like rabbits

that's how my blogs seem to multiply.

by now you all know that i knit. i blog about knitting too. it's probably not very interesting to some of you, despite the fact that i really hold back on how much i say about it.

so now i have started the obligatory knitblog. i'll probably still post little things here about my finished projects, but i can write about all the things that are boring to non-knitters there.

peeve

if you're asking me for help and instruction, then do what i say.

DO WHAT I SAY!

(wow. it's only been a few hours and already everything is pissing me off. so much for grace today, huh?)

grace

i want to make it clear that having strong opinions is not the same as being judgmental.

i find that when you are vocal about what is good or bad, right or wrong, people are afraid to get close to you for fear that they will come under judgment. it is an unfortunate misunderstanding.

here's the thing. it is possible to be keenly aware of these things as principles and standards and at the same time to love people apart from them. it may seem impossible, but it is possible. it is difficult and it goes against natural human tendencies, but still, it is possible. it is the very grace that we have been shown by God, after all, and we learn it from Him. it is at the core of what love is.

just thought you ought to know.

men

tonight was single guy night at the grocery store. no, i was not out on the prowl, shopping for single guys. it's just that there were a lot of single guys there. i can't remember the last time i saw that many dudes shopping for food. weird.

guys at the grocery store stare. i dunno. maybe all guys stare, and at the store there's no crowd or dim lighting to hide that fact. or maybe it's just that they were so out of their element and bewildered that they're already wide-eyed when they look up at you. now don't get all in a huff about the out-of-their-element comment. i'm sure some guys are comfortable at the store. these guys weren't. example. while cruising down aisle 9 for barilla pasta (i ate ALL of my pasta this week. all my spaghetti, my wheat spaghettini, and the linguini i've had for quite a while now) i saw a dude pick up and put back and pick up and put back a one pound package of valu-rite spaghetti several times. i grabbed my pasta and cruised on, while he continued to ponder the pastas. he had stared at me when i was rounding the corner from the breads, while he was all the way over by the eggs and cheese. maybe it was a silent plea for help.

i just can't bring myself to make eye contact in these situations.

this brings me to something else i wanted to write about, but haven't thought i'd be able to write about it in an interesting or entertaining way. i'm going to write it here anyway, and despite a lack of an appropriate segue.

last night's masterpiece theatre was the last installment of dickens' "bleak house." in it the protagonist, a slightly homely but plucky and wise orphan girl, received two marriage proposals probably within 20 minutes of viewing time. not to mention that she was already secretly engaged. to her significantly older GUARDIAN (eww). the remarkable thing was the proposals. these dudes were like, "since the moment i saw you your image has been fixed in my mind. i love you. we don't talk, and i know i've never said anything, but i believe you love me too. now that i have a house/job, will you marry me?"

dude, what?

i think it's funny. really funny actually. is that how it happened back then, over there? heh heh. i know the chickie writers from that period wrote like that, but this was dickens.

i'm trying to think of a weird courtship thing in our culture now to compare it to/contrast it with. maybe internet dating (eww)?

i'm still laughing. mostly because i'm imagining the girl looking at the man, this near stranger on bended knee, and she is saying, "dude, what?"

more dreams

i have been having bad dreams lately.

really bad.

most of them involve failure.

i've dreamt that i missed diagnoses and babies grew extremely ill. i've dreamt that there were tons of important things i didn't know (and my brain is making up diagnoses. how did it come up with "pregnant prebiotic vitaminosis" anyway?). i've dreamt that i've gotten sent back to medical school for remediation, and could not perform well there, and the students made fun of me for sucking. and i've dreamt that patients died in my care.

a dream here or there doesn't really affect one, but this recurring motif is really starting to get to me. the dreams are horrible, horrible. it's starting to affect me at work and how i practice. i guess that having this degree of responsibility has never really weighed on my psyche before, and perhaps it's surfacing now. it is a great responsibility, isn't it? a parent does all that he/she can (or wants to, depending), and when they are out of their ken the child is brought to me.

these dreams must stop. don't you go trying to analyze me; i know it's a reflection of feelings of inadequacy. but i'd rather have more of those dreams about having no breasts (which is much closer to truth) than something that's going to affect my work, where other people depend on me.

here's the thing. i am, at least by objective committee reviews, a good doctor.

perhaps i truly am under spiritual attack.

women

women are crazy.

women create obligations for other people in their minds and don't let the other party know about them. when the other person does not fulfill said imagined obligation, women become disappointed and sometimes angry.

it is completely unreasonable.

i too am a woman.

dangit.

shoes

(male readers: i feel the title of this post to be fair warning in and of itself.)

oh, yeah. did i mention? i have a lot of shoes.

i was thinking about this while cleaning up the living room for the maintenance people who will be coming in at an unannounced time to change my air filter and perform some sort of inspection. what sort i do not know. (mental note— do not hang around in bathrobe this week.)

well i don’t wear shoes in the house, so i take them off at the front door. (mental note— my new place must have an entryway and a way to keep my shoes tastefully stored and hidden.) and there they sit. why should i move them? sooooo, i have a lot of shoes hanging out on the first level of my place. um, a lot. while straightening them up, i thought to myself, i wonder how many pairs of shoes i have? the answer to that question frightened me:

i have no idea.

i'm not one of those. i don't obsess about my shoes, nor would i blow my life savings on them. but when did i get to be a shoe-bie? i don’t know. it’s so not me to be all shoey. but maybe it is. i think it was in medical school, when i started to have to dress up daily. i started getting shoe compliments, and well, that was it.

at work i am now known for my shoes. when i walk into a room, the nurses and residents, female and male, notice me and quickly look down to check my shoes, and then scan upward to check out the rest of my outfit if i’m not in my white coat. or scrubs. or flightsuit. i see them do it. it's funny. it does create some pressure, having the reputation for fabulous shoes that i do. one would not want to disappoint. (mental note—time to go buy more shoes.) just kidding.

i can’t remember the last time i bought shoes though. i think it was in the early fall. espadrilles. on sale online. and before that? motorcycle boots. on sale online. or was it scarf-style ankle-tie open-toe pumps, a pair in each of two colors, on sale at the mall?

my shoe opinions, like my others, are strong and somewhat unusual. i am decidedly anti- pointy toes, but i can't decide whether it's because they look witchy, slutty, circus-y, or elfin. i am a great fan of ankle-ties. ugg boots are ridiculous-looking; wear them only if you are desperate to keep warm inside the house. a good mary jane style can take you a long way. the cowboy boot trend is poser and stupid. the slingback is forever. flip-flops are and always will be informal; don't wear them to the white house. and without extra height under the toebox, anything over 2 1/2 inches for a heel teeters on the edge of trashy. over 3 1/2 inches makes them stripper shoes. i thought that was common knowledge though.

i haven’t seen any shoe-related posts there lately, but here is a blog about shoeism. the lass makes me feel how old and salty i am, but girlfriend seems to know shoes.

right now my most pressing shoe question is “where are the shoelaces to my green plaid sneakers?”

i cannot think of a better example of the flaming hypocrisy of catholics than the way in which they "celebrate" mardi gras.

there. i said it.

untouchable

the waiter was about to put his hand on my shoulder and squeeze it. he stopped himself about two inches away from me and pulled his hand back.

i wonder why. no no, i did not want him to touch me. we weren’t flirting (i had figured he was gay) at all. but i hadn’t signaled either way, for him to reach for my shoulder nor to shy away. i was just asking him to bring my friend a piece of cake with a candle in it. completely neutral and professional.

i wonder what made him head toward adding a physical gesture to the conversation, but i wonder more what made him stop himself so suddenly.

my prickles. they must be about two inches long, and sharp.

i wish...

today, i wish i could draw.

this is because today, the words aren't there.

if i could draw, i'd draw something in pen and ink.

i'd use a really really dark heavy blue ink. almost-black blue.

it would be a very messy and liney and angular drawing of nothing

the kind you could do with the pen in your fist

the exercise being "draw how you feel today".

i can't draw though.

once in college we were supposed to draw something. maybe it was "draw how you feel today;" i don't quite recall. the pretty sisters from down the hall drew hearts and smiley faces and flowers on pink construction paper. maybe even birds that looked like v's and m's. i was stunned. i didn't know people our age still even thought to draw like that.

the memory is coming back to me now. i drew something on white paper with a medium blue crayon. boxes. small boxes. going diagonally upward and to the right. the first box (bottom left) was a perfect square, shaded neatly and evenly. the next box less so, with some white gaps in the shading. the 4th and 5th boxes started to lose their outlines. and by the top right of the doodle there was no box outline at all, and the color that would have filled the box took the form of a blue sprawly scribble.

puffintoad looked at my picture and said she liked it and she understood what i meant. i initially felt some doubt, not of her ability to understand, but that my picture actually communicated what i wanted it to. i soon convinced myself that it did, and i was glad to be making a friend who understands.

i have no idea why i just remembered that.

sometimes i wish i could have all my drawings back to look at too.

puffintoad, on our trip i don't care what we do. i like spending time with you.

OWWW!

THUUUUKFB!

(pause. apply pressure. recover.)

i jutht bit mm lipf.

ith bleedng a lot.

why do we do thngth lyk that?

i bean, i knew mm lipf waz therr

an’ i chmpd ri’ dunn onni’ anyway.

(slight whimper)

i just go, "so?"

hahaha! hee!

oh man. i forgot. these guys are funny.

hoops & yoyo, man.

this one is particularly funny. and as an added bonus, i like to make the bear go "plop". or "ka-thunk", whichever you think it sounds like.

prescriptions

name: naughty brat in room 7
rx: whuppin’
strength: medium
sig: one whuppin’ applied liberally p.r.n. insolent behaviour. repeat as indicated.
disp: ninety. and if some spills out of bottle and lands on parent, that is fine.
refills: unlimited

name: parents of naughty brat in room 7
rx: spine
strength: average
sig: apply to deficient area p.r.n. child’s bratty tantrum
disp: two
refills: none. if you don’t use your spine and discipline your child, i can’t help you.

hic!

i have the hiccups.

my hiccups are the classic “hic!” sound. and when i do it my whole upper body goes up. sometimes i even make the “hic-uk!” sound. it’s probably the only thing i do the traditional way—besides my practices of medicine and music.

it used to be that when i got the hiccups, i’d have them on and off for days. days, i tell you. on and off.

startling me does not stop my hiccups. it just makes me mad. making me scared has worked though—one of my scary teachers once worked her cure on me by getting real up close in my personal space and interrogating me about something i can’t remember what but i was so frightened i went into fight-or-flight which probably changed my sympathetic-parasympathetic tone balance and stopped my random phrenic nerve firings and therefore my hiccups. and once i ate a cube of sugar and that stopped my hiccups successfully for some reason. i also hear that a good long kiss stops hiccups. makes sense. but i’ve never had a boyfriend and the hiccups at the same time, so i haven’t gotten to try it out yet. maybe next time i’ll just grab a stranger and see.

sometimes hiccups mean something is seriously wrong inside your abdomen. on the rare occasion it’s an actual medical condition, it is often that something is wrong with the spleen. it's not because of the spleen itself; it's because of where the spleen is. because it’s so cosy with the diaphragm. nevermind. don’t you dare go running to the doctor and asking about if your spleen is okay next time you get hiccups, you freakin’ hypochondriacs. don’t do it! and all babies hiccup a lot. don’t ask why, they just do. so don’t bring them to the e.r. for it. i only wrote this paragraph because i wanted to write the word "spleen" anyway.

when i was a kid they used to say that the hiccups meant you were growing. that’d be awesome. you see, i lack about three inches in my tib-fibs for them to be proportionate with my femurs and with the rest of my body. that’s three inches taller that i should be. that's three inches of top shelf that i can't reach. that’s three inches i have to cut off the bottoms of my pant legs when i buy outside of the “petite” section.

so instead, i’m just hiccuping with no consequence except that it sounds “cute”, which takes away from my credibility as a professional.

dang-hic!-it.

new bunny

look at the new itty bitty bunny my friend anonymous gave me!


he's very very soft. and you can't really tell in this photo, but he's waving.

i didn't have a better size reference handy, so i just grabbed what was nearby.

why do you fuss so?

this was brewing in me and was written before i received yesterday’s two sentences that reached in and grabbed my heart and stomach.

over the past few years i have learned to surround myself with things i find comforting and pleasurable and good to me. within this shell i have grown, but perhaps in a different way from what i would prefer. we all know that it is through bearing burden that one’s spirit grows to be strong, flexible, and agile. i’ve a feeling that my spiritual growth has been more the flabby kind. i don’t want to be all big and useless.

i don’t want to hurt, but i don’t think this is quite right either.

do you surround yourself with people who are just like you? why? are your problems bothersome but still trivial? what i mean is, do you have food to eat and clothes to wear? a job that pays money? people in your life who love you? are you safe? are you free? are you healthy? then what are your problems? why do you fuss so? i know people who don’t have these things. spending time with them has shown me how trivial my perceived problems are and how spiritually rich and capable of handling life they can be. they are more likely to be spiritually healthy.

my challenge for all today is to go out and help one another bear each others’ burdens. why? otherwise you will not grow. not in the right way.

i cheat. my day job is to help heal the sick. that’s really kind of a shallow way to do it. i invest time and energy and emotion, and it is hard and it is a sacrifice, but it’s nothing like the sacrifice of bearing their burdens along with them.

i’ve been thinking about this because over the past few days my personal issues have re-appeared and started to bring me down. trivial issues. it’s so easy to get caught up in them. but SO not worth my time or emotional investment. and i’m not going to write about them, because they’re not worth yours either.

trying

you know, i'm trying really hard not to care. i am! i even started blogging here again on saturday.

i know. blogging is a public medium. but still. there are some people whose gaze i do not want fixed upon my life so, so very persistently.

i can't help it. i care.

why? why why why? why won't the blogstalker leave me alone? am i really just that awesome? no, i am not. i am horrible, horrible! oooooga booga booga!

are you lurking in the blogosphere? do you have a blog of your own? if you don't, i recommend that you start one. it could be good for you.

two sentences

two real-life sentences about a real-life little boy that have re-adjusted my attitude and set me straight:

claude needs some more clothes.
everything he had was in a small plastic shopping bag.

bad day

i'm mad. and sad. it feels pretty bad. i'm glum and bummed 'cause it's all so dumb. but today i'll pray it goes away so whatever happens, i can just say tomorrow is another day.

lookit

now we're talkin'.

i made a camobunny.

oh yeah i made a kitty too.

gender confusion

i had to write another letter to right another egregious wrong. i hope this time i wasn't too harsh...

dear sir or madam:

i am one of the pediatric hospitalists, and am writing with regard to my physician’s profile on the page
http://[remainder.of.url].

it refers to me as “he.” i am a woman. please correct this at your earliest convenience.

thank you,

[camobunny], md

you know it's not every day that one writes a letter like that.

they changed it right away.

and she's back!

did you miss me?

i kind of did.

out of control

forty-eight hours ago it was 71º.
now it's 9º.

well i think it's funny.

work

i left work with the pager on my pants.

THE pager.

it's going to ring unpleasantly in the morning and i will feel all salty.

well probably not. the sad thing is, no one will probably miss it. we are so tightly leashed to the unit, we don't need the e-leash that i accidentally stole.

i'm turning the sucker off. haHA! i just turned it off. i feel so rebellious. no, i feel... nothing. i feel as though i shouldn't have forgotten and left the pager on my pants is what.

i also feel as though i shouldn't have stayed late to see those patients. those patients who went to the emergency room for a RASH. it's a RASH. not an emergency, a RASH. rashrashrash. ptooey. phooey.

actually today was a day of stupid things (notice: not stupid people, stupid things). a bunch of things that did not need to be seen in an emergency room. booboos and owies and sniffles and squirts. and some weird crap too, herpetic whitlows and marijuana-induced gynecomastia. maybe that's my answer to filling out clothes better. no wait, men get boobs, women get facial hair. drat. and why do people think a humidifier fixes congestion? i don't get that. and 'i diagnosed myself with appendicitis.' well good for you and congratulations, you're fine, just gassy, go home and rip some and you'll feel better (really!). i actually told her to go home and fart. very professionally.

i am not liking how i feel at the end of these 16 hr day shifts. it didn't used to be like this. i feel straight up bad. everything about everything feels bad. my morale is mediocre, my energy drained, my confidence quashed, my spirits dampened, my body in pain. even more pain than i'm used to. i'm ready for my new job. my new 80-hour a week job. dangit. nevermind.

for two days now i have been entertaining this novel thought. unlike most of my colleagues, i've never thought about leaving medicine before. what if i did? oooooh. not because i dislike medicine. because i loooove lazing about.

so tonight i wonder, which of the things i saw today will i catch? diarrhea? herpetic whitlow? influenza? fleas? why do i do this? ewww! ewww! i gotta go shower.

fishing for compliments

i never intend to do it.

i promise.

fishing for advice, perhaps. but never for compliments.

but unsolicited advice can sometimes be like catching plants or garbage on your line. usually if i want advice, i bait the hook with, "i'm looking for advice" (you know me and my subtlety), or "what's your opinion on [blah]?"

if ever i express diffidence in person, i'm truly confessing diffidence. if ever i ask questions of uncertainty on my blog, it's an exercise in thought and exploration of possibilities. just to clarify. (read: the previous post was not me fishing for compliments.)

and now, to close, here is a cute related picture featuring a favorite character of mine.

critical review

hm.

(sniff.)

my blog has been remarkably un-funny lately. my potentially very entertaining post about the grease fire was lackluster. nothing really remotely funny except maybe the mozart stuck in the bathroom idea, which isn't even mine. and aside from the washed-out bunny photo, there's nothing to catch the eye. oh, and i even caught two little grousy posts about lost love. ewwww.

i review my blog from time to time, trying to read it from the point of view of a person reading it for the first time. i think i'd surf on.

but i don't care.

(grin)

fire up!

i got paged this morning, waking me up and causing the very first emotion i felt today to be perplex... perp... perplexity? yeah, that. i drew upon my talent for sounding awake and chipper even when i've just woken up and called the number.

her: [camobunny]? hi. (pause)

inner me: (uhh...)

her: (pause) it's dr. h. (dramatic pause)

what am i supposed to do in this dramatic pause? oh yeah, respond.

me: oh, hi! (with audible exclamation point)

both: (tension-breaking laugh)

her: (deep breath) i got your e-mail.

me: oh, yes. yes, yes.

her: yes.

me: you know, i hope it didn't sound upset. i'm not upset, but i re-read the message and it was harsher than i intended...

her: well, it did sound a little upset, but that's mostly because i was upset while reading it.

inner me: (heh. good! get fired up!)

me: oh? yeah.

...

yeah, so someone made a recommendation that i didn't like yesterday. it wasn't rude. it was subtle and polite. but it was wrong. it was wrong for patient care. it was the wrong thing to do. it pointed out a team trend in compromising quality of care. and dr. h. is the team boss so when we got back from the helicopter trip i wrote her.

as you may have figured, i like reading myself write (i don't like hearing myself talk, but that's different), so i may have gotten a little overzealous with my e-mail. i used phrases like "it is not acceptable" and even the sentence, "this i will not compromise." and honestly, re-reading the message yesterday, i sounded more upset than i truly am. still, i don't take anything back.

driving home yesterday i thought a few things to myself. what does this mean? am i avoidant about face-to-face confrontation? does writing strong letters make me feel superior? is that why i prefer a communication medium in which i can present my case in its entirety without interruption, and which gives me time to choose words carefully and organize my argument as i could not do on the fly? am i afraid to make someone dislike me? do i brandish big words because i'm a small person? am i a coward? am i fake? am i nasty and harsh?

i did say what i thought about that recommendation directly to the person who gave it. i said, "i don't think i'll do that. we all need to [do something else]." and she said, "well you could [do it this way]." and i said, "no we can't, because [of this]." and she said, "oh." and that was the end of it.

dr. h. said "a different nurse may have been snippier about it. another doc might have taken it, but i think you're outspoken enough to have been able to do the right thing."

but am i? and did i? i don't know. i'm not outspoken. i'm passive. and inhibited. i just get fired up about certain things, that's all.

being quiet when i'm worked up and expressing it later is a habit of mine. how does one change the way one responds to certain situations? if i had conciously been thinking about it, would i have said all those things i wrote in the letter right then and there? would it even have been the right thing to do?

i've been thinking, and i think i did it the right way. i stated the facts, and it wouldn't have helped to pontificate about how i felt about it the way i did in the letter. no one is going to be implicated or "corrected", and hopefully, no one's left thinking i'm a bitch.

except you guys. heh heh.

by request, for a limited time only

a blurry bathroom photo of the flightsuit.

i know, i need a haircut.

dangit

if i had left my office 45 seconds earlier i would not have run into the man who years ago broke my heart, whom i never ever see, on valentine's day.

...

oh, well!

lookit

i made a bunny.

fire!

a fire burned in his kitchen, and all i could do was listen over the phone. i thought, "don't put water on it," but i didn't say it out loud because i wasn't sure what was going on. i probably should have said it out loud. all i heard was, "oh my gosh. oh my gosh," and some clanking. his life flashed before my eyes. well, no it didn't. his apartment flashed before my eyes. flash fire that is. i didn't think he would die, but i certainly did not want his home to burn. then his smoke alarm went off.

i couldn't tell exactly when the fire went out, but after it was clear that there were no more flames, i had to laugh. i really wasn't trying to be insensitive. yes, it was a laugh of relief, but also— it was just so bizarre and funny. i mean, spontaneous combustion of his food? and then there was the image of him walking about his kitchen/apartment with a flaming pan in his hand, unsure of what to do.

in any case, it went out, and nothing was burned except for the label on a bottle of dish soap. i am so glad.

but i'm still laughing. so is he.

i wonder if he still has his eyebrows and arm hairs.

blasphemy

allegro assai

mozart's stuck in the baaath-room
let him out, let him out, let him out...

mozart's stuck in the baaath-room
let him out, let him out, let him out!

the mozart bored me.

the stravinski bored me.

the contemporary piece annoyed me.

and the second mozart bored me.

but i wasn't bored because i don't know music. i was bored because i do know music. the interpretation was sort of, well, affectedly, unconvincingly dramatic and on top of that, mozart bores me in general. blasphemous, i know. it's pretty and everything, yet it is boring. but hey, better boring than anxiety-provoking (bach).

i held my coat in my lap the entire time and wondered how much longer it would be. the contrabassoonist looked as though he wondered the same, there on stage in his tux, instrument on a stand, arms folded and resting on his protuberant belly, knees slightly apart, waiting for the piece to end. i wondered what he was really thinking about. from his posture, i was guessing beer or hockey. he may as well have been wearing an a-shirt.

why do i go to the symphony anymore? oh, yeah. because i love music. even when it's boring. i'm glad i went.

as an added bonus, the audience did not clap between movements. cough and snort they did, but applaud they did not. how refreshing.

oh one more thing. i've wondered for some time now what bach's reaction would be to hearing jazz. (i don't listen to his music because it makes me anxious, but i still admire his genius.) for some reason, i feel that he would get it, and probably even dig it.

props to puffintoad and to mozart for his symphony no. 40 in g minor, with apologies for misremembering. corrections would be accepted and considered helpful.

oh no! he's stuck in there
oh no! it smells in there
mozart's stuck in the baaath-room
let him out, let him out, let him out!

i was right, i was right, i was riiii-iiiiiight...!

i don't get to do the "i told you so" thing at work, but i still get a juvenile satisfaction about being right when others doubt me.

the thing is, there's more at stake here than just my stupid ego. see, when i'm right, the patient does better.

euthymia

me: it snowed. i'm like, all happy about it, which is totally weird. i don't usually like snow. maybe it's because i left that christmas cd in my...

camodidi: it's because you're all euthymic now.

me: (pause) oh, yeah.

addendum

oh, and most of the people who don't get it think that they do.

that makes it tough.

get it?

you know how sometimes people just don't get it? and sometimes there are specific people who never get it?

unfortunately, i find it hard to be friends with them.

there's one person, for example, that so often misunderstands that i've stopped telling her things. i'd tell a whole long detailed story, with bullet points and highlighted statements and i would even repeat my thesis a couple of times, and she somehow manages to misconstrue the meaning of my story.

there's another who always tries to interpret what i say as reflections of me and my personality, and my world view. he is always dead wrong.

what is it? is it a language barrier? bad listening skills? faulty deductive skills? different world views? prejudice? arrogance?

arrogance? what i mean by this is a combination of egocentrism and countertransference. it's a combination of a) projecting one's own faults onto someone else, and b) an inability to modify one's prejudgment when presented with new facts, because, among other things, to do that would mean admitting one was wrong.

wait, that's not exactly what i meant. oh well. nevermind.

has it occurred to me that maybe i am the one who does not get it? yes. but if i were the odd one out, i wouldn't be surrounded by other people who get it and agree with me.

we should try to be friends anyway. but today i am thankful for people who get it.

gift

it was done.

because i so love giving gifts, i had invested time in it, but not too much time. definitely a thoughtful gift, designed and created entirely by me. i chose the stain of the wood, the different papers and matting. i hand-lettered the verse, tracing with colored pencil on the translucent overlay. i wrote a personal message and the date on the back, gold ink on burgundy background. i cleaned the glass, carefully placed each layer into the box, closed the back, and set it up to look at it.

eh. it was nice enough, i guess. then a thought hit me. drying above my bedroom mirror were red roses, the first flowers he’d given me. i took two dried petals and placed them inside the shadowbox, where they lay at the foot of the display.

perfect.

and now, meaningless.

my first and last valentine’s day gift.

i wonder where it is now.

blog etiquette

forgot to ask all y'all's help with this.

inertia

my brain was going, churning away.

i was in that odd sleep phase. i was having strange dreams about things that didn't relate to one another, and at the same time partly awake, wondering if i should fully wake up, and what that meant, and whether or not i should go to conference today. (i'm not going. i am playing hooky all week this week except tomorrow.)

the phone rang.

my brain kept going. is that the phone? am i dreaming? i wonder what time it is. my body did nothing. come on, open your eyes. i could only get one open. the clock said 0542. i wonder who's calling? is it that stupid solicitor that keeps calling? surely it's too early. i will yell at them for that. am i on backup call today? or no, it could be a wrong number. but if it isn't, and it's someone i know, then it must be important. oh wait, i almost forgot, i should move my arm and pick up the handset!

i picked up the handset. caller ID identified the caller as my friend anonymous. oh wow. i wonder what she wants. i can't remember what she was up to last night. i hope everything is okay. did she go out of town? what time does she get in to work? oh wait, i should answer the phone!

i pushed talk and mustered up my phone voice. "helloooo?"
i heard all kinds of weird noises. not pockety sounds, but harsh jostly almost clanky sounds. i smiled a half-smile (mouth muscles not awake yet) and hung up, and rolled back over in the bed.

my body went back to a useless, inert state. but my mind kept going. i pondered the possibilities. what sort of situations would cause my number to be dialed and all those sounds? i thought of lots of things; some of the ideas are bizarre and i shan't mention them but the one i liked the best was that her dog was chewing on her cell phone. actually her dog is a very good dog and wouldn't do that, but i liked the idea for some reason.

at that point i decided my brain needed to shut up so i could go back to sleep. and it did, so i did.

disturbing knits

it is disturbing.

i don’t know what to say.

(pause)

...

(recover)

“hello, i see that you’re knitting. what are you making?”

bored with scarves, i was looking for something different to knit. a hat, or another bunny or something. now i found bunnies and i found hats. but you know what else i found along the way? all sorts of weird s***, that’s what. pardon my language, but that's what it is.

knit breast prostheses. okay, if you’ve had a mastectomy, maybe that’s not so weird. actually that makes sense. okay. but knit condom pouches ("for when you're on-the-go"), vibrator cosies, and "willy-warmers"? useful or weird? can’t decide. oh, wait, actually yes i can: weird. knit (and crocheted, being very careful about typos now) male and female external genitalia? whatever. weird.

what took the cake was the knit uterus and fallopian tubes.

why? why, why, why?

please don’t answer.

that’s what i get for looking for patterns on the internet, i guess.

people are bizarre.

now a prude i may be, but it’s not the subject matter that bothers me. i am a physician, after all. it’s the fact that someone thought to design and knit all these things. i mean, what the heck? i’m much more comfortable with the real things than these weirdo knit versions.

wait, that came out sounding all wrong.

nevermind. there’s no fixing any of this.

“hello, i see that you’re knitting. what are you making?”

truth and telling

okay, so i blogged a fib the other day. but i told you in the end it was a lie.

something occurred to me recently. i tell a lot of true stories on this blog. how will you ever trust me again? will you believe me? (does it matter if you do?)

how about if i tell you if i ever write something untrue on my blog then i'll tell you it's untrue. like i did.

i'm only bothering with being honest on this anonymous blog because some of you know me. oh, and because i'm pathologically honest. it often does not occur to me to lie, and it's harder for me to tell a lie than it is for me to put my foot behind my head. (or, i suppose, in my mouth.)

honest.

every day a celebration

i am in the middle of a long stretch of days off.

i used to hate these SO much, because i was so depressed and felt horrible when i didn't have work to distract me,

but now each morning when i wake up on my own, with no horrid jarring alarm buzz to jerk me from a peaceful sleep, knowing there's a whole day of doing anything i want ahead of me, i feel like celebrating.

woohoo!

it's a positive prognostic sign.

oh, and one more thing...

puberty screws up everything.

fact

when faced with facts that he does not like, rational man will go to irrational lengths to disbelieve them.

don't ask for an example. there are too many to choose from, just from over the past 48 hrs. you would think that when it comes to health and medical topics, people would realize that maybe physicians actually do know better.

parlour games

i took two of the quick-release ibuprofen and put something a little stronger in my pocket before heading out the door. i didn’t know what to expect and i was nervous.

i tried to ignore everyone else there. the bald dude at the counter kinda wrinkled his forehead when i told him what i wanted. i got distracted, trying to tell where his forehead stopped and his scalp started. he pulled out a book. ugh, i didn’t want anything out of the book. i can’t draw, but i drew something for him, and had a couple of sample art pieces to show the general ideas. the line, i said. the overall line is really important. the cartoon lightbulb that suddenly turned on over him reflected its light off his shiny pate and onto my face as he lowered his head and sketched exactly what i wanted. we both were pleased.

“you’re little. this is big,” he said.

i know. that’s what i’m going for.

“it’ll be like a mural.” his eyes brightened just a little. i wasn’t sure whether i should be scared or relieved.

yeah.

“you have any others?”

no.

“you ready?”

ugh, as ready as i’ll ever be. i know too much. too much about viruses, and skin, and blood, and infections. and i know little about pain.

so there i was, on my belly, heart pounding with the anxiety of knowing that there was no turning back (tapocketapocketapocketa...). he started, and honestly, it didn’t really hurt much. it was more annoying than anything. you know, a shallow, spreading pain. it reminded me of when i was five and allergy tests were done— eighty pricks with a little screwdriver all across my back. i itched for hours afterward. i had a feeling i’d be able to handle this at twenty-eight. the little pains started up on my left shoulderblade, and worked their way down and to the right.

he was being careful. i’ve always loved surprises, and have typically been very good at waiting for them, but this time the suspense was killing me. i shut my eyes and tried to imagine how things were coming together. branches, blooms, ripples of water appeared before my closed eyes, etched in white and pain and pink and brown and blood and blue. pain then blossomed on my right hip, and i started to get really excited because i knew he was almost done. i wondered what i’d feel like in the morning. and then,

“that’s it. i’ll leave so you can have a look.”

the curtain fell closed again, and i stayed where i was, prone, for just a bit longer, my skin throbbing a little. i grabbed my jacket and held it in front of me as i stepped toward the mirror and turned. which shoulder to look over first? left or right? right. i turned my head.

i lie. none of this happened at all.
yep. made it all up. every word of it. wait, except for the allergy testing thing. that did happen.

what?

LOL

(warning for guys: girly post! girly post! scroll down! scroll down!)

to me, LOL stands for "little old lady."

that's what i think of whenever i consider my newest hobby. i am kind of regretting having chosen this hobby. well, regretting is not the right word-- it's too strong. i am, um, wondering about the wisdom and utility of that choice.

i started knitting less than a year ago because, well, at first because i wanted a light blue scarf and couldn't find one in the stores because freakin' everything was pink last year (not that pink isn't lovely, but it was just, you know, a pepto bismol explosion last winter) so i decided to make one for myself. i ditched that project when i found out my brother and sister-in-law were expecting, and made that blanket i posted a picture of a while back. (i also ditched it because i snapped one of my needles in half while working with it, likely a sign of the ridiculous amount of tension i tend to carry in my body.) what better reason to learn how to do something than for the sake of a family member? or a baby? or a baby family member?

anyway, since then i think i may have gone overboard in my usual way of going overboard with things. a respectable quantity of money and time have been invested, and i've got a few projects— some failures, some successes— under my belt. the successes include mostly long straight things, like that blanket, and scarves, one of which i now use myself, one of which i donated to the cold africans at church, and one of which i am saving to give someone as a gift. the failures? a meant-to-be-felted bag that i made out of yarn that doesn't felt (duh). well i guess that's the only failure and i guess i could salvage it with some seamstress-type work. the other not-quite-success is the same bag in a yarn that does felt, but i ran out of yarn and i really don't need enough to warrant buying another skein. i'll graft something in, i suppose.

"why do you like to do that?" camodad asked me, unable to completely hide his tone of nauseated anxiety. "i don't know," i answered. but i do know what he was thinking. he's thinking his eldest daughter is never gonna catch a man if she is seen doing something that only LOL's and pregnant women do. and no, it does not help my reputation as a closet badass. in fact, it strengthens my reputation as a poser. maybe i should take up motorcycle repair or archery, or trap shooting, or woodworking.

furthermore, i cannot argue strongly by saying that i will be making useful things as i am moving to a place where it is warm all year 'round, and no one needs hats, scarves, or sweaters. (except newborns. i guess i could do the knitting for newborns thing.) and i refuse to start making tea cosies, tissue box covers or toilet plunger covers. (shudder) not while i'm in my twenties, at least. or thirties. or forties or fifties.

so why do i keep doing it? because i like it. i've always liked making things and crafty-type activities. i like having a finished product i can be proud of, especially if it's something useful. it's repetitive and (sometimes) mindless, which can be therapeutic. it's something i can do while watching tv, and that makes me feel like i'm not wasting that time. and the yarns are soft and their colors are preeetty.

despite its recent increase in popularity (don't believe it? ask 5 women you know when they started knitting, and at least one of them will say within the past two years), knitting will always be uncool. it will always be an activity for older women, sitting by the fire, rocking in a rocking chair while the cats play with balls of yarn. but i don't care. like i said, i like it.

so, does anybody need a scarf?

word of the day

today's word of the day is insouciant.

i don't know why. the word just popped into my head this morning.

i think it perhaps an improvement over yesterday's.

word of the day

it's 21:23, and suddenly there is a word of the day.

the word of the day, probably i should say of the moment but whatever, is

irascible.

i don't know why or where it came from. after the events and non-events of the day (by non-events i refer to all that happened virtually, i.e. over the internet, i.e. all that blogstalker crap. man, you get slammed in the face with reality when your phone rings and it's your blogstalker. or should i say you get slammed in the face with the phone when your blogstalker rings and it's reality?) i feel the word "irascible" kind of emanating from my essence. my qi is jumping around all irascibly, even if it the irascibility hasn't penetrated my mood yet. because today my moods are pensive, cute, and guilty.

perhaps it's a predictor of how i will be tomorrow.

you know what else is cute? that azul and i both believe the last bite to be sacred. i knew there was something i liked about her.

and no, you may not squeeze my business.

howdy

camobunny takes a tentative step back toward her usual posting habits...

i do know how to spell "maneuver". in fact, i checked it and checked it again against m-w.com. somehow it still got jumbled when i posted.

hiding can be hard work, mostly because one's anxiety level is ratcheted up several notches all day long. i wonder how difficult it would be to deal with an actual dangerous stalker instead of the harmless kinds i've had. actually, i imagine it would be less difficult in some minor ways because there would be no attempts toward protecting anyone's feelings or toward subtlety. and i could involve the law. and guns.

the only thing that makes someone a stalker rather than very thoughtful/romantic is whether or not they are welcomed by you. that makes me feel as though i am a bad person for not welcoming my blogstalker, as though it is all my fault.

i think i had all these creative things to say between last week and now, but they got stifled by this, um, issue. so all i will say right now is i've had a rough 24 hrs between this and work. i can't believe i got called back in to the hospital right after i left at 1900 last night. i can't believe the helicopter pilot was trying to take off without me even though i was within the ETA i had given. i can't believe i didn't get out of bed this morning when i woke up and saw that the clock said 0522 (i get up at 0530). nooooo. instead i had to stay in bed waiting for the alarm to go off, go back to sleep, and sleep 'til 0716 (i have to be in the hospital at 0700) because the alarm wasn't turned on! i'm incredibly thankful there haven't been any trips yet this morning. here in my cubicle i sit, my body feeling tired-- you know, that sort of languorous soreness in the muscles?-- and my eyes feeling dry, and my throat sore from whatever weird allergic post nasal drip i have going on. nonetheless it feels good to be alive. when i feel tired and languorous like this i don't store all that anxiety in my muscles, and i feel relaxed and calm-- it's like when a balloon has a hole in it; i just can't keep any anxiety inside me and i remain floppy. the only thing i'm worried about is that i'm a bit stinky since i didn't take a shower this morning because i was late.

oh, and meatball hotpockets are disgusting. i can't believe camodidi didn't warn me.

and now i will go to the nicu bathroom to put on makeup. i look like a little kid without makeup.