something about...finishing something?

and also...alcohol

Yesterday's Theme: New I-promise-not-to-poop-in-my-pants pants

Expertise unrelated to all them years of schoolin'

The guy next to me in the supermarket asked me how to know which avocado to choose. I must radiate some kind of avocado knowledge (avocnowledge?). I kept my cool though, and nonchalantly showed him some examples that I would personally pick. I carefully refrained from congratulating him on his excellent sense of who to ask about avocados. Meanwhile Aaron and Dylan were careening around in one of those enormous shopping carts shaped like cars that drive worse than that U-haul we drove when we moved here. Wegmans is one of Dylan's favorite places, apparently aside from the sub counter. There's not really too much more to that story, at least that I know about, but Aaron was the one who actually lived it, so I'll defer to him for details.

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You may remember last summer when we had the children build the tent. We thought we would encourage them to continue to pull their weight, so we had them transport this tunnel throughout the first floor.


Heave ho, girls. Put your backs into it.

Then, as long as we were playing "hard labor camp," we had them stay in a tent. And invent their own culture and social hierarchy.



Don't worry! They were good so we freed them the next day.

Low fat

I have been wondering for a week why that batch of cookies came out so flat. Actually, I started wondering even as I made the batter why it wasn't quite right. As I made a new batch tonight I was apparently transported back in time just to watch myself fail to put any butter at all in. My subconscious was taking notes: do not let this happen again.

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The problem with preparing for a long talk is that it takes a long time every time you practice it (ahem, 2.5 hours on the first pass, knocking my brother out cold), although while I'm actually speaking time in fact speeds up. I don't usually mind giving presentations, but this is nerve wracking because I have to really plan everything I say carefully to fit it all in.

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Guess what? Dylan is not too big to play So Big. She also bakes pies.

Oh, right

"I had heard people say their kids toilet trained themselves, but I didn't really know what that meant. Really though we just told her what to do and she figured it out herself."

"Yeah. The only casualty was the sub counter at Wegmans."

No bear bear on the menu this year

We decided to reprise our Toronto trip from last March with my family as part of Aaron's never ending birthday celebration (now on week: 6). Last year the 3-hour drive took 5+ hours due to a blizzard, so this year we were very easily impressed. This is not a blizzard! We can see! Out the window! The drive took...3 hours! We still, however, managed to visit the rotating restaurant in the CN tower during a time of near-zero visibility, which led to exclaiming over seeing the tip of the flashing red light on top of a radio tower poking up through the clouds.

Luckily, we managed to recreate with eerie precision the candid shot that was captured last year.
Or, if you prefer, the fiery gates of hell is also a background option.

We also wrestled Dylan into a bathrobe again. I don't know why we thought that was a good idea since getting her to wear a scarf is a battle, but she caved in eventually. Ah, toddlers. They're so much smaller than me.

BleisenMusings

I am now on the e-mail list of my new med school class. I have gotten to know a few of my new classmates on rotations, but there are a lot of people whose names I don't know. The point is: My fellow students, I cannot differentiate between your e-mails and spam. Especially given your enthusiasm for exclamation points!

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Why did we not get a flake of snow during the Giant Blizzard that Paralyzed the Northeast and Also the Pretty Far Southeast? But we were all over the Freezing, Driving Winds and Bitter Cold? Just saying. It's cold. And windy.

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Why is Dylan so suspicious whenever I'm chewing anything? And how did she learn to smell chocolate on my breath? It's uncanny. Dried apricots, sweetie, that's what I'm eating.

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I am on a rotation now where I help with one of the courses for the second year students. Little do they know that as we sit in lecture I am typing up their exam questions. Having recently taken a rather horrendous exam myself I seem to be drawn towards developing evil questions. You would think I would be sympathetic, who knew?

Put to work, again

Good job this post!

Another side effect of daycare is that Dylan talks like a daycare teacher. It's not a bad thing in a small child--she's very positive. She always praises us after a good parking job, or putting on pants, or, more recently, after using the bathroom. I have to agree with her, it is pretty awesome to have someone offer you candy and stickers every time you use the bathroom. She's also learned to mug for pictures. Here she is with her arm around a duplo structure.


We're so proud.

Reduce reuse...

In Ithaca you can recycle all kinds of plastic, numbers 1-7, so you usually don't have to worry about whether food containers are recyclable. In Rochester, not so. Only 1 and 2 are acceptable, so there is a lot more squinting at the bottoms of containers to find their number. Some of us in the BleisenMarriage are apparently more adaptable than others, and were able to learn within approximately the first five years of moving to Rochester that there is a different system here. (To summarize: 1 or 2? Yes. Not 1 or 2? No.) Others, rather than subject themselves to all that pesky memorization, relied on first gesturing with the container at their spouse and asking whether it could go in the recycling, then, when instructed, doing the squinty thing, then, after identifying the number (e.g. 3), asking if it could be recycled (see algorithm above).

In Year 6, however, all that is changing, and BOTH of us can now independently determine which containers are and are not appropriate to recycle, although old habits die hard and sometimes the yogurt containers get rinsed out anyway, just in case.

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In other big life changing news, we starting the Potty Training Process last weekend, which we in fact don't care about at all because neither one of us minds changing diapers. We were mainly motivated by not wanting to deal with this issue in someone who is sure to be an incredibly stubborn three-year-old. Aided by M&M's, she is getting it really quickly, but unfortunately only with me, at home, with the potty in the kitchen. (Clue, anyone?) As I was working all week this is not really a sustainable approach, but it's fine for now. When we were out today we saw one of those little toilet seats that you put on the regular toilet and Dylan said it would help and it had Big Bird on it and we are now its proud owners. Aaron took it out of its packaging, and, using his training, checked what number plastic it was. See where this is going? Number 1, of course. He giggled and put it in the recycling.

Our next potty-related challenge: figuring out how to spell M&M without, well, you see the problem?

From the what are they teaching them at daycare file

Dylan came home today, took my face in her hands, told me I was gorgeous, then gave me a kiss on each cheek. Everyone needs a little glamor in their day, I suppose.

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There was a spider in the bathroom this morning that caused Dylan to leap onto my person in a manner reminiscent of that scene in cartoons where, for example, a scared elephant will jump into the arms of a mouse at the sight of a ladybug or something equally terrifying. I know that's not quite apt in that I outweigh Dylan by a good 100+ pounds, but still, it gives you the right idea. At first I blamed daycare again because why would a two-year-old think spiders are terrifying, and...wait, I still blame them, but Aaron pointed out that she has done this with bugs since she was really little. She's also been at daycare since she was really little, so there you have it, the entire nature/nurture debate summed up in a paragraph.

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Speaking of elephants, the example one of my books gave for hallucinations during alcohol withdrawal was pink elephants. Come on, really?

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Speaking of school (remember that old thing?), I finished my rotation today. They try to dampen any relief you may have by having your last experience be a mind numbingly difficult exam to be done in 30% too little time. Let's all hope the answer to the last 20% of the questions is C! It is for cookie, after all.

Neither snow nor rain nor 24-degree weather

My Medicine Rotation: A Week By Week Guide

Week 1: What am I doing? And why have I been doing it for so many hours?

Week 2: Hm, didn't I go to medical school with you people? Why do I still seem to be in medical school, whereas you all seem to be in charge of me?

Week 3: Hey, didn't we go to high school together? Except you were a class below me and now you are my intern and I had no idea you even went to med school?

Week 4: I'm starting to get the hang of this a tiny little bit! Good thing it's my last week here.

Scene change from big university hospital to small community hospital with residents from all over the world

Week 5: My new intern wants to be in a different field, specifically surgery. He is therefore unhappy with life and presumably as a consequence found it too difficult to speak to me for the week and a half I was supposed to be working with him. I guess we've all been there.

Week 6: The people I'm working with are speaking to me now. It's...nicer. It's interesting to see all the advantages and disadvantages of having a smaller hospital. Advantage: 150% less time spent navigating a huge bureaucracy and vast physical distance to get the simplest of things done. Disadvantage: some of the attending physicians are really not interested in working with students or residents and are rude, if not hostile, regarding input/questions/my existence.

Week 7: Good lord, I've been doing this for seven weeks. Thinking back through the haze, I believe I also registered my dissertation somewhere in there. Defense Date: March 16th. Relatedly, I cannot seems to stop myself from getting into epidemiology-type disputes with the residents and attendings in public forums. It is possible my exhaustion is starting to show through, as documented by my current intern this morning on his iphone.
I had heard this before I started, but it really is hard to be judged by everyone, all the time.

Week 8: TBA

kid in bed

Salon, by Aaron

Interlude

If you didn't see this lego exhibit, I recommend it.