Whine w/o Cheese

Friday I saw 24 patients in approximately seven hours:

two pre-operative clearances (one for cataract surgery, one for arthroscopic surgery on the right knee);
one international adoption physical;
five fasting check-ups;
one hospital follow-up (for COPD exacerbation);
more sore throats, sinusitis symptoms and bronchitis than I care to count;
a few gastroenteritis/Norovirus-type illnesses;
one thrombosed internal hemorrhoid(s);
one ear lavage;
one suture removal (antitragus/concha of a left ear, conked by 12 year old daughter while playing basketball);
one superficial laceration to the dorsum of the right hand who walked in without ant appointment  and whose wound was cleansed and steri-stripped on the fly;

and no partridge, no pear tree and ten minutes to inhale lunch while talking to a pharmaceutical rep who I actually like because he doesn't do the robo-detailing schtick.

At 5:04 pm I flew out of the office, having done as many of the tasks in my electronic in-box as I could, 26 minutes before the start of our parent-teacher conference at Thea's school which doesn't cut it for travel between Columbus and Princeton while obeying local speed limits;

and I'm working tomorrow and on-call all weekend;

and it's a full moon.

The upside of all this is that for working tomorrow, I don't work and don't have to be on-call on February 13, the day of Thea's school's Lunar New Year fund-raising event.

Meanwhile will someone please call the producers of 'Clean House' and have them swoop in, clean, redesign and organize my world?   Because that's the only way it's going to happen, at least for the time being.  Why does 'Clean House' only perform those miracles in the greater Los Angeles area unless they're going after the messiest home in America?

Once Upon a Good Deed. . . .

Back in December, when we were in Maryland for the Christmas holiday, the four of us went to National Harbor to hang out for an afternoon.  We parked in the St. George garage, mostly because that's where I parked when I went to the Gaylord for NCNP conference.  Steve tucked our minivan into a corner spot, and when they got out of the car, Steve and Thea found a cell phone on the ground.  I put the phone in my purse and we walked over to the ICE show, which was sold out for that day (even though the web site showed tickets available for a couple of time slots).  As we were walking around, the cell phone rang, and it was the sister-in-law of the cell phone owner, who was actually nice enough to not hang up when I told her that I was just some random person whose daughter had found the phone in a parking garage.

As Steve and Thea got our lunches at Potbelly's, the cell phone owner's SIL and I had a couple of chats on the phone - she gave me names of her SIL's family to see if they were listed in the address book or recent calls, we would hang up and I'd go looking.  No such luck, so we started working on how to figure out how to connect to hand off the phone since she lived a few exits north of National Harbor.  She and her husband volunteered to drive down, and I'd meet them. (The cell phone owner was visiting the area from South Carolina and was to be seeing her brother and sister-in-law before leaving the DC area.)

Meanwhile, Steve, Thea and Micah went off on a water taxi ride to Alexandria and back.  I got to wander around for 15 minutes doing some window shopping.  (Who would have ever thought that there could or would be a store almost entirely devoted to selling Little Peeps?  Just amazing.)  With a couple more calls to get connected, the hand-off took place in front of Ketchup (a restaurant, very unappealing name, IMHO, let's see if it's still there on our next trip there) and took less than 30 seconds.  They were happy, I was happy - and I had some time to wander around and see the water taxi coming back and heading for the dock at the Gaylord, so I could call Steve so they could disembark there and I'd walk down to meet them and we could check out the Christmas lights at the hotel.

Later that same night, I was going through my purse and found the plastic battery compartment cover to the cell phone.  Damn, damn and double damn.  What a half-baked good deed, the cell phone returned but not all of it.

Fortunately in the course of exchanging information with the SIL, I had her name and address written on a scrap of paper.  So when we got home to New Jersey, I wrapped the cover up in a bit of padding mailed it there figuring that if the SIL was nice enough to come and pick up the cell phone, she could be counted on to mail the cover back.  And then I pretty much forgot about it.  Not even pretty much.  I completely forgot about it.

Today the mail came and there was an envelope - very creatively decorated - with a return address from South Carolina.  Still didn't ring any bells.  Inside was a custom-made thank you card from the lady who got her cell phone back, and then who got her cell phone's battery cover back, too.   Really, really thoughtful.  Nice to see that thank you cards and snail mail aren't completely lost arts. The half dozen or so foil stars that came falling out when the card was opened, those I could have done without.  Whoever thought of putting confetti, however large, in cards is either a sadist or a vacuum cleaner salesperson.

Anyway, that's about all the excitement around here, other than watching bits of "Mama Mia!" while charting and catching White Collar's latest episode.

Shameless Advertising:  Stones into Schools by Greg Mortenson.  Just finished it yesterday.  Three Cups of Tea was one of the best Christmas gifts I've gotten.  Ever.  One of my top five favorite non-fiction books (Half the Sky, The Unheard, China Ghosts, Love in the Driest Season and There Is No Me Without You rounding out the list in case anyone wants to know, and those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head.)  The sequel is equally wonderful.  A must read, in hard copy, on Kindle or Nook, or whatever.  Though I still favor a 'real' book because there is just something about turning the pages and smelling the paper that just cannot be duplicated by an e-reader.

Off to a good start. . . . .

. . . a weekend with nothing pressing to get done (other than cleaning the house, organizing closets, purging) except a trip to the post office today to mail out a book that sold on half.com (What to Expect During the Toddler Years, complete claptrap.  Expect chaos, roll with it and just deal, don't buy silly books that make you more neurotic than you were before you consulted the massive tome filled with its alleged wisdom) and then after that one errand, the possibilities are wide open.

Thea made her own steamed eggs today; I lined up the ingredients and coached her on the order I put them together, but she did the work.  I can't believe she still likes them, five years after being home; the recipe has evolved a little over the years to include more soy sauce and a sprinkle of pepper, but basically what comes out of the steam bath after 12 minutes is a ramekin filled with a fluffy substance that bears a little bit too much of a resemblance to phlegm.

While the eggs steam on, Micah is playing with his mechanized Thomas trains, whose grinding noises I am growing to hate by the minute.  One is fine but four going at once raises the annoyance factor exponentially.  The tracks work better on the hard floor in the kitchen, so it is what it is though now the Christmas tree is off of the landing, we could move train operations back up there.  Thea is actually in Good Big Sister mode, and playing with him while her eggs cool.  Getting Man-in-Motion to sit down and eat will be a challenge, as usual.

Today one of our most special friends turns 13.  Happy Birthday, NORAH!   Lucky you to have a birthday on a Saturday.  Amazing the adorable toddler at my graduate school graduation is now so very grown up.  Add shopping for Geritol to the to-do list for today, suddenly I feel old.

Back to Normal. . .

. . .hair, at least.  Today I finally got back to see the person who usually cuts my hair, and I checked when my last appointment with her was September 1, 2009.

No wonder I feel like I've been living underneath someone else's hair.  Four months.

Meanwhile I did manage to get it cut once while I was visiting my mother in October, but it wasn't the usual person at the salon there that I've gone to, but she at least kept the grey at bay.

Unfortunately I had to drag my laptop along to get work done, so I didn't get to obliterate a few million brain cells perusing People magazine and the like.  I did get a quick peak at a copy of Woman's Day, but instead of destroying brain cells, it just served to make me feel inadequate because I am not taking the right vitamins to boost my immune system, using the right make-up (what make-up?) and I am not bouncing my cellulite away on an exercise ball.

I did get two shrimp and scallion rolls at Teriyaki Boy (sorry, I don't go for 'real' sushi, microbiological Russian roulette is not how I roll.)

So my regular hair is back, unfortunately it is on top of a face has a red nose and chapped lips from cold symptoms, courtesy of Micah or a patient or a combination of both.

Micah's Ear Update

Today we had another follow up with Dr. Choe - it was the longest period (four weeks) that Micah's gone without seeing him.  Since the last appointment cleared Micah for submerging his head, Micah's been swimming three times and done well.  He's now attending weekly swimming lessons at Can-Do with his sister, which will finish shortly before his second surgery.

Our appointments are usually on Wednesdays, and I think I like it that way; we're usually in and out, and are two of maybe a total of four or five people in the waiting room.  This time Micah's doctor was about an hour behind - and we got a call this morning asking if we could come 20 minutes early to complete paperwork for the office's new EMR system, and the waiting room was full.

Micah had to put up with Dr. Choe taking out a little bit of debris from the new ear canal, but the otherwise the new canal is looking good and no stenosis.  And better yet, his next appointment will be the pre-op for his next surgery which is ten weeks away.  I need to go back to August 2009 in my PDA, but I think that the pre-op appointment was about a week prior to the surgery.  Nine weeks without having to make the trek up the NJ Turnpike to Englewood would be a gift.

And I have to give myself a pat on the back, I made the drive to the ENT's with the GPS's dulcet voice on mute.  Newark Airport is the northmost point of my comfort zone, so I wimp out and put the voice on to make sure I don't stray into Bayonne (been there, done that and once is enough) or get sucked into the Lincoln or Holland Tunnels.

Micah was home with me today.  Supposedly he had had a temperature at school on Thursday; I had taken his temperature that morning and it was 97.8 (axillary).  What bothers me more is that he's back in school for only three days and has acquired a cough - thank you to whichever parent sent his or her little darling to school rather than keeping the child home. The fever has not resurfaced at home, and I've given him no Children's Tylenol or Motrin whatsoever.  I tried Children's Delsym last night, but from the coughing I heard prior to falling asleep, it doesn't do much.