In other news, the rest of life is good. The kids are adorable, the husband is still happy at his job, and we're about to launch headlong into a kitchen remodel.
How is everyone else?
The people who stayed all have new journals to read or have drifted away from slashdot. And I see most of the people who left. Actually I see a lot of people, people I never knew on here but that I've become fond of since getting to know them.
So... I guess I could delete this. But I won't. I hate putting things away. I could do what Nizo and tuxette have done and cross post the things I post on multiply, but I don't think there'd be anyone left to really read them or that anyone misses me in particular. I am a social poster, and most of slashdot is news/technology/politically oriented, s I fit better at multiply.
Just thought I'd check in to see how everyone's doing.
Is it lonely here with most of the circle gone? Or do you keep busy with news articles and whatnot?
I still check in from time to time to see if anything interesting is going on with you folks, but just realized I haven't posted in ages so you get this... Not that exciting but a post all the same.
By useless I mean you graduate and then there's no one really looking for your degree. With teaching, computer science, architecture, or mechanical, civil, chemical or computer engineering degrees it's obvious what you'll be doing. But what about biology? English? Psychology?
Why did no one warn me that Microbiology, while a great subject and very interesting requires a masters or doctorate to be truly useful?
I'm glad I feel strongly about medicine because the idea of going to graduate school is not appealing at all.
But did I email my friends? Nope. So being the super friends they are, they signed the role for me today so I wouldn't have an abscence. Yeah, not too sure how that's going to go over with the teacher.
We will probably be receiving another cranky email about attendance and the honor policy and that sort of thing.
You should totally be my friend. All of the cool kids are going to be, so get in early.
fallen: Read my journal thingy!
me: I did.
Saw your balls.
fallen:
me: Very impressive.
Lovely. Really.
fallen: Yay! I'm glad you like it
Did you hear the music too?
me: It's not unusual?
Yes.
Very painful
fallen: yeah, just wanted to make sure it
worked
me: Your ball references are delightful.
fallen: I'm glad you enjoyed it
Well I can't put up a real picture
until I get some photo edit software
me: Uh-huh.
Until then... your balls.
Great.
fallen: You almost sound sarcastic
me: No, no. Your balls are really the best
part of my Valentine's Day so far.
Me: Mommy is a girl and you're a boy.
Mercer: I'm not a boy! I'm a tiger! Grrrrrrrrr
It is a peculiarity of the offspring of my parents that between infancy and adulthood very little changes in the basic features (mine less so than my sister but I tend to think that has to do with weight). So I see this baby who looks like me as a baby, which means that he looks very much like me as an adult and it amazes me.
I nurse him laying down a lot, so we lay there in the morning, still in bed and I watch him eat. I am enthralled by him. It is a strange thing to see someone who looks so much like me, so close to me. He is still asleep in those early morning moments. If he is not finished and the breast is removed he will blindly quest for it, finding it easily by some infant intuition but all the time he's searching his sleeping face is crinkled with frustration. Re-insertion of the breast into his mouth instantly smooths his expression, he relaxes deeper into the bedding and is calm once again.
Eventually I get up and get ready for the day while he sleeps on. The last part of my routine is dressing him. I take his clothes, his dry diaper and wet wipes and crawl back on the bed. I twitch aside the blanket, my mood harried and rushed and ready to throw the baby into his clothes and go, and everything stops. I get pulled back into the slow, quiet feeling of the early morning. I watch him sleep. He is beautiful when he sleeps, although sometimes when he's fighting the knowledge that he is awake he makes odd expressions and will poke out his lower lip. He is less attractive at those times, but it has its own special charm. It is funny, watching him try to cling desperately to sleep.
So what should take 5-10 minutes takes 15, maybe more because of those minutes I spend watching. But I wouldn't trade being early to class for the memories.
Mom: So have you lost any weight?
Me: Yeah, I've lost around 20 pounds.
Mom: You can't really tell.
Okay, seriously? If someone says they've lost weight, even if you can't tell, lie. Tell them they look great, especially if you know they've been exercising and eating well.
People I go to school with can tell and I see them just as much as my mother and they didn't even know I'd been doing anything. They just randomly decided to compliment me.
But my mom? Nope. I know she's missing that switch in her brain that keeps her from saying thoughtlessly shitty stuff, but it's still irritating.
I really do think I'm entitled to more issues than I have. At least it has gotten better the last year or two.
7:15-8:00, wake up, shower, get self and baby ready, pump milk.
8:00-8:30, drive to daycare, drop Myles off.
8:30-9:05, drive to school, eat breakfast in car, catch shuttle to class, run up 2 flights of stairs.
9:05-12:05, Bac. Phys, Food Micro, Industrial Micro.
12:05-12:20, Get to lab building, parafilm slants and screw tops from Friday's lab for self and sick lab partner.
12:20-3:15, sample, plate, assay raw ground beef for yucky things.
3:15-3:55, get back to car, get baby, get lunch
3:55-4:25, eat lunch while driving to parents' home.
4:25-5:10, nurse baby, have a drink, eat a piece of candy, nurse baby more, change baby, leave baby with my father.
5:10-6:00, travel back to campus, find parking, walk to class.
6:00-9:10, Kaplan MCAT class, try to remember Physics, or learn it where it might not have been learned before.
9:10-9:25, drive to store.
9:25-9:45, buy food, baby wipes, etc.
9:45-10:15, drive home.
10:15-10:40, Cook dinner, prepare and store breakfast for the rest of the week.
10:40-10:50, Eat while nursing baby who woke up after being put down and doesn't want to go back to sleep.
10:50-12:00, Nurse baby, type letter for my mother, play with sleepy baby, get things ready for today.
Just four more months and then it'll be summer break.
So maybe it's type casting, who cares? I get to have fun anyway and I can show off my well roundedness on my med school applications. Yay!
Now the good news is that the average scores for the diagnostic are generally 15-20 and that many people who apply to medical school do so with a score of 29-30; although, a score of 34 is considered competetive.
So while I still have a lot of work to do and lots of room for improvement, I'm not starting off in a bad place.
At the moment I have a very high level of fixation about preparing for medical school, especially this test. I think to counter my less than stellar inherited GPA I need to try to score as close to 40 as possible (I was going to say 45 but I didn't want to come off egotistical) and I will consider anything less than 38 as failure.
For most people they were allowed to choose which monologue they wanted for their first reading and then the directors would select their second one. Me? I chose "The Angry Vagina" but instead they selected my first one to be one about birth. It was also my second one to read (after being given direction I did another reading of the same monologue).
I'm disappointed. I wanted to read something funny or feminist or rant about how vaginas aren't supposed to smell like roses. I mean on the upside I should be happy that they already had a part they were thinking about me for, but still... My second audition was sort of meh because I wasn't excited about it.
My vagina has done more than have babies!
To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.
