year in review

Joe and I are what might charitably described as "overcautious," and since we moved to Atlanta (where you have to get in a car in order to go pretty much anywhere), we don't go out on New Year's Eve because we figure there's probably a higher than average density of drunk drivers on the road ready to orphan our children. (The less charitable term for this approach would be "pessimistic misanthropic mole people," yes.) So we're staying at home tonight for a night of home-grilled steaks and MarioKart Wii, is my point.

Speaking of MarioKart Wii, before the start of the game, there's a white screen with the caveat that "Interactions In This Game Are Not Rated by the ESRB."


MICHELLE
What's the ESRB? Probably the Entertainment...Standards...Review Board?

JOE
I think it stands for End Stage Renal...Bisease.


(You know when you start reaching that point in your medical indoctrination that you start seeing acronyms in everything? Like suddenly you start seeing words and phrases in otherwise random jumbles of letters on license plates, and you have some seemingly very playable words in Scrabble that are by strict definition not actually legal? That's why Joe and I started allowing "Medical Scrabble" a couple of years ago, though we revoked this priveledge once we realized that every string of letters, no matter how random, is some acronym in some branch of medicine, and therefore the whole challenge element of Scrabble is ruined.)

We just spent most of last week in Virginia with Joe's family, which (if you aren't following me on Twitter) can largely be summed up in a series of pictures:







(Rough translation of the above: we flew from ATL to Dulles in order to watch "Cars" with our cousins on Aunt Sue's TV, which is nicer than the one we have at home! Also, intergenerational family and love and stuff! CHRISTMAS!)

Don't worry, I'm not going to do an actual "Year in Review" post, because I do think that treads the line between boring and inviting people to kind of roll their eyes at you, because no one wants to hear your blow-by-blow of the year when you already keep a blog, for chrissake. But I will say one thing, and I know it's sappy, but I just can't stop myself.

These are the precious years, the milestone years, and I know it. The years we're going to look back on decades from now. Cal is five and-a-half, and Mack is turning two next week. Joe and I are still young enough in our fields that every day is still challenging and exciting. We're still having new adventures, and we're enjoying them together. I know that things won't always be this way. I mean, not that every year from now until I...stop counting years...won't present new surprises and events, but there is something special about being young(ish) (thirty-two is still kind of young, isn't it? Just nod and say yes) and having small children that frames things in a kind of time-lapse photography that I imagine cannot be replicated once your kids are older or you're older or life is generally more stable. Everything just seems faster and fresher and bigger and more now, and next year, just like this year, I just want to be able to enjoy every single minute of it.

I hope 2010 was as good to you as it was to us, and that 2011 is even better. See you there.

georgia rambler

Sorry for the extended radio silence, it's been a very busy few weeks at work (the period leading up to Christmas always seems to be especially hectic for the OR--particularly for somewhat elective surgeries, what with patients wanting to use up their health insurance deductibles before the year ends); and then, of course, there was Christmas itself. So first, allow myself to indulge...myself...with a few pictures.




Wrestling at least 2/3rds of our kids to hold still for a picture before the whole tableau is destroyed.




Cal, Postmaster General of Gift Dispensery.




Mack with one of his favorite gifts: a headlamp. (Other favorite gift: an 8-pack of chapstick. I don't know.)




A rare all-family photo. We are all making unfortunate auto-timer faces (that is to say alternately caught off-guard or expectant) but at least all our eyes are open and no one is moving. I'll take it.

Yeah, so anyway, Christmas was fun. Both Joe and I took a week of vacation the week between Christmas and New Years, and I would say that the decompression from the work week to the vacation week has been acute and disorienting, transitioning from having too much to do to having...well, nothing to do. But again: I'll take it.

Oh, and unrelated to anything, but since I'm rambling (and apparently teeming with parentheticals) anyway, just a pro tip: the very best day to go into the post office to renew your passports is December 23rd, because it's already past the point where people are actually trying to mail Christmas presents (procrastinators non-withstanding, but likely even they've given up and are just ordering gift-certificates to Outback Steakhouse online) and the postal workers are super-efficiency mode, if somewhat (and understandably) grouchy. Cal needed his passport renewed for a trip we'll be taking later this summer (we got his first passport when he was just a few weeks old--in his picture he is propped up on some kind of swing seat and slumped in a pile of drool) and Mack has never had a passport, because barring a well-stocked cabinet of barbiturates (I'll leave it open-ended who would be the recipient of this pharmacologic intervention) no one in their right mind would want to take that kid on an international flight anywhere. However, might I venture the opinion that these two are the cutest passport photos ever taken of anyone, ever?




You wouldn't even be able to guess that I took them in the bathroom, because it's the only room in this house with an actual white (well, beige) wall. Whoever lived here last painted the living room this South Beach tangerine color which I have gradually become inured to, but in the way that people who live near a pork fat rendering plant gradually stop noticing the smell.

nerds of earth, I have your answer

It's been years since I've worn contact lenses regularly. I work some long hours, and I started noticing around the first year of my anesthesia residency that my eyes would get pretty tired and dry by the end of the day in contacts--it started feeling like that moment in your life that you switch from heels to flats, but, you know, on your eyeballs. (I'll give you a moment to process that imagery.) Also, with respect to my particular role in the workplace, there's something that I like to call "the splash factor"--all I have to do is look at my lenses at the end of the day and at all the projectile particulate that has accumulated there to make me glad that I always have a windshield in front of my eyes.

But you know, nice glasses can be expensive. My mom is an ophthalmologist, so for many of my formative years of glasses-wearing I relied on the insider connection with the optometrist to get a good deal on frames. However, in adulthood, I've had to get a few new pairs of frames (mostly related to my glasses getting smushed by someone's butt or cruelly twisted by my offspring--oddly, now that I never take my glasses off, my frames are much more protected) and every time I go to LensCrafters or what have you, I am floored by how much a pair of frames cost. A pair of designer frames (which, of course, are the only kinds that the big chains peddle) can cost anywhere between $150 to $300, and I'm not even talking about the ones with a blingity-bling Chanel medallion hanging off the sides.

At most chain optical stores, this also does not include the price of the lenses themselves, which--if you are a high myope like me and require a high-index refraction pair of lenses to lessen the Coke bottle effect--can jack up the price a couple hundred dollars more. Couple that with the fact that most people who wear glasses like to have a spare pair lying around for emergencies (see above: butt squashing, toddler torquing, etc.) and that's many, many hundreds of dollars for glasses.

Then I found this site called 39dollarglasses.com.

First of all, there are plenty of sites out there that offer cheap (albeit not brand-name) frames, some even for less than $39.00. However, 39dollarglasses.com is the place that I ordered my glasses from about a year ago, so it's the only one that I can speak to from personal experience. (Let me just explain in case this is in question that I am not sponsored by this or any company, nor do I generate any revenue or goodwill whether you click that link or not. I just really think that this is a hidden secret that people need to know about, because the last pair of glasses I got prior to discovering this genre of website cost more than six times the amount I spent on my web-bought frames, and now I am burning with self-righteous indignation against the brand-name glasses frame industry.)

The thing with glasses (which most of you who wear glasses understand) is that there is a highly specific fit, and not every frame fits every face. I know this as much as anyone--I have kind of a low nasal bridge (as many Asians do) and a roundish face, and on average I have to try on something like twenty pairs of glasses before I find a pair that feels right for me. So that's a problem with ordering glasses online--you can't try them on first. It's like buying shoes online. How particular are you about the fit of your shoes? If you are very persnickety, perhaps this is not the solution for you.

However, if you have a general sense of what kind of glasses look decent on you (I knew I wanted dark plastic frames with an ovalesque or rectangular shape), let me tell you a secret. The secret is in the numbers.

52-16-140 mm

128 mm

25 mm

Glasses come with measurements, did you know that? They do. Look, take off your glasses, and look on the inside surface of the stems. There should be three numbers. Those are the top three numbers listed above. The first one (in this case, 52mm) corresponds to the width of each individual lens bracket (or to be more precise: eye hole). The middle number (16mm) corresponds to the width of the nasal bridge piece. And the last number (140mm) corresponds to the length of the stem, which is the stick piece that goes over your ear. 128mm in this case is the width of the whole pair of glasses, and 25mm is the height of the lens frame (basically how librarian-reading-glasses-narrow or Carrie-Donovan-wide your peeping window is going to be top to bottom). If you can't try on the glasses before you buy them, these are the figures you need to know.

(I personally have kind of high cheeks so I know I can't get too wide of a measurement on the latter--I had a pair of rounded tortoise-shell glasses once that, due to the height of the frame, rested directly on my cheeks, and the constant feeling of having something on my face drove me, by small and insistent increments, completely insane. So insane that I eventually shelved those frames altogether and just swapped out the lenses into an old frame that I had lying around.)

So what do you do? Provided you already have a pair of glasses that fit OK and are not too different from the new pair that you want to get (for example, I'm not sure how it works with wire frames with the nose pads and the conversion to plastic frames), look at the numbers on the inside of your current glasses, and use those to extrapolate for the pair of new glasses you want to buy. THE NUMBERS ARE IMPORTANT. Trust me on this. No matter how adorable a pair of glasses looks online, if the numbers are not right, DO NOT BUY THEM, THEY WILL NOT FIT. This was of particular concern to me regarding the measurement for the nasal bridge; as a low-nasal-bridged individual, I knew that I needed a pair of glasses 16mm or narrower so that they would not slide down my face. If I went to Pearl Vision (or whatever) and tried on a pair of glasses, I would usually employ a test wherein I would put on the glasses and violently shake my head back and forth to see if the glasses would fall off. Since I cannot try on glasses online, I just go by the numbers. For the most part, if the nasal bridge part fits and the frames are not too wide for your head (example, if your current glasses are 128mm wide, do not buy glasses that are 134mm wide, even if they are super hot black with green trim OMG NERD CHIC!! Again, they will not fit). Believe me on this. I have spent way too much time trying on glasses to steer you wrong.

The glasses above are the ones I got a year ago, by the way. They are sturdy and well-made (not like the reading glasses you get next to the cash register at Walgreens or anything) and even with the upgraded package that offers a high-index refraction lens (you know, so the glass is thinner and not as heavy) it still came out to less than $80. For a pair of good glasses, that's a very, very fair price. (If you don't have a very strong presecription and don't need the high index refraction lenses, it's actually less than $50, which is yet another way in which people with better vision win. That and not needing glasses at all.) I got two pairs last winter--an heir and a spare, as it were--after my old pair of glasses from med school finally bit the dust (and yes, there was a period of time before the new glasses arrived that I was indeed wearing glasses haphazardly patched with some electrical tape, and also, briefly, some surgical suture) and I have been extremely pleased with them ever since. I even just ordered a pair of prescription sunglasses for driving, an extravagance that I'd never allowed myself, because really, who's going to pay hundreds of dollars for a pair of prescription sunglasses?

Not me. And hopefully, now, not you either.

(This post is not sponsored in any way. It's just ME sharing the good stuff with YOU. Now go forth and see clearly!)

scarface

The maddening thing about kids is that they don't understand that when you pick at a scab, it won't heal. Mack got this scrape on his forehead almost two weeks ago, tripping in the driveway. Given how vascularized the face is, this should have healed at least a week ago--maybe even less, it was such a small abrasion. Instead, he picked and picked and picked at it until it was all bleeding and oozy, and it was only through extreme distraction and a dose of hypnosis that I was able to keep a Band-Aid on, just to keep his hands out of the way. Of course, he can easily rip the Band-Aid off, it's just a matter of distracting him long enough that he forgets he has the Band-Aid on in the first place. It's either that, or he's going to look like Mikhail Gorbachev.

(YES, I'm aware that Mikhail Gorbachev has a port wine stain or nevus flammeus, not a scar, thank you, MEDICAL STUDENTS OF EARTH. Of which my sister is one, so I am therefore free to make fun of you guys! But with love!)

I have seriously considered bringing home a Tegarderm or some sort of mega-adhesive to foil Mack's attempts to rip off his dressings, but unfortunately his scrape is a little too close to the hairline. I have also considered getting one of those dog cones. (This possibility is still under consideration.)

an object of beauty

Hey, look what I got in the mail!




Turns out Steve Martin's new book is published by Grand Central Publishing also, and my editor sent me a copy after I sent her a rhapsodic e-mail like OMG STEVE MARTIN, DID HE COME TO THE OFFICE, DID YOU MEET HIM, DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS SHOPGIRL THE SPANISH PRISONER OMFG!!!

Man, book publishing people have the coolest jobs.

santa even got free two-day shipping

So this is what I got for Mack for his Santa Claus present.

(Oh, sorry, I should have first said: SPOILER ALERT! Santa is actually parents. Sorry, kids. You probably shouldn't be reading this blog anyway.)

OK, so here's what I got him:




It's a Lightning McQueen Power Wheel. Now, I will fully admit that the Power Wheel is not a toy that I'm at all familiar with (kids in New York did not have Power Wheels, because a.) where would you put it? and b.) where would you drive it?), but it occurred to me that things are different here, not only do we have a garage, but a relatively flat yard. True, it is a dog poop landmine field, but theoretically, that could be cleaned up.

(Theoretically.)

So I ordered the Hot Wheels and figured that I'd keep it hidden until Christmas, at which point we would assemble it, charge up the battery, and cram it under the tree. PARENT OF THE YEAR.

What I didn't realize is that the box that the Lightning McQueen Power Wheel would come in is gigantic, easily the size of a small refrigerator. This thing is not hiding anywhere. If the delivery person had maybe wheeled it around to the back instead of by the front door, maybe we could have shoved it into the garage where all the other things are that we don't want to look at (off-season Christmas decorations, boxes for Goodwill, the Kitchen-Aid mixer that someone gave us for the wedding that I have used exactly once), but instead, he very logically delivered it to the front, and the effort it took to shove it through the door and into the dining room basically removed all possibility of further subterfuge from my mind. This thing was staying in the dining room.

I know that having the Santa Present in broad daylight was possibly going to spoil the illusion that SANTA ≠ PARENTS, but I figured, it was just a box, who was going to know? We never even fully unpacked from when we moved in July, this place is crammed full of boxes. Mack wasn't going to figure it out, he can't read. Cal can, but I figured that he would just basically ignore the packaging (it is housed in mostly plain brown cardboard, save some stylized logos and suchlike), since the dining room table is where we have his Lego City set up, a distraction that basically amounts to dazzle camouflage. The original plan would still stand. I pushed the box against the wall, label side facing in, and waited for the accolades that were sure to be forthcoming.

Then the other day, Mack was cruising through the living room during his nightly jogging circuit through the house, pointed at the box, where the RUST-EZE log was sort of halfway visible, and coolly informed me, "Mom. McQueen Car."

So the gig is up. Whatever, we'll just give it to him for his birthday, it's only 12 days after Christmas anyway. Santa's getting him a book instead.

the jinx that stole christmas

(Sunday night, on call)



MICHELLE
Honey, I just got called, I’m going to head into the hospital.
There’s a case that’s going to start in about an hour.

JOE
OK. What’s the case?

MICHELLE
A lap appy.

JOE
Oh, well that’s easy, and it should be quick.

MICHELLE
I’m going to kill you now.

JOE
Oops, right! Sorry!

MICHELLE
You’re going to jinx it, you jinxer. OK, I’m getting out of here.
Let me just grab my coffee travel mug.

JOE
You have decaf in there, or full-caf?

MICHELLE
What? I don’t drink decaf. It’s just regular coffee.

JOE
Oh. I thought you might want decaf.

MICHELLE
Why?

JOE
Well, it’s kind of late for coffee. How are you going to fall asleep tonight?

(Silence)

MICHELLE
OK, I was kidding before, but now I really am going to kill you.


(Fin)

regular law-breaker

Ira Glass and I agree on one thing--well, probably more than one thing, but this thing in particular--that the best place to listen to a radio show (or podcast) is in the car while you're driving. This is a somewhat new development for me, as anything related to driving is; most of you are probably aware that I got my first driver's license a little more than a year ago (October 19th, 2009, to be absolutely precise, after failing the road test once the month prior) and while I am somewhat more comfortable driving now than I was then, I still would not classify myself as a good driver. I am probably a better driver than your average teenage hotrod, but it's the very thing that makes me a better driving--that is to say, a surfeit of caution--that also makes me a worse driver. Anyway, I always try to be very careful. I signal my turns even in empty parking lots. I never pick up my phone while in the car, or else I pull over before answering. I have a GPS in the car that I have programmed to avoid all highways, giving me the directions from Point A to Point B only via local roads. When I see other people driving like fucktards (which is basically every fifth car), I tsk tsk them in rue.

But I do like to listen to podcasts in the car.

It wasn't that long ago that I couldn't listen to anything in the car, because so much of my concentration was focused on the actual task of driving. No music. No conversation. I dreaded having the kids in the car with me, not only because of that fear of having all my eggs in one basket (that basket being the car), but because no matter how much I explained that they had to shush, Mommy was driving, she had to concentrate, the endless monologue and stream of questions from the backseat only increased in volume.

However, I've been driving for a while now, and 95% of my driving takes a well-worn circuit between home, work, and, on occasion, Cal's school, so I'm a little more comfortable with the act of driving, at least along these routes. When I'm going somewhere new, the old rules apply (no radio, no music, no talking) but on routine drives, I will listen to a podcast or two, or occasionally sing along to music. Singing and driving at the same time! Who knew this day would ever come.

Anyway, I used to plug my iPod into the auxiliary input port of the car so that the podcasts could play through the actual car speakers, but for some reason, this stopped working, and then subsequently, I lost the auxiliary cable hookup anyway. So then I was putting my iPod on the dashboard and playing it through the actual iPod speakers, but I don't have to tell you how this turned out--tinny, muffled, and I could barely hear anything anyone was saying. So, as a final solution, I plugged in my earphones and put one earbud in my ear for the drive. The other ear was free to, you know, receive ambient sound. I did have a vague notion that this was probably not the safest thing (you know, having something in your ear while operating a car) but I rationalized that it wasn't any different than having a Bluetooth earset for hands-free phone answering, which I'm pretty sure is allowed, if holding the actual phone up to your ear while driving is not.

Anyway, I was driving home in this fashion the other day (carefully, on the right side of the street, at the speed limit) when I pulled up alongside a police car, which had stopped, waiting to turn into a gas station. We passed by in slow motion. I looked at him. He looked at me. I passed on by. He made a U-turn. The next thing I know, I saw flashing blue lights in my rearview, which I'm pretty sure is some kind of indication that you're in the deep end of the shit pool.

"Is something the matter, officer?" I asked all politely, knowing already what this was going to be about. He asked me for my license and told me that he saw that I was driving with headphones on--did I know that wasn't allowed? I said that I didn't realize that (though it made perfect sense), but that I'd only had one earbud in. Then I forced myself to stop talking, because what did I think I was going to gain from making excuses to a police officer? Just smile and nod, dumbass!

The police officer (who was very nice, by the way, and had a very charming Irish accent, like a cop out of a damn movie about the 1950's) then stopped, and asked me, "What kind of work do you do?"

"I'm a doctor."

He looked at my scrubs and nodded. "Next time, don't drive with earphones." And then he let me go without a ticket. I'm not sure me telling him what I did had anything to do with him deciding to let me go without a citation, but I guess I'll never really know, even though that's not going to stop me for feeling vaguely guilty about that possibility.

And no, I'm not going to drive with earphones anymore. In either ear.

iowa!

(Apologies in advance for any obvious signs that this entry was written under duress--my browser crashed after some thoughtful noodling of this entry, and now I have to leave for work in twenty minutes because I'm on call tonight.)

So it's official, I'll be presenting on a panel about blogging in medicine along with these two very talented gentlemen (John from "Glass Hospital" and Rob from "Musings of a Distractible Mind") on a panel about blogging in medicine at the Iowa Writer's Workshop conference in April. We're all pretty excited, they more likely about the conference, me about the prospect of traveling somewhere--anywhere--without two kids and six carry-ons and a easy-one-hand-folding stroller that seems like anything but once you get up to the security checkpoint and everyone is yelling at you to take off your shoes. This will be the first time since Cal was born that I will be going anywhere without kids in tow. Even my Oral Boards, which usually involves some degree of travel for almost everyone, was fortuitously offered in Atlanta my year--which was awesome, because we all know there's no Oral Board prep that can quite equal the night before spent in your own bed.

Anyway, if I may ingratiate myself upon you, a few things:

1.) We need a good title for the panel. Our original panel was something like, "WebMD: a Panel of Doctors from the Blogosphere" which was serviceable. It was catchy at least, and even though I hate the word blogosphere (sounds like someone throwing up a beach ball) there really is no good equivalent that I'm aware of. In any event, we may have to change the title, at least the first part, as it has been pointed out to us by conference administrators that for one, "WebMD" is a copyrighted name, and for deuce, we don't really want to seem like we're affiliated with or endorsing "WebMD."

So what do you think? Since this is a conference that's going to be teeming with doctor/writer types, I think the panel name should make it clear somehow that we're talking specifically about writing on the internet (or "blogging" as it were--I am crusty and ancient and very Web 1.0, but I am aware that this is the vernacular now and will try to say that with a minimum of eye-rolling air-quotes). Ideally it would be something witty though not goofy--our panel will probably be more light-hearted than most, but as many of the other talks tend towards the more serious aspects of writing in medicine (the monitors beeped and I held her wrinkled hand at the moment of her death kind of thing), I don't want us to seem like three yuck-a-lucks piling out of a tiny clown car or anything.

Anyway, any thoughts on a good panel title? Thanks in advance!

2.) Are you in Iowa, or even if you're not, would you perhaps be interested in attending a conference about writing in medicine? You should! At the very least there are some CME credits to eke out of the experience, and you can be sure that I'm going to load myself up with what I can. If enough people are going and interested and very, very bored, maybe we can even have some kind of a meet-up one evening. That's not weird, right? Could be fun? We could meet each other and chat and drink ethanol (because, you know, IOWA). Just don't murder me. Maybe more on this as we get closer to April. Registration for the conference isn't open yet, but I think you can get on their mailing list and they will let you know when it is.

OK, I have to collect my frozen dinner and get ready to go to work now. Later I will tell you about how I got pulled over by the police for reckless driving, a story that sounds much more exciting than it actually was. Be cool, stay in school.

want to feel better about your parenting? read this!

Before I had kids (and therefore still ensconced in a phase of youthful hubris wherein I thought I knew everything) I swore I would never let my kids watch TV. Certainly as a Peds resident, I well knew the AAPs recommendation that no kid under the age of two years should watch any TV at all, and after that, if I let my kids watch TV, it would only be high quality educational programming that we would watch together. Like "Masterpiece Theater" or "Nova," maybe "Mystery!" but only if the crimes were tasteful or at least of the charming, small English village, Miss Marple variety.

My kids watch TV. Sometimes they probably watch too much TV. I do still try to control what they watch and in what quantities--it's mostly PBS/BBC nature shows or innocuous Nick Jr. fare, and I stay away from channels with too many external commercials (though I am aware that Nick Jr. is ostensibly commercial free, at least with respect to sugary cereals or fad toys, the number of internal ads they run for their own shows and tie-ins is obscene)--but still, my kids watch TV, and much more than I thought I'd let them watch before I actually had kids. And maybe that's not good.

But if there was no TV, I would never be able to take a shower, or cook dinner, or write stupid blog posts like this one. And until I can see the grey matter liquefying and oozing out of their ears like so much protoplasm, I'd like those "I don't even own a TV" people to come over to my house and show me what harm it's doing. Or at least take care of my kids so I can eat dinner for ten minutes after work while standing behind the sink.




Look, I even got a bean bag couch for the basement, a sure sign that I've given up the fight. (See also: two boys that like to dive bomb the furniture. Why even try? Bean bags, Berry Berry Kix and "Yo Gabba Gabba" for everyone!)

baby it's cold outside

So as those of you who follow my Twitter stream may be aware (and if you aren't, why not, at the very least there are links to some very detailed Lego pictures as well as my thoughts about creamy pumpkin soap--not soup, soap) the furnace in our house--that is to say, the house we are renting, not a house we actually own, thank god--made it apparent that it was not up to actually producing any meaningful degree of heat right at the end of last week. Unfortunately, this was on Friday night, past the point that any furnace repair company would deign to come check things out, freezing temperature and young children be damned. So this weekend was one of piecemeal heating solutions, consisting of strategically placed space heaters and many layers of Cosby sweaters. One good thing is we discovered there was actually a second furnace up on the second floor (who knew?) which had shut off for the past two years but did actually work, and was enough to at least heat the kids' bedrooms overnight, though not sufficient to heat up the rest of the house, where everything else (TV, toys, master bedroom) is. So, southerly latitude nonwithstanding, it's been pretty cold up in here.

One of the furnace people who came by to inspect the unit told us that the problem was that whoever had installed this furnace--and it's brand new, installed just a few months ago--put the whole unit in wrong, something with it needing to be leveled correctly something something condenser drainage something something reinstall the furnace ONE MILLION DOLLARS. And then, for some reason, some other guy came by today with the landlord, tinkered with something else apparently very minor, and now we...kind of have heat again. So I'm not really sure how he fixed it or what he fixed or if he even fixed anything at all or if it's going to last, all I know is that I no longer have arctic puffins roosting in my bedroom, and I'm no longer worried that my kids are going to run headfirst into the space heater and get Waffle Face. So that's good.

(Also, if you followed my Twitter stream, you would have seen the alarming pictures of me trying to make a brisket--yes, ME, I know!--which actually turned out pretty well despite best efforts to simultaneously cause massive conflagration as well as indigestion. Rest assured that though the meat looks strangely darkened around the edges in the middle photograph, that is merely an artifact of Hipstamatic, not what it actually looked like; I do love my family and want them to live.)

brick by brick

MICHELLE
That's quite a Lego city you have there, Cal.

CAL
I know.

MICHELLE
What's the name of your city? Oh, I've got it. Cal-opolis.

CAL
(Witheringly)
No.

MICHELLE
Um, Legoville?

CAL
No.

MICHELLE
Well, every city needs a name.

CAL
I have a name for the city.

MICHELLE
What is it?

CAL
Ohio.

MICHELLE
Uh. Well, that's a good name for a...city.

CAL
I saw that word from when Dad was watching football on TV.

a marriage of convenience

A text message exchange from earlier this week:

JOE
Momo, don't laugh at me, but I have a patient and I want

blood ready for the surgery, but might not need it. Should I

"type and screen" or "type and crossmatch"?

MICHELLE

Depends how fast you would need it. If you want it

sitting outside the OR to give at a minute's notice,

type and cross. If you will unlikely need it immediately

and have 30 minutes lead time once you think

you might want to transfuse, type and screen.

MICHELLE

Crossmatch involves an additional step, typing the

unit of donor blood against the patient's blood.

JOE
Type and cross dress? Ever done that?

MICHELLE

Yes, that's where the blood bank put the unit

in a dress and heels.

For my own vanity I will leave out the countless occasions that I texted Joe in the middle of the day asking him ridiculously simplistic questions about the human eye as it pertains to my scope of practice (that is to say: mostly corneal abrasions, and when it is OK to use nitrous after a scleral buckle). We are like a built in free consult service for each other. Marriage!

just like Joe in med school during neuropathology lecture

Please forgive me what may be a maternal indulgence, but I do think that if you don't find this at least a little endearing, you might want to check to make sure your brain is still working.





Mack falling asleep while Cal and I were watching "Top Chef: All Stars". Guess he doesn't like the show as much as we do. (Somewhat related aside: the last time we were in New York, we saw Eric Ripert in his chef's whites at La Bernadin. He looks just as silvery and Teutonic in person as he does on the tee vee.)

ladies and gentlemen, nora ephron

I got an e-mail from my editor yesterday telling me that she was going to try and see if Nora Ephron would read a copy of the galley, even though I think we all agree this is something of a long shot since Nora Ephron is capital F Famous and capital B Busy and oh, also, SHE'S NORA EPHRON. But if there's even a 0.1% chance that we could ever get an advance copy of the book into her hands, I'm all for it, and am in my head already trying to compose a little personal note to send to her on my nice grown-up stationery, if it's possible that might make any difference at all. (It's that personal touch that means so much, am I right, folks? Like when your doctor remembers your kids' names. These are things I try to do for the few repeat patients I get in the anesthesia business, though the unfortunate truth is that if I do my job right, most of my patients don't remember me.)

Nora Ephron went to Wellesley, of course--that's one of just a handful of things that we have in common. Of course she graduated a little while before me (I think she was class of 1962?) and I think she's written rather famously in one of her early essay collections from the 1970's about how much she loathed it there. For the record, I didn't loathe Wellesley--I found it a beautiful place to spend four years and I had some excellent teachers and some good times--but overall I did tend to find the whole experience indulgently over-earnest and somewhat humorless. (Please disagree with me, I am wholly open to the idea that I just didn't have enough fun in college. I was pre-med after all, the most over-earnest and humorless demographic of them all.)

But even though I attended Wellesley in a different era than Nora Ephron, a lot of what she had to say about her experience really resonated with me, and I want to share with you something I found meandering through the internet--a transcript of her remarks to Wellesley's graduating class of 1996 during commencement exercises that year. (This is printed on a number of different webpages so I assume it's OK to put up here--if I'm violating some sort of copyright thing, please let me know and I'll take it down or at least just judiciously excerpt it.)

Some of the things she reminisces about are completely foreign from my own college experience--all the stuff about boys in the dorm and Fundies and getting kicked out of school for being gay, those days were more historical curiosity than reality by the time I got to school there. (We still had Wednesday evening tea, though. It sounds much quainter than it really was, which was people clomping into the dorm common room to grab two fistfuls of cookies and then leaving immediately, completely ignoring the giant silver samovar sitting on the table.)

Yet...there were things I read in this speech that are so close, so familiar, that speak so much to me and my own experience and some of the themes of my book, that they sincerely gave me chills the first time I read them, and the five times that I re-read them after that.

And if I am ever lucky enough to get to meet Nora Ephron, you can bet that one of the first things I'm going to do is give her a big old high five.

Nora Ephron

Remarks to Wellesley College Class of 1996

(Reprinted from the website of the Wellesley College Office of Public Affairs)

President Walsh, trustees, faculty, friends, noble parents...and dear class of 1996, I am so proud of you. Thank you for asking me to speak to you today. I had a wonderful time trying to imagine who had been ahead of me on the list and had said no; I was positive you'd have to have gone to Martha Stewart first. And I meant to call her to see what she would have said, but I forgot. She would probably be up here telling you how to turn your lovely black robes into tents. I will try to be at least as helpful, if not quite as specific as that.

I'm very conscious of how easy it is to let people down on a day like this, because I remember my own graduation from Wellesley very, very well, I am sorry to say. The speaker was Santha Rama Rau who was a woman writer, and I was going to be a woman writer. And in fact, I had spent four years at Wellesley going to lectures by women writers hoping that I would be the beneficiary of some terrific secret -- which I never was. And now here I was at graduation, under these very trees, absolutely terrified. Something was over. Something safe and protected. And something else was about to begin. I was heading off to New York and I was sure that I would live there forever and never meet anyone and end up dying one of those New York deaths where no one even notices you're missing until the smell drifts into the hallway weeks later. And I sat here thinking, "O.K., Santha, this is my last chance for a really terrific secret, lay it on me," and she spoke about the need to place friendship over love of country, which I must tell you had never crossed my mind one way or the other.

I want to tell you a little bit about my class, the class of 1962. When we came to Wellesley in the fall of 1958, there was an article in the Harvard Crimson about the women's colleges, one of those stupid mean little articles full of stereotypes, like girls at Bryn Mawr wear black. We were girls then, by the way, Wellesley girls. How long ago was it? It was so long ago that while I was here, Wellesley actually threw six young women out for lesbianism. It was so long ago that we had curfews. It was so long ago that if you had a boy in your room, you had to leave the door open six inches, and if you closed the door you had to put a sock on the doorknob. In my class of, I don't know, maybe 375 young women, there were six Asians and 5 Blacks. There was a strict quota on the number of Jews. Tuition was $2,000 a year and in my junior year it was raised to $2,250 and my parents practically had a heart attack.

How long ago? If you needed an abortion, you drove to a gas station in Union, New Jersey with $500 in cash in an envelope and you were taken, blindfolded, to a motel room and operated on without an anesthetic. On the lighter side, and as you no doubt read in the New York Times magazine, and were flabbergasted to learn, there were the posture pictures. We not only took off most of our clothes to have our posture pictures taken, we took them off without ever even thinking, this is weird, why are we doing this? -- not only that, we had also had speech therapy -- I was told I had a New Jersey accent I really ought to do something about, which was a shock to me since I was from Beverly Hills, California and had never set foot in the state of New Jersey... not only that, we were required to take a course called Fundamentals, Fundies, where we actually were taught how to get in and out of the back seat of the car. Some of us were named things like Winkie. We all parted our hair in the middle. How long ago was it? It was so long ago that among the things that I honestly cannot conceive of life without, that had not yet been invented: panty hose, lattes, Advil, pasta (there was no pasta then, there was only spaghetti and macaroni) -- I sit here writing this speech on a computer next to a touch tone phone with an answering machine and a Rolodex, there are several CD's on my desk, a bottle of Snapple, there are felt-tip pens and an electric pencil sharpener... well, you get the point, it was a long time ago.

Anyway, as I was saying, the Crimson had this snippy article which said that Wellesley was a school for tunicata -- tunicata apparently being small fish who spend the first part of their lives frantically swimming around the ocean floor exploring their environment, and the second part of their lives just lying there breeding. It was mean and snippy, but it had the horrible ring of truth, it was one of those do-not-ask-for-whom-the-bell-tolls things, and it burned itself into our brains. Years later, at my 25th reunion, one of my classmates mentioned it, and everyone remembered what tunacata were, word for word.

My class went to college in the era when you got a masters degrees in teaching because it was "something to fall back on" in the worst case scenario, the worst case scenario being that no one married you and you actually had to go to work. As this same classmate said at our reunion, "Our education was a dress rehearsal for a life we never led." Isn't that the saddest line? We weren't meant to have futures, we were meant to marry them. We weren't meant to have politics, or careers that mattered, or opinions, or lives; we were meant to marry them. If you wanted to be an architect, you married an architect. Non Ministrare sed Ministrari -- you know the old joke, not to be ministers but to be ministers' wives.

I've written about my years at Wellesley, and I don't want to repeat myself any more than is necessary. But I do want to retell one anecdote from the piece I did about my 10th Wellesley reunion. I'll tell it a little differently for those of you who read it. Which was that, during my junior year, when I was engaged for a very short period of time, I thought I might transfer to Barnard my senior year. I went to see my class dean and she said to me, "Let me give you some advice. You've worked so hard at Wellesley, when you marry, take a year off. Devote yourself to your husband and your marriage." Of course it was stunning piece of advice to give me because I'd always intended to work after college. My mother was a career women, and all of us, her four daughters, grew up understanding that the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" was as valid for girls as for boys. Take a year off being a wife. I always wondered what I was supposed to do in that year. Iron? I repeated the story for years, as proof that Wellesley wanted its graduates to be merely housewives. But I turned out to be wrong, because years later I met another Wellesley graduate who had been as hell-bent on domesticity as I had been on a career. And she had gone to the same dean with the same problem, and the dean had said to her, "Don't have children right away. Take a year to work." And so I saw that what Wellesley wanted was for us to avoid the extremes. To be instead, that thing in the middle. A lady. We were to take the fabulous education we had received here and use it to preside at dinner table or at a committee meeting, and when two people disagreed we would be intelligent enough to step in and point out the remarkable similarities between their two opposing positions. We were to spend our lives making nice.

Many of my classmates did exactly what they were supposed to when they graduated from Wellesley, and some of them, by the way, lived happily ever after. But many of them didn't. All sorts of things happened that no one expected. They needed money so they had to work. They got divorced so they had to work. They were bored witless so they had to work. The women's movement came along and made harsh value judgments about their lives -- judgments that caught them by surprise, because they were doing what they were supposed to be doing, weren't they? The rules had changed, they were caught in some kind of strange time warp. They had never intended to be the heroines of their own lives, they'd intended to be -- what? -- First Ladies, I guess, first ladies in the lives of big men. They ended up feeling like victims. They ended up, and this is really sad, thinking that their years in college were the best years of their lives.

Why am I telling you this? It was a long time ago, right? Things have changed, haven't they? Yes, they have. But I mention it because I want to remind you of the undertow, of the specific gravity. American society has a remarkable ability to resist change, or to take whatever change has taken place and attempt to make it go away. Things are different for you than they were for us. Just the fact that you chose to come to a single-sex college makes you smarter than we were -- we came because it's what you did in those days -- and the college you are graduating from is a very different place. All sorts of things caused Wellesley to change, but it did change, and today it's a place that understands its obligations to women in today's world. The women's movement has made a huge difference, too, particularly for young women like you. There are women doctors and women lawyers. There are anchorwomen, although most of them are blonde. But at the same time, the pay differential between men and women has barely changed. In my business, the movie business, there are many more women directors, but it's just as hard to make a movie about women as it ever was, and look at the parts the Oscar-nominated actresses played this year: hooker, hooker, hooker, hooker, and nun. It's 1996, and you are graduating from Wellesley in the Year of the Wonderbra. The Wonderbra is not a step forward for women. Nothing that hurts that much is a step forward for women.

What I'm saying is, don't delude yourself that the powerful cultural values that wrecked the lives of so many of my classmates have vanished from the earth. Don't let the New York Times article about the brilliant success of Wellesley graduates in the business world fool you -- there's still a glass ceiling. Don't let the number of women in the work force trick you -- there are still lots of magazines devoted almost exclusively to making perfect casseroles and turning various things into tents.

Don't underestimate how much antagonism there is toward women and how many people wish we could turn the clock back. One of the things people always say to you if you get upset is, don't take it personally, but listen hard to what's going on and, please, I beg you, take it personally. Understand: every attack on Hillary Clinton for not knowing her place is an attack on you. Underneath almost all those attacks are the words: get back, get back to where you once belonged. When Elizabeth Dole pretends that she isn't serious about her career, that is an attack on you. The acquittal of O.J. Simpson is an attack on you. Any move to limit abortion rights is an attack on you -- whether or not you believe in abortion. The fact that Clarence Thomas is sitting on the Supreme Court today is an attack on you.

Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim. Because you don't have the alibi my class had -- this is one of the great achievements and mixed blessings you inherit: unlike us, you can't say nobody told you there were other options. Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead. Twenty-five years from now, you won't have as easy a time making excuses as my class did. You won't be able to blame the deans, or the culture, or anyone else: you will have no one to blame but yourselves. Whoa.

So what are you going to do? This is the season when a clutch of successful women -- who have it all -- give speeches to women like you and say, to be perfectly honest, you can't have it all. Maybe young women don't wonder whether they can have it all any longer, but in case of you are wondering, of course you can have it all. What are you going to do? Everything, is my guess. It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. And don't be frightened: you can always change your mind. I know: I've had four careers and three husbands. And this is something else I want to tell you, one of the hundreds of things I didn't know when I was sitting here so many years ago: you are not going to be you, fixed and immutable you, forever. We have a game we play when we're waiting for tables in restaurants, where you have to write the five things that describe yourself on a piece of paper. When I was your age, I would have put: ambitious, Wellesley graduate, daughter, Democrat, single. Ten years later not one of those five things turned up on my list. I was: journalist, feminist, New Yorker, divorced, funny. Today not one of those five things turns up in my list: writer, director, mother, sister, happy. Whatever those five things are for you today, they won't make the list in ten years -- not that you still won't be some of those things, but they won't be the five most important things about you. Which is one of the most delicious things available to women, and more particularly to women than to men. I think. It's slightly easier for us to shift, to change our minds, to take another path. Yogi Berra, the former New York Yankee who made a specialty of saying things that were famously maladroit, quoted himself at a recent commencement speech he gave. "When you see a fork in the road," he said, "take it." Yes, it's supposed to be a joke, but as someone said in a movie I made, don't laugh this is my life, this is the life many women lead: two paths diverge in a wood, and we get to take them both. It's another of the nicest things about being women; we can do that. Did I say it was hard? Yes, but let me say it again so that none of you can ever say the words, nobody said it was so hard. But it's also incredibly interesting. You are so lucky to have that life as an option.

Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women. Thank you. Good luck. The first act of your life is over. Welcome to the best years of your lives.