how quickly we forget

So after putting in a load of laundry and starting up the Roomba (my birthday present from Jack... which I love), I was preparing to wash a massive amount of dishes.  And I was thinking idly to myself how cool it is to live in such a time when machines can do chores for us.  I mean, back in the day, women would have to drag out their washtub and clothesline to do laundry, and it would take all day.  And most people still clean their floors themselves, with a broom or a vacuum cleaner, and it takes just way too long to be fun.

And then as I turned on the faucet, I thought, "Man, wouldn't it be nice if there were some kind of machine that could wash dishes, t..... oh.  Right."


(Also, here:  have a video of my Roomba in action, and be suitably envious.)

keeping busy

What have I been up to?

Knitting (of course):

Munching on Easter candy:

Trying my hand at making bagels (they were good!):

Doing seemingly endless paperwork for my residency program:

Preparing for a friend's wedding:

Baking cookies (chocolate chip meringue... yum!):

Getting ready for graduation (eep!):

Celebrating spring with fresh flowers:

four things

Thing #1- Hello, smog. Lovely to see you this fine morning as I gaze from the hospital window.


Thing #2- Why do I always manage to spill coffee on myself the mornings when I'm post-call?

Thing #3- The computers in the pediatric conference room are using a 10-year-old operating system. Awesome.


Thing #4- My school-distributed pager has them beat, though, because whenever I change the battery and the date resets, it asks me if I would like to set the year to 1999. Um, no.

a tale of danger!

Imagine this:

You're riding in the passenger seat as your husband drives down the highway on a DC evening. He merges onto another highway, and the driver already in the right lane on that highway takes issue with the fact that your car is now in her lane.


Aaaaand pretty soon she's so close behind you that you can't even see her headlights when you turn around and look. Don'tcha love a tailgater?

a PSA from Florida! woohoo!

Unfortunately, you soon learn the reason tailgating is illegal. A second car pulls in front of you, and proceeds to suddenly decrease in speed. Your husband slams on his brakes and manages to avoid hitting the car in front of you. However, the driver behind you (being approximately two inches from your rear bumper) is not so successful.

(In case you haven't figured it out, this story is not so much a hypothetical "imagine this" as something that actually happened to Jack and me a few days ago. Had you figured it out, smart ones that you are, hmm?)

Miraculously, despite being involved in an accident ON THE FREEWAY, we weren't hurt, didn't lose control of the car, and (it turns out) escaped with only a slight displacement of one bumper panel.

But! The story is not over!

Now, seeing as we were in a not-so-good part of a large and unfamiliar city, at night, we didn't feel particularly safe pulling over. We were only a mile or two from the navy base where we were staying, so we decided to just head there, figuring that the driver behind us would cut her losses, flee the scene, and never be heard from again.

However, incredibly, she followed us onto the base. To make a long story short, it turned out she apparently had some idea that she could:

• show up on a military base after rear-ending another vehicle (belonging to an officer in said military, no less) on the highway
• have no proof of insurance to show the police who showed up
• have no plausible story other than "I just know something hit me, I don't know what"
• point out only front-end damage on her car
• and think she could get some money out of us to repair what actually seemed to be previous damage.

Needless to say, it did not work out well for her, and she not only received several tickets, but will no doubt be a major character in humorous anecdotes told by the gate guards for weeks to come.

the answer

Sorry I kept forgetting to post and instead left the blog on a cliffhanger. The Navy gave Jack his first choice for residency!

Merry Christmas-eve-eve!

down to the wire

Two days from now, the military match results come out, which means that the Navy tells Jack where he'll do his residency... and thus, where we'll spend the next three years-- and to which location I'll have to limit my rank list in a few months.

I've been telling everyone for weeks that I'm no longer freaking out about this. God knows what He's doing, everything will work out, I'm sure it'll be fine, I got the worrying out of my system months ago, etc. etc. etc. All true.

But realizing that it's happening NOW? That in LESS THAN 48 HOURS the results will be final? That a large governmental bureaucracy is about to announce its decision that will affect the REST OF OUR LIVES in a rather large way?

Yeah, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous.

(This also has the effect of causing me to avoid, for the past week or so, my usual hobby of intermittently checking out apartments on Craigslist in the cities where we could be sent. Because apparently my subconscious has decided that by looking, I would somehow affect the decision and jinx our entire future. Logical, no?)

oh hey

I'm totally going to start greeting people like this.

waxing poetic

Ohio, how do I love you? Let me count the ways:

I love you for your changing of the seasons.


I love you for your prices within reason.


I love you for your waving fields of corn,


...and 'cause you are the place where I was born.


I love you for your Krogers and your Meijers,


...and for your pleasant lack of wildfires.

rain has to be good for something besides agriculture, right?

I love you 'cause your traffic's not a mess.


I love your honest unpretentiousness.

likely to be understood only by Ohio State Fair attenders... here's an explanatory link for the rest of you

(I even love your icy winter streets...
And that, you must admit, is quite a feat.)

veterans day

Also, just feeling the need to mention the day. According to the VA, the United States has had 48 million veterans, 23 million of whom are living.

seasonal

Look! It's fall!
(And construction season is still in full swing, too.)

Don't yell "fire" in a crowded theater unless you're sure

The other night, I was sitting at the dining room table and happened to glance out the window. Across our back yard I could see the back window of a house on the next street over.

"Oh, someone has a fire lit," I commented to Jack.

"I was wondering why it smelled like smoke," he replied.

I could clearly see the flames through their window, and idly thought what a coincidence it was that I was at just the right angle to see their fireplace.

Then I looked harder. Those were awfully big flames, and from where I was they seemed to be filling the whole window of the house across the way. I couldn't see much else of the house, since there were trees and fences in the way. "Huh, that's weird."

Jack came over to look. "Wow, that's a pretty big fire."

Then I saw the windowsill start to glow reddish orange, and skepticism started to change to panic. "Um, I don't think that's in their fireplace."

"I don't either. What if there's someone inside? We'd better call the fire department."

So he did. Since we didn't know the address of the house, we gave them the name of the street it was on, as well as our address, for reference. When he hung up the phone, he went out to go drive by the house to see what he could see.

After he left, it occurred to me to go into the back yard to see if I could make anything out better. So I padded across the grass in the dark, and peered through a gap in the fence.

The only fire there was a fire pit in their back yard, a good ten feet from the house. There were no flames leaping in the window. There was no windowsill glowing red-hot. There was just a cozy urban campfire, with the kids likely just inside, impaling marshmallows on sticks.

And then I heard the sirens.

Three or four enormous fire trucks had pulled up onto the street. Our street, not the next one over. In front of our house. The lights were flashing and the sirens wailing..... and alllllll the neighbors were out on their front porches, bewildered and wondering what was going on.

It was kind of surreal. I walked back around to the front of the house, swallowed hard, and stood on the driveway as three large firefighters in full gear got out of the trucks and came toward me.

Now, just try explaining that you called the fire department because of a neighbor's cookout, without feeling stupid. Try leading several firefighters through your back yard to peer through the gap in your fence (while still feeling really confused as to how you could have been so, so mistaken). I was just glad it was dark enough that no one could see how red my face was.

To their credit, they were really nice about it. I kept apologizing, and they kept saying things like, "That's okay," and "Probably when they first lit it, the flames looked really high," and "They do have some candles in their window." Then they called in and explained that it was a false alarm, got in their trucks, and drove away.

And I went upstairs and shut all the drapes that were still open, and hid my face and hoped I would never run into any of the neighbors for the next month.

(It wasn't until Jack came in and we looked out the window again-- where it still looked remarkably like the house was on fire-- that we realized our mistake. It was a reflection in the window. We were just at the right angle to see the leaping flames of the back yard fire reflected in the dark glass. And the metal windowsill was glowing red... with a blurry reflection of the red-orange fire.)

So, thus ends this cautionary tale. The moral of the story is.... if you think your neighbor's house is on fire, feel free to call the fire department, but you might want to check from another angle first.

Can you dig it?

Perhaps out of respect for the ferocious winds that make Northwest Ohio winters especially chilly (it's known as the wind belt of the state, apparently), my med school campus has tunnels conveniently connecting nearly every building. This means you can go from the child psychiatry building to the clinic to the education building to the hospital to the library, all the while never poking your head above ground level.

However, some of these tunnels are downright... creepy. Especially because often, you're the only one walking through them. And the ventilation system makes eerie clanking noises. And it's dim and full of echoes.

And also, mysteriously, many of the tunnel walls are painted in wide stripes, in tones of avocado green, mustard yellow, and rust orange. They're kind of hard to see in this picture (though the creepy vibe is plainly apparent).

And when I walk through there, I can't help wondering... am I going to die down here, underground, amid a color scheme from the 70s?

sunrise, sunrise, looks like morning in your eyes

Sunday morning at the hospital. An almost-empty parking lot and V-shaped flocks of geese flying overhead.

stitches in time

I'm lucky enough to possess three quilts which were made by my great-grandmother. They were delivered to my family when I was in high school-- I don't remember why or from whom. I have a feeling it may have been shortly after the death of an elderly relative. But in any case, I immediately snatched up the quilts and claimed them as my own.


I just love old quilts. Old-fashioned yet fresh, prim yet determined, rigidly patterned yet softly comfortable, plain and straightforward yet intricately beautiful. They're such a vivid reminder of times long past, nearly forgotten. You can imagine a quilt was the work of some desperately poor yet proud and determined pioneer woman. Or a shining-eyed girl who folded it carefully away in her hope chest. Or an amiably gossiping group of housewives at a quilting bee. In some ways, quilts are a legacy of women.

As I sit here with my crocheting (and yes, that's my geeky spreadsheet) and my coffee and my music, in my own home with the sun shining through the trees outside the window, cuddled up in a quilt made long ago with love by my own ancestor.... well. Then sometimes I wonder why I ever thought this whole "career" thing was so great.

(Don't worry, I'm not quitting medicine. Just... you know. You can't have everything.)

tragedy

We have a patient on the service this week, an elderly lady who recently had a massive stroke. As in, she was fine when she went to bed, and woke up the next day unable to speak or swallow properly or move her right side. It's an interesting and difficult case, because since she is unable to talk, it's hard for anyone to know just how much she still understands, beneath it all.

But I was reminded today-- and it's good to be reminded-- that she's not just an "interesting case."

Her husband was in the room when we went in to see her, sitting in a wheelchair facing his wife. The attending asked cordially, "So how is everyone doing today?" And the patient's husband looked at him and replied, "Well, I'm not doing so good." And two tears ran down his face as he looked back at his wife. And at the end, before we left, our attending put his hand on the man's shoulder and said, "We don't know just how much she understands. But she knows you're here with her." "I hope so," he replied sadly.

Their granddaughter had informed us that they've been married for 57 years. And I thought of how many Christmases and sunsets and cups of coffee and Sunday dinners they had shared together, and how young and beautiful she probably was when they got married, and all of a sudden she wasn't just an old lady who couldn't talk, and he wasn't just a hospital visitor. For a moment they were the hero and heroine of some great Shakespearean tragedy or epic tale.

I once read a quote-- I can't remember it exactly, or even who said it-- but the idea was... if we could know all the joys and sorrows of a person's life to their fullest extent, then every life would be as fascinating to us as the greatest novel.

mystery

Every day I walk back from the metro station through the Navy base to our hotel. And every day I am mystified by this:


Yes, it's some kind of door into underground tunnels (like a sewer manhole or something).... which always, 24/7, has copious amounts of steam billowing from it.

I mean, seriously, what is going on down there? I've tried and tried to imagine it, but I just can't come up with anything. Giant, terrifying basement laundry facilities? Secret mad scientist labs? Steam-powered generators with amazingly huge leaks in their pipes?

The best, though, is the accompanying sign:


What? You mean I shouldn't enter the BOILING UNDERGROUND WELLSPRING OF DEATH?? Oh, I'm so glad you said something, I was going to jump right in.

I also like that the danger apparently isn't related to the frightening amount of scalding-hot steam which would presumably fill the tunnels. No, the danger is that it's a "confined space." Claustrophobics beware! But the rest of you, just get your permits and climb on in.

character sketches

Remember when I mentioned the wide variety of people one sees on the metro? Well the other day I was bored on my daily commute (iPod batteries had gone dead, if you must know) and began looking around and writing down descriptions of my interesting fellow passengers. So here's a real-life list of some of the people who were riding the red line at 5:30 in the morning, and here's what you might have noticed if you were on that train:

1) A man in his 50s or 60s, reading the newspaper, with a truly amazing gray comb-over across an almost entirely bald head, and a mustache that looks like it belongs on a sheriff in the Old West

2) A middle-aged man in an unexpected combination of baseball cap, short-sleeved button-down shirt with a tie, elbow brace, wire-rimmed glasses, hiking-type shoes, and a briefcase on his lap-- and is that a pocket protector, or does it just look like it from here?

3) A 40-something woman in a rather stylish suit and-- literally-- rose-colored glasses, her hair dyed an unlikely shade of burgundy with lipstick to match, complete with lip-liner carefully drawn just outside the actual borders of her lips

4) A pretty Asian girl in a cute lime-green top and carrying a Coach purse, bravely applying mascara on a moving, jolting train-- an impressive feat

5) A trendy-looking, college-age Latino guy with gelled hair and a cigarette tucked behind one ear, wearing Nikes and a t-shirt that reads "chicks dig boarders" or something similar, dozing in his seat

6) A middle-aged man in a plaid shirt and hair that clearly hasn't changed a bit since he styled it after his favorite rock stars in the 80s (except for going gray)

7) A 40-ish guy in black jeans and a bright purple Oxford shirt, with a mustache, his hair cut into a flat-top, and carrying a red backpack

8) A 20-something girl with somewhat frizzy hair, in scrub pants and an oversized pullover, creepily looking around at the other passengers and scribbling in a small notebook-- oh wait. That's me.

down-home fun

This past weekend we went with our friends Mike and Emily to the Montgomery County Fair. I haven't been to a county fair in years, and I forgot how much I enjoy them.

The animals are usually my favorite part.

This cow (I forget what kind it is) came over to us and let us pat her on the nose:
(Actually, I'm not sure it's a cow. It might be a bull or steer. I don't know.)

Some alpacas, which I think are oddly graceful with their long necks and long eyelashes:

Miniature horses, which apparently to qualify for the breed have to be less than 36 inches high at the shoulder:

And a cow with her four-hour-old newborn calf (aww!):

Then, despite the fact that I find county fair rides to be somewhat terrifying in their rickety-ness, we had to take a ride on the ferris wheel. Because seriously? To go to a county fair and not ride on the ferris wheel? Travesty.
The view from the top:


Then we went home. (The fair was open until midnight, but we were all nervous about missing the shuttle back to the parking lot and how awkward and unpleasant that would be.)

Come on, baby, do the locomotion!

So in Ohio? There's no public transportation. Oh, I mean, there are usually bus systems in fairly large cities, but no one who can afford a car actually uses them.

Well in DC? It's different. Lots of people do use cars, true, but lots of people also use the metro. (That's, like, DC-speak for "subway," except part of it is above-ground.) So for my month here, I've been joining the crowd and taking the train to work. You know, "when in Rome" and all that.

The most amazing thing to me about the metro is how, even though I get on the train at 5AM (having to be at the hospital at 6 will do that to you), the cars are already at least half-full. It's crazy. I actually had to wait for people to stop using the escalator before I could get a picture of it without feeling like the paparazzi. (I know it's just an escalator and you know what escalators look like, but humor me, okay?)

One thing I've learned about the metro station escalators in DC? "WALK LEFT, STAND RIGHT." Even I, who have been a commuter here for only one little week, feel enormously irritated when someone stands on the left. And it is always a tourist.

The other amazing thing about the metro is the variety of people who use it. You'll see businesspeople reading the newspaper and looking important, trendy twenty-somethings reading the latest New York Times bestseller, angsty teenagers with iPod headphones permanently implanted in their ears, blue-collar workers carrying hard hats under their arms, retired men wearing black socks with shorts who sit pleasantly not doing anything at all... not to mention tourists. Though I guess I did mention them. (The other day I saw a young Asian guy reading a tourist book called "USA," where everything but the title was written in Chinese.)

Even when I took this picture at 5AM, there were already (besides me in my scrubs) several suits, at least one twenty-something, and a whole mess of construction workers.

Exam Day

Dictated and signed by a just-turned-four-year-old friend of ours.



Prayers and good wishes wishes appreciated! (Even retrospective ones, if you don't see this until after Friday. I'm sure God isn't limited by such paltry things as time.)