"I worry that Jesus drinks himself to sleep when he hears me talk like this." - Anne Lamott

(Laugh. It's funny.)

Many a good woman has had to learn that she can't always have what she wants. Such is life. And when you're too sad and tired to be happy for those who do, it's time to peace out, girl scout.

When the night has been too lonely

and the road has been too long

and you think that love is only

for the lucky and the strong...

Go home.

Cardboard boxes

I know, I know. It's been awhile. In fact, this may be the longest I've ever been away. I'm not sure I can say why I've been gone so long, exactly.

I spent the last month in the pain management clinic. The hours were good, but those posts would have sounded like my old ones from medical school when I was on a rotation I really didn't enjoy and the writing was so caustic that anonymous commenters felt the need to tell me I probably shouldn't be a doctor. I always wondered if those same people asked the mommy bloggers who occasionally admit to a bad day, "Have you ever thought you should maybe just give away your kids?"

In my non-pain clinic hours, I've had a great six weeks. I'm a little overwhelmed with the prospect of summarizing it, though. Beyond a bulleted list of all that's happened, it's hard to catch up here.

My brother got engaged, and I went home to celebrate with the family. They were just drunk enough to let me pick up the tab. Only in Ohio can you buy four rounds of drinks for 20 people with a couple hundred bucks. Midwest pricing and a gay waiter who appreciated the fact that I (mostly) kept my drunk sister-in-law from flirting with him made for some very cheap liquor. Although, I'm pretty sure when she readjusted her bra, popped a potato skin in her mouth, and told him, "I still have some to go, but I've lost 50 pounds since I had a baby six weeks ago," he was thinking, "Until a second ago, I liked the fellas; but girl, you had me at I used to be fat."

There's another amusing story there about gift giving gone wrong and one of the weirdest things a middle aged man has ever yelled in a crowded bar. In order to truly appreciate it, though, I think you had to be there in the moment when the bride-to-be opened the world's tackiest engagement gift, and my dad, in all sincerity, yelled "Oh, I love it! I'm a sucker for a snow globe." Now we know what his Craigslist personal ad will say on the off chance he outlives my mother: I like long walks on the beach, single malt scotch, and sparkly, magical globes of snow.

A few weeks after the trip home, Blake, Evan, and I spent a weekend in New York. La Cage Aux Folles, drinks at the Algonquin, more drinks at Marie's Crisis, brunch (and a fair bit of time spent in the ladies room) at Lips... Hungover and staring down a plate of eggs Benedict, I almost threw up in a drag queen's hair. (In Evan's best South Georgia drawl: But girl, you know that weave so tragic, little vomit won't hurt it.)

We drove Evan's car this time. Comparing this to the Bolt Bus, the back seat passenger summed it up as follows: "You know what the best thing is about your car? No one has come back here to take a shit since we left." There really is something to be said for not riding around next to a bathroom. And I said it.

A week later, my dad celebrated a birthday. After a few hours on the phone and a few drinks each, we decided that from now on, for the purposes of filling out census forms and applying for scholarships, we would count ourselves among the last remaining Blajewskimos. That's right. From here on out, on all official paperwork and government documents, we are Black Jewish Eskimos. (Also official: Having written that, I can now never run for public office.)

It was during that same conversation, before the aforementioned ethnicity changing decision, that I said, "You know how you buy little kids expensive crap for Christmas, and all they ever want to play with is the damn box? Well, the older I get, the more I think that all of life is like that. I laughed the hardest last weekend while drinking and singing showtunes off key in a basement bar at 1am...and then again hungover, nauseated, and stuck in New Jersey traffic on the way home."

"Well kid," he said, "I think you're right. I think all of life is like that cardboard box." And he would know. For he is the wisest of all the Blajewskimos.

It's like riding a bike

I was having a particularly tough day at work. I communicated this to my father like I always do...by sending him a text message that referred to work but in no way mentioned the shittiness of the day.

Your Iron Girl is doing two kidney transplants today.

I started my first case. My attending was exactly as I was warned he would be--old, and slow, and wheezy, and mad at me because he has gout. The longer it took me to get the central line in, the worse his gout got. That's the pathophysiology of gout. Inept anesthesia residents, maybe even intentionally, cause terrible foot and ankle pain with their inability to cannulate the internal jugular vein in less than 10 seconds. Incompetent cruel bastards, the lot of us.

I was glad for the warning, but in the moment, it didn't really do much to help. It never does, does it? Someone tells you something is going to be painful...and then it is. The heads up removed the element of surprise, reassured me that it wasn't just me, that everyone exacerbates his gout. But, starting the case was still like swimming through wet cement. Reminding myself, "He's like this with everyone," didn't make the central line go in any faster.

But go in it did. Eventually. And he left the room. Finally.

I texted Blake to say, "This morning, I was worried my attending may not survive the day. Now I'm worried he might."

A few hours later, Wheezy came back to give me a break. Everything was settled by then, the patient tucked in, the charting all caught up. The Goutmaster sat down at the head of the bed, propped up a swollen appendage, and opened his email. I gave the patient a dose of this and that and vacated the premises.

I didn't realize until I stepped out of the OR just how shitty the morning had been. I had been doing the one foot in front of the other thing to get through the laundry list of tasks that have to be completed at the start of a case. I hadn't had time to really think about miserable it was. As I walked away from the room, I thought, "Given the chance, right now, I would walk to my car, go home, and not come back until tomorrow."

I turned to cut through the PACU on my way to my coffee cup. As I walked under the hand painted white and black sign that says, GENERAL RECOVERY ROOM--a sign hung back in a time when they actually used to call the recovery room, The Recovery Room--I found a text message from my dad.

They got the right gal on the job. Just be glad you're not your sister... She's working in the 'beyond' dept of Bed Bath & Beyond today...and who the hell knows what's beyond?

Seriously, if that were me lying there, I'd want you in the room!

Nothing anyone else would have said could have made me feel better than I did in that moment. I walked to my coffee cup feeling a thousand pounds lighter. The shit eating grin was stuck on my face for another two hours.

Later in the day, I texted my dad to say that Blake was returning to work after two weeks in London. He had received some rather unjust criticism prior to his departure and was not looking forward to coming back. My dad, the Union President, sent a little something for my friend.

It started with, This is great...he is facing down the beast early in his career...always best to meet that bastard (unjust criticism) while you're young and strong...

I forwarded it to Blake. He wrote back, Where do I pay my union dues?

The next day, I emailed Dad. To understand this email, you need to know two things:

First, it took me for-fucking-ever to learn how to ride a bike. My father used to run marathons. He didn't even have to train for the first one. After all the miles he spent jogging back and forth down the driveway holding me up on my two wheeler, he was a power bar and some Gatorade away from his first race. His eldest child was the biggest little chickenshit on legs. You've never met someone so afraid of falling.

Second, this is in sharp contrast to the way that he learned to ride a bike. When he was a little guy, the Weber boys put him on a two wheeler and pushed him towards Bailey Road during rush hour traffic. They yelled, Pedal! and Turn! In that moment, he realized that if failed to follow their instructions, he'd die. So, he pedaled and turned. And that's how he learned to ride a bike.

Dad,

Everything you said yesterday, both to me and to Blake, was freakin' perfect. The older I get, the more I wonder if shepherding us through adulthood might be even harder and more important than all of that stuff you do when kids are still in the house. And yes, I say that as one who took a full 17.5 years to learn to ride a bike. Every single day, I feel like one of the Weber boys is throwing me on a two wheeler and pushing me into traffic...with a patient strapped to my back. I'm still not sure how I'd pedal myself upright without you.

Love,

T

It's true. Every day does feel like that. But, there is this feeling when the lines go in like buttah, the intubation looks like I throw yard darts in my sleep, the patient and I soar through a big operation...when I Pedal! and Turn! and we avoid being crushed by that bus barreling down Bailey Road...and the job is even more fun than this girl thought it could be.

Why aren't you writing about your job?

Because no one really wants to know what happens while they're asleep.

That's why they asked me to put them to sleep. There are many surgeries for which they could probably be wide awake and numb from the (insert surgical site here) down. But, they'd really rather not be. As it turns out, ignorance is, in fact, bliss.

I'd really rather they be asleep, too. I still like to talk to people...before and after. But during, I prefer them in peaceful slumber. Trust me when I say, I'm awake enough for the both of us.

The friends

It occurred to me the other day that if you don't have any good friends, it may be my fault. I may have them all. I was talking to Graci at the time, telling her that I think of her every time the pathology resident comes to the OR to tell the surgeons that the tumor is not a tumor. Then, the surgeons tells her she's an idiot and to send in her attending. She rolls her eyes and walks away.

A few minutes later, a little, old Asian man comes in and says, "Is not a tuma. Is a chicken egg. Your patient chicken?"

And the surgeon says, "How the hell should I know? I didn't examine him. But I KNOW this a tumor."

And the pathologist says, "Listen, we put zee tuma stain on dis and we poke it wit a stick and it say, I am not a tuma. We put zee chicken egg stain on dis and we poke it wit a stick and it say, I AM A CHICKEN EGG!"

The surgeon retorts, "But radiology said it was a tumor."

"Padology better dan radiology. I say dis all zee time." Then, the little old man crosses his hands behind his back and walks away.

Replace the words chicken egg with cystic adenoma and that's a true story. If you're ever telling Graci a true story, you should replace the words cystic adenoma with chicken egg. She has no interest in the true pathology of a pathology tale but will laugh her fool ass off if you sprinkle in a little poultry.

This brings me back to my original point, which is that I have the very best of the friends. By best, in this case, I mean most easily entertained. It is never a struggle to make that girl laugh...and I love her for it.

Blake and Evan are in London right now. Rhee (their pup) and I are holding down the fort in their absence. We miss them terribly and, if we weren't such Iron Girls, would certainly sulk these two weeks away. But, we are, in fact, Iron Girls. And as such, we are making the best of it. We have found that cheese and napping help us keep up our strength in these trying times.

Last weekend, before the boys left, we all watched Fried Green Tomatoes. I start crying some time during the opening credits of this movie and stop some time two days later. Graci, Evan, and Blake are the only three people on the planet who can resist the urge to mock me for this. Although, to be honest, two of them don't really have any room to mock. Graci was the most impressive crier I'd ever known...until I met Evan.

As I learned earlier this same day as we watched Rick Steves' tour London, Evan is particularly moved by the Rosetta Stone. "I don't know what it is about this," he said, his voice cracking, his bottom lip all a quiver, "but it gets me every time." I looked over to find him taking off his glasses to wipe his eyes. I looked back at the screen to see if maybe I was missing something. Perhaps an innocent animal had been crushed under the stone, or a small child had just lost his mother in the mass of tourists?

But no, it was just the rock with those translated hieroglyphics. I started to ask him what it is about this that gets him, but, as he'd just said, he doesn't know. Crying at the Rosetta Stone is sort of like having a crush on Hillary Clinton. You can see how anyone might appreciate the brilliance...but you can't logically explain that depth of feeling. It just is what it is. (That said, if Evan ever confesses that he has the hots for Hillary, I'm going to have some follow up questions.)

All of that is to say, Blake resisted the urge to mock my crying all the way through Fried Green Tomatoes. The other two can't mock. Crying fools, the both of em.

When the movie ended, I wiped my eyes (for the 57th time) and slipped on my shoes to go. I don’t often leave late on a Saturday night. (The boys call the guest bedroom T's room for a reason.) But, we hadn’t had much at all to drink, and I had a few things to get done the next morning at home.

Fried Green Tomatoes made me miss Graci. It made the boys miss the South. As I stood to go, they began to reminisce. Evan started telling a story. "My older cousin used to try to scare me and my younger cousin. One time, he told us the woods behind the house were full of Indians who would scalp us..."

I sat back down to hear the rest of this. Evan tells a tale beautifully. He whispers the quiet parts and sprinkles in pitch perfect dialogue. His boyhood stories are like Stand By Me...with just a touch of flair. And no one can end a story quite like he can.

In this one, he and his younger cousin ventured into the scalping jungle and crept around a small shack. "Are there Indians in there?" Evan's cousin asked. (Blake and I were on the edge of our seats.)

"I don't know," Evan said, wide eyed and dead serious..."but if there are, they drive a Monte Carlo."

We laughed like idiots.

Blake's childhood stories are more like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. As he tells them, part of me wants to snort laugh. The other part wants to hold him and stroke his hair and assure him that in spite of all that, just in case he forgot, he grew into a (mostly) normal and very good man who moved far away from the nut jobs and only has to see them on holidays.

Speaking of which, we then somehow got onto the subject of our most recent Thanksgiving. Blake's mom and brother came to visit. I spent the whole weekend asking Evan, "Who are these people, and where did your boyfriend come from?"

"This year was nothing," Blake said. "You should have been there when my grandma tried to shoot my mom." He then launched into a story about the year his mother and his paranoid delusional Alzheimer's afflicted grandmother wrestled over a loaded handgun on Thanksgiving morning. (So much for watching the parade.)

"My mom yelled at me to go for help," Blake said. "I still remember hurting my bare feet as I ran across my grandma's gravel driveway to get to the neighbors'."

This is where he got me. I used to spend summer months playing outside barefoot. I remember the stinging in my feet as I ran across gravel drives in summer's early warm days, before my heels had a chance to grow calloused and tough. I swallowed hard as I pictured the boy from Blake's childhood photos running barefoot and scared.

As with all of his childhood stories, though, this didn't end with the tragic and scary. It ended with the utterly ridiculous.

The police came, disarmed Grandma, and tied her ass to a chair. And then they left. As if that's what you do with crazy old people. Tie 'em to the furniture. Problem solved.

Blake's mom found a psych unit to take his grandma for a few days. But then, they had to get her there. They carried her out of the house, chair and all, turned it and her on its side - it was the only way it would fit - and loaded her into the back seat of the car. She road to the psych ward that way.

Picturing this, I laughed so hard I pulled an abdominal muscle. Exhausted from all that laughing, I kicked off my shoes and headed down the hall to my room.

The best of the best friends. An embarrassment of riches, to be sure. I assure you I am sufficiently humiliated...but I'm not letting them go anytime soon.

And I'm not beyond tying them to the furniture to keep them.

God bless the edentulous

This job really makes you appreciate people without teeth. In fact, when my patient has a mouth full of 'em, I can't help but think, "Well shit, now I have to work around these damn things."

Saturday morning

It's finally cooled down enough to turn off the air conditioner and open the windows. I'm sure this will only last a few hours, but still...a breeze wafting through these walls is just what this house needed. (Well, a breeze and a dust rag perhaps.)

My second cup of coffee and I are sitting in a rocking chair next to my front window, listening to the birds, watching the old men take their morning walks. Seems like sort of an old lady way to start the day, eh? Yes well, when the time comes, after years of practice, I'm going to rock at being elderly.

Text message to my mom, the former children's pastor

I have all the patience of Job.
Not the good, vacation bible school Job, but the bitchy, whiny, "what the fuck happened to my goats?" Job.

The one that's too long

Text from Blake: "Btw, I'm tired of waiting on you to post an orientation blog, so I'm just gonna come out and say... Blog."

Then, he started bitching about how long the post was going to be. This post. A post that had yet to be written.

I get home from a long day at work. All I want to do is relax and put my feet up. Instead, I have to listen to him complain about the ways he anticipates I may annoy him in the future. Coupled with the fact that neither of us has any desire to see the other naked, this friendship is a lot like a thing called marriage. (Not your marriage, of course. No, your love is special. I'm talking about other people - the ones you don't like.)

Orientation started with a few days of... Well shit, I don't even remember what we did those first few days. There were hospital tours, and lectures, and piles of human resources paperwork. We signed five copies of a form which said, in effect, "I will not take naked pictures of my patients and post them on Facebook. And if I do, I'll scratch out their medical record numbers with a sharpie first." The program director handed out anesthesia books and then, just to get it out of the way, yelled at us for not reading them enough this year. Just to get it out of the way, we went ahead and felt a little ashamed of all that reading we, apparently, won't be doing.

After a few days of this, the department took us out to a local restaurant and we all drank free booze until the tab ran out. Then, too drunk to care how much we were spending on liquor, we all opened our own tabs and, just to get it out of the way, drank our first paycheck.

It was somewhere in between their tab and ours that Blake and I told the program director the impound story. The more colorful version of this tale involves eight uses of the word fuck and at a single uttering of the phrase, ass virginity. (As in, Blake said, "There we were driving through the ghetto with four hundred dollars, my pretty truck, and your ass virginity, and I thought for sure we were going to lose it all.") I managed to retell it with only four uses of the word fuck and no mention of ass or virginity. And to think, Blake says I have no filter.

The next day, I drove to Connecticut to see Graci. It was 105 degrees. My car has no air. I sat in parked traffic in New York for two hours. At one point, I stopped sweating and had to concentrate really hard on not throwing up. I think this is called heat stroke. I don't know for sure because, as my program director predicted, I have not read that chapter.

The whole drive took almost eight hours. I nearly died. And it was completely worth it.

Graci's apartment looks almost exactly like the one we shared in medical school. Books, pinned bugs, wood carving craft projects from her camp counselor days - everything about it is just so...Graci. And it feels just like home. I packed anesthesia books and notes but didn't read a word all weekend. Instead, I just talked about how nervous I was to start in the OR without knowing anything from those books and notes.

My very first case on my very first day was a craniotomy. Fucking brain surgery. That is, in fact, what I said when I heard it. "FUCKING BRAIN SURGERY? Are you fucking kidding me?" I called Blake and said it. I called my mom and said it. I said it to Graci every four and half minutes all weekend long. She reminded me over and over again that they weren't going to let me kill anyone. (At least, not on my first day.)

Blake's first case was some simple little kidney procedure. It was complicated only by the fact that his patient was mostly dead. In fact, his anesthetic plan looked a lot like this.

Three weeks later, Blake and I are almost sort of kind of maybe in some small way getting used to this job. Partnered with another first year resident and an attending, we're rarely left alone in the OR. This all changes after next week when our month long orientation officially ends and we start doing our own cases. Once again, we will be scared shitless. (In my case, I mean this literally as stress gives me terrible diarrhea.)

At the end of every day this month, we have an hour long lecture on one of the basic topics in anesthesiology. Last Friday, Blake collapsed in the chair beside me in the lecture room and sighed. He looked like he'd been hit with a bus. He always looks 17 times better than I do, so I can't even imagine how I must have looked - like I'd been hit by 17 buses, I suppose. As we waited for the lecturer, we talked about how exhausting it was to spend all day trying not to kill the mostly dead.

And then, suddenly, as if the room was on fire, Blake grabbed his bag, stood bolt upright, and yelled, "Fifteen minute rule. I'm out." And with that, he was out.

I looked over the room of stunned, silent faces. They'd never seen such a dramatic exit from a non-event. I shrugged a little, reached for my bag, and said, "I'm uhh...I'm with him."

"I wish you could have seen the looks on their faces," I told him. We laughed about it all the way to our cars.

Blake, I could get through this residency without you. But friend, moments like these make me so glad I don't have to.

Could someone direct me to the OR?

I start my anesthesiology residency tomorrow. My medicine internship is finished. I ended with two weeks of nights. I thought about writing when it was all over, but frankly, I was too fucking tired. I stuck a note on the call room door for the incoming interns...

Sicker patients than this have survived dumber doctors than you.

And with that, I was done.

I stopped by the new hospital the other day to drop off the last bit of my anesthesia paperwork. I managed to park a full seven blocks from the office where I needed to be. When I finally found the elevators, I couldn't figure out which floor the anesthesia department was on. A housekeeping employee explained to me that since I was looking for room 1408, I was probably headed to the 14th floor. She asked if I was new. When I said yes, she asked, "Which department?" I could almost hear her under her breath, Please don't say housekeeping, please don't say housekeeping...

On the 14th floor, I stumbled into the Chairman's suite. His secretary directed me to the clearly marked education office that I had walked right past to bother her.

On my back out of the hospital, when the high pitched beeping started and security appeared, I looked up from my phone to read, Emergency Exit: Alarm will Sound.

Tonight, Blake suggested that we ride together tomorrow. I readily agreed. Mostly because I think it's only a matter of time before housekeeping and security have a drink and get to talking...and then I won't be allowed to go to work unaccompanied by a sighted companion or specially trained dog.

Houston, we have a problem

People always ask me if I'm like Blanche. Well, Blanche was an oversexed, self-involved, man-crazy, vain Southern belle from Atlanta—and I'm not from Atlanta. - Rue McClanahan


The dinner conversation started, as I imagine all in depth discussions of the difficulties unique to space copulation do, with a rather banal question. I asked Blanche, “Do you enjoy your job in medicine?”

“No,” she said, “I hate it.”

“What would you rather be doing?”

“Well,” she said, “I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut.”

I choked a little to keep from blowing onion soup out my nose. Like the Great Wall of China, the pile of toiletries Blanche brought with her for the weekend could actually be seen from space. The thought of her willingly donning a flame retardant jumpsuit accessorized with hose attachments made me aspirate a little.

“An astronaut, eh?” I squeaked, still struggling for air.

Rose, the voice reason chimed in with, “You can’t be an astronaut. Space is really bad for aging.”

“Wrinkles?” I said. “That’s why she can’t go to space…because she might get wrinkles?”

"Yes," she said, nodding. "I heard you age like five years for every week you’re up there. It’s a real problem."

Blanche looked at Rose like this was the single most idiotic thing she had ever heard. Aging. As if that was something that could ever happen to her. It was utterly ridiculous, as though Rose had just warned against the possibility of growing a third boob with a single trip to the moon.

Blanche had other concerns. Principally, how exactly would one clean up after space sex.

“You’re going to be having sex in space?” I said.

“Well, yeah,” she said, looking at me like that was the dumbest question anyone had ever asked an astronaut.

You know, you think you’d never be part of discussion about the potential difficulties of sex clean up in a zero gravity environment. But then, you have a little more wine, and suddenly, you’re saying things like, “What about a butterfly net?” As if that would even work.

In preparation

When I asked Evan what he wanted for his birthday, he said, “I want to make lobster for us. I am happiest when we are all together having French food.”

“That's when I’m happiest, too,” I said.

And so it was settled. For Evan's birthday, we would make lobster.

Blake had two friends from medical school, Blanche and Rose, coming into town for the weekend. Rose’s one-eyed on again off again boyfriend, Willie, was supposed to join us as well; but there was trouble in lover’s paradise. I, for one, was quite disappointed to hear of their falling out. Lobster Thermidor, beautiful china, fine wine…and a guy who lost his eye to a pair of brass knuckles outside a bar in Texas. Hell, that post practically writes itself.

Willie’s place was taken by Evan’s friend and coworker, Woman Who Looks Just Like Reese Witherspoon Except Chinese. (Reese, for short.) Reese is a fabulous dinner party guest because she is forever raising interesting philosophical questions like, “What is the meaning of the phrase, What’s up chicken butt?” Suddenly, you find yourself wondering, what is the meaning of that phrase? And then, it’s not long before you’re thinking the hokey pokey may actually be what’s it’s all about.

Evan proposed a five course meal for the six of us: French onion soup, salad, Lobster Thermidor, chocolate cake (which has a proper name I can never seem to remember), and finally, just to ensure that none of us would be able to get up from the table in our own strength, a selection of cheeses.

Evan made the soup and the cake the day before. The cheese was crafted by a couple of French farmers with a gift for mold preparation. That left the salad and the lobster. The salad is nothing. I mean, it didn’t taste like nothing. It was delicious. But, when it comes to preparation, the salad is nothing. Evan wiggles his nose like Samantha from Bewitched and a salad appears. So, in short, that left the lobster.

Julia Child’s Lobster Thermidor is no joke. If you had something else you thought you might like to do in the five and a half hours before dinner, if you balk at the thought of brutally murdering helpless animals in your kitchen, or if you weren’t already planning to repaint the walls after the mess this makes, just close the cookbook and walk away.

I can't claim that I didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I told Evan I’d make lobster with him. He and I have done this once before. Granted, my memory of that experience is a little hazy, what with the five and a half hours of wine consumption that went along with the cooking. But, I do recall that the whole process took for-freakin'-ever. I had to grab the dog and go cringe in the other room while he did the killing. And four days later, I was still picking lobster out of my hair. I also remember that Evan and I had a fabulous time...like Lucy and Ethel making French food.

This time, we would be doing it for twice as many people. Oh yeah, and I would be post call. This is to say, I would be doing all of this on about two hours of bad sleep.

I worked Friday night and ignored just enough pages to get that two hours of bad sleep. Saturday, after a short morning nap, I poured myself the first of about seventeen cups of coffee and headed out to pick up some flowers. Evan wanted tulips. Though it’s not really tulip season, I just sort of assumed, since it was his birthday, there would be tulips.

I stopped by the small flower shop near my house, walked in, and proclaimed, “I’ll take a dozen tulips.”

The woman behind the counter, a true retail professional, immediately apologized for something that couldn’t possibly be her fault. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but tulip season is over. ”

“I know, but it’s for a dinner party and it’s his birthday,” I said, as if that would make the requested flowers shoot out of her ass.

She smiled and, as if trying to distract a toddler on the verge of a tantrum, suggested, “Perhaps we could find something else?”

I sighed pathetically. “I guess I’ll take the orchids." She offered to pick them out, mostly because she imagined me destroying two dozen stems to get to the five I wanted. As she pulled out the bucket of flowers, Evan called me in a panic. He had been to three grocery stores and there were no lobsters. He was driving an hour away in a last ditch effort to find some. Dinner would be late. If they didn’t have lobsters the last place he knew to look, our lives would be over.

I hung up with him and started calling a few of the places I thought might carry them. Suddenly, I was distracted from my conversation with a local market by the crappy flower selection happening on the counter in front of me. Covering the phone, I reminded the florist, "These are for a dinner party."

"Yes," she said with a patronizing smile.

I clarified, “A dinner party with gay men.”

“Oh,” she sighed, as she laid down the tragic stems she had selected. “I guess I’ll start over.”

I smiled an equally patronizing smile and then resumed my conversation with the fish monger. I found an alternative to suicide just in case Evan's road trip didn't pan out and, a few minutes later, left the flower shop with orchids fit for a queer eye.

Evan’s pilgrimage was a success. In the end, cooking only got started about an hour behind schedule. I won’t bore you with all the details of lobster preparation…mostly because scant sleep beforehand and a bit of wine during left me with little memory of much of the day. I will however, offer the highlights: the murder, and the table setting.

First, the murder: Killing lobsters brings out something in sensitive, sweet, tender-hearted Evan. All the hostility, antagonism, bitterness, resentment, and general acrimony that the rest of us slowly leak out onto florists, meter maids, and loved ones, Evan quietly stores up and unleashes on sea life. The fact that those lobsters didn’t happily swan dive from the grocery bag into the pot of boiling water really pissed him off. As he abandoned the tongs and, with his bare hands, reached into the bag to wrestle them into a watery grave, he yelled, “Do NOT fuck with me. I have had a hard year.”

He has had a hard year. It’s not easy to be in love with a resident. Unfortunately, the call schedule doesn't taste right boiled, so the crustaceans had to bear the brunt of a year's worth of frustration.

Second, the table setting: A dinner party is not only an excuse to unleash wrath onto undeserving shellfish, but also to dress Evan and Blake’s beautiful new table with style. I admit I had to Google images of a proper place setting and watch the How to Fold a Napkin YouTube video seven times for six napkins. But, the lovely result was well worth this uncultured nitwit's exhaustive research.

“Oh T, it’s so beautiful,” Evan said.

“It is,” I agreed. I stood at edge of the table and smiled at him. It has been a hard year. There were parts of it you couldn’t pay me to do again. But, as I looked at that lovely table and my dear friend, snippets of every meal he and I have poured ourselves (and bottles of wine) into wafted over to me. I swallowed hard to keep from leaking a few tears.

After the table was set, Evan and I went to work on dressing ourselves in style (or, at least, in less shellfish). I, for one, spent not a few minutes picking lobster out of my underwear and spackling concealer over the dark circles under my sleep deprived eyes. While we were getting ready, Blake came home with Blanche and Rose. The three of them had been to the mall and to Sex and the City 2. When I stepped out of the bathroom, the Golden Girls introduced themselves. Then, they grabbed a leash and Blanche's dog and headed for the door.

“Um...I walked both dogs an hour ago,” I said.

“There’s a hot guy in the parking lot,” Blanche explained, as she adjusted her bra and made haste.

I would have joined them, but everyone who lives in Blake and Evan’s building has already seen me in all my sexiness. Rainbow pajama pants, a hugely oversized hoodie, pair of men's flip flops, and a baseball cap? Yep, that was me, dog-sitting and seducing the neighbors.

While the girls headed out to hunt the locals, I chatted with Blake about their day. He bitched a bit about how long they were at the mall and about how Rose embarrassed him by bartering for a deal on a bedazzled phone cover. I said something agreeable like, "Oh yeah, that would be embarrassing," all the while thinking, "Who are you kidding?" If those two are Blanche and Rose, Blake is their Dorothy. Dorothy was never so happy as when she was annoyed with those girls.

I just got through chatting with Rose on Facebook. I told her they must come back more often. I say this for purely selfish reasons. Hanging out with them, Blake looks like I feel when I’m with Graci. It is nothing but fun to see.

I’ll say more about the rest of the evening later. Right now, I have to go admit a patient.

In the meantime, to summarize dinner: Completely worth it. Worth the time. Worth the toasty seat in hell we reserved for ourselves with the brutal murder of helpless animals. Worth the lobster in my underwear.

Vacation, week one

I went home to see the family for a few days. My parents (and sisters, and Logyn) recently moved out of the 720 square foot home where we grew up into a 3,200 square foot condo. Their friends are all downsizing. Convinced that my sisters aren't going anywhere any time soon, they've done just the opposite. "We couldn't do it anymore," my mom said. "I mean, I know in many countries, several families live in a space smaller than that...but those are better people than we are. We were all ready to kill each other."

It was rather close quarters. The girls and the baby shared a small room. When I visited, I slept on the couch in a semi-finished room in the basement that also served as my dad's home office. There was only one bathroom.

The condo is huge by comparison. It has three bathrooms. Three. The girls have their own bedrooms. ("Now, we'll really never get them out of here," my mom says.) There's still no real privacy. Logyn is two, after all...

Logyn: "You go potty, TT?"

Me: "Yes, I'm going potty."

Logyn: "Can I come?"

My sister: "You can say no."

Me: "I was planning on it."

But, even with the occasional unsolicited assistance in the bathroom, it is a much easier place to stay.

Logyn loves her new house. That's what she calls it. Her new house. When my sister told her I was coming a few weeks ago, she ran around unlocking doors..."So TT can come to my new house."

The morning I left, she wrapped her little arms around my neck, and with tears in her eyes, said, "TT, you come back to my new house pretty soon?"

"Yes," I said, "I'll come back to your new house pretty soon." And then, I was the first person ever to cry her way through a flight from Ohio to the beach.

Lucy goosey