frazzled and flowers

Tonight I am frazzled. Was told I had to come in to work early to meet with the boss. Now what did I do wrong? Turned out he just wanted me to see a patient quickly. That was fine, but the guy wouldn't shut up. And my schedule looked hideous, two hours of extra patients scheduled, a new patient scheduled in half the usual time. Then the new patient turned out to be a seven year old. I'm sorry, I do adult psychiatry ok, but there's no way I can do child psychiatry, and the therapist know that, but the therapist with ADHD and anxiety has been dropping the ball lately and so I had to cancel that appointment, and then patients' cancellations started piling up and I went from a full schedule to a lame schedule, and then back again. It took me almost an hour to get the last lady to stop crying. Finally I talked her into positive options instead of "I can't do it", and when she was able to admire my flower arrangement I knew she was good enough to go home (with enough drugs to numb her almost to oblivion, just in case). Wasn't as black and white as it sounds, and I do think the meds will help and all. But just as I was thinking my day was over and I could relax, I went out for coffee with the receptionist. She toldl me how she thinks her husband is developing alzheimers, how she has urges to cut herself, and how her multiple personalities slow her up at work and at least her coworkers don't notice "the one that is almost like me." I told her we weren't going to talk about all that stuff, because if I listen to her then she'll have to listen to me, and she really doesn't want to go there.

Oh Maaaaaannn! as they say in Captain Underpants. One more day and I can think about vacation. Right now the trip to Vermont just feels like more work. Part of me is hoping for a nonstop seven day blizzard so we won't have to go anywhere and J can spend all his time digging tunnels and we won't have to lug a car full of presents to Vermont and pretend that Santa tracked us there.

I made two flower arrangements this morning in a pressured burst of creativity before work. One is a tall vase of roses that looks almost really good. The other is a remake of an earlier arrangement. It had spiky yellow fake gerber daisies that looked fine in the box, but make the arrangement look like it had been electrocuted when it was put together. So I took out the daisies and replaced them with pink roses and baby's breath and now it looks like a bridal bouquet. Oh well. Hope A likes girly flowers.

I've promised two more arrangements by Wednesday - one for a table and one for a long shelf for medical assistants I work with. Seems like when I have to do it, I wonder what others will think and it gets harder to sense what is right. Maybe that's what the difference is between me and a professional - they know how to do it right because they learned it; I just have to use intuition to figure it out, and that doesn't always work reliably.