ambition

I must have been feeling like life was under control last January. I don't know what posessed me to do this, but I signed up to host one of the weekly "Lenten soup suppers," which occur every wednesday night in Lent at our church. This job entails preparing the church basement for dinner that starts at 5:00pm. It means that you agree to make a cauldron of homemade soup to feed a 75-100 people. It means that you bring seven pans of "bars" to feed them dessert. The church supplies a big thing full of peanut butter. You're on your own for the rest. Sounds like fun, right? Besides....the median age at Mount Olive Lutheran Church is at least 70. I don't think most of our members can even lift a huge pot o' soup. I felt guilty. If I didn't feed them, who would? I don't want the old folks to starve. Peanut butter sandwiches get stuck in their dentures! So much for trying to run from my Catholic upbringing. The Catholic Guilt is there. Still there. I signed my name on the dotted line that cold January day.... March 25th was a long ways off, anyways. I will probably have tons of time in March. Yippee.

...

Well, it had been a very busy March. I was on the pediatrics service at St. Mary's, which is usually a nice relaxing rotation with 2-3 admissions a day, lots of time to read and learn, and a cup of coffee with fresh apple fritter promptly at 10:30 every morning. Not so this month. I think God decided that I didn't know enough about sick kiddos or something. Instead of peaceful relaxing nights and time with my own kiddos, I spent my evenings and nights admitting sick kiddos...right and left. I think I set a record for the number of peds admissions overnight. 12! People didn't believe me when I told them I admitted twelve kids in one night. I had two other nights of admitting eight kiddos each. Then there's the fact that yours truly made the call schedule for the month...apparrently not my strong suit. Two weeks ago when I looked at the schedule, I noticed that I was on call Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday.... Call every other night for five days in a row. Oops. What idiot would do that? um....

Somewhere in the middle of all this call, we got a letter from the IRS: You screwed up your 2007 taxes and you probably owe us at least $10,000. Yippee! Excellent news. Then, the resdiency decided to subject me to a series of nasty meetings (see last week's blog).

After five days of every other night call, I was pretty shot. Everything I encountered was suddenly hilarious, especially Dr. M, the tall red-headed lovable nut ball attending doc that I did all of these peds admissions with. On a late Tuesday night after five or six kids with gastro entered our service, he joked about me needing to go home and bake a cake. Suddenly, I had this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach: BAKE....uhoh... BARS....SOUP....100 people.....eee gads. I checked my calendar: I was signed up to host dinner for a hundred people TOMORROW night. It was 11:30pm and I was just remembering this. Oh dear.

I called Husband, who was sitting at home, awaiting my arrival. (I had called him an hour ago and said, "just fifteen more minutes, honey...) Our conversation went something like this:
S: "hi Honey!"
M: "grunt. When will you be home? I'm tired."
S: "I need you to do something for me tonight."
M: "I already turned on the electric blanket."
S: "Could you throw a turkey in the oven? I need it for soup for church tomorrow night."
M: "(still groggy) What?!"
S: "a turkey. There's one in the downstairs freezer. Just run some hot water on it, pull out the paper things inside, and throw it in a pan and bake at 325."
M: "damn woman. Let me get a pen and write this down."
S: "thanks." *click*

...

I was home an hour later to find my patient, exhausted, devoted husband chopping carrots in the kitchen that smelled of Thanksgiving. He had tears in his eyes. I was alarmed only for a minute...then I noticed the huge bowl of diced onions on the counter.

Since I was waiting for an admission to come in from Ashland, WI, I decided to stay up and make the soup. By 3:00AM, the turkey came out of the oven and I chopped it into a million pieces. The minute I was finished, my pager went off and it was back to the hospital with me.

...to be continued....