A Weird Week

We had a lovely, relaxing Thanksgiving with friends, but tragedy struck just once-removed the next day and I've felt useless and sad ever since. It's not my tragedy, but I love my friend and I hate how sad she is and how helpless I am to do anything to make her feel better.

And (much less importantly), my husband is out of town on business tonight and I hate that. He should always be within fetching distance (as in, please fetch me ice cream, please fetch me a blanket, please fetch me a valium). My children have been shockingly unloathesome while he's been gone, so that's one bright spot. And here's another...

Today, I was doing a phone interview with some people who used my 4 year old son in a research study recently (I have a lot of kids, might as well loan them out as lab rats, right?). The woman asked if my boy knew what to do in case of an emergency.

Me: I don't know, let me ask him. Buddy, what do you do if there's an emergency?
Boy: Call the police.
Me: Yes, but how do you call the police?
Boy (emphatically): You dial SIX SIX SIX.

If ever I needed proof that my children are more than usually wicked, here it is.

I'm officially lazy. Also, I still hate George Bush.

My bloodwork from last week finally came back (and I only had to call the office three times - anyone have a primary care physician recommendation for me?), and everything was completely fine. I still feel like the victim of a slow-motion underwater mugging, but apparently I'm just really really lazy. I can live with that, I guess. This whole adventure has reminded me just how much I can't stand doctors, by and large. Kind of masochistic to want to be one, huh?

My big boy had a political discussion with two of his friends during carpool today - they were comparing notes on why George Bush is a bad guy. It's a little sad that the 6 year old set has it more together than the 30% of Americans still giving this yahoo an approval rating, isn't it? The latest in my personal loathing has to do with the opening of military airspace to facilitate holiday travel. It offends me that the White House doesn't even pretend to hide their own hypocrisy. We're in constant and imminent danger from terrorism, to a degree that requires us to suspend the Geneva convention, wage preemptive war, and invade citizens' privacy, but Thanksgiving travel transcends our need for secure airspace? It's like the last vestige of an actual defensive military has now been removed - our military is now officially only for offense. As long as no one's late for dinner tomorrow, I guess our security doesn't matter that much after all. And of course, we have to advertise the opening of the airspace. I sometimes get the feeling that the whole crowd running the country right now are thumbing their collective nose at the rest of the world, including and maybe especially American citizens.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sappy

I can always think of a lot to say when things are going wrong. When life is good, though, how many ways can you say that? The twins still don't sleep, but I think I've given up on it - I actually can't imagine sleeping through the night any more. I'm still crazy tired, but I should get the lab results back next week, and in the meantime I'm eating a lot of meat in case of anemia and giving myself more than the usual license for laziness. Except for those two chronic items (which may just be two sides of the same coin - I suppose not sleeping for years could lead to fatigue), my life feels really comfortable right now. Bad things happen all the time, across the world and right in the neighborhood, but I have family and friends, everything I need and most of what I really want. Everywhere I look I feel lucky.

More about my so-called life

I loved that show. Still love Claire Danes. Dumbest network cancellation ever. But, as usual, I digress.

When I'm driving around or working at the hospital or sitting in class, I think of general interest topics to blog about, but when I have a few minutes to type, all I can think of is my own daily crap. I should rename my blog that - my daily crap. Although that sounds more scatalogical than I intended.

On the school front, I have yet another new master plan. I really like this one, actually. I figured out that since I have to do all the pre-requisites again anyway, I'll only be 6 classes from a second bachelor's degree (in chemistry), so I'm going to go ahead and enroll as a degree-seeking student and follow that track. The advantages are preferential registration and the appearance (I hope) to medical school admissions staff that I have goal-seeking abilities. Or something. Plus, more degrees! It's a little weird, because I started out college a million years ago wanting to major in chemistry, and now I've come back around to it. In one sense, it feels like completion or some circle of life crap, and on the other hand it feels like I kind of just wasted 15 years. I guess I'll try to focus on the former.

Unfortunately for the new master plan or any activity at all, I've been feeling really horribly run down the last few weeks, even for me. Yes, I'm busy, and no, I don't sleep, but this is ridiculous. I'm tired while I'm sleeping. It's bad enough that I actually went to the doctor today (for someone who wants to be a doctor, I'm very doctor-averse). I have a raft of bloodwork to do tomorrow (have to do it fasting). Hopefully it's just anemia or my thyroid gone wonky or mono and not something hideous.

So, that's the update. I'm full of ambition and exhaustion. Weird combination, not exactly designed for success.

Discouraged and cranky

I'm having a very grumpy day, kick-started by a very long night of screaming by wretched boy twin, who is implementing his own brand of daylight savings in the form of staying up all night. In addition, big boy was off school today because of the election and was on my very. last. nerve. all day. PMS may also be a factor in the mood extravaganza. The biggest piece of the grumpy-ass pie, though, has to be the information I got today from the med school where I want to go, which indicates that I need to retake 3 classes I was told a few months ago I do NOT need to retake, due to their (and my) advanced age. Crappity crap crap crap. So now I have to revise my whole plan again, and my dream is starting to feel more like a hallucination (an hallucination?), like a fading mirage.

To paraphrase Forrest Gump, sometimes there just isn't enough chocolate.

A much better week

I'm feeling much better, the kids are almost entirely well, my good friend's birthday is Sunday (woohoo, the big 30!), and I got to observe a surgery today. I love love love working at the hospital, and the tech I report to said Wednesday that I should look into getting on the payroll. How cool is that? As excited as I am about the whole doctoring thing, though, I've decided to go back to my original plan of applying for entrance in 2010 - yeek, that sounds far away. It's for the best, though, will allow me to take prereqs more gradually (and hopefully do better at them), prepare more for the MCAT, volunteer more, teach more, oh, and spend more time with my kids. I like them a lot lately. Weird, huh? Oh, and the clincher - if I take an extra year with the prereqs, I'll graduate from med school in 2014 instead of 2013. So clearly it's meant to be.

Halloween was a lot of fun, courtesy of friends who rise to the occasion of holidays and don't just act stunned when the holidays appear as if with no warning like I do. Now to figure out Thanksgiving. You'd think after 31 years, I wouldn't be so shocked by the regular progression of time.

I've had all these bloggy thoughts lately but haven't been on the computer much. Mostly I've been studying organic chemistry, to the point that I'm dreaming of molecular formulas and thinking of human relationships in terms of parallel hydrocarbons. That can't be healthy, right? I actually like the class, though. I swear I can feel synapses firing in parts of my brain that were atrophied from disuse.