is difficult to explain to such a young kid that, with the exception of his parents and his dog, everything he has ever known and taken for granted is about to change.
We haven't even left the city yet, but already, the transition has been rough. Cal did not want to take a bath at my parent's house last night, for instance. He was not against the idea of bathing itself, but as he screamed over and over again, "I want to take a bath in my own home!" Going to bed too was rough. "Want to sleep in my own home!" And a few hours after he fell asleep, he actually woke up screaming and crying, which he never does, telling me that he doesn't want to stay here, that he wants to go home. I don't know how staying at my parents house for a few days is different for him from when we stay at a hotel on vacation, but maybe some small, prescient part of him is realizing that all this talk about "moving to Atlanta" is something more than just a fun story that we tell before bedtime.
Anyway, it's been a little rough for all of us. Joe got the rental car early this morning and he and Cooper are now on the road, in Virginia somewhere by this point. He's going to stop overnight at his dad's house in South Carolina, and make the final push into Atlanta tomorrow morning, hopefully getting in before or maybe a little after noon. There, he will take care of some stuff (picking up our lease car, going to the supermarket, that sort of thing), and will be able to meet our flight when Cal and I land at Hartsfield Thursday afternoon. Our moving van should arrive in about a week to a week and a half. I wish it could be sooner--I think it would help Cal adjust to the new house to see all the familiar furniture, be able to have all his books and toys around him (as it is, half of the rental car that Joe is driving down is filled with Cal's "continuity" stuff, most of the heavy-rotation toys and books at least). But what can you do?
Scream and cry and demand to go back to my own home, I guess.
