that pluming place

application season

2009-09-03T10:07:00.000-07:00

Med school applications are the sort of thing that can take over your life, financially, emotionally, and otherwise. Especially when you're like me: not quite a shoe-in, lingering at the cusp of being competitive. It's hard not to psychoanalyze, to spend time thinking about how to game the system. Even worse, my default mode of late has been to be super hard on myself. How can I not think, as I write my fourteenth essay trying to convince a nameless stranger what an excellent physician I'll make, how much easier this would be if I had just gotten one or two more questions right on the MCAT? But, alas, it's just not a productive train of thought.

Anyways. I am trying to push through them. I sent in my first complete application yesterday to my first choice school. Today I am trying to get five more out the door. By the end of the weekend, I hope to have all 16 or so finished. At about $130 a pop, it's going to be an expensive few days. And it's going to be an even longer eight or so months waiting to hear back.

I may not get in anywhere, given my cusp-like stats, which is a tough reality after all the time, effort, and expense I've endured in the last two years. Not to mention the, uh, lack of a solid backup plan. J. likes to remind me that I'm doing something really, really hard, especially for an English major, and it helps me to put perspective on it. Organic chemistry is hard, and I did it! So these committees can have my 99th percentile verbal score, they can shake their heads at my marginal physical sciences score, and they will take it or leave it. I don't portend to be a physics genius, but I'll be a great doctor, and hopefully they'll see that somewhere in the delgues of paper they get from me in the next few days.

it takes finals

2008-01-13T12:51:00.000-08:00

It's not a coincidence that after a two month hiatus, I suddenly find myself compelled to write two days before finals. How could I study simple harmonic motion and conservation of momentum when I have a blog to update? really.

studying physics and chemistry reminds me how much I like reading and writing and researching. qualitative questions, books, the ebb and flow of words and ideas - I'm so into it. I've wondered this semester on pretty much a daily basis whether it makes sense to force myself into E = mc squared submission, to feign interest in pendulums and acid-base reactions. Of course this is just a stepping stone. Of course I knew pre-med pre reqs would be difficult, and they are. What I didn't anticipate is how hard it would be to force myself to develop an academic interest where it doesn't naturally occur. And I had no idea how much I would miss the writing, thinking, questioning, types of academic work I love. This is the first time in a long time I can recall being in school and disliking the learning. Is it worth it?

I have huge decisions to make soon about how to proceed. Namely, do I plug ahead and sign up for a second semester of chemistry and physics? Do I focus my efforts on an NP program? Do I do something else entirely? incredibly stressful questions to pose, difficult to answer, but it's time to resolve.

things that mattered this month

2007-11-18T19:37:00.000-08:00

a dinner party for ten, red, white, cod, grilled asparagus, rosemary potatoes, chocolate torte.
dancing till 3, sleeping till 2, breakfasting till 6. forgetting am or pm.
my niece in a fuzzy red feety fleece.
my niece in a striped pink cotton hat.
the festival of lanterns. little kids in bear costumes.
cocktail dresses and three berry martinis and the top of the hub.
fruit and cheese and asian pairs and garlic scrambled egg breakfast.
sub 8 minute miles.
the lucky number 7.
the first time.
baking lasagna and sweet potato burritos in the rain with my sister.
kissing soft new baby hair.
dancing at mantra.
meeting a mom.
apple picking, sleeping in the grass. cider doughnuts and sticky fingers.
the three generations portrait taken. matching red sweaters.
moroccan dinner.
impromptu trip to maine. feeling family.
lattes in the arboretum.
north end movie night.
beers at peoples republic.
lingering in bed.
talking about the world.
seeing ten friends, eating three sushi meals in three days in new york city. cuddling with indy.
coming back to cambridge and feeling home.

wherever you go, there you are

2007-10-03T23:43:00.000-07:00

I keep finding myself in conversation about selfhood. Finding strength and happiness in oneself as the most important part of life. We all move through friends and partners and cities and jobs and schools, but of course we move in unavoidable tandem with ourselves.

I've been overwhelmed so many times in the past months by my own strength. It's a strange and awesome thing to see yourself emerge. In the smallest ways - desperately lost on a run in a new place, I take step after step until I find myself home, sweaty and tired and indulgent. A three dimensional kinetic motion problem boiled down to a neat 7 m/s with my pencil, my time, my brute resolve.

this summer a family, a life, a way of orientating myself in the world was turned on its head. I was sick, I was sad, I felt desperate in the belief that I could never pull myself off the floor. I can and I did. I am astounded by my capacity to pick up and pull forward.

this fall I got into that lovely sweet kind of trouble. dangerous and fast moving and uncertain and all heart. how easy it is to fall into something that you can't trust when you have absolute trust in yourself to pull up and out of it. life is full of such sweet potential when your strong self emerges.

how did this happen?

2007-09-26T11:20:00.000-07:00

it was all that talking. we started with construction, passed though the vietnam war, turned to children and money and charity. I knew somewhere between vietnam and charity that I was in trouble. and you tell me now: you're trouble. if this is trouble, I need all the trouble I can get.

I love when you say it: you're trouble. It's all life and fun rolled into two final little syllables. tell me again and again. the diction is new to me and to you: incredible crazy amazing, and that utterly charming trouble - suddenly the ordinary discourse of life. it is hard to trust.

we wonder, together, is this a spike out of the ordinary, or is this the way it's supposed to be? you're trying to figure that out. so we joke about newtonian physics and moses and articulation, and treasure hunt $2 pints of ben & jerry's. I'll let the trouble lead where it will. I want a life of incredible crazy amazing, and I know you do too. however it ends up, it is incredible crazy amazing to learn, now, what incredible crazy amazing feels like.

Incredible

2007-09-18T10:58:00.000-07:00

It sounds like you're apologizing for initiating a serious conversation. He looked me in the eye. I don't want you to do that again, ever.

It was 2am. I am floored. I don't want to forget that, ever.

patching the nicks

2007-09-01T12:34:00.000-07:00

For my birthday last year, the boy I used to live with gave me a framed print from Scharffen Berger. I loved it and I loved him for giving it to me - knowing my penchant for high milkfat chocolates, he sought it out at the Scharffen Berger shop and lugged it downtown to an art store to be framed professionally. It's all print and glass and old chocolate oak frame. It feels the way Real Art should: very heavy and very huge and very beautiful.

Adding to the casualties of moving this summer, the side of the frame got nicked somewhere en route from New York to Boston. My roommate noticed the thin strip of white where there was once brown as we were hanging it in the hall this morning. Appropriate, I thought, that this should be bruised and damaged. Nothing is safe. I decided to ignore it. What's one more nick?

Thirty seconds later my roommate returned, announcing that the problem had been remedied. He had colored the white strip in brown again with a permanent marker. The nick had all but disappeared. I'm learning you feel your way back to making things whole, one little patch at a time.

the top of the hub

2007-08-25T12:38:00.000-07:00

I made it to boston!

celebrated my arrival a la one midnight feast with my two new roommates -- cold glasses of white yellowtail and doughy Levain monster cookies at the kitchen counter. last night, kate and maggie and I drank reisling on the roof at fiores in the north end. beautiful cool night, replete with skeezy 50 year old Italian men, and a between-bar bit stop for huge slices of north end pizza, which we devoured sitting on the curb of the street just after midnight.

this town is going to suit me just fine.

monkey in the middle

2007-08-18T13:51:00.000-07:00

you buy new furniture. sign a new lease. fill cardboard boxes with linens, measuring cups, memories.

you're with boys. you hold something iced and dry in your left hand, your right free, unfamiliarly, to swoop out. it's been so long since you've held yourself up to strangers. you hold it iced and dry. it's late and footloose is blaring; you're breezy and happy and singing.

it's 4am, a wild hour to return to the scene of domestication. the refrigerator buzzes in the quiet. next to stacks of cardboard boxes: soft familiar hair, loved flannel pajamas (a Christmas gift, you recall, two years ago) and cut to the chase and comfort. no explaining, because you both know. it's dark, and it's close.

taped boxes tangled into feet and fuzzy pajamas. you can't pack it all up, but you know you can't take it with you. but for now it's monkey in the middle.

it's too easy

2007-08-16T21:20:00.000-07:00

I have been having ridiculous quantities of fun in my last 10 days here in the city...I guess when the objective is to see all sorts of people and drink large quantities of alcohol in fun places it's pretty hard to avoid living it up.

I think I may have packed more fun into the last week than I have into the past three years. no kidding.

felt like a relaxed Parisian over glasses of wine at the wooden candlelit bar at V-bar (http://nymag.com/listings/bar/v_bar); a sophisticated new yorker at the posh bar at Bin 71; shared sloppy po-boys at a cajun joint with a bunch of friends; fled the humidity drinking cold coronas outside watching the yachts at the boat basin cafe on the husdon.

lots of escaping the apartment, crashing with friends and dogs and cats on sofas and futons and air mattresses - who ever knew beers and an air mattress could be so great? feeling loved by my friends, laughing all the time, feeling young, loving living here again. it feels like a crime to leave it all.

let the good times roll

2007-08-12T05:02:00.000-07:00

it's been a busy weekend. spent a delicious, rainy friday night tucked away with a group of friends in an garlicky west village italian cafe... after dinner, katie and I wandered downtown, to this place: http://cocoabarnyc.com/index2.html. Could there be a better concept than comfortable chairs, chocolate, and alcohol? four glasses of Riesling, three bon bons, and one peanut butter moo later, katie and I were in pretty fabulous moods.

I went to an african music festival and saw the Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars (http://www.sierraleonesrefugeeallstars.com/) play in Prospect Park yesterday. It's touching to hear these guys and think about how they managed to survive the very worst that the world has to offer. People constantly amaze me with with their capacity to pull through things that seem absolutely impossible. Brooklyn is such a funky place for a concert like this - everybody's moving and grooving and swaying, and people look ridiculous and nobody cares one bit. I was grooving with the boys from Sierra Leone, and it felt good.

back in the big city

2007-08-09T18:28:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Manhattan. Showing my face in the office, selling my furniture, organizing the last of my things before the big move to Boston.

It's funny how after living here for five years I managed to become completely un-acclimatized to the city after two weeks in Boston. I came to a dead stop when I saw a guy wandering around with a cardboard box on his head in Penn Station. Ah, now I remember... New York City.

But I will say that the first order of business upon my return was to order a big sushi delivery dinner. A boy on a bike on your doorstep with crunchy spicy tuna rolls. That I will miss every single day.

don't give me park avenue

2007-08-08T06:17:00.000-07:00

For the past two weeks I've been working from home, from my very new home in boston in fact. Woke up this morning to the sound of rain pummeling the roof like hail, and wasn't surprised to find in my inbox a string of impatient emails from my colleagues in new york announcing that they would be quite late, because they were stuck with hoards of wet, angry, rainy new yorkers waiting for the 1 train, the 6 train, the B train... the L, F, 2, 3 and A, C, E trains.

then we got this email:

Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007
8:59 AM
To: [entire firm]
Subject: MTA Alerts

As most of you know by now there are some serious problems with transportation today. The following is the list of alerts from the MTA website
http://www.mta.info/alert/alertnyct.htm
Due to severe flooding throughout the subway system, there are extensive delays on all subway lines. Customers are advised when at all possible to use bus service. The detours are as follows:
The R train is running on the N line in both directions between the Canal Street Station and the DeKalb Avenue Station.
There is no 1 train service in both directions between the Van Cortlandt Park-242nd Street Station and the South Ferry Station.
There is no 2 train service in both directions between the Wakefield-241st Street Station and the Brooklyn College-Flatbush Avenue Station.
There is no 3 train service in both directions between the Harlem-148th Street Station and the New Lots Avenue Station.
There is no A or C train service in both directions.
There is no E train service in both directions between the World Trade Center Station and the Jamaica Center-Parsons-Archer Station.
There is no F train service in both directions between the Jamaica-179th Street Station and the Forest Hills-71st Avenue Station.
There is no F train service in both directions between the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station and the Jay Street-Boro Hall Station.
There is no 4, 5 or 6 train service in both directions between the 149th Street-Grand Concourse Station and the Borough Hall Station.
There is no L train service in both directions between the Canarsie-Rockaway Parkway Station and the 8th Avenue Station.
There is no 42nd Street Shuttle L train service in both directions between the Times Square-42nd Street Station and the Grand Central-42nd Street Station.
There is no J train service in both directions between the Jamaica Center-Parsons-Archer Station and the Broadway Junction Station.
Astoria-bound N trains are running on the D or M lines from the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station to the 36th Street Station.
In addition, due to debris on the track at the Church Avenue Station, the B and Q trains are running on the D or N line in both directions between the DeKalb Avenue Station and the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station.
Please expect delays in service system wide at this time.

I'm positive that even if you've never set foot in new york, you can conclude, correctly, that the above describes basically every. freaking. line. in the city. the email might as well say: you, new yorkers, are trapped like rats in an impossible subway maze; give up and go home. Nothing like missing (and not missing, in the least) a bunch of drenched new yorkers commuting through a city wide subway blackout to make one appreciate the joys of working from home and the delights of good old beantown.

around and around and around

2007-08-07T10:14:00.000-07:00

I usually turn into a Big Lazy Runner during the summer. I'll find a breathable tank top, lace on my shoes, and get all ready to go with all the best intentions - and then I step outside. Stymied by a wall of humidity, I get cranky, hot, completely exhausted and lose interest in putting one foot in front of the other after about ten minutes of torture.

but today was one of those rare August days in the city when you open the door and you're greeted, unexpectedly, by post rain coolness -- damp and soggy and imminently runnable. I had dragged myself outside for a very quick two mile jaunt... but - incredibly - at the end of two miles, I wasn't hot, cranky, or exhausted. I was exhilarated. I decided to take advantage and do another two. Then another two. Then - my ipod gave out. but it was a good morning, about 7 miles when all was said and done, which for August for me is a lot.

it's nice to be reminded that the old scrooge who's miserable within 10 minutes one day can fall back in love with her sport the very next morning.

absolut(ion)

2007-08-06T17:58:00.000-07:00

martinis & distraction.

the frostier, the more saturated, the quicker the cue to forget. to proceed on: nothing is gone, nothing is lost. it's promise in frosty green, sweetly pink, unyeilding purple.

elixors that erase - well: subdue. couches and rugs and curtains and feet entangled long before midnight. gentle dogs and warm hands. nuzzling into a blue checkered collar.

Cold pink, cold purple, cold green. Disolving, falling, into a new sweet.

Sophie

2007-08-06T14:37:00.000-07:00

there is the most sweet and gentle golden retriever next door. Sophie. she is the first love of the three boys in the family who are now my age who grew up with her. they discovered a tumor on her paw last month and amputated it to save her. last week they found out that the tumor spread anyways and is in her lungs and her heart and pancreas. so they brought her home to die.

she follows the dad around the yard with her white bandaged paw. the family cancelled plans to go away for the summer so they could stay with her while she dies. out the window you see a flash of white bandage, red collar, and yellow fur and then the dad and sophie puttering together. she won't let him out of her sight. it's the saddest and sweetest thing I've seen in a long time.

Let the games begin

2007-08-06T14:14:00.000-07:00

I spent the summer of 2001 as an intern for the Olympic Planning Committee for the Salt Lake Winter Games. If only I knew then what I know now. The job was 9a (...or, erh, 10) to 5p. My boss bought us lunch all of the time. People were excited to come to work because we were working for the Olympics, and what's cooler than that? Every night after work I drove back up, up, up the winding I-80 into the mountains of Park City where I was renting a little cottage built into the side of Park City mountain. It had a sunny porch for drinking Riesling and an attached sunroom with a big old jacuzzi. I went trail running in the mountains, and I rode my mountain bike on the rail trail, and I hung out at crunchy ski bum coffee shops.

funny how I had no idea that summer when I was carting my little toyota up and down those hills how good I had it. trite, but bad bosses, difficult times, expesive lunches, and cramped apartments serve a purpose. thanks to all that - when you get to your little house on a hill you know it.