Tick, Tick, Tick

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I’ve come to the conclusion that being married to an Emergency Room doctor kind of sucks.  Not in the way that most outsiders would probably think.  Sure, in the beginning there was that whole “fear of needle sticks giving him HIV” thing, but you get over that fairly quickly (otherwise you go bonkers).  And I’ve never been particularly squeamish, so he can pretty much talk about “what’s grosser than gross” all the live long day (this morning he brought a present home to show the kids — a tick in a plastic jar that he’d removed from some poor bastard’s scrotum).   I think the real problem — and this isn’t nearly as exciting as it sounds — is that every day is a frickin’ surprise.

We live a life almost completely devoid of any normal, regular, or set schedule.  From week to week and month to month, Tenzin never works the same days or nights.  Neither of us knows exactly when he might fall asleep in the middle of the day because a night shift has gotten to him and he just can’t function any more.  Or when he’ll suddenly feel energetic late at night and want to watch ultimate fighting for three hours.  After close to 15 years of life in the ER, you’d think we’d be used to this, but apparently not.  Most of the time, we deal with it just fine, but every once in a while, it starts to get to us.  Like now.

Right now, we have the added bonus of me feeling like crap.  Which means I add an additional variable into the equation.  For instance, will mommy suddenly feel like she’s going to rip her face from her skull and therefore be unable to pick up the children from school?  Or will she have a really bad night, have to take a bunch of pain meds, and then not be able to wake up in the morning (I swear, when the kids grow up, they’ll start comparing memories of me laying in bed, completely out of it, and they’ll speculate about whether or not I was actually an alcoholic — “Did you ever find the empties?”)?  Or will she be just fine, dandy, and rarin’ to go?  It’s a mystery.

And now, I’ve thrown in another variable — my “writing career.”  With all of this blogging, tweeting, networking, and article writing, I could potentially be working every second of the day.  And all night.  Turns out there’s a whole lot to these internets.  So on top of Tenzin’s crazy schedule, now I’m a blog-combing, multitasking, child-ignoring insomniac (come to think of it, the only thing that’s really changed is the blog reading, so I don’t know what the hell my problem is). 

I look around the house and think, why can’t we pull it together?  We have so much time at home.  Hours and hours more than your average eight to fiver.  So it has to be the schedule.  Otherwise, it means we’re failing miserably and need some sort of life intervention.  And I frankly don’t trust anyone who calls themselves a “life coach,” so that option is clearly off the table.

Therefore, in an effort to find a plausible scapegoat and make myself feel better, I’m blaming the crazy schedule.  Incidentally, the kids just finished the school year, which effectively ends our family’s only measure of time and space.  So lord help us.  Unfortunately for my brain, the world works much better when I can see it like a calendar or a grid.  Right now, it sort of resembles an amoeba.  So obviously I need to bring in the lines and tighten things up a bit.  Because right now, I feel a lot like that poor bastard that Tenzin saw last night. . .

Something beyond our control has us by the balls and is sucking the life out of us.