Thinning Out My Closet

Everyone is familiar with the concept of Fat Jeans... or, well, everyone that I can associate with because those girls who just lose 15lbs without trying tend to get lifted up up and clean away by the gale forces my eye rolling creates.

But Fat Jeans, yes? The reserve pair you keep in the drawer for the morning after you have six bowls of free bar cheese curls and an equally questionable number of beers? Exactly.

They're the pair you need the week before your period or the weeks so far after your period you think you might need to accommodate a burgeoning uterus. Fat Jeans. Everyone's got 'em.

But what about skinny jeans?

Not the emo cum Audrey Hepburn style Gap foisted upon us a few years ago that is flattering on no one save goth teenagers staging a hunger strike until somebody understands them. No, skinny jeans as in the opposite of fat jeans. The jeans on reserve in case the stars align and you have an explosive case of diarrhea, a heinous break-up, and a craving for celery and only celery, all at the same time.

Are skinny jeans ever in rotation? Are they just depressing reminders of what will no longer be? I mean... let's face it. We never actually lose fat cells, the existing ones just get smaller.

I lost a lot of weight last year in the throes of a vicious break-up and a determination to find a beach worthy bod. So much so my clothes didn't fit well. Thus, I went shopping. And lo, I bought items to fit my thinner self.

Well now I'm a lot happier and healthier and apparently I carry some of that good will around my midsection. This makes all the new things from last spring and summer laughably impossible.

But. Do I keep a pair of pants from that era? Just in case? I mean... again, the stars could align. I might still yet require skinny pants.

Blah. I think I just need to get over the fact that I will never again have my 16 year old metabolism. Okay. Skinny pants will go.

Let the purging for the impending move begin!

Edited to add: Wherein purging is not a Freudian-ly placed metaphor... I really need to throw stuff out. As in, not food from my body. But rather all the crap that accrues after eight years of moving the same effing stuff. Don't fret my pets.

Gesundheit, America

There are few things that chap my ass as much as the notion that health care is a privilege, not a right.

I stayed up last night watching the obscenely long votes via "electronic device," made by the House of Representatives on the bills aiming to start what can only be a long, long road for health care reform. I just couldn't believe the drivel being thrown around in the discussions.

I mean, fine. I understand that everyone has different opinions about abortion. I have my own. I may spout them off vehemently since this is my little space of the Internet. But now is not that time.

What it apparently IS time for is to remind people, specifically those Republicans and select Democrats unwilling to understand the notion of doing something, ANYTHING, right now instead of proceeding with a letter perfect bill, is that there IS assurance of the sanctity of life in this bill.

Now all people in the United States have a better shot of caring for their health and therefore saving their lives.

I just can't stand these garbage assertions of no respect for life, baby killer and what not. HI. HOW ABOUT THE LIVES OF THE ALREADY EXISTING UNINSURED.

Or, if the lives of the living breathing people of the United States isn't enough, what about the fetus that isn't aborted who is born into a family WITHOUT HEALTH INSURANCE? Sure it's alive and apparently sanctified, but maybe it'll be born with intestines outside it's abdomen. Maybe it'll be hospitalized with pneumonia. Maybe it will just need a check-up and some freakin' vaccinations. Without health insurance that baby would've been better camping out in its host uterus forever.

I was developing a tick last night and as I sat with Irreverand Boyfriend and his family (who are, as he pointed out, a family who yells at CSPAN the way Midwesterners yell at Monday Night Football) just DYING for someone to point out that this bill IS all about the right to life.

HELLO. HEALTH IS LIFE.

I'm not saying that anyone who is ill isn't living or is subhuman or something. But I think it's a universal agreement that in order to function at full potential and embrace the best version of one's self, it's easier to do so when you're not debilitated than when you are.

I didn't have to go to med school to learn that one.

Of all people I never thought I'd find Representative Stupak (a pro-life Democrat from Michigan) voicing my concerns from the couch on the floor of the House, but he shocked me and did. And thank God. Yes he's anti-abortion, be he also recognizes that this bill is about so so much more than a campaign bolstering buzzword. It IS about life.

It's about American life and I can't wait to see how this historic event enables us to progress forward so that we can ALL live it to its fullest.

Matchmaker, matchmaker... made me a match

Today really is the first day of the rest of my life. I've finally decided what I want to be when I grow-up: happy.

Four years of college, four years of medical school and an innumerable, INNUMERABLE, number of nervous breakdowns... and it's finally paying off. Well, sort of. I still have to you know, actually graduate and move and yadda yadda big girl stuff like find a bank, organize loan payments, get a car? Yikes. Okay. Too much reality.

All across the country fourth year medical students found out where they're going to be for the next 3-7ish years of their life.

This morning my roommate's girlfriend woke up, declared "HAPPY MATCH DAY!" and made steak and eggs. Clearly, it's a day to celebrate.

Irreverand Boyfriend wore matching clothes for the occasion and woke me up with Fanfare For The Common Man followed by the title theme to Star Wars.

Irreverand Boyfriend, my roommate Mean Bean Greene, her girlfriend Chefy and I clicked our heels and skipped to a big fancy room in the medical school where a large table held individual envelopes for every match candidate. Inside the envelope was where we each were going for residency. End of story. Binding contract. We are going there.

I was blessed to get my first choice.

I'm moving Out West.

And I'm going to be a pediatrician. So we begin.

Critique

Yesterday I had my Sub-I exit interview with the Sub-I director and he said I needed to work on not carrying my emotions on my sleeve. APPARENTLY my face is rather expressive and that can be a detriment because it tends to transmit when I have no idea what in the world I'm talking about. Evidently this does not instill confidence. Patients prefer to have a practitioner that seems comfortable with medical knowledge. Who knew.

So in my room for improvement section? It says familiarize self with literature and get control of face. Terrific.

Hope that makes it into my dean's letter.

One of the riskier things I do on a daily basis, besides of course pursuing a medical degree as a twenty-something single woman in NYC thereby ensuring hundreds of thousands of dollars are indebted to my name while my ovaries rapidly wilt, is walk away from an open Gmail window.

Typically it happens because I need to go to the bathroom, refill my tea cup, or scramble outside to the street to elbow swipe tweens out of the way of the Gossip Girl episode filming (true story - today!), but whatever the reason, it's just a dumb idea.

Were someone to gain access to my Gmail account they would essentially have an unadultered view of my psyche. And not just my psyche, my psychoses.

Cue the slasher music.

Gmail has become what my blog and actual paper diary are not: a repository of my inner most thoughts and neuroses. I write multiple times daily two to three line freakouts, observations or idiotic jokes to my nearest and dearest.

I compose long winded blow by blows of how this guy I liked this one time almost kind of looked in my general direction and I swear I'll try to ask him where the bathroom is the next time I see him to go ahead and jump start the love affair I know is brewing. Stuff like that.

Or, rants about so and so's new profile picture  on facebook or OMG can you believe what this or that wrote on his or her wall?

It's my place to unleash all the superficial, honest, humiliating truths of my life.

Basically what I'm saying is Gmail is my direct line of communication with Disturbingly Potent and if anyone other than her was privy to my inner workings, sweet Lord. I don't even know what I'd do.

Embrace a denial more powerful that that exuded by many a public pooper, I expect.

Oh my God, I know.

I wouldn't make eye contact with me either. It's awkward, whatever, a seven month hiatus following a blahbity month hiatus before that... you might think that I should just take this God forsaken thing down, but alas, no.

So, it's July.

I am now a fourth year medical student.

I don't know if you're aware, but there are only four years to medical school. As in, this is my last year of medical school. As in, my holy God I'm going to be a doctor in less than a year.

I would've written that last bit in caps, but frankly caps just won't cut it. I don't know what would. Skywriting? A Mt. Rushmore-esque proclamation? Blood?

Lots of changes have been afoot as is usually the case when seven months goes by. I'd say the most jarring of which is that... brace yourselves...

I want to be a doctor.

All evidence to the contrary, turns out there's a sick diluted part of me that loves this stuff. A very specific realm of this stuff, but a slice of this stuff that counts as medicine just the same.

I don't feel I can just come straight out and tell you because what fun would that be. Plus, I feel as though this proclamation is a pretty huge anti-climax to the whole of my blogging career. So I'm going to doll it up with a countdown of sorts. I think I'll try to recall as best I can the foibles of each rotation this past year and see if you can guess what I've decided to pursue.

You know, all two of you who still bop by this ragtag site from time to time.

The same two who already know what I want to be, but WHATEVER. I NEED TO WRITE AGAIN.

I'm on Peds now.

Yesterday I saw a 9 year old girl with abdominal pain. As I examined her abdomen I asked if it hurt when I pushed. She said yes. I said, Okay, scale of 1 to 10, how much does it hurt? She said 8.

She was completely well-appearing so I then backed up and said, Okay, scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being a paper cut and 10 being a train just sliced off your legs.

She got wide eyed and said 3.

Her mom asked if the real doctor could come in then.