Nail Challenge: Week 1

Day 1, 2, and 3? Fabulous. Not a chew. Then it started being the end of the week. I was tired and vulnerable. What was I to do when I got frustrated with students and other things in life?! Bite my nails, naturally. I tried to carefully bite, so as not to make it obvious that I had done anything. I have pretty much sucked it up all day today. So Week 1? Not completely successful, though they are slightly better. I'm starting to think the silly girl in the videos had a point when she said to invest in clippers, a nail file, cuticle ointment, and Sally Hansen Hard as Nails (is that what it is called?). Maybe personal care of the nails makes it easier not to chew... after all, it is the ragged edges I'm going for.

Maybe next week I'll give in to that. Meanwhile, here's pictures:

Until next week.

A New Goal (and something finally worth writing about)

Hello dear friends, if you are still out there!

I haven't written much for a long time now. Mostly because there hasn't been much of anything that was noteworthy. Teaching, taking care of dogs, and enjoying time with my husband has been the run of the mill day for me and I can't seem to turn any of the mundane daily tasks of my life into a funny story lately. Thus, the hiatus.

But alas, I have come upon something to write about.

Here is a bit of backstory: I have a cold. This is, I think, my 4th cold of the year (school year, not 2010 year). I usually get 2 colds a year, minor ones, and move on. It seems, however, that teaching small children has taken a toll on my immune system. My husband on the other hand, believes that teaching small children AND biting my nails have made the dent in my immunity. I can't really argue. He and I go around and around with one another about my nail biting. Never fighting really, but the conversation goes something like this (forgive the excessive lovey names):

CB: "Buunnny! Don't bite your nails"

LB: (removing hand from mouth) "You know that you telling me not to bite my nails does not actually get me to not bite my nails. It has to happen from my own motivation. Not nagging"

CB: "Yea, I know this. But you get sick all the time and I don't want my lovey to feel bad."

LB: "I know this.(long pause) You realize we will probably spend our whole life together having this conversation. You telling me to stop biting my nails and me, forever biting my nails."

CB: "I realize this. But I will continue to fight the power."

So last night, two days into my most recent Rhinovirus, CB sends me the following email at 11:35 pm after he finishes an assignment for medical school (again, forgive the lovey talk... it's just how we work okay?):

Haha! still awake due to just now remembering to do my assignment haha! So I just finished my silly thing and I realized that talked with a patient two weeks ago about nail biting. Part of this assignment (which I finished : ) ) was to come up with some additional things that you could have added to the encounter. I found these youtube videos and I wanted to share them with my bunny because I know she has been having colds more often lately, her teeths are not as strong as she wants them, and her tummy upsets her often (all things caused by nail biting : ) ). These are all things I know my bunny hatez and it makes me want to help! I love you kissy and love the way you are but if you are interested I think these videos are actually pretty decent. The girl is kinda silly but I think she has good ideas and I wrote about some of the tips in my assignment. : ) Love u kissy! Have a super good night of kisses!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q_7zAEHUq0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2bJ3wWtc6E&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUeEwPCB_-g&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4F4MZxq6aA&feature=related

cb ( :3

After receiving said email and watching said videos (the girl is a little silly), I contemplated things for awhile. Nail biting is just what I do. Really. It is. I bite when I'm bored. When I'm thinking. When I'm sad. When I'm nervous. When I have cuticle/skin sticking out. But CB has a point. I get sick a lot lately. The enamel on my teeth sucks. And I do get an upset stomach a lot... I call it my gastrointestinal problems. I kind of wish CB was making it up when he says all those issues are caused by nail biting, but he is the one training to be a doctor, not me. He would know.

So this is my solution: 31 days of not biting my nails. No cheating by getting fake nails on top (mostly because I hate them, and once they get taken off I chew them anyway). I most likely will not follow this girl's advice, but I admire her effort. And, I must record weekly progress via photograph on this blog. I have succeeded in not chewing my nails before, but I always falter. Maybe some accountability will help?

The ultimate goal is not bite my nails anymore. Ever. My biggest problem is that I never start this trek of non-biting believing that I will really never bite again. I always secretly think in the back of my head- "Really? Never chew these again? No way. But I'll try..." Obviously a bad way to start. But, I. Hate. Colds. So for real this time, never again. Will you help me? (Key word: Help. Not nag.)

CB doesn't know I'm starting this challenge. I will email him a link to this post when I'm finished. My request for you, my love, is that you don't nag me about it. Please. Just let me do my own thing.

So here goes:

Day 1. Starting my own personal challenge. Open to helpful suggestions from anyone on how to stop the biting.

Photos:

Right hand on top, left hand below.

Wishing for other people's lives

These days, with things like Facebook and blogging, I have found it has become so easy to be envious of other people's lives- their stuff, their marriages, their everything. It has become so easy to focus on what other people have that we think we don't.

For instance, I look at Facebook at some of my old friends who are married now, and I am envious because their husbands are home. Everyday. Around 5pm. They are done with work and can spend time with their wife and family, should they have one. I am envious because my husband and I do not get that privilege. Currently, I do not get that privilege because CB is back in DC, working on internal medicine. I haven't seen him in 4 weeks, and he won't be back home until April. When he is here, I do not get that privilege because CB works long hours, and sometimes is on-call for 24 hours or more, and sometimes only gets one day off a week and that may not be the weekend. And then when he is here? Sure, we spend time together, but then, he has to study. When CB gets "home" from DC, he will then only be home on the weekends, as he will drive up to another military base in our state and spend the weeks there working on Family Medicine. I often wonder what it would be like to have him come home every day, around 5pm, and be home on the weekends. So easy, to look around and be jealous.

But I have to remind myself: You knew. You said, "Yes. I will stay with you even though we will be long distance for 2 years. Yes. I will marry you knowing fully that you are in medical school and have a long road of long hours in front of you. Yes. I will marry you knowing that you are in the military and that may take you away for weeks and months at a time. Yes. I will marry you." I knew that he would be away for parts of his 3rd and 4th years of medical school. I definitely knew that learning and training to be a doctor is not an easy path and that he would have some weeks of good hours and some weeks of hell. I knew, and so it is not fair that I am jealous.

I also know that one day he will come home at 5pm, and not have to travel all over the US to different military hospitals for clerkships for weeks at a time. I know that he has chosen a specialty (99.9% sure of what he wants to do) that will allow him to have a regular family life. It will not take him away suddenly for a medical emergency (mostly). I know that he will be around one day, home at 5pm, ready to eat dinner and spend time with our family. In the meantime, I must try to be happy for my friends, and patient with CB and I's situation, knowing that it will all come out even in the end.

I LOVE March, Friends, and and update on CB and medicine

So, I have been more than absent lately, and for that you have my apologies.

I got out of the post-wedding, disgruntled blues, and hey- I made friends! Yay friends! Since then, well, I've been busy and have neglected not just this blog, but my computer in general. I live on my iphone. Lame, I know.

It's March now, and let me tell you guys. I LOVE March. I do. I love it because it brings Spring, it brings Spring Break, it brings 3 months or less until Summer, it brings sunshine and flowers and I LOVE sunshine and flowers. March is like one big Friday, and if you know me, you know I dearly love Fridays.

Let me catch you up on life prior to March.

I became friends with some of the people I work with at school, which has been extraordinarily nice since I have been lonely here in this city for awhile. With one of them, I drink margaritas, eat good food, play iphone games, and generally chat it up. With another, I drink wine and limoncello (because her husband makes it in their pantry- hilarious), eat really good homemade food, talk about history and classical studies and generally chat it up. With yet another, I randomly stop by her office, chat it up, complain about minor things, and see her updates to her new house. I like all of these people very much. Though it may seem kind of silly to be so excited about new friends, I have no regrets being so excited because it is not often you find people you CAN be friends with. I mean, high school and college are where most of us find our friends we keep for life, and while that is spectacular and amazing, we don't get to take those friends everywhere we go. Therefore we must learn to make new ones. I am so happy I have.

I have been sick. Twice now. And I am getting a little sick of it.

I have written dozens of thank-yous and yes, I am still writing and really hoping people aren't cursing that one bride who hasn't written them a thank-you yet. I am working on people. I really am. I have a process. Parent's friends first. Family next. Then close personal friends and co-workers. Parent's friends first because they tend to be the most old school and grouchy about it. But I promise. You are getting your thank-yous. Besides, I have heard there is a 3 month window, and it has only been 2 months. I have also heard a year window. I like that one, but don't want people to get angry at me.

I have been helping my husband choose a specialty in which to do his residency. He would be a phenomenal surgeon, let me tell you. He has surgeon's hands. You should really see them, they're beautiful. His undergrad degree is in mechanical engineering, which means, really, that he loves to take things apart and put them back together. And he's good at it (unless of course, it's the brakes on his car and it is the night before his internal medicine clerkship and he is still working at 11pm and is having complications... but that is a whole other story). He was fascinated and intrigued by surgery and by all accounts, he should definitely go for surgery. But. Then again. He's married. And wants children. And wants to do some of the things his dad did for him (he has a wonderful father). To which I respond: I will support you in whatever you end up doing, I will. But you need to realize that should you choose surgery, you don't get to be that kind of dad for a long time. And you will be absent. A lot. Especially for the first several years. So if you choose this, I will love and support you, and miss you a lot, as will any children we have in the future. Surgery is hardcore medicine and I do not want to be the reason he misses out on it, but at the same time, sacrifices have to come from somewhere and those sacrifices will be all of his time and energy.

So that left internal medicine and family medicine. Internal medicine bores him slightly. He does not like seeing the same age group or type of patient over and over, which in this case is 60+. But family medicine, in the military? Now that is slightly different. Family medicine in the Army means working daily with the soldiers and their families. It means developing a relationship with them. It means getting to do minor procedures like removing toenails and small cysts. It even means doing gyn exams (his least favorite of all these options). It means good hours and having a family outside of medicine. It means seeing commonplace illnesses and fascinating weird stuff. It means he has the potential to be attached to a unit and serve as the medical advisor for all those men and women. It means he will get to do medicine, and love medicine, and no it's not the hardcore kind, but it's the meaningful kind and that is what matters to him. So that is his unofficial, official decision. This summer and fall he will interview for residencies and we will know in December where Family Medicine will take us.

Oh yea, and to those on the student promotions committee who had such little faith in him, here are just a a few of the comments made about CB concerning his rotations:

During his cardio-thoracic surgery clerkship, "C has operated on the level one would expect of an intern and will undoubtedly become a fine physician."

"C was mature, organized, and successful in all settings. Perhaps one of his greatest strengths is his ability to adapt and to take feedback well."

In the clinic, it was noted that he had "good rapport with families, was very personable, and accepts feedback well."

"a dedicated team member with good follow through on patients and often volunteered to take on extra, complicated patients."

And that is just a few. I am so so so proud of him. Clinical settings were exactly what he needed to prove himself, and he has said so many times over that he has learned infinitely more while working with patients than he did from the classroom.

They definitely like him in the hospitals, that's for sure.

More frequent updates to come. Now that it's March, I am in a much better mood.

Post-Wedding, Post-honeymoon, disgruntled blues

Annnd, I'm back.

The wedding was wonderful, and one of these days I will find the motivation to post some pictures here soon. Aside from my step-grandmother violently grabbing my arm and telling me that my stepfather was a more of a father to me than my biological father right before the first dance, the whole thing went off without a hitch (still pissed about the comment though- who says that to a bride ON HER WEDDING DAY?!!?!).

The honeymoon was fan-freaking-tastic as well. We had a world of trouble, literally, getting to Rome, but once there it was heavenly. I frequently wish we were still on our honeymoon on a day to day basis. Being back in the "real" world has been a little rough. CB started his internal medicine rotation and oh my, has that been my worst nightmare. These are the worst hours he has had to work thus far and I miss him all the time. This could also be my hormones speaking dramatically as my period is just days away... either way, he's gone a lot and I haven't been coping as well as I used to. Our dining room table is covered in wedding gifts that have been opened but need to be sorted and put away (glasses, glasses, more glasses, dishes, crystal, etc.) and quite frankly, I don't have a place for it all yet. So there it has remained on the dining room table. And, there are hundreds of thank-yous to write. Starting with the showers that were thrown for me in the very late fall. I'm a little overwhelmed.

Add to this the fact that I teach 3rd-5th graders, and you have one disgruntled LB. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for my job and I love the kids I teach. I love the people I work with. But, I do not like teaching basic Latin day after day. I want to teach the gooood stuff. The Latin 2 and 3 stuff. The fun stuff. The can't help but get excited because OMG I am reading REAL LATIN.

And then again, maybe I am just all out of whack because everything in my world has been out of whack for the last month.

Possibly exacerbating the problem and my loneliness with CB working long hours is the fact that all my dear friends live elsewhere. I have friends here, sure, but they are work friends that I don't really hang out with regularly outside of school. I have one good friend from high school down here, but she is also married and spends the vast majority of her time hanging out with her husband who doesn't so much work the long hours on a regular basis. It is hard to find friends who will spontaneously go to the movies with you, or dinner, or lunch, or hunt through the racks at Ann Taylor Loft to find you cute clothes for a good deal. People you can call on a moment's notice who will say, "Yea, sure. I'll go with you." I had that in my last city, when CB and I were long distance. I had that in college. I don't have it anymore.

So, here I am. Married to a wonderful man who has a job that requires much of his time and energy, a job for which I respect him greatly, but am jealous of the time it takes. Living in a city I like (on most days, if I'm not driving). Working a job that isn't so much fulfilling like I want it to be. Overwhelmed by the generosity of friends and family and befuddled by where to store it and the amount of thanks I have yet to express. And lonely.

It's been a rough go of it since I've been back in the States.

Bad blogger with excuses

T-6, pretty much 5 by now, days until the WEDDING. And once it's all over, I will be able to breath... and blog... regularly again.

Tomorrow is my second to last day of work before I head up to Dallas to take care of final preparations and get ready to marry my wonderful husband, again, in a chapel with a minister this time. : )

I am so excited for the day, and yet so excited for the day to be over so that my life can just be centered around teaching, cheer coaching and hanging out. No more wedding thoughts hanging out in the bag of my mind, crowding my schedule.

And, I've almost finished my first whole semester in a new place! Teaching elementary kids! Coaching middle school girls! Without the immediate presence of my friend and mentor PR to tell me what to do. I survived on my own, and, from what my co-workers tell me, I've settled in nicely. It brings relief to my heart and soul to know I can do this on my own.

Now... December 19, please get here.

PS: CB has conveniently returned to his medical school for mandatory meetings and classes until Thursday. Way to escape, sir, way to escape. : )

Mean People Suck

During the wee hours of this morning, I was verbally attacked via a comment on my facebook status.

In all fairness to the other girl, I don't know her very well. It may have been her way of "joking around," or some kind of odd playful chiding. I went to high school with her and we never really associated with one another, though I always had the distinct feeling that she didn't like me. Or thought I was somehow really dumb or superficial- not caring about anything but stupid crap. All of course, based on her assumptions about me because I happened to be a boy crazy cheerleader. And all of these are, of course, my own assumptions about what she thought about me because she was never all too friendly or nice to me and I never really took the time to get to know her. Alas, see where assumptions get us? Absolutely nowhere.

Anyway, I digress. The insult was this:

My status at the time said: Lauren _____ is listening to glorious classical Christmas music, drinking hot chocolate and admiring the tree she and CB just decorated.

Her comment in the wee hours of the morning was:

How very stepford of you. congrats.

Upon reading this at one something this morning, I was mortified. Stepford? All I know about that word is that it is meant to be an offensive way of describing a wife. So I googled it. Urbandictonary.com told me that "stepford wife is "used to describe a servile, compliant, submissive, spineless wife who happily does her husband's bidding and serves his every whim dutifully"

or

Can also be used to describe a wife who is cookie-cutter & bland in appearance and behavior. Subscribes to a popular look and dares not deviate from that look.

I don't mean to be particular here, but neither of those is very flattering to me. The "congrats" part on the end especially made it snappy, as if I meant to sound self-involved and super proud of myself. If this had come from a close friend, I probably wouldn't have been so offended, but seeing as how it came from someone I hardly know I was indeed personally offended.

What does she even know about me?

Does she know my husband cooks most meals?

Does she know that I love teaching and working with kids?

Does she know that my heart aches for those affected by genocide and will vehemently oppose it and all other forms of hatred for as long as I live?

Does she know that I believe in loving people as they are?

Does she know that my husband is my best friend, not someone for whom I am completely servile and spineless?

Does she know that I desire to genuinely make a difference in this world?

Does she know that I happen to love Christmas and enjoy decorating for it every year and simply like to relish the moment?

Does she know that I have feelings?

Does she know that I have never had anything against her?

I would like to say that I took the high road in this situation and simply ignored it. But I didn't.

I wrote back something snappy and probably equally as childish. What is it about meanness that brings out the worst reactions in us, and why is it so effing hard to take the high road?