Loving summer

A few nights ago we had a tornado warning. Eric was taking call from home and got paged at about 9 p.m.  He braved the storm and headed out, only to get a flat tire halfway to the hospital. ("It looks like a dinosaur talon took a swipe at my sidewall," he said.) So he gets out in the pouring rain and changes his tire, which only makes him slightly later than expected. What makes him slightly more later than expected is that he takes an underground tunnel to walk to the ER before he realizes that the hospital side of the tunnel locks at night. And of course the side he came in locks after he gets in. So the poor guy is drenched, stuck in a tunnel, and wondering where this is all leading his career. He eventually finds an ancient call box and tells security that he's going to exit using an obscure, alarmed emergency door. The  door leads him to an even more obscure atrium, which has a fire escape staircase, which leads him outside the hospital. He goes into the ER, finds his patient, treats him, and returns home at three in the morning. 

     Some of Eric's residency stories make my job seem like a birthday party! I guess it kind-of is like a birthday party: it's not the kind where you rent out Jump-o-Rama and they bring the pizza and cake and decorations and clean up when you're done--it's more like a homemade one where you're working the entire time, but it's still plenty fun and something that you would do again. This is what the party looked like this week.   

A friend brought us to a delightful splash pad, where the kids spent a happy couple hours:

      

We were also kindly introduced to an indoor gymnastics center filled with kid-friendly equipment:

We've been digging the (heated!) pool near our home, plus the library programs and parks. We've played baseball in the backyard and rode bikes/wagons/police cars around the neighborhood:

And of course there are the normal things like mixing "potions" and trapping brothers in laundry baskets and writing letters to baseball players:

I guess that "birthday party" is a poor analogy--it looks more like a summer camp. I should think of a funny camp name for myself and puff paint it on a khaki hat.

Even better than all that was a magical Friday night with Eric, where we went to the Dane County Fair!

(Unfortunately the turkey legs tasted like salty ham, but the delish cotton candy, funnel cakes, and fresh lemonade made up for it. Eric was proud of me for not stressing about the cost of all these things, which, by the way, is absolutely criminal. I guess it's just once a year, right?)

 

Notice how the kids' smiles in the first ferris wheel picture (taken before the ride) look a little plastic, but the bottom pictures (taken after the rides) are all authentic. They really had a good time.

In general, we're all having a good time. Even Eric is, despite being overworked and a little bewildered. And even I am, despite the same reasons.