the day before tomorrow

Today is my last day of maternity leave, and if you're thinking to yourself, "well, that went quick," I totally agree.  Not as quick as my five week leave with Cal, or my six week leave with Mack, but it still didn't seem much longer than those other times, somehow.  One's perception always expands to fill the timeframe allotted I guess, which is probably why, no matter how long I had or when I started, my papers in college were always finished at midnight the night before.  (See also: why I did not major in the humanities.)

I am something of a planner (this is what Joe calls me, though I think this is charitable--I have what might more accurately be described as a crippling attention to detail with a vivid imagination for catastrophe and outlay for at least three contingencies) so I've been gearing up for going back to work for, oh, at least the last month.  I knew I had to go back to work August 31st, so naturally I started stressing about it August 1st.  SHUT UP, I'M NORMAL.  So here's what we have going on.

Naturally, the milk.  I started pumping when Nina was probably about three weeks old (with the boys I started pumping sooner, both because I had less time was not as worried about weight gain with them than with Nina--she was on the smaller side when she was born and I didn't want to, you know, screw with the system until breastfeeding was firmly established) and I think we have amassed a goodly stockpile for my re-entry.

As I think I've mentioned before, the pump I'm using is the Medela Symphony.  I used the Symphony with Cal, lugging it into work with me for six months on the subway (it's not, like, 50 pounds or anything, but it's a hefty hospital grade pump so I crammed it into a giant L.L. Bean backpack and looked every bit like the former Hunter student that I once was: monstrous square backback on the subway at dark o'clock every morning--at least I wasn't reading "The Grapes of Wrath" or "The Chosen").  When the rental company I was using with the Symphony folded, I bought a Pump in Style, which I used for another six months with Cal, and then for almost a year with Mack, and it worked fine.  But now, returning to the Symphony, I have to say--it's a much better pump.  It's just solid, and it works more efficiently too, which is great when you need to pump but have only a short amount of time to get the job done.  Obviously it costs more too, but you can rent it, or buy it an resell it like I plan to.  (Since it's a hospital-grade pump, it operates on a closed system and is therefore approved for multiple users--the new owner would just need to get a new collection system and fresh tubing.)  I would also like to point out, for anyone else in the same boat, that the purchase of a breast pump can be deductible on your medical flex account if you have one for work.  (I printed out that article and stapled it to the receipt when I submitted it to my business office, and had no problems.)

I know a lot of people use those plastic baggies to store their milk, but I never have--experimentation in the medium led to a lot of spillage and of course the solid waste over the course of a year is not inconsiderable.  So for the third time in a row now I'm using this Mother's Milkmate system, which is basically a series of wire racks and little bottles (the bottles store up to five ounces I think but I never fill with more than four, because it can get messy, and of course if you end up freezing the bottle there's no room for expansion).  I obviously think this system is the way to go since I've gone back to it twice, because it easily shows you how much milk you have and dispenses the stash from oldest to newest in a way that satisfies my neuroticism attention to detail.  (If my use of masking tape labels color coded by day doesn't tell you everything you need to know about my personality, I'm not really sure what will.)

Some pro tips: get a few packs of extra storage bottles to have around, because between having some in the freezer and having dirty ones in the dishwasher, a good percentage of the bottles are going to be out of circulation each day and you want to have enough clean ones lying around to pump and store.  The rack itself comes with ten bottles those bottles screw directly into the boob horns of the pump setup, which means less pouring and transferring of your hard-won bounty. As an added plus, you can also screw on any standard-sized nipple (the Medela ones or the freebies they give you at the hospital fit fine) and feed directly from the storage bottle itself, which is very convenient as long as your baby isn't particular about bottle feeding.  (We didn't get one of these non-particular babies, however.  She's a woman of discriminating tastes, about which more later.)

I work at the same place now as I did when Mack was born, so luckily I have my pumping logistics and geography pretty much down.  Since the year I pumped with Mack, the hospital has actually added a lactation room pretty close to the OR, but from what I've heard they've missed the mark a bit because while it is a room with a door and a chair, it apparently doesn't have a sink.  People, you need a sink, both to wash your hands before and to rinse your pump parts after.  Sure, you could carry your stuff down the hall and rinse them in the lounge, but believe me, people get awfully squeamish when they have to see your lady gear.  So I'll do what I did last time, which is pump in the bathroom of the female doctor's locker room.  It sounds kind of grim, but it's actually leagues better than where I pumped as a resident--it's reasonably clean first of all, and there's an overhead light, which seems redundant to mention in this modern age, but believe me, it's not a given.  Also, 100% fewer dirty mops are stored in this particular bathroom.  So basically it's like Shangri-La.

So you need a place to pump at work.  Here's what you really need: a pump, a platform to put it on (desk, table, bench, what have you--I put my pump on a hamper), a sink, a door (for the sake of workplace discretion), an electrical outlet, a fridge, and an insulated bag with some ice packs to get it all home.  The electrical outlet is technically optional I guess, but using a battery pack to power a pump over the long term is going to cost you bank because those things eat batteries like Cookie Monster eats cookies, so just do yourself a favor and just park near an outlet.

Let me say here that although I've nursed all three of my kids, I have a problem with people being a little too adamant about breastfeeding as the be all end all. Feeding your kid formula is just fine as I and millions of other formula-fed humans will attest, and what you feed them is probably somewhat lower on the list of things that are essential to their health and well-being than, you know, loving them and being attuned to their needs and safety, all that jazz.  So I have a problem with people making moms feel like they're failures if they can't/choose not to breastfeed.  Look, breastfeeding is great if it works for you, but it's not as important as many, many other things you can do for your baby, like, for example, getting them vaccinated against dangerous childhood diseases.  BUT I DIGRESS.

Anyway, what got me to that last point is that I was going to say that the more militant of the breastfeeding literature says that if you're going to dare to go back to work and tear yourself away from your tiny human, that you should ideally be pumping every two or three hours during the day.  (Pause for laughter.)  I don't know anyone who has a job that allows them to pump every two or three hours, do you?  I mean, maybe if you work from home, but even then, I bet it would be rough, because of the actual "work" part.  So just get that out of your head.  It is impossible.  I pump maybe two or three times a day total.  Once in the morning before I leave for work.  Once midday, around lunchtime.  And once later in the evening, if I'm working late.  I also usually take some sort of galactagogue--with the boys I took domperidone, and with Nina I've been taking this Lactation Support stuff (basically fenugreek with other herbal jazz) and supply has been pretty good.  Once I get home, I just nurse on demand, which basically means I have a baby attached to me all evening and all night.  Good stuff.

Ironically, it was much easier to find time to pump as a resident than it is now that I'm an attending.  This seems counterintuitive, but the reason is that as an anesthesia resident we were mandated to get a thirty minute lunch/bathroom break midday, during which time I knew someone was covering my patient and I had no explicit clinical responsibilities.  As a grown-up (that is to say, now that I'm an attending), I don't get lunch breaks anymore.  I mean, I eat lunch (usually), but I just grab it between other things to do, because I can be (and am) called to do something constantly throughout the day.  A thirty minute break is the stuff of pure fantasy.  So when I pump at work, it's kind of like playing Frogger.  I eye the rooms I'm supervising, calculate how long it will be until they need me or until my next patient shows up in pre-op or how long it's going to be before the surgeon removes The Big Clamp or starts dissecting around The Pulsating Thing--and then I just run for it.  Really, I just need ten or fifteen minutes, because I have everything in place and for the most part assembled.  So I run in to pump, give the parts a cursory rinse and dry (I do the real wash at home, in the dishwasher--the heat effectively sterilizes everything) and run my stash to the refrigerator, all hopefully before I get called to do the next thing.

Of course, pumping the milk is just the first part of going back to work if you breastfeed; you also have a way to, you know, get the milk inside your baby.  With Cal and Mack, I introduced the bottle in earnest at about two weeks, and they had very little trouble transitioning between the two (something that made me seriously doubt the phenomenon of "nipple confusion" that people talk about) but Nina has been a little more of a tough nut.  She really, really, really strongly prefers to nurse over bottle feeding.  I started having my high-level surrogates (sorry, I just rewatched the entire run of "The West Wing" in its entirety over my leave and my mind is still half in the Santos-McGarry campaign) giving her a bottle or two a day starting around three or four weeks, but she just kind of hated it for a while.  We tried a bunch of different nipples and bottles, but so far what works best for her is the same thing we used for her brothers, which is this Playtex nurser system set.

It's marketed as better for breastfeeding babies, and I don't know if that's just a bunch of hooey but it does have the widest nipple base of any that we tried (how many times have I said the word "nipple" in this entry?  NIPPLEZZZ!) and I think that she's the most comfortable with it because it's the most boob-like non-boob that we have in our arsenal.  I also like it because it uses these drop-in liners, which not only means that we don't have to actually wash a bottle (the plastic "bottle" is really just a tube-shaped frame to hold the plastic liner and for you to grab onto) but it allows you to really squeeze out all the air from the milk reservoir before feeding, not unlike priming a syringe.  (Yeah, I just said that.  WHAT?)  For a happy refluxer like Nina, this ability to minimize the air swallowed is a nice benefit.

Nina's smart though, in that she will rarely agree to take the bottle from me, probably because she knows that when I'm there she has better options.  Sometimes she won't take the bottle (or will at least fuss more) if she knows I'm even nearby--this leads to the hardest part of transitioning out of maternity leave, which is: leaving before you really have to leave.

I knew I was going to be on call my first day back at the hospital, and would be away from her for maybe fourteen hours or more.  Obviously that's a long time, and I didn't want my first day back (stressful for many other reasons) to be all the more shocking to the baby because OMG WHERE DID THE BOOB LADY GO?  I wanted Nina to know well before it was time for me to go back to work for real that even if I wasn't there, there were other people there to hold her and feed her and love her.  Maybe it was more for myself than anything else, but I needed to see for myself that she was going to be OK before I actually left.  So starting a few weeks ago, I started "leaving" during the day, for increasingly long periods, a few hours at a time.

We are very lucky to have a nanny that has been with us since before Mack was born, and she knows and loves our kids, which has made it a lot easier.  But still, I will tell you that the hardest part of these "trial separations" is being in the house, hearing her cry, and letting someone else get her.  I've literally had to sit on my hands a couple of times.  Which is probably why I end up leaving the house during most of these "training" periods, and why Target has all of my money.  But Nina now takes the bottle during the day, she and our nanny now know each other pretty well, and we have our little schedule and routine pretty set, including coordinating school pickups and drop offs for the boys with the baby in tow.  I'll be sad leaving tomorrow morning but I won't really be too worried, because hey, we practiced.  We got this.

It's both wonderful and terrible to be needed so much by someone, but then also see that they're OK with someone else too.  I remember when I went back to work after Cal was born, thinking, "How can this little person possibly survive without me?"  But he did.  They all do.  But I guess this period is the act of parenting a child in a nutshell.  They'll do fine, but you try your hardest to prepare them for success and happiness the best that you can.  And look, I know, DRAMA QUEEN, you're just going back to work, not joining the Foreign Legion.  But these little transitions can be hard on everyone, though hopefully with all the prep it will be harder for me than for her.

Hey guys.  See you at work tomorrow.

holly hobby

This is the first maternity leave where I haven't had a big heavy To Do list hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles.  And it feels fine, friends.

My first maternity leave with Cal, you'll remember, was three weeks into my Anesthesia residency.  So I spent much of that five weeks off from work trying to memorize Baby Miller, or at least, you know, sitting at a desk with Baby Miller open in front of me.  That was...fun.

With Mack, I had the second round edits due on my book--and this was a big edit, since the first round manuscript had the chapters arranged by theme instead of chronologically; it was basically akin to dismantling your entire house and then building it again but with the rooms all in different places, with, uh, new doors and hallways connecting them (that creaking sound is that of a metaphor becoming overly labored)--so that leave was also spent marinating in a stew of low-grade obligation and stress.

But this maternity leave, I think I pretty much cleared the deck.  I'm not even doing those speaking engagements anymore, so there's no more of that "I gotta do my slides, I gotta review my slides, I gotta practice running through my slides" that has catagorized most of last year up until the Spring when I quit traveling.

So I'm doing some sewing is what I'm saying.

Some functional stuff I made for the baby.  That blanket, based on the tutorial here, and that crib sheet, based on the tutorial here.  Both were actually really easy, so fellow novice sewers, have at it, you will be surprised and pleased.

Then I modified the measurements on the fitted mattress sheet tutorial to make a cover for the diaper changing pad here.  This was especially pleasing because I got this piece of red striped cotton fabric from the "scraps" bin at the fabric store for 99 cents.  It was just big enough for the project, which was a happy coincidence.  (Joe also thought it was a coincidence that the cover matched the alphabet print hanging over the changing table, but I disabused him of that notion quickly--THE COLOR COORDINATION WAS PLANNED, DAMMIT.)

Speaking of salvage, my new thing is sewing with knit fabrics from thrift store finds.  Woven fabrics are nice and of course come in gorgeous prints, but in making things for kids, knit fabrics (think T-shirts, stretchy pants, etcetera) are much softer and more comfortable, especially for a baby.  Even for older kids--Cal complained endlessly when he had to wear this button-down shirt for school picture day, but he will wear any T-shirt or polo shirt until it basically disintegrates.  So anyway, I found this soft cotton sweater at the thrift store--not my style, and also not my size, but appealing in its oatmeal and grey stripes.  As you will soon see, I love stripes.  So I hacked off the bottom part and hacked off the sleeves, and made these two new items, respectively.

The internet is full of variations on how to make a dress from a onesie, so I'll just point you to this one here and say that I just sawed off a tube of fabric from the bottom of an adult T-shirt just to make it that much easier.  For comfort I decided to place the skirt part up higher, like an empire waist, so that the inflexible part of the stitching wouldn't be over the baby's stomach, where her width is the widest.

The pants I made out of the sweater sleeves, which was great because I basically had only had to sew the crotch seam and the casing.  (Tutorial for that little project here--but again, the internet is full of similar tutorials and variations therein, just look around.)  The onesies I got from Rock Bottom T-shirts, who I've mentioned before and with whom I have no relationship, but boy do I love them.  (Another plug: I also ordered some polo shirts from them for Mack's school uniforms--they are of surprisingly good quality.)

Using the bottom part of a T-shirt to make a dress was so easy that I just went ahead and made a couple more for the fall.  MORE STRIPES, PLEASE.  (No pants out of the navy and grey striped T-shirt, unfortunately--I would have loved to make them, but unfortunately that T-shirt was short-sleeved.)

And just so you don't think I am totally anti-pink, this last one here, which I'm hoping will fit by around Thanksgiving.

Just an observation--your local Goodwill is where all Gap, Old Navy and Target-branded shirts (your Merona, your Cherokee, your Massimo for Target, what have you) go to die.  It's like the elephant graveyard of soft T-shirts.

Another thing that they have at thrift stores is old sweaters.  Many of them are hideous, but some of them are decent, or, barring that, made of very soft wools or cotton (sometimes even cashmere) that you can rescue and turn into something else.  I found this grey angora turtleneck sweater that I was able to turn into two things for the winter.  (I kind of wish I had taken I picture of the sweater before I started, but this was my first time doing some of this stuff so in the event that it turned out crappy you understand I wanted to hide the evidence.)  First, these pants:

Again, from the sleeves of the sweater.  The angora is really pretty soft, but wool always has the potential to be scratchy so I decided to line the inside of the pants with the remnants of another thrifted T-shirt.  I actually had used that T- shirt to make another pair of soft pants, but I screwed that pair up in that I wasn't playing close attention and ended up sewing half the seams on the outside, half on the inside.  However, all was not lost--I just slipped that whole pair of pants inside the sweater pants, sewed them together and folded up the cuffs, and behold.  Mistake rectified.

The rest of the sweater (meaning the body part) I used to make this little cardigan, and let me just tell you, I AM SO PROUD OF THIS CARDIGAN.  I'd never sewn sleeves before, you see (something about the three-dimensionality of it seemed overwhelming to me) and I'd never drafted my own pattern before (I used a 6 month-sized onesie to approximate the size and dimensions), and while keen observation would undoubtedly reveal the amateur nature of this project, it actually turned out pretty well, and, I hope, very wearable.  (I would have liked buttons ideally, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet, and I didn't want to screw up the sweater with my first attempts.)

I mentioned this was a turtleneck sweater, right?  Well, there wasn't quite enough fabric to make the sleeves long enough, so I used the ribbing from the turtleneck to extend the sleeve length and make cuffs.  YOU'RE GOD DAMN RIGHT I DID.

I also used some of the leftover ribbing from the turtleneck to bind off the collar.  My stitching has its lumpy bits, but it won't be spotted from a trotting horse.  (Remember how Ramona's dad said that about her lamb costume?  I still think about that sometimes.  That and how the older girls colored her nose with mascara.)

And this was what was left of the sweater after I was done.  Every part of the buffalo, baby.

Now you'll have to remember that I only started sewing stuff like, what, a few months ago?  So I'm fairly new at this game.  However, as hobbies go, it's pretty fun.  Someone in the last entry asked me what I thought people would need to get started, and I have a few things that I would suggest.

First: a sewing machine.  I use this one, the Brother CS6000i, because while I didn't want to get the most expensive sewing machine in the universe, I also didn't want to get one that didn't have a good range of functions.  This one is nice because it's computerized (meaning you can change the type of stiches by pushing a few buttons), has a lot of nice convenience features, is really easy to use, and most importantly comes loaded up with basically every accessory that you could possibly need.  So I would recommend it, but it's also the only one I've really ever tried--there are cheaper models out there too, but I can't attest to their user-friendliness.

I'm going to assume you have scissors in your house if you're, you know, a human being, but I would also recommend (because I use it all the time) getting a rotary cutter (basically like a pizza cutter but for fabric and paper) and a cutting mat, unless you want to be like me with gouges all over one end of the table.  Sure, you can use the scissors for cutting too, but for long, straight cuts, the rotary cutter is easier.

You can get thread basically anywhere, and if you're starting out, I wouldn't go nuts--just go to any kind of craft store and get the handful of colors that you need.  But if you're looking for more colors to match your projects, this company called Threadsrus (I keep reading that as "thesaurus" but I think it's supposed to be Threads R Us--whether the R is written backwards is unclear) offers good quality thread at a very reasonable deal.  I am not at the point yet where I am ordering 200 spools of thread, mind you, but I did order a smaller aliquot from them in an assortment of colors, and I've been pretty pleased.

Oh, one last thing.  If you are prone to jabbing yourself with pins while you work (and I don't know how I am so injury-prone when sewing but I am--if I had as many needle sticks at work as I've had at home I would live at employee health permanently) might I recommend these?  They are these little fabric clips that hold your cloth together in lieu of pins in most situations, and they work great.  Don't bother with the small pack, get the big pack of 50, you will definitely not regret it.  They are super useful, and, you know, not so pointy.

Of course there's a ton of other stuff that you can get if you're in the market and have money to burn, but for a start, that's what I would recommend.  Anyway, sewing is fun, cutting up old busted clothes to make new cute clothes is fun, so let's all do it and humiliate our children by forcing them to wear our lumpy, ill-shaped handiwork into school!  It'll be awesome!

Feel free to discuss other sewing recommendations--either for projects or tools--in the comments section, and we will all share in the goodness.  And just so we don't get too far off course into turning this into a total other species of blog, my next entry will be the oft-requested "Day in the Life" post about private practice anesthesiology, or at least my experiences in that realm.  It'll be a real humdinger!

Hope you had a good weekend.

in which I either save you money or get you to spend more of it

Hey, can I give you a completely unsolicited, unsponsored product recommendation, if for no other reason than to get that gory cord photo down below the fold?   OK then.

Like many people, I like the aesthetic of American Apparel clothes for kids--for babies in particular, it seems like the only place to get plain, bold-colored (meaning non-pastel) clothes not cluttered with pictures and logos for various things.  The only problem is the price.  I mean, $11.50 for a onesie?  Are you shitting me?  I love my kid, and you know, it's nice that they're American made and everything, but...no.

Then, when I was tooling around the internet looking for some plain T-shirts for our freezer paper stencil projects, I found this company called Rock Bottom T-shirts, and among many other things (I think they mostly deal in plain T-shirts and sweatshirts and things of that ilk) I noticed that they sell, huh, what do you know, plain, bright-colored onesies not cluttered with pictures or logos.  I thought there was a pretty good chance that they would be made of that really rough, scratchy cotton, but I ordered a few to check them out and no, the cotton is nice and soft, good construction, washes up well, and the colors really are very bright.  I would compare them favorably to those Gerber onesies that you can buy in a big five-pack.  These shrink up the same way, but to my hand, they are softer.  And the colors!  Love the colors, want to lick them.  For the price, I could not say no.  At the time I ordered the onesies, they were actually having a sale, so they were even a full dollar cheaper than they are listed for now (and if you don't need a snap-bottom onesie, these short sleeved lap tees are a good alternative and also at a full dollar cheaper) which means I was able to get this big, admittedly indulgent pile for the price of two American Apparel onesies.

Will they hold up?  The real question is, do they need to hold up?  We're talking about baby clothes, after all.  It's a race to the Goodwill bin anyway, so who cares?

(And yes, when I have things in different colors, I need to order them all ROY G. BIV--I can't help it, it's a disease.)

At Nina's third bili check in as many days, she's down to 13.8, and an ounce shy of her birth weight. We're going to keep letting her get some sun (our house is unfortunately a low-ceilinged ranch devoid of natural light in most rooms, but the kids' playroom was a sunroom in its former incarnatiom so we'll just hang out there as much as possible for the weekend. One more weight and bili check on Monday, after which poit, hopefully, we'll be released on our own recognizance.

(Gorgeous quilt a gift from the lovely and talented Ramona Bates, a plastic surgeon, prominent medical blogger, and quilt-maker extraordinaire.  It must have taken a lot of hard work, thank you so much again!)

not nesting, just feathering

So I finally figured out what to do with our fireplace mantle.

I've been trying to sort out what to put on our mantle since all the Christmas stuff came down, a decision complicated by the fact that the original print we ordered for the wall actually ended up being too large to fit in the space above the fireplace.  (To be fair, I did measure the space, it just turns out that the measurements provided didn't actually include the measurements of the matting and the frame.  Lessons learned.  But never fear, the Rothko print is now hanging above the couch.)

Anyway, this is obviously not a design blog and I don't know nothin' about birthin' no decoration babies, but what we ended up choosing for our mantle seemed like a nice kind of post for Mother's Day so here you go.  Also I don't have anything else to write about.

This mason jar of sticks I made inspired by AB Chao, who was in turn inspired by this other blog.  (This is known as "proper attribution.")  It was good because we already had a jar, the sticks were free (thanks, backyard!) and the embroidery floss was cheap--it was a good excuse to buy a whole buttload for other projects, actually.  This particular endeavor was easy enough that Cal and I could do some of it together, which is where the Mother's Day part of it comes in.  We actually wrapped most of those twigs this morning (I don't know what your day looks like where you live, but ours is a Very Rainy Sunday) and they were ready for prime time before lunch.  And look how pretty.

The T-Rex wood sculpture is, I think, one of Mack's birthday presents.  The thing of it is that it's actually not a very good gift for a 3 year-old (it came flat packed in literally more than a hundred pieces that had to be assembled painstakingly--think lots of wood grooves and slots fitting together) and it absolutely would not hold up to any kind of rough play, which...well, you've seen kids play with dinosaurs, right? Anyway.  Not the best toy.  But ornamentally, it is fun.  So T-Rex lives on our mantle now.

This is the part that Joe made fun of me for getting (it's one of the few purely decorative items I've ever bought, unless you count pillows for the couch), and he keeps calling them "decorative balls."  Whatever.  I BOUGHT DECORATIVE BALLS.  I like them.  Shut up.  (They're from Target.  I can't find a link, but I'm sure you can find them in the decorative ball aisle.)

This poster I got from the Echo Park Time Travel Mart.  I have a few prints of Amy Martin's stuff and I  really like her work--the colors in this print also match the color scheme of our living room.  Also, it's about fire, which is HILARIOUS to me because we're hanging it over our fireplace.  (I'm easily amused.)  The frame I got from Target, I "matted" it myself by just buying a piece of white posterboard and taping the poster on there before cramming it into the frame.  Whatever, it looks fine.  TAKE THAT, PROFESSIONAL FRAMERS.

(I should also note that the poster is only $20 and part of the proceeds I believe goes to benefit 826LA, which is a non-profit writing and tutoring center for kids in Los Angeles.  You know, in case you need another excuse.)

And now, finally, a pictoral round-up.  Literally.  See, because..."round-up."  ROUND.  I slay me.  Me and only me, I guess.

29 weeks:

30 weeks:

31 weeks:

And...that's it.  How was your Mother's Day?  Mine's not over yet but it's raining and I'm about to go take a nap so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it was a pretty good one.

treat yo self

"Are you Korean?" one of the nurses in the endoscopy unit asked me yesterday.

"Nope, Chinese," I told her, and waited for the second part, which, in my experience, is usually 1.) asking if I can help translate for an Asian-eque patient who can't speak English, or 2.) asking if I know a certain other Asian person, even though (SECRET INFO) we don't all actually know each other.

But actually, she said: "Oh.  Because my daughter and I went to a great Korean foot massage place this past weekend.  It was totally..."  At which point I wheeled around, grabbed her by her lapels (uh, her scrub lapels) and rasped, like Christian Bale's constipated Batman, tell me more about this massage place.

Because I have been looking for a good Asian massage place since we moved to Atlanta almost four years ago.  I just specify Asian because usually they're a lot cheaper, and are generally disinterested in talking to you, which for me is perfect.  (I don't even like chatting with the lady at the salon who cuts my hair, which I probably why I never get my hair cut until it starts getting into Yoko Ono territory.)  I used to go to this old Chinese reflexology place in New York, which was on the second floor of a brownstone above, I think, a nail salon (I know, so typical), but we don't live in New York anymore, and most of the massage places I've seen around Atlanta have been of the fancy ladies-who-lunch variety, or at the very least, ladies-who-Groupon.

Also, she said the magic words, which were: foot massage.  Because I think I've come to terms with the fact that I don't like body massages.  I just don't.  I keep thinking I should like them, because, you know, everyone likes massages, and look at me, with my bad posture and high stress job.  But I just haven't ever gotten a body massage that I liked--and don't use this opportunity to tell me about your "happy ending" massage story because I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT.  Mostly massages are just painful.  Maybe I just don't have enough muscle to massage?  Because massages, no matter how light or soft I tell them to go, just feel like people contusing my bones for half an hour, and then I'm bruised for, like, a week after.  So body massages are not my thing.

Foot massages, though, I can get behind.  Because those are rarely painful, and my feet, I am on them a lot.  See also: pregnancy.  So I got the info, and today, since I was post-call and therefore early off from work, I went there.

It's called "Treat Your Feet," which I'm sure you can see because you are able to read.  It's located in one of these super-industrial strip malls on the Buford Highway (which Atlanta locals will know is the place to go for Ethnic Stuffs), but the inside is actually really nice, much more luxurious than I was expecting.

Anyway, after I told them what I wanted, they hustled me into this dim room with these amazing overstuffed pillowy chairs, and brought out this bucket of hot water for me to soak my feet.  And it is because I am not a vain person that I will show you what my feet look like, because hey, these are not good-looking feet right here.  I can also tell now, looking at this picture full-sized, that despite it being fairly early in the day (it was about 10:30am when I took this picture) that I already had a line from the elastic where my socks were, which, I KNOW MOM, means I should probably obtain some compression stockings at some point, only they're so tight and itchy and I hate them so whatever, I'd rather be swollen.

I didn't take any pictures of the massage part because that would be weird (also it was kind of dark), but know that there was oils and kneading and hot stones and some kind of crazy little foot hammer like in "Raise the Red Lantern," and at the end, they even did a brief face/scalp/neck/shoulder massage, which was like, bonus.  (The shoulder massage hurt a little bit, but the scalp massage was awesome--I wear a scrub hat a lot of the time, so who knows, maybe it's cutting off circulation to my scalp and that explains all my mental problems.)

Want to know the best part?  The best, best, best part is that the one hour foot massage, with the head and neck massage, only costs $30.  Actually, with this coupon (I used the "Early Bird" special because it was a better deal, but I actually I could have used either, since it is a Thursday and I am a lady, SO FAR AS YOU KNOW) only cost $26.  Twenty-six dollars, people.  So that's a hell of a good deal.  So much so that I gave them a $15 tip, because I felt kind of guilty that my enjoyment of the experience so far outweighed the cost.  Also, my dad taught me that tipping well is what you do when you're a decent person, especially if you intend to return to a place of business again.  Which I most certainly will.

(Sorry, this is all very region-specific, and exactly the kind of post that would get me despondent on another blog, because why can't anyone tell me where to get an awesome $26 hourlong massage here in Bismarck?  Or wherever you live.  But now you know where to go when you visit Atlanta, between the Aquarium and The New World of Coke.)

Since I was already on the Buford Highway, I decided to stop by one of the many ethnic eateries for lunch, and while I was tempted to go for Korean food (one of my favorite restaurants was actually right across the street), I decided to go for something which is actually even harder to find in Atlanta, which is a good bowl of Chinese noodles.  I think the place I went to was called The BBQ Corner II, which, I guess, presupposes the existence of a BBQ Corner I.  Anyway, it was not really a BBQ place, except for the fact that they did sell Chinese-style grilled pork and duck.  I had the duck noodle soup and some dim sum style desserts (basically sesame-encrusted glutinous rice balls filled with sweet red bean paste, deep fried).  It wasn't anything mind-blowing, but in a town where it's hard to find real Chinatown-style casual Chinese food, it was more than good enough. Final bill, including a soda, $10.

So.  As post-call days go, not too bad.

durable goods

I don't think I was particularly hysterical with my first pregnancy (being a Peds resident at the time helped--certainly I had a living catalogue before my eyes of all the terrible things that could happen to children, but I also developed a pretty good normative sense of what to freak out about and what else was not such a big deal) but certainly I was as susceptible to the merchandizing opportunity as any other new parent. I don't think we went overboard, but I do remember thinking that our choice of stroller was somehow critical, and also thinking it important that we had a coordinated nursery decor (down to the wallpaper trim) with crib linens to match. Of course, this was back in the days of folly when we thought Cal was going to be sleeping in his own room starting at birth. Oh Michelle of yore, YOU WERE SO YOUNG THEN.

(To be fair, our stroller got much heavier use when we lived in the essentially pedestrian-only culture of Manhattan. Mack, on the other hand, child of suburbia, sat in a stroller maybe a grand total of 20 times in his life.  The rest of the time we just lugged him around in our arms or, you know, shoved him in a duffle bag or something.)

OK, so out of no disrespect to Thing 3, one thing I told myself when we found out we were pregnant was that we were not getting a whole shitload of unecessary stuff this time. Mack was lucky enough to inherit a lot of stuff from Cal's tenure, but you'll remember that we basically liquidated all our baby gear after we moved here last Spring and so, with the exception of a few forgotten toys and some flannel receiving blankets that have since been turned into Absorbancy Rags of Unknown Origin, we're starting from scratch with the new kid. The new kid, who, despite receiving essentially no hand-me-downs from her brothers, will still be clothed in almost exclusively boys clothing for at least the first three months, simply because they were really, really, really on sale after Christmas.

However, there are a few things that I will shell out for again this time around, simply because they worked so well the first two times. Here is a partial list.

Mother's Milkmate Breast Milk Storage Rack and bottles

Sometime later, maybe when I'm actually on maternity leave and have some damn time, I'll do a more detailed post (Again? I feel like maybe I've done this already but people always ask me so maybe I haven't) about the logistics of pumping when you're working at a hospital full-time. But in any event, for those other of you who are contemplating breastfeeding your kids but need to, you know, not actually be present when your kid is eating, this little system works very well, particularly for keeping track of how much milk you have in your fridge and in what order it needs to be consumed. (Human breast milk lasts for about 8 days in the fridge, if recollection holds.) Each bottle holds 4 oz. as has both a stopper and a screw-on cap (so they're leak-proof), and ten bottles can be loaded into the rack, which dispenses from the bottom in the order in which you put them in. At full capacity (and I mean when the kids were eating like hogs but not yet slaking their appetites with solid foods) I was running two and a half to three racks, depending on pumping success. I also ordered a couple of packs of spare bottles, just to have some extras around.

The caveat is that this rack system does take up some more space in your fridge, so you essentially have to clear a shelf (whatever, half a shelf) to fit it in. But I never got into that whole plastic baggie system (something with how floppy and flimsy they were bugged me, I kept spilling stuff everywhere--also it just seemed like a tremendous amount of waste over the course of a year) and the way the rack is designed makes it much easier, I think, for whatever non-me person was feeding the baby to actually keep straight in what order the milk was to be consumed. Anyway, it worked well for the other two. We'll be getting this system again for Thing 3.

SPEAKING OF BOOBS...

Medela Symphony Breast Pump

This was the pump I used with Cal, at least for the first six months. I rented it from some lactationtrix in Manhattan who eventually moved to Westchester (necessitating the equipment return), and after that I bought the Medela Pump in Style, which I used for the rest of Cal's breastfeeding tenure (for whom I pumped for a year), and all of Mack's (for whom I pumped for 10 and a half months, because obviously I LOVE HIM LESS).

The Pump in Style was...well, it was fine. It got the job done. But in comparison, I do think the Symphony worked better. (I'm trying to phrase this in a way that won't squick out people who know me in person, but look, it just sucked out more milk, OK?) So this time around, I'll probably either rent the Symphony, or buy one and resell it afterwards. It's inadvisable, by the way to buy a used single-user pump like the Pump in Style or similar, but because the Symphony is a so-called "hospital grade pump," it's designed for multiple users and therefore is built with a closed system, meaning no human parts can mix with any of the machine parts. The downside of a hospital grade pump is that it is a tank. I know, I had to carry one back and forth to work on the subway for six months. Vertebral compression fractures, ho!

Sleeper Gowns

We had a ton of these lying around from Cal and Mack, and I think that they are great.  They're basically big long muumuu-like gowns for newborns that don't have any zippers, buttons, snaps, nothing--just an elastic band that runs along the bottom seam that keeps the baby's legs semi-bundled.  Diaper changes in the dark?  So easy.  Just pull up the bottom, and pull it back down.  Also, they are adorable.  The pair I showed above are Carter's brand, which seem to hold up the best (the quality of the cotton is very nice too), but a lot of brands make this kind of sleeper--Gerber makes the cheapest version, but they also have a cheaper fabric which means it's thinner and tends to shrink up quite a bit more.  Anyway, it really doesn't matter, the baby's going to wear them for two months max and then they will bust out of them, Hulk-style.  So by all means, get the cheap ones, just means you can have more lying around as extras for the inevitable GI spillage, above or below.

Prefold diapers

Look, I don't want to give anyone the wrong impression, because we definitely don't do the cloth diaper thing. It sounds like it would be nice, because, you know, THE EARTH, and some of those cloth diaper covers are so damn cute I could plotz--but the fact of it is that given that I work full-time I'd feel pretty guilty about essentially inflicting the work and commitment of going cloth-diapers on someone else for most of the day. So we do disposable diapers. But we do have all these cloth diapers around, even to this day, almost seven years after Cal was born. Because they're very useful.

Look, I think I pretty much summed it up here: what you really, really need with a new baby is rags. Just, like, a pile of rags. And these are good rags. First of all, they're soft and smooth, so you can actually put them on or near the baby without worrying that they're too abrasive. Secondly, they're absorbant, owing to their original function. Third, they're small and stow neatly, so you can keep them in stacks everywhere. Lie one under the baby's head when they're sleeping in the crib. Or under they're butt when they're sitting in one of those chair bouncer things that necessitate all poop to shoot up from the top of the diaper. Stow a couple in your diaper bag to use as changing pads. Keep them in a basket in the living room near where you feed the kid. Boom, it's magical, turns potentially big laundry jobs into small ones.  It's also great for cleaning regular things, like your kitchen counters and windows. Oh, and I guess maybe you could use them as diapers too, but I can't give you any advice on that, because I'm too busy killing the planet. Hats off to you cloth diaper parents out there, by the way. You're the real heros. (But! To be able to chuck that whole smelly poop diaper package away en bloc without having to scrape and rinse and soak anything! Priceless!)

How about you guys? What tried and true baby products--not necessarily expensive, but indispensable nonetheless--can you recommend?

20 weeks, and snake...surprise

20 weeks! And I'm not even wearing scrubs!

When I knew I was giving that talk at Wellesley, I took three vacation days this week--Monday and Tuesday to get there and back (if at all possible I like to limit all business-like travel to 24 hours, that way, it's not any different for the kids than me being on call) and Wednesday to decompress in case travel was awful. GOOD PLANNING, ME. Having the extra day off also allowed me to squeak in my 20 week OB appointment without too much logistical hassle, which was nice. I like making doctor's appointments for the morning if I can, because I figure it's less time for the practitioners to accumulate serial delays over the whole day of seeing people (they are inevitable, and really not their fault, especially if they are trying to do a good job with each patient), but because of my work schedule, usually I have to make appointments for the afternoon.

Also, I would like to point out (see above) that you can find plenty of maternity-ish tops in non-maternity sections, see that Old Navy tank up above. It probably won't work in another month or two, but generally (and this I found with my first two pregnancies as well) Old Navy and some other stores tend to cut their clothing overlarge and somewhat billowy, so what may be a really unflattering shape for a non-pregola (I would never have bought this shirt under other circumstances) works out great for the parturient, at least up through the second trimester. Also, non-maternity clothing tends to be cheaper, because it's not considered "specialty." More choices in cut and color too. I got a whole scad of these T-shirts when they were super on sale after Christmas (I ordered my usual size but in "Tall" so I could have a longer shirt-tail to cover the unfortunate elastic waisting of my pants) and they look much better than regular maternity T-shirts, which can tend to have more of a tent-like cut. Anyway! Girl talk! Clothes! Shopping!  (These links are not sponsored, by the way, I just thought I'd share what I've learned from clothing myself these past three pregnancies. Especially since, not knowing what I know now, I gave ALL my maternity clothes to Goodwill this past Spring after we moved--like, SMOOTH MOVES, EX-LAX.)

Wait, what?  You want to know about what?  The...oh!  Right.  The ultrasound.

Let me say first that I really like this OB practice we're with.  I was a little less than crazy about the group that we used for Mack (and obviously I'm not going to say who they were), but given that we've moved since then and would probably be delivering at a different hospital anyway, it was as good a time as any to switch practices.  Anyway, this group is a bit smaller, more personal, and they spend quite a bit of time talking to their patients, which, even as a third-time-arounder, I really appreciate.  Also, for all of the routine ultrasounds, an OB is actually doing the scan himself, which is very nice, especially since he really explains what he's looking at and isn't bound, like a tech, to not make diagnostic calls or say certain things for medicolegal reasons.  Anyway, we like both doctors with this group a lot, and I think they are excellent clinicians.

And we got some really nice pictures.  (Ignore the "Wondershare" watermark, it's just because I had to download some software to do the video file conversion blah blah blah nerd talk. CARRY ON.)







"Hey little guy!  Look at him go!" said Joe, when he saw Thing 3 moving around.  (I'd forgotten that he's only seen still images thus far.)

"Yeah, he's moving around a lot now," I confirmed.  We walked through the head, the heart, the abdomen, the cord, looked at his little face, his arms, his legs, everything.  "He looks great!"

"Yeah, he does," the OB, measuring this that or the other thing.  "Although, if we keep calling him 'he,' I guess we should actually look at that part too, to confirm."

"Oh yeah.  Sure, take another look."

"What did I say last time?" the OB asked, flipping through my chart.  "We said boy?"

"You said you were 99% sure he was a boy, but you also said couldn't get a super-fantastic view."

"OK then, so let's see here..."  He looked.  Then he looked.  Then he looked again.

Joe and I also looked.  "Uh..."

"I said boy?" The OB froze the frame. "I was wrong there.  Nope, totally wrong.  It's obvious now.  Huh, funny, usually when I made a wrong call, it's the other way around."

"Well, it was only 16 weeks..."

"Yeah, more difficult to say on a 4 oz. 16 week fetus...though, usually, I have to say, it's pretty obvious even at that stage.  Regardless, I think it's pretty clear now."

"Wait, so..."

"It's a girl.  100% certain this time.  You guys are having a girl."







WE'RE HAVING A GIRL.

Well, hell.  I hope she doesn't mind wearing a whole lot of blue clothing for the first 3 months.

Obviously we're thrilled to bits and aren't fussy about the clothing--and whatever, babies can't read anyway.

HOLY SHIT, WE'RE HAVING A GIRL.

more on hand wounds

Thanks for the input, guys, though I wish now that I had solicited your advice on how to more easily peel ginger (with a spoon?  Really?  And it doesn't just turn it into a mush?) BEFORE slicing a sliver of my damn finger off, not from the arguably more bloody world of the retrospective.  This is why I can't have nice things.  Like, you know,  fingernails.

Also, one commenter noted: "Wasn't there some big debate over bagel slicers at one point and now this? Is that irony I smell?"  (Click on the link to read the debate itself, but for the lazies, briefly: Joe had this bad habit of holding his bagels in his palm while cutting them in lengthwise directly into his hand, and I had a problem with that, especially given that he's in a profession where hand tendon injury could be catastrophic.  For instance, a minor to moderate hand injury would not necessarily end my career as I know it, but it could almost certainly end his.  However, you will be gratified to know that after that last discussion more than a year ago, Joe doesn't cut his bagels employing the "hand taco" method anymore--or at least he doesn't do it in front of me.)

Well, here's the difference as I see it.  I slice a lot of vegetables with a vegetable peeler.  This most recent event I would classify as an accident.  Accidents happen.  For example, I try to be cautious at work, but sometimes accidents still happen, like, say, needle sticks in the OR.  But accidents happening despite best precautions is different than habitually unsafe practice--like recapping non-blunt needles by hand, or sloppy sterile technique. (This is no one in specific, by the way, just a few easy everyday examples I can think of).  Or, to bring it out of the hospital setting and back into the kitchen where it started, let's say slicing bagels using your palm as the cutting board, or rubbing raw chicken all over your countertops.  My point being, I would say it's the difference between cutting yourself in the kitchen (it happens to everyone) versus setting up a situation where cutting yourself is much, much more likely to happen.

So no, that's not irony you smell.  Just the smell of human flesh and ginger cooking in a delectable mélange.

*          *          *

Oh, and by the way, not that I wish you pain, but if you happen to have cut your hand and if you also happen to work in some kind of germ zone (or at least in a job where you have to wash your hands a lot), here's a great and truly occlusive bandage that will hold up for, I kid you not, a good couple of days.  

I got a six pack of these for the winter season (A.K.A. the "I'm washing my hands so much and the weather is so dry that my hands be cracking everywhere" season) and between me and Mack (Mack is a great believer in the curative power of Band-Aids, even without any actual visible injury--he prefers to prophylactically laminate himself) we are putting them to good use.  They're a little more expensive but seriously, they are worth it for high-mobility areas--as mentioned before, they are truly occlusive, they really stick well, and don't tend to get all sodden and ooze off like the more traditional model.  

Now everyone go get injured!

these are not the droids you're looking for

Hey, can I recommend something to you completely unsolicited?

If your kids like Star Wars but you like your walls/furniture/kids' skulls/wallet too much to get one of those stupid overpriced light-up light sabers from the toy store, might I suggest this thing?

I think it's actually a party favor, but it's essentially a white foam tube--the consistency is similar to those foam pool noodles, only smaller--wrapped around a series of different colored LED lights.  There are five settings, so you can have the light saber flash red (Darth Vader), blue (Obi Wan), green (Luke Skywalker circa "Return of the Jedi"), slow rainbow (in which it cycles through all the colors, including all the in-between colors like purple and pink and turquoise), and Cal's personal favorite, ULTRA-KINETIC RAINBOW STROBE (likely not recommended for epileptics--it is kind of intense).

They are cheap and they are blunt and they are foam so even if someone gets hit in the face with it...several times...no one will be the worse for wear.  Also probably a nice party favor for your next Star Wars-themed birthday party-slash-rave.






(I remember, back when Cal was wee, when I used to have this blanket rule that we wouldn't allow any kind of mock weaponry in the house on the basis that it would promote aggression or something. I WAS SO YOUNG THEN. Later I realized that basically everything could become a light saber, including the cardboard core of gift paper wrap. Not very sturdy, those, and oh, THE TEARS when they eventually bent and unravelled.)

(I still have a "no toy gun" rule, though. Not even water guns. Unless they are shaped like a non-gun, like, I don't know, a dolphin that squirts water. I don't like guns.)

(You heard me, Charlton Heston. Yes, yes, from your cold dead hands, I know.)

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!)