unorthodox, but grateful nonetheless

I got my first driver's license a little more than a month ago. I KNOW. However, since then, I have driven to and from work every single day, and even though I don't really know how to go anywhere else and I get really nervous whenever I have to deviate from that home-work-home route, I'm kind of getting used to driving. This is a big step for me, as every time got behind the wheel even two or three months ago would have me shaking with white-knuckled terror. I can even change lanes on the highway now without activating my fight or flight response. I am becoming a normal person.


MICHELLE
I wouldn't say it's enjoyable, but driving is becoming...satisfying. You know, like any other repetitive, habituated behavior.

JOE
(Brightly)
Like pooping!

(Long pause)

MICHELLE
No...not like pooping.


I used to not even be able to hold a conversation while I was driving (truth be told--I still don't like to talk when I'm driving somewhere that I'm not familiar) but at least with my commute to and from work, I recently progressed to being able to listen to the radio--the soft rock station only at first, until it started to drive my slowly insane--and now I am comfortable enough that I can listen to my podcasts* again. I can actually listen to other people having a conversation, concentrate on the conversation, and not veer off the road. Do you know what a big deal this is? It is. It is a very big deal.

I AM THIRTY-ONE YEARS OLD AND I JUST GOT MY FIRST DRIVER'S LICENSE.

So anyway, I can drive now is all I have to say. And I drove my kids around (twice!) when Joe wasn't around and we had to get somewhere and I had no other choice, and we all lived! Even though I had to tell Cal don't talk to Mommy while she's driving the car


CAL
Why?

MICHELLE
Because I have to concentrate.

CAL
What's "concentrate" mean?

MICHELLE
Concentrate means when you have to think hard about something.

CAL
Why do you have to think hard?

MICHELLE
Because...shh. Shhh. I just do, just...shhh.

CAL
Mom, why did you say "Shh?"

MICHELLE
Cal, don't talk to Mommy while she's driving!

CAL
But Mom, you're not driving.

MICHELLE
Well, I'm in the car, sitting behind the steering wheel.

CAL
(Pityingly)
But it's a red light.

MICHELLE
That's it, no more talking forever.


Um...Happy Thanksgiving!


* I used to only have the "This American Life" podcast to fall back on, but as of late I am in love with "Jordan Jesse Go!" because it is funny and I don't want to be depressed about the war in Afghanistan or teenage runaway heroin addicts first thing in the morning. If you can suggest any other similar funny podcasts, please advise. (I am trying to get the comments section back online but it has been disabled for so long that I kind of don't know how to do it. Bear with me.)

just desserts

Am I supposed to feel like a loser when people ask me what we're doing for Thanksgiving and I have nothing to tell them? Nothing. We are doing nothing for Thanksgiving. We're probably going to pop over to a friend's for lunch (they live about a block down the street), but aside from that, we don't have family in town nor are we planning to cook anything elaborate, and I have to work on Friday anyway, so even the four-day weekend aspect of the holiday has lost its impact. Maybe I will make some mashed potatoes for dinner on Thursday. Maybe. But honestly, aside from the spirit of Thanksgiving--reflection, being grateful, time with family etcetera--I don't care much about the machinations of Thanksgiving, the manic preparation and ensuing frenzied cooking in particular. (Right now, somewhere out in Ohio, my mother-in-law has read that last bit and gone blind. But everyone already knows that my housewiffery is not renown, I never prevaricated otherwise.)

But anyway, as mentioned, we are going to a friend's house for Thanksgiving lunch, and as such, I felt obligated to bring something--I offered dessert. This is called "being a good guest." As opposed to showing up empty-handed, eating everything and leaving, I guess. Like I said, I really don't like to cook. In particular I loathe the cleanup but I don't really enjoy the actual cooking along the way, either, although I do it occasionally as it is a means to an end. (The end being eating.) But I have in the past made apple pie, and though the recipe is nothing special or prized (the secret ingredient is LOVE! No actually, it's extra sugar) it usually turns out pretty good and doesn't look terrible, unlike that time that I decided to make tuna casserole not via the Tuna Helper box and the results looked like something died in the pan, and something ate the carcass and then threw it up again. So, apple pie it is. I'm not going crazy or anything, I bought a frozen pie crust from Trader Joe's, but I have real apples and butter and sugar and whatnot to fill it with.

Ever since I mentioned that I am going to make this apple pie, Joe has been after me to pick up a cake from the local bakery to bring with us to Thanksgiving lunch. As this lunch is a rather small affair (it's just going to be our family and their family, and our family will only account for about 25% of the food consumed, as one member is still mostly in the soft solids phase of mastication and the other refuses to eat anything that doesn't taste like breaded chicken with ketchup) I brought up the point that we were already bringing a pie, why would we bring cake and pie? It's like stripes and polka dots, one or the other, am I right? But Joe was weirdly insistent on the cake point, reminding me again and again that we had to go get a cake, bring a cake, buy a cake. After mentioning it for, oh, the tenth time, I began to suspect that possibly the reason that he kept wanting to pick up a cake in addition is because he thought that my apple pie was going to turn out shitty, and that he wanted to have a backup dessert option so that in the event of a last-minute pie fiasco on Thanksgiving Day when everything was closed, we'd have something to bring to lunch aside from a six pack of beer and a half-empty bag of Cheetos.

Well, it didn't matter anyone since neither of us got out of work early enough to get to the bakery before it closed for the holidays. But! I got a festive box (perhaps this is overstating it's decorative value somewhat--but there is a picture of a reindeer on it at least) from Target and have filled it with cookies. I did not make the cookies, but hey, don't ask, don't tell, right? At first I was making an effort to choose cookies that weren't so obviously out of a package (for example, ix-nay on the int ilanos-may) but then as I was unboxing the cookies and fluffing them in their decorative container I noticed that the more fancy chocolate coated of the selection had the words PEPPERIDGE FARM embossed rather vulgarly all over the back end of them, so I guess the gig is up. Anyway, it's not like anyone cares if the treats are from a box or not. Cookies are cookies, and everyone likes cookies. Especially Squanto.

I'm not really sure what my point was when I started writing this entry, except that it was maybe that I am terrible at the mechanics of a traditional American Thanksgiving. The sentiment, however, I am pretty OK at.

the solution to having no time is just to type very fast

When we moved into this new house the first week of October (cripes, almost two months ago--the fact that we appear to live in a shantytown of cardboard boxing is getting harder and harder to explain away) I could see that the backyard was once beautiful. Certainly it had some stately old growth, two stunning Japanese maples in particular, but no one had really lived here for at least a year before we moved in, so you could see the sort of soft slide into decay--the overgrown ivy, the lawn in need of raking, the decrepit-looking swing set in the back that I have declared off-limits as it appears to to not only consist solely of sharp snapped-off pieces of wood, it also plays host to a good percentage of the yard's wildlife. The backyard, it's looking a little wild, like someone's going to plant a sign in the middle of some of a deeper overgrowth inscribed, "NATURE WINS." But it has potential, you know? And someday, maybe someone (possibly us, though unclear--we're just renting, after all) will get in there, plant some stuff, pull up some other stuff, put in a new playground set, clear off the stone path, and it will be a pretty great backyard.

That's kind of how I feel about this website.

Unlike a yard, though, I actually sort of know how to upkeep a website. I know it's not really obvious, since I haven't really had the time to do much with this space as of late (see: two kids, myocarditis spouse, big move, book revisions), but I have some ideas in my mind of some new content that I might start to feature, which will take this blog back a little more in the medical direction. There may be some video. There may be some special guests. We will see the return of open reader comments. I still have to work on fleshing it out, but there is stuff in the works, and I hope you're going to like it. In any event, and in the meantime, here are some pictures of from Halloween and this past weekend. See you again soon.













(Full disclosure: I Photoshopped a booger out of Mack's nose in that last photo. You're welcome.)

as seen on the MARTA during my afternoon commute





No words can appropriately communicate the sheer wrongness of these shoes.

60 posts in 60 non-consecutive days: the stink of failure

So...I failed my road test. But it wasn't totally my fault.

Wait, let me rephrase that. It was my fault. Nobody failed my road test for me. But the nature of the failure wasn't (in my opinion) related to skill or disobeying traffic rules or running over granny or anything like that. Well, let me get to that part.

First of all, yesterday (the day I took my road test) was maybe one of the rainiest days I've seen since moving to Atlanta. This was not rain as you or I understand it, this was monsoon season on the Ganges. This was, "I can barely see out of my front windshield with the wipers going at full speed, giant lakes of water on either side, can't hear what anyone is saying because of the volume of water beating down on the roof" typhoon level rain. It was also the first time I had ever driven in the rain. Ever. Not making excuses, just saying. There was a note on the DMV website that said that driving tests would be cancelled under unsafe weather conditions, but I guess they were talking about, I don't know, tornadoes or something. I know I'm going to have to learn to drive in the rain at some point, since, you know, it does rain sometimes, but probably trying to do it for the first time the day of the road test would not be the way I would want to break into the practice of inclement weather driving. Anyway, again, not an excuse, but non-ideal conditions they were.

We waited at the DMV for about two hours. It was a little annoying since we actually made a 9:00am appointment for the test (in the end, it turns out there was some sort of problem with the light-up board that calls your number, hence us waiting an hour past the appointment time for our ticket to get called), but at least it allowed us to play sociologist in the fascinating and occasionally grim world of the DMV. Like, for example, noting this conversation next to me, between a a mom and a teenage girl filling out an application for her learner's permit.


TEENAGE GIRL
(going through checkboxes on form)
"Do you want to be listed as an organ donor on your license?" What does that mean?

MOM
It means if you're in an accident and they have the choice between saving you or saving your organs, which one should they save? If you say you're an organ donor, they'll just take your organs and let you die.

TEENAGE GIRL
Oh. I don't want that.
(Checks "NO" on the form)

MICHELLE
Sigh.


When it finally came time for the test, we had to run out from the rear doors of the DMV to this tin metal shed, where "the licensed driver" (Joe) was instructed to pull up the car. The rain on the tin roof was deafening. The road test instructor was kind of a small lady, clad in a full-length (and I mean full-length, down to her ankles) yellow rain slicker with a gigantic hood. With the hood up, she looked like that killer with a hook for a hand in "I Know What You Did Last Summer," except, you know, yellow. I know that instructors aren't supposed to give a lot of feedback or show emotion or whatever, but she was also rather sphinxlike. Meaning that she was unusually stoic and stony-faced, not that she had the body of a lion or anything. (Though, under that rain slicker, who knows?)

"Get in the car and (blum blur blar) so I can check your (inaudible)," she mumbled grimly.

"Excuse me?" I moved closer to her so that I could hear. "Sorry, I didn't catch that, the rain is really loud."

She looked at me about a beat too long. "I need to check your TURN SIGNALS and your BRAKELIGHTS," she said, as though to someone of questionable intelligence.

"Oh. Yes. Right away." I duly fired the signals, and she neither conformed nor denied that everything was OK, just got into the car.

"Cool raincoat," I noted. I wasn't trying to kiss up, though the second those words were out of my mouth, I wish I hadn't said them, because--complimenting your road test instructor's attire? How could that not be perceived as kissing up? In any event, she didn't respond, just telling me to pull out into the driving course in the back lot.

The driving course part went OK, I think (again, I didn't get any feedback, so who knows. It was fairly hard to see out of any of the windows despite the windshield wipers going full blast and the defrosters going front and back, but I think I parallel parked OK, and I think I managed to do what she was telling me. ("Yes ma'am." Southern people seem to have this innate ability to say "Yes sir" or "Yes ma'am" sounding totally sincere, but for some reason, when I say it, it sounds sarcastic, even if I mean it. But no matter.)

The real trouble came when we had to start the "road" portion of the road test. Now, let me just say this first: I had been told by several people (including one of our OR techs, whose daughter just took her road test at this same DMV location a few months ago) that this would consist of "driving around the block." I also heard from one of the other parents standing under the tin shed (I guess they were there for a repeat road test too) that the instructor would take us "in a circle." So I was all geared up for that. We pulled out of the parking lot, turned right, and started going down this long, straight road which ran parallel along a larger street.

"Up ahead," the instructor droned, "there's a left turn coming up. Go left, straight."

"Left, got it." I approached the turn and saw a couple of signs indicating that I could make a left turn to double back at this point. Figuring that this was the part of the circle where we turned around, I signaled, pulled up to the intersection, and turned left, heading straight down the road back the way we came. Only as I was completing my turn (visibility not so good, remember), did I see a small, side street a little off to the right from the left turn, across another lane of traffic, which went straight down into kind of a warehouse-y type neighborhood. And I probably wouldn't have thought much about that, except that for the first time, the road test instructor showed a human emotion, a barely perceptible moue of annoyance and displeasure.

"Oh wait," I said, trying to salvage the situation. "Did you want me to go into that side street? When you said 'left, straight,' I thought you wanted me to turn left and head straight down this road. Sorry, I didn't understand what you meant. Do you want me to go back?"

"Pull back into the center," she said. And that's when I knew that I'd failed.

Anyway, after I made the Drive of Shame back to the shed, she told me that I "didn't make it today" and that I "needed to learn to follow instructions." I remembered that not following instructions was one of the automatic fail criteria of the road test, lumped in with trying to bribe the instructor or driving on the wrong side of the street into oncoming traffic. I would argue (not that I did, NEVER ARGUE WITH THE DMV) that "not following instructions" is different than "not understanding instructions" (for example, if she had said, "turn left here, across the lane of traffic slightly off to the right is another road, I want you to go straight down there" we might not have had this issue), and I exhibited no unsafe driving or violation of traffic laws...but whatever. You can't semantically debate your way out of a DMV fail. I will make another appointment for as soon as I can and hopefully, it won't be hurricane conditions that day.

(And I definitely didn't say this part, but saying that a former medical resident needs to learn to follow instructions? Until last year, following instructions was all I ever did. Medical training is like the army, but with worse food.)

60 posts in 60 days, day 12: this old house




So we stopped by the new house today to finalize some last minute details before assuming the lease, including signing some papers and asking the landlord stuff like "what do we do with our trashbags?" and "what do all these light switches turn on?" Oh, also, we had to pay them the money. Our lease starts this Tuesday, at which point we can start our staged operation of moving select items in before the big move date on October 4th.

And for those security-minded who are going to e-mail me that I shouldn't put a picture of our house on the internet because that's how They find you and kill you in your sleep, maybe it will make you feel better to know that every single house in this entire neighborhood looks exactly like this. I guess Tudor architecture was all the rage in the 1920's, when the majority of this housing stock was built, but it makes the area look like some kind of Hobbit village.

60 posts in 60 days: I never specified that they were consecutive days

(First of all, let me say that there would have been a post up yesterday afternoon, had Blogger not decided to ingest it. RIP, post that never was. Someday it will turn up tucked into the archive, all dessicated and mutated looking, like when one twin absorbs the other in utero. Yes, well...)

First off, more pictorial evidence of why we are moving in a few weeks:




(Fortunately, not our car.)

I wish I could tell you I had to look and look and look for a car with a broken window, but the fact of it is that a few cars get broken into every week around here. Also, the assaults and the stabbings and the fact that when we left the house last weekend there was a police squad slapping cuffs on some guy right outside our door. Nice. So long, wrong side of the tracks. Three more weeks to go.

(Here is the part where I try to regenerate the post that got vaporized.)

I love having kids and I would not trade the two I have for all the tea in India, because what would I do with all that tea? No, but seriously, sometimes I envy my friends who don't have kids, not so much for their disposable income (well, a little) or their fancy travels (again, a little) but the very fact of how much time they have for themselves. I don't make a real effort to have "me time," (that started to sound hopelessly indulgent right around the time that I started my intern year) but I do get the feeling between work and home that my whole life consists of careening from the service of one set of needs to the other. Imagine what people do when they don't have kids! I can barely even remember. This is all somehow sounding very pathetic but you have to understand that I wake up for work at 5:00am and spend the few hours after getting home from work packing lunchboxes and giving baths and putting people to bed, until it's finally time for my own bedtime, usually around 8:30pm.

(Actually, I'm going to abort this post regeneration. Reading it again makes me realize how utterly boring it is to read about the minutiae of the ostensibly SO BUSY! SO HECTIC! life of the working mother. Wah wah, tell it to Joy Behar. Followed by some canned banter and Whoopi Goldberg drawling something borderline off-color.)

All of us have been a little sick this week, except for Joe, unless you count the myocarditis. Cal had some sort of flu (whether swine or otherwise I know not, nor does it really matter I guess, it's not like we would have been rubbing him on babies and the immunocompromised regardless) and Mack had one of those mysterious baby illnesses that manifests purely as a high fever with no other symptoms whatsoever. Is there anything worse than waking up in the middle of the night with a glowing hot baby beside you? His little hands and feet felt like mini grill pans, and his head felt like a giant light bulb.

I used to feel guilty every time Cal got sick as a baby, so certain that he was sick because I had brought something unsavory home from the hospital, clinging to my clothes or my hair like some miasma of infection. But now that Cal is in school I think that he can claim his share of the blame for bringing things home. As for me, I haven't had a fever or any specific symptoms, but I've just been feeling a little punky (Pediatricians would have you know that this is a clinical term) and have one giant lymph node blown up on the side of my neck. Nothing else. I'm not even sure if the three of us had the same thing or if we just happened to all catch three separate illnesses at the same time. Oh epidemiology, you mystify and intrigue me. Maybe we need a blackboard so we can draw lots of circles connected by dashes and lines. TV tells me that this is how medical mysteries are solved.

OK, have to put the kids to bed. Alcohol-based hand sanitizer, people. Buy yourself a bottle today.