Thursday, August 31, 2006

What Sasheika's Shirt Said

"You are just jealous because the little voices are talking to me"

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

What Nada's shirt said

"Next Mood Swing in 6 minutes" It had a big picture of a clock on it. "It's more like 6 seconds", she confessed to me "But it is ghood to give some kind of warning"

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Procrastination for dummies


Genetics is over, or that is to say, our lectures for genetics are over and the final is a week from Monday. I am refining my arts of procrastination, selectively playing mah jong on my computer, making a new play list on itunes, cleaning my little apartment, debating the merits of washing my area rugs with myself and catching up with the species in my new “birds of the West Indies” birding guide. Excessive blogging is also an advanced form of procrastination. I now am fairly sure that the odd looking bird I have seen several times in a big field next to Grand Anse Beach is a Yellow Crowned Night Heron, a very odd duck if you will pardon the pun. And I think there was a Grenadian dove on my road the other morning,-- they are endangered and endemic to south Grenada. The other doves in this area do not have white bellies, and this one had a white belly. But perhaps it is just wishful thinking that I saw the endangered dove. I could not ID the Bird of prey (Grenada has an endangered kite and a more common broad winged hawk) that was sailing above the little valley I live in this am, I should have thought to bring binoculars with my bird guide. From the size and the fact that it was soaring it was probably the hawk.

Last night I made real New Mexican red chile chicken enchiladas for Sheri, Nichole and Dr. Robert Blanc-- my friend and husband of my friend Dr Deanna Martin. They were excellent, if I do say so myself. I made Mexican style rice, black beans and Nichole made a beautiful salad. We played scrabble, and I began boldly by spelling R-E-V-E-L-E-D, using all 7 of my tiles and earning 80 points. If I were not a gentlewoman, I would mention that I beat Dr. Blanc by a couple of points, although I told him we were at a statistical draw (which is true.. counting points accurately and drinking do not go hand in hand) Many good conversations were had and an immoderate amount of red wine consumed. Later I went to campus where my friend Pam hooked me up with a Term 2 “Mac Daddy” -- A few gigs worth of old tests and review materials. I didn’t get to sleep until 11:30--- late for me. So, genetics seems less than appealing for me, although I like the idea that there is something for me to do even if I don’t do it. Without that tug, I would be bored, and when I get bored I get depressed. So this morning’s inspirational message is “I am grateful for the opportunity to procrastinate.”
On to segment polarity mutants.
Dr. Xavier would be proud. (if you get that reference, you are, by definition, a geek)
Nuf Said

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Just saying

I am recieving unsolicited requests to cut people's hair. Some of you may remember this part of my past. What is it about the university setting that makes people look at me and think, she would be good person to cut my hair?

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Witness


It’s 6:15 am and I am attempting to get back in the grind. Xena sits on her perch on my hard disk observing my shenanigans, and I find myself taking ANOTHER picture of my desk. This summer I found myself wondering why I took so many pictures of my desk, and now I realize I want to share with you where I spend a huge amount of my time. Mornings are and always have been intellectual prime time for me and today I am giving myself to Genetics.. the final is in a little over 10 days.

Larissa sends me books to read, as I do her. I have a copy of Reading Lolita in Tehran that she sent me that I just tided off the bed. In it I found a year old letter from her that basically posed the question “how does one decide to make major life changes when there is no guarantee that those changes will be changes for the better?”

I don’t have an answer but I have a start of one. I think some readers of this blog have been surprised at my candor and my willingness to both discuss my bouts of depression and anxiety and the rough spots of my transitions, and the most common response is.. “I am sorry it has been so hard for you, I hope things get better”

But it seems to me that the things that are important to do in life are rarely easy. We love to read novels and watch movies about doing those profound and important things. But now that I am doing this important thing, some folks seem concerned that I often find it difficult. I think this is due to the “everything happens for a reason and when you are doing the right thing the doing will be easy and make you happy syndrome” This I think is frankly bullshit. But I do tend to wax poetic here more about the struggles than I do about the joys.. which are considerable and somehow simpler and less profound seeming. I really do dig the fact that Shade can go out with my to most restaurants. And I haven’t found the words yet to describe the thing I can do in patients interview that gets people talking and more importantly helps them feel listened to.
There is a precept a remember from my time in the Zen Center that urges the zen student “To bear witness to the joy and suffering of the world” and this is one of my attempts at bearing witness. Life is more extreme, more profound, more difficult and more joyful than it has been in a long time. That is what matters to me.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Scary Showers

Week two and I have been busy.. I think. I don’t even have to think about driving on the left side of the road. The good news about my car is the squeaky belt problem has gone away, but the bad news is that my AC quit along with the sound. My neighbor Mark fiddled with the carburetor the other day and it is now running much easier. He was very happy to have been paid in beer and I was very happy to have him check things out. I have been getting terrible gas mileage in my little Nissan., which is even a bigger deal in Grenada where gas is about a $4 a gallon. My afternoon was taken up with a fruitless search for a new air filter that I hope will rectify the situation. The auto supply store was out, but I got the kind of service that doesn’t exist in the states, with an auto supply store clerk carefully removing and replacing the many bolts and clips that cover my air filter so he could check to make sure they had the right one. The errand seemed to take most of the afternoon after, and produced little except an encounter with “ the guy who sells the good mangos” -- who is a man who wanders around the Grand Anse area saying “I am the guy who sells the good mangos” I am pretty sure I knew him last winter as the “:guy who sells the good loofas” I think he is a seasonal guy, changing as the needs suit.


By the time I walked shade and made diner it was 7. That included time for a shower in the scary little shower that has the heater attached directly to it with wires held together by electrical tape sticking prominently out the top. All this too say time flies and things seems normal until they are not. Until I am driving on the left hand of the road thinking about a cold shower because it both seems safer and more refreshing and wondering if I should try the Nissan dealer to find an air filter or just wait ten days for the next shipment to arrive.

Studying is still a lonely business, although Shade does make good company. I have more names in my speed dial here in Grenada than I do back home, but getting to know folks better is already getting cut short by ever present study guilt.

Saturday night I went to a barbeque on campus and then out to Nichole’s for a small party. We ended up at the prickly bay marina, drinking wine and eating pizza in the soft warm Caribbean night. My friend Christine and I ended up talking to a couple of dive shop operators, one of who was also a former chef and who had just signed a contract to wear a suit and help run a hotel in Dubai. It was nice to have a nice normal non med school conversation with people who had histories. I love my classmates, but most of them don’t have histories yet.

And Shade came to Prickly bay and ponied up to the bar.. ate a little pizza. And she was and is universally admired. My vet student apartment mates tell me she has been singing a bit when I am gone – But they are understanding and clinical, talking to me about separation anxiety instead of why my dog won’t shut up.

SO I am settling in. Physiology is good and feels very familiar. I am already more than half way though genetics, and I feel like it will take more memorization than I am comfortable with. I love to problem solve, hate to memorize. We had a clinical skills patient interview workshop today, and I still love the opportunity to do that type of work. Many of my classmates complain, but as the physician who was supervising us said, it is what most of us will be doing all day every day. It is good to remember why exactly I am doing this, and good to meet that feeling of rightness.

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Home sweet.. what tha.....?



I should have know that re-entry into Grenada would be a little tough when they wouldn’t let me take my favorite pillow on the plane in Albuquerque. The woman at the security check point said it was an extra carry on item and so I had to leave it behind. I found out when a day after I landed in Miami that the shipper (Amerijet) I had planned to use to ship Shade to Grenada was now flying dogs through Barbados. If you fly a pet through Barbados, the veterinary officer is allowed at his discretion to remove your dog from the plane and destoy it. Rumor has it that they shoot dogs. So flying shade through Barbados simply was not an option for me. American, the airline I flew to Grenada, flies pets but will not fly pets if it gets above 85 degrees.

I had flown to Miami so I could put Shade on Amerijet if the heat embargo came into play. It was averaging 90 degrees in the afternoon. I was, to put it mildly, stressed out. Mom had flown to Miami to help me get Shade on some sort of plane. We spent Saturday driving to Key west, which was really beautiful. On the way home, we encountered bad traffic only to have it end with a cornoer’s van and what looked like a body draped in a yellow sheet of some kind. Not long after that I got ahold of my friend Nichole who told me about Amerijet. That’s about when I stopped being able to hold down food.

I spent most of Sunday seemingly incapable of doing more than watching a Gilmore Girls marathon on TV in my hotel room. Mom was a complete and total doll especially considering the fact that this was supposed to be a relaxing and rejuvenating bonding op for us, and she ended up with a stress case on her hands who couldn’t even enjoy a meal with her.

My flight was Monday at 1 pm, but I ended up flying standby with Shade on a 8 am flight to San Juan in order to beat the heat. Shade and I found a clover filled patch of green in the Miami airport and hung out until my 5:10 flight Once we got to Grenada, I went to get her through customs and got another shock. The paperwork from SGU said the customs officer could make up whatever fee they wanted as import fees, so I brought roughly US$130 with me, thinking that would be enough considering Nicholes pure breed American Bulldog had only cost her $45. The customs officer looked over her paperwork and told me it would cost $240 US to get Shade through customs, and if I didn’t have it I could leave her there. I had my cell phone and called Nichole and Sheri who were outside to pick me up. They willingly emptied out there wallets and Sheri barged her way through customs to bring me cash, but by the time she got there, the customs officer had decided to take pitty on me and gave me a “deal” by only charging me the exact amount I had in my wallet.

Sheri and Nichol literally saved my sanity that night, looking a little like sisters.. smiling pretty blond sources of reassurance I couldn’t have been welcomed by kinder more understanding friends. They whisked me back to my apartment where I met my landlady Ms. Baptiste. She had the AC on and had someone in to clean it to spotless that day. She had clean sheets on the bed and flowers in both rooms. I felt safe and welcomed.


I had a hard time, my first few days here, shaking off my fear. It didn’t help that I got a US $60 ticket at the police station when a police officer on duty noticed I had driven in to renew my license. A Sheri and Nichole who drove up right after me escaped his notice and the ticket. The other officer on duty who, with Sheri, watched me get a lecture, told Sheri that the officer who was giving me the ticket was “a small man.”
A lot of SGU students come to Grenada and can’t leave their anger at the fact it operates differently here than it does in the US. I have really tried hard to not be that resentful. All of the students here are, by the standards of this country, rich. And many students are disrespectful of our hosts. I try hard not to be resentful, but being shook down twice in two days weakened my resolve. I had to go back to the police station to pay my fine, and then return again two days later for a receipt. When the same officer who gave me the ticket came to the counter in his civilian clothes to give me the receipt, he mostly looked incredibly young, like one of my students from SFCC. I left confused.. feeling a little adrift.
As the days passed and I filled my time with errands and finishing up a writing project for SFCC, I began to feel more and more at home. Shade has several new adoring fans among my classmates and a cushy new bed under my desk. She has gone in the ocean here and enjoys her walks with my walking buddy Molly and with Sheri and Nichole and their dogs Chiquita and Athena.
The first week of class has sped by. My medical genetics course is already half over.. It meets two hours a day for two weeks and then we take the final and we are done. I though a lot these past two weeks about whether or not I had done the right thing by coming here. I thought I had put those worries to bed but my reentry fears brought them all up again. And I had a very restful and pleasant summer back in the states and back at SFCC. The life of a professional is certainly easier than this strange student peripatetic life I have signed up for. But I kept on holding on to those moments of rightness I felt last term when I got a glimpse of what my life as a physician will be like. And I recalled a conversation I had about happiness I had with my friends Deanna and Robert about happiness. The key to happiness I try to remind myself, has more to do with how passionately engaged you are with your life, than it does with ease of living or material wealth. So is this stress, the cost of living I sometimes have to pay to be happy? I don’t quite believe in that kind of karmic quid pro quo, but as I have said before, I am happier taking those kind of risks than I am when I don’t.

Listening to one of my itunes mixes, I have begun to consider the possibility that the song “Best of my Love” by the Emotions could actually be a very profound recipe for living, when seen as a set of instructions for greeting the world, instead of a specific beloved.
Every time I listen to it I have to let go of some of my cynicism and of course, it is just one of the great old funky RB tunes that never fails to make me smile
Choosing a syrupy pop-song as a personal theme seems desperately un-cool to me and it in the past it would have been the kind of thing I thought but did not express out loud. I am much less concerned these days with seeming cool.. I am embracing my inner dork in my little Caribbean apartment, rain pattering on the roof, small dog curled at my feet, getting ready to take a cold shower because they feel good after a long sticky Caribbean day. Perhaps the only thing cool about me anymore is my showers, or perhaps the true definition of cool is truly and profoundly not caring what cool is anymore.
Doesn't take much to make me happy
and make me smile with glee
Never never will I feel discouraged
Cause our love's no mystery
Demonstrating love and affection
That you give so openly yeah
I like the way ya make me about you baby
Want the whole wide world to see
[Chorus:]
Whoa whoa, you got the best of my love
Whoa whoa, you got the best of my love
Whoa whoa, you got the best of my love
Whoa whoa, you've got the best of my love
Goin' in and out of changes
The kind that come around each day
My life has a better meaning
Love has kissed me in a beautiful way
And oh yea (my love, my love)
oh yea (my love, my love)
Oh you got the best of my love
Whoa whoa, you've got the best of my love
Whoa whoa, you've got the best of my love
Whoa whoa, you've got the best of my love
Demonstrating sweet love and affection
That you give so openly yeah
The way I feel about ya baby can't explain it
Want the whole wide world to see
Ohhh but in my heart
You're all I need
You for me and me for you
ohhh, it's growin' every day ooooh
ohhh, oh oh oh oh oh
you've got the best of my love
ohhh, oh oh oh oh oh
you've got the best of my love
ohhh, givin' you the best of my love
my love ohh my love
ohhh, givin' you the best of my love
my love ohh oh yeah
ohhh, oh oh oh oh oh
you've got the best of my love

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Here Safe


After a long and winding Journey, Shade and I made it here safe. Much to write about, and I will... but just wanted to lewt you all know we are back here in grenada and everyone is happy and well.

The picture is of Shade chilling out in San Juan during our layover there.

Sarah