liquid schwartz
Well howdy. Explaining why this blog hasn't been updated is only slightly more boring than reading the blog itself, but in short I had to give Grand Rounds last week, and since I couldn't work on Grand Rounds at work or while my kids were awake, basically every free minute I had up until last Wednesday was channelled into that presentation. Thankfully, it's finished! Now to resume my life of indolent goofery!You may also be disappointed to know that I ultimately decided against using the "Exorcist" slide in the talk (Factor 1: too early in the morning, Factor 2: Catholic hospital) but it may please you equally or maybe eve...
Source: the underwear drawer - December 17, 2013 Category: Anesthetists Authors: Michelle Au Source Type: blogs
prokinetic
Hello gadabouts! Sorry for the recent long-form radio silence, but my current schedule allows a few hours each week for generative activities, and two weeks ago it occurred to me that I was scheduled to give Grand Rounds to my department at the beginning of December. Am scheduled. Also, we don't technically call them "Grand Rounds," rather "Education Lecture" or (perhaps more to the point) "CME-Getting Exercises"; but I just continue to call them "Grand Rounds" for ease of reference.Upon hearing that I was giving a lecture soon, and perhaps more thrillingly, that I would be giving my talk off a series of PowerPoint slides ...
Source: the underwear drawer - November 25, 2013 Category: Anesthetists Authors: Michelle Au Source Type: blogs
car talk
I had to take my car in for some maintenance earlier this week. (Not the suburban kid hauler, I already took that one in a few months ago, this time it was the car that I usually drive to work, a 2005 Toyota Camry that we bought used about four years ago and which has been remarkably reliable since, despite the fact that I rear-ended it squarely with another car the very next morning after finally getting my driver's license.) I had a flat back tire after rolling over some kind of screw, and while one would think that changing out a flat tire and putting on a spare would be the end of it, apparently I still had to take the...
Source: the underwear drawer - November 10, 2013 Category: Anesthetists Authors: Michelle Au Source Type: blogs
quotidian
Cal was supposed to bring a pumpkin to school on Tuesday for some sort of jack o' lantern carving activity in his class. There was an ostensibly academic twist to it (I think they were weighing and measuring the pumpkins first, converting ounces to pounds or stones to hectares, whatever antiquated non-metric systems we still insist on teaching despite the fact that they make NO SENSE) but let's get real, the true purpose of such an activity is to claw out all the pumpkin guts and show your friends the clotted mass of stringy entrails while making a variety of throw-up noises.Cal left his pumpkin at home by accident, so whe...
Source: the underwear drawer - October 31, 2013 Category: Anesthetists Authors: Michelle Au Source Type: blogs
sunny side up
It's hard to know what triggers certain memories in your brain, and I can't figure out what made me think of this today, except...maybe it was the weather. It was beautiful outside today: sunny, clear and mild. And on days like this, as strange as it sounds, I often think about the opening sentence of the 9/11 commission report; how it was so much better written than a government report had any right to be, how evocative that first sentence was, and how perfectly it set the scene for what we all now know was going to happen. "Tuesday, September 11, 2001 dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States."Bu...
Source: the underwear drawer - October 21, 2013 Category: Anesthetists Authors: Michelle Au Source Type: blogs
alimentary, my dear Watson
When Cal was little I freely admit that we rarely cooked and ordered out a lot due to a confluence of factors: residency, tiny apartment kitchen, ridiculous availability of cheap multi-ethnic restaurant delivery options being the primary ones. When Mack was a toddler I cooked a little bit more, but again, freely admit that I relied very heavily on the Trader Joe's ready-made-meal aisle for, well, 75% of our dinners, though supplemented with fresh fruit and vegetables to round out the microwaved, peel-back-the-plastic-wrap experience.Now, with Nina eating table food and me being somewhat more firmly entrenched in the trappi...
Source: the underwear drawer - October 16, 2013 Category: Anesthetists Authors: Michelle Au Source Type: blogs
nature vs. nature
We found ourselves with only two kids Saturday morning. This sort of makes it sound like we left one in the back of a cab but in actuality Cal got invited to his friend's lake house, which is wonderful for two reasons. First, Cal is realizing that being unendingly polite is garnering him the reputation as The Kind of Kid That Other People's Parents Like To Have Around, and has thus been on the receiving end of a lot of very nice playdate invitations. Number two, of course, is that his friend has a freaking LAKE HOUSE. Which in Georgia is apparently pretty common, but as we have no such lake house, seems as exotic and Gatsb...
Source: the underwear drawer - October 12, 2013 Category: Anesthetists Authors: Michelle Au Source Type: blogs
bangers and mash
The one thing I didn’t expect about going part-time was how much it was going to enhance how much I enjoy my career. Don’t get me wrong, it's still a stressful job, but not having to do it all the time does change the experience significantly. Now that I have regular days away from the hospital (and just as an aside on other thing that I’m learning is how short the day is between school dropoff and pickup—it seems on paper like you should have all day to do things but in all honesty we drop off, I take the baby to the playground for an hour or two, come home, put her down for nap, clean up, give her lunch, cle...
Source: the underwear drawer - October 9, 2013 Category: Anesthetists Authors: Michelle Au Source Type: blogs
mud weekend
When I decided to go down to 60% at work, I figured the easiest way to do so (for the ease of my group and for my own personal budgetary calculus) was to do 60% of everything. That is to say: 60% of days, 60% of call, 60% of weekends, as well as my share of holiday call, which is distributed on a rotating basis. (For example, this year I worked the fourth of July. Last year I had New Year's and Labor Day; the year before that, Christmas.) I considered briefly a work configuration in which I didn't take night and weekend call, but it was a surprisingly easy decision against that. First of all, there is an element to the kin...
Source: the underwear drawer - September 27, 2013 Category: Anesthetists Authors: Michelle Au Source Type: blogs
sartorius
Blogging has changed a lot in the almost 13 years (!) since I started writing online, and I often think--particularly during this most recent long hiatus, when I was too busy to perform anything but the most basic of life tasks (see: job, performance of; family, keeping alive of)--why do I still do it? What is it, aside from perhaps the compulsive need for me to document the minutiae of my life, that makes me continue to write online?It's not a business decision, certainly. It probably speaks to the direction that online media is moving these days that this blog is such an aberration--a more than decade-old blog that is al...
Source: the underwear drawer - September 25, 2013 Category: Anesthetists Authors: Michelle Au Source Type: blogs
kafka-esque
I was in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner this weekend when Mack walked into the room, looked up at the ceiling, and froze.MACKMom! Mom!MICHELLEWhat? What?MACK(Pointing)Look!I looked up at he ceiling, where he was pointing, and there, just hanging out upside down, was this giant cockroach. The kind that we used to call "water bugs" in New York, and that some people call "German cockroaches" or Southern regionally, "palmetto bugs." I would post an illustrative picture here, but when I did a Google image search for "giant cockroach," I basically DIED OF GROSSNESS, which is an actual fatal medical condition. Truth.I ...
Source: the underwear drawer - September 17, 2013 Category: Anesthetists Authors: Michelle Au Source Type: blogs
just the two of us
I'm in a Starbucks with a pumpkin spice latte and my laptop now like some goddamn stereotype. Man, even I hate myself right now.Starbucks always makes me think of working hard. I studied for all my board exams in Starbucks-es, from Step I at that Starbucks on 103nd and Broadway all the way up through my Anesthesia Oral Boards at the location on Monroe and 8th. The difference between Starbucks-es in New York and Atlanta, by the way? The Starbucks-es in New York serve you much, much faster. I also wrote my entire book at the Starbucks on 29th and Park, which if you need to do work is (or at least was five years ago) an ideal...
Source: the underwear drawer - September 11, 2013 Category: Anesthetists Authors: Michelle Au Source Type: blogs
boy meets world
Cal started fourth grade about a month ago, which would usually be my cue to say, "Can you believe it?" but every time I say something like that I think about that Tig Notaro bit and feel a little bit stupid.Anyway, fourth grade. It's going pretty well so far, at least academically, but I think we've entered the age where we really need to start watching his friends and keeping on top of their activities and interactions. And while this all would likely be true regardless of the existence of Minecraft, it sure doesn't help.For those of you blissfully unaware (meaning you know no kids between the ages of, oh, say 5 and...
Source: the underwear drawer - September 5, 2013 Category: Anesthetists Authors: Michelle Au Source Type: blogs
the chamber of secrets
Cal did two weeks of "Danger Camp" this summer (basically a summer day camp program based on this book) and came away with it not only with the requisite mosquito bites and tie-dye T-shirt, but also with an enduring passion for spying, ciphers, espionage, and general subterfuge. It's all highly contagious, and while Mack will deny this to his last breath he idolizes Cal beyond all measure so whatever interests Thing 1 has rapidly become the interests of Thing 2.Separate and mostly unrelated: we currently live in a three bedroom house, which while by New York standards is an embarrassment of bedrooms (and square footag...
Source: the underwear drawer - September 1, 2013 Category: Anesthetists Authors: Michelle Au Source Type: blogs
straddling
I had to take our minivan to the dealership for a physical (I don't know--what do you call it when you have to take your car in for a visit to the car doctor? A well-car check? I plead ignorance and this parenthetical is now threatening now to take over the whole intro) and at the dealership they have honest to god carrels in a room off the waiting area, like a damn library. On one hand--how great! A quiet area with a desk and a chair and a power outlet to get some actual work done! And on the other hand--how long do you expect that I'm going to be sitting here, exactly?Well, nothing like a stretch of captivity to force yo...
Source: the underwear drawer - August 28, 2013 Category: Anesthetists Authors: Michelle Au Source Type: blogs
