Well the sourdough bread making has been going well. Matthew made a light rye sourdough the other day that was ddeeeelicious. We made more yummy bruschetta with it. I have been on evenings, which has been okay. Most importantly the one time I was at a birth and the baby required bag-and-mask, it was still when the reg was on, so I wasn't alone for too long before help arrived. Which is how I generally prefer those things! Patients are still all liars and fakers. Mostly the adult ones I have to cover when I'm on evenings are liars and fakers. It's all about narcotics or attention, some people seem to have made it their life's work to fake being sick or in pain. I mean, these people are experienced at it and really good at what they do! They are time and money wasters. The last thing you want when you are covering another specialty is to spend most of your time dealing with things that aren't real. Anyway... end non-specific rant.

I don't feel like enough people have taken the time to enjoy "Reefer Madness - the musical" so here is a short excerpt of some of the lyrics:
"We are just like Romeo and Juliet
We're happy young and bubblin' with love
I can't wait to read the ending!
I can't either!
But I'm sure it turns out real swell
I bet Romeo marries his Juliet
They have a baby
And makes lots of friends
That's probably the way the play ends"
________________

I guess I'm in a fairly random mood today. I might go try and tidy up the house a bit before guest type people arrive (or Matt gets home from the shops and refuses to give me a raspberry split because I haven't done anything useful).

Very quickly I forgot to mention that last night I found a leopard slug in our yard, I think we probably have lots of them, they are an introduced pest, but I saw them on "life in the undergrowth" one week and they are really amazing. You should see the way they mate (http://members.optusnet.com.au/awnelson/davidavid/slug/ <-- this site has good photos of it). Plus if you put slugs in your bathroom they eat the mould!

Heart of Joy, Heart of Sadness

Part I - Heart of Joy
Today, after blatently copying Muppit's idea to make sour dough, Matt and I (actually I was at work and had nothing to do with it) baked our first loaf of sour dough using out starter. And it has turned out quite well, especially for a first go. It is not quite as sour as I expected, but it is still yummy, a little sour, and very bread like:) Tomorrow I shall have bruschetta for breakfast. Matthew has named our starter "the bitch" after the starter in Kitchen Confidential, one of his favourite novels. It was indeed a happy moment

Part II - Heart of Sadness
Matt and I have a set of 6 burnt red Le Crusset ramikens and recently I have come to lament the decision to only bring 4 of them to Melbourne with us. Especially as our two best deserts - creme brule and chocolate soufle are cooked in the ramikens and we will soon have everybody with us and need 6 of them to cook these deserts. However today, there is a new loss to lament. Did you know that if you drop a ramiken onto tile floors from a height of 1 metre, it breaks? Well it does:( And now there are three ramikens. I think what this means is everyone will have to share. Matt and I will share, Becky and Matt2 can share and Sally and Floss can share. Alternatively Matt and I might get our act together and just buy three dirt cheap ramikens to cook with while they are here. We'll see what happens.

Must go, Matthew keeps yelling stuff about the opening ceremony for the commonwealth games.

Smile

A smile
Is a great weapon
In can hold captive a heart
And make it feel free
It can connect strangers
In kindness
In the acknowledgement
Of existance
It is the innocence
That we all crave
A beautiful thing
To gaze upon
To remember

hello

Hello. I am tired. It turns out that if you work 8am-10pm for two days in a row. And come home after each shift and have cups of tea and snacks and watch TV for a while, that it makes you tired. But I have to go to work now so I can't write an exciting post. Patients are liars. That's all I'm going to say for now.

A tiny bit restless

Last night I was utterly amazed, that after working a week of nights, and sleeping most of the day away, I was able to go to bed and sleep the whole night through. I thought I must be blessed with a very easy to reset clock. Now that it is 2.30am in the morning and I have been to bed 3 or 4 times, I am starting to think I may have had that thought a little bit too early. However I have come up with a few solutions.

First, I have a small headache, so I have decided to take something for it. My first thought was paracetamol. Unfortunately the only paracetamol I can find in the house is children's liquid paracetamol, that I once bought because I had a sore throat. That's not really a problem, I'd be happy to take it, except, embarrassingly, I can't actually get the child-proof lid off. STOP LAUGHING. It's actually a real problem. For some reason any childproof lid where you have to push the lid in and twist, never works for me. Squeezing sides is fine, those I can do, pushing lids in - I just end up with a sore hand. Right now for instance my hand feels like it has carpet burn because I push in and I try to twist, and then I push harder and try to twist, and the bloody thing doesn't move. So I had to move to the second choice of asprin. Now as we all know, you shouldn't have things like asprin on an empty stomach if you can avoid it. Usually people would recommend milk if you weren't going to eat. I don't particularly like milk. However I have found a milk type product which I thought would do the job. So I have taken my dissolvable asprin, and now I am drinking bailey's. Damn that paracetamol.

Secondly, the list of ideas and jobs in my head need to be written down. Otherwise I'm just going to keep thinking of them. They just keep running through my head "book a hotel in Canberra" "get a present for Jasmine" "look up places to stay while skiing" "convince my brother and his family to meet me at Dubbo to go to the zoo".... Over and over they run through my head. That's it. I've written my list. I've checked I have the things I need for Jasmine's present. I'm going to trial the bed again. I think maybe Cecil is finding this a bit disruptive to his sleep... I do feel bad. Maybe tomorrow I'll be a good girl and go for a walk with him.

End of The Act (The Curtains Close)

I didn't tell you
Before the curtains closed over your eyes
Over you
Hiding all the things
I needed to know
The you
Impossible to know
Impossible to see
The you
Full of impossible judgements
With eyes wide open
And completely unfocussed
Not short sighted
Not long sighted
Not sighted
So I didn't tell you
And the cycle of silence
Permeates the air
Its presence
Heavier
Then the rain
Swallowing us
Just as I am swallowing
All the words
I couldn't say
To the empty space
Of you

End of Nights

I have survived a week of nights. Yay. I am happy to report I did not have to go to any scary births on my own that required me to resuscitate neonates. For which I am very very grateful! The truth is, that no matter how busy any night may not have been, to me it was a good night, because I have still not been required to use CPR. Isn't it funny how standards change. When I worked in a micro lab as a lowly lab assistant, and didn't really do anything that was remotely difficult or involving people's lives, the worse thing that could happen was a busy night. I used to hope and pray for rain, because people don't go to the doctor if it's raining. It's bizarre, but true. When it's raining people think "oh, I'd better stay at home, it's raining". Or at least they don't go and get swabs when it's raining. They also don't get swabs, give poo, wee, fingernail or sputum samplings on major holidays. It's a fact of life. However, now that I'm doing doctor stuff at a hospital, being busy is not the worse thing that can happen. People dying is (despite what Dr House might say!).

On the plus side, I was also not terribly busy most nights. I didn't actually sleep too much, but I have discovered the depths to which Tv sinks at 3am in the morning. It's low. Really low. You know how terrible our morning news-type shows are? The american ones are worse, much worse. Who knew that was even possible.

Anyway, I have just chased and killed a white-tail spider that was in the house. Normally I would be fairly opposed to the killing of a spider just because the spider existed. However white-tail spiders are renowned for biting people because the spiders wander around so much. Whilst it is debatable whether or not their reputation for bites causing necrotic ulcers is deserved. A bite is a bite, and I'd rather debate that debate theoretically, not by being bitten and seeing if it went necrotic. I guess the reason I was particularly not keen was because Cecil had a bite (not of human origin) on his shoulder last weekend. He didn't notice it, but I noticed the bite wound and the area of redness around it. Over the course of the week the erythema around the wound worsened into a single quotation mark shape with the round part of it being larger then a 50 cent coin. Even now there is still some redness but I am reassured that it is fading now and not growing worse. I know I had no proof that this particular spider was the culprit. But I haven't had a problem with spider bites before and these spiders are biters, and it was there and it seemed fair.

Anyway, last night I had no trouble falling asleep despite sleeping most of the day. But this evening I'm struggling a little bit. But i might go give it another whirl.