Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Mishpucha (mi familia)
Finish this sentence: location, location . . .
We looked at real estate in the Seattle area today, and Jake radiated disappointment in great, mighty waves. How dare they charge this much for this little? seemed to be his feeling. Problem is, we visited the Olympia area first, and of course you get more for your dollar there. A lot more. Twice as much, seems like.
So, no, we didn’t see any homes we fell in love with, not that it would make a difference; no matter where I go, it’ll be a few months before we’re ready to buy. CREDENTIALING! Hospitals don’t give just any shmoe privileges. Well, sometimes they do (hey, Leann, you reading this?) But even when they do, they still have to go through the credentialing process, and that takes time.
Back to the homes. It seemed like a good idea at the time to have the agent drive us around the various neighborhoods, but by the second hour of this (in the back seat of her Beamer — and why exactly did I go into medicine instead of real estate sales?) I felt sick. Perhaps I wasn’t in the best mood to look at homes.
Deep down, I agree with Jake. I understand the location3 rule on an intellectual level, but my gut still isn’t down with it. I should be less of an idjit about this, though. After all, if our present home weren’t on the ocean, it would be worth about $39.95.
D.
PS: Here’s where we ate tonight. Mmmmmm.
Sentiment
Bloggin’ on the Blackberry tonight, so this will have to be a short one.
Driving to my interview this morning, I remembered something I hadn’t thought of in years. The hospital’s impressive size jarred the memory; that,and the inevitable comparison to my little 44-bed (or whatever) hospital.
We had just moved to Crescent City a scant few weeks before, and Jake had just had his third birthday. While walking with me through our hospital’s foyer, he said, “I like your hospital, Daddy. It’s very nice.”
I know that doesn’t sound like much, but it choked me up a bit to think of it. “My” hospital. There’s such innocence there, and such sweetness in the sentiment.
We had dinner with my friend Stan last night, as I’ve mentioned. His baby girl took a shine to me and insisted I spoon-feed her her dinner. I haven’t done that in a long, long time. So maybe that’s on my mind; maybe I’m remembering Jake at that age; maybe I’m thinking about how much he has changed in the last nine or ten years.
It seems like such a long time . . . and it has gone by way too fast.
D.
Dig the frog
Sighted this morning, perched atop our algae-overgrown tub “pond”:
My best guess, this is Rana aurora, the Northern Red-legged Frog, indigenous to Del Norte and Curry Counties. I saw two of them this morning, but the smaller of the two was camera shy. Nothing could perturb this big fellow.
The call doesn’t sound familiar, though . . . and that means we have another species lurking about. Probably several.
***
We are NOT in transit to Seattle. Karen had some severe abdominal pain last night, so we spent the evening at our friendly neighborhood ER. Nothing serious, she’s fine, but we decided to scrub our Saturday departure date until she felt better. Current plan is to depart Monday morning. Since my first interview is Wednesday, we still have some wiggle room.
***
Coasting on 2.5 hours of sleep, I have this overwhelming desire to do nothing but veg out playing some old computer game — Civilization III, perhaps, or Diablo III. Both of those games are mindless and endlessly replayable. I never could get my head around Civ IV; Leonard Nimoy’s voice-overs were fun, but the slow, tedious, and bloodless gameplay made Civ IV a yawn-fest. Someone decided to make military conquest nearly impossible in that game. Not my idea of escapist fun.
***
A patient’s husband picked up my tab for breakfast this morning. That’s never happened to me before.
I liked it.
Live blogging tonight? Maybe, if I’m not too sleepy.
D.
Thirteen photos for my mom
As y’all know, I decided the other day that I would put together some sort of photo montage for my mom for Mutti’s Day. (She hates it when we call her Mutti. I have no idea why.) Why not kill two birds with one stone and share those photos with you?
If you’ve seen some of ’em before, well . . . sorry.
Mother’s Day prezzies
A friend was bemoaning not knowing what to buy her mom for Mother’s Day. Good thing, too, since this provided me a nice reminder about Mother’s Day. I have a bad habit of forgetting these things.
Karen, fortunately, is one of these people who hates Madison Avenue holidays. I usually get her something for Mother’s Day anyway (or I might fix her a dessert she likes), but if I forgot, I doubt she would be all that upset. MY mother, on the other hand . . .
She’s impossible to buy for. Well, yes and no. In reality, she’s super-easy to buy for. She likes baggy pastel sweatshirts with sequins, the gaudier the better.
Nope. Not gaudy enough. (She would like the color, though.) Maybe,
(more…)
She moved!
Bix (Fanatic Cook), who knows her nutrition*, has been writing about the dangers of a high protein diet (here, for example). Recently, she posted the protein breakdown of a typical vegan diet, and that sparked an interesting discussion. Here’s my question to my readers, which I posed to Bix: don’t vegans have to be careful to balance their diet in order to avoid deficiencies of essential amino acids?
The answer might surprise you.
***
When I woke up at 6:30, Karen was asleep in a peculiar position. Her breathing was so shallow and quiet, I couldn’t hear anything, and I couldn’t see her chest rise.
An hour later, her position had not changed.
(If I were the prick I sometimes claim to be, I would have taken a picture. Hmm. Does this mean I’m actually not the prick I claim to be?)
Sometimes, I touch her to make sure she’s warm, or to feel her chest rise, but often this wakes her up. Is this paranoia a hazard of my profession? A result of my discomfort at all the pain meds she has to take? An inevitable byproduct of our early years together, when her health was even more dicey?
In any case, two hours later, she’s snoring softly (purring, like some of my patients say) and her arms are in a different position. Phew.
***
Day Two of my more-or-less vegan diet. I don’t know how long this will last, but my gut does feel better. Lately, I’ve been having more and more indigestion with meat — beef, especially, which my body seems to think is Milk of Magnesia. But at some level, this is also an intellectual pursuit. I’m asking myself: what would it be like to not eat a steady diet of crap?
I’m going to miss the pork rinds and Cheeze Whiz.
D.
*From her Blogger User Profile: “MPH with concentration in Human Clinical Nutrition, Certificate in Integrative Medicine, BS in Nutrition and Biochemistry.”
Road trip
Short one tonight, since we’re on the road. Tonight, we’re in Garberville, where the streets are paved with marijuana bricks. Which looks a lot like asphalt, actually; you have to get down on your knees and sniff to smell the difference.
Jake and I had dinner at Calico’s Deli, a quirky little place that impressed the hell out of us a few years ago, last time we made this trip as a family. I had pesto, Jake had gnocchi. Jake didn’t like his gnocchi, so he had pesto, I had gnocchi. We brought a BLT back for Karen, who was resting in the hotel.
Another two hundred miles tomorrow. We believe in civilized driving, Karen and I. None of this “500 miles in one day or you’re a sissy” stuff like dear old Dad used to do.
Hey, let’s see how fast I can do Thirteen Road Trips:
- 1964, LA to Boston (Exciting! Everything is exciting when you’re two.)
- 1960s and 70s, various times, LA to Las Vegas (Short of Boston, my parents’ favored vacation destination. *Yawn*)
- 1970, LA to Boston (Exciting! Still too young and dumb to know better.)
- 1972, LA to Boston (By now, I knew better.)
- 1979, LA to Berkeley, I-5 (Boring!)
- 1982, Berkeley to LA, Hwy. 101 (Grueling!)
- 1982, Berkeley to Tahoe (My first and only skiing adventure. I didn’t break anything.)
- 1983, Berkeley to Palo Alto, my first ‘big’ move (Not that big.)
- 1984-1990, Palo Alto to Monterey (The annual Cancer Biology retreat at Asilomar. Best conferences ever.)
- 1990, Palo Alto to LA (We drove the truck. The snakes stayed in pillow cases.)
- 1997, San Antonio to Canyon
LakeMudhole (That’s how desperate we were to see water.) - 1999 and after, Crescent City to San Jose down Hwy 101 (Nice drive. We’re reliving it.)
- 2004, Brookings to Portland (Hwy 101 north of Brookings: kicks ass. Some of the nicest coast line you’ll ever see.)
No lurve, lurvlings. Don’t know when I’d find the time.
Wish us luck 
D.
First beach day of the season
Yay! I’m done photo-futzing.
After a week of rain, we had sun today, and here at Chez Walnut it was deceptively warm. Jake and I noted the low tide and decided it would be a good beach day. We didn’t account for the wind-chill factor.
Photos below the cut. (Big, non-cropped versions here, at Flickr.)
Doing our part to pull America out of the recession
Not much from me tonight, I’m afraid; we got home rather late from our weekend trip to Eureka. We spent money, lots of money (hence the title), on CostCo and PetsMart and a bookstore and restaurants etc.
But the big ticket item came today. A new car, perhaps? Down-payment on a vacation cabin? Hardly. Karen went to see a pain medicine specialist for a shot in the ass. Two shots in the ass, to be precise. She screwed herself up when she fractured her pelvis back in ’05 (it’s the 12-19-05 entry, if anyone’s reeeeally curious) and now, more than two years later, we’re still trying to make her better.
“Discouraging” barely begins to cover it.
She did the shots once before and they did nothing for her. That was with another doc, though, and this doc thinks, well, some docs got it, some don’t. Okay, I’ll buy that, but that’s not where I’m putting my hope. I’m putting my hope in the sheer perversity of the human body, its ability to react one way to Treatment A on one day, and the exact opposite way to the exact same Treatment A on another day.
Ugh. I’m tired. I doubt I’m doing a good job expressing myself. Anyway, she’s fine, thanks, but it won’t be clear for another day or two whether this was a big fat waste of time, hope, and money.
But it’s not a waste of money, is it? We’re bolstering the sagging US economy, yeah!
Back to work tomorrow so I can pay for all of this.
D.
PS: Sorry for not visiting your blogs, sorry for not even doing a great job replying to comments. I’ll do better.