I hadn’t really noticed the flowers starting to bloom amidst the April showers n’ all, because the telling sign of spring in the city is the arrival of Peeps at the drug store!

Joe’s comment on this picture was: “What is Mr. Fur staring at?  Notice that he’s not interested in the peeps because they aren’t food.  (Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants)”

I tried going downtown today, but it was a complete disaster.  Most of the sidewalks are semi-decently shoveled, but I got to one point where it wasn’t, and the option was to jump into the road where there was a 6-inch deep puddle with dirty ice chunks in it, or to backtrack almost all the way home to where there was a path cut to the road to the opposite side of the street where it looked like the sidewalk was cleared a little bit better.  Then the wind took my umbrella and flipped it inside out. Then a truck came by and splattered frozen water all over me.

The first snow (or rather, snow, followed by rain, followed by snow, leading to a fine sheet of ice) of the year has arrived in Boston, and I must say, people do a crap job of keeping the sidewalks clear. I wore my 10 year old hiking shoes to work yesterday, but they aren’t exactly waterproof or very high, so the hems of my pants and my feet were wet all day. Normally, I enjoy any excuse to buy new footwear but boots annoy me. They’re all ugly or non-functional. For example:

Uglee. I’m definitely going for function-over-form, but is it worth $80 to get a pair of boots this ugly. The cheapest sort of boot I could find were of the following variety:

I mean, if I’m going to shell out bottom dollar, I might as well go for the Boot of My Childhood, the 80’s puffy velcro space boots, into which I tucked my stretch stirrups, over which I wore my awesome vest.

The vest-stirrup combo was saved special for school picture day (wish you could see the stirrups).  Seriously, though, if I wanted to do high-fashion, I would not survive the icy sidewalks of this town:

(These furry spike heeled creations are $1213.) And apparently, if you’re a hooker, there are cold-weather options for hooking:

Seriously, though I somehow just can’t justify shelling out any money for even a decent pair of sturdy waterproof leather boots.  It’s like forcing yourself to adopt an ugly child.

It’s only half way through intern year and I feel like I’ve already topped out on viral infections.  All you kids with runny noses, cough and fever who are making your parents miserable: stop it.  Please? The winter has barely begun. 

I’ve also topped out on how much I can wash my hands.  Before I see a patient, after I see a patient, between seeing patients just for kicks…it feels like it’s all for nothing when a kid coughs into my face from 6 inches away and a spray of fog and spittle covers my glasses.  My hands are so dry from such frequent hand washing that they’ve started to bleed and crack.  In fact, my whole body is drying away — I forgot how dry the winters can get, and I’m getting these eczematous patches all over my extensor surfaces.  I’m going to itch myself away to a fine dust if I can’t slather myself in lotion.  Or roll around in a large vat of Eucerin cream.  So itchy!!!