Once, Peter and I stopped at a grocery store in Highland. We looked for some pomade that grocery stores in Provo apparently don’t stock anymore. It is the best pomade for your dollar. It is cheap and effective. So we’d been running low and were desperately in need of this pomade. When we looked in the grocery store in Highland, we were elated to find that they had eight (!) of these pomades in stock. So we bought all of them.
This is my half of our purchase.
Today, Julia and I (we’re roommates now) made something fantastic: an egg baked in a tomato. It was super delicious. (The recipe we figured out was to cut off the end of a roma tomato (the opposite end of an end it can stand on by itself) and empty out the insides (which you can then eat on buttered toast), put a tiny bit of olive oil inside and sprinkle some salt and pepper inside and swirl it around so it gets all over the inside, crack an egg into the tomato, salt and pepper the top, bake at 425°F for 15 minutes, remove and put grated cheese on the top, bake for 5 more minutes. Then eat.)
Yesterday, Peter and I went stand-up paddle-boarding, which was extremely fun, and we both got terrifically sunburned. This aloe stuff has been saving me. But it’s still painful. Here’s hoping it is over soon.
I’m just working these days (since school ended a few weeks ago) and it’s great. I’m very happy about the no homework thing. Also, I will be done with school in a year. What? Weird.
I’ve been very obsessed with leggings lately. Especially patterned leggings. Those of you who see me regularly know about this. It’s quite fun.
Anyway, there are lots of fun things I hope to do this summer. I’m pretty excited about it all. I guess that’s the simple summary of my life: I’m doing well, Peter’s doing well, it’s super fun being roommates with Julia, work is good (despite Stacy leaving) and summer is good.
well, i suppose the time is far spent and i ought to update this again. i’ve been back from washington, dc since 8 december. my family moved to our new house, we celebrated christmas, i had a gathering with a bunch of my friends (more on this later), and currently i’m in albuquerque with peter and his family. my four-week break has been lovely so far. i resent the fact that it must come to an end — school starts on monday — but i am happy to have had so much time to spend with family and friends.
it’s a new year, and i made a resolution. i thought of it several months ago, and since then i have thought of many more resolutions i would like to do, but i decided to stick to only one. if i do too many, i just end up quitting them all, so one was my safest option. my resolution is to eliminate trans fat from my diet. (this includes all hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils, which means i will be checking the ingredient lists on all the food i buy.) i am excited about it. i think it will be good for me to (1) not eat any trans fat, and (2) be aware of the things i am eating.
concerning that gathering i hosted (hostessed?): whitney and i decided we wanted to get people together, so we planned it in about four days and carried it out on 26 dec. i daresay it was a success. we had lots of good food (==good leftovers) and lots of great people. in total, i think about 20 people came. (parents: everyone loved your new house.) it was fun to see all those people after so long. i don’t think i had ever hosted a get-together with that many people (excluding birthday parties, but those were mostly my mom’s doing). it was quite an adventure, but i enjoyed it.
so now i’m in abq. i’ve been here since friday. (6:15 a.m. flight. not super fun, but i did arrive here before 10.) i’ve met lots of wonderful people, have eaten lots of good cheeses and meals, and played with many small children. most adorable children ever, by the way. it has been lovely to spend lots of time with people i like a lot. and it’s great to be with peter again.
i’m writing this on a mac. there is no ‘end’ button, which i have wished to use several (maybe 5) times so far, but i do like the way my blog looks on a mac better than on a pc.
The past few weeks have been tumultuous, what with an upcoming election and everything else. In times like this, it can be difficult to really remember how good people are. We too often forget someone’s intentions when we look at their acts, and that does a world of harm. There have been several things in the last few weeks that have really reminded me how truly wonderful people are.
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I. There were many things leading up to me being able to recognize the goodness of people, but one of the first moments of recognition came when I was participating in Trick-or-Treat for Service, sponsored by George Washington University. Swarms of students were sent on various routes throughout surrounding neighborhoods to knock on doors and collect non-perishable food items to donate. Flyers had previously been distributed to every house that would be contacted.
The following is an excerpt from a paper I wrote about this service project. For reference, Doug was another student that I had been assigned to knock on doors with.
This next part of my trick-or-treating opportunity warmed my heart. Doug and I knocked on a door that was on a tangent of our route – it was likely that this house could have been missed if we weren’t careful. A man who looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties answered the door, and after we explained who we were, he told us that for the past two years, he and his wife had set out a bag of canned goods for the drive, but no one had come to pick it up. He told us that since they had thought no one would come, they had not bought any non-perishable food items to donate. We thanked him and continued on our route. We knocked on the next door and they gave us some food. As we were walking back to the sidewalk, I saw the man from the previous house walking toward us with a can in his hand. He said, “Oh, there you are! After you left, I looked around and found that we had an extra can of soup.” I was so surprised and grateful! We thanked him profusely and apologized that he had been missed for the last couple years. He thanked us for stopping by, and we then parted ways. It touched my heart that even after some disappointing experiences with this program that could have caused him to be bitter toward us, he was generous enough to go looking for something to give. He sought the opportunity to serve, even when others might have considered the opportunity to be lost or not worth their while.
II. The other day, when I was feeling a bit down in the mouth, I visited the website Humans of New York. If you haven’t looked at it before, you definitely should. It brings me so much joy to get an insight into these people’s lives. Just as a bit of background, HONY is run by one man who lives in New York City. This man walks around the city for a couple hours each day, and he asks people who look interesting or unique if he can take their photograph. He asks them some questions and takes their photo. He later posts photos on the blog or on the Facebook page along with a bit of the conversation he remembers having with them. You can see a video of him talking about the endeavor here.
I have previously written a post that included some favorites from this website, but I’m going to share with you my favorites from the past few days.
Seen in Breezy Point, Queens.
Seen in Breezy Point, Queens.
Seen in Sea Gate, Brooklyn.
“We ordered a bunch of pizzas for the firefighters. And when we came to pick them up, they refused to let us pay for them.”
Susie The Dog spreads love and happiness on a Bronx-bound 6 train.
“Is that you?” “Kinda.”
I wandered into the lobby of a nursing home on the Upper West Side, and discovered this man, who was on his way to deliver a yellow bear to his wife. “I visit her everyday,” he said. “Even when the mind is gone, the heart shows through.”
“Why are you photographing homeless people?” “I’m not. I’m photographing friendship.”
I found this man on 7th Avenue in Park Slope. He was leaning heavily on his cane, looking down, wearing a grimaced face. I felt bad for him, so I smiled and waved when I walked past. His face changed completely. He lit up, smiled wide, and gave me a cheery greeting. There was nothing forced about it. He seemed like a man who went through life looking for the smallest excuses to be happy. I walked 50 feet down the sidewalk, turned around, and walked back to him. “I want to take your photo,” I told him, “because of how big you smiled when I walked by.” He said: “Well I saw someone smiling at me who I didn’t even know. So I thought: ‘By God! I Better do something!’”
“I’m deaf in one ear, so I built a helmet that transforms sound into vibrations, which resonate against my skull and register in my inner ear.” *I wanted to hug her, but didn’t want to freak her out. So I’ll just share her website instead: http://www.ameliamarzec.com/
Dear HONY, There’s an older gentleman that lives on the corner of Lewis Ave and Jefferson St, in Bedford-Stuyvesant. I walk past him everyday on my way to and from the train, and every single time he makes a point of asking me and anyone else passing how they are. I think he would be an incredible addition to your HoNY blog, and I’m sure you wouldn’t have very much trouble finding him—he’s out on his stoop, rain or shine, nearly every day! -Brigid
III. On the same day that I was scrolling through HONY, twitter recommended that I follow someone. I wondered who it was, since we had no one in common. So I clicked on his twitter page and, from there, clicked on his blog. His name is Brendan Klem, and he is a photographer. On the side of his webpage, there is a link that is titled, “Family Comes First.” The following is written on that page.
FAMILY COMES FIRST
For 1 year, since April 3rd 2011 the passing of my father, I have been trying to figure out how I can bring a positive light to the terrible experience of cancer. Cancer had been apart of my family for over 4 years, constantly ravaging my fathers body, mind and spirit. It came to affect my mom, making her drive daily to the hospital; my sister, left with not just one parent but often times neither; and then myself, living in another city constantly wondering how I could support at a distance. Thankfully I was able to spend the last year of my fathers life with him, helping him to hockey games, mediating the tension at home and trying to help my mom and sister as much as possible.
In that last year of my fathers life there were way more lows then highs. The one constant that I came to realize was that no matter how hard or insane the situations would be, was that family comes first.
Being a photographer came 2nd or 3rd or even 80th on the list. As a result, the images that I have of our family from that time are few and far between. The last image of my father is below. He was battling the effects of chemo on his body and for the life of him could not stay warm enough, so would curl up with a blanket and lay himself over a heat vent.
Family comes first.
Always will.
I have come to realize how I can personally shine light on cancer. I would love to give back to any family currently affected by cancer by photographing them. I want to honour the love in your family that is stronger than ever as you all battle. As you all cry. As you all love. Love that can never be broken. Creating images that can honour that love.
The session of your family is at no cost. No pressure to travel anywhere. I will come to you and photograph your family to honour the love that you all share. I am looking to capture this love on Black and White film. You will receive all images of from the session in digital format and you will be free to print and share as many as you like. All images will be loaded to a proofing website to showcase for other family members. I would also love to share the beauty of love within your family on my blog. Everything is within your confidentiality and your comfort level.
He then has a form where people can nominate their families.
IV. Jimmy Kimmel’s done it again, only this time it’s completely heartwarming. The second half is the best.
V. One of my friends put a link on twitter the other day. It was a link to a Quora question. Quora is a site that asks questions and people submit their answers. The question she linked to was, “What is the most heroic thing you’ve ever done? This was the top-voted answer:
I ate a cockroach.This requires an explanation.While a trainee as a pediatric cardiologist during my rotation in the cardiac ICU, I met a stoic 12 year old girl (her fictitous name will be Tammy) diagnosed with heart condition called dilated cardiomyopathy. The heart muscle was weakened to the point where it no longer could sustain the needs of the body without the support of continuous infusions of powerful medications. There was no other option: she needed a heart transplant. She was stuck in the ICU, mostly bed-bound waiting for a new heart. Depending where you are in the United States, the average wait period for a matched kid-sized heart to become available for donation is 5-6 months. For many patients, it’s simply too long and some die waiting.When I met Tammy, she was emaciated, weakened, depressed and well into her 3rd month of hospitalization with no word of an available heart. She struggled as an adolescent would – frustrated with life, isolated from her friends, literally plugged into pumps and IV bags and surrounded by rotating physicians and probing medical students. In her room, I couldn’t help but to notice that her room was her metaphorical aquarium, cage, even prison cell. Passerby ICU staff would constantly walk by, some would take the time to peer in, a minority would walk in but mostly to examine her or drop off her meals. I overheard a cardiology fellow joke to another referring Tammy as the “mascot” of the cardiac ICU given her extensive length of hospitalization. I’m not entirely sure she didn’t overhear it as well. Her view from inside to outside must have solidified the feeling: healthy people laughing, interacting, going home to family and friends.Tammy’s response was to be severely withdrawn. Emotionally shutdown.
When I was assigned to her, I tried to connect with her but could not get any traction. I was nervous as a new trainee and my goal really was not to screw up her medical treatment plan. But recognizing her depression, I did consult child psychiatry to help her during this time. I stopped by her bedside multiple times throughout the day to chat specifically avoiding medical jargon. During the first few weeks, I ended up mostly speaking to her mother as she stayed withdrawn. After some time, through subtle probing, I discovered one of her favorite TV shows was “Fear Factor” – a reality based TV show that puts contestants through extreme challenges. I started watching the show so that we had something in common to talk about.
I had the idea to bring “Fear Factor” to the Cardiac ICU.
After convincing several of my colleagues, nurses and even the ICU Attending to participate, we set up daily challenges for the medical staff to go through very much in a Fear Factor manner. Wheelchair races, who-would-tolerate-the-biggest-IV-needle, etc. I could tell, Tammy was instantly interested. She looked forward to the next challenges. My challenges for her were mostly physical (as a secret agenda to get her rehabilitated: transplant recipients do far better when they are better conditioned). Her interest grew and she started coming up with challenges of her own. “Put an NG tube in your nose! (she had one), drink the nasty Colace! (she had to do)” Her mother commented to me, for the first time in a long time, she’s smiling.
It was a fateful Saturday morning, when I came in for my call, I found both Tammy and her mother sporting an evil grin. They had procured a cockroach to ingest as the next challenge. Everyone instantly refused to partake in this one. So did I. Towards the afternoon, it looked like this challenge was going to be a bust. Tammy was by nature a stoic girl, but I could tell she was more than disappointed. Fearing we would lose the momentum of her new found spirit for life, I mustered up the stomach to entertain the notion. I looked at the dead ghastly thing with as much of a poker face as I could gather. When I said I would try, Tammy giggled with so much delight that I knew there was no turning back. I could not break her already broken heart.
I’ll spare you the details of the act itself, but I could see a look of gleeful horror yet immense satisfaction on her face while I was holding my nose and chewing. She clapped with vigor after the unimaginable deed was done. The nurses looked at me with disgust. My colleagues avoided me. But I had the joy of that girl for a few minutes and it was worth it. That evening, when I was rounding, she was getting ready for bed. I checked in on her vitals and all was stable. I said goodnight, to which she replied, “Thank you for today.” For some reason, the way she said it completely warmed my heart.
Early next morning, our team received a call that a heart was available. She received a heart transplant that very day. She sailed through her operation and was discharged to the ward then home shortly thereafter. A few weeks later, I received a photo from her in her Tae Kwon Do uniform – noticeably fuller than her previous emaciated self and…healthy. In her note, she said “Thanks for being my hero.”
What’s funny is that her clinical course was marred with complications and near death experiences. At one point, I was performing CPR on her. A second time I electrically shocked her for a malignant arrhythmia – both times averting certain death. But I am confident that her hero reference had nothing to do with that. It was all simply because I ate a goddam cockroach. But it changed my perspective on what it means to “care” for a patient and how to have a meaningful impact as a physician.
VI. I have the best roommate ever. At the beginning of the semester, Jana and I basically just peacefully resided in the same room. Around the end of September, we started actually hanging out with each other, and we have become great friends. We have some wonderful discussions about life, seeing the best in people, loving, etc.
VII.
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Please, please make an effort to recognize the good in everyone. People are all doing hard to do their best. Everyone is trying to make good decisions and be the best person they can be. Each person has challenges. No one gets the easy way out. We are in no position to judge others or think we are better than anyone. We have no idea what people are going through, and it’s our responsibility to love others no matter what happens.
All these things, if nothing else have taught me one thing:
I guess it’s about time for me to write another of these things.
Because let’s remember how the last time I wrote about things that I’ve done was in September. (That may not seem like a long time, but in the most eventful term ever, it’s a lot.)
In the past three weeks, I’ve been:
eating Korean food
watching a presidential debate (i filled my quota)
going to the Baltimore Museum of Art (they have The Thinker. (not the original. but still cast by Rodin.))
walking around Johns Hopkins University campus (gorgeous)
attending the Diwali Festival of Lights celebration at JHU
seeing Anish!
trekking around Roosevelt Island (fall leaves. need i say more?)
and…plenty of other mildly uninteresting things.
I’ve started walking home from work. It takes about 30 minutes, and it is a lovely walk, really. My walk home does consistently involve plunging into a crowd of tourists who are busy taking photos of the White House. Granted, one could then infer that I walk past the White House on my way home. That’s true. I do walk past the White House on my walk home. So it’s not all that bad.
(On a completely unrelated note, I realized that I like to have a “New Tab” page open along with all the rest of the tabs in my browser. There’s something mildly comforting about it. I could read into it and say that it symbolizes potential or something deep like that, or we can just accept it at face value. I’ll stick with the latter.)
Sometimes, my roommate, Jana, and I stay up too late talking about which residents of the BC should date each other. And then we wind up talking about our distastes for the words “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” and then we end up singing some JB and Avril, naturally.
I’m running out of things to say.
walking through the woods in maryland to get to the temple visitor center. take note of the absence of sidewalk.
statue of Brigham Young inside the Capitol Building
All I can really tell you is that I’m obsessed with the east coast and writing in my tiny notebook and walking and weekend trips and everything else. This post is going to be a jumbled mess.
I’ll make a list. I liked that. This time I’ll try to coordinate the items on each side.
OUT
Disneyland
Flip-flops
Blogging (oh, the irony)
Desert
“Growing the economy”
Politics
Harry Potter
Metro
Hot
Shorts
Birkenstocks are still expensive
Tourist
IN
Monticello
Loafers
Writing
Woods
Growing a garden
Democracy
Harry Potter
Walking
Brisk
Cardigans
(non-sequitur) Walden
Resident
Now you guys can have some photos of my last two weekends, aka weekend trips.
Valley Forge and Philadelphia/Monticello and Williamsburg
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My favourite part of the VF/Phil. trip was gazing across the Delaware River at New Jersey with Jana.
My favourite part of the Monticello/Wmsburg trip was walking around T.J.’s expansive gardens with Anna.
There are few things I would change about my current life situation. The few things are (1) I’d give myself a kitchen that I only shared with 4 people instead of 20, (2) I’d transport my favourite people out here, and (3) I would stay here for longer.
I love autumn, I love the east coast. Life’s pretty good.
Remember that part in Toy Story where they all say “Bye, house!” as they drive away?
I wanted to say that today as I drove away from the apartment I’ve lived in for the past year. It was pretty sentimental to leave: not because the apartment itself was super fantastic, but because it has housed so many good memories. And bad memories. And learning experiences. And everything else. A lot of things. It was hard. And it was fun. And it was painful. And it was lovely. And it was the best year of my life to date.
It’s weird to be moving home, but only be “moving home.” The coming week or so will consist of unpacking and repacking everything. I will be packing for my venture to Washington, D.C. The stuff I don’t take with me to Washington will be put in boxes and go in a storage unit in preparation for my family’s big move in a couple of months.
So, in a couple of weeks, I will again be saying, “Bye, house!” This time, it will be to the house that I spent a vast majority of my 20 years in. All the years I lived before I went to university were within the walls of this house. It will be sad to say goodbye to this house, especially when my family will be residing here for a few months longer.
I’m grateful to have learned in this past year, though, that the people are the most important part. Location is good, but the individuals are even better.
A big, huge THANK YOU to everyone who has made my life so great. Whether we’ve been friends since before I can remember or were acquainted just a few months ago, I’m glad to know every one of you.
I know some pretty amazing people. And the people in my life are what have made my life so wonderful.
I just ate the starchiest meal of my life, so now I’m going to eat one million Mike’n’Ikes.
I just realized today that I am supes glad I will not be in P-town when people come en masse for education week. Worst time of the year for on-campus-non-ed-week-attenders. That and Women’s Conference.
Another realization that came with my not being on campus for ed week is the fact that I am moving out on Saturday. Say what? I have lived in the same apt for almost a year now, and I will be moving out on Saturday. What an adventure that will be. But seriously, I think I have accumulated a lot of stuff…
Then, !!! I move to Washington, D.C. in less than three weeks. I am so excited. It’s going to be a time and a half. Cannot wait.
But for now, I’m just excited to go out to eat with Sarah C. (if she ever answers my messages), keep working/interviewing people with Stacy and Ji Su and all those other peeps who don’t have blogs, eat at India Palace with Jules-Camps, hang out with Meg and Rachel some more before I leave, and see Peter in a couple weeks. Things are good.
But also, I had a fantastic birthday. A big thank you to everyone who participated in making my birthday so wonderful, whether you were in my immediate presence or not.
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