Let's review, shall we?
- I came home from France. Home to the kids and Willem, which is good, but home from France. From Paris.
- A little over 24 hours later, my dad called, thus beginning the process which ended with him moving back in. The fact of him living here? Doesn't bother me. I'm glad that we're able to offer, and glad that he has a place to live that involves people who love him and respect him. But it's another change. So far, everyone is adjusting pretty well: Willem, now having a partner in crime, is drinking more beer; the kids, having a new audience, are behaving in particularly annoying ways at dinner; I, given my propensity to think too much, am worried about his health and finances but have used this opportunity to eat more ice cream. And fried dough, which Willem has suddenly started making at home. (There! There it is! My unequivocal positive for the week! I knew there was one, somewhere.)
- My water heater died. And in case Willem was harboring ongoing doubt about whether we really needed to pull up the carpeting and replace it, this morning the whole house smelled uncomfortably like, well, moldy carpet.
- Friday, I overslept. And the door fell off the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. And I had two very long and difficult cases that kept me out until 10:00 last night.
So, I'm feeling toasty today. Stick a fork in me, and all.
When I think back over the week, I get little snapshots of memory, instead of mental movies. Moments that seem to have nothing to do with each other and yet somehow work together...
- I was walking my normal oft-repeated path from my coat-closet office at the hospital to the emergency department where the patients are, and glanced idly into an exam room on the way... and noticed that, in a moment of supremely bad feng shui, the occupant's feet were pointed toward the door. But then I realized, it's actually not such horrible feng shui after all, because while the young gentleman's knees were aimed straight at the door, his right foot was pointing directly at the right-hand wall. Those sorts of images bother me enough on sports-disasters shows, but in real life? No, thankyouverymuch.
- I was talking a family through the process of involuntarily hospitalizing their father, and had a moment to think that the 17-year-old, in front of whom the patient had overdosed, had gone from looking older than her years to about four at the moment that her mascara started to run.
- This morning, I was lying on the couch with Jacob, trying to convince my brain to wake up because the boy was clearly not going back to sleep, when he looked up and me and said, "I love you so much." Unprompted.
- I took a nap today. Normally this means I will wake up groggy and disoriented and spend the rest of my day cranky and stupid. So far I've avoided at least most of these side effects.
- Yesterday, my father needed to get a form to his doctor, which he needed signed and faxed to work for an all-clear sort of thing. I faxed it from work in the morning, and by evening, the doctor had received the form, signed it, faxed it successfully along, and my dad was making plans to return to work next week. This is remarkable only in the sense that it's about the only thing all week that has gone smoothly for him.
Enough. Clearly I'm just free-associating now and it's not making a compelling story. But at least it's all out of my head now.
