Back in the Saddle and Back on the Blog!

• Current Scholastic Pursuits
• Sorry for being MIA since the move, everyone! As I'm sure you can imagine, it was a crazy time. Made worse by the fact that the moving company did their very best to royally screw me over. They delivered my belongings a month late - not a few days, not a week, but a month late. And the process of getting it delivered was simply hellish: they wouldn't return phone calls, couldn't offer a delivery date, and basically refused to admit any wrong-doing or inadequacy on their part. For a month, I slept on the floor with an air-mattress that leaked slowly and a rolled up sweater for my pillow. I had no clothes, no dishes, no books, nothing. The bunnies didn't have their cage either and so it was free-reign and disaster for a few days until I got some new fencing to give them some security.
• To add to the moving drama, I started my first rotation of residency on the Acute Care Service. It's a surgical service that only deals with emergency conditions requires, you guessed it, surgery! My first call shift was exactly the same as the pilot episode of Scrubs (if you haven't seen this episode, you can watch it for free here). The shift started with a Code Blue (patient dying on the floor), ended with  a Code Blue, and stayed true to the plot line right up to and including the fact that one of my patients died and no one paged me to let me know. In fact, my version of the episode went something like this:
• I got a consult from Internal to come see a delirious guy who had belly pain. His daughter had just flown in from England because she'd heard he wasn't getting better in hospital and was there when I did the assessment. She was really quite lovely and so was her dad, the patient. He was certainly quite sick and we weren't sure what was going on, so I moved him to ICU and ordered some tests. A few hours later, I returned to reassess him and see what the tests had turned up. I walked into the ICU room and the daughter had her back to me and there was another man there, I assumed he was the son. I glanced quickly at the patient and said, "oh, he's sleeping! I can come back later" when the daughter turned to look at me with a tear-stained face and said, "he died 3 hours ago." I looked again at the patient and saw that he wasn't sleeping at all. He was definitely very dead.
• "No one paged me!" I said with a hoarse voice and plunked down in the chair beside the daughter, unable to stand. Turns out the other man wasn't the son but the preacher there to give the last rites. Since when do preachers were polo shirts? I don't know. He gave me a withering look but I could care less. I knew I'd blundered. It was a rookie mistake.
• I stayed with the daughter for a few minutes to give my condolences and then went to find a closet to have a good cry. It was pretty short. My pager when off within moments and I pulled myself back together to go do my job.
• Needless to say, it was one hell of a first day. But, I took things one day at a time and in the end, I survived. Now I'm on radiology, which is basically a holiday rotation. Those guys take coffee breaks every 2 hours and take an hour and half long lunch. Every single day! On surgery, I was lucky if I had 5 minutes in a 20 hour shift to go pee.
• Last Friday, I came down with the stomach flu and have been trying to fight it off over the weekend. So far, not much success, but I'm ever hopeful. Send me some 'get well' thoughts if you've got them to spare, I could sure use 'em today!

• Recipe I've Been Drooling Over

• Cheese Biscuits by Garret over on Vanilla Garlic and re-posted by Elise on Simply Recipes are the perfect comfort food for post-call-I-don't-know-what-order-I-should-sleep-eat-and/or-pee-because-I'm-so-tired moments. Even if you don't regularly work for 30 hrs straight, I'm sure you'll enjoy them, too. :)

• Favourite Thing on Etsy this Week
• Look, somethings in life just make you smile, no matter what. Duck bums are one of those things. I can't help but grin when they go "Bottoms Up" - even if I'm walking to work in the pouring rain at 6 am. Here is a perfect rendition of one of life's simple joys:

 

• What I'm Reading Right Now
• I'm currently reading "Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant" by Jenni Ferrari-Adler. It's a collection of essays by famous people I don't recognize talking about what it's like to cook for one and all the strange things we eat when we're alone. Some of the essays are quite snotty (ie. truffled egg toast; made with white truffle oil, creme fraiche, and a few other totally unaccessible ingredients) while others are absolutely terrific (ie. asparagus superhero. 'Nuff said!). In the end, I'd say it's a great read, especially since it makes cooking for yourself feel less lonely and there are several recipes that sound quite good. Just don't read it when you've got the stomach flu - lesson learned.

• TED Talk I Watched This Week
• I went to the movies the other week and saw the trailer for I Don't Know How She Does It during the previews. My friend turned to me on the spot and said, "we've got to go see that!!" and I agreed. It seemed to epitomize our lives. This got me to thinking about how gender roles have changed and what it means for our generation with respect to cultural expectations and social functioning. This, in turn, led me to look up some talks on the subject on TED.
• Below are 2 talks: one on the rise of women and the other on the fall of man. You'll quickly discover that they're deeply related stories and neither has a happy ending. Women, unable to shake off the traditional (and frankly biological) expectation to generate children have, through the suffrage movement, also acquired the need to have a career, earn a competitive salary, and generally do everything. This, in turn, has undermined men's traditional role as the head of the household and the official breadwinner. With the shift from a manufacturing economy to an information and service based economy, men no longer earn enough money through labour to support their families. And, labour positions are often the first to see lay offs when the economy tanks. 
• Thus, the roles of men and women are both affected: men feel that they cannot be "manly" if they don't support their families; women feel that they can't support their families because they're too busy doing everything else! No one wins.
• I think the solution is to dissolve the notion that certain roles are associated with certain genders. Thank goodness, Penguin can cook, because I'm lousy at making sure dinner gets to the table whereas I know he'll never forget to feed us. While not a traditional "manly" role, making food is essential and celebrated act in our home and Penguin always rises to the occasion. (Nothing says I Love You like a good meal!!) In turn, I usually do the dishes. Not because I'm a woman and that's what I'm supposed to do but because that's my contribution. But for us, maybe it's easy. Because we're young and adventurous, we don't pay too much attention to the roles society tries to confine us to - we decide our own roles, sometimes consciously and other times not.
• And that's my rant for the month. :)

 

• Song of the Week
• Sabrina Starke's song A Woman's Gonna Try was pretty much my theme song for the first month of residency.

• Thing I'm Most Grateful for This Week
• Having all my stuff here! YAYA!

• Thing I'm Most Looking Forward to This Week
• Penguin is flying in on Friday and staying until Tuesday. It's been so long since I've seen him and I miss him so much. During med school, we used to drive 600km every other weekend to visit. Now that I live 2000km away, our visits aren't nearly as regular or scheduled. The loneliness of being in a new city away from all my friends and family is only reprieved by the total awesomeness of my job and the new friends I'm making in the process of being here. But nothing much seems to make up for the loneliness of doing all this without Penguin here to share the highs and lows.

• Bunny Photo of the Week
• Since my things arrived a month late and I'm very poor, I spent the first rotation of residency sleeping on the floor with my camping mat and sleeping bag. Eventually, I made some new friends and they lent me a duvet, a pillow, and a pot to cook with. It made all the difference in the world. Jazz bunny was also ecstatic to have a blanket to nap on and here she is surveying her new home pre-furniture arrival (note: the booze in the recycling bin is not a sign that I'm an alcoholic; they're all full bottles! I went to all my favourite wineries before leaving home and got the vintages I knew I wouldn't be able to find here in my new province... and they are now carefully stored away for upcoming special occasions):