well, here goes. For anyone interested, here's another round of rants and ruminations, neatly divvied into the following sections:
In recent months, many people have asked when we are going to move to Ottawa. I wish there was a simple answer. We thought it would be December 1, but...
In July, a secretary at Western told Chris that, after looking at his file, she thought he would be done his first-year contract February 1 instead of December 1 as had been previously thought. This was
Chris checked with his supervisor and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. They said he would be done December 1 (‘don't listen to that lady, she's just a secretary whereas we are important Doctors and Physicians and Surgeons’). So I declined law school.
Anyway. In mid-October, Chris was called in to a meeting with a sheepish supervisor who admitted that he'd miscounted and Feb 1 was indeed the correct date.
So I could have gone to law school this year after all, if only I had known that Physicians and Surgeons can't bloody well count and that you should ALWAYS listen to the secretary because she's the one who actually knows what's going on.
Chris pointed out that our lives had been ROYALLY screwed (again) by misinformation, and asked if they could possibly reconsider.
After many weeks of frustrated dangling while Important Doctors decided our fates yet again (no, I'm not bitter at always being left in the lurch while the Medical Powers That Be screw us around, why do you ask?), we finally got back an answer. The answer was no.
So I'm moving to Ottawa with the kids December 31. Chris will follow on February 1. Because of their incompetence, we'll be paying mortgage and rent for two months, so this pretty much puts movers out of our budget. We're going with U-Haul. And won't it be a treat to load a U-Haul with all our possessions in the dead of winter while our children wander in and out of the house, especially if there's a snowstorm. Maybe we should get the Royal College to come help us load the truck or watch the kids.
Justin got ear tubes put in October 2. Wish we had pictures - the surgery clothes they put on him (striped shirt and pants) made him look like a little tiny inmate. It went fairly well and he's now talking up a little storm. He's in day care, which he loves, and the teachers always report on his daily moods by circling descriptors like "happy/grumpy/cooperative/busy/quiet/chatty/etc". He usually gets happy/friendly and ‘chatty’ circled these days.
He's even started two and three word sentences. His first three-word sentence was actually "Mama kiss Daddy!" (aaw...). His current one is "I make pooh" (eew...).
He's also the class clown in daycare. Makes funny faces, gets the other kids and teachers laughing, and then keeps hamming it up for all he's worth. He’s a riot at home, too – and he knows it.
I swear I don’t understand people who tell new parents “Enjoy their baby months, ‘cause it’s all downhill from here!” First of all it’s an inhumanly cruel thing to tell people who are sleep deprived, spat-upon, and in desperate need of a shower and a friendly voice that won’t scream for hours. Second... kids just get more fun, in my experience. Sure, babies are cuter, but that’s only so that their parents won’t throw them out the window on a daily basis during the months when they do nothing but eat, cry, and poo.
Daniel can write his own name! He's also getting better and better at reading, and can decipher a lot of ‘Hop On Pop’ on his own. Our little student.
However, the student thing does not always go smoothly. Academically, no problems, but socially... well, it’s a bit of a lion’s den sometimes. He's doing better than I expected, but I still get pulled aside by the teacher every so often for a discussion of his latest exploits. As she put it, he often has trouble with "groupthink", which is an important skill in public school.
After a particularly bad day at school, Daniel and I had an all-day discussion of his behaviour. At the end of the day, I said, "Daniel, after the day we've had I don't think I feel like telling you a bedtime story. But we can talk if you want."
"Are we going to talk about my behaviour?" he asked with a world-weary sigh.
I relented. "Well, no. What would you like to talk about instead?"
"Maybe... mechanical science." (Huh? Where’d he get that word? I’m thinking that what I know about mechanical science could be painlessly tattooed on my eyelids, but I’m willing to wing it)
"O... K... How about I tell you a bit about three kinds of machines. Let's see, there's a pulley, a lever, and a something else." (I'm actually not clear on this. Are the pulley and the lever both the same kind of machine, actually called a fulcrum? Or have I totally mixed up the whole thing? I learned this in grade 6, so it's a while back for me.)
Anyway, I ended up telling Daniel that although I could not remember the three types of machines, or even if all machines really fit into those three types, I did remember how pulleys and levers worked. Explained pulleys and levers. Answered some questions (e.g.. which one is bigger, a pulley or a lever?) Gave some examples of both.
Finally, good night.
Minutes later, Daniel rolls over and whispers "I think a teeter-totter is a kind of lever!"
In the last couple of months, Chris finished a rotation in Internal Medicine and is currently doing Obstetrics.
Internal was not fun. He came home every night saying "I'm SO glad I didn't go into Meds!" I think it had something to do with the hours and the call, but also a lot to do with keeping people alive whose minds had already left and whose bodies were earnestly trying to follow. Not much that was cheery about the rotation. Not much of "this person was going to die, but because of me now they will live a long and healthy life!" It seemed to be more of a daily "This person would probably like to die, but their family wants their body kept alive. Here we go, let's go all-out to try to save them so that they can die tomorrow instead!" Not much of a motivational mantra.
Now he's doing OBS. Some heartbreaking situations, but mostly healthy moms and babies, and mostly happy endings. Bad hours though. 6am-6pm and on call every three days is the norm. Thankfully, through a SNAFU Chris was not included in the original call schedule, so he got to pick and choose when to do call. Sweet! Wish there were more screw ups like that!
And soon, very soon, he will be doing nothing but psychiatry. And his rotations will be 3-6 months long, instead of 1 month. Yaaay!
I was talking to a friend who had changed jobs three times in the last two years, and was pretty sick and tired of changing her place of work, colleagues, hours, etc so often. I sympathized because it really does suck, but later thought, you know... Chris has been doing that every single month since February 1999. No wonder we’re both sick of this. No wonder we’re both looking forward to him ‘only’ changing jobs every 3-6 months. It seems like serene stability from our perspective.