why i can now never leave this job

Before I started working at [Private Hospital], my only knowledge of Tab soda was from that scene in "Back to the Future" where Marty, newly transplanted to the year 1955, orders a Tab at the diner and the wise-cracking diner owner tells him that he can't give him the tab, he hasn't ordered anything yet. I figured that Tab, much like Max Headroom and Ms. Pac Man (Pac Woman?), was an artifact of the '80s that no longer existed outside of the vaults of collectors and connoisseurs of rare discontinued sodas.

Not until I started work at [Private Hospital] and opened the fridge in the physician's dining room for the first time did I ever see a real can of Tab. It was there, amidst the Cokes and Sprites and little cartons of milk. The Tab cans were packaged in a long box of a dozen. The box was open. And it was half empty. People were drinking Tab. In the year 2008.

I figured that the hospital must just have a monstrous stash of Tab, stacked in some basement vault, amassed sometime in the mid-80s and which they were bringing up box by box until all the Tab was gone and they could buy some more normal soda, like, I don't know, ginger ale or something. But the Tab kept coming up. Every time the box would near empty, another would appear, sometimes even two boxes at a time. And people kept drinking it. I saw it with my own eyes. They would bypass the Diet Coke and go for the Tab. What the hell? I THOUGHT DOCTORS WERE SUPPOSED TO BE SMART.

The first time I tried Tab--purely out of curiosity, mind you--I hated it. It had a cloying, strangely chemical taste. I know that all diet sodas are chemical-y and it's not like I think Diet Coke is some kind of ambrosial brew, it's just that I am used to the chemicals in Diet Coke, and to me, Tab tasted, well, weird. But then, a few weeks later, I had another one, because that day at lunch, all the other sodas were either not restocked, or warm. And then another one a week after that, because there was a line in front of the fridge and it was the only can I could easily reach. And another a few days after that--I hardly even know the reason.

And now I like Tab.

So this is why I can now never stop working at this hospital. Because so far as I know, it is the only place on Earth where Tab still exists.

(And yes, I know that Tab contains caffeine, but despite the fact that I am pregnant, I have not totally cut out caffeine, even though yes, I read that article in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology too. One, because I believe that caffeine, especially in the latter half of one's pregnancy, and in moderation, is not going to kill anyone. Also, the fact that when I was a Peds resident, the fact that we actually used to directly administer caffeine IV to our preemies as a treatment for apnea and bradys has probably removed some of the stigma of deadly baby-killing caffeine for me. This is all very logical and sounds like the reasoning of a rational mind, but the real reason is--I already had to cut out a shitload of things from my diet in the interest of a healthy pregnancy. If I cut out all caffeine too, I WOULD HAVE NOTHING. So let me drink my weirdly retro Tab.)

benign neglect

Sometime last week our nanny asked me if it would be OK for her to keep an overnight bag at our house, in the event that the baby suddenly and precipitously decides to make an appearance and she needs to stay overnight with Cal while Joe and I were at the hospital. I told her that the overnight bag was a great idea, but it took me a full few days afterwards to realize that huh, with all this thinking ahead that other people are doing on my behalf, I should probably pack an overnight bag of my own at some point. Not really overly prepared for this baby, me.




I noticed while getting dressed for work this morning that Ling Ling's position seems to have dropped somewhat, which is good news for the old breathing (increasing FRC is one of my favorite things, how about you?) but which might explain why I had to go to the bathroom three times overnight. At 35 weeks, I'm sure (or at least I'm hoping) that this shift in position doesn't mean that anything is imminent, but certainly things are looking like they're moving in the right direction. That direction being down and out.

We did do some baby laundry this weekend (consisting mostly of Cal-era hand-me-downs--swaddling cloths and blankets and the like), unboxed some of the comically small newborn diapers that we finally got around to ordering, and setting up our upstairs-downstairs diaper changing stations. But we're probably still underprepared for the baby. This is largely my own fault. At this point, I'm just like, "What, the baby? What's the big deal? Babies are easy. I'll just stick him in a sling and carry on." Honestly, I'm more focused on how I'm going to juggle taking care of Cal with a baby strapped to my chest than I am about the baby himself. I may be practicing a little selective memory here, but compared to a three year-old (what with their talking and questions and desire to have you ooh and aah over the wonder of each bowel movement bearing a passing resemblance to some letter of the alphabet), aren't babies kind of...low maintenance? Portable? Essentially lumpish and inert? I'd better be right on this, or I'm screwed.

thanks

So I was originally planning to detail the makings of our First Family Thanksgiving (not that we haven't celebrated Thanksgiving before, but usually we're with a bigger group of family, with little or no cooking involved)--in my frenzied over-ambition, I even had a notion of live-blogging our preparations--but then I noticed that the food wasn't looking very beautiful and that we had somehow forgotten to include in our preparation any green vegetables, giving our entire meal a sort of beige palette reminiscent of institutional cooking, minus the styrofoam partitioned serving trays. So that's why, with the exception of that one picture of Cal mixing the cornbread stuff, and some pictures of Joe basting the half-done turkey, there are no pictures of our meal. Pity. I took most of the leftovers (turkey, mashed potatoes) with some of the ingredients that we forgot to use on Thursday (leeks, mushrooms, some frozen corn) and ended up making a shepard's pie the day afterwards, which actually was a modest success, though it, like much else, looked not unlike a pile of slop with mashed potatoes on top. But I think that "pile of slop with mashed potatoes on top" pretty much sums up what people want to get out of their Thanksgiving leftovers anyway, so score one for the slop master.

Anyway, thanks for nothing, Thanksgiving. On to the next thing.




I don't think I've ever put up our Christmas tree this early, and I don't think I necessarily would have this year except that Cal was SO EXCITED about it. He has been talking about putting up the Christmas tree ever since we moved, and he saw our (fake) tree amidst the boxes up in our closet. Also there is some weird three year-old thing going on in his mind about Christmas and The Baby, such that he equates the two (probably my fault for repeatedly telling him that the new baby would be coming after Christmas), such that the second after we had the tree up, Cal looked at me and asked hopefully, "So...is the baby coming now?" Yes son. And I will put him under the tree for you wrapped in a GIANT RED BOW.

(And yes, Cal is winking in that photo. No, I don't know why. Either he is imitating me looking through the viewfinder of the camera, or this is something he learned at school. I asked him why he was making that face, and he told me it was because, "I need to look with one eye." Ah so.)

Cal has been off of school since Tuesday afternoon, and it's been just enough days for me to realize that damn, those two and a half weeks he's going to be off for Christmas Break is going to be a long-ass time without any structured activities. I mean sure, there are playdates and the inflatable playground and the aquarium and all that stuff, but any way you spin it, sixteen days is sixteen days and I sure as hell hope he doesn't run out of things to do.

Anyway, partially to that end, and partially because we needed something to do now, today, we took our first trip to the Atlanta Zoo. (Actually, they call it "Zoo Atlanta" for some reason--perhaps Yoda was involved in the naming, but never mind about that.) I had toyed with the idea of going to the zoo earlier this year in the summer, when it was just me and Cal amusing ourselves before I started work, but it was just so hot and it seemed kind of far away, so I said screw it, let's just go to the pool again. We almost didn't go today because it was kind of raining on and off, but finally we just decided that since we weren't made of sugar, we could probably stand to get a little wet.

I am really glad we went. Not only is it an excellent zoo (for some reason, I didn't expect it to be that big, nor to have that many big-ticket animals so close up--I'm sure I don't need to tell you that not every zoo in the country has a pair of pandas, not to mention a BABY PANDA), but the fact that the weather was kind of crappy meant that hardly anyone else was there. We practically had the full run of the place ourselves. Minimal interaction with other humans! Woo!










(Full Thanksgiving picture set here, zoo picture set here.)

all he needs is a bucket and a shovel




Cal "helping" mix the dry ingredients for the cornbread. Though I suspect this was less for the love of cornbread and more for the novelty of having his own private sandbox.

(Incidentally, Thanksgiving culinary lesson learned, part the millionth: do not try to cook cornbread in a toaster oven. Unless you really love the taste of cardboard, in which case--save yourself the hassle, and just eat the box the cornmeal came in.)