new friends

meet gunther and chan.

gunther


chan

prepositions

left out, chewed out, burned out, guilted out, bummed out,

upset, put upon

fed up

mourn with me

for it would appear that i have joined the masses.



yet take solace, for crocs remain to me the greatest of abominations.

new camera

heh, heh heh.

the company one keeps

i find all the doctors quite boring.

this, in addition to the daily grind, has worn me down to a little nugget of banality. i sit here jiggling meaninglessly, like a small grey lump of oatmeal that has slid from the stubbly chin of a local vagrant and landed ever so unfortunately onto a cold sidewalk. gross.

it's vaguely frightening, this threat of becoming as boring as most of my married friends. but i'm too bored to care.

and no, sorry my current single friends, no amount of alcohol makes things any more interesting.

i shan't waste more blog space on this. just wanted to tell you where i've been. i've been here. with nothing to report.

maybe i'll start writing about the ennui.

oh, wait. i just did.

candid pic

spongebob has seen better days.

hi friends

some of you guys are my fibre arts friends.

if so, then join Ravelry with me! (i'm using a different pseudonym but lemme know if you join and i'll tell you what it is)

okay that's my plug.

answer

the answer to last week's "name that cartoon" post:



for some reason my brothers and i had this one on tape, and we watched it time and again as children. i'd nearly forgotten about it. it inspires rather fond feelings as i watch it and each new scene is so familiar to me, right down to the way that the chicken clucks and the way donald despondently laments, "my apples!"

one thing i will confess: i never did understand what they were saying in the apple core bit. now that i know, i still don't get it. baltimore?

bathroom adventures

admittedly, i'm stooping to yet another level of blog stories.

yes, sometimes i have to go to the bathroom at the hospital. come on, we're only human.

evidently two of the hospital bathrooms are back-to-back, and the plumbing, therefore, is likewise back-to-back. why would i know this? because today, being in one of those bathrooms, doing what one does when one is in such a room, i heard someone enter the adjoining bathroom behind me. i heard that door lock. and then suddenly, thump! i felt my toilet seat go upward as someone else plopped his/her posterior onto the toilet seat behind me, on the other side of the wall.

i'm sorry, but i just don't want that much interaction with other people when i'm going about my business. a toilet teeter-totter? or would it be a potty-totter? or a pee-pee-see-saw?

also, last night while getting into the shower i slipped and hurt my knee on the edge of the tub. at least i didn't fall, but i am starting to not trust these bathroom places. perhaps i should never enter a bathroom again?

name that cartoon

"apple core."

"baltimore."

"who's your friend?"

"ME."

SMACK!

owie

i hurt myself by coughing and sneezing.

for the past week or so i have had chest pain with each cough, sneeze, sniff, and deep breath (i gots allergies). i thought i was getting better, but today while crossing the street i sneezed. suddenly i was hurting a lot worse— with breathing in and breathing out, with each step, with every word i spoke.

i could take something for the pain. sure. but the best medicine for it is something i've been taking for fairly frequently for headaches. what if it becomes too much medicine? i could get ulcers. or kidney disease! what if i...

i am certain i have simply pulled a chest wall muscle. of course, it has been so long now (and the pain is getting worse) that i have to entertain another diganosis: a broken rib.

why on earth would i have broken a rib? coughing and sneezing? sure. little osteoporotic old people do it. so it's possible. so now do i have osteoporosis? am i malnourished?

this has been an exercise to illustrate that sometimes knowing too much makes for nothing but a big heap of trivia.

HA!

owie. it hurts to laugh.

errors of omission

are hurtful as well.

too little, too late.

i was not prepared to go softly into that good night,

but it would appear that the human heart has only room for so much.

rage, rage against the dying of the light

(such a bad habit of mine)

yet falling on silent ears and busy minds

my tears and words would simply be without worth.

goodbye. i will try to miss you only for a little while

and perhaps exhibit the grace

and do you the favor

of keeping quiet

blogstipated

but you already noticed that.

solution

from all the way across the long, highly-polished board room table the surgeon's gaze intensified, and my colleague's eyes widened as she stuttered.

i had been on call with this particular junior fellow, who was particularly sweet and particularly soft-spoken. i liked her a lot, and didn't want her to feel stressed out as she was bearing the brunt of an especially rough set of questioning. this last question was unusually tricky, and had that "read my mind, read my mind, guess what i'm thinking" quality to it.

my junior colleague did not know the answer to this one. i, having no other outlet for my maternal instinct, always desperately want to help the juniors, to protect and shelter them from potential defeat, humiliation, or surgeonwrath. my mind churned with potential answers, none of them the one he wanted-- i did not know the answer either.

fortunately, my colleague did well to reply to the question as best she could, and the answer ended up being a tricky little philosophical answer designed to open up further discussion- nothing we'd been taught before. no defeat, no humiliation.

after the conference i approached the poor lamb. "great job in conference this morning. it's so hard to be put on the spot like that, especially after working so hard through the night and not sleeping. i hope you feel okay about it."

"oh, yes. i'm fine. but thanks."

"seriously, [c]. i am sorry about that last question. i really, really wanted to step up on that one and take the hit for you, but i didn't know how. i was just sitting there, desperately trying to think of someway to divert his attention away from you, and i didn't know what to do."

"well," said my delicate, soft-spoken friend without missing a beat, "you could have farted."

i would never have thought of that solution. my respect for her problem-solving skills grew immensely.

i am so proud.

friendships

if you have a friend who lives in a place that may have just suffered a huge natural disaster,

contact them and make sure they are okay.

otherwise, how will you know if you still have a friend?

and maybe, just maybe if you didn't,

you don't.

yes, fortunately, all my friends and loved ones who live there are okay.

hi friends

i miss you.

all of you.

a lot.

i have been

abused in the ICU.

that is where i have been.

today

it's cousin ray's birthday.
hope he's having a happy one.

seriously?

i can't believe these are the first words i heard when i flipped through to the history channel.

"is there nothing that dung is not capable of providing? dung is the gift that keeps on giving."

i mean, really.

ew.

addendum:

but wait! there's more later in the program!

"... it's the maker of fortunes and the destroyer of worlds.... love it or hate it, poo makes the world go 'round."

seriously? it's not even funny anymore.

goodbye, sweet baby

it will never be okay with me.

let's never let this happen again.

because

because i've been bummed out lately, and flowers can help cheer people.

that time of year

congratulations are in order for camodidi who, by graduating from medical school this past saturday, has just increased the number of doctors named [Camo] (and who are immediately related to one another) to three.

so. how do you like that?

congrats didi. i am proud of you.

now don't call me for a consult.

pizzaface

still one of my favorite hawaii pictures.

camobunny sings

sunday, june 8, 6:00 pm

be there, or

don't.

no video cameras, please.

love

love is really rough.

settling

sometimes it's hard to be hopeful.

for the sake of...

i turned the corner. the attending was detaining the ICU fellow as the latter was trying to enter the men's bathroom.

i know what it's like to be the ICU fellow. everyone wants a piece of you. all the time. i mean, my friend couldn't even go to bathroom without someone having some sort of patient care thingie to discuss that seemed important enough that he had to stop him. to STOP HIM FROM GOING PEE.

oh, the humanity!

artifact

i kind of like it.

bauble

most of the friends with whom i used to correspond i have lost to love. and by "love" i mean alaska. just kidding. i mean romantic love. uh-huh.

so because they are all gone now, busy splashing happily about in seas of lovey luv love, i am not sure what to do with that which i have found.

misplaced as it is, i honestly don't know what to do. i hold it out before me in my open palm and squint at it. it looks vaguely familiar but seems much less powerful than i thought it'd be. it makes me feel fretful. and distantly happy. and stressed. and ashamed.

i should enjoy it. or cherish it and caress it and dance with it clasped to my chest. instead i just keep staring at it with furrowed brow.

then i clench my fingers around it, squeeze hard, and shake my fist at you. at all of you.

stubborn

my foot.

it's stuck between railroad ties, and i hear a train coming from somewhere.

i tug and tug, and it won't budge.

panicked though i may be,

for some reason still,

i refuse to remove my shoe.

shrimp

in oahu, on the road to the north shore, there are a lot of shrimp trucks.

i know it sounds sketchy, but still you should eat at a shrimp truck.

if you eat at a shrimp truck, this is the one at which you should eat.

in fact, it is the original. see? the sign says so.

i always seem to go to the north shore when it is raining.

and to be in a bad position to take photographs.

that being inside a car.

in any case, tourists coming through sign the truck.

and so did i.

it was fun.

grief

i made a man cry tonight.

*cries*

fish are cool

at least i think so.


don't you?


(add your own caption to this one)

it's obvious, right?

just in case it isn't, here you go.



and how do i fit into all this?


very comfortably, thank you.

one at a time

after much delay,



we'll start with something obvious.

also i'm about to start another intensive care unit rotation and i won't be writing for a while, so i may as well have something to draw from for the next five weeks. a whole vault of low-effort posts!

grown up

"where's dad?"

the house was quiet, and he usually makes lots of noise no matter what he's doing. through the minds of three of us at the table the plausible medical catastrophes paraded. he was fine, engrossed in working on something trivial in the gameroom, so all felt silly after we found him. it was funny. sort of.

for nearly a year now i have been familiar with the reality of the situation. i had no reason to be concerned, but my parents are getting older, and if something should happen, i must be the one to take care of them. no one else is in a position to do so. it started as just a thought, then became a serious thought, then became a resignation to the frailty of human life. i seriously doubt any of the other kids have thought much about this, let alone deemed it an eventuality.

now that cancer has stuck its ugly, sneering face around the corner (and retreated after we threw rocks at it), i am glad that i was prepared. currently the demon has been staved away, but it won't be long before other morbidities rear their heads. i am ready to do what has to be done.

will you still be my friend if i do?