Ramblings

Yesterday I took my older son and three of his friends to Great America as kind of a pre-graduation ramble. It was an interesting drive. One of the kids brought his I-Pod with a car adapter for entertainment. I called veto power but was amused to find that his I-Pod was loaded with classical music and jazz. I guess that is what comes of hanging out with geeks! So we discussed the merits of Holst's The Planets and was it difficult to play a Bach piece on the drive north. Actually I did veto a bit of the jazz because I was driving and jazz tends to make me sleepy.
It was quite civilized. When we got to the park I handed over the cash and arranged a meet up time. Then I took off to ramble northward along the lake front.



I visited Illinois Beach State Park but high winds made it feel far colder than the approximately 60 degree weather would have indicated. After a while the numb extremities, runny nose and hacking cough got to be too much for me and I ambled farther northward in my car. I stopped at a couple of beaches to see the sights and hunt for interesting rocks, glass and fossils but each time the wind overwhelmed me. Just north of the Illinois border in Wisconsin, I found a delightful, sheltered little beach. I could have stayed there for hours but I'm not sure the beach was really open to the public. I was legally on the land if I was at the water line (if my recall is correct) but had to cross what might have been private land to get there. It wasn't posted but I was so anxious about running into an irate home owner that I didn't linger long.
Then northward again into the city of Kenosha and a good cup of coffee and sandwich at a little cafe. I froze my ears off again taking a photo of the light house and then headed south. The kids wanted to be picked up at 9 and I was running out of things to do (rural Illinois and Wisconsin are shuttered up pretty tightly on a Sunday evening) so I headed to the outlet mall at Gurnee Mills which was shuttered too. The only open store was Kohl's, open til 9 PM even on a Sunday. After a very boring purchase I grabbed a quick dinner in a crab house where the waiters are obligated to dance the Macarena on cue. Then back to pick up the kids.
We discussed colleges, music, and studying foreign languages. The kids are less geeky than most of the scientists I hang out with (who tend to do nothing but talk shop) and were quite mature. I almost miss the discussions of Pokemon and the preteen fart jokes--well maybe not the latter so much.
Life is good.

Dance Mania and a Cautionary Tale

I had a busy but fabulous weekend. My younger son and I danced in three performances of a local Nutcracker production. I was the equivalent of an extra on a movie set, part of a group of around 10 adults who adorn the party scene. My son was in a starring role and it was wonderful to see him dance. It was tiring but fun and now it is hard to get back to a work/school routine. Fortunately next week is winter vacation!
One bit of ugliness happened yesterday which marred my joy in posting photos of this event. I've always had some reluctance about posting pictures of children, mine and others. I read once on a photography forum about parents objecting to other parents posting birthday party pictures with shots of their child in it. Since then I've tried to be ultra-sensitive.
Here's what happened. Yesterday I threw caution to the wind a posted a couple of pictures of the ballet. I wanted to share the photos with my friends and possibly other parents in the community. I figured with hundreds of people in the audience, many taking pictures or video of their own, what was the harm? After all last year someone posted some video on YouTube.
One of the nicer photos was of the Nutcracker and Clara interacting with the Snow King and Queen. All are in costume and it was beautiful. Well, one of my photos on Flickr was marked as a favorite (a Flickr way to earmark photos) by a stranger. I went to his site because I like to check out the folks who favorite my photos. Generally we share a love of photography and have a particular interest in common. Being "favorited" is usually a compliment.
Turns out this fellow chose this particular photo because the Snow King was wearing tights and he has a fetish. Literally. His Flickr groups include "Men in Tights" and "Tights Fetish." I blocked the guy immediately and pulled the photo from public viewing. I wish I could chew him out though. I don't care what turns him on at home but the kid he was ogling is 14! I am so glad said kid's parents won't know about this. I feel a bit contaminated myself.
Moral of the story: beware what you post. There are ugly people out there.

Mother son teams

It is funny to me that two people have commented on how my son might find it embarrassing to have his mom up on stage with him. What you have to understand is my son is only 11 years old. He still thinks I am cool (except when I'm nagging him to do his homework). He's more embarrassed that he is a boy that dances than that I am a mom who has a bit part in his show.
I know this might change one of these days. I'm glad he doesn't think I'm embarrassing to have around. I try to be a cool mom without being a mom who tries too hard to be cool, if you know what I mean.
With my teenage son, it is the reverse. I'm embarrassed to be seen in public with him. Some times he gets into what I call "doofus mode" and I just want to hide. I think it is the overdose of testosterone or something that makes him act more juvenile than his 5 year younger brother.
I still can't focus on blogging and photography. Too much of my energy is invested in getting my NaNo story off the ground. I finally passed the half way point. 25669 words.

To the Dells and Back Again

Tuesday I took my son back to camp. We picked him up last week because he still had not recovered from his GI disorder. After being seen by two doctors and one nurse, having blood tests, an abdominal x-ray and so forth, this was one kid who needed to be home with mom and dad. I have to give him credit. He stuck with it and was really hanging tough but it was time. A couple of days of mom's special GI diet though, and he was ready to roll, back to the Wisconsin Dells which is where camp is located.
I made the 7 hour round trip in one day. It was long but not too grueling. On the way home I decided I was sick of expressways and detoured on smaller roads. Unfortunately, it got dark before I could indulge in a lot of photography.
My conclusions are:
The Wisconsin Dells make Vegas look tasteful.
They have a thing about Indians. What is with the moccasin shops and native American themed motels? My guess is that there hasn't been a native American within a hundred miles of the Dells in around a century. But you can get real, genu--iiiiine Chinese-made, lead free moccasins in around 30 different stores.
Sigh.
Camp ends tomorrow. I hope my son stays cured. After three days of hot dogs, macaroni and cheese and sloppy joes, I have my doubts.

Do I have to?

Write something today? Today I felt sort of at loose ends. This was to have been my final child-free week but somehow things didn’t go as planned. The younger son continued to have stomach problems at camp this past week which culminated in our picking him up on Thursday, one week early. Needless to say, two days later, he is fit as a fiddle, complaining of boredom and asking for a play date. He was also fighting my “upset stomach diet” tooth and nail. Said diet is boring as all good diets seem to be.
Today, if all had gone as planned, I would have driven my son back to Wisconsin to rejoin his camp for the last week. Then, back home to start my final work week before vacation. However, a combination of wishful thinking (I’d rather be home with mom) and non-compliance with the GI diet led to a minor relapse. Younger son doesn’t exactly make symptoms up but he is a bit of a hypochondriac. Sadly, hypochondriasis runs in my family.
So here we are. Happy, not quite, camper is playing video games. And how have I spent my day? I could be revising my novel. But I decided to find yet another way to procrastinate. So I made a quilt. Well, a small quilt. A fragment. I think it will be a pillow cover.
I decided to write about this because I got my sewing machine out of mothballs (actually I excavated it out of the dust bunnies) and have been using it. My first major project in years was to make a quilt out of old t-shirts. We have enough discarded t-shirts floating around the house to make several quilts without compromising our leisure-wear status. The quilt came out pretty well, if I may say so myself. The principle is quite simple. You cut t-shirts into 13 inch squares, sew them together and add backing. I love it because the quilt is made up of outgrown shirts from 16 years of child rearing. I can see the University of Chicago onesie my oldest wore the day I graduated from medical school. And a Seattle Crab shirt I got for him the same year. There are a couple of camp shirts, a shirt from Duncan, British Columbia (from the train phase), another two shirts from the Pokemon phase, and so on. The quilt back was a $1 sheet I found at the Salvation Army. Here’s to recycling!
My next project was to make a pillow case out of a Hawaiian shirt I bought at the same Salvation Army store. The shirt was too loud for any of the men in my family to wear but it went well with the peach paint in our guest bedroom (where the quilt also resides). That project took my around an hour.
Yesterday, I decided I wanted to try crazy quilting. I liked the idea of making something without planning. No patterns needed. No trips to the fabric store for matching squares required. I had bought a couple of scraps of vintage fabric on my trip to Iowa last week. There were a couple of worn quilt squares and a ball of fabric strips intended for making a rag rug. Instead I incorporated some of these strips and scraps, bits of a (commercial) quilted pillow sham we had that disintegrated from too much machine washing, a few bits of the Hawaiian shirt used for the pillow (including a pocket), remnants of the sheet backing for the t-shirt quilt, bits of an old bathrobe and (don’t tell my husband I told you) of a pair of boxers I fished out of the garbage. I ran all the pieces through my truly ancient White sewing machine and I now have a rectangle of fabric waiting for me to figure out the next step. Even my sewing machine was bought used. Today was a good day for recycling.

Black and White

We generally consider flies to be ugly pests. But here, on this flower, the fly is putting his best feet forward. Beauty and the beast?

My writing workshop is going well. We've all sort of bonded over the ritual of analyzing each other's work. My stuff is up for review today. I'm a bit calmer knowing that people are kind and constructive.

Speaking of anxiety, I got a frightening phone call from the nurse from my younger son's camp. He seems to have developed the same lousy illness I had last week. He is all right but it scared him. After all, doesn't "pooping blood" scare everyone? Poor guy. The doctor in me came to the fore and I decided that there was no point in panicking since I seem to have survived. The little guy is eating, his color is good (per the nurse) and all other major organ systems seem to be functioning. I think this too shall pass (pun intended) and there is no need to race up to Wisconsin and pick him up as long as all else remains stable.
The mom in me did freak out a bit but I have her under control. She was also proud of her little bugger--he handled himself quite well, a little subdued but no tears, no pleas for me to come and get him. Alas they grow up!

Back to work now. And breakfast!

Kind of Cool

To have a son who has the credentials to apply to MIT. I think I might want to go there too if they'd have me. More on college tours later (when I'm not at work).

Fame and Fortune

Kids herded together waiting to take the SAT tests.

Well, actually I managed neither fame nor fortune but still. . . . I've been getting back to posting regularly and was wondering what had happened to my nearly non-existent fan club--I love all three of you--so I looked at the source of some of my recent "hits." As usual most are from Google searches which is after all, interesting. However, I discovered I have garnered a teeny-tiny bit of vicarious fame from an old post about a Tom Chapin song on No Child Left Behind. It turns out that Tom Chapin has a web site and has linked to my 2007 post (which linked his song) on it. I guess this is kind of like returning a compliment. Thank you Tom. I honestly do think your song is great.
My attention has turned again to the issue of school testing lately as my older son it suffering from an excess of tests. As a junior in high school and a serious student, he has more tests than most. In the past 6 weeks, and I'm sure I am missing a few, he has taken the SAT subject tests (calculus, physics and U.S. history), the ACT's, and 2 AP tests (with a third today in AP Physics). He has his SAT scheduled for early June. This is not to mention his high school final exams and so forth.
The poor kid frequently has the deer-in-the-headlights look and we have had to rigorously encourage him to "chill" on numerous occasions. We also spoil him with lots of good food. I don't know who is looking more forward to his summer vacation, his parents or him. I am not "getting" this high stakes testing. How many times does a kid have to prove how smart he is in any 12 month period? Is it really helping the colleges pick the best students or just earning money for the College Board? I can tell you that my son believes the latter. I tend to agree with him. As yet another aside(I seem to specialize in asides) I am nonetheless a proud mom who can boast that his ACT score was off the charts.

Show and Tell

A couple of days ago I told my kids about my month long career as a novelist. My younger son who is 10 years old was especially enthusiastic. I read the first few pages aloud to him before bed one night. It was a good exercise for me to hear my work read aloud and get a sense of the cadence of the language and it was fun to share with him.
Next thing I know Mr. Enthusiasm has decided that he wants to share the story with his entire English class. He has always been especially fond of show and tell and seems to ask to bring something in to school fairly often even though formal show and tell probably ended in First Grade. I sort of choked at the idea of having him bring in what is still very much a work in progress.
On the other hand I felt I would be very much a wimp if I asked him to keep this a secret so I grudgingly told him that he could bring in a bit "later." Suffice to say, he wore me down. Last night I printed the first 10 pages for him, probably secretly hoping that he would forget he had it or that his teacher wouldn't want to do anything with it. Well, today was my first public reading as a fledgling author. Apparently the first page was read aloud in class and they are planning to read one page a day henceforward.
I wonder what kind of critics a class of 5th graders and an English teacher will make. Will they share my son's enthusiasm? I'm kind of squirming with discomfort at the thought, but if I ever plan to submit anything for publication, I know I need to get over this.
His eagerness to show my work gave me pause for a moment. Independent of my discomfort at coming out of the closet, as it were, I realized what a wonderful thing it is to have my son that proud of me. It makes me sad to admit that this interaction could never have occurred between my mother and myself. The closest I remember our ever getting to this show and tell experience is when she took an essay I had written in high school and that I was especially proud of and gave it to a friend of hers to plagiarize for her college history essay. This was done without my knowledge or consent. I was not in the least bit pleased or flattered.
For now it is ever onward. I'm at 19170 words (32 pages)! I'm still on track and have an entire weekend before me.

Thin crust

Older kid was getting mouthy today. Said I, "You're walking on thin ice there." Said he,"And you're carrying an ice axe."

Gotta admit that is a good line there!

Jumping on another bandwagon

This is an ad free zone

The site tells me I used the word "dead" two times, now three. I gather this isn't good for the kiddies. Although judging from the nasty language the kids in the next room are using, I'd have to expand my vocabulary to offend them.
Which reminds me of a story. . . .
When older son was 10 he used the expression "sucks" one too many times in my hearing. Now, I find this especially irritating because modern kids use variants of the word as an adjective, verb, and adverb far too often for my taste. I have no major objection to using a four letter word when you stub your toe hard but let's not make it the most common word in one's vocabulary.
At any rate, son said the S word and I decided to teach him a lesson. I asked him, did he know what it meant, literally. He said no and I told him. His face went a bit white and he became very quiet for a bit. He also stopped using the S word. I'm not sure if I overdid it but it sure beats washing his mouth out with soap (which I won't do) or grounding him (which would have resulted in his inner conviction that I truly S----ed.

Quiet times and parental paranoia

My younger son is away at camp and has been for a week. The house seems very quiet. In fact, it is very quiet.
Like, I presume, most parents, I am enjoying the respite. I get to sleep in an hour later on weekdays because I don't have to drive anyone to school or, for summer, day camp. Older son has no one to fight with except myself and his father. Fewer people to share the TV, computer or to quibble about what's for dinner.
Of course, I miss him. I had two little birds in my nest and now I come home and one is gone. Like the bird, I'm puzzled about what to do about the absence.
We get to view random pictures of camp activity. Some one takes photos daily and posts them on the internet. I sort through the set for one of my son. Then I pore over the shot for information. Does he look happy? Does he seem to have made friends? Is he wearing the clothes I had to buy to prepare him for camp? Does he look tired, sunburned or bug-bitten?
The speculation tends to become pointless after a while. But we're parents and we're not allowed to call and talk to him. Camp rules make your child theirs for a few weeks. We can e-mail him daily but he cannot e-mail us. He can write letters but writing is not his strong suit.
Suddenly, wonder of wonders, we get two postcards. Here is the text of one, misspellings and all:

Dear Dad + Mom + (big brother)
I was just writting to say that the first day was ok. The food is great Please mail me back as soon as possible. Please give more flag posts (I think he means stamps--the ones we gave him have flags on them). Love (son) to family
With all my love
xxxs and ooos
(Son)

Isn't he sweet? So of course I have mailed more stamps. And I've assembled a care package to send in the next day or so. But that's all there is. A happy kid living in a world created by big kids (young adults) for little kids. Lots of structure, like school but each class is "recess." Of course, it could be more "Lord of the Flies," after all these are middle school kids at their level worst.
Every day I e-mail him back saying that nothing has changed here at home. The cats are well, we are well. We miss him but aren't dying of sadness. If anything we are a bit bored. We omit the stuff that would make him jealous and want to return home. In fact my social life is the most active it has been in years but that doesn't say much. I've also finished a lot of books. But I want my son to imagine that we are all living in suspended animation waiting his return. Given a ten year old's thought process that probably is what he actually believes.
In the meantime, the keg's at our house.

Moody Monday---Gluttonous

My entry to Moody Monday today. Not a perfect fit but the kid on the cover is a bit rotund and it is a candy box.
These candies have a story. (Doesn't everything?)
When I was a kid in Seattle, it was a real treat to go have dinner in China Town. One of our favorite restaurants was named Tai Tung (sp?). I was introduced to foods that now I find just fine raw but at the time were quite a shock--squid, octopus, and other assorted sea foods. I have a vague memory my elementary school class may have gone to China Town once as part of a field trip. Nowadays, going out for Chinese food is much more routine.
On our outings, we sometimes went to a store or two. There was one trinket that my brother and I were given on at least one occasion--it was a little wooden "pop-gun" with a cork in it that would pop out with air pressure. And as a special treat we were bought each a box of the rice candy pictured here. The candy itself didn't thrill me so much as the rice paper it is wrapped in. It looks like plastic wrap but melts on the tongue. It was so much fun to unwrap the candy and carefully put the rice paper in my mouth and feel it dissolve. It had a magical appeal when I was young.
Now I buy these candies for my kids to share my joy in them. I doubt they find it as exciting as I did. Their world is somewhat bigger than mine was. I think that is a good thing.

Fun and games with teenagers

This was just too choice not to blog. . . . This evening we were serving dinner to my family and my older son’s friend. Both older boys are 14 years old. Suddenly my son grabs his stomach and runs to the bathroom. My husband and I look at each other and say that he must be getting the stomach bug that kept my younger son out of school for the previous 2 days. My son’s friend leans over his absent friend’s plate and interjects: “Ooh, can I have his rice?” We nearly died of laughter. Compared to rapid-growth-induced hunger, what are a few virus particles between friends?

Heroes--Sunday Scribbling

I think when I was a kid I must have wanted to be a hero. Not like superman or a firefighter. I wanted to be the hero in the novel, the “plucky” kid who overcame adversity and triumphed in the end. Most of my favorite and often read stories involved these heroic youths. Some of these heroes were actually not human but that was fine with me. My hero could be a hobbit (LOTR), a rabbit (Watership Down), a deer (Bambi—from the book, not the Disney movie) or a person. I wanted to write great stories in my attic like Jo March or sell my hair to support my family. Some of my heroes were orphans, like Taran in the Lloyd Alexander series. Although I wasn’t orphaned I could identify with their search for their own identity and with their resilience despite loss. In kids’ novels, loss makes people stronger and they find true friends along their journeys.
Books supported me in hard times. They were my best friends and they could be counted on never to turn on me. The ones I had read many times before became a comfort zone. There were no surprises, but I could still share the hero’s ups and downs.
Kids today have rediscovered literary heroes in reading the Harry Potter books. I would have loved encountering Harry as a child. He is the perfect orphan, overcoming adversity and a really bad guy. (Of course in real life, I was more of a Hermione type). As a parent, I have read the Harry Potter books more than once. Each book is read aloud to my older child, then my younger son as he “aged” into it. Partway through the read-aloud, I get impatient with how long it takes to cover the book and read the rest in one sitting before my own bedtime. We listen to the book-on-tape on a car trip or I listen during my commute to work. (Incidentally, the reader of the Harry Potter series, Jim Dale is fabulous).
Nowadays, the only dragons I slay are internal. I try to fight my inner Voldemorts and Saurons, and teach my kids to do the same. The real-life heroes in my life are the parents I work with who are coping with mentally ill or disabled kids, as well as the sufferers themselves, who get up every day to a world as grim as any Mordor or as scary as any forest after dark. The times I feel, just a little bit, heroic are when I have helped someone conquer their OCD or depression, or simply, when I realize that I am raising my own kids to be the fine, young men that they are and will be.
Heroes change as you grow up.

The Winner of the "Needs to Get a Life" Award

Incidentally, this is my 50th Blog!!! I wasn't sure if I would persevere but it is coming along. We'll see if I'm still going in one year.
No, it is not me who needs to get a life. Or maybe I do, but I'm talking about someone else.
I've been stuck for a topic for a day or two plus too busy with back-to-work woes. Then life gave me a prime rant topic.
Yesterday I was dropping my son off at a class and had double-parked due to lack of parking spaces. Unfortunately I was too close to the car beside me and D. opened the door into the car next to us. Equally unfortunately the car was occupied. Mr. T. as I'll call him got out of his car and inspected the site that was touched by D. It appeared he found some mark because he then came up to the passenger side of my car.
Nice lady that I am I rolled down my window. He then went on a rant about the damage to his car. I said apologetically that I'm sorry, my son was nine and made a mistake. This wasn't good enough for T. The rant went on so long that I became a bit riled up myself. Not for myself but because I felt he was picking on a little kid who made a mistake. Kind of like the people who chew out one's kids for kicking the seat in front of them in an airplane. I mean I'm trying to keep them under control but what am I supposed to do, put barbiturates in their milk?
Mr. T. keeps on raving. "The car isn't even mine" he says. "And I only have 20,000 miles on my car", he says. I reply, "I thought it wasn't your car." "It's my father's." I wish I had thought of something smart to say like "what man your age needs daddy to buy you a Lexus?" but I don't think that fast.
When Mr. T. threatens to call the police, I feel a need to take decisive action. First I tell him derisively that the police will laugh him out of town if he calls them to tell them a 9 year old kid put a mark on his car. I also call him an unprintable name. Unfortunately the 9-year-old already knows mommy uses bad words. I go inspect the mark on his car. It has to be at least a milimeter long!!! Mr. T. tells me there is not a mark on the car. This I doubt. 20,000 driving miles in urban Chicago lead to marks. In Chicago, we park by the touch system, i.e. back up until we touch the car behind us. I look at his back bumper--marked up everywhere. I'm tempted to tell him my car has fewer miles than his but refrain. Mr. T. never stops ranting but my remark about the police changes his tune. Macho men do not like being mocked by the police. He now threatens that he has my license number and wants my insurance information. He also tells him that someone like me is obviously divorced. While I'm trying to figure out a meaningful come-back (after all I've been married for 17 years), Mr. T. gets back in the car and drives off. I fleetingly wondered if he was going to ram my car but was reassured that that would leave a really big mark in "his" car.
The encounter left me shaking (rage, adrenaline, fear, embarrassment). I needed to cool down over hot Starbucks. As I say, some people need to get a life. Or not drive expensive cars in the city.
Yours,
Sarala

Did you like your kid today?

This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I think sometimes I am doomed to think too much (hence the blog). But also I am the parent of a teen and work with a number of teens and their parents. These musings started a few weeks ago. I had had a major fight with my son and the next week I had a session with a teen-age boy who has an unhappy relationship with his parents. This is not revealing much private information since many teen-age boys have unhappy relationships with their parents. And this is not really about this boy. It is about me.
I left work that day worried that perhaps my son did not like me. Not because of the one fight but because of the daily accumulation of parenting mistakes. I understand that the parenting involves unpleasant obligations--enforcing chores, homework, setting limits and so forth. It is a dangerous mistake to give up on those obligations in the interest of making your kid like you. But what about those days when you are irritable, arbitrary, unpredictable and irrational? When you probably aren't particularly likeable to anyone? Do these moments do irreparable damage to your relationship with your child? Probably not, if the balance is in the positive direction. A little humility always helps too. Sorry, uh oh and oops do a fair bit to pave the way to mutual tolerance and respect. Kids do not need perfect parents; they need parents who are aware of their own imperfections.
I supressed the urge to ask my son if he likes me. Being insecure because of something that happened in my work day, does not constitute a good reason to launch a heavy discussion. A corollary is never use your child as your therapist. I do not need to impose a brief moment of self-doubt on my child and make him obligated to reassure me.
Well, I got over that moment of weakness. And I think that generally my son does like me. Of course, I am not as noble as I used to be, but in a few more years he will reconnect with the simple fact that I am not as stupid as I sound.
But this incident led my thoughts in another and more important direction. It is nice if your kids like you. It is essential that you like your kids. As a person and a therapist, it is hard to be in the room with a parent who does not appear to like his or her child. Note I say "like." At the moment I am not talking about love, which, of course, is important too. Parents dislike their children for many reasons. Some children are hard to like. They are defiant, explosive, aggressive, lazy, moody, irrational and so forth. But generally any parent should be able to take joy in some aspects of a child's talents, personality, empathy, humor, intellect or inner or outer beauty. I don't know if Jeffrey Dahmer or the Unabomber were likeable as kids, but it is hard to find a child who has nothing to offer. I'm not sure I've ever met one.
So no matter how awful your son or daughter is today, try to like him or her just a bit. Separate their actions from their character. When my older son was a toddler, we used to say to him "Sometimes you do bad things but we still love you." It always amused me that he turned that around and said "Sometimes I do bad things but I still love you." Freudian, huh? For an older child, the message also is "Sometimes you annoy and frustrate the heck out of me, but I still like and respect you for the person you are."
Just a thought. . . .

MeSsedTuP

MeSsedTuP is a humorous take on my previous academic training. Actually the acronym is MSTP which stands for Medical Scientist Training Program. We also used to say it stands for Maybe Someday To Practice. Today's theme has nothing to do with the above pictures. They refer to how I am spending my summer vacation. And my new-found ability to download two pictures to my blog at a time. Of course, I still haven't figured out how to move them around the page.

To begin (again). Well, around a century or two ago when I was young and idealistic, I had the honor of being accepted to the MSTP program. The MSTP is a federally funded program designed to create Medical Scientists. The theory is that students complete both an M.D. and a Ph.D. (somewhat) concurrently and therefore become ideally placed to become cutting edge medical researchers.

And why am I on a rant about something that I started in 1983 and finished in 1992? Because I have run into some interesting Blogs by women in science. Some are completing Ph.D.'s and some are junior faculty. I wish them all luck. And I admire their Blogging acumen. I have linked to two (another new Blog skill) but there are more out there worthy of attention.

The interesting thing is that I'm not sure I am a "woman in science" anymore. For me the "Maybe Someday To Practice" is descriptive of my current career choice. My work life since 1983 has gone more or less as follows: Ph.D. (basic science), M.D., postdoctoral fellowship (bio-medical), residency, medical fellowship, academic position, private hospital position, academic position, private practice. If my thesis advisor knew what I do for a living now, I think he would feel all his hard work wasted. But what about all my hard work? Was it wasted?

The answers depend on how you look at it. See, being a woman in science, I also have to listen to the old biological clock ticking away (in direct conflict to any potential tenure clock). Somehow I managed to squeeze into the above list, marriage (Ph.D.), first child (M.D.), spend time with first child before intern year (postdoctoral fellowship), see child on days when not on call (internship and residency), second child(fellowship, no more in-house call), raise a family and earn a living (all jobs since). Job number three made me decide against potential child number three--fatigue factor was too daunting.

Oh, by the way spouse is a "man in science"--now why does no one ever use that phrase? He managed his Ph.D. before marriage, skipped the M.D. and now has tenure. I am not trying to imply that he hasn't pulled his own weight (solo parenting while wife away on 24 hour call and zombie next day). I only bring it up here to point out how complicated it gets sometimes.

Anyhow, I'll leave you with this cliff-hanger ending. It's dinner time and I figure no one will read this Blog if it gets too long. Next installment, how I got out of science and into humanity. . . .