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April 4, 2016

Post-Call Mom: Special Gluten Free, Organic, Free Range, Non-GMO, Vegan, Kid Free Edition

I was on call last night. The “trauma gods” were in my favor and I found about 3 hours to rest, in between pages. My husband, Scott, called me around 11am this morning and asked, “So when are you going home?” I thought for a moment, and even though I knew I could have cashed it in then, I said, “Oh, I’ll stick around for a while. I mean…I don’t even have internet at the carriage house (aka, my temporary...

March 21, 2016

The Kindness of Strangers

My parents came over to our place this weekend. We were expecting them around 9pm, after their cooking class. But they texted to say they would be late because they were grabbing a drink with “their new friends they met at the class”. They finally made it to our house around 10:30pm…and they went on and on about Frank and Betty (or whatever their names were…I missed that part). And then they went on all weekend, joking that after we move,...

March 7, 2016

Survey Says…Do The Right Thing

If you have recently flown on an airplane, purchased an appliance or had one repaired, been a patient in the hospital or gotten a haircut, you’ve probably received an email requesting your opinions about the service. A survey. We are asked if we were satisfied, would we recommend the company to a friend? What could they have done better? Was it clean? Was is complete? Was is worth our time and money? Will we come back? Companies, large and small,...

February 25, 2016

Entertain Angels

Sometimes, I get weary from the everyday interactions. I mean, I’m all about people…but I’m also all about my alone time. Some quiet time. I’m not shutting my office door because I don’t like you, but I just need a few minutes to myself, to complete a thought, finish an email, recenter. I get kinda antsy, sometimes…when my mind is racing and I have a million things to do and my pager is going off and I’m getting a text...

February 8, 2016

Check, Circle, Done!

Tell me you do this, too. The checklist. The checkboxes. The “To Do List”.  When I feel overwhelmed (like today) with all I have to do (like everyday), I make a list. Because I derive intense satisfaction from crossing things off the list. Or X’ing out the boxes. Tell me you make boxes. You should make boxes. Sometimes I make boxes for things I have already done so I can put an X in the box. I learned about the...

January 13, 2016

The Exact Opposite

Scott and I went away for a quick couples ski weekend and we left the kids in the care of Scott’s mom. We returned on Monday night to find that all four children remained alive and well. The house was exceptionally clean (thank you, Mawmaw!). The children had been fed and read to and loved all weekend. We started to unpack and rapidly assimilated back into our “parent roles”. We dumped out the kids’ backpacks to make sense of the homework we needed...

January 5, 2016

Post Call Mom: Four

Four miles pre-call. Four hours rounding in the ICU. Four exhausted but VERY hard working residents. Four AMAZING NPs. Four surgeons in-house. Four traumas in quick succession. Twenty-four admissions. Four hours of sleep. Four cups of coffee. Four miles post-call. Four telemarketer calls. (No, I am not Sanjay. I don’t know who Sanjay is. I am not Sanjay’s wife/girlfriend/sister/mother/cousin. Yes, I know you are Sallie Mae. You sound very legitimate ma’am. As you did the first time you called me…four...

December 29, 2015

Let’s laugh together…

Let’s laugh together. Let’s feed our kids leftovers for dinner. Again. Let’s be easy on ourselves. Yet take really, REALLY good care of ourselves. Let’s burn the cookies, forget about the laundry ’til it mildews and we have to run the washer again, and let’s leave the Christmas decorations up ’til February. Let’s share our worlds, our minds, our hearts. We are not alone. Let’s admit we are anxious, imperfect, scared. I experienced numbness. Then brokenness and healing. And now a...