FreshMD

Terese Bast

Terese Bast is a Finnish artist whose work I - and Saskia - love.

Clockwise from top left: Autumn, Meeting Point, Soft and Solid and Sweet Dreams.

The mossy boulders, groves of trees and rich, natural colours remind me of life right outside our windows in Deep Cove.

I purchased Autumn months ago, and finally got around to getting it framed and hung. The matting and framing is always the rate-determining step for me; I have stacks of prints languishing in a cardboard box in my study, waiting to be put behind glass.

Saskia's room is the best decorated in the house, as Autumn joins Green Girl and some of Cicely Mary Barker's flower fairies.

Bast's work is available for purchase through her website, in her Etsy shop and through various vendors.

Goat farming, return to residency or the status quo?

* * Posted at Mothers in Medicine * *

I work two days a week, and I'm home with the kids for three. Apart from a full-time stint when Pete took a ten-week parental leave in 2005, I've never worked more than three days a week since I finished residency five years ago.

You might assume that if I've maintained the same pattern for years, I must have found the perfect balance, requiring little review.

But a typical week of end-of-day comments to Pete looks like this:

• Monday: "I've been thinking of doing another residency. What would you think of staying home for three years?"

• Tuesday: "Let's move to the Island and take up organic goat farming. Think how much the kids would love it."

Continue reading here.

Timmy

When Saskia got home from school the other day, she was so eager to play in the pup tent I had set up that she dropped her backpack outside the front door and ran down into the yard. An hour later when she returned, the bag had disappeared.

Our kids' missing things tend to turn up shortly in the most unlikely places, so we didn't do more than a cursory search. But by the next morning we still hadn't found it, and we began to hunt for it in earnest. 

Someone must have taken it, but the list of possible culprits was improbable. A passerby, in our remote area of Deep Cove? The paperboy? The neighbour's dog? A raven? Bear? Raccoon? Pete scoured the yard while I surveyed the treetops from the upstairs windows.

"Maybe the raccoon took it under the house," I suggested. Our neighbourhood rests on solid rock, and the homes are built off the ground. You can crawl under most of our house. We have a resident raccoon that I've seen saunter beneath one area of the house on a few occasions.

When I joked once that the kids might want to follow him in there, Saskia was duly apprehensive, but I had to hold Leif back. "What if he bit you?" I asked. "Then I'd whack him with this badminton racket," Leif replied matter-of-factly. Leif named the raccoon Timmy.

Pete thought it unlikely that the raccoon had taken the pack, but as we couldn't think of a better alternative, he finally crouched down and peered under the house. Sure enough, he could see a purple strap dangling over the rocks. He gingerly removed the knapsack, dirty and scraped, with a garden rake.

The kids were delighted at this turn of events. The fact that the bag had been unzipped, and the contents undisturbed save a missing lunchpack, pleased them no end. For the next few days, I was constantly asked to speculate on Timmy's current activities.

"Mommy, tell me what Timmy's doing right now," asked Leif in the van that morning.

"Ummm . . . shaking the lunch bag upside down to see if he can get a few more crumbs of Daddy's chocolate chip cookies out."

"What's Timmy doing now?" at dinner time.

"He can smell our fish and chips and he's crossing his little fingers hoping Mommy forgets the garbage out on the deck again tonight."

"What did Timmy do today?" as I tuck Leif into bed.

"He sat on a rock at the beach and threw pebbles in the water."

"And he splashed himself!" supplemented Leif happily.

So when I saw this from the living room window yesterday, it was nothing short of a dream come true for the kids:

Timmy was lying on his back in the crown of the tree, licking his privates while Saskia, Leif and Ariana watched reverently from the window seat. I averted my lens until he was decent. He humoured us for about ten minutes, and then made his way back into the undergrowth.

As I put a large box out for recycling at dinner time, I suggested, "Hey! Tomorrow let's put a chicken drumstick in here and set a trap for Timmy!" There was unanimous agreement that this was a brilliant idea, even when I amended the plan to exclude food scraps as bait. Then I acted out a tussle with the caged raccoon, which was very well received.

I can see that Timmy could occupy a few little minds and hands for a good week or two, and I'm going to milk that for all its worth.

Big B, little b

Now that I've made an effort to combat the bandying about of the term projectile vomiting, it's time to address another popular medical misconception.

My kids' brown eyes frequently elicit comments, which often include the observation, "Because even though you and Pete have brown eyes, your kids could still have blue eyes." Then follows a reference to big B, little b and recessive and dominant genes. And the concluding statement is invariably: "But parents with blue eyes can't have brown-eyed kids."

Even the Eye Color Calculator refuses to give me results for my children, stating that I cannot be the child of my parents:

I hate to break it to you, but when your high school biology teacher made that Punnett square explaining the transmission of eye colour, he was dumbing things down. Simple Mendelian genetics applies to the colouring of corn kernels and the shape of peas. Human iris colour is more complicated.

Eye colour inheritance is multifactorial. Several genes are involved, and the occurrence of mutations further complicates the possibilities. Though uncommon, blue-eyed parents can have brown-eyed children.

So that Dutch cousin of yours with the brown eyes, whose paternity you've always secretly questioned? Probably legitimate. The cousin, that is; not your suspicions.

Wedding

My youngest sister got married this weekend. Saskia was the flower girl and Leif the ring bearer. So the last week has been busy with visits to Black & Lee, searching for the perfect black headband, repairing a flower girl dress that I had put in the dress up bin, the rehearsal dinner and the big day itself.

Going through my photos yesterday, I realized I only have one picture of Alisa and Alistair. Guess I was too preoccupied with the other two girls in white dresses:

Saskia advised me that morning that her front tooth was ready to come out, and I had visions of a small stream of blood flowing down her white satin gown mid-service. But aside from Leif doing the classic pillow toss while walking down the aisle, and then holding it with his teeth during the ceremony, all went well.

My grandparents sat behind us in church, to Ariana's delight. Note the small Dora figurine which we unthinkingly permitted her to take from the van, which then became a fixture in the wedding photographs.

Taking a picture of my three kids hasn't gotten any easier over the past few years. Fortunately, I've lowered my standards.

The reception was at Minter Gardens. To my horror the kids kept offering me flowers they had picked on the grounds. At least they could name most of them.

Leif wanted to nap in the van, but he had a job to do.

Saskia had the time of her life, and since Saturday has been recounting in detail the various speeches that were made. Good thing they were tasteful.

And Ariana was her usual sweet, quiet self.

Going to a wedding used to be the equivalent of a night on the town. It's a totally different experience with three kids in tow. Pretty much the only conversation I had all day was sympathetic clucking from my aunts as I mopped up spills and tried to keep Leif from poking his finger in every cheesecake lined up on the dessert table. Thankfully, my siblings and parents happily amused the kids.

My sister Diana with her date, whom she typically drives to drink:

My ten-day-old nephew, PJ, fascinated my kids to the point that my mother exclaimed, "Oh, Martina! Look at Ariana with that baby! You have to have another one!"

Maybe that's the logic that led to my parents having six kids. A better argument might be that I should have a couple of flower girls and ring bearers in reserve for my remaining three unmarried siblings.

Chlamydia

"You have chlamydia," I said, and waited while the Farsi interpreter relayed this to my patient, a young Afghani woman with two kids wiggling on her lap. She smiled brightly at me after receiving the news.

"Chlamydia is a sexually transmitted infection," I continued. She nodded pleasantly. I enquired about sexual partners.

"She's only had sex with one person, ever," the interpreter stated. "Her husband. And he's only had sex with her."

I explained again that the bacterial infection was contracted sexually, and went on to describe the antibiotic dosing, and the need for her husband to be tested and treated as well. Her cheerful response suggested that something was being lost in translation, and at the end of the visit I emphasized that it is impossible to get chlamydia in a relationship where two people have only ever had sexual contact with each other.

Her smile faded, and she asked a few quick questions through the interpreter. "Can you get it from a towel, maybe?" she asked hopefully. "Or from the swimming pool?"

I shook my head, and when a quietly angry look settled on her face, I knew she understood. She purposefully tucked the medication into her purse and left the office, her two kids skipping after her.

Ma Ingalls makes suet

I think most at-home mothers have Ma Ingalls moments, when they quite like the idea of airing the quilt from the trundle bed, churning butter and sewing calico dresses by firelight in the evening while Pa cleans his rifle.

I consider myself a modern-day Caroline when I make salmonberry muffins for the kids, or plan how to fill our cellar. Or when I make suet, as I did today.

Red-breasted nuthatch - February/08

Discarding bacon or hamburger fat has always struck me as wasteful. I'm not quite willing to do as my Oma did, and spread bacon grease on toast or saute vegetables in it, delicious though that was to an eight-year-old. But I couldn't think of any other use for it until we ran out of store-bought bird suet recently.

"We're not bird people," I reassured a house guest this past weekend. "I find birders a bit odd. I went birding once and it was painfully boring."

Throughout the afternoon, our conversation was interrupted by Pete and I commenting, "Check out the one out that side window," and "Hey, is that a goldfinch? Wait, no - it's too big. Where's the book?"

Our friend finally asked, "So, you're only birders from the comfort of your own home?"

"We're 'Don't call us, we'll call you' birders," affirmed Pete.

Hairy woodpecker - March/08

We have a suet feeder hanging in front of the living room window, and while at times it does strike me as strange that we would choose to have a brick of fat interrupting our view of Indian Arm, I do love the constant stream of visiting birds. And I like the challenge of trying to photograph every species that drops by.

So the Ma Ingalls in me wanted to whip up my own suet, and an Internet search (like Ma would have done) yielded several recipes. I've been saving every spare ounce of fat in a container in the freezer for a few weeks now.

This morning I melted down two cups of the salvaged grease in a pan, and stirred in a cup of peanut butter, a cup of flour, a handful of oats, some stale hazelnuts and some crumbs from the bottom of a bag of tortilla chips. I only sampled the mixture once. Pete was not nearly as excited about this whole process as I was. If only I got this much pleasure from cooking for my family.

I poured the concoction into an 8 x 8 baking pan and put it in the freezer to set. Two hours later I carved it into four squares of suet, perfectly sized for a standard feeder. Pete was quick to point out that when suet is a dollar or two at Canadian Tire, this exercise is not exactly cost-saving. That didn't deter me for a moment.

It's pouring out, and the birds are nowhere in sight, but I'm sitting on the couch knitting and drinking tea and waiting for the first visitors, feeling very satisfied with myself. Tomorrow's project on the homestead: headcheese.

You didn't tell me you're a doctor!

* * Cross-posted at Mothers in Medicine * *

Our painter, a fifty-something fellow, has done many jobs for us over the years. He works hard, grunting and thumping and wheeling the roller around whatever room he's working on. I commented once on the superb quality of his work. He responded kindly, "I'm sure there's something you're good at, too."

Months later, touching up our living room, he caught sight of my medical degree tucked in a corner of a bookcase. "You're a doctor!" he said accusingly when I saw him next. He felt deceived because I hadn't volunteered that information.

This has happened to me on many occasions, where someone who has known me only as a mother discovers that I am a physician. A neighbour is seated in the clinic waiting room and is shocked to see me with a stethoscope around my neck. A mother at the playground asks why I'm carrying a pager, and is taken aback when I explain that I'm on call for the clinic. The response is usually dismay, and I know it's because they are madly working to mentally recategorize me. They're disconcerted because they realize they've been using the wrong set of assumptions.

The response to both occupations bothers me. I resent being patronized as a mother, and I feel embarrassed when I'm congratulated for being a physician.

While doling out hot dogs and orange drink to my kids at the school barbeque recently, I remarked that the energy and enthusiasm of students made teaching look attractive. A teacher grasped my arm and replied earnestly, "And I'm sure you could do it, one day!"

What was I supposed to say? I just nodded and thanked her.

*  *  *  *  *
(Click here for some great comments on this post coming in via Mothers in Medicine.)

Mothers in Medicine

I'm excited to introduce you to a group blog with which I'm involved: Mothers in Medicine. There are fifteen contributors, all physicians, all mothers, blogging about their dual occupations. I am the lone Canadian.

There are some great posts up already, and I'll be making my first contribution this weekend.

Thank you to KC of Where's My Cape? for initiating this project, and for inviting me to be part of it.

Wickenden Park owls

When Pete got home from work yesterday, he took one look at me and sent me into the woods to unwind. We live a stone's throw from Wickenden Park, and there's nothing like spending a half hour alone in the forest surrounded by massive cedars, wet huckleberry bushes and bird calls to calm oneself.

There's a family of owls that have been living in the park for years, and everyone I've met in Deep Cove knows about them. I headed out with my camera, followed the sound of the screeching, and found them in their usual spot near the bridge.

Pete's been chased by them as he runs along the trail. My fear of having those talons aimed at me kept in check the extremes to which I was willing to go to get a good shot. 

We've seen the three owls working together to corner a squirrel. Once one flew over the trail clutching a rat.

Another evening one was perched on a low branch in a tree just outside the park. All the neighbours were milling about, coffees in hand, admiring it. The owl never took its eyes off a cat that was lounging at the side of the road.

I believe these are barred owls. The fluffiness makes me wonder if this one is a juvenile, but I'm no ornithologist.

Somehow seeing these creatures in the forest puts everything in perspective, and I trotted out of the woods refreshed, having only overstayed my allotted time by twenty minutes. 

Petty theft - Part II

Thank you for the very insightful comments on the last post. What a complex scenario this is. Here's what transpired after the visit:

After Katie left, while we were still standing in the driveway, I asked Saskia straight out: "Did Katie try to steal Sophie?"

Saskia gave me a strange look and answered, "No!" in a tone indicating she thought my suggestion completely absurd. I didn't press it.

When I was brushing my teeth that night I noticed that my jewelry was rearranged on the counter. Saskia and Katie had changed into swimsuits in my en suite that afternoon. A cursory exam didn't reveal anything to be missing, but the idea of my earrings being handled by those little fingers made me uncomfortable. And double-checking to make sure my engagement ring hadn't been taken from my jewelry box by a six-year-old was sort of sickening.

The next day Saskia asked cheerfully, "Can Katie come over again next week?"

"Maybe you could have Ingrid over next time," I replied, which met with an enthusiastic response.

I don't know if Katie's behaviour is pathologic. It could very well be related to social and financial stressors at home, a character flaw or immaturity. It would probably be in Katie's best interest for us to welcome her to continue to visit. Problem is, I'm not sure it's in Saskia's best interest to encourage her friendship with Katie, especially given that there are a dozen other little friends with whom we've never had a problem. At this age, I can direct Saskia towards other friendships without her even noticing. I won't have that luxury when she's nine or fourteen.

If I knew Katie's parents well, I'd tell them what happened. The mother was right there when the goods fell out of the coat, but she genuinely didn't seem to notice. She seems generally oblivious, I know her only superficially, and I think a conversation with her would be extremely awkward. So I'm not going to address it.

I don't plan to discuss it any more with Saskia. I think she is naive enough that the whole incident went over her head, and I don't think dissecting the episode will be of any benefit.

No, I don't look at every kid with suspicion now. I still think kids in general are delightful, innocent little beings. And I haven't written off Katie. She'll still be invited to the next birthday party.

But I'm locking my triplicates* away from now on.

*prescriptions for narcotics and other controlled substances

Petty theft

Saskia had a friend over the other day, a six-year-old girl named Katie.* Now and then I overheard snippets of their conversation, and it soon became clear that Katie was much more clever than Saskia. Their play withstood the unbalance, however, because Saskia was never even aware that she was being continually one-upped.

"My dad makes the best pizza!" I heard Saskia say as she and her friend played cards at the kitchen table while Pete mixed up some dough. "It's so good, I eat three pieces!"

"My dad makes pizza, too," Katie responded quickly. "And I eat nine pieces."

"Nine pieces!" repeated Saskia, duly impressed. "Nine pieces! Mommy, Katie eats nine pieces of pizza!"

"That's a lot of pizza," I replied.

They went outside to play, and when her mother arrived at the end of the afternoon, I brought out the little girl's coat. Katie took it from me, murmured something about needing to get something, and disappeared into the house. Five minutes passed.

Finally she emerged from the front door, clutching her coat to her chest. As she walked down the driveway Saskia's most treasured toy, a stuffed kitty named Sophie, fell from the coat. "Sophie!" exclaimed Saskia. "Sophie just fell out of your coat!" Saskia laughed excitedly at the miracle she had just witnessed. Then a hairband fell to the driveway. "And my hairband! My hairband just fell out of your coat!" Saskia shouted delightedly.

"Oh," said Katie calmly. "I guess your mom must have wrapped those up in the coat before she gave it to me." She ran down the driveway and climbed into the backseat of her car. She didn't wave back as they drove away.

I stood in the driveway, trying to distill my reaction. She's six years old, I thought. Maybe she doesn't have many toys at home. Maybe attempting petty theft is a stage some kids go through.

And then I thought of her appraising and removing contents of my home. I thought of how distressed Saskia would have been when she couldn't find Sophie at bedtime. And what gave me an actual pain in my chest was that Saskia was so sweetly oblivious to it all, that she didn't recognize what her friend had done even when the pilfered goods dropped onto the driveway in front of her eyes.

I saw Katie at the grocery store a few days later, and said hello. She didn't answer back, wouldn't even look at me. She knows I'm on to her.

*Name changed to protect the identity of a minor