My life in bullets

I've had good intentions and poor follow-through on my blog this month. Topics I've meant to write about and haven't (and almost certainly won't get around to at this point):

• Taking classes (I'm awesome! All 100%s so far!)
• Teaching a class (big suck, hate it this semester, not doing it again)
• The primary election (I just voted, after changing my mind about who to vote for at least 37 times in the past week)
• Tae Kwon Do (enrolled 2 of the boys, and it seems to be making them lovely, who knew, crazy 4 year old even wore clothes with a face on them, unprecedented)
• Bingo ("Balls!" I went on Saturday and am totally hooked, must go again soon, totally worth the money just to see the bizarre subculture even when you don't win)
• Volunteering (still awesome, excellent motivation not to do drugs/go insane/drive into things/walk drunk down dark streets in front of traffic)
• The twins (trying to wean, still not sleeping, cute but speechless, girl peed on the potty twice but then lost interest)

See how much I talk to you all in my head? Isn't it faster to just get the Clif's Notes like this?

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.

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.

Wow, time flies

I've been a little preoccupied lately. Boy twin had a double-ear infection followed by a new molar and girly got FOUR teeth and the number of pained bits mentioned there (um, 2+1+4?) is more than the hours of sleep I've had during the same time period. I actually dozed off a little during the masterful crafting of that gem of a sentence. What was I saying? Oh, right. My father-in-law sent me this email, which prompted me to realize that the date of my last post, 10/3, was 8 days ago and not, like, half an hour ago, like I thought it was:

When one begins a blog, doesn't that come with an implied contract that one will keep that blog (somewhat) up to date?

Twice daily is probably unrealistic to expect – but – daily updates are/or should be the norm.
Going three days without updating your personal blog is akin to a child not brushing his/her teeth for three days. Going a week without posting something is just beyond most people's ability to comprehend. What kind of example are you putting forth for your kids? Has anyone thought about contacting child protective services?

Is there a Blog Master to whom this complaint should be directed? Can one get their blogging privileges revoked? Is there a penalty associated with blog-lacking-updates? Does one hear from the Blog Master that they must go back and retroactively update all days for a rolling month period that were missed?

Things I wonder about when I am so busy at work that my head is spinning.

So, since my poor, clearly-overworked father-in-law has put so much thought into it, and since it's his birthday, I will try to step up my game. Step up to the plate. Step...oh, I don't know. Thought I had more stepping cliches in my bag o' tricks. Thought I had a bag o' tricks. May really need some sleep.

So, here's a super-fast, very tired, distracted-by-The-Office update. I should rename this blog "random disjointed updates on my exhausted life." That may be redundant, though, as if you looked into my head, that's about what you'd see. Me trying to even remember what has happened recently. Here it is:

-I love love love volunteering at the hospital. I think I may finally, at the age of 31, have figured out what I really want to do when I grow up.
-I really like teaching my computing class, too. I am a little concerned, though, that I'm either a really bad teacher or my students are really dumb, because I gave the midterm today and they did not do well. Hmm.
-I'm really loving my kids these days. Think there's some correlation between me spending less time at home and liking them more? Another hmm.
-Organic chemistry is hard. When the twins let me doze off for more than ten minutes, I dream of hydrocarbon stereoisomers. I suspect this is not the key to good mental health.
-I've seen two hilarious comedies this week. I almost never see a comedy I like, or any movie all the way through for that matter, so this is a high point for me. The first is Stuck on You, which looked absolutely awful (the premise is that Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear are conjoined twins), but turned out to be not only funny but really sweet. And the other was Knocked Up, which I think we were the last people in America to see but which lived up to its hype.

We've moved on to My Name is Earl now, so I'll end this travesty of a post. I should be studying chemistry, but all the carbons are starting to swim together in front of my eyes.

Doing better

I'm still here, and life feels less painful though still a little overwhelming. My mother is back, though, and my friend is in town and helping me catch up on the disaster that my house became in sympathy with my mind last week. Just in time, as little boy's birthday is tomorrow and I'm totally not ready and haven't slept much in a week or two to boot. To boot is a funny expression.

Updates in bullet form, as I must must must start cleaning and got about 4 hours of sleep and can only think in fragments:

• Boy twin got ear tubes in on Wednesday. One of them got a blood clot on it, which has resulted in some oogy looking blood-from-ear, but otherwise it went well and the change in his personality has been dramatic. He's SO pleasant. Poor baby must have been hurting more than we knew!
• Big boy was evaluated for tonsillectomy/adenoidectomy and is a go for surgery. The theory here is that his sleep issues stem in part from faulty anatomy and are contributing to behavior problems. Let's hope it works!
• Big boy again - he had a GREAT week at school this week, didn't cry once and went to bed like a champ every night. Thank. God. Apparently 2 weeks was the required adjusted period. It would be so handy if he'd post that kind of information ahead of time.
• Still no dryer. The one we ordered was delivered 2 days late and didn't fit down the stairs to the basement. Suck suck suck. Still working on ordering another, smaller dryer.
• We got a kitten. Because yes, a kitten is EXACTLY what I needed. It was more a mission of mercy, though, than a true mental aberration. Poor kitty was about to be dumped in the woods by a weird crackho with 5 kids in the car, and was so covered w/fleas he had fleabite anemia. The vet said he's only 4-6 weeks old and shouldn't even be away from his mama. He's SO tiny (the cat, not the vet), but really feisty and tough. Still nameless, since big boy can't commit, so I think he's probably going to end up stuck as Kitty.

I think that's the highlights. Off to clean/stash stuff in closets.

More of the same

I feel like I should post, but since my days lately have been literally filled with screaming from very early morning (I think today is still yesterday to me, technically, since boy-twin managed the night shift single-handedly last night) until late night (well, late-night by the standards of a very tired thirtysomething lifeless mother of too-goddamned-many, it's 9:45 and I am ready for some SILENCE, DAMN IT), my train of thought has been a few cars short of...well, a train. A few lumps of coal short of a hopper? Cards short of a deck? Cheese sliding off the cracker? God, I'm tired, and my ears ache from the screaming.

So, just another update. The twins officially have hand foot and mouth disease, which sounds like a livestock illness except that you can't keep the kids in a barn, even though they act like they were born in one, what with the door-leaving-opening and all. Damned mosquitoes. What? Oh, sorry, my stream of consciousness hit a dry spell, or a tributary, and my metaphors are not all that well thought out at the moment. Although I'm not so far gone as to not linger on my love of the metaphor. Or the tangent. Or the padded room and Valium.

Crap, where was I? Oh, the twins. Yeah, sick. Stupid virus that's not dangerous or treatable but very painful and results in twins unable to eat, nurse, sleep, or do anything other than whine and scream (whining under the influence of tylenol, scream when the meds wear off). Big boy is, as I type this at almost 10pm, going into hour 2 of the nightly bedtime screamfest, despite a therapy appointment today that gave me what now appears to be false hope and an afternoon of absolutely charming and pleasant behavior. My own mother told me today that if she were in my shoes, she would run away, and although I would not call that helpful advice, particularly, it is a little reassuring to hear that the unbearable nature of this behavior is not merely in the eye of this particular beholder. Hmm, that one's not a metaphor. Idiom? Whatever. Oh, and our clothes dryer died. Usually, appliance rebellions send me into hysterics, but it hardly even registers against the backdrop of the constant noise and the no sleep.

Oooo, but my sister-in-law just called, and her water broke and she's on her way to the hospital, so I'm about to be an aunt again. Yay for new babies who are not. mine.!

This and That

I've been meaning to post pictures from the twins' birthday and party, but they're on my husband's computer and I never get around to it. Maybe before their next birthday. I think they had a good birthday, not that they had any idea what was going on. We had their pictures done at the Picture People and they turned out really well, and we went to dinner at Fuddruckers and gave them ice cream. What more could babies want? At their 12 month doctor's appointment on Friday, they got shots and were both diagnosed with yet another double ear infection, so that was less exciting, but they both still managed to have a lot of fun at their party on Saturday. We lucked out and had it the last day of tolerable weather before this oppressive heat moved in, and we had a wonderful group of friends here to celebrate.

What else? My big boy has been getting curiouser and curiouser (in the killed-the-cat sense, not the Alice-in-Wonderland sense, but I like the phrase) about his biological father, and asked if he could speak to him last week, so I tracked him down. Boy is very excited to have contact with these mysterious antecedents (we talked to his biological aunt, uncle, and grandmother, too), and I think some of his recent hideousness has been due to unexpressed questions. The bio-family all did really well on the phone, were excited to talk to him and made him feel very special. I know there's a big potential here for a let-down, but I think it's best to answer his questions as they come up and give him the contact as he requests it. At least I hope so.

Boy twin is walking around the room and jabbering in an alien language - he all of a sudden seems about 6 months older than his floppy little twin. She has decided to be a stereotypical girl lately and cries if we say no, however gently.

I'm still set on the idea of med school, strangely enough. I've been researching programs and applying for volunteer positions and trying to squeeze blood from the stone that is our finances.

That's about it. Not much time for contemplation lately, but I'll try to come up with something more interesting than a current events update for my next post.