pants off dance off

Three things are happening.

1. I am studying for (yet another) exam. My pants are off, my hand is stained with chocolate chips, my eyes are sore and my mind is wandering.

2. I've been listening to the podcast, "Adults read things they wrote as kids". It is exactly what it sounds like, and the results are often hilarious and sometimes poignant reminders of what it was like to be writing stories and diaries and journals and (eep!) poems as a boy-crazy kid and angsty adolescent.

3. We're finishing unpacking our house, sorting through all our books and papers as we put them out on shelves. I found my old blog archive and have been reading through it.

These events are coming together to form a perfect storm.

I am having flashbacks to every exam I've studied for previously. Long days in the UBC library, curled over molecular biology texts. Sending mass email quizzes to all my friends so they would write back and divert my attention during study breaks (the world before facebook). Chugging diet pepsi and sitting at my little blue desk in my little blue bedroom at my parents house, playing CDs (CDs!) to mark the time I could start and stop working. Perspiring it out in Australia, experiencing my first page-curling palm sweat that rippled my notes. Googling boys and pictures of cute puppies and babies. Writing diary entries and blog posts and study haikus and...

Anyways. This is my last exam. Ever. I'm getting better at studying. More efficient. Enjoying my breaks more (baby cuddles are way better than pictures) and feeling less guilty about eating all the junk.

I do have a worrying urge to send out a mass email to all my 2001 friends. Answer the following questions and i'll send you my answers. I actually saved all their answers from back in the day, but alas, they're on discs. I'll keep thinking about what i want to know...

What book are you reading right now?
What song is MAKING your summer?
Who are you thinking about kissing? (Way more interesting before everyone got married...)
What's the weirdest thing you've ever done in the library?
What should I google right now?

All this, plus comforting manatees.

One last exam. ONE MORE TO GO.

googles, "how much is botox"...

When the patient's mother grabs me and says, "Are you the staff?" I am momentarily chuffed. 

I must look authoritative. Mature. Confident in my medical professionalism. 

"I'm not", I say. "But what can I help you with?"

"We want another doctor. Our doctor looks too young."

Sigh.

I am in that delightful stage where I look haggard enough to be staff, but am inexperienced enough to need someone supervising me. 

The fun part about working at the Children's Hospital is that I am not supposed to know how to manage kids, so people give me lots of help and training and double check my plans. 

(They also ask me for help with ER specific problems; last night I used ultrasound to place a hematoma block and reduce a Bennet's fracture, which is a bit of a rock star move. FYI.) 

The less fun part is that the junior residents look about 12 years old and I keep mixing them up with the patients.

Oh well. Wiggly butts, rashes, minions teeshirts and therapeutic popsicles. Pediatric ER is not all bad.

Routine

Elective time.

Drive a million miles, arrive at a musty-smelling home with sad motel furniture.

Claim a room, figure out which couch is comfiest.

How many channels do you get?

The wifi password is Isengard? How are you nerdy enough to have that password, but misspell Isengaard? How did I notice?

I think the hospital is walking distance to here, but where is the nearest LCBO?

Yelp "best delivery thai Ottawa".

Is this pad thai? The soup tastes like dirty bathwater.

Man, I wish this place had air conditioning, but at least it's clean.

Why can't I log into my schedule?

I think my first shift is tomorrow. Where are my scrubs? Did I forget to pack my scrubs?

I have done this every year, several times a year, for about 10 years. This is my last elective. Unusually, I have my family with me to help settle in, and also make things complicated (I know which couch is comfiest and I'm not currently on it.) Three weeks, then I'm done. Living in one place for more than a year at a time. Making a paycheque. Deciding what shifts I want to work and when...

Now all I need is a recommendation for good delivery food in Ottawa.