My kids’ spring break unfortunately coincides with my last week of night shift for the year. Instead of staying home quietly while I’m sleeping all day and then hanging out by themselves while I’m working all night, they are going to go to Florida and hang out with Grandmas. We are going to meet them in Savannah and explore for a day and then I’ll go home and work. It isn’t much but we will get to see Juliette Lowe house and eat at the Pirate House for dinner. My parents are going to take the kids to see Cape Canaveral and they are going to help with some bathroom remodeling that requires more hands on deck to complete. They’ll get to go to the beach, sleep in and hang out with a different, larger set of dogs.
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I find it hard to justify the expense of greeting cards. Why should I spend 4 or 5 bucks on a card that someone is literally going to read for one minute. Of course, I can think of times they are relevant but for little holidays like Valentine’s Day, it was not something I was going to invest in for my kids. I got them a couple of little chocolate things a few weeks ago when I was out running errands and tonight I printed cute little cards from a free online card site (greetingisland.com if you are interested). They are half sheet little cards that you can customize the insides on and print out at home. For the purposes of this holiday, they are perfect. When the kids were little, I used to use our art supplies and make them homemade cards with notes in them about how awesome I think they are, in a specific and individualized way. It is fun to highlight the ways I find my kids amazing for their consideration.
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Valentine’s Day is actually my wedding anniversary. I spent about 10 years hating that fact and wanting to do some sort of vow renewal thing to re-adjust our anniversary. I found it cheesy and faux romantic to be married on Valentine’s day. Finally I came to appreciate having an industry reminding us of the date, as neither of us were particularly sentimental about actual dates. I’m doing surprisingly well today, the eve of my 20th wedding anniversary. I was very sad several weeks ago and spent a lot of time anticipating the event. Now that it’s here, I happen to be in an “all for the best” headspace about the ending of my marriage. It was sad, it was not what I wanted for my life, but it was what needed to happen. I hope that the ending will bring us both more lasting and authentic happiness.
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We had a Spring day today, it was nearly 80 out in the peak of the afternoon. It surprised all of us, we were all wearing sweatshirts and extra jackets and winter stuff. But this is what I missed in Oregon, the erratic but generally upward trend of temperatures heading toward summer. I gave the kids explicit lessons in climate trends outside the PacNW and they responded predictably. He was very accepting and she gave a “but that’s not how things are” response. I love Spring!
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I have had 2 tasks on my mental to do list for many weeks. Both of them required multiple steps but neither was technically complicated or difficult to accomplish. I just wasn’t doing them. Recently I realized that they really are the last 2 marriage-related chores I have to do. I mean there are a couple of ways we are still entwined - obviously the kids, but also taxes. I’ll be paying the IRS for years but the payment plan is set up and that is just an ongoing bill. These 2 tasks were the last things that tied me to my marriage. I don’t think I was holding onto them to prolong the process. Maybe I was just leaning away from unpleasantness. Either way, as soon as I made the connection, I finished them in less than 5 days. It is time to move forward.
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Today was a hard day. I wanted dessert. I wanted it badly and for no good reason. I wasn’t more hungry, tired or stressed. I just wanted it more. I was thinking about it more. And then I walked into a break room to get a drink of water and there they were. I could smell them when I walked into the room. 5 different kinds of dessert, all with chocolate. I got a glass of water and went and ate an apple slice. And then I ate a slice of cold meatloaf when I got home. Now I’m at Whole Foods while D is at soccer, mooching their free wifi. I treated myself to a bottle of Lime Mint Elderflower sparkling water. And that’s it. It is hard, but I’m building my capacity.
I’ve been struggling, pretty much since I wrote that I wasn’t struggling, with jumping ahead of myself. I’ve been trying really hard not to think about the “next thing” I’m going to do to change my diet. I don’t need a next thing, I’m still working on this thing. I’m trying to keep my change horizon extended to the end of residency. By the end of residency, I would like more control over my diet. I would like to be able to fit into my clothes again. Probably not ever those size 8 cords I’ve had in my closet since first year of med school, but the stuff I was wearing a year ago, 2 years ago. I don’t need to make all the changes right now to make this happen. In fact, I know that if I try to make too many changes at once, I will just spiral down and end up in a really bad place. Better to be content with my little victories over the surprise break room finds and daily choices stick to my goals. And I’ve been exploring the idea of an OA meeting. I’m really not down with the 12 steps, but maybe some support would be useful.
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By this point in my training, I’ve had a few opportunities to take care of women who were incarcerated. Whether at the hospital or clinic, they are accompanied by a guard who is armed. I have some pretty visceral feelings about the guards that I am having to pay close attention to. While the individual women working as guards are personable enough and at least on the surface they seem to have a good report with my patients, I find myself carrying a great deal of resentment and suspicion toward them. I really dislike doing exams and having conversations about medical history with the guards in the rooms, even if they are behind a curtain. The individual guards I have met have seemed like kind, respectful women but the inherent power differential is something I cannot ignore. Prisons and our justice system are such broken, dysfunctional, skewed, manipulative structures. The culture of guards and our clinic has been such that they are not asked to leave any rooms and I honestly don’t know if the would or if such a request would be supported by our practice. I have worked with incarcerated women and with people who have worked with incarcerated women before, but doing it as a physician is a new experience and brings with it new questions about boundaries, roles, options and more. 
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