ride the commuter train west to chicago

I'm always so restless in the springtime...it's distracting.

I am a new homeowner, sort of.

Brent and I will be closing on a 3 bedroom 2.5 bathroom townhouse in the Montrose area of Houston in the end of March. Well, technically, the place is completely his. I won't actually be moving in until early May when I finish my classes here in College Station. I am excited, but there are hurdles to live through before I can even begin to think about the new place. Until then, I need to ween myself off of HGTV (seriously addicting). I guess the two main hurdles are finishing up this year and to do well on the USMLE coming up in June. All this studying is exhausting, and thinking about all the studying I will have to do is even more exhausting.

My freshmen year of summer, I worked in a lab at Rice, and one of the new grad students was this guy named Jonathan who was married (engaged at the time) to a MD/PhD student who was studying for her USMLE step 2. I remember we would always go to restaurants and do stuff after lab in groups. However, I never once saw his fiance. He would always say she was busy studying. I remember thinking that it must be sad to study so much and have your husband/fiance go out with friends without you all the time. Now that I am in that boat...I would love for Brent to go out all the time and leave me alone to study. I guess it helps that he currently lives 100 miles away. It was nice to be alone this weekend. I know, I've become my worst nightmare. Hopefully, my social life and educational burdens will improve when I enter my grad school years (beginning in July).

make life beautiful

my thoughts are all scattered.

i can't think about him. at all. because otherwise i'll love him and hate him, pine for him--resent him. and right now i'd rather just be neutral and non-emotional. god (or whoever, or nobody in particular) knows i made my share of awful, remorseful, grimace-when-i-think-about-it-now mistakes. it's funny, but i never felt badly for what i did, or saw my errors clearly, until he finally walked away and let me go. telling someone you love to leave you alone is the hardest thing i've done, but at the same time, i didn't feel like i had any other choice. there was only one option. it's only been a while, just a minute in comparison to our tumultuous and long-winded past, but already i'm learning and wanting to change. i am changing. at least i think i am. since i can't think about him, i can't really think too much about my past, which was consumed by him and by our relationship. he's in almost all of my memories, whether it be his presence or just the thought of him, his all-pervasive influence. *sigh*

so i'm trying to fill the void, i guess. don't get me wrong, i don't hate everything about the past. in fact, i still think he's beautiful and amazing and i know i let him define me too much, but i like the many ways he contributed positively to my character. i hope i did some good for him, too, despite all the bullshit near the end...

i'm surprisingly sane these days and relatively optimistic. i'd like to think it has nothing to do with the new boy (man) i'm sort of seeing, but that'd be a lie. still, i don't think it's all of that either. i guess it sort of feels like i'm coming out of a haze. i haven't smoked in almost a month. and i really don't feel the desire to. i've been stoned for so long, it'll last me a while, i think. not that i'd ever give it up for good, but now i'm ok with this. and i don't really want to get drunk as often as i used to. it's probably strange to some people, but i'm only now getting used to thinking about things. i mean, i used to think before, too, of course. but usually i'd discuss or whine or bitch to stan. it was more of a discourse rather than contemplation. still relishing the fact that i can be happy in my room, with my books, my writing, my cheap colored pencils and blank sketchbook. i want to discover new music, new hobbies, new talents, etc., and it's all overwhelming and almost paralyzing. i'll take it one day at a time. signed up for the gym, and that was good. started cooking more, and feeling good about that, too. not eating junk food all the time with stan and kurt. oh god, but those lazy sundays, when we'd eat two meals at the same diner, smoke a joint and watch an obscure, beautiful movie...sometimes i miss that, too.

but i'm looking forward, trying to create a life of my own. i really want to create something beautiful, but i think my thoughts are still too scattered for something like that. i'll keep reading and listening to music and maybe with more introspection, i'll have an Aha! moment.

goodnight ladies. i miss you all <3

That boy is a monster

I got sworn in today. I am finally and officially a US citizen!

Valentine's day is this Sunday. I will be studying alone for the whole weekend for a test Monday. I guess I'm used to that and I don't really mind as much as I probably should. At any rate, I am not that big on celebrating "love" in general. When I think about it, I haven't had that many memorable moments when it comes to v-day. The only one I actually remember distinctly was when Adam and I exchanged CDs when I was in 6th grade. I gave him a Beck CD and he gave me Spice World, and we swapped on a bench somewhere in chinese school. I know, it's gross. I was way too young, but I felt so old back then, with all that Dawson's Creek nonsense in my head.

Speaking of Dawson's Creek, my favorite (and obvious) famous couple right now -- Diane Kruger and Joshua Jackson. They are so cute it makes me sick, in a good way.




Do any of you have interesting vday stories -- good or bad?

confused

i was manic and feeling good for a few days. now i'm confused and in a slump. i went home last weekend, and it was nice and i didn't have to think about any of this and what will i do this weekend? i mean, i can't keep going home to my parent's house every weekend. i'm just all confused about everything. i thought i figured out that i was taking this time for myself to discover what my desires are, separate from stan's pervasive influence. and lately i have been looking forward to time alone, reading or watching freaks and geeks, in the evenings. and i relish that i like time to myself, because i mean, if i can be happy reading a zombie book by myself before i go to bed, then who can take my happiness away from me, you know? nobody can. but then idno, tonight i got confused. about life, about the earthquake in haiti, about everything. i mean i know awful shit has happened to people in the world since the beginning of time. but they were showing footage of doctors working there, sleeping in tents eating mac and cheese from a packet. i saw the babies with contusions, screaming victims who had to get a limp amputated or whose family member recently died from tetanus after being treated. children asking the doctors to take them back home with them. i mean who's to say they deserve their lot and i deserve mine? compared to all that, everything in my life seems insignificant. yeah so what stan kind of takes me for granted sometimes and so what if he's more strong-willed than i am so i tend to go along with his ways? why should it matter, b/c deep down he loves me. i know he loves me and i know i love him. and shouldn't that be enough? no one is perfect. part of loving someone is accepting their flaws...and i mean, if i'm going to go looking for someone who's completely perfect, i might as well just resign myself to dying alone right now. ahhh hopefully i'll wake up with more clarity tomorrow.

Overcoming/Accepting inadequacies

1) Giving presentations -- we have to give a presentation once a semester for MD/PhD journal club. I usually spend an inordinate amount of time fixing every little detail and making sure all the citations are perfect. Then, I always get a bit flustered before I present and sometimes stumble on words. This time, nothing. My heart rate didn't even increase. Maybe the adrenaline is gone?

2) Making an entire fool of myself in front of patients -- A nurse (my age) asked if I wanted to check a patient in. Usually, I do preceptorships every Tuesday (required) and I often will do a history and physical on the patients by myself. However, checking in a patient means taking their vital signs. I have no idea how to work the scale, take temperature (with this disposable strip looking thing), or any of those practical things. So, the patient was a little boy and I had to weigh him. It took me literally a minute in silence while the parents judged my incompetence as I tried to figure out how much he weighed. Then, I had no idea how to take his temperature, and the mom had to show me...and then show me how to read it. I felt like an idiot but I guess my skin is growing thicker these days. I think that particular nurse gets a kick out of how little I know. I can rattle off the apoptotic cascade but I can't work a scale. Sue me.

3) I am no longer afraid of not knowing an answer when I get "pimped" by a doctor. Yes, this is the term that the medical field uses when a superior tries to embarrass you by asking you a question on the spot, and you have to answer intelligently. I hear it's a productive learning experience. I guess I am no longer ashamed of being a complete idiot.

4) Children -- I think I have gotten over my fears of them. I've been seeing quite a few in the clinic. There were these 2 kids (2 yo and 3 yo) who were both sick and still in their pjs. The boy's name was Thor and he had blonde curly hair! Also, I really wanted their one-piece pjs. Kind of look like the above picture but with animals and a zipper in the front! Also, the 2 yo got breastfed in the room! I have never seen anyone breastfeeding in the flesh before. Kind of strange.

Doomsday Book

"A record of the year of infection" reminded me of a book I just read--Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. It's a sci-fi book about time-traveling historians who accidentally send an undergrad back to 1348, the year the bubonic plague hits England. The premise is pretty far-fetched and silly, and it ends pretty much the way you would expect, but for some reason it made me really sad after I finished the book and I couldn't stop thinking about it. The more I thought about it, the madder I got about the fact that the characters in the book had to die of the bubonic plague (sorry for the spoiler). Then I started getting mad about the fact that anyone ever had to die of the bubonic plague, and that people die for all sorts of silly reasons like getting mugged or getting hit by a car or being in the wrong place at the wrong time when a tree branch falls or an earthquake hits or someone decides to drop a bomb on your village. Or because you get cancer after being chronically exposed to all the carcinogens in your food, air, water, etc. that are the result of poorly regulated industries and guidelines that have not caught up to our current understanding of health risks and safety levels. That kind of thing makes me feel very mad, and very helpless.

My gmail inbox is a mess, and so is my life. :(