Narrator: … and suddenly, it was September.
Happy September 2nd!
Where did the summer go? Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess?
I was doing really well, writing every morning, and housekeeping in the afternoons. And then I spent a week in Vancouver helping my sister prepare for her three-day wedding extravaganza. The wedding itself was one day, but to take advantage of friends and family being in town, we packed the weekend with a bachelorette party, a bridal shower, a tour of her new house, and a rehearsal dinner. My sister and I put together wedding favors, baskets, 75 programs, 80 place settings, a flower wreath, a balloon wreath, a guestbook, and more. Everyone had fun, and the wedding was beautiful. It was all worth it in the end. I am so happy for my sister and her new husband! But 99% of me is happy that L and I eloped. That 1% is looking forward to having a dinner reception so that friends and family can celebrate us as well.
The point is, I didn’t write much, except for a matron of honor speech (that made me cry while writing it, but apparently didn’t make anyone else cry) and a reflection on my little sister getting married (more on that later). We returned on a Monday evening after a full day of traveling, making our connection in Toronto by some miracle despite a delay in Vancouver. We lost three hours in the process. But I tell you, I never believed what they said about growing old until a three-hour time change caused me to be jetlagged for three days. Gone are the days when I could sleep in jeans on a couch. Even being on 24-hour call requires a day of recovery. Of course, I blame some of it on the fact that I am actively growing a human in my womb. I talked to the wedding photographer at Claire’s wedding, who is about as far along as I am, and she agreed that the fatigue is real. It’s unexpected and a little bit unsettling for someone who is otherwise able-bodied and has always been running, lifting, crouching, without stopping. Some days I feel completely normal, and some days, which I call ‘growing days’, I get tired after standing for ten minutes and making breakfast. This happens every 3-4 days or so. In the second trimester, these days seem to happen a little less frequently.
That being said, I had to do some normal human things after returning home this week. I paid our utility bill. I added tap water to a hand soap dispenser to extend it a little longer (I’m not going shopping today to get more soap; it’s a scent I like, and they stopped making it! Rosewater and mint, from a Target line.) I ripped the space bar off my keyboard to ‘fix it’ from sticking and had to watch a YouTube video about how to put it back on. I drank orange juice with extra calcium in it. I woke up to the news that Sarah Palin had lost to a Native American woman named Mary Peltola for the one Alaskan House seat. In the article, Palin said that she would ‘reload’, though I feel that using a firearm metaphor in this day and age is in poor taste.
Lastly, I’ve been cooking my way through the New York Times, mostly to L’s delight. You could call it nesting, but I truly love to cook, and having some of that order, chaos and creation is replacing that part of me that loves doing surgery. Here is a poem I wrote after dinner yesterday so that I would have something to share with my writing group.
The Room
I step into my smoky room
With its familiar smells and colors
Light mint green soothing on the walls
Belies the chaos that occurs here.
The lights are not right. I have someone adjust them
So that they are aimed in the right direction.
I need to see, need to see what I’m doing.
They’re not bright enough, so someone adjusts them again.
Every stranger needs to get out of my space.
My tools are lined up against the walls, shining, sharp.
I insisted on stainless steel shelving to imitate sterility.
Gowned and gloved, I start to chop
Pink flesh glistens with dark coagulated blood.
Slicing onions puts me into a meditative state.
Mincing garlic, ginger
Dicing tomatoes.
The skin of the chicken thigh browns in the cast iron pan
I add a knob of butter to the rendered fat
And soften the aromatics in it.
My movements are an orchestrated dance,
Though I drop the cumin, nobody dies.
In my head, I have choreographed the steps
First rice, then chicken, then carrots, lastly the broccoli
Which takes the least time to cook.
In the end, we have one-pan coconut braised chicken
The tomato provides an acidic kick.
No one else in my family likes to cook, all that work for ten minutes of eating
But I enjoy the process
Thirty minutes of solitude, of order, of creation
Resulting in a plate of instant gratification. What else can you say does that?
Everyone is happy.
No one is hurt (except for the chicken)
No one is in pain (at least, not tonight)
The kitchen is my new operating room.
This recipe, in particular, is One-pot braised chicken with coconut milk, tomato and ginger. I, of course, cannot resist a few changes so I used a bit of butter to make it more like butter chicken, used fresh cherry tomatoes and a tablespoon of tomato paste to cut down on sodium, and added a bit of turmeric and paprika while frying the onions. L gave it a two-thumbs up.
We finally published this article in Cureus, Symptomatic Colorectal Cancer is associated with Stage IV diagnosis, after almost 4 years in the making. Yes, I like to stay involved in scholarly work. Here my group looks at disparities in colon cancer.
You can continue to find me on carmenfong.com, on Instagram @drcarmenfong, or on Twitter and Facebook.
Until next time, always go black tie!
