Slacker

It's 1:30 PM, and I'm still in my pajamas. I worked in the ER til 2:30 this morning, so I don't feel so bad about my choice of clothing at the moment especially since I'll be back in the ER at 6 tonight. I know I need to update my blog, but I have been a slacker. I don't have a really great excuse; it just seems that every time I try to put my thoughts down lately, the words don't convey the depth of the experience.

To sum up the last 2 weeks in tidbits:

• I really love my husband. We drive each other nuts sometimes, but I love that man so much!!
• My experiments in the kitchen have been exceptionally tasty recently. I've made a ton of chocolate chip cookies, one delicious pot roast (thank you, Barefoot Contessa!), several yummy spaghetti dishes with extra veggies, a yummy butter cake, two batches of java-streusel banana muffins, mango sorbet for the hubby, and a batch of vanilla bean ice cream. I've given most of the food away which is why I haven't gained 50 pounds.
• Swine flu is not my friend right now. Neither are the 300 parents crowding the ER wanting their perfectly healthy kids tested for the swine flu.
• I think we've figured out where we want to move. As soon as our house sells, we'll re-examine the area to see what houses are available, but it's nice to have an idea of where we want to end up.
• On the other hand, I really dread packing this house and finding a moving company!
• Speaking of other hands, I already bought my birthday present even though my birthday is six weeks away. Hubby is taking me to see Fiddler on the Roof when the production comes through Dallas in May. I am SO excited!! I loved that movie when I was little and can still sing all the songs from the musical.

Birthday thoughts

I'm now five and a half weeks through my eight weeks in a row in the ER. Double ugh! In light of the fact that I feel progressively more brain dead after each shift, here are some random thoughts from this week.

• I had a great birthday. My mom sent presents in the mail before she and my dad left for Spain, and Hubby sent me flowers at work the day before my birthday (I was the talk of the ER!). I also didn't work for 2 days in a row, so life was great.
• While I'm talking about work, let me say that I am so over the ER. I only have eleven more shifts to go; they can't end soon enough.
• When children are seen in the ER, parents have the ability to call back and speak with a doctor if they have a question about discharge instructions or prescriptions. That doctor is whatever second year resident happens to be running the ER that shift, and I was that resident earlier this week when a mom called to talk to me. Typically the front desk takes a number down and has me call them back whenever I have a free moment since the residents are often in traumas or urgent situations; however, this time a new person at the desk put mom through to my portable phone without notifying me I had a "mommy call." As soon as I answered the phone, this mom told me, "Hold on a second" and then proceeded to place her order at Sonic. She then started to ask me her question but told me to "hold on again" and corrected the error in her order. Really??? After finally getting the story out and realizing this would be an easy problem to fix, I told her I was happy to help her but needed the number of her pharmacy to correct the issue; that's when she realized she didn't have the number to her pharmacy and needed to go home to get it. The call was priceless.
• Sometimes a popsicle can fix everything.

Happy birthday to me!

I am officially exhausted. Yesterday was my birthday, and what was the best present I got? Ten and a half hours of sleep! I was in bed before ten and didn't get up til after eight (my first day off in twelve days). It was amazing.

In addition to the sleep, I also had some nice and one not-so-nice surprises. I got an awesome haircut on Thursday (nice!), but as I was leaving the salon, I found out that Sebastian has yet another cough and won't get to come home this weekend (not-so-nice). Friday I went to work knowing that I would have to stay later than usual to cover for someone til she got back from clinic to be on call, so I was prepared for a long, busy day.

One of my big pet peeves from work is when people page me with just a call back number. We carry text pagers, so why not make use of the 120 characters you have to give me a heads up on what you want instead of typing in just 4 numbers? Even worse, I got paged about 30 minutes into rounds when I was meeting with the other doctors including my boss to discuss all of our patients; I hate leaving rounds to return pages because I tend to miss out on something important that's being discussed. I called the number back only to rind out that my sweetie had ordered a dozen roses to be delivered to my hospital as a birthday surprise. Doh! What a great surprise! Then the girl I was covering got back to the floor around 4:45 when I hadn't expected her to arrive until 6 or so -- I got to leave earlier than I thought!!

After I got home, I got to open my presents from my parents. They are in Sweden right now, so my mom shipped my presents right before they left so that they would arrive on my birthday -- so thoughtful! I love to open presents ... no idea why it's so exciting, but it's one of my favorite parts of Christmas or birthdays (watching other people open theirs is actually even more exciting!). I ended the day with a delicious dinner of sushi (mmmmm, tuna sashimi and firecracker rolls) followed by me crashing as soon as we got home. My sweet husband just laughed because he knew how tired I was.

Now the hubby is off taking some exam for work, so I slept in and am now spending the morning lounging around and watching the Food Network. I'm unsure when he will be done, so until then, it's lazy Saturday for Sarah. After he gets back, I want to grab some food, run errands, and hopefully go see Shrek the Third either tonight or tomorrow after church. Oh yeah, church! Another exciting part of the weekend, I actually get to attend church twice in one month. That's a rare blessing with my schedule, so I'm really looking forward to being back.