So, I'm in a delivery, minding my own business, cleaning up the new mother, talking about her deliciously cute little boy that has just joined us, when I catch the glimmer of something liquid out of the corner of my eye.  Simultaneously, I feel a wet *splash* on the back of my neck.  I slowly turn my head, knowing something I would rather not have happened, happened, and there stood the first year resident, still in his gown, looking at me with horror in his eyes.  More than likely from the look of death in mine.  Because said resident was holding the syringe that he had used to inject lidocaine, and, in trying to help clean up, had squirted it into the placenta bucket.  Which is flat and low walled. And containing a placenta.  A messy, soggy, oogy placenta.  Now, anyone with a basic grasp of physics, as one would hope someone with not a few science classes under his belt would have, knows that shooting a liquid under pressure at a flat surface is going to cause some ricochet.  And then one of Newton's laws will then apply; either a body stays in motion (the lidocaine flying from the placenta bucket) until acted upon by an equal force (my neck) or the acceleration of a body is directly proportional to the force exerted and directly proportional to the mass.  Meaning the lidocaine hit me at about the speed of sound.

The resident stood there gawking while I hissed through clenched teeth, "Don't ever do that again."  He began to apologize profusely while I scrubbed at my neck with one of those "this-will-kill-everything-from-the-plague-to-mad-cow-disease-and-may-even-put-a-dent-in-herpes" wipes (you know, the ones that say never, in any circumstances, use on bare skin).  I spent the rest of the day dreaming of a bleach bath.

The life of a resident is, by nature, incredibly...well, sucky, to use a besties venacular.  The learning curve is huge, faculty is always pimping you on the most innocuous and trivial decisions of patient care, nurse are, let's face it, pitbulls with lipstick until you earn their trust and respect.  It's not a life I would choose for myself.  Mainly, because I am a loud mouth and don't take kindly to that level of bullshit.  Once in a while, a resident appears who is completely competent, confident, and, most important, receptive to suggestions from the care team.  My family practice doc was one of these residents.  Which explains, in part, why he is my family practice doc.  We have a resident on our floor now who, I believe, will follow his same path.  Residents can be wonderful and they can drive you to want to shove them into the nearest food trolley until they promise to quit acting like a complete ass.  But they are always good for some quotes:

Resident: "Help!  I need a doctor!"
Corpsman: "You are the doctor."
Resident:  "No!  I mean a real one!"

Resident while checking a cervix:  "Okay, well, I'll just get out of your hair now...."

R1, first day on the floor:  "I heard we had patients in triage!  That's so cool!"
Extremely jaded nurse:  "Oh, that's so cute;  stay green Pony Boy!"

Nurse trying to guide resident: "So do you want to do all the cultures?"
Resident: "We should probably check for funk in her thing."

Ponderings

I know there are events that I'm supposed to be detailing, but I have, in my usual manner, been distracted by all manner of inane, but consuming, questions.  For instance:

Is there a special class given to a certain sect of  graduating doctors to teach them to be complete assholes that discount all suggestions or advice from nurses that have been doing their job in a particular field since these self-same doctors were in middle school?  Could I have made that sentence any longer without any punctuation?  From whence did the word "cocktail" originate, and why do we call a drink by that name?  For that matter, why are roosters called cocks?  And who thought a penis looked like a rooster? As I age, am I getting more tolerant or more apathetic?  And do I really care?  Why is it no one gets a classical reference anymore?  Why do people worship Jesus' foreskin?  Can one ever be too rich?  Because we know you can be too thin. I'm talking to you Mary-Kate Olson.  Does my 12 year old really think I'm going to let him be home alone for 12 straight hours during the day instead of going to The Girls and Boys Club?  I know his parents after all.  Is it possible that my dogs actually have access to crack?  Their behavior would lead me to believe it's so.

Here's another wicked smart Navy guy with a literary bent...go drop by and enjoy.

I really did survive the back-to-back family reunions, no matter how it appears.  I'm not, however, recovered from the debilitating fatigue from way, way WAY too much family time.  My dad's family reunion is always every year, and always the same weekend every year; the first weekend after Father's Day.  This isn't too bad, as you always know when to ask for time off.  However, depending where we have it, it is either hot and dry (Utah), hot and humid (Oklahoma), or hot and hypoxic (Colorado. At least for those of us used to living at sea level).  My dad's oldest sister is getting on a bit (she's older that my mom's dad), and so lately we try to keep it close to her home, which means Utah.  The only thing worse than Utah in June is Utah in July and August, so I am grateful for small favors.  The boys and I flew to Salt Lake and then rented a car to drive the 2 hours north to Logan.  The plan was to return the car to the airport the next day, jump in my parents' SUV and travel down to Bryce Canyon and Zion.  Yippee.  Locked in a car with my kids and my parents who have already spent 5 days together in close quarters.  Whoohoo.  The only thing that would make this better is staying in the same motel rooms..oh, wait.

After dropping the dogs off at the kennel, we got to the airport in plenty of time to stand in an incredibly long line to get through security.  I had the kids' passports with me, as well as their dad's death certificate, because I'm positive some day, someone will ask for their photo ids or proof that I have permission to drag my children hither and yon.  It hasn't happened yet, but I'll be prepared if it ever does!  It looked as though I was in line for the naked body scanner, but it was taking so long to evaluate what was being seen, that the line was growing exponentially with each passing minute and we were hurried through the regular metal detector. In an aside here, wouldn't that be a sucky job; looking at the naked body scanner images all day long?  I know it's not supposed to show graphic images, but I've seen pictures of the images it does show, and I think that is nightmare inducing enough.  I've had enough 400 lb patients to know they exist, and, while I'm used to having those naked images burned into my retina, can you imagine being a poor TSA agent sitting there all unsuspecting when, WHAMMO!  Image of a giant pannus and no way to escape it?   Argh.

The flight was uneventful, and after SoS had to go to the bathroom six times from the gate to the rental desk, we finally got in the car and were off.  We got to my aunt's about a half hour before dinner, dodged what felt like 8500 Dachshunds (okay 5), ate a little, talked a little and then headed back to the motel for some swimming time.  FB is like a giant great Dane puppy right now.  At 12 he's close to 5'8, about 170lbs and his appendages are moving through time and space without any real control on his part, not to mention he is in a hormonal stupor that leaves him oblivious to pretty much anything.  My aunt's house has one step at the door.  You step down from the house to the step and the step to the driveway.  Apparently, this was a little too much terrain to navigate for FB.  He walked out of the house to to get something from the car and had barely cleared the doorway before he was on his hands and knees.  "Dude, did you trip?"  "No."  "Twist your ankle?" "No."  "Step on your shoelace?" "No."  The only other explanation is a temporary astral projection being brought on by a rip in the space-time continuum.  Then next morning, I was trying to get SoS out of the back seat so we could go in to breakfast, when I experienced a mini earthquake and heard a large grunt.  It seems FB got tangled up in the strap to his book bag and fell out of the car.  The car that was about six inches off the ground.  I'm such a bad mother, I almost couldn't ask if he was okay because I was bent over trying not to pee from laughing about it.

Here's a side note about being a grown ass woman and sharing a motel room with your parents and your children:  try to avoid it. No one wants to subject themselves to their father's baggy, peek-a-boo boxers, the need to be considerate and curb one's night owl tendencies, and don't get me started on the dual teeth flossing concerto. How I wished my children and I could have been spared!  The horror, the horror!  I couldn't get my own room because I know my parents would give me all kinds of flack about it being ridiculous to spend money for two rooms when we could stay in one, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Here's one problem with this.  The first night when I was about to shower I realized I had forgotten my pajamas.  Not a huge problem since I had my House of Blues Las Vegas t-shirt that only came in 2XL and comes to just north of  my knees.  It could double as pajamas.  The next problem I noticed was that I had one pair of boyshort undies and the rest were all thongs.  Thongs pack really small and are a good choice when you are trying to keep three people's worth of clothing down to one bag.  Not a good choice when you are sharing a room with your children and your parents and you have no pajama pants.  So, while I was safe on the first night, the next three were spent putting my shorts back on after my shower then trying to shimmy out of them and into bed without exposing too much of myself to my parents or my children.  Not to mention that SoS slept with me, he's a snuggler, and I spent three nights unsticking his sweaty little body from my ass. 

If one stays on I-15 you can get through the state of Utah, north to south, in about 5 hours.  Salt Lake is north, Bryce and Zion are south.  I decided I wanted to take the kids to a dinosaur museum in Price, which was more east than south and would add about 3 hours on to our trip, but what an experience to see, right?  Raptor bones so far found only in Utah, how cool is that?  It would have been really cool, had I remembered what state I was in and that there is nothing, but nothing, that would allow a museum to be open in central Utah on a Sunday.  Really wished that we would have remembered what day it was before we started this trek off the beaten path.  We ended up staying in a motel in Panguitch, Utah, which is exactly as small as it sounds.  Said motel was not picked by my mom and I, who wanted the cute little individual units that looked like separate little Victorian houses, but by my dad for the sole reason there was a '32 Ford parked at one of the units with some really cool rims he wanted to get for his 55 Chevy.  If you only know the number of decisions in my life that have revolved around my dad's need for bitchin' car parts.

We got to Bryce the next day and spent time looking at the hoodoos.  I oohed and aahed, and listened to my parents gasping at 9100 ft above sea level praying the whole time that I wasn't going to have to code them.  Put a damper on the vacation, that's for sure. The kids and I decided we would hike down a trail that descended about 520 feet into the canyon; all slickrock switchbacks.  Did I mention that it felt like the surface of the sun?  Ninety degrees in the desert, hiking down  rocks with no visible vegetation.  Basically it was hot.  But gorgeous.  And yes, I left the parents in the relative cool of the shade at Sunset Point Lookout, otherwise I would have to employ some life saving skills and I was just not feeling it.

This is looking up at Sunset Point about a quarter of the way down the trail.  My parents are on either side of the tree.  So not far at all.

And this is looking down to what lies in store.  Awesome.

This is looking up from the canyon known as Wall Street.  Don't go in there if you're at ALL claustrophobic.

HH

Awesome view, yes?
Howzabout this?

Meanwhile, this is what the offspring were involved in:

Overwhelmed with the natural beauty, apparently.

More to follow, but I should probably do something besides blog today.

I found, as I was helping SoS with the aforementioned Blue Poison Arrow Frog habitat, that brown is not a color that is standard in paint sets these days.  Is this part of the millennial "we can't do anything that doesn't blow sunshine up your skirts" mentality of child rearing?  Seriously, I needed brown paint and couldn't seem to find any.  But, I'm educated, resourceful...desperate....I can figure out how to make brown paint, can't I?  I had several craft paints left over and started my artistic alchemy.  Red, yellow, green, hmmmm...I've got some kind of grayish-green ooze happening here.  Perhaps some purple and some more yellow?  Nope.  I decided to call the Senior Chief 's wife; she homeschools, this should be like breathing to her!  She was useless.  Together we decided that maybe adding brown colored food stuffs would change this to what we wanted.  Cinnamon!  It's brown!  It will work!  What it does is make the grayish-green ooze fill with particulate matter.  It doesn't blend, and it certainly doesn't color.  Next on the list was Worcestershire.  Hmmm.  No change in color.  How about some vanilla?  Why I thought that would work when the Worcestershire wouldn't is beyond me; it's basically the same thing except sweet.  And now the ooze smells like pancakes and I'm starving.  I decide that this color would be fine for the rocks the frog uses as shelter, especially since we were going to glue moss on to them anyway.  Did I mention that black paint didn't come in this paint set either? Yeah, out of luck on both counts.  So, what are we going to do for the black spots on the frog?  Hey!  Charcoal Puffy Paint!  That will work!  And it didn't look too bad.  Especially when you put the frog in his shelter so that the majority of his little self was hidden.  Our last obstacle was the predator...the only snake not affected by the poison in the frog's skin.  This is a specific snake and it is specifically colored.  Specifically, brown and orange.  Well, shit.  Orange I can handle; but I still have brown issues and I refuse to drive to Target to get brown paint for this one project.  But, since I doubted SoS's teacher would know exactly what color this snake was, I thought we could fudge it by painting it black.  I can make black, right?  If you mix everything together it should make black, I'm almost sure of it.  Wrong.  It makes even more grayish green ooze.  By this time I was over this project (and SoS was really jonesing to get on the Xbox) and I remembered that black fingernail polish is a staple in my fashion zeitgeist. (Can one have a fashion zeitgeist?  I have no idea, but it sounds good.)  So, SoS painted the shiniest, blackest snake Snootsville Elementary has ever seen.

I now have a Twitter account.  Fear not, I am sufficiently satisfied with this little experiment in narcissism and self indulgence;  I have no intentions of tweeting. I can't imagine how obnoxious I would have to be to think I would need to publish every impulse that jumps the synaptic gap.  I joined so I could follow Steve Martin, John Cleese, The Onion, Drudge Report, etc.because, apparently my Google Reader doesn't leave me feeling nearly as overwhelmed as I would like, and I need even more to keep the spice in my insanity.  What gets me though is I keep getting emails about "So-and-so is now following you on Twitter!"  Why? I could see if I were writing something wittily brilliant on a daily basis, but the way things are, I can hardly manage something mundanely mediocre here in any kind of timely fashion.  It remains a mystery to me.

I saw a guy at the Costco gas station the other day who was wearing Napoleon Dynamite's moon boots. I came close to yelling out "LaFawnduh!" just to see if I could get a reaction.  

I am in the midst of helping SoS create a "Blue Poison Arrow Frog Habitat"as his last big project before school is out.  So I have made a snake (that is immune to the poison and therefore, the only predator the frog has), several rocks (they hide out under them in the rainfores0t, termites and ants for food (really just rolled up bits of clay and the leavings from mistakes I have made) and, of course, the frog itself.  I had a really cool one made up, with little fingers and toes, and it was bitchin; if I do say so myself.  Unfortunately, it was a trifle fragile and every time I moved it, it would lose an appendage or two.  Not to mention all the fingers and toes that have now joined the ranks of "ants and termites."  I tried to repair it several times and, just when I thought the glue had done the trick, another piece of the little bastard would break off.  I finally chucked him into the garbage and started over.  Blue Poison Arrow Frog v. 2.0 seems to be made of sterner stuff,  but it won't matter if it isn't.  We're running out of time, Connor needs to pain these things and we have to figure out how to make a tropical rainforest out of a shoebox. By Friday.  Hmmmmm. 

We will be heading to Utah for a family reunion in a week and a half, and then, two weeks later, heading for Idaho for another family reunion.  No matter what, the chaos and mayhem of those two trips should result in some awesome story fodder.

Marshal Dillon! Marshal Dillon!

I loved Gunsmoke.  It was a weekly snuggle-fest with my dad and I had a deep, deep crush on James Arness.  (Which may have led to my recent Mike Rowe lust; they share a look)  RIP Marshal.

Update:  I just found out he was wounded at Anzio .  Amazing how many actors of that time period were combat vets.