Posts from — April 2010

Brain Dump

This weekend I got the idea that I should go and stand in every room of my house with a piece of paper and a pen and in each room write down everything that I really needed to do or had been meaning to do in that space (or anywhere, really). I decided to do this because in the daily schlep and grind of life, I feel like a full half of my sentences start with the words “Blarrrrgh, I need to…”, and there just IS NOT enough space between my ears to hold the myriad of things that follow that phrase.  I thought maybe if I went room to room it would act as a trigger to remind me of different things that I think about while I’m going about my normal activities, and you know what – it WORKED. In fact, the first item in the first room read “OH SHIT, THE TAXES!!!” (Just kidding.) (No seriously Dad, I’m kidding.) Like BUTTAH it worked, and now my brain feels free and clear and vacant as the Bates Motel. My hope is that now that I am so unfettered from the ever present To-Dos I will have the ability to remember the smaller things in life like removing my coffee mug from the top of the car before I pull away from the curb. Or hair brushing.

Of course, I have no idea if I will actually DO the things on this giant behemoth of a list. However, I find this inconsequential to the cathartic process.

Insert Joke About Being Really Tired On The Way Home From FL And Then Seeing This Up Ahead HERE

Just hook me up to the hose, kthnx.

Rated R for Regret

I turned off not one, but TWO movies recently and never finished them. This is unprecedented. I am notorious for sitting all the way through AND ALSO watching the special features for movies like Maid In Manhattan or [name of any other Jennifer Lopez movie], but I just couldn’t muster up enough energy to even care about The Notorious Bettie Page  or Copying Beethoven – both of which I checked out on a whim from the library. This is the downside of free movies. Sometimes you get to see The Godfather for the first time or stumble upon the greatness that is The Motorcycle Diaries, and sometimes you have to suffer through Ed Harris in a godawful wig being an asshole to some oddly-accented supermodel who also happens to be Vienna’s greatest composition student. (Totally believable, I think!) Also, if I never have to see Ed Harris’ hairy saggy white bare bottom again in my life it will be too soon. Too too soon, my friends.

And with that image seared in your brain, I leave you to enjoy your Monday.

There have been lots of changes happening around here in the past few weeks, some of which I will be writing about in the coming days. The majority of them are good, and some of them are even pretty great. But for some reason I have been finding it hard to sit down and type anything into this posting page, even with all the material I have at my disposal, and today I think I figured out at least some of the reason.

I went out to get the mail today, and buried between my student loan repayment bill and some Target coupons was another letter from some misguided source that thinks I am still a medical student.  I get them all the time, solicitations from the AMA and the like. They’ve followed me through a move, even though I never updated any kind of address with them, and out of laziness I’ve never really taken any real action to stop them from coming to my mailbox.  But today I got a letter congratulating me on my upcoming graduation, with offers for fancy frames for my newly minted M.D. degree. Because if I were still in school, I’d be needing one of those in less than a month.

Here is what I know:

I am grateful to have had time with my kids while they are small.
Rosie would not even exist if I had not left med school.
I would not have started writing had I not left med school.
I have learned an unbelievable number of things about myself and who I am in the last three years.

But I also know:

That letter made me sad.
I still wonder all the time about what could have been.
There are times when I feel an overwhelming sense of regret about my decision.

Because no matter how amazing the alternative turns out to be, it’s just really, really hard to give up a dream.

We’re back, and I’m worn slap out from wedging my XL childbearing hips into the very small space between Rosie’s car seat and Noah’s booster seat for the last two hours of the 10 hour trip back to Atlanta, (in a torrential downpour)(in a traffic jam)(with Rosie teetering on the edge of toddler insanity)(OMG) so I’m just going to hand the storytelling* over to Rosie for today. I seem to change my mind on this every time I’m asked, but for today, if I had to choose one word to describe this girl it would be expressive.

*If you can decipher an actual story from this, please tell me what it is. I am dying of curiosity.  Something about…the fact that she has a hand? And Ashley was there? And also Sam? I have not the first clue, you guys. I just know that whatever happened, it was MAJOR.

Well, what had HAPPENED was… from racher on Vimeo.