…..I have felt crummy for quite some time. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been living a great life and enjoying things. I still have fun because life’s too short. But I’ve been dragging my backside around through the muck and taking care of business with very little spring in my step. And at night, I can barely get through feeding the pig and the dogs before collapsing in a heap somewhere soft.

You know you’ve had it when you buy a wrap at the store and eat it in the car on the way home because you’re too tired to prepare anything, even yogurt and fruit, and you’re starving. You know it’s bad when you aren’t sure you have the energy to drive home after work, so you sit in your office for forty-five minutes, feeling tired and drained before you can face transportation. And when you can’t make it up the stairs to your bedroom and decide instead to pee in a jar and sleep on the couch….something is definitely off.

I can tell by the rumblings of some of my friends, and by the kids coming into my practice that fatigue and brain fog are at an all time high.

I can also tell you that I’ve lost patience with feeling crummy. I’ve lost patience enough that I’m willing to do the work to feel better. I’m also interested in sharing my story because I think I’m on the cusp of a breakthrough, and everyone needs to hear this.

We are breaking down. Not all of us. Some have found health, vitality and balance and others are constitutionally strong enough to handle the abuse. I’m strong as an ox. I’ve made it through all kinds of self-battery and assault and have always been able to rally and go, go, go….through partying in high school, all-nighters in college, medical school and residency training that encouraged us to push through exhaustion, raising kids, and through the belief that any kind of extreme self-care was thoroughly selfish and unnecessary. I believed our bodies were designed to handle everything I was throwing at mine, and any problems only meant I wasn’t pushing myself hard enough. I was ram tough and proud of it…..

…..until I couldn’t do it anymore.

Breaking down and having nothing left in the tank is the end result of days, and months or even years and decades of poor self-care and disordered living….and it is now an epidemic that is hitting people of all ages and all walks of life.

Theoretically, my training should have taught me how to fix people who don’t feel well. I’m also supposed to know a thing or two about staying healthy. I’ve mastered a few tricks, like how to pop in a nursemaid’s elbow and the diagnosis and treatment of strep throat but these days, it’s not enough.

General advice to eat well, drop a few vitamins and get enough sleep mean nothing in a world so out of whack that just about every industrial machine is working against us.

How bad is it? Really???

Well it’s bad enough that it’s no longer a question of if we’ll fall apart, but when. And the when is becoming – at younger and younger ages. As a pediatrician I can’t escape the sad fact and awareness that young children are hitting walls left and right. Middle schoolers and high schoolers are in crisis. Parents are at a loss and fatigued themselves. And when we come up for air, we vow to make changes that don’t always stick and rarely change the outlook much.

Many people talk about their health journey, and while it’s tempting to rush through it all here in one giant post chock full of pearls and what I consider to be straight up wisdom there are two problems with that.

The first is that you won’t probably hear me. You might say – oh yeah – but there won’t be much of an impact, and I really do want us all to feel better.

And the other is that I’m not 100 percent there yet.

I may not be able to evaluate some interventions well enough to even recommend them for a year or more. But I definitely have lift off.

The categories I have come to believe we need to consider for optimal health and well-being are:

1. Sleep, rest and restoration.
2. Food as medicine
3. Body movement: flexibility, strength and endurance
4. Rhythm, pace, attention and focus
5. Art, creativity and flow
6. Community, friendship, love and connection
7. Purpose, productivity and contribution.

As you move down the list, it starts with self care in the most basic sense. The lower categories are without a doubt key measures of living well, but it’s very hard to live there without a foundation of good health. And, as we are learning and can no longer escape: all of these categories are interdependent. Numbers 1-3 are necessary to get to 4-7, but 4-7 support good physical health and magnify the impact of 1-3.

Nothing I’m saying here is new. But what is new to me is that once you break down and fall apart, you need it all to be optimized in order to feel well; you can’t pick and choose. That’s why “trying” one new health recommendation is doomed to fail. One new thing is unlikely to give you rewards beyond the honeymoon phase.

It’s why medications have become crutches for so many, myself included. I don’t hesitate to help out with the right prescription. And I’m not against taking pills. Better living through chemistry is a thing. But so is better living through better living.

The first thing I need to say is not very nice but it’s true: no one is actually looking out for your health but you. Food manufacturers only care that you eat and drink as much of their product as possible. For pharmaceutical companies, disease represents an opportunity for profit. Your doctor is trained to treat illness, not to prevent it. And health care workers are spread ridiculously thin themselves. How could they know the first thing about living well? Teachers are teaching metrics to sleep deprived classrooms of kids nourished on sugar and artificial foods stripped of their nutritional content. Brains need proper fuel, not an excess of calories. Social media isn’t interested in real-life connection, and time outdoors has been reduced for children to short recesses and scheduled soccer games. The world is noisy, full of unwelcome distraction and it’s moving quickly. Rest is hard to come by, and feeling refreshed after sleep is for many a distant pipe dream.

Some of you have cracked the code and I’m all ears. What have you learned?

I’m emerging from my Covid cocoon ready to make what’s left of this life the best I can make it. That’s everyone’s goal whether we have the energy to go for it or not. I’m going to share as I figure this out and I’ll start with a book and a few housekeeping items.

Read this book:

Commit to eating only whole, fresh foods, in moderation and with minimal sugar and refined carbohydrate:

Spend time with people you love outside:

More, tomorrow because….

It’s time to enjoy this beautiful day!

I had been sleeping great for weeks then bam – the last two nights have been all: toss, turn, doze, wake up, reach for iPhone, then watch the sun come up.

I know that as wide awake as I feel right now, when it’s time to actually get out of bed I will be inexplicably sleepy and not ready to start the day.

Ironic little thing, this insomnia.

There’s a bit of panic because I’ve been spacey and tired during the day. I can always do my job because people in need are compelling enough to keep me focused, but I’m sloooow when it comes to paperwork and filler. I can just sit in my back office and stare into space for hours, happy as a clam.

I’m also in one of my “creative phases” aka I’m hypomanic. That’s when I vigorously recommit to hobbies, art, home decor, gardening – you name it. I used to get full-on crazy and would have a ton of physical energy. I could deep clean my entire house from top to bottom, rearranging every drawer and shine all the silver – in a single weekend.

Now my brain gets going but my body poops out. I can’t always execute all my bright ideas like I used to, so stuff just swims around in my head until I can find a way to make it happen IRL. Or until I forget about it.

I have figured out that I need to review my Tues/Thurs Spanish sessions with Eze. He is a linguistics wizard in his twenties and can name and execute every part of speech perfectly, which is hard because I never got much past subjects and predicates and nouns and verbs. If it wasn’t a part of Schoolhouse Rock it didn’t exist, or stick with me. Conjunction junction anyone? Schoolhouse Rock made us all a little bit smart if we could nust remember a few lyrics.

I need to set aside a little time Tuesday and Thursday nights to review my zoom notes. Yesterday we did something Eze called “the family links”. Like a golf course, but with people and complicated relationships.

This was not an exercise for sissies, I’ll tell you that. (My brain just made a pun so I’m leaving it even though sissy is a word that could land me in gender jail or gay prison). Sister/sissy get it? Ha,ha – just enjoy it please.

We flew right past the nuclear family and then things got cookin’. It’s important to learn what’s relevant so we explored terms like step-father, ex-husband, and crazy uncle once removed. There are many family links and we stopped just short of “squatter I’m trying to evict” and “single guy who always comes to Thanksgiving and eats all the cheese dip”

I started off my lesson crying. Yo lloré por many reasons. First I had tried to look at a conjugation chart for the verb “ir” the night before and it broke me. I’ll never learn this damn language!

My mom who’s good with languages and is mastering Italian in her 80’s suggested I just stick with the present tense for the time being.

If only.

Eze is incapable of staying in the present. He’s all over the map tense-wise but I think the tears moved him because he decided to let me just do some present conjugations and the family links.

He also told me that crying is healthy. I’m glad he thinks so because I’ve got more where that came from.

All of my various teachers usually think I’m a hoot….until I start with the crying. I am a marvelous student until things get hard, and then I crumble and weep.

Sometimes I try and abruptly end the lesson, stating that I simply can not go on. “My brain is scrambled,”I say. “Just try this next exercise,” they say.

“I can’t”, I say.

“Yes you can,” they say. They are paid to say that. I am literally paying someone to argue with me. 😆

Ok, fine. I can….kind of. Dammit to hell.

I get this way about many things: music theory, physics, whether to use para or por….some things just make my head spin.

The theory of relativity makes my head just about explode. I’m kind of no way about some things. The teachers say way and I have to try and accept that which I feel in the moment I can not accept, much less learn.

Like when my ex-fiddle teacher Jan got all into the circle of eighths. You can just eff right off with that nonsense. I believe it was that attitude and the crying that got me nixed from his teaching schedule when he decided to pare down his lessons and release a record. (AJ Lee & Blue Summit – awesome band, and I wasn’t ready to tackle the circle of eighths anyway so fair is fair)

When I’m hypomanic (I actually prefer to think of it as being in an expansive state) I think I can do just about anything. And that’s partially true. I can start most things because I am an excellent beginner.

But part of this recent big mood of mine is a wish to go deeper and get better. I’m gunning for mastery this time around.

I just found a strings teacher down the street from my office who fixed me up with a bass ukelele tuned like a violin. How groovy is that???

I asked him about the cool tuning thing and he casually asked me if I knew John Blasquez. WAT???? Why yes he was my first adult violin teacher!!! Well John invented this uke thing and it’s the bomb.

I’m not sure John will ever talk to me again though because I was super cray in my Blasquez days. I had my third baby and was marching towards a divorce. I cried a lot. Especially when he took away my tablature and made me read music.

(Incidentally I also cried when my first Manning Music teacher informed me there would be no sheet music, as I would be learning by ear)

(And I teared up and said some swears later when my next Manning teacher -Jan- suddenly started calling the places I put my fingers by the names of the notes – wtf – I thought we were over that. )

So John basically had it rough and if there was a restraining order for ex-students he’d probably slap one on me.

I’m telling you though, 2022 is going to be my year of mastery. There will be movement. Progress will be made.

I’m a crier, but it’s gotten way better. Menopause took away my monthly emotional breakdowns, and lexapro keeps me from bursting into tears every time I see a kitten.

I was driving home from work yesterday crying because my dog Garth is now middle aged (pre-mourning his demise) and then I remembered that I’d run out of my lexapro a few days ago.

Bingo.

I’m not depressed, but if I don’t take my lexapro I cry buckets. I could worry that I must be repressing all kinds of demons if a mere three days off my meds turns on the waterworks like this. I could worry a lot about that but I’ve got insurance and it’s easier to go to Walgreens, grab my Rx and swallow all my emotions in one tiny little pill.

I’m being funny/not funny. I care/don’t care.

What I really want and care about is to play music and speak Spanish and write blog posts in between taking care of patients, tending my garden and feeding my dogs and the pig. And I want to read. And throw some pots.

And to do all that I’ll need some better sleep.

And now, we have come full circle and it’s time to get up. I may not have fallen back to sleep but I wrote this masterpiece.

So, silver lining, there ya go.

Sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself on a FB memory or in a random selfie on my iphone that I took before the great shearing of 2021.

I am always startled and I tend to think before realizing that it’s me – wow, how pretty.

I know it’s me, but truthfully it feels like I am looking at someone else.

And in a way, I am.

The first reason I am looking at someone else is that in most of my (good) old photos, I am doing my signature move. Everyone has a go-to photo pose signature move.

Here are some examples of mine:

As you can see, my go to pose is: chin up/out/down (it’s a complicated move actually), lips together with a little smile that forces a slight dimple near the left corner of my mouth and head turned slightly to the right, preferably without a tilt) I am almost incapable of turning to face the world any other way, at least in photos.

So, as I say to myself “how pretty” I also know that it’s a little bit fakey fakey and let’s be honest – I probably took 3-100 pics to get the one I finally liked and used. So yeah, how pretty. 😆

Obviously, 28 pics in with my signature pose it isn’t exactly me. It’s a version of me. But not really the me-est of me’s.

The other reason it isn’t me is that now I have short hair. If you wanna rock your world, try shaving your head. And when your hair starts to grow in, bleach it white and dye it a peachy pink that is to die for.

What happens first is everyone notices you. I have had people on the street run up to me back when I was nearly bald just to tell me how much they loved my hair.

Really?

Yes.

At first I overtalked about it. I had a five minute monologue I trotted out anytime anyone mentioned my hair: how great it felt, why I did it, how I wanted it short but the barber actually basically shaved my head – all that.

I honestly don’t know how my workmates tolerated hearing the same schtick coming out of my mouth over and over and over as the public adjusted to “the new me”.

But seriously, I was called out and noticed not just by my gang of patients and friends, but by randoms on the street. And I don’t think it’s too hard to imagine that being told how great you look many times a day is a big lift to one’s mind, body and spirit. I digged it, and still do though now that my hair has grown a bit and people are getting used to it, I’m not being fawned over quite as often or with quite the same gusto and intensity.

Deep down, when it was super short one thing was obvious, at least to me. The comments of how great it looked were also a veil for “omg you’ve gone and shaved your head!!!”

Did it really flatter me, the initial cut? Probably not. But that wasn’t what made it so attractive to everyone. What made it so fabulous was the guts it took and the spirit needed to pull it off.

I know because at the end of my monologue I’d usually say – you should do it! – it would look great on you!….and invariably I’d hear one of two things: 1) I could never pull that off or 2) I had my hair that short once.

Never, or once. But certainly not now.

I was now admired for something people either felt they couldn’t do, or had only done and ever would do once. Interesting.

It is a shock. I’ll tell you that. Over about a ten day period right after the “haircut” I purchased maybe 2 or 20 wigs off Amazon just to deal with the drama of it all. Whenever I stumble across all those boxes of wigs I have to acknowledge I was a woman on the verge for a couple of weeks. I figure one day I’ll have a party and the guests will all be required to wear one of my wigs of shame and then we’ll cut and style each other’s hair and have a beauty contest.

Also the wigs are hilarious on babies and dogs. Still though, I bought a crazy amount of wigs until I adjusted.

Then I got over it and then I started to change.

I started wearing make-up and dangley earrings. I know that’s not an earth-shattering change but it happened and I also discovered that I look adorable in boy clothes. Hoodies and big stompy boots fit me to a T. Before, I always felt too busty and wrong for that look but suddenly my “look” changed completely.

I have to put “look” in “quotes” because prior to the great sheering, bleaching and coloring of 2021 I had settled into leggings, tanks and Island Slippers. Think of an après hot yoga look minus the sweat and uber-toned bod.

I looked this way all the time. At work. At home. On the couch. Asleep. Same thing. I was nothing if not consistently sporty-relaxed. Minus the sport and relaxation.

I added eyelash extensions and a freshly maintained mani-pedi to show that on some level I cared. But beyond that I couldn’t be bothered.

With the short hair though, I instantly became stylish. I was told by complete strangers that they liked my vibe. Can you imagine?

Thing is, I started digging it. As pretty as my long hair could be…..

I just felt more badass and whoopie fun with the short hair. And less desperate. The long hair was for me (especially when paired with my lash extensions) starting to feel a little desperate. My botoxed forehead was bumming me out, too, for that matter.

I was ready to wrinkle a bit more. And here’s a weird secret: short hair pairs beautifully with wrinkles. It just all flows and even though in photos I could look nice with the Rapunzel tresses IRL it was looking tired and didn’t really express anything fresh or fun or any vibe that anyone would go out of their way to want to embody.

But the short hair channels Judi Dench and Annie Lennox and Sharon Stone and Tilda Swinton and every other cool, ageless and timeless woman who’s decided she’s had enough.

(If Madonna and I were as close as we once were I’d suggest a shorter look. The long hair and work she’s had done is starting to undermine her strength and funky beautiful factor. She’d tell me to STFU and MMOB but not before I’d reminded her that no one wants to be the inspiration for the word sad. Ouch I know but friends look out for friends)

Moving on, the short hair has had the effect of breaking through the stereotype of wanting long hair, to be slim, to be slimmer, to be the slimmest I’ve ever been in my life, and to not have a double chin or chin hairs.

Ok I still don’t want the chin (or the hairs) although on Aidy Bryant she looks gorgeous with the chins so maybe it’s just another paradigm that needs shifting.

I think culturally we are learning to celebrate all shapes which is important because if you take care of yourself and look nice you look good whether you are tall or short or slim or big. Or how long or non-existent your hair is. It’s more about style and attitude.

The absolute worst is the place called “when I’m thin” where my head dwelled mentally for years. And the sad thing is, I am not alone. Even Oprah has lived in this place, and that woman has everything a person could want for.

Well, almost everything.

I have been slim here and there, but mostly I’ve teetered between thick and full-on chubby girl fat – delusionally believing that the right outfit will “make me look thin” (which is almost true but actually not true and even if it were true shouldn’t be running through my head every morning of every day as I try and get dressed)

I think one reason I settled on the leggings and tanks “look” is that I just let it be what it was going to be. And after years of putting on clothes that didn’t really look the way they did coming down the runway and not knowing how to dress myself and relate to my bigger girl body…it was a relief to settle on clean, nicely groomed, big smile and off you go.

Now though the world is styling big girls and suddenly we are pretty. Again I mention Aidy Bryant because she’s one of my girl crushes and thanks to her show I’ve seen her in her undies and she looks awesome. Also I have a texting friend who cares less about how pretty or ugly or small or big I am in any photo and more about the overall esthetics portrayed in the picture – and it’s liberating.

I’m also rereading Alan Cumming’s Tommy and he speaks so lovingly about a woman’s soft and curvy places that it helps me cast off some of the damage that was done the first time I ever opened a fashion magazine.

I always thought that bisexual men would prefer harder, leaner bodies – and some of them probably do. But there is also a thing where men love women’s bodies not in spite of their differences but because of them. Boobs, hips and tummies are lush and feminine and we are taught to hate all that an early age. But many men aren’t taught that and they just think…ooh, soft.

Boobs may not be a problem but very few women can be super skinny and have big boobs. Most of us have to be a little rounder or starve ourselves silly and then get implants or at least wear a push-up padded contraption to have a nice rack. Pick your poison but let’s not pretend 38-24-34 is even a thing.

I know I talk about body image a lot and I hate it that I do but it’s a big problem and feeling one’s self really loving one’s body, especially later in life when it all is starting to droop and sag – well it’s really special.

That’s what is happening to me.

The combo of not internet dating and not looking for a partner and instead having short hair and some of my own style over comforming to impossible beauty standards has pushed me further into self-acceptance, self-love, who cares anyway, and chocolate milkshakes when I’m in the mood.

I’m not my FOAT (fattest of all time) but I’m a bit fleshy at the moment. I’ve been eating and that’s ok.

I also did a big hike straight up a mountain Thursday and my legs are like rocks. The up was hard but the down was the brutal part. I was in a great mood because since discovering my anemia and iron problem and getting transfused, I can now hike better than ever. My stamina is back so hikes I did when I was weak and didn’t know it are now so much easier. Waihe’e is up up into the mist and it was fairly dry until we reached the top but then it started to pour down hard.

Thursday I was in such a good mood that nothing could be anything but a kick in the pants that day, not even coming down a mountain after a big rain – which is the worst in terms of slippage, fallage and the immense amount of concentration needed in order to avoid breaking your neck.

I did pretty well but there was this one Marx Brothers moment when I fell down coming off a step, got up, braced myself on the foliage then fell again but this time it was more like surfing then doing a 180 and landing on my hands and knees. Then Natalie fell too while I was sliding backwards on my hands and knees wondering how far I’d slide before coming to a grinding halt. It was hilarious. Almost as good as when a group of Indian tourists caught me crab-walking down a steep part because I will do anything, even crab walk, to fend off another fractured bone.

I still care about fitness and clean eating, but I had some swedish fish on the plane out to Maui because – they are divine and denying myself didn’t feel as good as those babies tasted.

My tummy is full and soft and that, too is ok. I can crunch a bit and can usually locate some core when I need it.

So that’s what short hair has done for me.

To recap: I get more attention and people think I’m way cool even before I open my mouth. I get to wear more boy clothes and have it look cuter. Style-wise it’s given me a nice little handicap (the golf kind) which is good because I’m not one to fuss over a wardrobe. Or to have anything that would even be called a wardrobe. I forgot to discuss the not having the worry about my hair blowing in my face but there’s a ton of that too. No need for hair ties and fussing. So it’s easier and more fun.

I would highly recommend short hair (with a great cut) and surprise surprise it looks great on everyone. The big lie (ok not THE big lie but A big lie) is that only some people can “pull it off”. Not not not true.

Here’s a bonus to end this post with. A good cut is a must if you go short. Natalie turned me on to this woman. Prepare to be amazed!

https://instagram.com/jayne_edosalon?utm_medium=copy_link

You won’t believe this.

Ok you will believe this but there will be irony, for sure.

I wrote a great post (at least to me) on gratitide. It was called Gratitude. It wasn’t called Gratitude1 because I didn’t anticipate a need for a Gratitude2

Excuse me while I hit save.

Ok so as I was saying….I wrote this post, the first version, and I was cleaning it up and looking for photos. A good post takes me 1-2 hours – start to finish. And this one was GOOD.

I wrote it waiting for everyone here on Maui to wake up and they’ll be all wake-up-and-go soon. So the clock was and still is a-ticking.

Can anyone guess the next thing that happened while I was polishing my damn post called Gratitude and dreaming of all the people I might reach out to and speak to and get kudos from (yes I do love the attention that a good post brings, and any attention, really)- from all 5-10 of you – it matters, a lot.

It’s that whole “without an audience I am nothing” thing.

So yeah that’s right. I thought I was discarding a photo but instead the whole post vanished.

Kabaam! Just like that.

Excuse me while I hit save draft again.

I was calm until I went into my drafts and it was not there. Hmmmm. So I then moved over to the trash and – nuthin’

I searched the internet for a fix. Mmm. No. Never happened to anyone, or at least anyone able to fix the problem…it wasnt even a problem. At this point it was a F*CKING EMERGENCY!!!!

Deep breath, hit save, and I am back.

I then mistakenly called India via a sneeky redirect in which an ad for website help posing as WordPress offered to accept money for not being able to help me but would I be interested in…..

…..can you imagine my state at this point??

I was trying to breathe in the Gratitude and exhale out the fuggity fug fug but when I found the correct chat site and they asked me to choose how I was feeling (I kid you not) I skipped right over the “upset” button and hit the square labeled “panicked”.

Well, I was. I was panicked. I was in a panic because I write in a flow state that I can’t always recreate. Often I start out writing about one thing and end up halfway across the world on an entirely different topic. All the stops along the way just spill out, for better or for worse. That’s what editing is for.

That’s also why it takes me a couple of hours to write a post. It flows, I edit, I put in pics. I proofread and when it’s “good enough” and/or I’m over it, I hit publish.

I would never ever ever hit discard. I keep everything I write, whether it’s a jewel or a literal turd that mocks the English language. So the whole situation was really out of control for me and I was now at level 4 lamaze breathing panic and not doing well at all.

Still, I had just written a post called Gratitude (now known as Gratitude1) and so when it came time to chat I couldn’t really flip out, now could I? So I flipped out a little bit. I flipped out in my head while trying to remain calm.

Here you go. I’m too tired to crop so just read the chat box.

Ok so that happened and I immediately wanted a beer which was really alarming to realize. Especially at 9 am. Though in my defense it is 11 am in Oakland so not quite as bad.

I did not drink a beer because it would confirm a “problem with alcohol” and also – the real reason – we have a long hike planned today and the last time I tried that I almost fainted. Though in my defense once again I was probably actively bleeding and anemic from my undiagnosed at-the-time rubbing hiatal hernia and huge secondary stomach ulcer. But still no beer on hikes is a good rule and I stuck to it.

About that time my daughter woke up and I told her I was writing G2 (I can’t even write the word anymore) and she said through sleepy eyes in that sweet gentle way of hers: write it in Notes then copy it to WordPress next time.

Smart as a whip, that one.

I made her take this pic in real time writing this:

Excuse me while I hit save.

Right now, on Thanksgiving Day, this is all you are going to get.

If I have it in me I’ll try to recreate G1 in a post called G3. Later. When I’m done with some actual living and can get back to this…this….whatever it is.

Whatever it is, today I felt Grateful.

And I wanted you all to know that. ❤️

Yesterday was incredible in so many ways.

First, Paris Hilton got married. After several engagements, our girlfriend finally did it. Her mom looked fabulous. That’s all I’ve got on that one.

Next, I had an endoscopy. Anyone who knows me will recall that for the past few years I have complained incessantly about feeling tired. It was finally discovered that I had some wicked anemia from a GI bleed and much later it was finally localized to an ulcer in my stomach. I knew it was an ulcer and not cancer because: still chubby.

Nevertheless the scope was to verify the diagnosis and I was all for it. The biggest reason I was all for it is that I love being attended to on a gurney (think friendly nurses and warm blankets) and also I have an unnatural fondness for propofol (do NOT try it at home). Propofol gives immediate restorative sleep and you wake up cozy and feeling like you just had the best rest of your life. It’s an insomniacs dream come true.

I am quite chatty during surgeries and procedures. I have been known to have entire operating rooms in stitches. There was this one time, a little loopy from the meds, that I accused my surgeon of only caring about me from the elbow down. I tell it like it is, especially on meds.

Yesterday was no different only it had more of a chatting-on-the-subway vibe. The guy who wheeled me into the procedure room asked about the meaning behind my finger tattoo. I said I just thought it was pretty. Well, it turns out that my tattoo is in fact cultural appropriation but instead of being all woke and cranky about it this guy was overjoyed. Foreigners are like that.

He told me that he is from Algeria and Berber women have similar tattoos. The older women tattoo their faces with these meaningful markings.I asked him the meaning and he said he didn’t know; he just knew the symbols were powerful He told me this in a very thick accent and behind his mask it was hard to hear him so I kept sitting up to hear him better and he kept slamming me back down horizontally like an episode of the Three Stooges.

It was a great conversation but I was preparing for my propofol and wanting to zone out a bit. That’s when he left the room to grab his iphone to show me pictures of Berber women with the tattoos. Apparently when I told him that I would look it up on my iphone later he thought I had asked him to get his iphone and find some pictures now, in the endoscopy suite. He was quite nice about it so I had to look. This took about five minutes of scrolling but indeed – the woman have beautiful face tattoos.

The anesthesiologist, gastroenterologist and procedure-nurse burst in with a flurry and the manhandling made me wish Mr. Algiers would come back with his iphone. I don’t want to be inappropriate (ha,ha joke) but when you are having an endoscopy they put a device in your mouth “to protect your teeth” that basically turns you into a sex doll. I can’t be the only one who feels this way. It’s this plastic thing with a hole in the middle and the nurse who strapped it on me had a dom vibe and I didn’t like it one bit but about the time I was wondering where to place my tongue, the propofol saved me.

I woke up dreamy and happy and my nurse Annabella who married a dude she met in St.Marten who is from a country I now forget is trying to get pregnant and we hit it off so when she finally has a baby she’s picking me as her pediatrician. Yay!

Next my gastroenterologist Dr. Shwarma (I am so confused by his name because he sounds like something I order off the menu at my favorite Indian restaurant – so that’s close but probably not his actual name) came in like the cat who swallowed the canary and said without taking a breath: you have a six centimeter bleeding ulcer caused by an enormous hiatal hernia that is rubbing back and forth and I am going to refer you to a thoracic surgeon because this horrendous situation needs fixing.

I teared up. Two plus years of almost fainting at work from the anemia, of not being able to drink coffee without horrible stomach cramps, of thinking that my “heavy drinking” had gotten me into this situation – and actually I had a correctable problem that for some reason had been missed on three endoscopies and two cameras that I fearlessly swallowed. I still want to know the reason it was missed but no one wants to go there and accuse the other doctors and Dr. Indian Chicken is the bomb so now, finally, I landed in capable hands and can move past this. Hooray!

You must have a ride home so my mom got me and we sobered up at Starbucks and I felt unusually starving. I had two apple juice boxes (no idea why but I craved them), a turkey pesto panini and a peanut butter perfect bar. I continued to eat like this all day and ended at 9p.m. with a Wendy’s chocolate frosty. It was insane, but having just been diagnosed with a serious medical condition I ate like it was my last day on earth.

Next my mom drove me to my car so I could go to work. But before my afternoon I was scheduled to sign my loan docs. That’s right. After reams of drama that started this past March (seven months ago) my refi is about to close, God willing. Mika the notary showed up to my office in a mumu. She looked like a queen and her laugh was uproarious, especially for a notary.

She love, love, loved my office. She love, love loved it that I have dogs in my office. She could tell I was an awesome person. She had three dogs but she had adopted them at the same time so when it was time for them to die, they all died at once. She wants more dogs but is trying to hold off so that maybe she can travel.

She has been lonely without her dogs so she started a compost pile and has…….wait for it……..you know what’s coming……..WORMS!!!! We had a good laugh about her pet worms but in all seriousness she now loves worms. Specifically, she loves her worms. Fun fact: did you know that healthy worms jump???? Her worms are very healthy and they jump all over the place. She also told me that if you try to house worms in shitty conditions they’ll climb right out of their enclosures lickity split. She said it’s surprising how fast they run from crummy dirt. I got a lesson on cardboard shredding and lettuce feeding……it takes about an hour to sign documents. Ridiculous too because if I had read every page it would have taken three days.

Last thing we talked about is where she wants to travel. Turns out she’s from Oahu so that’s one of the reasons for the mumu, the fleshy queen body habitus, the familiar broken english, and the crazy laugh. I loved this woman so much I got her number incase my daughter who gardens on Maui needs worm advice. But the worm advice is an excuse. I just like her energy and hope to connect with her sometime in the future, preferably on an island in Hawaii.

Coincidentally, later in the day one of my two families from Algeria came in and confirmed that my finger tattoo is the type that Berber women wear and that it has deep meaning. I asked the mom what the meaning might be and she told me that she has no idea, but it’s very important. Talk about leaving me hanging – twice in one day!

That’s it for yesterday but I have one more story from the day before, Jueves. It’s about the past tense. En Español they really go nuts with the ways things can exist in the past. I looooove my teacher, Ezequiel. He and I Zoom twice a week. He is in Argentina and either zooms me from a loft with a view of a soccer field or a room painted a rust color. He is young and smart as a whip. I, too, am smart as a whip and according to him I “ask good questions.”

Unfortunately or fortunately, he has a firm grasp on how you label parts of speech and I do not. So funnily enough, he is also teaching me English.

In Spanish there are four ways to conjugate things that occur in the past: the perfecto, the indefinido, the imperfecto and the pluscuamperfecto. MMMkay????

Well all hell ensued when we got into this discussion. He used the sentence, “I loved Anna” as an example. Eze spoke of himself as loving her but not loving her anymore, loving her but not divulging whether the love still exists, loving her and still loving her, and loving her in the recent past. I kept yelling, NO!!!! STOP!!!! You’re killing me!!! But he insisted that all of this was necessary to express the particular way he may have loved Anna at some point in the history of time. I told him this must be why the latins have so much passion. I also found it completely unnecessary but he said it is 100 percent vital so I’m going to have to get with the program and “paint my story” as he put it. It’s a refreshing break from Pimsleur who just wants me to order fifteen vanilla conchas from the bakery as my friend Juan exclaims “That’s a lot of pesos.”

I’m going out on a limb to say that when an endoscopy, the signing of mortgage documents and a Spanish lesson bring this much joy – a person must be living one hell of a luck, fun-infused life. That’s me in a nutshell and….

Muchas gracias por reading esto!!!

Dr. Maria

I would like to give you an update on Rome. We previously established that it wasn’t built in a day, but there’s a bit more to it.

My own personal Rome tends to be a two steps forward, two steps back situation. There’s movement, then it swings the other way, like a pendulum.

The post-menopausal apple shape was on my mind a few weeks ago. I had decided that running might be the only way to get rid of my tum while still being able to eat solids. I went for exactly one run and then it started to rain.

Back when I was a runner a little rain never stopped me.

Yeah, well that was a decade ago.

Winter hit and the running seemed less urgent when I discovered that apple shapes can kill it in leggings, a cute hoodie, and Doc Martens.

Add in my boyish hairdo and – adorbs!

So esthetically, I’m good at the moment – and running is on HOLD.

I had been under the illusion that I’m a reasonably active person. I don’t sit for long hours because my job has me up and down and sometimes contorted into various shapes and positions to examine all those wiggly littles. Plus, I usually try and take the dogs out at lunch which is a good 30-60 minute walk up a hill with Tyrone on my back.

So I’ve felt pretty smug on the activity front until my son-in-law gifted me an apple watch.

I mentioned before that every time it tells me to get up or to breathe I get annoyed and make a big deal of hitting “dismiss”. I will not be bossed around by some watch! But I do like that it counts my steps. Or at least I liked it until I found out that even with my lunchtime hike, I average a mere 5500 steps per day.

I looked it up and under 5,000 steps a day is considered sedentary. I’m barely avoiding the category of complete and total sloth, according to my apple watch and the internet.

So now I’m back to really needing to run only I don’t wanna. I am willing to dance in between patients and maybe lift the weights that are staring at me in my office a few times here or there -and oh yeah I have my inversion stool and I can do that too. Maybe.

Meantime, I am doing Pimsleur in the car and I discovered a great way to practice my Spanish. What I do is I pretend mis perros no entienden inglés. There are many things (muchas cosas) I can hablo en español to the dogs. Qué quieres, Garth? I really don’t have to ask him because I know the answer: more treats. But it’s good practice..

I also have conquered a biggie. After a year or more of getting into bed right after work, I am now sitting in the living room until a reasonable bedtime of ten or eleven. That’s right, I am upright!

It’s pretty funny though because I’m basically doing the same things I would be doing if I were in bed and twice now I’ve passed out on the couch and Dylan has brought me a blanket.

But other than that I’m killing my return to being a mostly non-bedridden person.

Some of you might remember that my grandmother on my Dad’s side took to her bed in her seventies waiting for the good Lord Jesus Christ to take her. She remained in bed until her mid-nineties when she finally croaked. So the bed thing is in my genes and I have to watch out.

One inexplicable thing happened when I passed out on the couch fully clothed with my apple watch still on. At 3am, it vibrated and told me I should stand up. I actually did have to pee but I refused to get up on principle.

Part two of the bed thing was supposed to be not taking my laptop with me and not surfing my phone. Ha, ha.

Fail!!

I have though started to listen to podcasts when I think it’s time to turn in. I’m trying to limit the TikTok rabbit holes and all the Brad Mondo-ing. Not that it’s not good stuff, but I’ve spent too many nights doing the 1a.m. – what the hell am I doing ???? thing.

I’m a little frustrated because I’d like to have a drink or something but last night I downed a bottle of rosé so tonight I said nope, it’s water for you young lady.

And speaking of young lady, the guy at security check called me young lady which I assumed was just a joke but he actually gasped when I dropped my mask and he looked at my driver’s license.

He declared that I look half my age.

It’s the hoodie and the Doc Martens, but I’ll take it. Until I start running five miles a day and lose this apple shape, I’m all about the hacks.

This post is going to cover a lot of ground so fix yourself a generous pour and a hearty snack and settle in.

For years, I have wanted to meet Alan Cumming. He’s been one of my imaginary friends, much like Madonna and Paul Rudd were in the 90’s. I’ll often say things to myself like, “Oh I bet Alan Cumming would love this or if only Alan Cumming were here.”

I could tell you that he is smart and funny and seemingly down-to-earth and cute as can be. I could say he’s a good writer and he has played some goofy characters and I find that super charming.

I could mention his brogue and his dimples and my years as a Bay City Roller fan — but to really understand this, there’s a lot more that I need to tell you.

I’ll start with when Peter left me.

If you want to know more about the leaving part, I cover some of it in my Datergurl blog. I’m done reliving it, so I’ll tell you all you really need to know to kick this off and that is that I was a sad puppy and I cried constantly for a year straight.

Some things besides gin helped get me through this dreadful year. One thing was the series Queer as Folk. Gale Harold was so beautiful, and the show’s energy was familiar and fun. It felt like home for reasons that are still hard to talk about.

After high school, and before I decided on medicine, I worked in salons. I wanted to be a hairdresser, but I was expected to go to college. So while I dabbled in higher education, I was a shampoo girl and I answered phones and eventually ended up at Joseph Anthony Hair Salon on Union Street in San Francisco.

That’s where I met Philip Plumb.

Philip was from England.

He had once been a scrawny thing (I saw pictures) but he worked out and lifted weights and got huge.

When he cooked for us he’d eat an entire chicken and a plate mounded with mashed potatoes and green beans. I’d never seen a person need two dinner plates to hold their food. When we went out to eat he’d ask the waiter which entree was the biggest. It was great fun watching him eat.

Philip was one hundred percent gay, but we were close and sometimes he would say, “Come here darling and lie down on me.” There was never a hint of anything sexual, but he would massage my shoulders and my neck and I would go limp on that massive chest of his. He was affectionate and I was boyfriendless, so it was nice.

I lived at the end of Army Street and he was on the corner where Market meets Castro. I have no idea who’d call whom or how we made plans back then, but I’d walk over to his flat and we’d play the records of Alison Moyet and Roberta Flack and his favorite – Patti Austin – and we’d smoke cigarettes and sing and pass the hours away.

I rarely had a boyfriend but Philip was always up to something. It didn’t matter who he was seeing though, he always wanted me around.

Sometimes I’d have a crush on a boy and Philip would say, “You know I fucked him.” Philip fucked everyone.

The great thing was that he’d never go into very much detail. That would have been crass. What he’d do instead is he’d throw me a one-liner.

He’d say something like: “That guy asked me to tie my work boots to his balls” and I’d say, “NO!!” and he’d say “Yes, and they were swinging back and forth when we were fucking and it was hilarious.” And then he’d be off talking about some movie or his plans for dinner.

He was a gentleman.

He teased me regularly, and nearly all the time. He called me Sugar Tits in public and once when I showed up to his flat in a red Benetton sweater dress he told everyone that I had come dressed up as a blood clot.

It was hard to be mad at Philip because he was so funny and so sweet. I was a part of his life and he welcomed me any time and we were just great, great friends.

When AIDS hit everything changed.

We literally had no idea what was happening to our friends or how the disease was spreading but our friends would get the purple dots and the diarrhea and start wasting and they would die, in misery.

At the time, the bodies of most gay men in our circle were burly and toned. It was the 80’s. To see them waste away was one of the most tragic things I have ever witnessed.

These men were loud and proud and out and living big. It hadnt been that long since their liberation, since Harvey Milk and since the emergence of gay rights. They were free to be themselves in SanFrancisco. They had a special brand of wicked, playful humor and then all of a sudden fear crept in and things went dark.

There were so many stories circling about. A girl in our circle loved a boy and he loved her. He also loved other boys and she knew that and she also knew he was positive. Still, she wanted his baby. She got pregnant and then miscarried and then she got really sick and she wasted and she died and by the time she died he was with another boy and she was hollow and broken and bitter and sad and alone.

Some mistakes are deadly. Or at least they were back then. That was when love and lust became something that could kill you.

Once the HIV virus was identified, we all needed to get tested.

Unbeknownst to any of us at the time, Philip probably saved my life by warning me off all the men he had slept with. He never wanted to see me hurt so he always told me who to stay clear of. It wasn’t their bisexuality that concerned Philip, or me for that matter. He was warning me more of their particular kind of unavailability. They fucked around but I wanted a boyfriend.

There had been Ilya the bisexual ex-IV drug user. Even with Philip’s guidance there had been risky exposures. Before AIDS, none of us worried. There was medicine for anything we might accidentally pick up. Embarassment aside, STDs weren’t that big of a deal back then. You just called the people you needed to tell and mostly they were very nice about it and a few pills later – good as new.

I was sure I would be positive but I wasn’t.

Dumb luck.

I never asked Philip his status because Philip remained happy and upbeat and if he had wanted to talk about this he would have talked about it.

I left my job at the salon and went back to school when I decided to gun it for a career in medicine. Philip and I drifted apart because I had to study and life is like that.

One of the last times I saw him we were at a bar and he said, “I have something to tell you.”

Once he said that, I knew.

He didn’t have to say the words because I knew.

I’d watched enough people die and I could connect the dots in our circle of friends and it would have been a miracle for him to have escaped this thing.

Philip never talked about his own feelings about having AIDS. He just comforted me because of course I burst into tears and I was distraught. He refused to be distraught and just said – “Oh, honey, I’ve had a great life.” He couldn’t have been older than thirty-three.

At the time there was no hope for someone with AIDS. It was just a matter of time. Philip didn’t ever talk about it again. I had dinner at his flat and he was still buff and handsome. I poured myself into my studies and we drifted further apart.

I don’t know how he died or when he died or where he died. I have made weak attempts to find him and any of the people we knew back then but the trail leads nowhere. I feel as though he might have gone back to England but I just don’t know. I would give anything to know and I don’t know how it’s possible that I don’t know but I think he wanted to keep to himself and die quietly when the time came.

There is one thing I want to show you and it’s a painting. The really weird thing is that Philip is in it. It’s a Renoir and the man in the bottom right corner is Philip. All his friends who saw the painting were stunned by the resemblance and Philip was also a little shook by how identical he looked to the man in the Renoir. He even had the same moustache.

Here is a close- up.

Watching Queer as Folk wasn’t really about the show. It was more about the friends I lost……the life, the music, the friendship, the humor and the fun I’d had with Philip and his friends and the thrill of being with so much benevolent male energy.

After blowing through all the seasons of Queer as Folk, I picked up some books by Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris. I read books that felt like they were written by people I’d want to hang out with even though Augusten Burroughs seems a little scandanavian-tall-and-scary and I get the feeling that David Sedaris is completely inaccessible to people outside his family and his inner circle.

Next I read some Alan Cumming. I didn’t know him very well except for Spy Kids and the clips of Cabaret which were irresistible. He had a little gleam in his eye and and it reminded me of Philip’s energy which was wicked and naughty and pure and lovely. His writing felt like something I had missed for a long time. The elegance and the the-telling-of-truths and the intimacy of trusting his audience helped me feel at home.

Reading helped to heal my heart. It was like hanging out with old friends.

I ran an animal welfare non-profit (that I started). It initially grew from an idea to an organization with a pretty big following. It was first called No Kill Oakland and then became PALS East Bay (People, Animals, Love, Support). My goal was to take the teachings of Nathan Winograd who discovered that it was possible to find homes for the majority of shelter animals. The killing, as it turned out, was driven by a lack of imagination and an acceptance of sheltering dogma and catma that said there were too many dogs and cats and we had no choice but to “put to sleep” millions of animals every year.

It was my baby and it filled my heart. It was also one of the reasons Peter left me. I brought home many many animals and was often distracted with this on top of my pediatric practice. The thrill of saving a life eclipsed everything else.

I brought my nonprofit to work with me. I had many fosters and even had a litter of puppies born and raised in my office. Ten pitbulls. It was fantastic.

I sometimes used celebrities to legitimize what I was doing and I was sneaky about it. This picture was taken at a Farm Sanctuary meet and greet with Joan Jett. I was shameless but it was for a good cause.

I wanted great high profile people to wear our T-shirts. The logo was really cute and everyone who’s decent loves animals. If I could reach the right people, I knew they’d probably wear the T- shirt and send me a pic. For the animals.

I was talking about the non-profit and I said I wanted Alan Cumming to wear the T-shirt (cute dimples, twinkle…I could totally see it) and I wanted to get a picture of him wearing it. It was just a silly idea but I get fixated on things like this. So there I was yacking with Maggie. Maggie is the mother of triplet boys. I have been their pediatrician since birth. Basically she’s nuts. The good kind of nuts.

Maggie laughed her way through the first few years with the boys. I had some experience with multiples because I had my own twins in residency. It was really challenging, and I have no idea how Maggie did it. I asked her every time she came in: “How are you doing this” and she always did her Maggie laugh and said – “I have no idea.”

So when I talked about my non-profit and my marketing idea involving Alan Cumming I almost choked on my stethoscope when she said she knew him.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Well it turns out that her husband has been good friends with Alan’s husband for years. They are the boys’ godparents. One of her sons is named Grant, after Alan’s husband Grant!

I wanted her to send Alan Cumming the T-shirt but we got distracted and I never asked her and then I lost my non-profit in a hostile takeover and that huge loss piled on to all the sadness surrounding my break-up with Peter.

I survived, but barely.

I dated.

My kids left home.

I went through menopause.

Then I finally emerged okay.

Maggie and her kids were at Kaiser for a few years and then the family returned with two more kids – girls this time. More laughter. more cute kids. What else?

I routinely fill out piles of school forms, sports clearances and the like. The start of the school year is a shit show of paperwork.

Maggie texted me after hours one day and said she had somehow missed the memo that her boys needed forms completed by a pediatrician in order to attend their first day of water polo.

Most parents would wring their hands but Maggie stayed in character and ….she laughed. I can’t remember if she laughed via emoji or we talked but she made it clear that her boys would survive if they missed the first practice but it was also kind of a tryout and I am a mom and no way did I want Maggie outed for missing the forms or her boys to be excluded, so I said – let’s get this done.

Practice was at 7a.m. and she needed the forms before then and I needed some information from their charts so I had to go into the office insanely early. I did it though. And then I said – and now you have to tell me when Alan Cumming is visiting and invite me over.

I think I caught her in a weak moment because she said – I promise I will get you two together. And by he way – he drinks Tito and soda.

I told my staff all about how Maggie and my fave celebrity are good friends blah blah and Alan Cumming is so talented blah blah and how much I am a fan (though I am more a spiritual fan, and fan of his writing more than a fan of his acting because I barely have watched his shows. As you know, all I have time for is The Voice)

I don’t need the picture in the T-shirt anymore but Alan Cumming was a voice who spoke to me when I was very down and very lonely and very in need of genuine friendship. I know he has been the place holder of an archetype in my psyche but you could also say that he seems genuine, cheeky and sweet just like my beloved friend Philip. It’s not about stereotypes or projection as much as it is about recognizing traits that resonate.

Not long after I scored a potential meet and greet I was listening to Alan Cumming’s podcast about things on his shelf which is actually just him talking to people. The best episodes are when he talks to friends and they reminisce. They told one story about fans wanting a piece of him – his attention – when he isn’t working.

Uh-oh.

I decided that I can’t meet Alan Cumming when he’s visiting Maggie and Brad after all. After all these years of him being my imaginary friend, meeting him in real life under contrived circumstances would be wrong. Not violating the Hippocratic Oath wrong, but wrong nevertheless.

I can’t meet Alan Cumming but I can remember my friend Philip and I can read Mr. Cumming’s new book and I can laugh with Maggie.

And that is good enough.

I really can’t explain it.

In many ways, I’m a rule breaker. I like people who “think outside the box” and dogma makes me crazy.

I certainly like to think of myself as someone who thinks for themselves.

You get the picture.

Some things though I (surprisingly, not surprisingly) have no patience for. When I have no patience for someone or something I have no problem opening my mouth and saying so.

Also for some reason (fear of falling from the sky), I am very concerned with airplane safety. Where I might be into thinking for myself on the ground, three miles high I become a stringent follower of rules and precedent.

I make sure my carry-ons are the right size and that I stow them properly. I listen to how to inflate my floatable safety vest and I fret about whether I will be able to pull on the cord or be forced to blow into the tube when the time comes.

Long ago, a frequent-flier friend-of-mine passed on a travel secret. She said that she always counts the rows to the nearest safety exits both in front of and behind her.

It turns out that if the plane is on fire and smoke pours in, you’ll have to feel your way to the exit, possibly while having dropped to your hands and knees.

You’re welcome.

My pre-covid flight strategy used to involve mass quantities of alcohol. Keep in mind that people who are wasted and fall from tall heights tend to do better than their sober counterparts. Nevermind that sober folks tend to fall less often. Floppy is an asset when it comes to falling and let’s leave it at that.

Try as I might I can never really stop the thought of what falling from a plane might feel like. Maybe I should stop wondering and just jump but I will never ever parachute from a plane so I’m left just imagining it. And going down, I’d rather be tipsy.

Covid messed all that up. You can have water and a snack and maybe a soda but that’s it.

So now I fly before dawn in the hopes of sleeping through most of what would otherwise amount to fits of quiet terror mixed with stories I tell myself about who I might kiss if the plane decided to fall from the sky.

Yesterday, after a sleepy 5 a.m. flight into Midway, I turned into a Karen. I wasn’t tipsy. I was stone cold sober but I detected a threat to airplane security and I summoned my inner busy-body.

You know how you are supposed to keep your seatbelt fastened when you’re in your seat? You know how you can’t hang around the john at the back of the plane anymore?

Well…you are supposed to put your larger devices away prior to landing, too.

The woman across from me didnt heed the warning.

I don’t know what the point of this rule is but it’s a rule and airplane rules are important. Yes, true, I used to sit in the smoking section and chain smoke at the back of an airplane. For years I did this and now I can’t so much as flick a bic in the john.

But it’s a rule that you have to park your phone in airplane mode and you need to stow your bigger devices and you can’t smoke on the plane.

We had an all-male crew and that was a kick because – no drama- just a lot of crisp shirts, sarcasm and hair gel.

Ms. Laptop kept typing even though gay number one told her twice, nicely, to shut it down.

So I went and got a bee up my vagine.

I looked at her in her middle seat across the isle and asked her what her problem was. Hmmm?

She ignored me so I got louder. I said, “Are you an adult?”

She still ignored me but the guy next to me made gentle shushing noises intended to soothe and keep me from beating her with my inflight magazine.

So next I started to stare. I just did my best I-dare-you-not-to-notice-me glare and I didn’t blink. I may have appeared crazy because then she started telling me “Everything is fine” but I wasnt having it.

I told her it was NOT fine because she was violating international airspace law and why did she think she was so special anyway and I didn’t stop until she put away her laptop and took out her phone.

It was pretty seamless and part of me honestly did want to know what was so damn important as I watched her continue on her smaller, allowed device.

We landed safely but not before I sereptitiously got a quick snapshot.

I made sure to open my overhead carefully incase the contents shifted during flight. The neighbor who had gently shushed me offered to get my carry-on down.

We de-planed and I got on the moving sidewalk but I walked.

I’m all for breaking rules on the ground, but in the air I take no chances.

And neither should you.

I’m 58.

At this point, there are some things I’ve accepted I will never master – like socks.

I’m okay at buying them. My favorite are the fifteen dollar magic fabric running socks. I know cotton is rotten and all that. I have owned socks, and when I was a runner (and I use that term loosely given my 15-minute mile time) socks mattered.

With three kids, socks were a bit of an issue. Some battles are better off abandoning. You can say “don’t walk around outside in your socks” or “don’t throw your socks on the ground” til you’re blue in the face but chances are you’ll still find one sock on the bathroom floor and it’s mate downstairs on top of the T.V. Or in the dog’s mouth. Or if you are really having a bad day, in the dog’s stomach. That’s a three grand problem by the way.

Parents have sock strategies – sock tricks if you will. Sometimes we try and buy every kid a different color sock to ease the sorting and matching. Sometimes we buy socks in bulk because with a thousand socks, there’s bound to be a match, and other times we buy “nice socks” mistakenly thinking our kids will become responsible sock stewards and cherish them enough to keep them matched and free of holes.

I passive-aggressively gave my children socks every year for Christmas. Maybe if socks are presents you’ll look after them. (In my defense Christmas socks were always cool, and not some kind of coal in your stocking thing).

My youngest kid hated and still hates as far as I can tell to cut his toenails. You know what that means. No, it doesn’t mean he’s growing them out for the Guinness Book of longest toenails world record. When he was young every six months I would either tackle him to the ground or stand in his doorway with clippers and say – now! He’s a great kid so his toenail thing wasn’t that big of a deal – except that he’d wear holes in the toes of all his socks…..and continue to wear them. Last time he visited he had this one sock where his entire forefoot was exposed. As a mother I felt guilt, responsibility, and shame. He thought it was funny.

When my kids were all at home we had a sock box. A sock box is the ultimate defeat. It means you have given up on sorting and matching socks entirely and rather than pair them nicely, you take all the socks from the dryer and dump them in a basket.

In the mornings before school there was always some kid running around saying, “I can’t find any socks.” Forget a balanced breakfast, I just tried to get clothes on their backs and lunches made and I was usually under my own bit of morning pressure so I quickly figured out that finding socks was a last straw sort of an ask.

Not wanting to blow a gasket every morning I invented the sock box and after that my kids socks might not have matched, but I could yell from the kitchen, “check the sock basket.”

Score!

I have a photo I’ll try and dig up of the day I decided to try and match all the socks in the sock basket. There were socks all over my bedroom and I posted it on Facebook and a fifty comment sock discussion ensued. You see, the aliens who run this show love to mess with us in little ways that aren’t the end of the world but that slowly drive us insane.

The missing sock is definitely an alien abduction type of a situation. Anyone with singles in their drawer they can no longer find the match to know what I’m sayin’. And I have to assume by the discussions I’ve had that this is every human being except this one family I take care of who always wears perfect matching socks. They have some kind of sock secret most of us have not been gifted.

My kids are gone, I’m old and now I have the power to say a big eff you to socks, and I have.

I wear one pair of shoes every day and they aren’t really shoes, they are flip flops. I buy them from a company called Island Slippers and they are just wonderful. I know doctors aren’t supposed to wear open-toed shoes but I have never stabbed myself in the toe with a needle (yet) so everyone can calm down. Kaiser would fire me for the way I dress, but I’m my own damn boss and I say comfort makes me a better doctor so the slippers stay.

There is only one problem. When the weather gets just too freezing cold, I have to cave and wear actual shoes. I have some boots and a ten pound pair of Doc Martens for that. The only thing is, for those, I need …….socks!

It just started raining yesterday and it’s getting a little cold but I wore my slippers anyway because it usually takes me a week or two to transition to winter shoes. That’s a fancy way of saying I don’t have any socks. Right now I have some of those fuzzy things they give you when you have surgery, running socks I keep stuffed into my hiking boots in the car, and a never worn pair of thigh-high stockings that have the print on them of chicken legs (which is funny because I’m a thick girl – no chicken legs, believe you me, but they were a gift)

So today, I am going to have to buy my yearly four pairs of socks so that I can avoid pernio (look it up) and frostbite and get some shoes on my feet. I only buy four pairs a year because that is about all I can handle at this point.

There are some problems we never master, but a good learner of life will always find a work-around.

Ha, ha socks, you’ll never bring me down.

Warm toesies to you, and Monkey love, Dr. Maria

I don’t know about you, but when I try some new life hack, I like to see results in under 24 hours or I lose all motivation. Let’s face it – a gin and tonic works in 15 minutes, chocolate is immediately effective and cheese is the gift that keeps on giving.

Cleaning up our habits is more of a slog and waiting for results can make the whole process a little touch and go.

Those of you who want to know how things are going are going to have to wait a few days for me to integrate and summarize any initial progress because not only has the ship not sailed, it has barely even left the harbor.

Give me a minute, I’m working on it.

In the meantime let me tell you about Darby, my new puppy.

Darby likes to go on hikes and she runs like the wind. It looks more like hopping – and here’s a video so you can see for yourself.

I have to keep her on a lead because if this monkey got bit by a rattlesnake she’d be toast. A coyote could snatch her up in a New York minute, and I’ve seen hawks circling, mistaking her for a little bunny. She weighs around six pounds and they might just carry her off.

Darby likes to sniff just like any other dog but there’s something a little sad – she can’t pee on anything. She doesn’t have the ability to express urine or stool voluntarily. It’s part of her birth defect.

I give her teeny amounts of miralax to soften her poops because if I don’t she screams in pain when she goes. This means she leaks poop a little bit. If she weren’t the cutest thing you’ve ever seen this would be intolerable, and if she were big she’d be in diapers, but as-is we just clean up after her and a few times a day I squeeze her over the sink or the potty and she empties her bladder and some stool comes out like one of those Play-doh Fun Factories or soft serve ice cream.

When you have a special needs animal you do what you need to do and that’s that.

Well…on today’s walk she was very interested in the animal smells on a certain tree. I am such a ridiculous empath that I decided that it was just super sad that she couldn’t mark her surroundings like all the other animals. So guess what I did??

I bet some of you can guess.

I held her up and squeezed her on the tree so that she could drop some urine and mark the tree too! Most exciting is that we got it pretty high up the tree so other dogs will think she’s bigger than she really is.

Isn’t that the best?

Here are some pics…….

I can’t wait to take her back tomorrow so she can figure out that she marked the tree. I hope it doesn’t go to her head.

I hope you enjoyed the Darby story and while I’m not going into Maria 6.0 just yet, I will tell you that it’s 8:40pm and I am NOT in bed. I am writing this on the couch, upright…..which is a big deal given the fact that I almost had to crawl up my front steps on my hands and knees this evening just to make it inside the house.

I drove home soooooo tired that after I fed everyone, all I wanted was to throw myself down onto my bed.

New habits take time so here I am toughing it out on the couch.

I watched the season finale of Only Murders In the Building and resisted the urge to stream The Voice. And now I’m going to read.

Signe, if you’ve made it this far, I didn’t manage to not look at my phone last night and it cost me an hour of sleep and my 7a.m. wake up fell to pieces (insert swear word). Tonight, I’m going to try harder. I’m still a little pissy because the no scrolling at bedtime rule feels completely oppressive but a goal’s a goal so I’m going to recommit. It doesn’t help that I have to keep my phone by my head because I am always on call but whining about how hard it is is unattractive so I’ll stop with the excuses.

My iphone watch just told me to stand up so I raised my hand over my head and jiggled it a little to simulate a change in elevation. I normally wouldn’t cheat but my watch and I are having an argument. First of all, a big thank you to my son-in-law for gifting me this watch for my birthday. It’s so fun and I would never have bought it for myself.

But honestly, who does this watch think it is? I ran down the battery so yesterday I wasn’t able to wear it for very long and today I got an earful. My watch noted that I’d been “taking it easy” (um, no I started running yesterday). It said in condescending type that I needed to close at least one circle today. Yeah well, sez who.

My goal actually is to be the person my watch wants me to be so I don’t want to bag too hard on this tiny little wrist coach but when it tells me to breathe I can’t help but wonder what the eff it thinks I’ve been doing. Sarah what do you make of the breathe command?

I’m going to obey my watch and stand up……..and walk straight upstairs and get into bed. I’ve had enough of this day and after twenty minutes of reading I’m going to see if there is any way I can go to sleep and hit my 7a.m. wake-up goal for the week.

Take that you stinkin’ watch.