my little whiskey girl

the above title is the name of a song that is played on the radio these days, if one is tuned to a country station. the reason i know this is because the peds practice where i am currently slaving away has country music piped in all day long. since the station repeats a cycle of, oh, 7 songs, i now know their entire playlist by heart after 8 days of working there. my least favorite song has the title above, and has lyrics like

“No Cuervo Gold Margaritas /Just ain’t enough good burn in tequila”

and

“Whoa she’s my little whiskey girl /my ragged-on-the-edges girl

Ah, but I like ’em rough

Yeah, I like ’em rough

I like ’em rough.”

now, is this is not only just nast but strikes me as not-quite-appropriate for a pediatrics practice. unless the idea is that toby keith’s caterwauling just might be able to drown out the desperate wails of children getting shots (it doesn’t, not quite).

in my life, there are certain playlists that i associate with certain times. for example, easy listening songs from the early 90s make me think of the orthodontist. top 40 from 1999 makes me think of the horrible summer i spent as a temp in center city (philadelphia). and now, country = otitis media and well-child-checks. who said life doesn’t have a soundtrack?

on a more serious note, i was reminded by one of my most faithful readers (ok, it was my mom) that i never mentioned that i was working almost exclusively with native american patients. or “indian”, as they refer to themselves– apparently, they haven’t updated to pc vocab yet around here. anyway, the reason i hadn’t really gone into this was that i actually don’t notice it all that much. to me, the patients generally seem like very old-fashioned, rural southerners. their southern accents are the thickest i’ve heard anywhere. my comprehension is slowly improving.

my preceptor gave me a book about the tribe of native americans that live here (the lumbees) so perhaps once i read some of that i will start to get a better flavor for their culture.

so i didn’t see much in clinic worth writing about. some fifth’s disease (which i had as a child!), and some phenylketonuria (which, thank god, i didn’t). and a lot of adhd.

i have very little more to say, except that i am in fayetteville, which is good. also, wilco is coming to town september 29, which is also good. sadly, it seems that i have more to say when there is something to rant about. i’ll try to be more positive in the future. but to write a “good things that happened list” 2 days in a row would just be getting a little ridiculous.

i’m audi!