It has been a long week. A wallowing kind of week, made longer by suffocating heat and just sheer exhaustion. Like the chicken/egg thing, I don't know which came first--the exhaustion or the wallowing. Either way, it is miserable.

First of all, the heat. Over 100 degrees every day--no rain. The trees are wilting, the grass is crunchy, the sky is a relentless, mocking blue. I hate it. I discovered several years into this drought that I like rain--no, I love rain. There is something innately wrong with cloudless blue skies day after day after day--like a face that has been botoxed into mask-like perfection. It makes me uneasy. It is not to be trusted.

And, I am tired. I think my body is still on the summer schedule of going to bed around 11 and getting up around 6:30. Now I go to bed around 11, but I get up at 5. I am clearly too old to sacrifice even one more moment of sleep, so I have been groggy and grumpy. Couple that with it being a week where I work AFTERNOONS--yes, seeing patients in the afternoon every day. I am a morning person. By 3 pm I am not at my best; in other words, I don't really care why you brought your kid to see me. If he/she isn't dying, you are wasting my time. Compassionate, huh?
Fortunately, I am usually able to schedule my patient care in the mornings and early afternoon--there are just occasional weeks when it doesn't work out that way. Add to that the new interns and students who don't really know their ass from a teakettle and, well, I get a touch sour.

All of this leads to: you got it--wallowing. I feel old. I feel like a failure. I look at my friends: vice presidents of hospitals, directors of programs, etc. and I think "what the fuck did I do for the past 10 years?" Devoting myself to saving a doomed marriage was clearly not worth it in a lot of ways. I am 46 years old, and I feel like I will be working until I am 96 to get the kids through school and get myself financially stable. So what am I craving? A convertible. And a new, big rock. For me from me. Neither of which I can have. So now add whiney, petulant, irritated and spoiled to the mix.

Yes, the only thing that sucks more than being me this week is having to put up with me. Poor children, interns, and students (but not the patients--I can fake it with them til the cows come home)! Maybe it will rain soon. Or I will enjoy a long night of sweet, dreamless sleep. Or, I will just get over it. That is usually what happens--I just get over it. Please, make it soon!