March 15, 2018
Ben sat on the floor in his closet with tears in his eyes. He had been scolded and sent to his room after being caught playing on his computer after he was told to stay off of screens for a while. Then when confronted about said usage, I received a decisive, “No. I wasn’t on my computer.” Lie. Busted. To the bedroom. I let him wallow for a few minutes before I went upstairs to find him in a puddle...
February 20, 2018
In the wake of yet another school shooting, emotions are running high on social media. It’s politics as usual on Twitter and new issues and hashtags are cropping up faster than we have time to resolve them. I’ve been spinning around my cycle of email, Facebook, Twitter, news sites and Instagram. I have been tagged in several posts which leaves my phone dinging with notifications at all hours. And my mind racing trying to decide if and how to respond. And all...
January 31, 2018
To the mom who texted (in the Cub Scouts group chat) last night: “I’m sorry, but I’ve given up. Cub Scouts is just one more thing to do. It’s too much for me to get to. Thanks for organizing, though. Appreciate it.” I got your message in rapid fire, group text/chat format…while I was busy…at work. Just finished in the OR. I rolled my eyes and muttered to myself, Really? Can’t do it? Lame. We are all busy. And I went about my...
January 20, 2018
It’s a DONSA. That’s military language for Day of No Scheduled Activity. Not vacation. A DONSA. Nothing on the calendar. That’s right. It’s blank. This happens, oh, I don’t know, twice a year. No soccer practice. No work. No Boy Scouts. No dinner parties or evening meetings. Just a DONSA. I got up this morning…later than usual. I did my reading and drank my coffee, as usual… and then went for a long run. With the whole day in front of...
December 29, 2017
It’s the awkward week between Christmas and New Year’s. The kids are home, my husband took the week off, family and friends have been in and out. Months ago, as my partner was making the call schedule, he asked each of us to list the days we wanted off. I put in my request to have this week free, knowing that several other partners would do the same, and that I probably would end up with at least one call....
December 1, 2017
I am so organized. You don’t even know…My shirts are arranged in my closet by color; each of my upcoming conferences/trips has its own manilla folder complete with checklists and a pocket for receipts; I keep duplicates of all my toiletries and make up at home and work so I am never at either place without something; I catalog my favorite recipes on Pinterest and spend sleepless nights on call choosing what to make for dinner the next night. I...
November 16, 2017
When the alarm went off this morning, I tapped the snooze button over and over for an hour. Finally, I made it downstairs for my morning ritual of coffee and devotions. By coincidence, or more likely God’s humor, my personal reading and the church’s automatic email, were both about joy. Soul soothing words, as recently, life has felt a little bitter, a little empty. Jarred by the sudden death of a dear friend’s husband and my welling anger of American...
October 25, 2017
We just got home from a great family vacation…well, pretty great until the last day when I got mildly sea sick. (Thank you, Jesus, for Dramamine.) Fortunately, the giant ship rocked us very little on our way to Ocho Rios, Jamaica. We got off the boat for a few hours to go through the trinket shopping gauntlet but more impressively to Dunn’s River Falls where we donned our stylish water shoes and climbed up a gorgeous waterfall! It’s a 600 foot...
October 9, 2017
As it turns out…I’m tired. Just really, really tired. My partners and I are participating in a study to examine the physiologic toll that nights on call have on our bodies. We are all wearing these little wrist bands that track our heart rate and sleep. We check our apps every morning…the little wheels spin and spew forth numbers about our heart rate variability, our sleep quality, and our “recovery”. This data will be matched with our call schedules and...
September 11, 2017
Now that the kids are a little older, they can all wipe their own faces and brush their own teeth (mostly), some (with significant harassment) do their own laundry, and they can read their own bedtime stories, I have found a few minutes to read, too. I mean, like, for fun. Like, not journals or textbooks. I recently read JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy and Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash: The 400 Year Untold History of Class in America. I believe our family roots...