1. Our build site got its certificate of occupancy on Monday! After only 9 weeks of construction, our brand new, state of the art clinic is move-in ready and has passed all its inspections.

2. With walls painted low-VOC Natura Benjamin Moore Peach stone throughout, the clinic’s walls are soothing, cheery, and neutral enough to not have to learn to ignore. It’s the same color as my kitchen and it perfect in the clinic as it looks great in whatever light, from fluorescent to daylight. On two walls – one on the waiting area, and one behind the reception desk – we have natural clay from American Clay in a color they call maunaloa. It’s textured and vibrant, and it’s gorgeous! I am pretty sure I will regularly catch people feeling up the wall.
4. On Thursday morning, my kids get on the bus at 7, and Bob will head over to Sphyrnatude’s house, and then they will go and get a 24 foot rental truck to do some MAJOR schlepping. With 2 waiting areas, a lounge and an IV therapy area, doctors’ offices, treatment rooms and a staff room, we’re talking chairs… like, 35! We also have pieces of equipment, towels, slippers, water bottles, supplements, an exercise bike for the oxygen therapy, and I am certain I have forgotten many things over the 4 months things have been accumulating both in my basement and over at ‘Tudes’ house.
4. My DH has been planning, designing, obsessing, and dreaming about this now dream come true clinical space for many months. and while I recognize how effusive I am being, when I publish photos of the clinic AFTER the big move, you will see what I mean!
4. Within a five-minute drive of the new clinic, there is a Lowe’s and a Target; we anticipate setting up the furniture, and then popping over to get lists and lists of essentials. These include trays for tea containers, baskets for the sundry feminine items each bathroom will stock, plants, garbage cans, toilet brushes, mops, cleaning supplies, etc.
5. I have answering phones when patients call to make appointments and am thrilled to say we are booked starting next Tuesday afternoon onward a few weeks.
6. This means patients will begin showing up for all sorts of therapies and treatments in a mere 5 days. Guess what we will all be doing all weekend, through MLK day!?
7. It’s been a lot of fun to speak with patients, and have particularly enjoyed the conversational calisthenics involved in NOT comparing Bob’s previous employer and their institute with ours. Everything is framed positively, looking forward, with emphasis on our philosophy and our care for patients. I do listen as patients vent – and they vent a LOT – but I demur, active listen, and if asked directly, mostly respond with a variety of things on the lines of how wonderful fresh starts are, how it was time for these three doctors to go out on their own, how excited they all are to help patients in the best, fully congruent way they know how. It’s that dance between what I am saying and carefully NOT saying that I find so exhilarating.
8. Exhausting, too. I must have spoken to upwards of fifty patients over the last few days, but I love talking with people, so it’s been great fun. Some are more fragile cancer patients, so I have to be mindful of speaking slower, calmer, in the most soothing tones I have. Others are peppy, humour-filled folks who just want to get on the books with the doctors they love, who just want to chat. I am getting the feel for directing a conversation, making sure I stay in control, and using some of the same patter, the same phrases to keep things moving. I now have new appreciation for the level of skills involved in good customer service! We’re fortunate that some of the excellent front desk personnel that were employees and trained by the other place years ago are coming onbard to help train me, and to work alongside me. I’m very excited!
9. I warned you about the exclamations! Hope they’re not crazymaking, but I am unable to think in anything but exclamatory superlatives at the moment. My face hurts from all the smiling I’m doing. Holy crap, eh?
10. It’s been years – somewhere on the lines of 13 – since I worked full time, and I anticipate some frustrations and resentment with not having as much time to myself as I have grown accustomed to having. My kids are used to my being home at or very near to the time they come home from school, so it will be an adjustment to having them as they learn to be more self-disciplined and more proactive with me not there. That said, we anticipate organizing shifts as soon as we can, so I can be home by at least 4:30. Boo is ready to step up and help prepare dinner, and while Monkey isn’t really keen on the idea, she has grudgingly agreed to get over her indolent twelveness, and help out. I am quite certain this will be a growth curve for them as well!