this latte is from too early on a sunday morning

 I think the best thing about medical school is how a man can ask you, "How was your presentation on..." and you can finish the sentence, "... female genitalia?" And he answers, "Yeah, that one" without skipping a beat. "It was pretty good." And it's normal. Because I think that kind of thing is hard to come by in the real world when the man isn't your chief resident, who went to medical school in Tehran and was an ER doc and then did medical school again in the U.S. and is now an internal medicine doctor who tells you stories about a man who tried to pay for a car in cash and crashed into the car dealership with the car he was test driving. People. Are. Amazing.

Note to self: be more like that. Because right now things are looking a little like this (but less funny):

elephant tea pot

Spotted this elephant tea pot this morning and accidentally became obsessed with the idea of elephant tea pots. And it holds 28 oz.! I had to switch from my awesome 40 oz. clear teapot to one that holds maybe 12 ounces, and I miss being able to make 2-3 cups of tea at the same time for a friend or brother.

things i absolutely need to do this weekend:

1. Interview tomorrow
2. Babysit Saturday
3. Painting class Sunday
4. Work out.
5. Be caught up in class.
6. Make thank you cards.
7. Grocery shop.
8. Clean my bathroom.
9. Fold my clothes.
10. Clean floors.
11.  Order textbooks.
12. Wash linens.

I guess here's where I say something that solidifies my old woman status, but I don't even care and have fully embraced who I am. Who I am is someone ready for productivity and studying super hard. My last claim to young womanhood- I have no kids so I feel like all the chores I need to do combined should take 30-45 minutes. I know some people having babies now, and they're cute, and I'm sure they wouldn't want their lives any other way, but man I am happy when I think about how easy my apartment is to clean because there is no child who just smashed cheese on the walls, which I have cleaned off walls before and is not so fun to do. Or when I can somewhat irresponsibly and spontaneously spend $15 on coffee each week because that won't be the difference between whether my baby can eat for the day or not, I can't help but think... FREEDOM!

pencil reasoning

So here's my reasoning about these pencils: Oh man I love these pencils.  They would make writing stuff much better. Wait, I don't use pencils anymore. All tests are taken on computers, all handwritten things are written in pen. I could use them for those random quizzes we have. Nah, I always use Mike's pencil for those. It's kind of a tradition. It's probably a super annoying tradition for Mike though. We don't even have those quizzes anymore. Wow, that's $2 per pencil. Probably totally worth it. How much do pencils even cost these days? Oh right, I don't know because I don't use pencils.

I guess the conclusion here: would somebody who uses pencils please buy and love these? On my behalf.

my ideal bookshelf

First things first- I love the public library. I still remember the first time I went to the library in the new town we had moved to when I was five. I checked out so many books. I think it's the best thing ever. There was an amazing library in the town I grew up and in Chicago, so there has never really been a need for me to buy a ton of books. Nonetheless, besides traveling, I think books (okay, and food) are my favorite way to spend money. I checked this book out at the library awhile ago but eventually it was due, and then it was overdue, and I still hadn't finished reading it.

This book asks a bunch of people what books would be on their ideal bookshelf. Even though there are quite a few people (mostly designers) I haven't heard of, the explanations (on the opposing page) are so great for every single one. Some of the books people chose aren't favorites, but books that had been significant to them at one point or another. Or, they are the books that are consuming them now.

So a few weeks ago, I decided to make the trek up north to the Book Cellar and buy this book for myself as a late birthday gift. This is Atul Gawande's bookshelf and a little bit of his reasoning:

"Writing is about speaking to others who may be confused about the same kinds of things that I'm confused about, and ho are willing to follow along as I explore what's interesting to me. How else would I end up writing about itching? I just wanted to tell a story. And I hoped it would make people feel really itchy."

dear bottomless coffee,

Will I ever sleep again? Or will I just be eating a lot of stinky cheese under the guise that it is about to go bad even though I Googled that cheese is usually fine for two weeks after the Sell By date and it's only been 5 days?

Sincerely,
Jocelyn

a letter to days forgotten

And then came the day I hoped, without believing, would come. I forgot your name. The forgetting lasted more than a second, but not more than a few moments. I knew I wanted to remember you, to find you in the recesses of my mind, or something. But I couldn't think of you, even though it was cold and there was some point in a past life I always thought I would need to turn to you when I couldn't feel my toes. At the very least, in the darker moments because I thought I'd need something for a rainy day. My mom taught me to save up for a rainy day and we always had our differences; what we felt we should be saving was only one of them. I guess I thought (and dreaded) that for me, it would always be you. And then came the day that I knew that it was raining, but that it wasn't you. And just like that, I was free. Over and over again, free.

But before that freedom, and after the day you said good-bye like only a coward could, a lot of days went by that I wasn't even thinking about you. There were lots of rainy days that my mind never even acknowledged your absence as something noteworthy; it forgot that I didn't even really have rainy days before you. Those days that went by unacknowledged, un-noted, and not today, were the real testaments to how irrelevant you had become to me. Those days I learned to come home and turn on all the lights in the living room and one set of lights in the kitchen to embrace brightness and read a book instead of crumpling into bed motionless--those days, and not today, are the ones I stood by myself in the way that I dreamt of in high school.

I'm proud that you don't know me today. I feel no desire to explain any part of myself to you. I think back on you only as a mile marker of a place I came from, and I can't wait for the rest of the miles.

Maybe I wish I knew which day, which moment, nothing was about you anymore. Maybe that would have given me some peace of mind at the time. To know that every decision was for myself again. But from where I stand now, that moment doesn't matter to me anymore. Because there were so many moments after that one. And that was the more important accomplishment.

Refusing to be haunted doesn't always come easy, you know.

Facing things head on doesn't always come easy, but you wouldn't know.