august favorites

August went by so fast this year! My pediatric rotation is over and I've been on my surgery rotation for a week now. Here are some of my favorites from last month.

1.  What She Left Behind

This book was our August book club read, and unfortunately because I had to study the night before my pediatric shelf exam the next day, I missed the meeting where we actually discussed the book. I was not sure about this book at first, but wow this is the one of my favorite stories I've read in a long while. I couldn't stop reading and had to set a timer every night so I would go to bed and stop reading. The characters were well-developed and the story was very deep. Here's what the "back of the book description" is:

Ten years ago, Izzy Stone's mother fatally shot her father while he slept. Devastated by her mother's apparent insanity, Izzy, now seventeen, refuses to visit her in prison. But her new foster parents, employees at the local museum, have enlisted Izzy's help in cataloging items at a long-shuttered state asylum. There, amid piles of abandoned belongings, Izzy discovers a stack of unopened letters, a decades-old journal, and a window into her own past. 

Clara Cartwright, eighteen years old in 1929, is caught between her overbearing parents and her love for an Italian immigrant. Furious when she rejects an arranged marriage, Clara's father sends her to a genteel home for nervous invalids. But when his fortune is lost in the stock market crash, he can no longer afford her care--and Clara is committed to the public asylum. 

Even as Izzy deals with the challenges of yet another new beginning, Clara's story keeps drawing her into the past. If Clara was never really mentally ill, could something else explain her own mother's violent act? Piecing together Clara's fate compels Izzy to re-examine her own choices--with shocking and unexpected results. 

2.  Candle Burning

Burning candles with relaxing scents have always been nice to come home and study to after a long day at work. Unfortunately ($$) I've been venturing into more complex scents as this love grows. That being said, I also know many tricks and which ingredients (thanks internet)  get the most scent per dollar from each candle to make one seemingly small candle last months. (new post idea!)

3. Moleskine Notebooks 

Now that I'm kind of getting the hang of clerkship rotations for school I've found that having a little notebook in the front pocket of my white coat is necessary. I write down suggestions and/or critiques that attendings give me, drug facts I can't remember, information that I use for presenting plans for patients that I don't have time to look up, vital signs for premature infants, etc. I also write down questions I have that I want to look up or ask my attending about later. 

The larger notebooks I use for summarizing all the info I can't remember from my exam review textbooks. I'll write in them towards the end of the rotation and only write down things I can't remember and need to learn for my exam. Using fine tip pens on the bleed-proof paper works really well. I throw the larger ones in my larger pocket every day and it's a good way to always have something to study on down time. 

4. Breakfast for Lunch

I got sick of deli meat sandwiches for lunches real fast. So I bought the Jimmy Dean sandwiches and have been eating them for lunch every day the past month (well, when we have time for a lunch). I won't say it's healthy to eat sausage every day, but for now that's what I'm doing. It's a nice pick-me-up after standing without food for 5-6 hours in a morning surgery. I've also been having Eggos at 5:00 a.m. before I leave in the mornings, those are a nice motivation to get up and out of bed.

5. Adidas Superstars

I bought these in July during the Nordstrom sale, after seeing them on a blogger's instagram. I just think they are the coolest and they are always my shoe pick as long as I'm not in the operating room or whatever. When I was in grades 4-6th I had an orange pair (Go Griffins!), a red pair (Go Jeffs!), and a navy pair.  You do have to size down one to two sizes to get them to fit though. I'm a size 7.5 and I have a size 6.5. 

6. TapHouse

(photo from Matt M on yelp)

Last month Jake and I visited TapHouse at least three times . We can't resist the giant cheese curds (holy cow amazing, worth going for just those) and their burgers are loaded with a variety of ingredients and really hit the spot. My favorite is the brown sugar cheddar burger (full menu here). We started splitting one burger, an order or sweet potato fries and an order of cheese curds.