Getting over the 90s

Last night, coming home from school around 9:30pm and hoping to catch the last bit of the Phillies/Yankees game, I drove past the elementary school a few blocks from my house. The neighborhood had that just-dark feel to it, like even though the sky was black, I could swear I detected a faint light to it.

The scoreboard on the ball field was lit up, a numerological beacon. I kept thinking that it must be some kind of sign, those numbers. But what? I like the idea of signs, that someone much larger than us has something to say, directly, and so you suddenly feel spotlit and special. God says, Hey you. Listen. But for the life of me, despite my relatively new-found baseball fandom, I could not figure out what 0-5-8, 0-0-2 would mean for me. So maybe God was just saying, Hey you. Or, vastly more likely, maybe someone simply forgot to turn it off post-game.
Hah.

It gave me this great pleasure to see it, though. Inexplicably. Lit up numbers in a dark field on a dark night.

Guess what?

I've been suddenly infused with a burst of confidence. I'm really tired of doubting myself. Doubting oneself is like so 1990's or something. I'm going to make a good nurse. Maybe even a great one. Maybe even a fucking great one.

Maybe when I enter patient's rooms and do my stuff and then leave, people will look at each other and say, "Who was that woman? That is one damn good nurse."

Okay, now I'm getting crazily ahead of myself. Because if you know anything about me, I'm a first-class waffler. I know the doubt will creep in again, when I'll start worrying about making mistakes or having to treat someone high on PCP. Or being faced with a spinal surgery. There is something about the spinal column that makes me feel faint. I actually feel a little queasy right now, just pondering it.

Whenever I visualize myself as a nurse, I always place myself right in the middle of something hard. I never visualize myself sitting on a stool in a fluorescent-lit room asking a teenager about their acne patterns. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But I wonder why my fragile mind goes to hospice care or oncology or, like most recently, the burn unit. I even ordered a book on burn unit work.

I mean, really.

Sometimes I also visualize Ricky Gervais getting right in my face and saying, "Oh come off it!"

(This is what I picture. Ricky as David Brent looking at me just like this. Except without that corporate seminar guy looking over his shoulder.)

There has to be a happy medium. Maybe I could handle those things. Maybe I couldn't. Most likely I couldn't. Oh boy, there's that self-doubt again. Circa 1996.

I wish the light on the scoreboard spelled something out for me. Like, Kelly, you'd make a damn good cardiology nurse. Or, because there isn't enough room for all that: try some heart.

Though because the scoreboard is only numbers, the best it could probably do in terms of messages is 80085. Which would be BOOBS.

Weeeeee.....Summer Classes!

Things I'm learning in my medical ethics class:

Amputating the wrong limb is bad.

Leaving surgical instruments in a patient, also bad.

(Also, if you leave instruments in a patient, in the future, those x-rays will be passed around a medical ethics class and the students will all laugh at what an idiot health care professional you are.)


If your medical co-worker is doing drugs, and you shun your responsibility to get that person some help, that is bad.

If your co-worker comes to work reeking of Red Bull and vodka, and you let that co-worker give a 90-year old man a tub bath, this is bad.

Over a dinner out with friends, do not name your patients and state all the crazy VDs they're currently in treatment for. This is bad.

Even if your patient is Johnny Depp, and it's his birthday, and all he wants for his birthday is you, sleeping with your patients is bad.

Even if your patient is George Clooney, and he looks at you the way he looked at Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight, and he insists that all it will take for him to get better is to spend some quality time in a locked car trunk with a naked you...resist, because if you don't, this is bad.

Even if your patient is Channing Tatum, and he comes in with nether regions scalded in an on-set accident, even if he professes to harboring fantasies of nurses in their mid-thirties, do not, I repeat, do not sleep with this patient. This would be bad.

Do not squirrel away Percocets for yourself. Also goes for Stadol, Demerol, Propofol, and a host of other pain-relievers that, in general, make the world a more hospitable place if only for a moment. Because this is bad.

Do not ignore a patient's head wound, resulting in flies laying eggs in that wound and then resulting in maggots in that wound, and then attempt to falsify documents to show that you did actually take care of the wound and oh my God, I have no idea how the maggots got there Your Honor. This would be bad.

(Also, a medical ethics class will then pass around newspaper articles detailing the charges against you and shake their heads collectively at what a horrible person you are being responsible for the vulnerable elderly and not fulfilling your charge. Jerk.)

Do not specialize in ENT and then bill yourself as a plastic surgeon and actually operate on people's faces and bodies. You will screw something up, perhaps kill someone, be sued, lose everything. And this is many, many layers of bad.

If you are an 18-year old, please rethink your decision to get liposuction. Because you might end up in the office of someone without the proper precautions and monitoring in their recovery room, who might not notice you turning blue and dying of a pulmonary embolism. In a doctor's office. Unbelievably. This is so horribly bad it's painful to think about.

Some people shouldn't be responsible for plants, much less human beings. This is frightening, and bad.

Perhaps for my own future well-being, I should reconsider my medical vocation, and instead focus on getting a job in Happy Kitten Sunshine Rainbow Land.

Dipping My Toes in Crazy Lake

This morning I heard the bells of the church across the street ring five times. What that means is that I was awake prior to five, most likely opening my eyes for good sometime around 4:45. This has been my pattern of late -- falling asleep on the couch before 9, and then rising way too early -- and I don't know how to get out of it. Going to bed late does not mean I will magically sleep until seven.

********

I'm feeling way dysthymic. Blogger doesn't register that word, and so as I type, it remains underlined in red, driving me mad.

For those of you with little knowledge of mental health terms (be grateful, really), this means I'm about knee-deep in a depressive funk. I've been that way for several weeks now, coming out here and there, but mostly remaining in it. I sequester myself, hurrying to and from events, wanting to get out and simultaneously dreading it. I try to force myself to do things, chanting my pathetic mantra: I will do this, I will do this, I will do this. But it all seems too much.

This morning, my daughter's preschool is having a fair. I volunteered to make something baked, and you have no idea, it was like I signed up Dinner Impossible, and my task was to scour a forest for ingredients and then create an entire meal for a wedding party of 200. And I'm like, what the fuck can I make with tree bark?

*******

Sometimes I think I should be in therapy. Except there really are no issues. So it would be a tragic rehashing of the story of yet another relatively privileged, lucky person, expressing their discontent.

Yawn.

*******

Therapist: So what brings you in to see me?

Me: What do you call it when you don't ever feel like doing anything, ever?

Therapist: Laziness?

Me: Dude. Ouch.

*******

I wish this dysthymia came along with zero appetite. During my last major depression, I got down to 116 pounds. It was great.

Wait. No it wasn't. Because I couldn't leave my bed. Forget I mentioned it.

You should have seen me yesterday, mopping up the brownie batter left in the mixing bowl. I used strawberries to do it.

*******

My husband is already outside, putting me to shame with his industriousness. I had a load of clean laundry in the dryer for a week.

*******

If you meet me out and about, and I seem fine, go with it. If you meet me out and about, and I start crying uncontrollably, I give you permission to slink away and pretend you don't know me.

Happy Birthday, Hannah

I realized it as I stumbled to work one August morning. Coming out of 30th Street Station, making my way down Market Street. I was lightheaded, and uncertain I could make it to Penn. I leaned against one of the buildings along my way, out of the flow of pedestrians in a hurry. I was listening to Bjork, and she sang in my ear,

"It's not up to you....oh, it never really was."

Oh my God. I was totally and completely pregnant. Totally. Completely. Pregnant. That's where I was when I realized it: Market Street, Philadelphia, PA, August of 2002.

7 years ago, I'm not sure what was happening. It was such a long process, getting her out. The midwife who first examined me that August must have been a jokester, telling me I could easily deliver a 9 lb. baby. And I believed her, because have you seen my hips? I have a pelvis, people.

7 years ago, there was something called membrane stripping (um...ouch!) and castor oil, which is the midwife way of getting your baby out by first forcing you to poop uncontrollably for several hours. There were lots and lots and lots of those things called contractions, which feel like the turning of the Earth has come to a halt and at any minute, you expect to be hurled across the room at the speed of light, only to be reduced to the basic building block of everything. Your atoms, everywhere. Contractions feel a lot like thunder sounds, loud and ominous. Except they're not really ominous. It's hard work, getting a baby out.

7 years ago, my husband turned white as a ghost, and somewhere within his not particularly emotional soul, I know he worried about the outcome. He stood beside me, and behind me, rubbing the small of my back as I rocked and rocked and rocked.

7 years ago, there was a hospital transfer, and all the interventions I had tried to avoid. It wasn't working. My body, fickle and stubborn. My baby, positioned awkwardly.

7 years ago, my own mother stood by. She had pushed me out 27 years before, and now here she was, watching the baby she birthed birthing another.

27 hours. A fever. A scalpel. A girl. My girl.

She was lovely from the start, with very fine wisps of light brown hair and eyes so bright and blue I knew they wouldn't change color.

******

It's crazy. One egg. One sperm. One particular combination creates one person you love so much. One person you'd go to war for. Face fire or bullets or a hulking tank. One person and so much love.

******
We got her a bike for her birthday. It's seriously the cutest bike I've ever seen, absent of all things Princess or Hannah Montana or any other passing phase. It's truly a big girl bike, for a big girl.

7 years ago, she was still inside me, all balled up and feeling the pressure of wanting out. And now she's here and big. She runs and jumps and slides and sings. She loves to watch Paula Deen cook, and watches shows about tornadoes. She used to want to live in Hawaii, but now she's settled on Maine. (Does Maine get hurricanes? she asked me one day.) She wants to own and operate a bakery that serves free coffee on Tuesdays. She wants to make wedding cakes. She also wants to be a teacher and a singer and a poet and a mom. She wants two boys and two girls. One of the boys is named Marco.

I've told her she'll be busy. She always tells me that I can help her. And she's such a delightful person, I couldn't decline. I'm so glad she's here, and that she belongs to me.

Happy Birthday, Hannah!

Things My Daughters Can Learn While Standing in the Grocery Checkout Line

1. The clever gift-giver can get one's husband a threesome for his birthday! (I wish I were kidding. I Got My Husband a Threesome For His Birthday was an actual Marie Claire headline.)

2. You can be famous for simply being beautiful, or for having multiple plastic surgeries by the age of 23.

3. John Edwards is a douche nozzle. (True story, unfortunately.)

4. How quickly Kendra or one of those Kardashian women loses her baby weight can be of national importance. (Also, the term post-baby bod will eventually reside in their brains, taking up cerebral space forevah.)

5. Straight couples have been messing up marriage for an eternity. (And yet...we fear the gays.)

6. Your perfect weight is approximately 20 pounds underweight.

7. A celebrity's weight fluctuations are important! Really! We need to know that Scarlett Johannson lost 20 pounds for Iron Man 2, or that Gwyneth softened up for her next movie role.

8. Cosmo keeps coming up with new, never-before-printed ways to please your man, every month! Because the possible variations that exist between two people are limitless, thanks to their intrepid sex reporters. And you'd better learn them, otherwise...Tiger Woods, ya'll!

9. If you discover your future husband has a penchant for Nazi memorabilia, you might want to rethink the engagement.

10. Larry King STILL has sex. (There should be a cut -off.)

11. We're supposed to be thrilled when the rich and famous get caught at the beach with cellulite, and pissed when they're not.

12. Reese Witherspoon is moving on.

13. It's okay to mock fallen stars, and then pretend to feel just awful when they die broken and alone.

14. It's acceptable to pay $1.25 for a 12-oz Coke when you could get a 2-liter on sale for a dollar.

Ace of Cakes, I'm Not

Hannah's birthday is coming up, and as soon as I can get over the fact that my firstborn is turning 7, (7!), I can pick my jaw up off the floor and proceed with party planning.

We have only done the family thing thus far, which is awesome, because I don't have to worry about protecting the grandfather clock or wood floors or freshly polished sconces when they're around, like you might have to with a house full of 6-7 year olds. Pop-pop won't be chucking toys in the living room and Nani won't be making deep tracks in the floor by pushing down too hard on the vintage Matchbox cars.

You think I'm kidding about protecting things? I'm married to a conservationist. This guy is down at Nemours making things pretty again on a daily basis, or at the Rodin Museum, or gussying up Joan of Arc. Stuff matters to him. So kids, in a lot of ways, are kind of like his nemesis. Well, kids, and time and the elements and such.

But, I can't blame it all on conservation. It kind of makes my insides shrivel up and die simply thinking about planning games for a group of children. Chaos makes my head spin. It's not my thing, and I think it's good that I can admit that to myself. Luckily, both my kids feel exactly the same way about chaos. It's quite convenient.

This is the first year, however, that Hannah has asked about a friend party. Specifically, she wants it at a bowling alley with everyone. EVERYONE. At least I wouldn't have to plan any games, because...hello...bowling, but still....hello...cash money. The kids party business is a racket.

And I'd feel weird about her getting that many presents. We have too much shit as it is. I'm not eager to add to the pile.

Family inquires, and thus we can steer presents in an appropriate direction: clothes, or a Magic Tree House boxed set, a DS game or craft kits. But with friends? Who knows. Suddenly you have a set of iCarly DVDs where there is kissing (kissing!) or a Twilight beach towel that has Edward stalking Bella. I'm like, look at the pretty paper dolls, and everyone else is already letting their kids get a taste of vampire desire. I don't think vampire desire is appropriate until at least 21, right? Nothing has turned me into a prude quite as quickly as parenthood.

I also profess confusion at her particular cake wish. Here's a taste of a conversation we had about it fairly recently:

Me: Hannah, your birthday is coming up...

Hannah: I know, it's in 45 days exactly.

Me: How'd you know that?

Hannah: I'm keeping track with my calendar.

Me: 45 days exactly?

Hannah: Yep.

Me: Okay, well, you need to start thinking about what kind of cake you want me to make.

Hannah: I want a dolphin cake.

Me: What? Dolphins?

Hannah: Yeah, I love dolphins.

Me: Well, they're very cool creatures, but.....

Hannah: Why can't I have a dolphin cake?

Me: I didn't say you couldn't have one, I'm just a little confused. I've never heard you speak of dolphins before...

Hannah: I really like dolphins!

Me: ....you have no books on dolphins, no stuffed dolphin toys, no dolphin posters...

Hannah: Mom?!?!

Me: ...no dolphin movies, no bookmarked dolphin websites, no dolphin coloring books....

Seriously, the dolphin bit completely came out of left field, and I tried mightily last night to convince her that this Joy the Baker cake would be preferable:

http://www.joythebaker.com/blog/2010/04/big-berry-birthday-cake/

Click on it, it's so pretty! And it has berries, and frosting with a scraped vanilla bean in it. Oh, yum!

But I also realize that kids don't consider a birthday cake a cake unless it has some Blue #40 or Red #20 on it, and also a crapload of sprinkles. And if I'm not going to do a friend party, I should at least find a way to make the dolphin cake a reality.

And I suppose, even if after the last crumb of cake is finished, she never mentions dolphins again, it will have been worth it.

Woman Tries To Study -- A Play in One Act

(Scene: It's a beautiful weekday. Man has the day off, and is puttering around the house. Child 1 and Child 2 flit this way and that, generally agreeable. Woman is at the table, textbooks and notes splayed out in front of her. A scientific calculator is there, turned on, and a pencil rests right next to it.)

Woman: (Muttering to self): I don't get this rates of effusion thing. It's the whole solving for some damn thing under the square root. Basic algebra.

Man: Huh?

Woman: Just talking to myself.

(She picks up the pencil and begins to write quickly. She changes her mind, and starts to erase.)

Woman: Fuck.

Child 1: Mommy, can I have a snack?

Woman: Oh my God. Ask your father.

Man: Why is it so dusty in here?

Woman: Because you never pick up the rag, or Pledge, and then dust with those two things.

Man: Seriously. There is like a layer of dust in here an inch thick.

Woman: Cleaning supplies are in the basement.

Child 2 (voice coming from the 1st floor bathroom): Mommy, can you wipe me?

Woman: Is this really happening to me? (She gets up and goes into the bathroom to help Child 2. She comes back and sits down again, picking up her pencil.)

(Child 2 runs out of the bathroom and into the living room.)

Woman: Get back in there and wash your hands!

Man: We need to dust more often. This is disgusting. For real.

Woman: For real? We? I think you just mean me. Because in a marriage, that's what 'we' means.

Man: Don't be so sensitive.

(Woman picks up her pencil, surveys its point, and briefly considers violence. Shaking her head, she renews her efforts and tries to concentrate.)

Woman (in a low voice): When hydrochloric acid is poured over potassium sulfide, 42.1 ml of hydrogen sulfide gas is produced at a pressure of 758 torr and 25.6 degree centigrade. Write an equation for the gas-evolution reaction.

Child 2: Mommy, can I have a snack?

Woman: Did you wash your hands yet?

Child 2: (guilty silence)

Man: Wash your hands!

Woman: Wash your hands!

Man: What is the deal with hand-washing? Why is it such an event?

Woman: It is ALWAYS an event.

Child 1: Can I use your calculator? (Grabs it.) Mommy, what is 457 + 32?

Woman: This is insane. You all just wait until I'm in school full-time. I will be biting off heads left and right.

Child 2: Can I have a snack now? I washed my hands. Smell them.

Woman (to man): Can you please get them a snack so I can hear the end of this line of questioning?

Man: It's 3:30pm. Isn't it too close to dinner?

Woman: Modern pennies are composed of zinc coated with copper. A student determines the mass of a penny to be 2.484 g and then makes several scratches...

Man (from in kitchen): What can they have?

Woman: ...in the copper coating to expose the underlying zinc. The student puts the scratched penny in hydrochloric acid, where a reaction occurs between the zinc and the HCl...

Man: Fruit snacks?

Woman: No, they already had those today. It's actual fruit or vegetable right now. That's it.

Child 2: Nooooooooooooooooooo!

Woman: ...the student collects the hydrogen produced over water at 25 degree Celsius. The collected gas occupies a volume of 0.896 liters at a total pressure of 792 mm Hg. Write the equation for the reaction and calculate the percent zinc in the penny assuming that all the zinc in the penny dissolves...oh my God. Seriously. Oh my God.

Child 1: Mommy, what are we having for dinner tonight?

Child 2: Poop! Eat the poopy. Cook it up. Fry some poop. Poop on rice.

Man: That's enough. Leave Mommy alone, she's trying to study.

Child 1: But I just want to know what we're having for dinner tonight.

Woman: I have no bloody idea.

Child 1: Is Chemistry hard?

Woman: For people with small children, yes.

Child 1: But you have an A, so we must bring you good luck.

Man: Look at the crumbs on this floor. We should sweep in here more often.

Woman: I should probably go to the library.

Child 2: Can I come?

(The curtain closes as Woman puts her head down on the cool expanse of her textbook and starts to cry.)