time, time, time

see what’s become of me

while i looked around
for my possibilities
i was so hard to please
but look around, leaves are brown
and the sky is a hazy shade of winter

hear the salvation army band
down by the riverside, it’s bound to be a better ride
than what you’ve got planned
carry your cup in your hand
and look around, leaves are brown now
and the sky is a hazy shade of winter

hang on to your hopes, my friend
that’s an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away
simply pretend
that you can build them again
look around, the grass is high
the fields are ripe, it’s the springtime of my life

— “hazy shade of winter”, originally by simon & garfunkel

i’ve always loved that song, but i admit i (like, totally!) grew up on the bangles version (see below). i vividly remember trying to capture this song onto mix tapes — it was hard, because it didn’t get a lot of radio play! the video is 80s-licious:

anyway, i’ve sort of been dreading this weekend, and i woke up not super-excited about having to spend both today and tomorrow in the ED. but this song popped into my head, and reminded me that it’s the springtime of my life. and what’s so terrible about spending the day taking care of patients? i DID sign up for this, after all.

today
✔ i will do one thing at a time
✔ i will not get caught up in the chaos
✔ i will prioritize but i will not rush

one challenge to flow and mindfulness in the ED is that you can see exactly how many patients are lined up in the waiting room at any one time and what their issues are. this is useful for triage purposes, but it tends to just put me on edge as i see people piling up.

newsflash: worrying about the patients who haven’t been put in rooms yet doesn’t help ANYTHING. aside from making sure there aren’t kids in respiratory distress languishing out there (and the triage nurses are good at making sure that doesn’t happen!) i need to keep my mind centered on the ones i’m actually dealing with. today i will aim to do just that.

culinary chi
caroline, i’m glad you liked my term. i definitely found it more fun to work in my refreshed kitchen! i think it even helped me be more creative with our curry noodle leftovers:

repurposed into a salad
one thing the clean-out did was to demonstrate that if canned goods are buried in cabinets, they WILL eventually expire. oops! it pained me to throw things out, but olives that were ‘best in 10/2007’ are probably not good for anyone. i’d really like to do a better job of using things up and keeping track of what i have.

for the time being, i am going to try to plan at least one recipe a week around using up the odds and ends left in the freezer and pantry. i also am NOT allowed to buy any of the following until our stashes are used up:

☒ pasta of any kind
☒ rice
☒ frozen vegetables
☒ bread

we’ll see what kinds of things i can come up with in the hopes of emptying the coffers! i suppose it might end up being kind of fun.

cilantro haters!
we are in good company. although i disagree with julia on the arugula.

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4.16.10

workout: 5 treadmill miles, 9:13/mi to 8:35/mi (started at 6.5 mph, increased the speed with each song up to 7.0 then back down, all 0.5% incline).

vegan misdemeanor: hopefully famed vegan dreena burton won’t get too mad that i used real cheese rather than a dairy-free sub in her veggie sizzle burritos recipe. in my defense*, it was fresh mozzarella from local hillsborough cheese company. and also, i love cheese.

josh and i both enjoyed this meal immensely, and it felt uber-healthy (moderate amount of cheese and all). served with extra veggies mixed with local tomato + homemade easy guac (just avocado, lime, salt, pepper, and a dash of cayenne for good measure)

* i realize: not a great defense. i’m a doctor and not a lawyer, after all! but do i really need to defend myself anyway?