Monday Pants

I'm tired and stressed and cranky. And it's Monday.

And then these walked through the door:

Courtesy of the medical student on our hospital team. I should specify that even though they might look like scrubs, they're actually a horrific geranium red/pink denim fabric, and he paired them with a button-up shirt and a bright red tie. He calls them "My Monday Pants." He wears them without shame or hesitation.

I officially stand in awe of this phenomenon.

Gee, the traffic is...terrific.

One morning, Cletus woke up, looked over at his cousin/wife, belched mightily, then said, "I reckon people ain't gon know we's rednecks less'n we advertise it better." Several weeks later, after extensive debate over the proper spelling of Redneck, and heated discussion about whether the additional flag on the truck cab's antenna would be tacky excess or stylistic genius, they settled on a design that was both historically referential and contemporarily distasteful. And behold, as I was on my way to Best Buy to pick up a new power cord for ye olde laptop this evening, I got stuck behind Cletus Redneck's truck as it made its way inexorably to Wal-Mart.

Seriously.

Atlantic to Pacific

Starting this upcoming Monday, I'm slated for 2 straight months of intense, sleep-deprived, heartbreaking, boundary-stretching inpatient medicine and pediatric rotations, with 80-hour workweeks and 30-hour call shifts and a lot of wondering why I'm doing this. In the calm before the storm, I had some flexible time off last week and went up to Minnesota then out to San Diego for vacations with friends. In Minnesota, I learned that the word "belated" makes up for absolutely any amount of elapsed time, and also that cake is still really tasty no matter what belated occasion you pretend it's for.

I learned that breaking 100 in a bowling game can fill a person with infinite pride.

I also learned that Justin, who was recently fitted for a tuxedo for his upcoming wedding, has similar measurements to most Miss America contestants. It was hard to tell whether he was proud of this fact or not. (For the record, he measures 36-27-34, but he declines to participate in the swimsuit portion of the competition for some reason.)

- - - - - - - - - -

In San Diego, I learned that I make a really pathetic flamingo

and that Dar makes a really pathetic tortoise

but that we would both fit inside the mouth of the (extinct) megalodon shark

or inside the nest of a weaver bird. ...if the weaver bird were 100 times bigger than its actual size.

I learned that this Northern White Rhino is one of only 7 left in the world. There are 2 males and 5 females (4 of whom are too old to breed). It's pretty sobering to look at an animal and realize that it will probably be extinct before our children's generation is old enough to realize it had ever existed at all.

Speaking of breeding, as we walked past the African Gerunuk enclosure, one of them was just standing at the back of the field, ho-hum, casually grazing while giving birth. Holy shmoley, I've never seen anyone or anything act that nonchalant during childbirth! This antelope is my new Icon of Pain Tolerance. (In the picture, you can see its newborn poking its head up out of the grass near the mother's front legs.)

On a side note, anytime I think of animals giving birth, I have a flashback of the night that my sister's friend's chihuahua decided that my face was the best place to have puppies while I was asleep. There's nothing like waking up to find your face inches from amniotic membranes. It ruins the whole "miracle of life" thing.

On an unrelated note, koalas are relentlessly cute:

And SeaWorld is amazing, despite being relentlessly commercialized.

And vacation is a very good thing.

CHOMP!!!!

And then, in an unprecendented example of rock climbing gone horribly wrong, the cliff face decided to fight back:

Slam!

Ah, sweetness is in the air. Another Valentine's Day come and gone. I hope you spent yesterday evening receiving and enjoying the chocolate, flowers, fancy dinners, candlelight, diamonds, and shhmoooopy love cards that the holiday entails.

In contrast, my feelings about Valentine's Day are probably adequately summed up by the Zombie Pet Shoppe Playset. So I spent yesterday in Philadelphia with my friend Alyssa, attending a Story Slam.

Philly has a very cool organization called First Person Arts that sponsors a story-telling competition each month. They give the audience a theme then let people come up with whatever true life experience they can think of that relates to the theme. Audience members' names get drawn randomly from a bucket, and whoever's name is drawn goes up on the stage to tell their story in 5 minutes or less. It all gets scored by judges from the audience who rate the stories on content and delivery. The winner of the night gets invited back to be part of a summer Grand Slam, which is a massive crazy championship round for all the year's winners.

Last night's extremely Valentine-appropriate theme: The Ex-Files. There were some amazing stories. Terribly odd and awkward tales of high school romances, painful breakups, first kisses, life-changing heartbreaks. Some funny, some sad, most a bittersweet mix of both. One girl talked about the unrequited junior high crush she had on a guy with a rat tail haircut. She's probably still in therapy to this day, if only because feeling attracted to someone with that haircut must undoubtedly scar a person for life.

And then my name got drawn from the bucket.

The rest is a blur.

Here's the story I told:

When a relationship ends, you have an Ex. You also have an Ex-House, which means you need a new place to live. That is how I found myself searching the classifieds for an apartment in Minnesota. After reading plenty of disconcerting listings for overpriced mildewed windowless basements shared with creepy roommates who were probably registered sex-offenders, I found a listing for a "Clean, quiet, shared 2-bedroom apartment very close to St Mary's Hospital. $400/month, all-inclusive."

This was clearly the holy grail of apartment offerings, so I called immediately. A polite, intelligent man answered the phone and explained that he and his wife lived in a very large house on the hillside. It was too much space for the two of them, so they had subdivided it to make the lower level into a separate apartment. They offered it at a low rent rate so that they could catch more interest and thus be more selective of quality tenants, who they welcomed into their home like family. He told me the other current tenant (my prospective roommate) was a very responsible nurse employed by Mayo Clinic. I excitedly asked when I could come take a look at this wonderful place. He said, "How about tonight?"

After work, I rode my bicycle to the "clean, quiet, shared 2-bedroom apartment very close to St Mary's," which turned out to be 3 miles away from St Mary's, all uphill. I was nervous that I would be so sweaty and haggard from the bike ride that they would deem me unfit to rent to. I knew they were highly selective, and I silently pleaded that I'd be found worthy.

I finally arrived to the address (gasping for breath) and feasted my eyes on my prospective future home: a decrepit funky place that looked like a single-wide trailer rendered in brick, thoughtfully landscaped with lots of dead stuff and broken things. The door was gaping open and creaked inward away from me as I tried to knock, revealing a split-level staircase with steps headed up and steps headed down. The landlord came bounding down the stairs, beer-belly flailing side to side, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts and a black silk dressing gown with a giant red dragon emblazoned across the back. I wanted to run away. Instead I said, "I called about the apartment." He said, "Come on upstairs and meet the family!"

Upstairs, the living room walls were encrusted with those frightening porcelaine things you buy from the Sunday glossy ads -- the plates with the embossed wolf howling at the moon, and the indian praying to the sky, and dream catchers, and lifelike dolls with beady little eyes watching your every move. I was greeted by a girl who was about 15, dressed in a ratty sportsbra and sweatpants, watching a Blue Man Group concert on TV and maniacally dancing along. I said, "This must be your daughter." She said, "I'm his wife." I said, "Great! Ummmmm...so...uhhhh...awkward...can I see the apartment?"

Dragon Man led me down the stairs, which dead-ended at a piece of plywood. By opening a closet door, shimmying sideways through the closet mess, then passing through a gaping hole they had busted through the back wall of the closet, we arrived in the garage. Taking a 180 turn to circumnavigate the water heater, we came to a door. The door to the "clean, quiet, shared 2-bedroom apartment very close to St Mary's." At last.

Dragon Man turned the key in the lock and swung the door open. The air inside was thick with a haze of 40 years of marijuana and hard living. I found myself standing in a kitchen comprised of a laminate countertop propped up on 2x4's, a sink that drained into a bucket instead of pipes (because plumbing is irrelevant), and a stack of dishes full of stagnant water full of organisms that had probably been there long enough evolve into intelligent life.

The bathroom was off the kitchen through a set of flap-hinged saloon doors. It contained a sink and a toilet. When I asked about the shower, Dragon Man pointed to a drain in the floor. You showered by wrapping the curtain around you and hoping for the best as water rained down from a bare pipe in the ceiling.

From the kitchen, gazing ahead through the smoke, I could see the living room. There was a leathery 40-something man with long stringy hair sitting on the couch watching TV and emanating child molester vibes. As a wave of revulsed horror washed over me I asked, "Are you the nurse?"

To my relief, he said, "No."

To my non-relief, he followed that up by saying, "She's my girlfriend. I just come over to sleep with her." And then, setting a new standard for classiness, he finished by saying, "But don't worry. We close the door."

Meanwhile, Dragon Man started listing all the perks of living there. Of note, I would get my entire security deposit back when I moved out as long as I "don't punch any fist holes through the wall, or patch them up yourself if you do." Then he showed me to "my" room. The door only opened about 1/3 of the way because it ran into the bed. The twin bed filled the room. The room had no windows. It also had no closet. Because it was a closet.

At that point, completely overwhelmed, I hastily shook the Dragon's hand (vowing to thoroughly sanitize my entire limb later), and told him what a GREAT place the apartment was but that I had a few more possibilities to check out before I made up my mind. Then I fled from the clean, quiet, shared 2-bedroom apartment, riding my bicycle into the night and honestly contemplating the relative appeal of homelessness.

- - - - - - - - - - -

In related news: Guess who won Philadelphia's Valentine's Day Story Slam...

- - - - - - - - - - -

Do I need this?

Yes. Yes, I'm pretty sure I do.

The real question (if you can read the fine print there) is whether the fact that this toy has "small parts" is reeeeeeeeeealllly the only thing that makes it "not suitable for children under 3 years old."

Distance running with a soaking wet gorilla

First and foremost, I can happily report that I survived the Krispy Kreme Challenge this weekend! Despite 4 miles, 12 donuts, 2400 calories, 7500 runners, 34-degree weather and nonstop pouring rain, I survived! Everyone had to arrive an hour early for pre-race registration. Mostly that involved standing around shivering in the rain, wondering why the heck I signed up for this event. On the plus side, I met a lot of phenomenal people! Including Elvis (...ish), the two guys from Dumb & Dumber (...ish), a guy wearing nothing but black body paint and two strategically-placed Frisbees (...yeek), and a guy in a full gorilla costume which had to have weighed 40 pounds when you include the amount of rainwater it had absorbed.

(Sorry it's blurry. I was shivering uncontrollably at this point.)

I haven't competed in a cross-country/road race since the state championships my freshman year of high school, and I've never been in a race with thousands of runners like this one has. There were so many people lined up at the starting line, it took over 5 minutes from the time the starting gun went off to the time my part of the crowd actually made it up to the line to truly start the race.

A few quick miles later, I arrived at Krispy Kreme, passed through a chute to pick up a boxed dozen donuts... ...and then crouched down in the Krispy Kreme parking lot with all these other runners and ate until I lost my will to live. I learned that if you stack up 3 donuts then smash them flat, you can pretend it's just one really dense donut and eat it all at once. That's a life skill that will probably never come in handy, but a life skill nonetheless. Things went well until donut #9, at which point I thought I heard my stomach audibly beg, "Please, don't hurt me anymore." I mercilessly fed it 3 more donuts, showed my empty box to the gate judge, and starting running again. I had thought running with a dozen donuts in my stomach would make me feel ralphy. But actually, eating the donuts had been so unpleasant that resuming running felt like a relief by comparison. The worst part was seeing the splattered donut remnants on the pavement all the way back to the finish line; mementos of the people whose GI tracts hadn't been so lucky. Ultimately, I had a fantastic amount of fun, didn't yammer, and didn't freeze to death! Plus, I finished in the top 100 women out of about 3,000! Wheeeee! ...totally never doing that again.