New Shoes

I am a physician all day every day. I can tell because I just bought new shoes. I found these nice sensible shoes the other day that fit into my new healthy-me kick. I think I like them because they reminded me of my school shoes from fifth grade. They were brown Mary Janes by Famolare. Famolare you might remember was a big deal in the 70's. They had wavy crepe souls and were famous for really high platform wedge sandal's. So anyway I happily wore my new shoes on Saturday and discovered that when I walk I make a noise exactly like the heart sounds of someone in congestive heart failure. Apparently I have narrow heels. Perhaps the last remaining bit of me which can truthfully be referred to as thin. At any rate it seems that my medical training has completely saturated every last aspect of my life. I can't even run away from it because then I sound like congestive heart failure with tachycardia.

My Home Gym

Who needs a gym membership when you own a decrepit old house? Some houses are money pits. Mine is an athletic center. I've been in a "disgusted with dirt" mood lately. Maybe because it is finally spring and the species is genetically programmed to clean out the cave in the spring? It's not really very spring like so maybe it is my primitive attempt to banish winter by putting it out with the trash. All I know is I've been pitching and sorting like a mad woman. Occasionally I veer dangerously into bitching and snorting but who cares when you are alone in the basement?
Eight bags of trash and two huge stacks of flattened boxes later I have moved everything in the basement at least twice. Except the washer and dryer which I only moved once. Okay, I'm kidding about the washer and dryer. On the way to the garage with the trash I noticed the yard needed tidied and so did the alley beside the house. Two more bags of trash later I had to stop myself from starting on the neighbor's yard. Clearly I'm obsessed. It was a great work-out though and cheap, too.

Freaky Talk

Last Friday the New York Times had a travel piece based on regional dialects in North America. The writer drew his inspiration from a recently published Atlas of North American English. A $600 book with over a hundred maps and who knows how many sound recordings. Fridays they write about weekend getaways from New York City so the guy didn't get very far. He made his way from New York City going from diner to diner sampling the local accent, pie and coffee until the grand finale of his trip in, you guessed it, Pittsburgh.

I honestly didn't notice the accent when I first got here. I think because I was in school with a bunch of people who were also not from here. Every once in a while I'd hear "n'at" which I've since adopted as a useful modification to my normal speech. So much easier than all those syllables in "and all that". The thing I remember most about the English language upon arriving in Pittsburgh was the fact that everybody spoke it. Having spent a lot of years in the Bay Area I was accustomed to communicating with people in possession of a whole range of English skill levels from nonexistent to seriously broken to merely accented. I'm not proud to say that I rarely communicated in their languages. I did get good at pronouncing Chinese names though.

Growing up in Iowa I probably got one of those "nothing" accents everybody thinks they've got. Really though Iowa doesn't sound like much. We don't have the Minnesota intonation or the drawl you start to detect as you approach the Missouri border. Iowans sit around sounding like a bunch of newscasters forecasting the weather to one another while here in Pittsburgh we can talk about nothing in particular and sound quite colorful doing it. Witness Rob Rogers' "Brewed on Grant" cartoon in Wednesday's Post Gazette. The scene is a diner and the dialogue goes like this:

Guy: What do you think of (Mayor) O'Connor's new "Redd Up" plan?
Waitress: Great idea... But I hope he doesn't use Pittsburghese for all his initiatives.
Guy: At least he didn't call it "Needs Fixed".
Waitress: His crackdown on violence could be called "Sick'N Tard of Guns 'N'At".
Guy: His plan to attract people downtown could be called "Meechins Dahntahn".
Guy: The "T" expansion could be called "Ovadair 'N'Back".
Waitress: I'm just hoping the "Dooder Jobs" plan is a success.
Guy: What's that?
Waitress: That's where they all just "Do Their Jobs".

Lazy Lazy Girl

I am a lazy blogger I am. Actually I'm not. But, I prefer to think of myself as a lazy blogger than as someone who's life is so consumed by work that I cannot even steal a moment of online amusement for myself. So in the interest of giving you something to look at I'm providing for you a link to Wymsey Co. The best description I can give is that this is the on-line equivalent of Lake Wobegone for the English. Amusing. Indeed.

Operation Eden

It is rainy outside and the weather in my head is rather foul as well. Instead of sharing my stormy weather with you I would like to direct your attention to something I like: Operation Eden. I'm not saying it is a cheery place, but the guy takes some really amazing photographs and deserves more attention for it.

Smidgen and the Cold, Dark Night

Smidgen really has grown into her name. Which is to say she hasn't gotten all that much bigger. Wednesday last week I was holding down the fort at home all by myself so of course it was sleeting outside and the wind was howling. I decided to retreat to the warmth and security of the bedroom a little early but before I did so I needed to grab the mail. If I don't bring the mail in daily the postman takes it upon himself to declare us out of town and hold delivery of our mail. Being as it was nasty out I opened the rarely used front door just wide enough to get my arm through, blindly grabbed the mail and locked the door back up. I trundled upstairs without looking at the mail and promptly fell asleep with my reading light still on.

At 3AM I woke with a start with the fully formed thought in my head: "Smidgen is outside." Had My Beloved been home I would have promptly woke him up and sent him to look for her. Heavy things, sharp things, middle of the night things, smelly things and strange noises fall in the general category of "his job." But as I was home alone I started the search on my own. I forced myself to search the house first: under the beds, in the closets and cupboards, in the basement, and behind the furnace. All the while the film loop of her slipping out the front door onto the stoop under my extended arm played in my head. Killer and Princess followed behind me looking first at one another and then at me. "Now that you mention it. I haven't seen her either" was what they seemed to be saying. Finally I got bundled up and retrieved the flash light from the trunk of my car and went searching.

I started in the front. This is unfamiliar terrain for the animals since we don't come in and out this way. There is also virtually no where to hide. I crawled around on the icy sidewalk looking under all the parked cars and under some raggedy shrubs. I shined my light down the narrow passages between the houses. I decided she would not have gone far down the street. It was unappealing to a small scared cat. Probably she had followed one of these passages into the alley at the center of our block. Just to be systematic I went back around my house and started at the very end of the alley checking the big pine tree and the big pile of crap in the neighbor's yard on the way.

It was very CSI walking slowly down the alley shining my flashlight here and there. Except for the fact that all the while I was softly calling the cat's name. Thankfully she had enough sense to meow when she heard me calling but she wouldn't come to me. I had to follow her pitiful little voice until I found her 2 houses down behind the neighbor's cellar steps. She was too cold to move but let me scoop her up off of the cement and allowed herself to be carried home. She now spends the night sleeping directly on top of me.

Ah Yikes, Med School!

I honestly don't remember how I found this blog. Well, rant really. To the best of my recollection I stumbled upon it on the single occasion I followed links to the next blog and the next blog and the one after that. I have started checking it now and then mostly out of morbid curiosity. It reminds me of some of the creepier moments (and creepier people) in med school. It vividly brings to mind that intern I worked with on my inpatient medicine rotation at the VA. He spent the entire month mournfully muttering under his breath: "I should have taken that toll booth job." The writer does show some flashes of insight but alas he is young and does not appear to have enough so called real world experience to realize that what he is experiencing isn't about medicine but about life in general. None of that is his fault of course. This is how we make doctors. So on my days when I'm tired and way too old I will have to stop and be thankful for how much energy I'm able to conserve by virtue of maturity.