ECTOPIC ANUS!!!

While reading about constipation in preparation for tomorrow's pediatrics final, I happened upon the term ectopic anus.

ECTOPIC ANUS!!!

If you are grappling with this concept, as I was, just imagine ectopic pregnancy (egg implanted in places other than the uterus...very dangerous) but with anuses instead of eggs. Yep, a runaway anus!

Now, this is too amazing not to google. So here is an entertaining conclusion one Medline abstract provided: Posterior anoplasty with sphincterotomy is curative.

Wooooweeeeee.

(P.S. There was no google image. A novel opportunity for contributions!)

Mad World

Such a strange way to wake up– humming the Donnie Darko theme song.

Soporific Sunday Summer.

I downloaded Google Earth today and found my farm in North Dakota. In the middle of harvested fields and gravel roads, there it was: a couple rows of trees, some grain bins, the combine or tractor sitting in front of the quanset. The image got blurrier as I zoomed in close enough to see a fuzzy outline of our front porch. It took a second and a half to turn the Earth back to New York and look at the traffic jam in front of my apartment.

On the brink, verge, cusp, edge . . .

Ripe wheat crops and crickets chirping. Nights so quiet and I can hear the buzz of electricity going to the lamp on my nightstand. The warmth of the hardwood kitchen floor in the morning. The old brown 70's GMC pickup with the key hidden in the cloth of the soft, torn bench seat. Our big tin mailbox at the end of a long driveway lined with cotton wood trees. Fields so flat and wide the Earth curves before they are interrupred. Thunderstorms at dusk. Dinner at the creaky handcarved kitchen table. Swimming in the lake. Long grass in the pasture, giving away the direction of the wind. Airplane rides just after sunset, but before it gets to dark to land in the backyard. The smell of diesel on my dad's laundry. The occasional tornado that touches a grain bin and retreats.

School's (almost) out for the Summer. Only two tests stand between me and my vacation. I'm going home to North Dakota.

Full of Beans

Too full to type. And too sleepy, now that the beans are stowed away in the fridge and it's time to stow me away in bed. Today our Eldercare research papers were due. I felt ten pounds lighter (and probably was with all that paper out of my bag) until the beans came along. I love beans. And bed. Goodnight.

The grass IS always greener

Since I have to plan a field trip to actually see any grass in New York, I can safely say that the grass is always greener. Especially when this is the forecast:



That cute little sun character is so unfair. The sun will be shining on New York tomorrow, but it wont be smiling. It'll be busy cooking the rotten trash on the sidewalks and the urine and dog shit on the curbs. What good is warm weather when it's too unbearable to go out doors? Oh how I miss the other side of the fence:

Stairway to Silence

I was sitting in Pediatrics class this morning, half-listening to a discussion on child onset diabetes, when an iCal alarm popped up on my computer screen, alerting me to a scheduled phone interview after class at 11:00. At first I was pleased with myself for adding an alarm to the event because I had originally scheduled it for last Thursday and forgot. Then I realized I was 15 minutes from home and wouldn't have time to make it there from campus for an undisturbed conversation. I imagined sirens going by if I tried to go to the park, students yelling at each other in the halls if I sat down outside of class, and some lame computer lab monitor kicking me out if I attempted to do it there.

When I got out of class I walked around in a panic and ended up in the nursing building. The normally quiet lobby was filled with business casual men in yarmulkes drinking beverages out of styrofoam cups. Noting this confusing sight and panicking slightly, I darted into the stairwell, which was closer and faster than darting into the elevator. I started to go up, but stopped when I noticed how quiet it was. I looked at my phone. It got perfect reception, and it was 10:59 a.m. I looked up, looked down, and heard no impending disturbances. So I sat down, pulled out my handwritten list of questions, and dialed the number of one of the most respected reproductive epidemiologists in the world. My intent? Basically, to ask if she could use a pet nursing student. If she could have seen me crouching in the corner of a stairwell with my bag dumped out and my eyes constantly moving up and down watching for traffic, I doubt I would have gotten past hello. But amazingly, she offered me a potential unpaid position in January as a nurse working with participants in her pilot study on bilateral tubal ligation. It was perfect: one day a week for about 2 months with a possibility of volunteering in her office this Fall to become familiar with her work. I tried not to sound too shocked as we conluded the conversation.

For some reason, after I hung up the phone I kept watching the flight of stairs above me. Then it occurred to me: in all of the 20 minutes or so I had spent crouching in between flights of stairs, not a single person had disturbed me or even entered the stairwell. This is the nursing building, at one of the busiest times of day. I hope the middle aged men in yarmulkes scared people too, because otherwise this realization means than no health conscious future nurses, or the people that stand and preach health to them, use the stairs.

World Cup

My first world cup. No, I'm not 2 years old. In fact, I would say that at 23 my enthusiasm for soccer surpasses the average person in the U.S. of any age. But I am a novice and because of it I have a dilemma: which team am I suppose to support? Beside sucking big time, the U.S. team is no fun to watch because they have no fans and they are never going to be taken seriously when their home country doesn't know the first thing about the sport. Routing for the U.S.A. is definitely out. Does that leave me with a lifetime of ambivalence, or routing for the underdog, or worse: simply picking my teams ad hoc? I need some feedback here from U.S. soccer fans of anyone-but-us anonymous.

Damages

My camera broke. It might be a minor problem that can be fixed easily and cheaply, but it is probably the kind that will total it, if you will. You see, I'm finding out that cars aren't the only possessions that can be totaled. For example, shoes can be totaled. I took my most beloved shoes- a pair of pointy toed flat black leather shoes that I got for Christmas from someone that loves me enough to know they were exactly what I wanted and needed- in to the shoe repair man and he told me it would cost at least $65 to patch the holes that are forming in the soles. If they didn't have any sentimental value, I would slap him with them and take them home unrepaired, but I can't just let them waste away like some kind of disposable Payless sale shoes. So I'm going to get a second opinion and then suck it up and pay what needs to be paid, because even if shoes had insurance I couldn't surrender this pair for a shiney new one. Love doesn't work that way. And yes, I'm in love. With my shoes.

Longing for London

I was excited to see David, and not necessarily London, before I went to visit a couple weeks ago. When I came back though, I missed both dearly. People keep reacting with surprise after I tell them how much I loved London. "Why? Oh god, but London is so expensive!" (As if they weren't paying $8 in New York for a bland beer and then handing $15 over to a taxi driver to get them home to their 300 square foot, $1200 a month, studio apartment.) New York is very expensive; London is very very expensive. I never said I liked going broke in London, I simply said I loved London.

But come to think of it, I would pay the unjust prices in London over the just-plain-high prices in New York if I could choose between the two right now. Benefit of being with boyfriend aside, I would pick London for the subway stations that don't smell like rats feeding on fish and shit, for cream tea and full English breakfasts, for public bathrooms that have pink toilet paper and living plants (and no one shooting up in the stalls), for round-shaped parks, for a good salt beef, for raw milk cheddar from the Isles, and for some courtesy once and awhile. I'd trade the East River for the Thames, Penn Station for Paddington Station . . . I'd just rather live in London.

As I write this New York is particularly miserable. It's a holiday weekend in the Summer. The weather is 90 degrees and it's about 80% humidity. The only people on the streets are fat tourists in flip flops and pit-stained I HEART NY shirts. It smells like even the garbage men went away for the weekend. I suppose it's unfair to judge New York so harshly against a 9 day vacation to London, but I think it's strange that everyone wants to commit me for prefering London to New York. Should I like New York better just because the subway is open 24 hours a day and a movie costs $8 less?

Someone answer me please.

Happy Birthday Kirsten!

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My little sister is 22!

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