So I was watching Obama's state of the union last night with the family. The baby (MP) slept through it but to get My Love (ML) to watch it, that took a little doing. For whatever reason, I feel like it's something important, for Americans to sit down and have a shared experience as a nation. Kind of like with the Olympics, but more often than every 4 years, and about something other than sports.
I love this country. It's something that I have in common with my brother, Day Trader (DT). In our left-leaning, hyper-liberal circle of friends, it's not a common trait at all, having pride in the US of A. It's not like DT and I don't have share the left leaning politics of our friends. We want electric cars, universal health care, abortion on demand, homo marriage, and a ban on whale murder just like everyone else. It's just that we recognize how amazing this country has been to even the people around us who disparage it with every breath.
I know that there's a lot wrong with this country. I really do. I just think that sometimes, it's pretty amazing what kind of creativity and innovation that's possible. People going from nothing to everything. I see it around me all the time.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Baby
So I tried to do some writing at work on Christmas Day 2010:
"So this will be my first experiment in writing blog posts from work. Today is December the 25th, Christmas 2010. My daughter MP is one week old today (MP are her initials). I type this sitting in the CAT scan trailer parked outside the ambulance bay of the hospital.
One week ago today, at 1 am, ML’s water broke. Unfortunately, my sinuses had been clogged from earlier on that day and at the time of water breaking, I was a couple hours in to a lovely benadryl induced haze. ML woke me up and somehow I convinced her to let me sleep another 30 minutes. Apparently early labor has nothing on the dysphoria that arises from messing with my benadryl haze.
But eventually my sense and ML’s anxiety got the better of me and off I went to get our zipcar to drive us off to the posh hospital just the next state over where MP would come into being.
There are things that I want to remember about the birth. For instance, the soundtrack. For whatever it means, the music we listened to on the way to the hospital was Jack Johnson. When the pitocin was really starting to kick in and up through to the epidural, it was Lemon Jelly’s Lemonjelly.ky. During active labor during the child’s first moments here in the world, the album was Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream. And to calm the infant child during the first few days in the hospital, either Pinback or Jack Johnson seemed to work wonders."
People are always trying to remind me and ML about how they grow up so fast. Today MP is 5 and a half weeks old. And in just that brief time, I understand what people are saying to me. The time goes so fast because every moment is just so precious. It's really amazing. I'm not sure it's something I ever could have understood prior to having this baby. It's something I definitely can't put properly into words. I will try though...
"So this will be my first experiment in writing blog posts from work. Today is December the 25th, Christmas 2010. My daughter MP is one week old today (MP are her initials). I type this sitting in the CAT scan trailer parked outside the ambulance bay of the hospital.
One week ago today, at 1 am, ML’s water broke. Unfortunately, my sinuses had been clogged from earlier on that day and at the time of water breaking, I was a couple hours in to a lovely benadryl induced haze. ML woke me up and somehow I convinced her to let me sleep another 30 minutes. Apparently early labor has nothing on the dysphoria that arises from messing with my benadryl haze.
But eventually my sense and ML’s anxiety got the better of me and off I went to get our zipcar to drive us off to the posh hospital just the next state over where MP would come into being.
There are things that I want to remember about the birth. For instance, the soundtrack. For whatever it means, the music we listened to on the way to the hospital was Jack Johnson. When the pitocin was really starting to kick in and up through to the epidural, it was Lemon Jelly’s Lemonjelly.ky. During active labor during the child’s first moments here in the world, the album was Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream. And to calm the infant child during the first few days in the hospital, either Pinback or Jack Johnson seemed to work wonders."
People are always trying to remind me and ML about how they grow up so fast. Today MP is 5 and a half weeks old. And in just that brief time, I understand what people are saying to me. The time goes so fast because every moment is just so precious. It's really amazing. I'm not sure it's something I ever could have understood prior to having this baby. It's something I definitely can't put properly into words. I will try though...
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Just to write
So much has gone in my life in the time that I've been away from this blog that I'm no longer sure what I've written about here. But at the risk of repeating myself, I was just thinking about what one of my high school English teachers once told me; "If you want to be a writer, you have to write." It was in the context of a conversation we were having about how to find inspiration. So I was thinking about that, and here I am. Once again. Not sure if anyone is going to be reading this, but it doesn't really matter. I'm here. Just to write.
It was about a month ago now that My Love (ML) and I took our first real vacation together. I mean real in the sense that it was enough vacation that we really started to forget how long we'd been gone from work and our day-to-day life groove. We had the kind of time spent on vacation where it seems that possibly, just possibly, we might not go back to those "real lives" of ours.
One souvenir of the trip that I'm sure I'll have for quite a while is my first tattoo. It was done by Hippie Pops (HP), a man I'd not seen in far too long. Now I hadn't planned on getting a tattoo at all, but like so many good things in my life, it seemed to just sort of happen and I feel like a better person for it.
I got in touch with HP just a few days before ML and I were to arrive in San Francisco. He was working and invited us over to his tattoo shop to say hi and maybe figure out what to do later. Of course, at the end of his day he had a little bit of time in his schedule and that planted the seed in my mind.
Something I admire about those with tattoos is of course the ability to commit to something in life. If only it's just a small amount of extra pigment in the skin, you know that tattoo wearing people will at least be decisive about something.
There have been a few things I always thought I'd want to get, but the only thing in life I've been through worthy of a tattoo is to commemorate my getting out of medical school with my degree.
To that end, I'm now sporting a caduceus on my shoulder. You know, the winged staff with the double helix of snakes. The purists of course would have you believe that the rod of Asclepius is the true Greek symbol of medicine. And they would be right. The caduceus more formally got its start as the Wand of Hermes and is classically a symbol of protection for travelers, tricksters, and gamblers. It's a symbol associated with knowledge and eloquence. It's actually got a pretty fascinating history. Most people just think it symbolizes the medical field. But it really doesn't. So I like that. Most of us are many things to many people though initially defined by first impressions. And I think I found a good symbol to represent that part of me. Plus HP is just a fantastic artist, so that helps.
It was about a month ago now that My Love (ML) and I took our first real vacation together. I mean real in the sense that it was enough vacation that we really started to forget how long we'd been gone from work and our day-to-day life groove. We had the kind of time spent on vacation where it seems that possibly, just possibly, we might not go back to those "real lives" of ours.
One souvenir of the trip that I'm sure I'll have for quite a while is my first tattoo. It was done by Hippie Pops (HP), a man I'd not seen in far too long. Now I hadn't planned on getting a tattoo at all, but like so many good things in my life, it seemed to just sort of happen and I feel like a better person for it.
I got in touch with HP just a few days before ML and I were to arrive in San Francisco. He was working and invited us over to his tattoo shop to say hi and maybe figure out what to do later. Of course, at the end of his day he had a little bit of time in his schedule and that planted the seed in my mind.
Something I admire about those with tattoos is of course the ability to commit to something in life. If only it's just a small amount of extra pigment in the skin, you know that tattoo wearing people will at least be decisive about something.
There have been a few things I always thought I'd want to get, but the only thing in life I've been through worthy of a tattoo is to commemorate my getting out of medical school with my degree.
To that end, I'm now sporting a caduceus on my shoulder. You know, the winged staff with the double helix of snakes. The purists of course would have you believe that the rod of Asclepius is the true Greek symbol of medicine. And they would be right. The caduceus more formally got its start as the Wand of Hermes and is classically a symbol of protection for travelers, tricksters, and gamblers. It's a symbol associated with knowledge and eloquence. It's actually got a pretty fascinating history. Most people just think it symbolizes the medical field. But it really doesn't. So I like that. Most of us are many things to many people though initially defined by first impressions. And I think I found a good symbol to represent that part of me. Plus HP is just a fantastic artist, so that helps.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Happy New Year 2010
If whenever I have a birthday, I get a little bit depressed and pensive, then every New Years I get a little happy and hopeful. I know that it's a little bit contrived, but it's just the way that I feel. So much possibility for the future. My resolutions for 2009 were to write more and to be more honest. To that end, I started this blog. Which I think helped me a little bit to do both. As for this year, I went pretty modest with the goal of drinking more water. What could possibly go wrong with that? Anyways, for my first post of the new year, I get to write about one of my friends with whom I go way back; I'll call him Not Crazy (NC).
Anyways, NC and I met back in my sophomore year of high school. We went to high school together, we went to college together, we shared a ton of misadventures together. December 13th of 2009, NC's parents called the cops on him, he was taken in and got a 5150. As I've previously worked in a psychiatric inpatient facility in California, I was well aware that the 5150 is a 3-day involuntary hold, which can be upgraded to a 5250, the 30-day involuntary hold. I don't know exactly what NC said or did but he got that upgrade too. So lucky him, he got to spend Christmas and New Years in a loony bin. Or so I thought. I got to see him the day after New Years and I found out that he was actually staying at a "clean living" home. He seemed all right. I was out in Los Angeles with My Love (ML) and went to see NC with ML and a couple of other mutual friends. Walking in to visit felt a little like Buckner walking back into Shea. The layout was pure frat house. However, the difference was that instead of kegerators and beer-pong tables, there were all the hallmarks of 12-step programs. Lots of coffee, ashtrays, and friend of Bill W. literature scattered all around. Having regularly attended 12-step meetings in the past, I knew the scene very well. We were told to have a seat in the lounge and that NC would be right out. It took maybe the longest 5 minutes of my life sitting there and waiting. I wasn't sure if I was going to get the NC that I knew so well, or someone waxing manic, talking a mile-a-minute, or possibly a haldol'ed out shell of a former human being. Luckily, the person who emerged was NC, just like I remembered him. He said that he was actually in the middle of a class and that we should come back in about 20 minutes. We went to the burger stand across from the house, had some snacks and in 20 minutes NC came outside and we sat outside the house catching up.
This wasn't quite what I was expecting. Being on a 30-day involuntary hold, NC wasn't behind any locked doors. He could have just strolled out to the car with us and rolled away it seemed. But for now, he was staying put. If he did AWOL, I'm sure there would have been some consequence for sure, and I really didn't want to find out about it. It was quite a scene, the 5 of us sitting on a beautiful day in Southern California, the least crazy and least addict prone person in the group had somehow become the person who ended up in treatment. Like I said, I don't know the full story and I didn't want to press, but my theory is psychiatric mismanagement. Sometimes the meds that are supposed to make you sane, all they do is just make you crazy.
Anyways, NC and I met back in my sophomore year of high school. We went to high school together, we went to college together, we shared a ton of misadventures together. December 13th of 2009, NC's parents called the cops on him, he was taken in and got a 5150. As I've previously worked in a psychiatric inpatient facility in California, I was well aware that the 5150 is a 3-day involuntary hold, which can be upgraded to a 5250, the 30-day involuntary hold. I don't know exactly what NC said or did but he got that upgrade too. So lucky him, he got to spend Christmas and New Years in a loony bin. Or so I thought. I got to see him the day after New Years and I found out that he was actually staying at a "clean living" home. He seemed all right. I was out in Los Angeles with My Love (ML) and went to see NC with ML and a couple of other mutual friends. Walking in to visit felt a little like Buckner walking back into Shea. The layout was pure frat house. However, the difference was that instead of kegerators and beer-pong tables, there were all the hallmarks of 12-step programs. Lots of coffee, ashtrays, and friend of Bill W. literature scattered all around. Having regularly attended 12-step meetings in the past, I knew the scene very well. We were told to have a seat in the lounge and that NC would be right out. It took maybe the longest 5 minutes of my life sitting there and waiting. I wasn't sure if I was going to get the NC that I knew so well, or someone waxing manic, talking a mile-a-minute, or possibly a haldol'ed out shell of a former human being. Luckily, the person who emerged was NC, just like I remembered him. He said that he was actually in the middle of a class and that we should come back in about 20 minutes. We went to the burger stand across from the house, had some snacks and in 20 minutes NC came outside and we sat outside the house catching up.
This wasn't quite what I was expecting. Being on a 30-day involuntary hold, NC wasn't behind any locked doors. He could have just strolled out to the car with us and rolled away it seemed. But for now, he was staying put. If he did AWOL, I'm sure there would have been some consequence for sure, and I really didn't want to find out about it. It was quite a scene, the 5 of us sitting on a beautiful day in Southern California, the least crazy and least addict prone person in the group had somehow become the person who ended up in treatment. Like I said, I don't know the full story and I didn't want to press, but my theory is psychiatric mismanagement. Sometimes the meds that are supposed to make you sane, all they do is just make you crazy.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Birthdays
"Whenever I have a birthday, I think back over the past year, how I've spent my time, what I've accomplished, what regrets I have, how I've tried to make the world a better place, and what exactly I've been doing with my life over the past 365 days, and I think to myself: 'Man, I wish I'd gotten laid more'."
-Unknown
So for some reason or another, it seems that I've been celebrating a lot of birthdays recently. Partly because I do know a lot of people with October birthdays and also partly because one of those birthdays was my own. I was back in San Diego for the night before my birthday, starting off the night with Jelly Bean (JB), some delivery Chinese food, and the Laker game on TV. JB was a dealing with some kind of cold/flu issue and since I was without My Love (ML), I was kind of looking forward to a relaxed kind of birthday celebration.
I used to both love and dread birthdays so much more. Especially that day before, the last 24 hours of being a certain age. They used to make me so anxious and pensive. Strange as it may seem, the older I get, the more it seems like I have the time to do the things I want to do. Maybe it's because there's just so much less pressure to go out and make the most of every day like when you're young. Maybe it's because I've gained a maturity that makes me enjoy the simple things in life. Maybe it's just the calmness that comes with being in love. Whatever the reason, I spent the day before thinking more about all the things for which I was thankful rather than think about all the things for which I had regret. It was nice.
I ended that night and early morning with Vikey McStoner (VM), sitting around and just shooting the breeze like we did so many nights as medical students. And in the midst of it all was of course a great deal of phone calling to and from ML. I was without her for a whole 9 days and while it was nice to be on vacation, it was hard to be away. Of course I write this now with her a few feet away asleep in our bed and when I think of it now it all seems so silly. For a time there though, it really did take a lot of the flavor out of life being so far away. It feels good to be home, which of course is wherever I'm with her.
-Unknown
So for some reason or another, it seems that I've been celebrating a lot of birthdays recently. Partly because I do know a lot of people with October birthdays and also partly because one of those birthdays was my own. I was back in San Diego for the night before my birthday, starting off the night with Jelly Bean (JB), some delivery Chinese food, and the Laker game on TV. JB was a dealing with some kind of cold/flu issue and since I was without My Love (ML), I was kind of looking forward to a relaxed kind of birthday celebration.
I used to both love and dread birthdays so much more. Especially that day before, the last 24 hours of being a certain age. They used to make me so anxious and pensive. Strange as it may seem, the older I get, the more it seems like I have the time to do the things I want to do. Maybe it's because there's just so much less pressure to go out and make the most of every day like when you're young. Maybe it's because I've gained a maturity that makes me enjoy the simple things in life. Maybe it's just the calmness that comes with being in love. Whatever the reason, I spent the day before thinking more about all the things for which I was thankful rather than think about all the things for which I had regret. It was nice.
I ended that night and early morning with Vikey McStoner (VM), sitting around and just shooting the breeze like we did so many nights as medical students. And in the midst of it all was of course a great deal of phone calling to and from ML. I was without her for a whole 9 days and while it was nice to be on vacation, it was hard to be away. Of course I write this now with her a few feet away asleep in our bed and when I think of it now it all seems so silly. For a time there though, it really did take a lot of the flavor out of life being so far away. It feels good to be home, which of course is wherever I'm with her.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
The Job
Alice tried another question. "What sort of people live about here?"
"In THAT direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter: And in THAT direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad."
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
Lewis Carroll
Alice in Wonderland
Each day that goes by, I find such new and interesting ways in which my new residency program is dysfunctional and broken. Of course it all starts with the people who've somehow ended up working there and as I'm well aware, I am one of them. But in this installment, I'll tell you about another coworker who is just one of the most amusing people with whom I've ever shared a job. I'll call her NF for No Filter. I used to think I said random nonsensical things without a hint of self-awareness. NF just takes it to a whole new level. She has a little boy, just over a year old, and just the very mention of his name brings such joy to her eyes. For some reason, almost every day, without fail, she will tell you about his poo. Just today she was telling me about him making poo, how it smells like roses, and how every #2 the kid makes is a precious, precious gift to be held like gold dust with the aroma of morning coffee. Then she went into a ramble about how much she loved cleaning the kid's bits and pieces. Apparently she finds her son's wedding tackle just so adorable and before long she was telling me about how yucky she finds the naughty bits on girls. It's a tirade I've heard before but only from flaming gay men, not so much from thirty-something-year-old mothers. And while I think NF is sort of a nice looking lady, it's hard to imagine how she ever figured out how to get pregnant. She's just the kind of person who wears old-lady sweaters and sensible shoes no matter the context, I imagine her more as the kind of person who would end up with a dozen cats before she ever ended up married and parenting. That being said, I enjoy her company tremendously and in the very near future, I hope to craft more and better stories about the crazy things she says and does.
"In THAT direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter: And in THAT direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad."
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
Lewis Carroll
Alice in Wonderland
Each day that goes by, I find such new and interesting ways in which my new residency program is dysfunctional and broken. Of course it all starts with the people who've somehow ended up working there and as I'm well aware, I am one of them. But in this installment, I'll tell you about another coworker who is just one of the most amusing people with whom I've ever shared a job. I'll call her NF for No Filter. I used to think I said random nonsensical things without a hint of self-awareness. NF just takes it to a whole new level. She has a little boy, just over a year old, and just the very mention of his name brings such joy to her eyes. For some reason, almost every day, without fail, she will tell you about his poo. Just today she was telling me about him making poo, how it smells like roses, and how every #2 the kid makes is a precious, precious gift to be held like gold dust with the aroma of morning coffee. Then she went into a ramble about how much she loved cleaning the kid's bits and pieces. Apparently she finds her son's wedding tackle just so adorable and before long she was telling me about how yucky she finds the naughty bits on girls. It's a tirade I've heard before but only from flaming gay men, not so much from thirty-something-year-old mothers. And while I think NF is sort of a nice looking lady, it's hard to imagine how she ever figured out how to get pregnant. She's just the kind of person who wears old-lady sweaters and sensible shoes no matter the context, I imagine her more as the kind of person who would end up with a dozen cats before she ever ended up married and parenting. That being said, I enjoy her company tremendously and in the very near future, I hope to craft more and better stories about the crazy things she says and does.
Too Long
It's been a strange 10 weeks or so since I've updated this blog. As I've known people to disappear before in the way that I've done so recently, I've learned that the reason is usually one of three things: drugs, religion, or love. I must say for me the overriding things that has so completely turned my life upside-down and inside-out has been the experience of falling in love. While there are many reason I don't want to write too much about the experience, one of the biggest things is how syrupy sweet I feel about the whole affair. I'll call the person I'm with, ML for My Love. We seemed to have formed such a disgustingly saccharine couple that while I often get looks of empathic joy and happiness from complete strangers at our public lovey-dovey displays, I feel just as often looks of jealousy mixed with nausea and I completely understand. So for now, I'll just say that I've found the person with whom I'd like to spend the rest of my life, and everyday I find my life start anew.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
