Usted Esta Aqui

M and I just came back from a lovely week in Cuba.  It had been seven months since my last true vacation (a week off at home for our local theatre festival in July), and I was starting to crack a bit under the strain of constantly having to be on for other people.  A week of sun and books and more alcohol than is recommended was somewhat desperately needed.

The setup was perfect for relaxing.  We were in an all-inclusive resort, so the most strenuous thing required of us was walking from our table to the buffet to refill our overflowing plates.  And yet, despite being on vacation, I found it hard to turn off the constant chatter in my brain.  When eating, I would be thinking about the books that were waiting to be read; when reading, I'd be wondering what was going to be served at our next meal.   When on the beach, I'd be wondering if I would've been happier spending the day in Havana; when in Havana, I would dream about the beach. 

My distractible brain, my ever present companion at home, had followed me to paradise*.

I am so accustomed to my constant thoughts about what else I should be doing and what needs to be done next that it took me days to recognize how ridiculous they were in paradise.  My moment of clarity happened on the beach, when M was snorkeling in the shallow water and I was walking beside her.  I had just come out of the water myself, and I was feeling a bit chilled, and all I could think about was wanting the walk to be over so that I would be back at my beach chair and wrapped in a warm towel.

And then I paused.  And I thought "Why on Earth am I wishing this time away?"  Wanting to be back at the beach chair wasn't going to make the distance any shorter or make M swim any faster.  All it was going to do was rob a perfectly good moment of any potential for happiness.  So I stopped, and instead of feeling my usual impatience, I took a look around me.  At the people and the palm trees and the mountains all glowing in the warmth of the late day sun.  And I realized that I was literally in the middle of a postcard.

A postcard that I had almost missed, because all I know how to do anymore is rush from what I am doing to whatever it is that comes next.

*I recognize that I am very privileged to view Cuba as "paradise", as that isn't the experience for many of its citizens.   

Making Peace with My Food Budget

When I first put myself on a budget about 2.5 years ago, I had to cut out a lot of things to make it balance.  Things like clothing and online shopping got essentially eliminated.  Travel changed from fancy overseas vacations to trips within Canada that I purchased with AirMiles.  Visits to my favourite independent bookstore were replaced by the public library.

But one area that didn't get cut much was eating out.  Throughout training, eating out was my main form of entertainment and relaxation.  It was also an essential way of staying connected with friends and family at a time when my apartment was too messy and my fridge too empty to ever entertain at home.  So despite being ruthless with my spending in many areas, I averaged about $300 a month on eating out throughout my training.

And then I became an attending.

At first, I stuck to essentially the same budget, as I was somewhat obsessed with reaching a net worth of zero.  Once I had worked for about nine months, and I had achieved the long-dreamed-of positive net worth, I started to relax a bit more.  We started eating out a bit more often than before.  And ordering a few cocktails or a bottle of wine with our meals.  And dropping $100+ on dinner at a fancy restaurant, instead of $20 at one of the tasty dives that had previously been our favourites.

When I reviewed my spending for 2016, I was absolutely appalled to discover that I had averaged $600 per month on eating out.  SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS!  Which is utterly ridiculous.  And to make it even more crazy, that only accounts for my contribution to eating out.  My girlfriend was also paying for restaurant meals, and although she tends to pay for the less expensive meals given that she works for a non-profit agency and doesn't earn a physician's salary, she was probably still contributing a few hundred dollars a month to our eating out budget.  And, the $600 was an average for the year.  At the beginning of the year, it was closer to $300 a month, meaning that it was well over $600 a month by the end.  RIDICULOUS!

So in early January, I said enough is enough and put myself on a slightly strict eating out budget of $300 per month.  I figured that I had lived with that level of spending as a fellow, so it wouldn't be all that hard to go back to it.  I motivated myself with calculations of how much $300 a month would be worth at retirement (about $138,000 if I retire in 20 years).  I promised myself that it wouldn't be the end of eating out, but just an opportunity to recalibrate my spending.  I was ready.

I lasted approximately two weeks.

It took me two weeks to realize just how many of my favourite moments happen in restaurants and how much I would miss out on if I based my spending on an arbitrary budget instead of conscious choice.  In those two weeks, I spent a Friday night eating takeout with a friend and her young baby while talking about the crazy rollercoaster ride that is being a new attending.  I spent a Monday night at a ramen bar with another friend hearing about her struggles with infertility.  And I spent another Friday night with my partner eating in a cheezy 80s style Greek restaurant because we were both too worn out from the week to even think about cooking.

After the two weeks, in which I didn't quite manage to stick to my eating out budget, I realized that food is my sacred cow.  I'm quite happy to live in a modest home and drive a car that my physician friends make fun of and never own a Coach purse.  But I'm not happy saying no to friends or my partner when they want to get together over food.

So bring on the ridiculous food budget.  I'm ready for some tapas.

The Weekly Hiss and Purr - September 7 Edition

I knew from the beginning that I was unlikely to write a "Hiss and Purr" post every week, but I was hoping to do it a bit more frequently than monthly.  By comparison, slukettg at This Liminal Space has been writing her "Weekly Hiss and Purr" literally every week and has lapped me in a very short time.  (If you haven't read her recent post about substance abuse and privilege, you should do that now.  It's way better written and more important than anything I'm going to come up with today.)  I'm going to try to write these posts more often, as they're a relatively easy way to get some of my thoughts out and to keep up with the habit of blogging.  I don't, however, promise weekly.

The Hiss - Insomnia:

Insomnia has been a lifelong enemy of mine, and for some reason it has decided to be particularly bad lately.  Most nights I wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and then I lie in bed afterwards for anywhere from one to three hours, completely awake.  On bad nights, the timing of falling back asleep corresponds to the timing of the cats crawling into bed, and then there is no additional sleep for me.  The interrupted sleep has left me profoundly tired - on Friday night, I started whining about needing to go to bed at 9 PM, which is very unusual for a night owl like me.

The strange thing is, I don't know why the insomnia is so bad.  Usually I suffer from insomnia when I'm under stress or unhappy about something, but I don't feel like either of those things are the case right now.  Yes, there is some stress associated with starting work as a real doctor, but it feels very mild compared to what I'd feared.  And I'm not unhappy!  I'm enjoying work even more than I had expected; the girlfriend and I have been doing lots of fun things in our spare time; and I'm getting better about avoiding the trap of staying up too late at night.  I just don't get it!

I've been exercising again recently (more about that later in the week), and I'm hoping that will help turn things around.  Because I'm tired of staring at the ceiling when I should be asleep!

The Purr - Long Weekends:

There is something so unbelievably luxurious about having three days off in a row.  I love having one day for fun things and one day for necessary things and then yet another day for whatever I choose to do.  This has been a particularly good long weekend, as we haven't had any weddings to go to (I am so done with weddings).  I've finished my book (more about Chasing the Scream in a future post), finished knitting my first sock (and started my second), introduced my girlfriend to Treme in honour of the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, played board games, tried four different hamburgers for Burger Week, and eaten an amazing celebratory dinner at my favourite tapas restaurant.  And it's not over yet!

At the moment, I'm still in pj's, and I'm keeping my girlfriend company while she makes zucchini loaf.  We have an oldies station playing in the background, and we're chatting about everything from the tragedy of the Syrian refuge crisis to the awkwardness of junior high.  It's everything I need in life.

Evening Routines

OMDG posted today about her challenge with evenings, which got me reflecting on my own evening routine since starting back at work.  When I was on holidays, my plans for my work evenings were very ambitious - cook tasty dinners with my girlfriend, clean the kitchen, take care of housework/paperwork, exercise, and read stimulating and erudite books.  Shockingly, the reality has been somewhat less impressive.  Despite not actually working that hard yet (I'm only working about half-time at the moment), I've been coming home mentally exhausted every day, and I haven't been able to motivate myself to do most of the things I would like to.

Currently, my post-work schedule looks something like this:

1)  Arrive home and dump all possessions (lunch bag, purse, backpack, jacket) in the front hallway.  Ignore voice in the back of my head that tells me that I should be putting things in the spaces I created for them.

2)  Cook dinner with my girlfriend.  This varies from spending 2-3 hours making an elaborate dinner (we love cooking) to BBQing hot dogs and eating potato chips from the bag.

3)  Spend way too much time on the computer.  Facebook, blogs, news, repeat.  I haven't mastered the art of turning off the computer when there is nothing good left to look at, so this eats up a lot of time.  On a good day, I write a blog post of variable quality.

4)  Watch something on Netflix with my girlfriend.  Lately we've been watching Human Planet, which is actually a decent and not entirely mind-numbing show, so it could be worse.

5)  Look at the stack of library books on my coffee table.  Decide it isn't worth the effort.  Possibly watch another Netflix show, usually of lower quality than Human Planet.

6)  Feel progressively more exhausted.  Resist the urge to go to bed like a reasonable human being.  Repeat item #3.

7)  Realize it's past my bedtime.  Rush around trying to make a lunch, pack my work bag, feed the cats, and do anything else that needs to be done.  (Feeding the cats is the only thing I consistently accomplish before bed, and that's only because they meow at me.)

8)  Finally get to bed much later than I should.  Realize that eight hours of restful sleep has become an impossible dream.

9)  Lie awake staring at the ceiling, regretting all of the things I didn't do.

This is something I need to work on, because evenings make up a lot of the quality time I have for myself and my girlfriend outside of work.  Looking back on this time of my life, I don't want Facebook and Netflix and a cluttered apartment to be my most vivid memories.

How happy are you with your evening routine?

Choices

Last night, my girlfriend took me to my favourite Ethiopian restaurant for a meal to celebrate my first day as an attending.  We ordered one vegetarian platter and one meat platter, which is too much food for two people to eat, but not quite enough food to leave a good serving of leftovers.  After my girlfriend had given up, while I was still trying to finish off every last tasty morsel, we had the following conversation.

Girlfriend:  "You know...if you stop eating now, we could share a mint Oreo Blizzard for dessert."

Me (pausing while bringing a handful of food to my mouth):  "What if I want to keep eating, but I also want to have a mint Oreo Blizzard for dessert?"

GF:  "Well...you're an adult and you can make choices for yourself.  My only request is that you not vomit in the car on the way home."
 
Me (reluctantly returning the handful of food to the plate):  "You never let me have any fun." 

Day Off Fun

When I started planning my vacation, I imagined an abundance of time with my girlfriend.  We would sleep in late, cook elaborate breakfasts, ride our bikes through our local parks, and head off on adventures in the city and across the province.

I did not imagine weddings.  And multiple family gatherings.  And all kinds of things that involved people other than just the girlfriend and me.  In the end, we've had much less time to spend together than expected.  Until today!  There was no wedding to attend, all of the family has flown back to their home cities, and my girlfriend had a mid-week day off.  Bliss!

We started the day with a very large breakfast at an old-school diner.  The diner is only a few blocks from where I'll be working starting next week, and it's right in the heart of the inner city.  A lot of people avoid this part of my city because it's associated with gang activity and drug use, and they worry that it isn't safe.  While these are definite issues in the neighbourhood, in reality most of the members of the community are good people who are just trying to build their lives under sometimes difficult conditions.

And there's great food available at low prices.  (If you're not familiar with the deep fried pockets of goodness on the right, they're perogies, which are a staple in diners in my city.)

After breakfast, we headed across the street to a Thrift Store to search out some bargains.  My girlfriend found an assortment of $0.50 CDs, including the Sound of Music and a few classical CDs, while I scored big on knitting needles - six pairs for only $0.25 each! 

(Please do not put any needles in here)

While a big part of my motivation for going to thrift stores is to save money, it goes beyond that.  In our wasteful society, I think it's important to look for ways of reusing things and reducing how much we send to the landfills.  It's also a great way to support charities such as Mennonite Central Committee, which focuses on relief and peace-building efforts across the world.  And there's something really satisfying about making a great find (like six pairs of knitting needles for $1.50).

(End of soapbox)

After the thrift store, we went to almost every bike shop in the city to look for a bike for my girlfriend.  She's been using a second-hand bike from her brother for almost ten years, and it's probably well past the time when she should have bought one for herself.  She's looking at a cruiser bike, and I think she's finally settled on the one she wants to buy.  (At least I hope so, because I think I might ram a kickstand through my eye if I have to look at another bike.)

After the bike shopping, we headed to a local farm to pick up our Community Supported Agriculture share.  (I could wax poetic about CSAs for days, but I think the thrift store paragraph was probably enough sappiness for one blog post.)  The people with whom we've been splitting our weekly share are away for the next few weeks, so we have an even greater abundance of produce than usual.  I have no idea how we're going to eat ten cucumbers, five zucchinis, and four bags of kale in the next week.  Any suggestions?

And that was our day.  My girlfriend got a last minute invitation to a free play, so she's off watching that while I read and blog and try to fit copious amounts of produce into our tiny apartment fridge.

Life is good. 

Mountains

The past month has been a difficult one.  I've been away from home on an elective rotation, meaning that, not only have I been dealing with the stress of a new place, new people, and new medicine, I've been doing so without the benefit of my usual support people.  Although the work has been interesting and the medical staff very supportive of me, it has felt like a very long and hard month.

Thankfully, the end of the month brought with it a conference in the Rocky Mountains, which is pretty much my favourite place in the world.  The girlfriend was able to join me for the conference, so she had a few days to enjoy Banff while I listened to talks and shmoozed with other physicians.  And now that the conference is over, we have six days (four left) to explore Japser and to visit some family in rural Canada.

The drive from Banff to Jasper was absolutely spectacular.  I've done the drive at least seven times now, and it never ceases to amaze me.  Every time I make the drive, I pull over multiple times to take the same photos that I've taken before, because I can't resist the views.
 

One of many photos I've taken of Castle Mountain from the same viewpoint.  

I also have this photo in summer!  And fall!

Since our arrival in Jasper, we've been doing a lot of relaxing and a lot of eating.  We tried unsuccessfully to go on hikes to Mount Edith Cavell (road closed for winter) and Maligne Canyon (paths were deadly skating rinks due to recent melting), and then resigned ourselves to staring at the mountains through our hotel window while lounging in front of the fireplace.  It's a hard life.

 The glacier at Lake Louise.

People who have trouble following signs.

The breathtaking Columbia Icefields.  

Someday I'll have time to actually take a tour out onto the glacier.