How I Spent My Summer Vacation

That break was a bit longer than I had hoped. I spent most of the past week editing about an hours worth of video then authoring it all to DVD for the resident’s graduation dinner festivities. It seems that before they graduate from slave labor to filthy rich doctor, residents take a moment from their busy schedules to savagely mock each other because, hey, we’ll never see those guys again, except for the doctor who’s taking a full-time position at the same hospital, but that’s his problem.

I spent pretty much every minute that Abbie slept piecing together jokes involving colitis and systoles, except for those brief moments when I actually slept, too. I had to hit the timeline hard while she slept because she doesn’t tolerate being ignored during waketime. If needed, I could leave her in her playpen with some toys while I hacked away on the computer, but only for a few minutes. After that, her screeches for attention drown out the audio. Oddly, she tolerated being left in her crib much better. I could set her down with a burp cloth, turn on her aquarium lights and sounds toy, and she would be adequately entertained for several minutes watching the aquarium toy, shredding the burp cloth with her teeth, and generally wandering back and forth. The problem with that approach is Abbie apparently has a finite amount of patience for self-entertaining that she can use in every waketime period. By spending her entire patience reserve in one 15-minute span, I then have to deal with one cranky toddler until her next nap. I get the same way if I have to clean the house for more than 15 minutes between naps.

I could manage an extended editing session if someone could watch Abbie for a while. The obvious person to watch her is mommy. Unfortunately, she’s on one of those hectic rotations where the most she could hope to accomplish in her free time is to shower, and maybe if she manages her time really well she could wash her hair too, but that’s only on post-call days. Even though mommy was too busy to watch Abbie much for me, one of the neighboring residents with three of his own young kids practically insisted that he watch her for a night so I could work. I imagine I reacted in much the same way a military commander would react to a soldier volunteering unprompted for a suicide mission: The price is just too high for me in good conscience to allow you to do that, but okay. I happily hacked away in peace for little more than an hour, and then picked her up with red, puffy eyes. He told me that she didn’t cry the whole time I was gone, and that’s not a lie as long as we both believe it.

The day after the dinner, several residents moved away. I helped a little in hopes of pilfering someone’s abandoned deck and dragging it to my back door, but it turns out decks are heavy and generally attached to something. So we still have no deck. Then the next day I took Abbie to see my parents in Sioux City. The highlight of that trip was seeing a baseball game with my dad on Father’s Day. We left Abbie with her grandmother because lord knows a baseball game is tough enough for adults to sit through. The game involved professional players, and when I say professional I mean only that they were paid to play, not that they were necessarily any more talented than you or I or Abbie. The star of the visiting team was The Slowest Known Professional Baseball Player, who was possibly even slower than Vladimir Guerrero. Sioux City surrendered three runs in the top of the first and trailed for the entire game, but managed to score two in the bottom of the ninth in a thrilling comeback that meant they only lost 18-3. Then the next day I came home. Then the next day I blogged. That pretty much takes us up to the present.