What are you up to to start off the weekend?
So despite being a short week, this was a loooong one in the land of the Family medicine people! Today, especially so. Paper is raining from the sky and finding it’s way onto my desk for more people then I knew I had in my practice.
So I asked Jon and the kids to meet me by the lake after work. By the time we got there it was grey and cold. A perfect fall feeling day. Except it’s spring. So we were all “end of the week angry” about this kind of shite.
We walked down the forest trail to the lake and were swarmed by May flies. Which is especially awesome when you have a lot of hair.
Then we get to the beach, and I’m freezing, the sky is grey, the water is really high and there is barely any beach left from the heavy rain we have had this last week. My feet were cold. I’m wearing scrubs and the tiredness is hitting hard.
But the boys persisted, against the wind and on a narrow beach we poked. Boys with net in hand, trying to find a slightly bulbous tadpole (they are MASSIVE here), and me thinking we are going to find nothing because the reedy part of the lake is buried in water.
I told Noah the other day plodding through the forest that I quite fancied finding a turtle. I promised him that day if he found one (knowing he wouldn’t),basically anything he wanted. No turtle.
So I was a little sceptical when he ran toward me, at 13, with his cool 13 year old saunter, and a net in his hands, saying he got a turtle. Especially since the net was tiny and the thing inside was the size of an avocado pit.
None-the-less he rescued a half dead, belly up, itty-bitty lad of a guy we called Gary. So we did our version of turtle CPR, gave him a long talk about resilience, put him somewhere safe and watched him plod off toward the water. Gary, as it turned out had life in him yet.
As a small snapping turtle I hope that Gary remembers us with kindness later in the summer when we are swimming in the same lake and step on him or a family member as big, stompy boy feet tend to do.
Then we found the chonkiest tadpole ever. We hung around with him for a bit while he checked out our bucket, then we wished him well and off he went. With tale and bulb body he pushed his way through the water, hopefully growing legs and arms soon, to be caught by us again later this summer in his frog body.
It turned out to be an excellent end to our evening. Despite my cold misery and feeling annoyed that the sky looked like it was threatening snow.
As we were walking back to the car we were swarmed by mosquitos ( we meaning me, cause they love hair), and one went right up my nostril at an alarming and shocking speed.
It has yet to come out that I have seen. Despite me doing an emergency pick because I panicked, during the frenzy of having an an insect as part of my face. Henry immediately told me off, (despite an obvious life threatening object torpedoing through my nasal passages). At seven, and doing the disgusting things he does almost hourly, I would have thought he could have given me a break.
So likely I will die of westnile or of a mosquito boaring into my sinuses and then having babies, as they do.
None-the-less . Happy Friday.
Prayers for Gary, the size of my thumb, who will likely get eaten by a bird tomorrow but who brought much joy to our lives tonight.
Glad the weekend is here.