Category
February 20, 2017
The other week, I finally tackled the job of painting Scott’s office. He works from home now, so we agreed that setting up his office was priority #1 when we moved into this house. I decided on a paint color and blocked off a Sunday afternoon to sequester myself in his office and get it done. I have painted many, many rooms in our homes over the years. I have, what I think, is a pretty good system. Tape on the...
February 6, 2017
I’ve been making these chocolate chip cookies for 25 years. These cookies have traveled from my hometown of Troy, Ohio, to my alma mater, Miami University; to Clarksville, Hopkinsville, Villa Park, Chicago, Memphis, New Albany, Columbus, and Indianapolis; they have a connection to Jamaica and Lima, Peru. They have fed hungry tummies, lonely hearts, homeless souls and the sickest of the sick. They show up when the spirit and the stomach need nourishment. When I was in med school, exhausted and...
January 21, 2017
I have spent many hours this week on hold with several kind customer service representatives trying to help me hack back into my life. Sadly, about two weeks ago, while syncing my phone to my computer, I must have unknowingly checked some box that indicated that I didn’t want to transfer my apps from my phone to my computer…because why, when you are doing a backup, would you want to preserve all of the data from your phone to your computer?...
January 1, 2017
Across my desk, sat the Vice Chair of Surgical Education. She was debriefing with me after an observation of my interactions with the residents and students I have the honor of teaching and mentoring in my new job. She offered some kind and complimentary words followed by a few pieces of advice to make me a better teacher. The interaction was comfortable, but matter-of-fact and compulsory as part of my role as academic faculty. But just as she was getting...
November 17, 2016
Last week, as I was sitting at my desk, mindlessly scrolling through FaceBook, I read that a former colleague, just three years older than me, met an untimely, rather sudden death, leaving behind a wife and two small children. Numb, tears rolled down my cheeks. I couldn’t believe it. On call over the weekend, I admitted patients much younger than me and watched their grieving parents as I told them there was nothing left to do; I admitted patients much...
October 1, 2016
Scott has been out of town on business. And while I miss him terribly, we are doing fine. We really are. As far as I am aware, the kids ate every meal this week. Some on the go, some with friends, and some standing around the kitchen, but they ate. And they bathed. At least a few times. They made it to school. And practices and games. The laundry is done. The dishwasher run. I was on call twice this...
August 29, 2016
Saturday night was definitely not supposed to turn out like that! Scott and I and our two older kids hadn’t even made it to dinner when our poor babysitter back home was texting, asking how to troubleshoot the alarm that was going off. Our sweet sitter walked all over the house, pushing buttons and checking doors and smoke detectors. No fires. No broken windows. Just a loud alarm. We were sitting in traffic downtown, totally unaware that there was a Colts pre-game...
August 6, 2016
I have had just about enough of this week. Getting four kids ready for school, in a new school, is wearing me out. That sucking sound? Yeah, that’s the audible hemorrhage from our checkbook…new clothes, shoes, and backpacks; computers, pencils, and Kleenex tissues…yes it specified Kleenex tissues. By Monday night, I could be heard saying, “Is this week over yet?” My car was at the dealer for an oil change, the dog was incarcerated at the vet for the weekend so we could go to...
July 6, 2016
Seriously. I want to do it all. Every morning, I get up, make my coffee, read, and head into work. I sit in the morning check-out conference with my Handy-Dandy notebook, full of Post-It Note lists of all the things I want to do. We have discussed this before. I want to schedule appointments (eye doctor and PCP and dog grooming), work on my research, arrange for a family picture, apply for a grant, go to the grocery; I want...
May 31, 2016
So…the movers finally showed up. We kinda have a plethora of worldly possessions because #fourkids, #married18years, #ikeepthingsjustincase. In typical Hartwell fashion, we allowed NO buffer of time to close on each house, move, settle, and go on vacation. We reserved the beach house before I even had a start date for my new job. And when we got a full price offer on the old house, we couldn’t let it go just because they wanted to close two days before...