Nightmare Time Again -- LONG

It's been awhile -- I can't remember exactly how long -- since my last really horrific and real nghtmare, so I suppose I was due for another one. This one was a bit frightening but equally stupid.

This nightmare had a slight basis in reality, but aspects of it could never have actually happened the way they did in the nightmare. That's somewhat characteristic of  dreams and nightmares for me, anyway, in that they're a blend of just a touch of autheticity or realism with things so far-fetched that it causes one, once awake, to wonder how he or she could ever have bought into anything so ridiculous to the extent to be scared by it even in a state of uncnsciousness. I'f like to think I'm not a total moron even when I'm asleep, but such is apparently not the case.

It's difficult, upon awakening, to remember every last detail of one's nightmare. Thus, I needed to fil in a few details to make the story flow, so to speak. I'll leave it to you, the reader, to decide which parts authentically happened in my dream and which parts are fillers. 

In this dream, my group was traveling back to the mainland from Catalina.  On our return trip, we were traveling not on the smaller and slightly faster charter boat that took us over there. The independent charter my Uncle Jerry had arranged for us had apparently flaked ut.  Instead, we had to choose between  one of the major ferries that leaves from the more standard ports of call such as San Pedro, Newport Beach, Long Beach, one of the large catamarans also providing this service, or , for some unknown reason, Maid of the Mist XIII, which usually takes passengers across the Niagara River beneath the various waterfalls that make up Niagara Falls. 

The supposedly unprecedentled number of passegers wanting to depart Catalina at that exact time had necessitated calling for the service of one of the Niagara Falls crusing boats.  How it had been known far enough in advance that such a demand for boat trasportation would be needed to get a Maid of the Mist (there are multiple Maid of the Mist boats numbered with Roman numerals, but I seriously doubt that there is one numbered 13, with or without Roman numerals. Rather, I'm certain that such was just one of those dream- enhancing features inexplicably present in most nightmares) wuld be anyone's guess.

Why the port authority there didn't just tell those in charge that designated boats would make a return trip for the excess of passengers desiring to make the trip back to the mainland of California, or why the port authority didn't just tell the people who failed to make return reservations in a timely manner that they would need to wait until the next available space are two very good questions, and again, typical common sense-defying features of nightmares.

It had been my choice to try to board a catamaran, as that would have been the fastest way back. I was outvoted by my traveling companions, most of whom hadn't been my actual traveling companions on the trip. Jaci was there. Judge Alex and his wife were there. Josh Groban was there. Judge Judy was there. Judge Marilyn Milian was there spouting  little Spanish proverbs her grandmother or her mother used to say. She was sitting with Judge Alex. Other people continually asked them if they were married. After awhile they got tired of asking the same question. JA told me to stand in front of them and answer "No!" whenever anyone asked if they were married. When I was later chosen to get of the boat and parasail, Judge Alex said I couldn't leave because it was my job to say "No!" when anyone asked them if they were married. I said Becca could do it for me. JA said she wouldn't say it with the right level of hostility. Meanwhile, Judge Alex and Judge Marilyn Milian were playing footsie whenever she wasn't spointing one of her grandmother's Cuban proverbs or fixing her lipstick. JA's wife was there, but she was holding hand with the cute Irish singer who gives music theory lessons online. i was a bit jealous of her. As much as I love parasailing, I would have preferred to hold hands with the really cute Irish singer.

OJ was there, along with Johnnie Cochran, who I believe is technically dead, which didn't stop him frm appearing in my dream.  At least one Kardashian was there, but I don't remember which one. Doug Flutie was there. Knotty was there with her dogs but without the Retired Lieutenant Colonel. Chuck Bluestein was trying to get there. Many more of you than I can remember may have been there. Becca was there. Mitt Romney was there, and he remembered an earlier nightmare  encounter in which he was trying to inject me with a syringe full of the ebola virus. he said, though he claimed not to have the syringe with him on this trip, that matter had not yet been settled. My grandfather, who hates me, was present. Donald Trump was there.  Magyn Kelly was there. Heidi Hatch was there. A few polygamist ladies with big hair were there. Any one of you may have been there, as there were many more people with whom I remember being familiar whom I cannot remember now. 

Though I never saw her there on the island, Donna was there. It was she who discovered a novel (pun intended) way to lighten the load of the boad without any human casualties. She discovered multiple copies of Books of Mormon had been stowed in boxes under seats where life preserves should've been stored. "Is anyone going to be reading these?" Donna hollered out. "I didn't think so," she answered herself as she dumped box after box into the water. Alexis jumped up to help.  

Both Alexis' geriatric grandfather and Mitt Romney started to protest but then, realized that each had the entire book committed to memory verbatim, indicating neither needed a hard copy of the book. They ceased with their protests.

The professor who got all pissy at me because I killed one of the "patients" in Medical Pracice lab (supposedly, anyway; I merely inserted a test that would have provided and did provide the right results more quickly, except that the class hadn't gotten that far into the textbook, so I shouldn't have known about that test and I threw  off the professor's agenda, which delayed the test the professor said said should have provided the diagnosis. If she'd looked at the results of my test, which I did, and tried to call to her attention, she would have seen the data she and I needed, as I did, but because according to her I went 'out of the box'. ["Real medicine isn't like House, M.D., Rousseau!" she screamed at me. 'You're getting these ideas from your father. He may be able to get away with it, but a first year med student cannot and will not as long as I'm around here. Consider this 'Strike One' for you."  Really? Reading ahead in the tetbook, when by next week this will be the established procedure, is Strike One? ) The patient's timer went off, and the patient had to seize and then lie motionless even after they shocked her with defibrillators. The "patient" was angry with me because they all hate it when they have to seize, and they ripped open her favorite hospital gown to defib her, which futher irked her. The professor was angry A) because I knew about the test before I was supposed to know, B) because I didn't cry when I "killed" the "patient," and C) because the department gets billed everytime one of those hospital gowns has to be ripped. The professor, other than OJ, Scott Peterson, and Casey Anthony, and maybe Donald Trump (all of whom were there) were the very last people I'd care to have on a boat with me. Very few of my 
actual traveling companions were with me, if any at all.

It ended up that there was one too many people on the boat, and there was also not enough gas on the boat to make it back the either 22 or 26 miles depending upon whether or not a person trusts the lyrics to a cheesy 50's song or the measurements of geographers for the distance. Someone had to parasail both to get the extra body off the boat and to provide momentum to propel the boat back to the mainland. Everyone knew that I love parasailing and nominated me. "Yes, I love parsailing, " I admitted, " but that's when the boat goes fast enough to get me airborne!" No one was listening except Judge Judy, who said, "If it doesn't make sense, then it's probably not true."

"It's getting a little boring on here," Trump complained. "you, and you, and you, he pointed at three random passengers, "Sing something!" The three random passengers looked at each other. One said, "I don't even know any songs."

Another said, "I don't sing . . . ever."

The third satrted singing, 'Happy birthday to you."

'You're fired!" Trump screamed.

Josh Groban began the opening line to one of his hits. "Amateur hour, obviously," Trump whined, "but it'll have to do." 

Cute Irish guy from Celtic Thunder wandered over to join him. "Just what we need. More amateurs," Trump added.

Knotty joined in. "At least she's female, " he  said in a slightly less whiny than before. "None of you are fired . . Yet!"

I got hooked up to the parasailing gear, but, predictable, never got off the boat deck. "she's too heavy. We need a lighter passenger, " Donald trump suggested. The boat's captain told Donald Trump to go all over the boat looking for someone lighter than I. His method of doing this was to grasp all the women's breasts. Several screamed sexual assault and a few cried rape. "What? I'm not even Mexican. I didn't rape anyone," he whimpered. Judge Alex cuffed him while Trump sat there moaning, 'What did I do?' Will someone tell me what I did wrong?" 

"You forgot to put sunscreen on the top of your head," Megyn Kelly told him. By the end of the day he had an at least 2nd degree sunburn from the neck up.

"What did that woman say? I can't understand a word out of her mouth. I don't even think she uses real words," he complained.

A helicopter was hovering.  Someone suggested that If they extended a rope and I held onto it, we would be going fast enough to propel me  to go airborne, sort of jump-starting the parasailing effort. I was skeptical, but OJ thought it was our only chance. OJ said they should have me attached to the helicopter really high, as in very close to the blades. Scott Peterson thought they should just get out into the water a bit, weight me down with Maid of the Mist XIII's anchors, and toss me overboard. Then the boat wouldn't have too many passengers.

Jaci thought the helicopter was a good idea, but that no sober person could tolerate it, so she thought I should consume several shot glasses full of something potent before going up there. Then I wouldn't care. She said someone on the boat - she wasn't naming names - had magic mushrooms, which would work even better. "It'll be the most exciting  parasailing experience of her bloody life," Jaci concluded. 

The captain wanted to know how to find the mushrooms. Donald Trump offered to grope all the female paassengers to see if they were concealed on any of the female bodies. Judge Alex wouldn't unlock his cuffs, so he went around groping the best he could with both hands cuffed together.  He groped Rosie O'Donnell,then, realizing who he had groped, turned and began vomiting. Rosie pushed him overboard. The consensus, minus Becca, was to leave him in the water as shark bait or whatever, and if he made it on his own, perhaps he really should at least appear on the ballot, or maybe at least in the next debate. Becca couldn't stand to see him drown, so she extended an oar, to which he clung for dear life.

Meanwhile, the helicopter extended a line, which had a harness. I attached the harness to myself, which meant I was harnessed to both the boat and the helicopter.The boat harness, for parasailing, was not attached tightly enough, so I slipped out of it, when the helicopter took off, i slipped out of the parasailing harness. Casey Anthony quickly attached herself to it. She wanted to go up in the air to see if she could spot Caylee anywhere in the Pacific.

The boat wasn't moving fast enough to propel Casey into the air, so she reached for me when the helicopter made a dip toward the boat. i grabbed part of her harness and tried to attach it to my harness. after about seven tried, it attached. i soon regretted this action, as roughly every twenty seconds she hollered out that she could see both Caylee and Nanny Zanny, otherwise known as  Xenaida Gonzalez, or both of them in the water. She kept wanting the helicopter to stop, which it did not. 

We were now moving the Maid of the Mist XIII at a decent clip toward the california shoreline. Becca was dutfully hanging onto the oar to which Donald Trump was hanging onto the other end. He saw Megyn Kelly on board and accused her of sabotaging his efforts in the debate because of using words either he couldn't understand or of which he had never before heard. Heidi Hatch threw a dictionary at him, probably just as a joke. Joke or not, Trump held onto the dctionary with one hand while trying to hold onto Becca's oar with the other hand.  

Then he saw Judge Alex and Marilyn Milian.  who by then were staring at the spectacle of the helicopter, which was beginning to catch fire. 'Are you people Mexicans?" he called out to them. They looked at each other, then, looked at ther spouses and children, then ignored Trump and looked up at the helicopter, which was essentially enguled in flames. "She should've stayed here with us and told everyone we're not married,' Judge Marilyn Milian commented.

"Yeah. What a stupid question anyway," commented Judge Marilyn Milian's  husband - a real-world judge with a surname other than Milian whose bench is somewhere in Dade county, who was by this time holding hands with Judge Alex's wife.

Jaci by this time was screaming at Alexis (me!), "Disconnect yourself from the helicopter. It's going down in flames."

'I can't!" I exclaimed to her.


"Why?" she demanded.

"Because I have to go to the bathroom!" I answered, my face turning red either from the wind, from the hotness of the flames, or from embarrasent at having announced to a boat full of people that my bladder was full.

"The loo is on the boat, not on the helicopter," she told me. "Disconnect yourself. You'll fall in the water, and we'll fish you out and get you on board so that you can use the loo."

"I don't need a loo!" I yelled at Jaci, "I need a bathroom."

"Like she really wants to take a bath right now. Idiot American," Jaci muttered under her breath. "A loo is a toilet, you little fool, "  she shouted up to me. "Now unhook yourself and fall in the water. If you still think you need a loo after that, we'll show you where it is."

"Is it a public restroom?" I demanded.

"I would assume such to be the case," she answered, shaking her head.

'I can't go into a public restroom unless someone checks it to make sure there are no bad guys in there,' I announced.

By this time even Becca was growing impatient. "Unhook yourself from the helicopter, Alexis. I'll let go of Trump's oar and  hold one out to you. Then you can come on board and use the restroom, which Judge Alex will check out for you to make sure it's safe from intruders."

"How many of you on board are Mexicans?" Donald Trump hollered.

No one paid any attention to him except Marilyn Millian, who called out a Spanish proverb she'd learned from her grandmother. She then offered a translation that said something like,  "Only a fool in danger of drowning would be concerned with whether or not the person saving him was a Mexican." 

"I thought so. You're a Mexican. You're a rapist and a thief," Trump bellowed at Judge Mariln Milian.

Judge Marilyn Milian's husband, Judge John Something-Or Other, hollered back, "She's never raped anyone or stolen anything," except he hollered it in Spanish. which Trump did not comprehend. "And you're a Mexican, too, you thief and rapist," he hollered and Judge John Something-That- Sounds-Very-German.

Alexis disengaged herself from the helicopter harness and executed a near-perfect inward dive with 1 1/2 twists (perfection marred only by lack of springboard or platform) just before the fumes of the flaming plane nearly overtook her. Becca, as she had promised, dropped Donald Trump's oar and extended one to Alexis, who treaded water until the boat got close enough for her to grab the oar.

Becca fished Alexis in first, then Casey Anthony after her, a mst disdainful expression on her face as she helped Casey Anthony aboard the boat. 

Judge Alex, true to his word, checked the bathroom. "There are no thugs inside, Alexis. The bathroom is safe for you to enter."

"There's no bath inside there either," Jaci countered. "It's a toilet, you American dullards, not a bath."

Judge Alex sat next to his wife. 'I don't think she cares what anyone calls it, "Mrs. Ferrer observed, "as long as she can pee in it."

The flaming helicopter then plunged into the Pacific. Out of it came Jose Baez and  various members of the Goldman family, all wearing life preservers, and all viciously pursuing various prey.  The boat at this point had enough gas to make it easily to the pier at San Piedro, which was only approximately 3 nautical miles away. 

Trump was already dog-paddling away from Rosie O'Donnell as fast as he could. O.J. frantically tried to hide rings, watches, sports memorabilia, and gold chains as members of the Goldman family approached. Jose Baez presumably came in pursuit of Casey Anthony, wanting payment, but was not likely to collect any even if he caught up to Ms. Anthony.

The consensus among the captain of Maid of the Mist XIII and the passengers was to let everyone who was in the water fend for himself or herself until the U.S. Coast Guard arived tosort things out.

As for Alexis, she A) made it to shore, B) escaped the smoke of the helicoper and C) made it to the restroom, which was found to be free of thugs, then D) made it back to shore. Upon return she made a quick call to her medical school adviser , who assured her that she did not need to take any further lectures or sessions from anal retentive professor with characteristics that would cause her to be described as a female dog even though such comparison is blatantly unfair to femaile dogs.

Again,  80% of this really happened in my dream. I'll leave it to readers to decided which 80% was autherntic nightmare material.

Baby's getting fat!

Camille isn't quite in this baby's league, but she is at least starting to look almost normal.

Saying that  Baby Camille is getting fat is a slight exaggeration. She gained two ounces in a day.  I think it was all the strawberry waffles her mother ate. Her mother doesn't eat whipped cream, so she didn't have the added fat, but she had two waffles with strawberries, which may have translated into high-calorie milk for Camille. 

In any event, Baby Camille Catherine weighs 5 lbs., 2 oz. When she puts on two more ounces, she can eat every ninety minutes instead of every hour on the hour. That seems like a small step, but to her parents, who take care of most of the feedings, it's huge. Then once she reaches 6 pounds, if jaundice is gone, the interval between feedings can be  lengthened to every two hours, and if she sleeps through one night feeding, they can let her.

Jillian is eating as much as she can to produce plenty of milk and to make it rich in fat and nutrients. Jillian has lost all her baby weight and is fighting to keep at her normal weight because she burns up so many calories by nursing. She'll only have to produce milk for another six weeks or so, although her doctor said if her CF symptoms hold off as well as they have been and if she can keep her weight up, she can continue  a little longer. Breastfeeding is healthful for both babies and mothers. 

If the breastfeeding becomes too much of a strain on Jillian's body, she can slow or stop. There's a three week supply in storage, and two aunts who are still lactating are storing extra milk for her as well. At the rate she is going, this baby will be in a good position to audition for a fat baby in a circus  before long, though she's still quite scrawny at the moment. It's been very interesting to watch her come out small, then drop almost to a scary level, then slowly but steadily grow both taller and fuller.  

What's weird to me is to think of how much smaller I was than she was when I was born.  My mom and dad both say that I was 2 lbs, 2 oz. My  mom remembers being told, and my dad actually observed the weighing-in process. For some reason it was recorded as 2 lbs., 4 ox., but my parents are both sure it was 2-2, not 2-4, and I trust their memories. Regardles, 2-4, 2-2, it's still very small. I think my very lowest weight was one pound, thirteen ounces, and I wasn't there for long. I was on some sort of constant food drip into mt stomach, which Camille would have probably needed if she'd lost much more weight. My dad said I was considered healthy, though, and that my lungs were strong and my survival was never in doubt. I was the loudest crier in the NICU and considered the healthiest baby in there even though there were larger babies in there at the time.

Baby Camille seemed so tiny at 3-13, and then down to 3-3, while I was only about  2/3 her size. I must have looked a bit strange. I was classified as a micro-preemie even though my gestational age wasn't clearly established. My birth weight may have been due to insufficient placental nutrition. Sometimes with twins, one baby gets a better placenta and the bulk of the nutrients, while the other baby is stuck with what's left over. Matthew was the hog, and I had to scramble for the little food left.

My dad, and even my mom to some degree, say I was quite cute, especially for a baby so small. They say that other people visiting the NICU would sometimes comment on it. The people, visiting other babies, would pause at my incubator and say, "This one's almost cute." It was so nice of the people, and it seemed to happen consistently, to insert the almost. I couldn't merely be "cute," or "kind of cute," or "a little bit cute." I had to be  "almost cute."  i'm glad I cannot remember it, because if I could, my feelings would probably be hurt. Since I can't remember it, I can just marvel at the rudeness of people. 

Regardless, at least I wasn't so appearance-challenged that any nurses made barfing gestures when they looked at me, which happened with poor Camille. She's catching up in cuteness, however. I'm just waiting until she gets to the "really pretty'' stage, which she'll almost for sure reach considering what her parents look like, and probably pretty soon. 

I know the name of the nurse who made the barfing gesture. I will take a photo of Camille in all her cuteness and send it to that witch. I'll  include a message that she only wishes she could produce a baby even half as pretty as Camille. I'll sign my own name to it so that the parents don't get the blame, though there's nothing illegal in my sending the picture and message to the nurse. Furthermore, no litigation is being pursued -- the hospital agreed to pay the costs of all the transfers in exchange for no legal action on the part of Camille's parents -- so my communication to the nurse won't some how throw a wrench in any legal actions. 

Chances are that Scott and Jillian will never know it happened, but I'll know and the nurse will know. If she has any sense of propriety whatsoever, she won't show it to any colleagues, because it will only make her look worse than she already looks, if possible.  If she does show it to someone, however, I don't care. I would NEVER work in any capacity in any hospital that allows its nursing staff to get away with such unprofessional and cruel behavior. I won't be applying for an internship or residency there.

My textbooks for the next quarter arrived. i opened them and scanned the chapters. Tomorrow I'll actually start reading them in my spare time. I have lots of doctors around off whom  I can bounce ideas and to whom I can ask questions if there's something unclear in my readings. Some of my peers would consider it a waste of vacation  time, but it will make the next quarter infinitely less stressful.

I hear the baby crying. If I hurry, i can grab a bottle of breast milk from the fridge and heat it and let her parents sleep. Around here, one has to move really quickly to get a chance to feed the baby even at 3:00 a.m.

Recovery from Catalina

It was too nice a piano to leave sitting dormant.

Most people travel to Catalina to relax. There is no such thing as relaxing anywhere one might travel with the group accompanying me.

Today was a nice day in that Baby Camille reached a milestone weight of 5 pounds (we had a nice celebretory breakfast) and because  Baby Andrew did not reject me as a result of my having I left him in the care of others for a few days. 

It was also a very good day because once we got through the morning routine, Baby Andrew and I took a nap. Someone must have gotten him up after a reasonable interval -- I have no memory of him trying to wake me up -- but no one disturbed me. I woke up some time after 9:00 p.m. The dinner dishes had been done, the babies had been put to bed -- or Camille had been temporarily put to bed, anyway. It's never long before she'll be up and eating again. 

Someone had saved dinner for me, which was New York strip steak, salad, twice-baked potatoes, garlic bread, grapes, and sherbet. I ate about one-quarter of what was on my plates. The rest will make excellent snacks and side meals for me. I love it when I have a home or restaurant meal (particularly a home meal; home meals that are well-prepared agree with my gastric system much more than do restaurant meals, which contain ingredients to which my body is not accustomed) that I really like that's far to much for me to comsume, and I'm set for the next three days or so.

We did most of what there was to do on Catalina, including parasalining (twice!), jet skiiing, sailing, going out in a small motor boat, driving all over the island in golf carts, miniature golfing on what has to be the second-lousiest putt-putt golf course in the U.S. (the worst, I'm pretty sure, is in Watonga, Oklahoma), humoring the kid entertainment performing nightly on the pavillion (we applauded excessively, asked for their autographs, and did all the things that make little middle-school-aged kids feel great about theselves; their parents were most pleased with us, and we weren't even drunk!), hung out in hotel rooms, and took over the vacant piano bar in the hotel one night. Because of the tips, we went home with almost as much cash as we brought. I didn't have my violin with me as I had no clue that there would be any use for it, but someone had left one behind the bar which the bar tender allowed me to use.  it may have increased our tips a bit. I didn't do the obnoxious behavior of approaching tables and serenading them unsolicited, but if they summoned me over, I played what they wanted. Timmy and Matthew are both more or less good enough to follow along on piano, and both have reasonably good singing voices, as does Meredith. We were only in there for two nights, but still pocketed well over five hundred dollars in tips.

Catalina isn't really known for its outstanding hotels, but Uncle Jerry did the best he could for us. We were in probably what was the nicest hotel on the island. Many of the "hotels" there are rustic old houses which, while charming in their own ways, aren't terribly comfortable. Some, for example, don't have air conditioning. On Catalina, it's nice to have access to air conditioning about two-and-one-half months out of the year. We needed it this time and were fortunate to be in one of the few hotels that has AC in every room. 

It was a nice little diversion. While I was prepared to have spent my summer doing nothing but baby-related tasks, the break was nice, and it was nice to spend time with friends close to my own age. Baby Andrew will probably be my friend for the rest of my life, but at this point there's a limit in the quality of companionship he is able to offer. 

I leave in twenty-one days to return to school. I'm neither dreading nor eagerly anticipating it. I think, or at least I hope, that I'll get excited about it once i'm there. Once the competitive juices begin to flow, I suspect I'll remember why it was that I chose medical school.

Catalina, Babies, and Vocations Versus Avocations

Fortunately, for my dad, he looks a bit less geeky than this guy, and probably plays the guitar better as well.

I have returned from my trip to Catalina with a renewed and refreshed perspective: ready to take on the world of small babies, diapers, forumla, sterilization of bottles and breast pumps, crying, demands for attention, and everything else that accompanies having two babies well under a year of age in one household. 

I was warned by several people that Andrew, the older of the two babies at nine months, might temporarily disdain me and want little to do with me as his way of expressing his displeasure at my having abandoned him frn a few daya of fun and frolid without him. Such turned out not to be the case. Andrew was thrilled to see me from the moment I walked in the door on return from Catalina. If anything, he's a bit clingy in response to my haveing been away from him for a few days, but he's handling the situation quite wel, all things considered. He did, after all, have both of his parents and all four grandparents with him in my absemce.

New Baby Camille Catherine  reached the grand total of five pounds this morning. We celebrated with homemade strawberry waffles and whipped cream. i don't eat whipped cream, so I skipped that part, but mine were delicious just the way they were. We pureed Andrew's strawberries, and gave him small bowls of of purreed strawberries and whipped cream into which to dip his very thin strips of waffles. He thought it was a great breakfast. 

The next part of my blog concerns a reply by one of my readers that my father has historically been inconsistent in regard to who is important in society  with regard to his later recommendation as to what career he recommended that I pursue. I shall attempt to address the responder's concern in a not-too-incoherent manner, as i'm still somewhat running on fumes. i need a long nap at some point today, and i suspect my state of sleep may cause me to be a bit unclear and/or redundant in my adress of the poster's concerns. Please forgive me if such is the case.

My dad is all about being multi-faceted as an individual himself, and would wish the same thing for his offspring.. While one primary focus may put the food on one's table and pay the rent or mortgage, other avocations may further enrich one's life in both literal and in emotional/ psychoogical senses, and, if one is lucjy enough, even in a financial sense.. My father worked his way through medical school, incurring relatively few debts along the way, as a musician whenever he had a break long enough to get a traveling gig. I've been asked not to identify the artists with whom my father toured or recorded, but they were well-known and accomlished musicians. My dad didn't have to "sell out" so to speak, or to compromise his musical principles in order to earn the money he needed to support himself and pay medical school tuition.

My mother, as an educator and as a psychologist - both clinical and educational -- in addition to being a musicicologist, holds doctorates in piano and vocal performance and enough on-paper background and practical ability in theory and musicology to teach upper-division courses in both at the university level. She was furthermore sufficiently skilled at violin to the degree that she could teach me well enough that I could obtain an undergrad degree in violin performance. On the other hand, she spent a large portion of her working years as a school psychologist and school administrator. She also recognizes the point of being multi-facted in one's approach to a career and to life in general.

Both of my parents recognize that writing is a gift for me. It is for my dad to some degree as well. He doesn't use it as much as I plan to, though he publishes more prolifically than do most research physicians at his stature in the profession, and does more of the writing himself than do most of his peers, most of whom rely on fellows and other underlings to do their heavy writing. My father's fellows are often disappointed at the lightness of the writing load placed upon them. Most research physicians of my father's stature consider writing to be a part of the job that is somewhat beneath them and not a task they particularly enjoy. My father considers it a perk of the job, A trademark somewhat characteristic of my father's journal articles is that they contain humor in places humor would not typically be found. (In part, this is due to the final draft usually being written after a couple Guinnesses or glasses of wine have been downed, but his wit is evident even if not under the influence.

My dad "gets" my need to write. I think he just feels that writing will be both easier and more fun for me if I'm not waiting daily for the arrival of  the mail carrier,  anxiously feeling the thickness of envelopes before opening them with hope that they contain contracts and checks rather than rejection letters and the return of my original manuscripts, so that I don't have to hit my parents up for one more loan in order to pay one more month's worth of  bills. Additionally, my dad believes that one is most inspired to write when one's mind is actively engaged and one's life is filled with cognitively challenging work He doesn't believe that the slow, contemplative life lends iself to the highest quality of writing for most who wish to, or , mmore appropriately in many cases, have to  write.

My father's viewpoint is in diametric opposition to the early premise of A Room With a View, that it is the right of every young woman to be provided with a room with a view so that she can contemplate and write without the necessity of such mundane matters as how to sustain herself while she does so. My father believes that not only has this sort of attitude -- that of a right of a daughter to be "kept" with no responsibility toward her own livelihood -- has contributed to the setting back of the women's movement for generations longer than needed to be the case societally, in addition to setting women as individuals back in terms of their inspiration for whatever art form they cared to pursue. While there is a season for everything, including watching and contemplating, true inspiration more often comes from being an active participant in the world around one, and not merely an observer. Furthermore, this idea of a woman's right to be provided with a livelihood of any sort, be it a room with a view, lodging in a more cloistered setting, or plane tickets and paid hotel rooms to jet-set around the world living a life akin to those of the Kardashian offspring or Paris Hilton and her sister Nicki***, my dad feels, perpetuates the idea that, at least among women, the right to participate in the creation of art, including fashiopon design,  is the sole domain of the wealthy -- an idea he detests. Many of us detest that idea when it comes right down to it.

I could ask someone currently earning a living in the field of writng -- perhaps journalist Jaci Stephen, to name one such writer,  which is more conducive to writing:  free room and board on an unlimited basis in some remote yet scenic locale, or actually living and working among one's writing subjects, scrambling for interviews in competition with other writers also trying to eke out a living at their craft?  i don't know  what Jaci's answer would be withut having asked her,  but I suspect I could make a reasonably good guess.

My dad recognizes that I will probaby always need to write, and that it is not beyond possibility that at some point either writing or music could overtake medicine as a career for me. Still, he felt that not taking advantage of the ease with which the mastery of mathematical and scientific concepts have always come to me,  compounded by the medical school scholarships literally falling into my lap, which is not the case for most med school students,  would have made it foolish for me not to study medicine if only as a way to provide inspiration for writing and to finance a fledgling writing career, hopefully not maiming or outrightly killing off too many patients while doing such.

We are a family of multi-dimensional people. My parents respect my skill as a writer. They just think, as I do, that a degree in English composition isn't, in and of itself, the most useful degree on the planet, though there's an abundance of time for me to return  to the university setting and earn one if I truly believe the lack of such degree is standing between me and the attainment of any of my goals.. I took more electives in the English domain than were required. Those, combined with what I had already learned and what comes naturally to me, have probably provided me with what I need in order to spring-board a writing career if I so choose it. Furthermore, among professors under whom I studied while completing undergraduate studies, at least one of a few I would choose would likely be willing to serve as a mentor to me as a fledgling writer.

In summation, other than the severe time and energy encroachment, nothing in the study of medicine stands in the way of my becoming a writer as well as a physician or surgeon. Will it happen for me? It's all a function of life's great balancing act. i do not yet know just how adept I am at walking a tightrope or juggling, or any other such thing, either metaphorically or literally.

***i hold no personal agenda against any of the Kardashians nor against the Hilton sisters. I'm just not certain that the lifestyles afforded by their wealth give them any significant creative  advantage in the production of whatever art forms they pursue.  The concept that "it takes money to make money" certainly works in their favor, and  the media exposure that comes along with their territory certainly works to their benefit in promoting whetever product it is they're apptempting to hawk. They may complain about their excessive nedia exposure, but when it cmoes to promoting perfume or fasion lines, it definitely works to their advantage; I don't hear them complaining about that aspect of their publicity.  In terms of quality of production, however, I'm not at all convinced that the proverbial  Room With a View or , in their cases, mutiple rooms with as many views anyone one would desire, enabled them to produce a product in any way superior to that produced by the competition. They'll make a lot of money, but at the end of the day, I don't see the financial advantages as having enabled any of them to have created and developed a product the quality of which surpassed that of the competition less supported by financial advantages. They will have made more money simply because it takes money to make money. The sad aspect of this is that if one of such children of privilege actually comes uo with a product that is artictically superior, it's unlikely that proper credit will be given. Instead, the success will be attributed to the financial advantage enjoyed in the first place by the child of privilege who came up with the design for the product.  

My Most Serious Phobia (Public Restrooms) and the Reason For It

What looks harmless to some is a source of major anxiety to others.

IMPORTANT DISTINCTION; This blog entry describes an event  that happened to me. It does not, nor did it ever, define who I am. It was merely a day out of my life -- one that cause a bit of fallout, but still just one day, nonetheless. A victim is not who I choose to be.

Before moving on to my more serious phobia, I should report that everything is fine on Catalina to the best of my knowledge. Chances are that somewhere on the island someone is drinking himself or herself ill, or someone is quarreling with a significant other, but since it's happening in neither room sharing a wall with my hotel room, I'm blissfully unaware of it.

Furthermore, the babies are doing fine in our absence. If  one of them misses any one of us, no one is sharing that information with us. Baby Camille is up to four pounds, fourteen ounces.  As soon as she gains six more ounces, her interval between onset of feedings can be increased from its present one hour to ninety minutes.

Now I'll move onto my most serious phobia. It's long and convoluted, but I cannot make it otherwise. Sorry.I cannot enter a public restroom by myself without someone checking it out to make sure that no one is hiding in there, just waiting to harm me. If I'm  by myself when i really must use the restroom, I wait until someone else who looks safe goes in, and I follow that person. i take the stall nearest the door. If wash my hands as quickly as possible. I carry germicide gel in my purse that I can use once I'm outside of the restroom to more fully decontaminate my hands. I know that stuff  [germicidal gel, soap, or other products] is bad for the world of bacteria and should ideally be reserved for use in hospitals and other clinical medical settings. Its widespread use i contributing to the development of bacteria that are more resilient to germicides and antibiotics. Still, I use it in such occasions because I feel as though I have no choice.

 I have no issue with private restrooms which have locks on their doors. Furthermore, I'm not like my dizzy brother, who until he was almost five thought he would be sucked down a toilet if  It was not a random attack. he stood too near it when it was flushed. I wish I could say my fear was based on something so irrational.

When I was fifteen and in my final year of high school, I was assaulted in a school restroom. The attack was not random. Another student had stolen a paper I had turned in two years earlier. The teacher to whom I had turned it in had a practice of keeping photocopies of all   "A" compositions so that if one appeared again, or if large chunks of one appeared again, he had proof that the paper, when turned in for the second time, was not original work. (There are websites that will catch most college and university plagiarism or use of purchased papers from organized sites, but high school teachers are usually on their own to catch low-tech thieves.)

It's a very long story concerning the person who helped himself to my paper. I'll borrow from an earlier blog that tells the account in part. 

The whole incident, as I didn't learn until after hours of sitting in the principal's outer office under the watchful eye of the Rottweiler-turned-secretary, centered on a paper I had authored in my sophomore year of high school for my required U. S. History course, for which I took the Advanced Placement option in order to earn college credits. The title of the paper was, "The Cold War, McCarthyism, and Accusations of Communism Infiltration." As my compositions go, it was somewhat unremarkable. It was technically and factually sound, and met the requirements for an Advanced Placement-calibre paper, but wasn't one of my more creative efforts. Considering the topic, it probably shouldn't have been one of my more creative efforts, anyway.

The instructor for my course had a policy of photocopying all "A" papers, filing them by topic, and keeping them for at least ten years so that in the event that a paper seemed familiar as he was grading it, he could consult his file to see if the paper had been recycled from a previous author and submission. The file cabinet in which the papers were kept was usually locked, but there were occasions in which it wasn't secured. The student seated across from me in the office had been my U. S. history's teacher's assistant for a Freshman Studies course the next year. At some point the file cabinet containing "A" papers was apparently unsecured and unsupervised for just long enough for him to go through the cabinet and purloin my paper.

The moron was so lazy that he didn't even bother re-typing the paper in its entirety. He merely retyped the title page, then whited out and retyped the header on each page, ignoring the differences in formats required. Because I wrote the paper for a social science course, the APA format was used. English courses almost exclusively require MLA formatted papers. The essence of this was lost on my peer.

The plagiarism would have gone undetected -- and I really wish it had --  except that my plagiarist's English teacher was so incredibly impressed by her student's work, as it was far beyond anything he had ever done, that she submitted it for a writing award. She retyped the paper for the thug into the MLA format, which is standard for English department papers. (The thug who stole and submitted my paper probably couldn't tell the difference between the APA and MLA formats and whatever format it is that graffiti artists use when sharing their gangs' messages with the world at large. The committee charged with deciding upon the winner of this award happened to consist of both the English teacher who submitted the student's paper and my U. S. History teacher, who had originally received the paper two years earlier. My teacher immediately recognized it as having been turned in by one of his students immediately. The English teacher disagreed vehemently and accused me of being the plagiarist even though, once my U.S. history teacher realized the original source of the paper, knew that it had been turned in to him two years previously. The English teacher, who offers proof positive that not all English teachers are of even average intellect, offered as evidence the plagiarist's originally submitted paper, with the title page and headings not even in the same font as the body of the paper, then showed how she had helped him to retype the composition into the correct format.

The argument between the two faculty member of the panel charged with choosing a recipient for a particular writing-across-curriculum  award,   soon made its way into the principal's office, where it immediately became a disciplinary matter. The principal was unimpressed by either the lack of match in font of the title page and page headers of the body of the paper to the overall lack of pertinence of the topic of McCarthyism and communism to American literature.  (A skilled arguer and writer could have bridged the disparity between the topic and the course's subject matter, but this plagiarist made no attempt to do so, presumably for reasons both that he saw no need to do so [both the course title and the composition's title contained the word American; that alone, in his mind would have been more than sufficient commonality between the content of the composition and the subject matter of the course and, by extension, the topic for the specific composition as assigned by the teacher] and that he lacked the skill to create such a bridge or segue of sorts  had he known one was needed.)

Parents were soon involved in the dispute. The plagiarist's father, a prominent local banker, argued that even if his son had plagiarized the paper from me, I, too, must have plagiarized it from some other source, as the paper could not have been authored by any high school student. My former social science teacher asked that my English teacher send in samples from my English portfolio to refute the plagiarists' father's assertion. My mother pointed out that my SAT writing score had been a perfect 800. The banker didn't understand that. His son hadn't taken the SAT, and the writing portion did not yet exist in the olden days when he himself took the test. The principal seemed to be swallowing some of the plagiarists' father's arguments. The plagiarist's mother was oblivious to the significance of all that was occurring. When asked a specific question concerning when she might have observed her son working on the composition,as he claimed to have written it entirely at home, his mother smiled and uttered, even though her answer didn't come close to addressing the question she was asked, "I can hardly believe my son was nominated for a writing award. I'm just so proud of him." 'Thank God the superintendent took over.

The U. S. History teacher left to consult his file, but found my paper to be missing, even though it was indexed. He came to the outer office to ask if I still had a copy of the paper. I keep hard copies of all of my papers, in addition to copies in backup files of computer and on an external Q-file device. I told my mother exactly where she could find it in my room. I told her that even though the paper had been typed originally on the desktop in our home library, it was on my laptop in my room as well. I told her where to find the hard copy in my file cabinet, where to find the external Q-file device, and where I had put away my laptop. She was back twenty minutes later with my laptop containing the composition, and with a copy of the original paper, complete with title page and date, which matched the index maintained by my history teacher. The text and font matched the plagiarist's copy of the body of the original document before his teacher retyped it (which was, incidentally, against the rules for papers submitted for the particular honor). Furthermore, the topic was well-matched to my assigned topic of mid 1900's politics, as opposed to the plagiarist's course topic of American literature. (I believe his actual assignment for the paper had something to do with using both a poem and a work of prose, each written by an American author or poet -- ether the same or a different author from the same time period would have been acceptable - to capture and illustrate an aspect of the popular culture of the time. My paper in no way met the requirements of this assignment, as works of American literature were not featured prominently and only appeared incidentally in the few literary allusions included in the paper.

The plagiarist's father remained unconvinced of any guilt on the part of his son, or at least pretended to believe such was the case . The mother continued to beam with pride and to make inane comments such as, "I always knew [thug] was bright, but I didn't realize writing ability was part of his giftedness," to no one in particular, as no one was either talking or listening to her.. The superintendent told [thug's] father that it didn't really require his assent to decide in my favor, but, just to prove the point, each of us would be called into the inner office to answer questions about the composition's content. Following that, we would each be assigned a five-paragraph essay on a given topic, which would need to be completed in the inner office in the presence of parents and administrators, after which the essays would be analyzed for writing style. The superintendent even conceded that the topic would be one about which the plagiarist should have presumably more background information than I.

I answered each question asked, in each case, elaborating beyond what was presumably expected. (Senator Joseph McCarthy and his "anti-communism" platform had long held my fascination. My parents owned several non-fiction texts including biographies by actors who were black-listed and lost work as a result of appearing on McCarthy's lists of actual communists or sympathizers. The movie and subsequent motion picture, The Way We Were were based on the chilling effects of McCarthyism on Hollywood and on specific actors .The plagiarist apparently had no answer for most of the questions. He had no idea who Joseph McCarthy had been and any of the significance of political work. eventually he made some connection with General Douglas MacArthur and went off on a brief tangent concerning General Patton, citing scenes he remembered from a movie about general Patton's life. I didn't see any of this, as we were questioned separately, but my social science/ U.s. history teacher said, as wrong as what the thug did was, he was almost beginning to feel sorry for him except that the thug was so utterly witless than he though his answers were on the mark and were helping to establish his case. The boy''s father said, "So [thug] is confusing a few generals with a senator. That hardly proves he stole the paper."

The original plan for the essays was that they would be written by hand, but the plagiarist's father complained that his son had problems with spelling and would be at a disadvantage if computer use were not allowed. A couple of non-networked laptops were brought in for use to use. We were given a seventy-five minute limit for our essays. The topic announced. The topic was "Advantages and Disadvantages of the BCS System in Determining the NCAA Football Championship." I'm far from an expert on this topic, but I evidently have more knowledge of the system than does my plagiarist. I focused upon the lack of objectivity in determining who gets into the major bowl games in the first place, the disadvantage created by an early loss by an otherwise superior team, and the lack of a playoff system in determining who makes it into the actual bowl game that is determined to be the championship game. I conceded that the BCS system is clearly superior to the old poll system with sports writers and coaches determining the national champions (sometimes without consensus between the two voting bodies) but insisted that the current system was in need of major overhaul before it can be deemed acceptable. My plagiarist didn't even complete a single paragraph.

So I spent almost an entire day helping adults who should have known better to decide that I did not plagiarize a composition. Most of the day was wasted, although, since part of the day was spent writing, that portion could not be considered a total waste of time. The next half hour was devoted to an argument concerning whether my plagiarist and I would be required, or even allowed, to make up the work that was missed. In an extremely rare show of support for me, my mother said that if the district wanted me to continue enrollment in the district, I would be given full credit for any daily assignments missed in the day's classes. Any portions of the classes that were devoted to projects, she said, should be my responsibility to make up. The plagiarist's father insisted that his son be granted the same privilege. The superintendent told him that his son's privileges and consequences would be discussed in private shortly. At that point, the school day was over.

The head varsity football coach had heard of the situation and had made his way to the office, demanding to know what was happening. The superintendent dismissed him and told him he would be notified as soon as any decision that affected his team had been made, still, he lurked in the outer office, waiting to here of the resolution to this issue, as it impacted likely would his starting lineup for Friday's game.\

Note: I'm adding this to the original text. It can be found in greater detail in a subsequent retelling of the assault in a later blog (though even then, some details were omitted because I felt too humiliated to share them. I'm no longer humiliated by any of the details. The humiliation should and now does belong to my attackers,. but at the point this blog was originally written, and even in a later post when I shared more details, I was not yet up to full disclosure of the assault. I now have little problem talking about it.

This should have been the end of the whole matter, but it wasn't. I had been stuck in an office all day with no food or bathroom privileges. Although I was hungry, I was even more in need of a bathroom visit. I hurried as fast as my crutches would allow me to a bathroom just down the hall from the principal's office before heading home. I heard the outer bathroom door open as I was in the stall, but thought nothing of it. When I emerged from the stall to wash my hands, I saw two girls standing idly. Girls sometimes stand idly in bathrooms, so I still thought little of it. Then one of them said to me, "Just what the fu@&amp did you think you were doing?" I recognized her as the plagiarist's latest hook-up.

"Using the bathroom," I answered.

She slapped my face with sufficient force that I fell against the wall. Fortunately I was using the sink located against the far wall, so I fell against the wall instead of onto the floor.

The other girl said, "That's not what she meant, and you know it, [female dog]."

I still had my baby cell phone, which my parents had traded for my original cell phone because I had exceeded our the minutes or numbers or whatever of texts covered by our plan in an outrageously expensive manner because I had been under the mistaken impression that our plan included unlimited texting. It ended up being one of the few times if not the only time that, after the fact, both my parents and I were unbelievably grateful for the action that led to seizure of my real cell phone and what had seemed at the time like a rather draconian punishment my parents had handed out and they were grateful that I had run up the huge bill, motivating them to take my real cell phone away and replace it with a kiddy cell phone. The kiddy cell phone had the capacity to dial my home, my parents' cell phones, my mom's work numbers, my Uncle Steve's and Aunt Heather's phones and home, and 911.

A quick mental survey of the circumstances told me that 911 would be my best bet, especially since it was the top button on the phone. The phone was in the pocket of my jacket, which I had been wearing all day because the principal's thermostat was set at about 65 degrees. I talked loudly and made liberal, virtually non sequitur references to my precise location, hoping that the 911 operator could get information about my whereabouts from my end of the conversation, and also hoping my voice would cover up that of the 911 operator. It's possible that knowing 911 had been called might have caused the girls to abort their operation, but then again, they might not have known about the GPS on my phone, and furthermore, I didn't really know how quickly law enforvememnt could determine my location from the GPS-tracking device,

I still don't know if I made things worse or better by hiding the fact that 9-1-1 had been dialed. It's possible the girls would have run out as soon as they learned of it, or it's possible they would have bashed me over the head with my own cell phone, then continued to beat up on me, confident that law enforcement would have no way of knowing where to find any of us. I didn't know it, but my kiddy phone also had a GPS-like device on it, so the 911 operator was able to locate me. I decided that the best thing was to keep the girls talking as much as possible. I lied to them about how I had tried to take the blame but that the superintendent wasn't buying it. I told them that I deliberately blew my essay, but that the plagiarist had blown it worse. When it became plain that they weren't buying any of my lines, I tried pleading to their senses of dignity, asking them if they really felt right about two relatively tall and normal-sized girls double-teaming someone who weighs 77. (I still hadn't gained back all the weight since I was hurt and sick.) Eventually the talking ceased to stop them; one of them pushed me to the floor, The other one crawled on top of me and put her hands around my neck. The one not on top of me kicked me in the mid-right portion of my rib care, then stepped onto my leg, more or less directly on the portion of my leg that sustained the worst of the fractures. I lost consciousness.  

When I regained consciousness, the male who had plagiarized my paper had joined the girls and me in the bathroom. He directed the girls to undress me from the waist down, He unzipped his zipper and removed his male appendage. from the direction he seemed to be headed, It appeared that my mouth was his first intended target. I vomited, which appeared to have the effect of causing him to lose the ability to perform the function he had intended to perform on me. He kicked the side of my head hard my head so that it would be forced into the vomitus. He then kicked my side, kicked my leg in the approximate area of the original injury, and delivered an especially vicious and bruising kick to my vaginal area.

At that point, a security officer entered the restroom, followed closely by another security officer, the school football coach, the superintendent, add the principal. (My mother had been sent to a meeting in place of the superintendent, who had assured my mother that he would see to it that I arrived home safely. The girls tried to run out, but were stopped by a teacher and and by approaching law enforcement personnel, who had been dispatched to the scene.. The perps were carted off. I don't know if they were transported to the police station or to holding facilities. At least one of the two perps was already eighteen and a legal adult as such. Another of the three, as it turned out, was also above the legal age of majority, but I don't believe any of that had been sorted out by then. In any event, they were all released to their parents on their own recognizance with preliminqary charges pending. The attorney my parents later hired to represent my interests said that it was wrong to release any of them prior to sorting out charges.

The football coach, who lived around the corner from my family's home, suggested that someone should put my pants back onto me. The officer in charged said that photos of the crime scene needed to be take first. The coach told them to hurry it up with the pictures, and took off his shirt and covered me with it as the officers were organizing the photo shoot.

The fall itself didn't hurt me, nor, in any significant way, did the initial slap, but the various kicks and the step upon the area of my leg that was healing from the earlier serious compact fracture, as well as kicks to my rib cage, head, and groin area were all considered signnificant injuries. An ambulance was summonned, and I was transported to the university hospital in an adjacent city, where I spent the night.

The attack on me in the school restroom was not random, while any future attack in a public restroom would likely be random and is, furthermore, highly unlikely to occur. Still, I can't just walk into a public restyroom and take care of what needs to be done, without first going through certain steps to preserve my safety as well as I can. Will I live the rest of my life this way? I have no way of knowing. I've sought professional help to deal with PTSD steeming from this situation. Perhaps some sort of "public restroom therapy'" should have been part of my treatment,  

My chief therapist, Dr. Jeff, says there are some things you have to live with the best you can and compensate in any way you can.  I consider myself lucky that, for the most part, I can function as a more-or-less normal  adult. I may have to leave things as they presently stand. I tried just forcing myself to go into a restroom by myself once, and I ended up waking up with a nightmare followed by an hour of almost continuous vomiting.  It may be that having someone check out public restrooms, much as the way royalty and importnt politicians have to have someone taste their food before they're allowed to eat it. 

It's my phobia, and I'll deal with it as I please. Anyone who refuses to check a restroom out before I enter for me it is not my friend. Period.

Again, it's an event that happened in my life, and is not representative of who I am as a person even though it did have it's effect on me to some degree.

Sorry for the extra-long post, but I had no easy way to cut to the chase. I also have a fear of smoky rooms or buildings, but I susect anyone who has every been traped inside one deals with issues related to it, so I don't even consider it a phobia.

 

Lice and Other Things Not So Nice ; A Contemplation of the Realities and Irrationalities Providing the Inspiration and Power Behind Our Most Compelling Phobiast : Part One

When my brother and I were in kindergarten, Matthew came down with a case of head lice [according to precise scientific and medical terminioogy, pediculosis capitosis humanis]. As cases of head lice go, it wasn't an especially serious bout. Matthew's case of head lice was was caught early and treated aggressively, and the overall practical and financial impact  to our family was minor. 

We'll never know for certain how the suicidal insects (why had they not heard through their own head lice rumor mill that there was a crazy lady in the neighborhood who was out to get them at all costs in a manner that caused Hitler's pursuit of the Jews to appear benign?)* made their way onto Matthew's head.  We do know that Matthew had to have contracted the critters  after leaving our home on that fateful Sunday morning. My mother had shampooed Matthew's hair in the bathtub that morning, and my mother was always both vigilant and thorough in  inspecting our heads for anything that didn't belong there, whether during what was usually nightly shampooing or daily after-school headlice-hunting expeditions. 

That day, my dad was taking Matthew to one of those chain haircut stores for a haircut, and then was taking him on to a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. Most likely Matthew picked up the  head lice either through ther use of unclean instruments used ny the haor cutter or got them in one of the many tubes or ball pitts at Chuck e. Cheese. We'll never know for certain.

Every day when we came home after school, we sat on stools at the breakfast counter in our kitchen and ate small afternoon snacks while my mother inspected our heads. On the days my father picked us up, he thoroughly inspected our heads using the same process. My father wasn't nearly so concerned about headlice as was my mom, but he had to live with her, and he knew that a key to not getting a decent night's sleep or any peace whatsoever or anything else that night  if you get my drift was for word to get to my mother that our father's inspection of our hair had been anything less than the thorough tactile  examination we received from her, which involved her going through individual strands of hair with her fingers to feel for the tiny nits, which are the eggs that mother lice attack to the shafts of hair using a special and highly potent form of natural glue  [I've always thought that if head lice glue had been used to attach those O-rings on the Challenger space shuttle, disaster would have been averted and we'd still have all those brilliant and talented people with us],  the intense visual inspecition involving ultraviolet lighting and the use of a magnifying glass, the use of a fine -tooth comb, and, finally, the thorough rubbing of our scalps and shaking of our hair over a towel for one final visual inspection. 

Matthew didn't have as much hair as I did, so his inspection was quick and painless to him. I might have given my parents more trouble about the whole process except thst A) my mother had, whether through genetics or daily modeling of the behavior, passed her obsession with lice onto me. The very last thing I wanted was for any bug in possession of sufficient audacity to make his way onto my head was to set up camp, breed her progeny there, and, adding insult to injury, invite uncles, aunts and cousins to the baby shower; and B) I genuinely liked and continue to like the feel of having someone mess with my hair, comb it, or rub or scratch my scalp. I was a most willing patient, subject, guinea pig, or whatever I might have been called. The lice check was my very favorite part of most days.

This inspection happened before we were allowed to sit or lie on any upholstered furniture in our house. The backs of our car seats were covered with plastic because we had to be transported home in cars before the inspection culd occur, although my mom could be seen lifting tufts of our hair and peeking at our scalps even as we climbed into the car. We usually underwent a simiilar thorough inspection after playing at any other friend's or relative's home, It wasn't the parents of the friends or relatives she didn't trust, M\my mother said. It was the lice she dod not trust.  They had no scruples and would let themselves uninvited onto any unsuspecting host's head. 

In third grade the students in our class were required for Opem House to create a  a poster illustrating or elucidationg a science concept that had been covered during the year. My assigned topic was symbiosis, which is essentially the relationship between two coexisting organisms, flora or fauna,  at least one of whom depends upon the other for survival. Many people think of symbiosis  exclusively as  mutualitism, or mutualistic symbioisis, in which the relationship is more or less equally benenficial to both species. An example of mutualistic symbiosis would be  the "good bacteria" that inhabit a healthy intestinal tract, keeping the person's intestinal pH in balance. Such covers only one-third of the concept of symbiosis; also falling under the the umbrella of symbiotic relationships are commensalistic symbiosis, or commensalism, in which one organism is helped while the other is neither harmed nor helped by the rerlationship, with an example of this being a hermit crab who inhabits a shell that has been cast off by another - usually deceased - animal, and parasitic symbiosis, or parasitism, in which one orgainism uses another to the other organism's detriment. Tapeworms in the human intestimal tract would be an example of parasitic symbiosis, or parasitism. An equally fitting example would be lice on any part of the body of any organism, including the dreaded head lice.

My poster representing symbiosis, which probably wans't very good, as my immediate family consists of horrible artists who cannot even draw well enough to play Pictionary, featured bees and flowers for mutualist symbiosis. Even an untalented kindergartner could have scrawled out a decipherable version of that, My dad had wanted me to draw Donald Tramp and whoever was his current trophy ife - he gets a trophy wife while she gets to spend lots of money - but my mom objected mainly on the grounds that the poster had to be drawn, and not one of use could have drawn a realistic Donald Trump, much less the trophy wife du annee. Furthermore, Mom did not think the teachers viewing the projects would be amused. My representation of commensalistic symbiosis was of spider webs on plants. Spider webs do not typically harm plants, though the spider webs derive great benefit for both the webs themselves and even more for the spiders. My illustrated example of symbioitic parasitism was a boy with head lice. My mom took a picture of Mathew standing  and scratching his head. she enlarged in onto her computer screen so that she coud sort of etch out the outline onto my poster. I colored in her lines with realistic marker colors, then applied the bugs and nits to the boy's head.  The teachers could apparently relate to my representation of parasitic symbiosis -- it had been a bad year for lice -- as they put a blue ribbon on my poster. That was the first and last time any project that involved drawing that I turned in ever received a blue ribbon. I think my mom still has the poster as well as the ribbon.

Incidentally, parasitism is sometimes referred to as amensalism.

Anyway, after Matthew came home with lice either from the chain hair-cut store or from Chuck E. Cheese's tubes and ball chambers, either because of my mom's overly agressive treatment provided both to Matthew and to me (preventive in my case; despite my wild hair, through my mother's vigilance I never came down with the despicable creatures) or because the seed for a phobia had already been planted by my mother with her slightly irrational hypervigilance in defense of our family against head lice.

All some relative has to do is mention in an email that his or her child in another state, who I haven't seen in three years, came home with head lice, and I'm washing my own hair with anti-lice shampoo.  My head is itching right now because I cannot even think of head lice without experiencing the tell-tale symptom. My mom very patiently inspects my head anytime I think I have the condition. The nurses in the health centers of both post-secondary schools I've attended have grown a bit impatient with my requests for head checks, but they eventually realized I would not go away, so they thoroughly check my head anytime i request it. My Taiwanese -American med-school classmate isn't much fonder of lice than I am, so she patiently checks my hair anytime I ask. Matthew knows that it in his best insterst to just chek my hair rather than listen to me chatter incessatly about all the bugs I feel crawling in my hair.  He checks thoroughly.  Cool guy, Raoul, and a couple of others are incredibly amused by this particular phobia. They initially played into it, telling me they saw things crawling in my hair, but eventually realized they were causing me real distress, and stopped doing so. Kal Penn is more philosophical, as in we all have quirks, and that, most definitely, is one of Alexis' quirks.

Other than my sometimes plucking out too much hair or scratching my scalp too hard, my phobia concerning lice is essentially harmless. The same cannot necessarily be said of a phobia I will discuss in the next installment.

I've been temporarily fired.

ation

my destination

I'm under-appreciated. I'm not terribly competent in regard to child care tasks. No one here really think my efforts are in any way useful. They don't even care about me.

And so, because  I'm only in the way anyway,   they're sending me away . , , to Catalina, as in Santa Cantalina, the little island approximately twenty-six miles away from its nearest point on the Pacifici coast. I'll be gone for three days and three nights. My brother, my on-again/off-again relationship partener Jared, the second-year resident tim, my cusin Josh, Jared's cousin Alyssa, my friend meredith from pre-college days, my Taiwanese-American med school friend Caroline, Kal Penn-look-alike, Raoul, and Cool Guy and a few others from med school, and  Josh's friend Amy are coming as well. Perhaps there's someone else I'm forgetting. If so, I'll tell you about it later.

We're scheduled to board a chartered boat that will depart at roughly 7:05 a.m. Depending up the size of the boat,the degree of roughness of the waters, the punctuality of everyone involved in the trip,  how much of a hurry the captain (which seems a bit grandiose a title for  a person who guides a likely somewhat unimpressive watercraft across a tiny stretch of the Pacific and back) is in, and other factors of which I may not have thought, we'll reach the shores at Avalon somewhere between 9:30 and 10:30. 

Scott just woke me up and told me to pack. I'm a fast packer. Io'm packed, dressed, and ready to go, with nothing to do for the next twenty minutes or so until we leave the house. The babies  are still sleeping, or I could play with them or play the piano. When it was just Andrew, I played the piano while he was asleep. Right now, with two babies in the picture, I don't wish to do anything to upset the equilibrium around here. The new kid will eventually need to learn to deal with the flow as it goes in this house, in which basic environmental noises include someone pounding on a Steinway or screeching on a violin, but they're giving the baby at least  until somewhere around the date on which she should have been born to adapt. after that, I suspect she's fair game for whatever chaos they produce. It's not an act of kindness on their part; they just don't want to listen to her cry any more than they must.

She is crying less in the past two days. It just seems to take preemies a little longer to adjust to life ex utero, and they compensate by crying. Who can blame them?

In any event, we have no agenda for our time on the island. It's a small island without an over-abundance of available recreational opportunities; three days is probably the perfect amount of time for us to spend there.  the only thing I will do for certain is parasail. Parasailing is to me the closest thing to heaven I can conceptualize. (Perhaps I'll re-sequence my activities in relation to their paradisiacal properties once I've experienced sex; then again, maybe I won't. Time alone will tell. [i made a rather odd miscue in typing that last sentence. It originally read as typed, "Tim alone will tell." I  can say with total honesty that the error was purely typograhical and not Freudian in nature, but still I'm glad I caught it before I published. Tim doesn't read this blog, but his sister does. She would have had a field day with the unedited version of the sentence.] )

For the next three days and nights, diapers, baby food, and other matters related to Irish twins well under a year old belong to someone else. I'm on holiday!

Hasta la visata. Carpe diem. Gung hay fat choi, or however you spell it.