"10, 10, 10, 10...Everything, Everything, Everything, Everything!!!!!!"

I have not been writing a ton on this blog lately, but today was an eventful day and I want to reflect for a few minutes calmly. In the morning, Naomi and I took the bus to the West Side for spanish playgroup at La Escuelita. It turns out there are actually kids younger than her who are starting in the fall in the 2 year old preschool, but they are all siblings of older preschoolers....so we probably would not have gotten in had we applied for this year. Plus in any case, she is pretty young to start preschool and not toilet trained, and we may be doing daycare this year instead anyway...so it is all for the best. She does like the playgroup, though. I haven't been doing very well learning the "camping" vocabulary they've given out to parents, but it's ok, we had fun. So, we took the bus back to the East Side where we met Rossana and I went in to the lab. Then I got a call for a liver resection (I wasn't on call, but I had talked to a med school friend about wanting to scrub in on a shorter case, so she called and offered this one to me).

So I ran home to change my shoes, ran back, and ate about 10 packets of salt from the cafeteria on my way up the elevator (to raise my blood pressure because I feel faint when I stand in one place for a while). WARNING: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!! As I walked down the hallway to the changing room, my neck and jaw began to feel numb. Then I felt sick to my stomach. Then I vomited all over the floor about six times (the last five times were at least in the sink, but still....unnerving, to say the least!). (I'm not pregnant, by the way. I'm positive it was the salt.) So much for feeling more confident about scrubbing in to a shorter case. So yeah....Don't eat 10 packets of salt at a time. Just don't.

But then I felt fine. And the surgery turned out to be super, super fun. And I did an ok job assisting, because afterward the attending said I did a really good job, and then came up to me again as he was leaving to say that he would love to work with me if I ever wanted to do a trip with MSMI (the med student group that does trips to Honduras and elsewhere...I totally would, but didn't apply this year because I really didn't want to leave Naomi and Matt for two weeks). And the fellow and nurse were super nice, and it was interesting because it integrated several aspects of disease that we have learned about and I got to do stuff for most of the time. So that was awesome.

I got home at 5:36 and rode up the elevator with Rossana and Naomi, all three of us smiling cheerfully and chatting about the day. At 5:40, Rossana ran down the stairs of our building saying she was never coming back. I am not sure exactly what happened during those 4 minutes to instantaneously destroy what I thought was a very solid, real relationship. There was yelling on both parts. But it seems that there was perhaps a deep, gaping lack of communication leading up to the blowup. It was, from anyone's standpoint, our first fight. And over...minutes and milk? My complaint that she should be willing to come 7 minutes early tomorrow (we were in an unforseeable bind) because I felt we had worked around her needs many times. Her complaint that we do not buy any food for our child (part cultural misunderstanding on valid "lunch foods"...we're thrilled if Naomi just eats a well-liked totally healthy PB&J sandwich every day; part legitimate criticism that we frequently ask her to buy milk when we run out). Irritating behaviors both, no doubt. But nuisances, nonetheless. Clearly neither of these issues can have been the true reason for the quick escalation to yelling and leaving that occurred this afternoon.

The unfortunate thing is that beneath our relationship's beautiful veneer of politeness and (real, heartfelt...I think?) warmth...criticisms and complaints were never expressed. Profound dissatisfaction was perhaps felt on both sides over certain things at certain times...but those feelings were never vocalized. We should have argued more. We should have fought and made up. Anything to bring conflict to the surface in a better way than they came out today.

So much for the myth of the conflict-free relationship.

There are things to be said for the type of relationship Matt and I have ended up with (more by mutual fault than by virtue!). We argue. We fight. Sometimes we start out arguing amiably and end up royally pissed off at each other. But we know where we stand, we know what we are doing that annoys one another, where we disagree. We don't typically hold back on the harsh criticisms, though we do cringe and sometimes lash out when receiving them. But we get to the bottom of things. We learn. So we are immature, but we communicate, and most of our communication is positive. Nearly all of it is real.

So anyway. This is a really sad event that has occurred with Rossana, an especially unfortunate way for things to have ended. Naomi didn't get to say Goodbye to Rossana. I didn't tell her how much I will miss her. All I can hope is that we will learn for the future. And talk in our other relationships.

Now for some belated pictures. Naomi at the Met:
Making friends:
Who says we don't feed, groom and clothe our child responsibly?
Matt and Naomi on the bus:
At the Central Park zoo. Penguins are a favorite (the polar bear, not so much). Now if we can just find a zoo with a walrus...

Naomi likes to wriggle free of the towel after bathtime and hide in this corner from the cruel torture of having to wear a diaper.
Pretending to be "cold" like the statue.

Night Terror Advice?

Naomi appears to be having night terrors. Every night about two hours after she initially goes to sleep, she stands up screaming inconsolably, with her eyes closed, for about fifteen minutes. Inconsolably. Eventually she wakes up and stops screaming, at which point however she usually does not want to go immediately back to bed.

Any advice for avoiding this? It usually happens less frequently, but since we got back from Utah again on Sunday it's been like clockwork every night. Other than this, she's really been a pretty good sleeper on a consistent schedule for a long, long time. The interweb is telling me there is not much we can do other than try to comfort her and wait it out (most kids outgrow night terrors by age 10). Hm.

She Won!!!!!

My mom is now the Republican nominee for House District 20!!! Hooray!!!! Wow, wow, wow. She won by 4%. Wow. This is a HUGE accomplishment--the odds are tremendous against defeating an incumbant in Utah. And she did it.

There is hope for moderate Republicans in Utah! I am so proud. Go Becky!!!!!!!!!

Ramblings

My grandpa Al who has Hodgkin's lymphoma has been in the hospital for the past week with pneumonia. He has not responded to any of the medications he has been on thus far and no one can figure out what he has. Ironically, I just finished microbio (but I did not do very well!) and am in a pulmonary elective right now. Relevant. Motivation to learn. And a strong reminder to me of how little I know, how useless I am right now. This is one of those times I don't really know what to say (and this is not necessarily the place....), so I will just say that I really love my grandpa and hope he gets better soon!!!!

It has been hot in NY. 98, 99, etc. The heat hit suddenly, prematurely, with a stench, a thickness of exhaust fumes and construction dust, and a nauseating wet staleness, motionlessness that made me suddenly hate NY. The day it hit, Matt, Naomi and I spent all afternoon in Central Park at a med school party followed by a birthday party. The Tuesday before, Naomi and I went to the Museum Mile festival where she roamed freely up and down 5th Ave, occasionally wielding a piece of chalk, exploring a church, etc. We didn't go in any museums, but I'm glad we went because of the subsequent loss of an abbreviated spring. At one point while we were there, Naomi fell. A random man leaned over to help her up (so I thought), then swept her up and gave her a big smack on the lips. He seemed to be mentally altered in some way. What can you do? Oh well.

Friday evening Naomi and I went again to the Children's Museum for free friday. It was fine except for the tragedy of the new Dora & Diego exhibit. The old Dora exhibit was perfectly great and usually empty. The new one (advertised all over the city) was insanely crowded. We ended up just hanging out in the water exhibit and the Greek exhibit for older kids (the one surviving refuge from the crowds).

Yesterday I did a physical exam with a fake patient in Spanish. This was an optional thing for school for people to be evaluated who wanted to test out their medical Spanish skills. I felt really encouraged by it, even though I made a number of mistakes (mostly I lost my history taking flow because I was so focused on the language and not on the components of a good history). Naomi is starting a Spanish playgroup on Monday at a place that has a Spanish immersion preschool we're interested in (for next year, not this upcoming fall). We're trying out the playgroup to see if the place is a good fit, if it's worth the commute (22 min?), and partly just because it seems neat and like something she might enjoy. I am also planning on going with her, so that should be another good place to practice/improve my Spanish. Also, I am feeling burnt out after about nine months of doing music playgroup at our apartment.

Life has been busy. For a few days it wasn't, and I felt antsy, so it quickly became busy again. I was feeling frustrated last week by the fact that I am earning negative money this summer towork in a lab (post-taxes and childcare), so I put out an ad to do MCAT tutoring. I had an appointment today and another one for Saturday. Then I got a call from a girl who saw my ad and asked if she could pay me to take her Anatomy and Physiology on-line final exam for her tonight. (I SAID NO!!)

Here is the one lone picture we have of the last week or so (I do have video, though). Naomi enjoying herself at Samuel's party:
Overall we are all doing well, especially Naomi. She responds to time out now! Not immediately, but still...that's fun news. Also, she knows lots of letters. She's still devious, but a lot of fun and we love her. And she is the only person I know in this city who has been completely unphased by the heat, and still wants to (but no longer gets to) spend every waking minute outside.

Finale

We had a great weekend. We are now exhausted and I am ready to get back to work, but we had fun. Friday I took my last final of my first year of med school. Ah sweet bliss. It was awful, and it was a class I loved (Microbio) unfortunately. I felt like half the questions were "A seventy year old man in Queens has a fever, myalgia, and nausea [ie, the world's most nonspecific symptoms!]. The infection he most likely has is most likely transmitted by ______" Which rules out about two out of 100 organisms we've learned about (transmitted a number of ways) that a 70 yr old man in Queens could reasonably have. Oh well. After the test, Naomi and I went to storytime yoga at Karma Kids near Union Square. They do this for free, I think as advertising for their classes, and it was AWESOME. 45 minutes of acting out stories as the teacher read them. I liked it too because the teacher was happy with kids blurting out answers, running up to point at the pictures, etc. It was, in other words....so very NOT upper east side. After that, we went to the Rubin Museum for a little kid art/banging on a giant drum, and amazingly a little art viewing on my part. We aimed reasonably low and stuck to one exhibit, which was really cool--a collection of black and white photographs of villagers in a remote part of the Himalayas. I was satisfied. We met Matt at Carl Schurtz, let Naomi splash around a while in the water, and headed home to watch the final two episodes of Grey's Anatomy (we never watched the rest of the season, but sometimes you are just in the mood for some pointless drama tv).

Saturday and today we went to playgrounds several other times to swim, run around on the equipment (it is hard for me now to remember that Naomi doesn't need help anymore!), dig in the sand. Naomi and Matt hung out at the bookstore. And we all went to the New York Hall of Science in Queens. It was amazing. A pain to get to, but really just extremely interesting and entertaining, both for Naomi AND for us. They had a preschool childrens museum-type area, lots of microbe and molecule features (Naomi really liked watching some worm under a microscope and smelling the fungus that causes the beautiful scent you smell after it rains...who knew?), a giant bubble wall, giant circular bubbles, a wall that freezes your shadow, physics of sports demos, an enormous outdoor science playground, etc. We stayed for three hours and left an enormous amount unseen. If only it were a little less of a pain to get to, we would definitely sign up for a family membership.



Saturday night Matt and I went to a dance performance at LaMaMa in the east village (I loved one dance, liked one, and didn't like the other), then had dessert at Max Brenner. This is definitely my new favorite place to eat. The chocolate is to die for--no better self-reward. So to any family members reading this outside of NY--be forewarned, we will try very hard the next time you visit to convert you away from Serendipity and toward the bald man's heavenly chocolate. One of the dances was part ballet, part modern, danced to a live soloist singing Faure with a simple piano accompaniment. So beautiful. We randomly ran into a friend from my med school class who used to dance for one of the companies. And just being in the village was great too. It continues to amaze me how many different worlds are contained in the small area of NYC. There is no single NYC. I love it.