Conversations With My Daughter ~ by Jay

Daddy says the only reason you let me go on that sleepover was that you wanted to have sex on the couch.

What did you say to Daddy?

I said "euew!"

Well, then, I guess we won't tell you which couch.
Euew! Euew! Euew!

Happenstance ~ by Jay

All my partners are attending the AAHPM meeting in Vancouver, so I covered the inpatient service yesterday.

I had to see a new admission at the hospice house, so I left the hospital at noon.

Then there was a new consult, so I had to go back to the hospital at 4:00 PM.

As it was after 3:00, I was able to park close to the hospital and walk in through the ER.

When I walked through the ER, one of the residents asked me to see a patient.

After I saw the patient, she didn't have to be admitted to the hospital.

Since that took me about 45 minutes, I didn't get upstairs until 5:00 PM.

Because I started the new consult at 5:00 PM, I was waiting for the elevator at 6:15 to go home - the main elevator, not the one I usually use, since I'd parked near the ER.

And so it happened that I noticed the man who was also waiting for the elevator looking very sad, and it happened that he had just agreed to hospice service for his mother, and it happened that she had enrolled in our hospice, and it happened that he now has a face, a name, a card and a handshake to tell him who is going to take care of his mother.

That's how it happened, just by chance.

In Which Melissa Explains it All ~ by Jay

I am waaay behind on other people's posts as well, but just in case you haven't read Melissa McEwen's brilliant Feminism 101 piece from last week, here it is. Go. Read.

This Always Happens....~ by Jay

...I take a longer-than-anticipated break between posts and, when I finally have some time to write, I am so overwhelmed by all the ideas (Egypt! Republicans! Reproductive rights! Adoption! Open adoption! Call schedules! Talking to Eve about sex!) that I just sit here and stare at the screen, and write nothing at all, thereby compounding the problem. So, random notes:

• After several months of a distressingly low census at the inpatient hospice unit, we are now full to overflowing, which means we have two patients in the hospital that we are following on hospice, which means I have to leave for work very early tomorrow.
• Medicare's new face-to-face regulations have about quadrupled my paperwork load and doubled the number of home visits I have to do.
• Eve continues to explore the idea of family; last week she drew yet another family tree for yet another school assignment. Sam and I don't appear on this one at all.
• Growler, the older of our two maladjusted dogs, appears to have decided that being housebroken isn't all it's cracked up to be. Not sure if this is related to age, weather, or general cussedness.
• Eve took her cellphone to school last week, breaking our household rule and also violating school district policy. Lucky for her Sam found out about it before her teacher did - school rules say if she's caught, she loses the phone until June.

But not all is bleak.

• Tigermom and I managed to have our long-postponed lunch on Friday (despite one urgent home visit - see face-to-face rule above - and ridiculous traffic).
• Last week I was driving home at 5:30 and it wasn't dark out. Blessings be.
• We tried two new recipes last week and they were both yummy. The repertoire expands.
• Eve asked me to sing her an extra song at bedtime last night. "Sing the one about the train, Mommy". So Mommy sang "City of New Orleans", and felt at peace.
  

Good night, America, how are you
Don't you know me?
I'm your native son.
I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans.
I'm gone five hundred miles 'till the day is done.

Conversations With Sam ~ by Jay

Sam, did you just turn up the thermostat?

I was cold.

Yesterday you told me to go put on a sweater when I was cold.

Well, we don't want to waste energy.

OK, so it's wasting energy to turn the heat up when I'm cold, but not when you're cold?

Right.

As long as you turned it up to 69, I'm going to kick it up to 70.

70 is too high.

Why? Because it's wasteful?

No, because then I'm too warm.