Birdies

I'm notorious for misunderstanding song lyrics.  When I was a kid, we three kids cleaned house with mom every Saturday.  She had a variety of records to keep us chugging along.  I cleaned toilets to Helen Reddy's "I am woman hear my roar."  I vacuumed carpets to the sweet gospel stylings of the Statler Brothers.  Our family favorite on cleaning day, however, was Kenny Rogers' Greatest Hits.

As a teenager on a long family car trip, "Lucille" came on the radio and we all sang along. "You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille," I sang at the top of my voice. "Four hundred children and a crop in the field."  For years, I'd never stopped to wonder why Lucille had 400 children rather than four hungry children.  My siblings tease me to this day.

Yesterday, after the out of town folks headed for their own cities, I took a long nap.  When I woke, my girl was going stir crazy in the house.  I could have donned winter apparel and taken her out to play in the snow, but I'm not a fan of snow.  Instead, we threw on our coats and took off for the movie theater.  She saw "Wreck It Ralph" the day before Thanksgiving and more than happy to see it again.

A week ago my car battery completely drained, and since then the stereo is temporarily (I hope) broken, so we drove in silence for a bit.  My mind wandered to all of the things I need to accomplish before returning to work on Monday.  I need to clean our house.  I need to clean my office.  I need to write lectures and test questions, take the cat to the vet, return a pair of shoes to Amazon via UPS, call the car dealer to see if I can recover the code so I can listen to my car radio again....sigh. So much to do, so little time.

From the backseat, I heard a familiar tune.  Daughter, whose only volume is loud, belted out the following: "Come bring your birdies to God.  Come bring your birdies to God.  Come bring your birdies to God, for Jesus will never say no."

"Sweetheart, it's not 'birdies,' it's 'burdens,'" I said, watching for her response in the rearview mirror.

She put her on grumpy face, lower lip jutted out, brows furrowed.  "I like to say 'birdies.'"

So be it.  God spoke to me through my child, and I gave my birdies to Him.  Thanks to that two hour nap yesterday and a large Diet Coke at a late afternoon movie, I didn't sleep last night.  As I lay in bed for hours, praying for unconsciousness, I remembered that loud voice singing in my car.  "Come bring your birdies to God...for Jesus will never say no."  Amen.

Listen - it's healing.

Order and Serenity

Grandma loved having all 8 grandkids at her house

My son (right) loved spending time with his same-age cousin

On the day she flew back to DC, my niece wore "crazy braids"

The littlest girls modeled their new princess dresses

Even a 14-year-old boy loves a good hug from Grandma

My kids loved seeing their cousins and I enjoyed the family visit, as well.   Turns out I processed all that anxiety before they came, so I was able to calmly go with the flow.  The final set left today and I celebrated with a nap.  In a couple of hours, I'm taking daughter to see Wreck It Ralph, the first movie she ever sat through.  It is, of course, her new favorite and I thought it was cute enough that I can tolerate it again.

I don't go back to work until Monday, but thankfully the rest of family goes back Thursday.  Tomorrow I have to write 3 lectures that I'm delivering in two weeks.  Thursday my mom is coming over so we can try to find the house again.  After a week of nine extra humans coming and going, it's at its worst state ever.  I'm a bit overwhelmed and welcome my mom's offer to help.  Friday I want to go to in to the office to get it ready for next week.  I realize that my mood is affected by my surroundings, and I long for order and serenity.

Happy New Year to anyone who stumbles across this post.  I no longer make resolutions, but I will continue to pray daily that I live my life in a way that makes my creator proud.

Anxiety Rears Its Ugly Head

Photos above: My kids in their holiday wear before church on Christmas Eve, 2012

Haven't posted here for awhile.  Many months, in fact.  I realized I was using this blog to cope with my near-constant anxiety.  I'm getting counseling now and learning how to set boundaries and be more selfish about protecting my own interests.  Turns out I don't need the blog as much anymore.

But today, I feel anxious.  So very, very anxious.  So I came back to the blog.

This week, we are blessed that my nieces and nephew came from Washington DC to visit.  They are staying with us.  My brother's family comes to town today from Atlanta.  They are staying with my mom.  It is wonderful to see everyone and I'm so lucky that my kids have ample opportunity to know their cousins on my side as well as their local cousins on their father's side.

I want everyone to be happy, and since I'm in the "host city", that means letting our visiting family call the shots about what they want to do and when they want to do it.  My visiting family has a different pace of life than I do, and I find it exhausting.  Plans change every five minutes.  We do several fun things a day, but they aren't fun for me, because I operate on a slower pace.  One fun thing a day is plenty for me.  I don't want to feel like a spoil sport, so I keep it all locked inside and get more and more anxious.

This is, as my mother says, a high class problem.  I could have no family.  I could have a family that wants nothing to do with mine.  I realize that I am blessed.

But this is my blog, and if I want to complain, I can do it.

On Hoarding, Frostiana, Independence Day and Hair

ice cream pie

Since I last blogged, I've been on Pinterest a lot.  By "a lot" I mean a couple hours every night.  I lay next to Husband in bed cradling my iPad and I plan vacations, dream of crafts I can make once I use all of the organization tips I'm pinning to find any flat surface in my house and think about recipes I'd like to try.

I haven't done anything remotely crafty in 18 months and I'm too lazy to cook.  As for finding the flat surfaces in my house....let me just say that remains a dream.  The dining room table, all of the countertops and end tables are piled high with junk that I just can't seem to throw away.  Am I a hoarder? Probably.  I'm getting there, at least.  No trash or multiple cats yet, so I guess I'm not too far down the hoarding path.

That's sorta why I love Pinterest.  It's digital hoarding.  Once I get the real mess cleaned up,  I can invite people into my home and not have to apologize for the hoarding because Pinterest is neatly organized, and it lives on the giant, nebulous internet.  Want to literally laugh out loud?  Literally?  Go to this woman's blog (if you can handle the foul language).  She tries the recipes and crafts and writes about it in a very comedic way.  Pintester. 

In other news, our choir sang a big schmaltzy program at church on July 1st.  Lots of patriotic music and Frostiana, which are seven Robert Frost poems set to music.  They are sort of art songs and generally I don't like art songs.  These are particularly difficult because there is an entire orchestra playing with the choir.  We performed them well, some would say, but I found the entire experience challenging.  Of the seven, Choose Something Like a Star was my favorite.  Here's a video someone made on You Tube and I think the choir is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. 

We had a lovely July 4th at home.  I didn't wear a bra at all that day, because to me that is what Independence Day is all about.  My son set off about 200 smoke bombs on the driveway.  I asked him after about the 50th one if he even knew what we were celebrating.  He rolled his eyes dramatically and responded that Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson signed the Declaration of the Statue of Liberty.  Then he finished with a very dramatic and sarcastic, "Duh!"  We finished the day with a back yard cookout and ice cream pie.  Mmmmmmm. 

My boy with smoke bomb dust everywhere

Son is now finished with coach-pitch baseball through the local YMCA.  He throws with his right hand but bats as a lefty.  Just like George Brett.  I guess George did pretty well with that combo.

Daughter is half girly-girl, half rough and tumble kid.  Tomorrow I'm taking her to one of those braid shops.  Between the swim lessons and the playing hard outdoors, I can't keep up with her hair.  I think we may do the cornrows for summertime.  I can handle her hair during the other seasons.  She's now 3-1/2 and seems to have a split personality.  She is either sweet, cuddly and funny or manipulative and deviant.  I like to think the second half of that reflects her superior intellect.  

At the nail salon

Most of the students have been off campus this summer and I've taken some time to tweak my lectures.  I'm assigned two new lectures this year and hope to get them knocked out in the next four weeks, because once the students come back to campus I will be very busy.   I'm also trying to develop some sort of curriculum in professionalism, so I have a lot of work to do before they return.  I'm completely caught up in the clinic (my EMR in-box is empty!) and that feels great.  I still love this job so much.  I love teaching and love patient care.  I can't imagine doing one without the other.

So that's pretty much what my summer has been like thus far.  Hope yours is going well.  

A (More or Less) Perfect Day

Slept 'til noon.

Made a game for the kids that resulted in them picking up all the clutter in the family room and putting it where it all belongs.

Took the kids for haircuts then sat at a Subway sandwich shop for and listened to my boy tell me made-up-jokes while we ate.  The photo above was taken following his nearly hour long monologue.

Napped with my baby girl for more than an hour, because, you know, I slept until noon but apparently that wasn't enough.

Made a game for he kids that involved sorting laundry.

Fed the kids dinner, read to them, sang to them and tucked them in bed.

Now I'm watching TV with Husband.  We're on episode 3 of the first season of Warehouse 13 on Netflix. It's rather cute, like Bones with a dash of X Files tossed in for safe measure.

What I'm not didn't do today? Work on a lecture I'm delivering to a group of physicians on Wednesday morning.  It's a topic I don't know much about.  Slides are due Monday.  I'm not panicked.  I work best under pressure, right? Right. I'll just keep telling myself that, hoping that line of reasoning will drown out the voice that is yelling at me for delaying the inevitable yet again.

Sill, despite my procrastination, it was a more or less perfect day.

It's Real

My kids have been fighting all morning.

Daughter wants to play with Son's legos, including the sacred Star Wars Lego sets.  This is unacceptable, so Son starts chasing her through the house.  Daughter hides in a closet and opens a door just as he runs by, gently bonking him in the head.  In retaliation, he attacks her treasured 3' long pink mylar dolphin balloon, which has been hovering in our kitchen for a week now, it's air gradually seeping out so the dolphin appears to be floating just above the kitchen counters.  Daughter jumps on the dolphin, protecting it with her body and soon the two children are rolling around on the floor wrestling, laughing, shouting and doing their best to pop the poor dolphin balloon with the weight of their two bodies mashed together.

Like most adoptive moms, I worried in the beginning that my children wouldn't have the real sibling bond that I shared with my sister and brother.

They fight.  They play.  They compare victories and mourn their own slights,  whether one gets a bigger cookie or the other gets invited to a play date.  The most heartwarming yet maddening part?  When I am sternly correcting one for being naughty, the other jumps in to defend the guilty party.  I love that...sorta.

It's a real sibling relationship, alright.  It's so very real.

Home Stretch

This is an ad they are using - I'm the one on the left. 

My board recertification exam is almost four weeks behind me and I'm getting a bit anxious for the score. I felt that I totally punted on about 50% of the questions, but I traditionally do better on exams than I think I did, so I hope that holds true now, too.

At work, we're headed into home stretch for the academic year.  Graduation week is always busy, but this year I am honored to "hood" four new physicians.  Our grads get to request a special hooder if they wish, and four students asked me to do this honor for them.  I know I will cry.  They are such wonderful women and I am so proud of them.

I'm also coordinating Clinical Skills Assessments, in which the students have to get through two or three encounters with standardized patients, people who are trained to use a script and "act" like real patients. We do this in a building that has rooms that look like real exam rooms, and the encounters are videotaped.  Faculty sit in a room watching these encounters real time, and we rate the students' performances.  Over the two weeks of testing, we'll rate about 1200 "patient" encounters for the first and second year students.

Finally, my mom is taking a small break from work and recovering at our house after a three day hospitalization.  She got shingles and, lucky for her, is one of the small percentage of people who have not just sensory and dermatologic symptoms but also motor symptoms from this nasty disease.  She fell three times, blackening her eyes and landing hard on her shoulder, which was pinned when she broke it five years ago.  During her evaluation in the ED, her blood pressure was wacky. so they put her in the hospital. There, they found that both of her carotids are blocked.  They can't do surgery while she is recovering from shingles, so she's hurting from the shingles in her leg and foot, super dizzy with these blocked arteries and wearing a nifty contraption on her foot that helps her stay upright.  Her attitude is amazing and we are all so happy with the care she is getting.

On the kid front, Son has a speaking line in the first grade musical, which they perform in a couple of weeks.  Daughter is very excited that her preschool is moving to a brand new site (and her mom is happy that it is closer to our house).  The kids are loving the warm weather.

The best news of all in this mini update?  After five and a half years of having 1-2 kids in our bed every night, we figured out how to get the kids in their own rooms.  Tonight is night 13 that Husband and I have not had to weather kicks from little feet all night.  To some, this might seem like a minor victory.  To us, it's a major triumph.

Church has been such a blessing to me.  When things get difficult, I am reminded that my church family and God himself are there for me and love me.  I'm happily singing in the choir and looking for more ways to share my gifts with this wonderful community.

Later, gators.

Too Calm?

I sit for my American Board of Family Medicine recertification exam tomorrow. First big test in seven years. First since the strokes in April, 2006. It's an 8 hour computer test. I've been working through practice questions and feel OK, surprisingly. This is probably a bad sign.

Case of the Grumpies

I got the grumpies in a bad way!  Not sure why.  Doesn't really matter.  I need to snap out of it.  Any suggestions?

Another Boring TMI Update

Howdy, folks.  Just a few updates...

HOME

Husband has been traveling a lot this academic year.  A lot.  I believe he his days away numbered more than his days here.  Between August and December, he traveled 10 times.  Already in 2012, he's been to Dubai, Bangelore, Prague and upstate New York.  I had a little breakdown a couple weeks ago when he was out of town and we had painters at the house and I felt somewhat abandoned.  Of course, I was forced to clean my built-in bookshelves in the main room, a task I've avoided for four years.  My in-laws, friends and mom jump in to help, but it just isn't the same as when Husband is here. It seems he might be home for awhile now, so that makes me feel better.

The kids are doing well.  Son is really focused on video games right now and we usually just see the top of his head.  It's hard to set consistent limits, because when he is engaged in the angry birds or bejeweled or plant and zombie battles, he's quiet.  That's something new around here and is somewhat pleasant, but we know video games can be numbing.  Daughter, on the other hand, is a typical 3-year-old.  Her language skills allow her to form convincing arguments, and developmentally she is at that point where she's a bit bipolar.  Crying one minute, laughing the next.  It's a whirlwind of emotion.  Occasionally, she'll wander into the room and say, "Mama, you make me happy!  I like you!"  It cracks me up.

WORK


I'm getting good feedback from the people who matter, meaning patients administrators and students.  Academically, I'm more comfortable with lecturing and delivering constructive criticism, but still struggle to write test questions that are challenging and case-based.  Clinically, I'm finding myself better able to set healthy boundaries and am trying harder to make peace with the electronic medical record client, with whom I've had a rocky relationship for 2-1/2 years.

On April 16th, I sit for my recertification boards board exam.  I'm trying not to freak out, but I don't feel like I've done much preparation and am really worried about it.  I have study plan which makes sense and is do-able, but I know that I tend to always choose the easier route.  Study or catch up on my TV shows? You all know what I'll choose.  I need to buckle down and do it.

CHURCH AND CHOIR

I made the painful choice to not sing the Brahms Requiem because I would miss the last two rehearsals, typically when it all "comes together", because I'm scheduled to be presenting a poster in Washington, D.C. that weekend.  The director OKd the absence, but I know I wouldn't feel comfortable.  The fact that I'd have to spend over $300 to change my return ticket also figured into the decision, quite frankly.  That's a whole lotta dollars.  So I'm missing the opportunity to sing this wonderful work and will miss seeing my childhood friend, Gwen Coleman Detwiler, sing the soprano solo work.  She was talented in grade school and junior high and went on to earn a doctorate in music.  On faculty at University of Cincinnati College of Music, she is coming home for this performance and I really would have liked to have heard it.

So I love the choir.  LOVE.  Every rehearsal feeds my soul.  They asked me to serve on the leadership team, which I thought was an honor until I realized nobody really wants to do it because it is some extra work and involves a time commitment.  Well, it's only a 3 year term, and I'm meeting a lot of really fantastic people by serving on this committee.

I'm honestly surprised that I'm enjoying church so much now.  I love the worship service, the pastor's messages usually speak to me (as I'm sure everyone feels) and I find myself thinking about God a lot more in my daily life, making conscious choices to behave like the Christian I am.  I haven't found a Sunday School class that "fits" and I still curse like a sailor.  Maybe when I find that Sunday School class, the cursing will magically go away?

PERSONAL HEALTH

I ordered Just Dance for the Wii, which I figure will be a good way to ease back into regular exercise, and I'm tracking everything I eat because the accountability is good for me.  Hoping I start losing soon and I recognize the stuff going on in my head that usually ends up with a weight loss cycle.  Saw my doctor and had my labs drawn. The good news?  Even though I don't take cholesterol med, a my LDL, or bad cholesterol, is an incredible 45 (my goal is no higher than 70).  The bad news? My HDL, or good cholesterol, is 28 (my goal is more than 50) and my hemoglobin A1C is 6.0 which puts me firmly in pre-diabetic category.   More motivation to exercise and lose weight, huh?  Yep.  Like I say, I'm working my brain around it.

CYBERLIFE

Now, before I go, I have to caution you all about Pinterest, which I previously recommended highly.  Turns out the legal blurb you have to check to use it is quite frightening and I think I'm considering taking my account down.  Click here read the article which frightened me and tell me what you think?

Blog Recommendation

Here's what some of my colleagues and students (who are also, in effect, my colleagues) are up to.  I'm so impressed with all of them!

http://kcumboutreach.blogspot.com/

Faith in Humanity

Today I received an email from a retired meteorologist who tracked me down via internet.  He asked if I'd written a letter to the National Weather Service when I was 8.  Why yes, I did, I replied.  

At my request, he scanned it to me. He explained that when he worked there they had this letter pinned to the bulletin board.  He thought it so cute that he made a copy of it and ran across it recently. 

I remember the day I wrote this.  I asked Dad how the weather folks predicted the weather and he suggested I write this letter.  He was like that.  "Look it up.  Go to the library. Ask an expert."  

My dad was a funny guy, somewhat self-deprecating.  I imagine he encouraged me to write that first paragraph.  In actuality, his father, a civil engineer, worked in the Army's weather department in India during WWII.  Dad knew very well that a coin flip wasn't involved.  Granddad, who lived in the greater KC area, had a weather radio and would let us kids listen to it.  I'm sure this flip a coin thing didn't fool me. 

Anyhoo, this man sent this to me, along with a photo of a scary cloud formation, and told me he's available to answer my questions about weather anytime. 

    

He could have just thrown this letter away, but instead he found me (tried three different email addresses until he got a response).  What a gift this letter is to me.  Today, he restored my faith in humanity. 

Has anyone done that for you recently?  

True

A friend of mine posted this.  It was originally posted on the Facebook page MomTourage.  I love it!

New Blog to Follow

My friend from med school just returned from Ethiopia with two daughters.  She's now a mom of five.  You can read their fantastic story here. What a blessing for all involved.  I pray that these girls weather their transition and are settled in soon.