(guest post)

oh hey. you there? mmmmm. hi? it's callie.
mary thinks i've been sitting on her lap just watching the cursor move the whole time, but really i've been studying these "words" and this "typing". now it's my turn... to tell you about how terrible the day was! really, you may want to send help.

i thought we were having a nice, relaxing day. mary has a little something called "vacation", which mostly means she sits on the couch in her pajamas and i help. i jumped right into bed for a good long snuggle in the sun at around 8. purr. my fatal mistake was that on wednesday, i slipped and let her catch me scratching my ear. dagnabbit! she stared at me for a while, but nothing happened so i thought i was in the clear. nope. today she scooped me up mid-snuggle and stuffed me into my carrier. i tried to argue my case ("no, really, my ear wasn't bothering me! foot spasm! learning a new dance!") but it was too late and i don't think she understands me anyway. just kept saying i was a "good girl". whatever.

so the long and short of it? ear drops for 3 more weeks! but, my friends, that is not the worst. well, ok, there are two bad things.

bad thing #1: i have chin acne. god, how embarassing. now that handsome tom across the way will never ask me out. but, worse yet, they shaved. my. chin. i mean, honestly. a lady cat can only suffer so many indignities.

ok, and bad thing #2: i might be getting all these ear infections because of allergies. food allergies. which means no more iams, and certainly no more fancy feast. let's hope that's not the case. although i did hear them talking about duck as an option, so maybe it wouldn't be that bad...

i tried to reason with mary on the way home, but she was mumbling something about "a hundred dollars" and having to board me at the vet while she goes on vacation. i don't know what these "dollars" are, but she sure does grumble about them every time we see dr. o'hagan. and i wonder what boarding is? i hope it's like string.

oops, mary's coming at me with acne medicine and ear drops. must go. nighty night.

oh my god i love autumn.

now that i'm on my community medicine block, with FULL WEEKENDS OFF*, i decided to take advantage of my new bon appetit subscription and start cooking again. what with the crisp leaves and the cool air, i embarked on a dinner in celebration of my favorite season. if i do say so myself, it was a resounding success. the key elements:

number one: pumpkin soup.
i went ahead and added some diced onions at the beginning and a little extra sugar at the end. also, i couldn't stomach the idea of dumping in so much half and half, so i went with whole milk, but i thought it was just as creamy as it needed to be. i was doubtful as i was spooning in the curry powder because it ended up to be my whole jar of curry powder! that's a lot of curry powder! however, it was also a lot of soup. (friend's comment: "oh my god. we made a lot of soup.") a lot of delicious soup that i will reheat and savor! i ask you, is there anything more quintessentially autumn than pumpkin soup? i think not. and yes, i do feel like a cheater for using canned pumpkin, but sometimes roasting a whole pumpkin just isn't in the cards.




number two: these little turnovers.
now let me tell you, these are like autumn in new england rolled into a puff pastry. and while they seemed a little intimidating at first, they were actually a snap to make and so exceedingly delicious. i may have to refine my turnover-filling skills, since i only ended up using about half the filling and they were not quite as stuffed as they might have been, but there were no complaints (comment: "you should open a bakery."). i ended up using gala apples, which i think worked just fine. oh, and about the cheese...

... while i was shopping for the ingredients, i discovered a little something called raw milk cheddar at trader joe's. normally, i poo -poo raw milk as something for the hippies, especially since the one time i saw a kid who nearly had to go to the OR after complications from raw-milk-related food poisoning. but then i remembered that time i went to kripalu and joined a drum circle, and i realized it was really a pot-criticizing-kettle situation to pretend i'm not a hippie at heart. long story short i bought the cheese and HOLY SMOKES. it was soft, almost a mozzarella consistency, such that you could roll it almost into little sweet balls, but with a delicious mild cheddar flavor. if campylobacter is the price i have to pay for eating this cheese, well, sometimes a girl has to do what a girl has to do.



so, happy autumn everyone (even if it's autumn in your heart and summer outside)!



*so long as my pager is strapped to me at all times and i'm never more than two hours from the hospital, just in case someone gets sick and i have to cover for them on a moment's notice. i hate being an intern. also, please excuse the stock photos, i was negligent on the photo front.

holding hands.

as you may know, i have a cat. she is the loveliest little cat in the world, i think. it breaks my heart to think that when i first got her, she was so scared of everything that the noise of me taking a shower would send her scurrying under my bed for hours. now, however, we are great friends and she has captured the heart of her "grandparents" such that when i say i'm coming home for thanksgiving, they ask "would your little friend like to come, too?" and i have to explain that she's not really a weekend traveler.

anyway, the dearest thing she does is this: while not generally not interested in sitting on my lap for long periods of time, she does like to be constantly touching me. so while i sit here, typing, she rests her little tail on my wrist and twitches it ever so gently. like so:


it's so sweet that it almost makes me forget that i came home from a long day of work yesterday to find kitty puke waiting for me on the carpet.

trust me, i'm a doctor.

well, i outdid myself tonight. i went out to dinner tonight with some friends, and when i got back into my car to leave, it wouldn't start. it would kind of light up and the radio would come on, but it just wouldn't turn over. i lept out of my car to stop my friend from leaving and in the process locked my keys in the car, battery running. (curse words!)

fortunately, my trunk was unlocked so after i shimmied through the trunk and hurled myself over the back seat action-movie style, i retrieved my keys and aaa card and called ... my father. (yes, i am 27 years old. why do you ask?)

"well, it's probably your battery." he pronounced. "they go without warning. you need a jump."
"but the headlights came on!" i protested.
"not enough power to start the car, probably." he countered.

so i called aaa. the kindly tow man showed up with his jumper contraption. despite my feminist sensibilities, i put on my best damsel in distress look.

"alright, start it!" he commanded.
[rumble, rumble, rumble, sputter.]
"try again."
[rumble, sputter.]
(me, internally: "crap, this is bad! how will i get to work tomorrow!?! i can't afford a new car right now.")
"um, step on the gas?"
[continued rumbling/sputtering.]
"this is what it's been doing?"
[nod]

mechanic: "so, uh, how much gas is in your car?"
me: "um, not much, but the light's not even on and after that i still have like 60 miles!"
mechanic: "yeah, but look at the hill you're parked on. all your gas is in the back of your tank."
me: [sizes up car parked at 45 degree angle.]
mechanic: "get out."

so, he put my car in neutral, rolled it down the hill until it was nice and flat. then he started it without incident and i followed him to the garage, where i filled my tank right up and drove home.

honest to god, i'm a smart person, i swear i am. put your life in my hands. you'll be fine.

excellent patient interactions (#3 in a series)

me: 'so, you probably want to stay away from white bread, because it can bring your sugar really high and then it comes crashing down.'
diabetic woman: 'it does?!? girl, hush!! oh. sorry. i mean, i didn't know that.'

(me, silently: what was your old pcp doing all these years?)

mothwatch 2009

we are in full blown moth elimination mode here. my closet, once overflowing with textiles, is a barren wasteland:


callie has taken the position of foreman on this job, and is overseeing the work while snuggling into my winter comforter:


i think she's judging me a little, don't you? i see it in her eyes.

well, there's been some good progress here today with the freezing, the ironing, the washing of washables, the mothballing, the packing in cedar. i think there have been some silver linings to the moth cloud.

1. i found a new laundry detergent. mrs meyer's clean day, lavender scent. so far it smells heavenly and has cleaned my clothes well. and i have done all of my laundry. all. i even washed out the hampers.

2. i'm weeding out the clothes i never wear. i always feel so guilty getting rid of them, but now i realize they were the problem. those sweaters just sitting back there, month after month, never being moved or shaken or worn? moth playground! not only can the clothes i don't wear be worn by others, but i won't be ruining my own favorite clothing by keeping them. win-win.

3. as i was getting ready to vacuum, i thought about how it smells like burning rubber sometimes when i vacuum and how that can't really be a good thing. so i found my vacuum manual and did such things as change the belt and clean out the hepa filters. that was probably about 18 months overdue.

4. i am organizing my downstairs storage, heretofore not well-utilized. i even assembled the garment rack i bought a few months ago.

so, you see? what's one old (actually, rather new) wool coat compared to all of this gain?

sigh. i liked the coat.

confession.

i have something we need to talk about.
i know, i haven't always lived an exemplary life. there have been indiscretions. i know, sometimes, in the stresses of life, i have let some things slide. still, i didn't think i deserved this. i wasn't prepared. it's hard to say.

i have moths.

moths!

now, i didn't think people GOT moths. i mean, i know there are these things called 'mothballs' and that my babci and dziadziu's 'shoe closet' sometimes smelled like them. sometimes, big moths would fly into our house in the summer and it was kind of gross. but never in my life have i heard of someone actually having a moth problem in their house. until now.

i have to admit, the signs were there last winter. i sent a few of my fave wool sweaters to the dry cleaners and they came home with giant holes in them. at first, i was furious with the dry cleaners, but then i pulled another sweater out of a pile and it had a similar hole. i had the thought that it might be a moth situation, but i had a lot going on, ok? things were kind of rough in my life last winter. so i honestly didn't think much about it. until the other day, when i pulled out a newish cashmere cardigan and found a teeny, but slightly too big to be chance, hole in the back of it. oh, and sure, maybe i had seen a little moth or two flitting around the apartment, but again, who cares?

well, today, i gave moths a little google. i saw the pictures of moth larvae! barf! surely nothing like that could go on in my house without notice. well i reached back into the depths of my closet and pulled out this old sweater my mom knitted me, and boom! it was in shreds. TELLTALE MOTH LARVAE. next, my lovely camel wool coat. PATCHES OF BALDNESS. i went down to the sweaters i had put in storage in rubbermaid. THERE WAS A CATERPILLAR IN MY CLOTHES. i immediately launched into my tried and true strategy for dealing with such situations: a finely balanced blend of panic and overreaction.

(grooosssssssssss.)

the good news is, my closet is clean now. all that wrapping paper i was going to reuse? POTENTIAL MOTH FODDER. GONE. (sorry, trees). that old mattress cover? down the trash chute. those wool sweaters i was thinking about keeping? on the next boat to the goodwill. now, a multipronged approach:

1. i have a lot of silk dresses. you don't go to 4 weddings a year without accumulating some, you know? and sweet fancy moses, you want me to dry clean them all? heck no. they're in my freezer. yes, that's right, and i will have none of your ridicule.

2. i am washing everything in the house. everything. i'm sorry if anyone in this building wanted to use the washing machines this week, but they will have to wait.

3. chemoprophylaxis. there seem to be two schools of thought. first is to seal up your clothes with old fashioned mothballs. effective, but may also kill you, your pets, or your children if you get too close. second, cedar. i'm turning the downstairs storage into death-ball territory, while limiting callie's upstairs world to cedar.

game on, moths. you think you're up for this? talk to the fruit flies who tried to take on my kitchen this summer. oh, that's right, you can't! because there were no survivors.