Less Nurturing than a Desert: On Babies and Cactuses

I am less nurturing than a desert.

A friend of mine helpflly told me this after I had successively killed two cacti. My first one, Nick, was an adorable little red bubble of a cactus that was part of the decorations at one of my sister’s college flute recitals. I loved him and took care of him, but when my family was on vacation, a babysitter overwatered him. He turned into sort of this blubbering fluberrish mess and I eventually had to throw him out on the compost pile.

My mom got my second cactus for me, Nicky, when I went away to college. She was tiny and feminine and small, with a green stalk and a small round red spiky head. I thought she was beautiful and presented her as a favorite object in my academic program’s grown up show and tell on a retreat. I remember when all the older kids helped bring my stuff into my college dorm freshman year, they swarmed around my parent’s van like flies, picking off bits until there was nothing left. I remember one boy carried in Nicky alone, as everything had already been taken up. She entered college proudly, like a queen.

Nicky was very important to me- reminding me of my family’s love and all that, but when you’re in a cramped freshman dorm, you sometimes lose track of the important things. She lived on our microwave for a while, then another set of shelves, but always seemed to be constantly falling over and having all her dirt fall out. I eventually ended up killing her through my lack of notice for her malnutrition. I posted an ode to her death on Facebook somewhere.

It was then that it was announced I was less nurturing than a desert.

When I found out I would have two beautiful nieces, I was out of my mind with excitement, but also full of trepidation. I love babies, but they scare me. They are so small, warm and soft. What if I break them? What if I hurt them? They wouldn’t be able to tell me what I did wrong- they are so helpless. In the past, I’ve avoided holding babies whenever possible. I hardly knew how to and I certainly didn’t want to do something wrong.

But these moments are so precious- how could I possibly miss out on them? Whatever risk I took, I knew it was worth conquering my fear.

I remember sitting next to Justus, my cousin’s little boy, on the couch at Thanksgiving the first year of his life. He was just a little over a month old. He was small and wonderful and I just loved looking at his face and his gorgeous brown eyes. Together, we “watched” the Cowboys game, my grandpa on his green chair nearby. I could tell he liked it by the way his eyes moved.

And I couldn’t help but think to myself as I held my sister’s little girl that children are infinitely more complicated than cactuses. Life is beautiful, but hard- looking at them, I see all the things that will try to hurt and bruise them in the future. I find my common sense overcome with this driving need to build a fence around them so they will never be teased on the playground, never cry over a bad grade, never have their hearts broken. But I can’t do that for them- life is too precious to risk missing.

As an aunt, I’m lucky to be separated off a bit, so if I screw up at all, it won’t be as damaging to these little ones. But I don’t want to screw up. I don’t want a second chance. The thought that I will always be in the lives of these little girls leaves me honored and awestruck. It’s a sacred responsibility that truly makes me want to be a better person.

I want to cheer them on as they try to learn to walk, learn to talk. I want them to love me as I love them and run into my arms when I hold them out. I want to write them songs about giraffes and fish and monkeys in trees. I want to have them over for sleepovers and introduce them to all my favorite bands. I want to be there for them when they’re teenagers if there’s ever anything they feel they can’t talk to their parents about. I want to be a cool aunt they will always think of when they’re bragging to their friends.

For someone less nurturing than a desert, I have a lot of work to do. I know I’ll get this right. They’re worth it.

An Ode to Dr. Mom: Or Why Medical Journal Covers are Scary

My beloved mother is a doctor. A pediatrician to be exact. She’s pretty kickbutt at her job too- she’s an officer in the AAP section on Bioethics and used to be an editor of Grand Rounds. She’s brilliant. And hilarious. And gorgeous. I’ve been told I take after her a bit. So anyways, all the photos on here are of my madre. (and heck, my entire family is cute, so they’re in a lot of these as well. : D )

Mom and I at the Texas State Fair a few years ago.
Feel free to laugh at my Ronald McDonald hair color-
that was one unfortunate case in my hair adventures.

Anyways, my entire childhood was colored by her medical career. Not in a bad way, but in a sort of- huh, this is a little different- way.

Mi Madre y mi hermana Karen at one of her baby
showers- I don’t know who took this picture actually.

There were some definite pluses. I was hardly ever the kid growing up who if I felt sick, had to go to the doctor’s office. I just went to Mom. She’d check my ears or throat or something and get me something out of her stockpile of medical samples. She’ll highly object to any sort of implication that she was my primary physician though- each of us kiddos had a separate doctor away from her. It just worked out pretty well having her mad medical skillz around the house- particularly for me. I was a pretty darn sick kiddo who had a habit of picking up nearly anything that was ever running around the neighborhood or school. I still have a bit of that- evidenced by the nearly three weeks straight I was sick in London (sinusitis is really gross). I’m sure my Mom’s abilities managed to save us quite a bit of money on doctor visits.

Mom with my brother Benjamin, his wife Valerie, and my Daddy
at Valerie and Benjamin’s baby shower.

We also would get into these great conversations over dinner when we were younger- Mom would tell these stories about her patients (completely anonymously of course) that we’d refer to as “Stupid Patient Stories,” or in some cases, “Stupid Kid Stories.” Some of them, such as “Fireworks Boy” and “Nintendo Thumb” have gone down in our family history as legend. Part of me still thinks they would make a fantastic medical short story book.

Mom and Daddy at a family friend’s wedding.

As I’ve grown up, Mom’s doctoring has led to some truly fascinating conversations on different diseases and bioethics cases. I’m currently looking at doing an intense article on Electronic Medical Records due to her own experiences with a new system at the hospital she works at. Her opinion has been invaluable on some of the articles I’ve written- and in turn, over the years, I’ve edited some of her medical articles. It’s a very happy arrangement.

Mom and Maggie. I just adore that look of wonder on her face.

I started thinking about all these things today as I noticed yet another Medical Journal on our kitchen table. This one was pretty tame- just a list of article titles on the cover- but I still enjoyed picking it up and trying to read the names. It included such scintillating articles such as, “Duration of Androgen Suprression in the Treatment of Prostate Cancer,” and “Primary Biliary Cirrhosis Associated with HLA, IL12A, and IL12RB2 Variants.”

So this one isn’t too bad. And honestly, most of the medical journal covers out there are sort of this same thing- classic text on a plain background. But I’m pretty sure my mind was scarred at least a few times as a child by the horrid covers on one of these medical journals…Cutis. A journal on “cutaneous medicine for the practitioner.” Aka- lots of horrid skin things.

I’m not going to put up a bunch of really gross pictures here- but I think I’ll post one of the covers from past years that scare me particularly…

Now is the time to put down any food you may be eating, drinks you may be sipping, and make sure your gag reflex is under control. This picture is not a close up or even that great of quality (yeah, I’m being lazy and sticking with my iMac camera right now), but it is still tremendously disgusting. (If you want better quality, click on it and it’ll do a better close-up).

Vol. 68 No. 3 of Cutis, published in September 2001. This picture is apparently of “Palmoplantar pustolosis exhibiting acral pustule formation on the palm and fingers with destruction of the nail plates.”

(Cutis, please don’t sue me. If you really have a problem with me having this photo up, let me know and I’ll take it down immediately.)

So yes. Having a mother for a doctor is truly an adventure.

First Pictures and Impressions of London

I’m here! In London, chilling in the common room for my flat.

I’m pretty jetlagged still (it’s past 10 p.m. here), so for now I’m only going to post the link to my (brand-new!) Flickr photostream- with photos I took on the trip/today.

Four Point Report’s Flickr Photostream!

I’ll update this more extensively tomorrow. : )

Smokin’: American and European Perspectives

This fascinating article from The Wall Street Journal last week looks at a new anti-smoking law in Austria and the smoking culture in Europe as a whole.

It makes some interesting points about the social stigma smoking carries in the U.S.A. that doesn’t really exist as much in Europe. Prince Harry is known to smoke without too much commentary, but president-elect Barack Obama‘s admitted smoking habits have been greeted with much shock, scorn, and pressure to quit by U.S. citizens and newspaper editorial boards. Many commenters have claimed to be “repulsed” by his habit. He has said he won’t smoke in the White House- a good thing since it’s a non-smoking establishment. In other news, were you aware that Laura Bush was a lifelong smoker until quitting about a decade ago? Interesting.

It’s interesting how, even though the world over it’s known and acknowledged that cigarettes are awful for your health, Americans in general have a social loathing for it beyond simple health worries, while Europeans care less about it. I’ve also read in memoirs before that in the Middle East, if a woman is seen smoking she is assumed to be uhm, a lady of the night. I suppose it’s not too shocking- Europe is also far more liberal than America is on alcohol consumption and sexual businesses in general. I don’t think I had ever seen a sex shop or a peep show so um, prominently displayed on the main streets of town until I went to Vienna. Of course, later on, I went to Houston, Texas, where there are basically no sign ordinances, and saw those businesses even more prominently displayed.

I have been known to have trouble with cigarette smoke before; it can make me very sick. Though I became accustomed to it while in Europe for 2 weeks last January, I haven’t been around anyone who smokes really since that time. I don’t particularly mind it otherwise though; I feel it’s not really my place to judge someone for smoking. It’s a health choice. I smoke hookah occasionally; I’ve actually purchased cigars for friends before. Who am I to admonish someone for their cigarettes?

It shouldn’t be too much of a problem for my smoke sensitivity while I’m in London at least. According to this BBC article, smoking in enclosed public places was banned in England July 1, 2007. Virtually all public places including offices, factories, pubs and bars are included in this- but smoking outdoors and in private homes is still protected. Similar bans exist in the Irish Republic, Scotland, and Wales.

Plus from the look of it, it’s becoming less accepted elsewhere. So maybe when I travel around Europe, I won’t be forced to my lungs a pep-talk every time I walk outside. That would be nice.

One other thing:

I’m interested in this 2006 book I found online- Smoke Signals: Women, Smoking and Visual Culture in Britain,  looking at the reasons why women continue to smoke even as the number of male smokers have declined  dramatically. It’s supposed to examine the persistent link between smoking, femininity, modernity, sexuality, and glamour. I’ll have to try to find a copy at some point.

Waxing Poetic on “Yanks Get in Free”

A friend of mine let me know about this fun “Americans go free” deal Madame Tussauds in London is planning for Inauguration Day.

As the website reads, “To mark the inauguration of new US President Barack Obama, and the debut of his brand new wax figure, Madame Tussauds is offering all Americans free entry to the A-List attraction on 20th January.”

Brilliant! All I have to do is bring “valid documentation” of my Yankee status and I’ve got free entry to one of the greatest wax museums in the world! I’m all for free stuff!

Apparently, the creation of just the head of a wax figure can take up to five weeks, as each hair strand is inserted individually and materials such as red silk and knotted rope is used to create the look of veins. 

The site now has a Sculptor’s Blog, with a few posts up on the process that goes into making each Wax Figure. I’ve already read through it all and it’s fascinating- I just really wish there were a few more posts up- though technically their blog’s been up about the same time as mine, they’ve got three posts up to my 30-something.

Here are some of the fun facts I learned:

• When the sculptors do “sittings” with the celebrities, to gather information for the wax figures, they take approximately 200 different measurements, including sometimes awkward ones in the crotch and chest areas.
   
• A hair sample ring of around 100 different colors is taken to the sitting to try to match the celebrity’s hair. It usually takes two different samples mixed together to get the match.
   
• Around 30 to 40 eye samples are used to try to get the correct match, but as the blog says, these never seem to match exactly. 

Here’s a picture of a ridiculously realistic looking Colin Farrell in Madame Tussauds London-

Creative Commons photo from Flickr by mharrsch

Another one of Prince Harry- wow!

Creative Commons photo from Flickr by mharrsch

This will definitely be a fun trip. Though my Inauguration Day is sure to be filled with lots of work, at my internship and on my own, I’m going to see what I can do to stop by and look through the exhibits.

What I’m Missing in London: To Who or Not to Dr. Who

Things I’m getting to London too late to see:

Tower of London Ice Rink- Set in the dry moat, this ice rink closes on my 21st birthday and the day I board a plane to London. Tremendously lame. However, I did find out that there’s still a cool “Life in the Medieval Palace” exhibit up through January 31. And Twilight tours of the tower start January 7 and go through March 25! Awesome! I’m totally going to one of those!

Apparently someone made a Dr. Who cake. Creative Commons Photo from Flickr by MonkeyBoy69.

Dr. Who’s David Tennant as Hamlet in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s latest London production- And Patrick Stewart‘s in it too! This ends January 10. Boo! Hiss! If I had found out about this before I bought my ticket to London I would seriously have considered coming in early just to see this.

Cold War Modern: Design 1945-1970- This art exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum looks so cool. It explores the effect of the Cold War era on contemporary design, architecture, film and popular culture. Of course, I’ll never know how truly cool it is, since it closes January 11.

One thing I can do:

Get Into London Theatre: As the website says, “Over 45 London shows are offering top price tickets at £15, £25 or £35 for performances between 1 January and 13 February 2009.” Separately from that project, TheatreFix gets £15 tickets for shows in the same time period for people aged 16-26. I’m looking now at “Thriller-Live” (on the career of Michael Jackson), Hairspray, Les Miserables, Jersey Boys, and Treasure Island.

You CAN get to London on Rollerblades

Creative Commons Photo From Flickr by jmtimages

“And you’ll roll right past those Buckingham gates…”

Teehee.

Anyways, I’m very excited about one of my planned activities in London. Apparently every Friday night, masses of people come out for the Friday Night Skate, a 2-hour 10-12-mile free skate starting at Hyde Park. They play music, skate around the city a different way every week, and have a blast.

Though I’ve rollerbladed probably once or twice that I remember in my life, on the skates the boy across the street from me let me have when he outgrew them, I am totally pumped and excited to do this. What a fantastic way to get in shape, get out and see the city, and meet people!

Of course, I’ll start first with buying skates (I could rent them but the pricing really doesn’t seem worth it if I’m using them for four months). I found a number of skate shops in London that look like a place I can find something, including London Skate Centre and 47 Degrees. I’ll also be getting large amounts of safety equipment, as I’m totally expecting to eat cement many times my first few weeks of skating.

Then, since there’s no way I can go on the extreme FNS in my current out-of-shape, pumped-only-from-using-a-mouse physique, I’m going to work up to that by attending the more chill skates first.

I plan to go to the Easy Peasy Skate a few times- it runs on Saturday mornings around Battersea Park. It has no roads, hills, or speed, so it’s supposed to be really family friendly. The plan is to learn how to really skate and stop on this run.

Then I hope to eventually graduate to the Roller Stroll, a Sunday afternoon one that’s a bit more intense- running from 6 to 8 miles. This’ll help me build up stamina and speed.

With work and a bit of luck, I’ll be on the Friday Night Skate before I leave London! After all, I have 16 weekends in London- I’m sure I can make it happen.

Other news of the day- my parents plan to come visit me in London! We’re very close so I’m tremendously excited about this. My mom was iffy on it at first, but once I suggested going to Easter services at Westminster Abbey, she was totally onboard. Now they’re planning out everywhere they want to go. I’m seriously considering writing to request a few tickets to the nightly Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London for their visit.

My mom, a brilliant pediatrician, also really wants to find out if there are any medical museums in London or nearby. Anyone know? I’m still looking.

: )

I Definitely Take the Internet for Granted

Creative Commons Photo from Flickr by dro?d (Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, Mexico)

I got an e-mail yesterday from Pogolink providing me the information about the wireless internet in my flat in London. Specifically, I’m given an “allowance” of 1,000 minutes and restricted to 1,000 MBs of uploads and downloads per week.

I sat down and figured this out- I get approximately 16 hours of Internet time. Well, that doesn’t seem too bad- over two hours a day- until I start really thinking about how much time I spend on the Internet. On my computer here at home, I tend to be constantly online, leaving my g-mail and twitter open as I go about my business). I don’t know how many times a day I sit down and check my computer for updates. I know I rarely can go a day without checking e-mail. My family and friends are all exactly the same way.

I don’t know when such a transition happened- Internet hasn’t been that widely available for much longer than I’ve been alive (21 years this Sunday!). Yet somehow everyone I know is addicted- massively addicted- to the Internet. It’s a lifeline to everything going on out there.

Even with the possibility of my using a computer at work three days a week, I can’t see myself using only 1,000 minutes from Saturday to Friday. And let’s not even get into the download limit- I’m planning on putting photos and videos up on this blog regularly and I’m pretty sure I would completely overwhelm the limit very quickly.

I can spend 10 pounds a week to get unlimited minutes and a 5 Gb download allowance. Though it would add up to 120 pounds the entire time I was there, my parents seem to think it would be a good investment. I probably will get that to ease my mind. However, there are other very irritating restrictions on the Internet out there as well.

On the “advice page” for Pogolink, I’ve been informed that since I’m not on campus but in a residential area, large numbers of computers can make the service slow for everyone, so I’m restricted further. Some of the few things I’ve been told I should not use my computer for: file or folder sharing, YouTube, any streaming video sites, iTunes, or video calls. Apparently I also shouldn’t use Skype video calling- which is completely off since that was my initial plan for remaining in contact with my friends and family while you know, I’m almost 5,000 miles from Texas.

There’s an intense Warning (with a capital W) that if I access this type of material my allowance will be used up quickly and my account may be disabled- with an administration fee to re-instate a disabled account.

I’m not exactly certain what to do about some of these restrictions- if I use Skype only for non-video calls (I think I can do that, right?) I should be alright with that, but I still need to use YouTube to post my videos online. Also, it’s quite possible that I will be contributing some sort of project for UWire/CBSNews on the happenings in London on Inauguration Day- I would very much like to use videos for that, but if I can’t do file sharing, I might be screwed on that.

I hadn’t planned on bringing my laptop with me- it’s old and in bad shape while my brand new amazing iMac is in fabulous, gorgeous, yet completely non-portable shape. Perhaps I should bring both computers though- so I could possibly take advantage of wireless networks at coffee shops or pubs to upload videos. I don’t even know if such options really exist- but I have to look into them and see what I can do. I put on nearly every internship application I turned in this last semester that I would be working on interviewing and videoing for this blog- I’m certainly not going to change my plans now.

I do seriously wish we had been told about these restrictions beforehand- a week before we leave seems way too late. I guess it can’t be helped though.

Visa! Visa!

That title is a ridiculous pun on the old Little Caesar’s commercials where this little Roman guy in a toga says “Pizza! Pizza!” I don’t know how well it worked. Hm.

Anyways, according to Wikipedia, the word Visa came from the Latin phrase, “carta visa,” meaning “a document that has been seen.” Which is fairly strange when you think about it.

I had to apply for a visa to stay in the UK for four months as a student- apparently these rules changed pretty recently. This is the first year students in this specific program from Mason have had to get them.

It was a much more complicated process than I expected. I had to fill out a hideously long application that asked all sorts of strange questions- for example, the names of all the educational institutions I’ve attended since age 11. I’m not exactly certain how that had anything to do with my ability to enter and live in London without dependency on the government.

I also was surprised about a question asking if I had ever participated in acts of terrorism. I suppose it’s something you should ask- but I suspect anyone who actually had participated in acts of terrorism would be exceedingly unlikely to admit it on a visa application. Maybe if the visa application had some graphics of a tiny dark room with a single lightbulb hanging over head and some animated bad cops and good cops…

I had to get fingerprinted at the local visa office and then put my application together in with a huge amount of documents (including my birth certificate, which I think I needed to include to prove citizenship or something) and send it to San Francisco. I just recently got an e-mail back from the British Consulate General saying that my visa had been awarded and my passport was getting mailed back to me. I am quite ecstatic over this, you can imagine.

My roommate Kate has informed me that this is more trouble than she had to go through to get a visa to China. Funny.

Why exactly is the British Consulate General office in San Francisco? You think they’d try to be closer to where the country is, not almost the furthest away you can be from the UK.

-EDIT-

I wrote this entry yesterday with plans to publish it today and look! Now I have my visa!

(I took this photo with a bad camera and distorted everything important so mweh on anything who thinks they can steal my identity.)

An American Cell Phone in…London

My plan while in London is to have a cell phone on me at all times, basically for emergencies and work, if necessary. I’m going to try to do any casual phone calls on Skype, which is possibly the most useful piece of software out there right now. This will save me oodles of money.

Since my former cell phone was falling apart and very old (I’m extremely hard on my technological devices, as I tend to take it with me everywhere), my wonderful father helped me purchase a new one. It is pretty and slide-y and black and green. I will call it “Pickle.”

Witness the prettiness.

Pickle (in Red)

The issue at hand now is how to take the phone with me to London and have it work. The sim card I have now will only work in the US.

We had discussed my renting or purchasing a different phone, just to work in the UK, but discarded that idea once we realized that it might get a little- expensive. We also looked for ways for me to continue to keep my current Texas-based phone number on the phone in the UK. However, worries about my friends continually trying to call or text me on that number and the extremely long-distance charges that would get racked up by that method, led us to look to other ideas.

My dad and I finally figured out the best way to do this. As he has been a proud customer of our phone company since back in the stone age (or 1993, you know, when beepers were the height of technology), he has managed to talk them into “unlocking” the phone so I can purchase an alternate sim card and put it in. Usually these phones are “locked” so the customer can only put a sim card created by that company, but now I can put something different in.

We haven’t determined yet whether it would be cheaper/smarter to order a British sim card from online or purchase one when I get to London. Either way, I’ll have a UK number. This I plan to give out only to my family and my bosses, or if say, I have someone want to interview me via phone. I think this should work out quite well for my purposes.

I’m excited. Woot.