Well, that was a good discussion. We are a good bunch up in here.
So, I'm doing some studying for the Oral Boards, mostly boning up on areas that I don't really do every day anymore, like Peds, OB, and complex intracranial neurosurgical anesthesia. I am remembering a lot of things that I have blissfully forgotten. Like the many hours I spent holed up in those dark neurosurgical ORs dripping CSF out into a little baggie in an attempt to "loosen" the brain for my neurosurgical colleagues while they were digging around. And the delightful phenomenon of uterine inversion, in which the postpartum uterus actually turns itself inside out and pokes out the vagina. Ah, residency. Those were good times.
Anyway...
So you know that we just moved in October into a house that we are renting from some nice folks (see: Southernism!) who had to move up to Philadelphia before they were able to sell the place. The house is a little old, and probably not the most enviro-friendly of dwellings (windows not weatherproofed, no low-flow toilets or showerheads) which makes it somewhat expensive from a utilities point of view, but it's a great neighborhood and close to Cal's school and easy for Joe to get to work and blah blah blah boring talk. Anyway, we have a one-year lease at this house, which seems kind of like a long time when you're a student, but for me just makes me think that there's barely any point of unpacking because what's the point, we're just going to move again in a few months anyway. Which is mostly fine, since we don't mind living among the boxes and we never have people over anyway (30% due to embarrassment, 70% due to anti-social tendencies). Anyway, the boxes are great for covering up all the outlets that Mack finds inexplicably fascinating and for building various child-proofing barricades, like in Les Miserable. (Primary intent of the barricade in Les Mis: defiant show of uprising! Secondary intent: to keep Gavroche out of the computer room.)
So I was fine with us living like shantytown people and had frankly stopped noticing the boxes, but then our landlords were in town this past weekend and wanted to come by and check out the basement, as there had been some flooding a few months ago and they wanted to survey the damage. They didn't give us very much notice, so I spent the better half of Saturday afternoon cleaning what I could and shoving what else I couldn't clean into a variety of unlikely to be opened closets. But there was nothing that I could do about this:
All our Christmas decorations are still up. Yes, all of them. Tree, stockings. The lights are even still hanging in the windows. And I'm sure I didn't need to point out to you that Saturday was the first day of spring. Awkward!
Anyway, after some uncomfortable silence in which the owners pretended not to notice or were decided whether or not to say anything, I cheerfully told them that since it was almost Easter, we just decided to leave up the decoration from Jesus' first birthday party and celebrate clear through April. I think they bought it.