It’s been a day. My surgeon is away so I got the day off (unpaid of course).
It’s very useful to get the occasional day off during the week to get various chores done: laundry, dishes, mow the lawn, hide from the cleaner.
I also took the opportunity to replenish my wardrobe. It turns out nice work clothes are vastly more expensive than the last time I looked, so I left the two pretty dresses I tried on, on the racks. It’s possible I’ll return in a moment of weakness in the coming weeks but no guarantee. It’s hard to justify big bucks on something you wear just for the few minutes at the beginning and the end of your work day, when the rest of the time you’re in scrubs.
New yoga gear was definitely required, though, and here was my chance to use my hospital discount that a colleague told me about after (!) my last big Lululemon spend up. Having selected my new purchases, I went up to the counter with my new hideous hospital photo ID on display and asked if they were still offering the district health board discount. “Why?” she said “What do you do?” “I work at the hospital” “Yes, but what’s your job there? Are you a nurse?” “No – I’m a doctor” in a tremulous voice, as my social anxiety came to the fore. “Of course you’re a doctor” she muttered darkly to herself – what’s that about, I wonder? Yes, there is indeed a 25% discount which is allocated to first responders (is that me?), it’s not automatically calculated and I have to tell them who I am and bring photo ID each time so they can add the discount manually. I’m not sure I can endure the trauma, actually. Anyway, I now have another pair of tights and a top which are no longer exorbitantly expensive but nearly reasonable in price.
Tonight’s yoga class went much as previous ones have, with me being called out by the teacher far more than anyone else. I will of course aim to improve, but I’m the meantime I might try hiding further towards the back of the class. Having turned up late, I ended up having to put my mat next to the older chap who appears to have a few health issues. He spent the entire class sounding to be in respiratory distress, wheezing and breathless and struggling during his poses. It was rather distracting, and it was quite a relief when he fell asleep during the wind up meditation phase.
The teacher touched her head a couple of times in class, and looked up towards the ceiling, but I didn’t think anything of it until I was getting dressed in the changing room upstairs afterwards. One of the women from class was looking in her bag and getting quite upset. Turns out she had a bottle of breast milk she’d expressed earlier in the day but the lid wasn’t on properly and it had spilled everywhere, including onto and through the floorboards. The teacher, who was in the room with us, took the news quite calmly I thought, considering she had had breast milk dripped onto her head during class, and seemed more concerned about the baby “Oh no! Is your poor baby going to starve to death?” My snort of laughter at that might seem callous but surely that was an unlikely outcome? Luckily the woman had some milk stored in the freezer so the situation wasn’t too dire. I asked her how old her baby was, as a sort of meaningless chat while the teacher was getting stuff from the kitchen to clean up, and the woman said a year. My initial thought then was, might be a sign it’s time to get weaning? but it’s probably just envy talking. I never got more than four months of milk out of my boobs per pregnancy. That was because I had to go back to work, and there was no set up for expressing at work in those days, as there is now. There’s certainly been a lot of progress in that area in the last few years.
I left them to it, and hopped back on my scooter, Apart from a run in with a road worker in a truck (“you drove through our no left turn sign!” “No I didn’t!” “You drove through our sign that said not to come this way!” “There wasn’t a sign!” “There’s a sign down there that says there’s road works” “but I didn’t come that way! Oh God, never mind, I’m leaving”) it was an uneventful trip home.