New Year's Resolutions

Yes, it's that time of year again.

I honestly prefer to plan what I am going to change during the year and get on it right away rather than establish a list of things and then suddently try to set about doing them. However, as the following year is due to change so very much, I thought I would write a quick list and we'll see how I go.

1. Keep up with study. Yes, my plan is to keep up with the study from week to week. I'm not a crammer, and I'm too afraid that I somehow got into medical school by some statistical errror (stupid impostor syndrome strikes again) so I really need to keep up with things. Plus, I'm studying to be a doctor, and with this comes great responsibility. One day I will be like those doctors I work with who are incredible fonts of knowledge and full of kindness, patience and care for the patients that they work on and the people they work with. There are a few of you, and you are rarer than gold and more valuable.

2. Make time for family and friends. Make sure that relationships don't deteriorate at all. I'm not a regular visiting/phone contact person anyway, but it's important to me that I don't lose touch with people. I don't even send Christmas cards. Really, I'm very slack. So this resolution should read that I'm "not to get any more slack in my personal relationships." Why is it even here? Hooray, an easy one!

3. Stick to my budget. Hahahahahaha!!!
No, seriously. We have been pretty generous with the planned budget here, and I'm a big fan of beans, rice and fresh veggies, so it shouldn't be too hard. All I have to do is stay away from clothing stores and I'll be fine. Honest.

4. Join that running club and run that half-marathon I've been thinking about for years. This is probably the one I'm keenest about but am least likely to do. All it has taken in years gone by is a couple of broken toes and midnight encounters with thirty-something women who have had MI's (myocardial infarctions) and subsequent hypoxic brain injuries resulting in death, which were brought on during fitness kicks, and I have been put off. I need to pull my finger out and join a running club. Full stop.

5. Don't shave my head. Because we all need one resolution that we are really very very likely to stick to without any effort.

A Happy New Year to you all, and good luck with your resolutions! I'll be playing board games and drinking with friends, and eating whatever I can be bothered throwing together tomorrow morning. Honestly, I'm tired of cooking. Which, for me, is VERY new.

It's raining babies . . .

The best thing that happened today was that we went to our friends' house to hang out, talk
and play board games.  It is a weird time in our lives. My best friend is pregnant with her first child, and we are all VERY excited for them. I know that everything is going to change from now on, and this makes me a little sad and nostalgic, and then I feel incredibly guilty for feeling this way.

Children are beautiful, and I love working with them in the Hospital and playing with other people's kids. But I am very much not ready for children and we won't be having any for years to come. To be frank, when we visit it is a relief to hand them back at the end of the visit, and I need to go and have a nanna nap. At least I now know how to pick one up! I worked out that the best way to do it was to treat them like a cat. 
All the squirming in the world and I still have them held nice and tight! It is so strange to think of them becoming parents, after we have done so many things around about the same time throughout our whole lives.

To be brutally honest, we are reaching that point where we are starting to be the odd ones out for NOT having a little nappy-filler running around the house. We won't be there for a few years yet, and this thought fills me with such relief.

The other one I keep hearing is that I shouldn't "leave it too late!" Honestly, do men EVER hear this? I know that a woman's fertility drops dramatically with age, but men don't seem to be held to the same kind of standard of reproductive timetabling. I have even seen a book out there called 
"Oh no, we forgot to have children!"
I realise that the title is humorous, but it annoys me quite a bit. Women who haven't had children by a certain age have not been ALLOWED to forget about having them, as we get asked about it by every second person we meet for the first time.

I'm quite sure that I will NEVER have the following conversation:

"Hi! I haven't seen you in ages. Did you have kids?"
"Damn! I knew there was something I should have added to the to-do list! That, and buying more cat litter!"
"I told you not to leave it too late!"
"I know, I'll NEVER get the smell out of the bathroom! Now what was that other thing again?"

I even get asked whether I'm having kids soon by people who know that I'm going to be spending the next 4 years as a broke and stressed medical student. What kind of a question is that??  Here is something else you'll never hear:

"Roll up, roll up and see the Amazing, the Incredible, the Unbelievable! She's the Worried Womble, Super Mum and Medical Student, able to balance a baby on one hip and an open copy of Rang and Dale's Pharmacology on the other, able to breast-feed while simultaneously practicing auscultation on her baby, with the ability to juggle lectures, childcare, a mortgage, cooking, cleaning AND study, all on zero hours sleep! For an extra five dollars you can poke her with a stick to check that she's real!!"

Never. Yes, I know it won't be easy having children as a doctor. But at least there will be money for things like childcare, nannies and FOOD. Food is good.

I am very much looking forward to my friend having her baby. Although she'll have less time for the frivolities of child-free life, it means she'll be able to drink again. And that's what REALLY matters here. (I'm kidding. Really. I already have presents for the baby stashed away. Just don't tell her.)

Dear santa, please get me some more vodka from the fridge . . .

Today I went stationery shopping! I know it is sad, but I LOVE stationery megastores like Officeworks. Mr Womble often jokes that I'm going back to study so that I have a legitimate excuse to buy more stationery. I think he's jealous. (Just kidding, Mr Womble!)

On another freaky note, it is only two more weeks until Christmas. At our family get-together every year there tend to be two distinct groups of people. Being a southern-hemisphere Christmas, it tends to be DREADFULLY hot, particularly at the main celebration on Christmas day. One group get thoroughly happy by about lunch-time, spend all day jumping in and out of the pool so that we don't melt, drinking, eating and having fun. I generally make a Christmas cake that is so rum-laden that it can be classified as drinking AND eating simultaneously.

I also do a LOT of drunken text-messaging on Christmas day. (Being vegan I tend to disappear around about the time people start beheading prawns. The smell gets me more than anything. Plus when I'm drunk I'm likely to start adding sound effects. "Where's my mummy? I'm scared! It's so dark in here! Ow! Ow! Ow!" Before anybody gets offended, I'll just add that it goes both ways - I get asked whether I'm worried about the carrots being in pain when I eat them because "plants have feelings, too" (no, I'm not worried, I hate the damn carrots and eat them slowly to cause them extra pain) and I get to tell stories of how when I was a child my family killed and ate my pet chicken. But we all have fun, and nobody takes it too seriously. We're all used to each other's quirks by now.)

The other group seem to spend the whole day sitting in chairs in the shade, looking miserable and asking when lunch is going to be served, or sitting inside and watching the television. My Dad took a picture of them last year. There was a row of flustered, red-faced, miserable people of all ages sitting around a table next to each other. At that point in time, all of the fun people were in the pool (or near their mobile phones). If I did the Christmas card thing, I would make this picture the cover for my cards. It was a great photo of The Dark Side of Christmas.

Ok, so I am being a little narky at these people who choose to spend their Christmas day with all of us. And it IS nice to have them there. Even when somebody starts telling creepy and inappropriate stories of his last business trip that I won't go into here. Family is family.

Thank god, this year more FUN people may be turning up, from the other "happy drunk" side of the family (as opposed to the car-stealing side). The great part about my genetics is that there seems to be a "happy drunk" gene firmly implanted in the x-chromosome, and everybody on that side shares it. So bring on more of the happy drunks!

We've also tried to agree on a sensible Christmas present year this year. There is nothing worse than a room full of people spending hundreds on presents for other people that they don't necessarily want. And yes, I'm easy to buy for, even cheaply. Just give me some stationery and I'll be a happy girl!

Those frickin' holes . . .

OMG, like, the bottom of the skull has so many frickin' holes. If you believe in a Creator God/Sky God/whatever, then he is a sadist who hates anatomists. It's like somebody staged a competition to see who could stick the most little holes and things in the bottom of a skull, make them all necessary, make it all functional, and that being's submission became the design for the human head. And they got a certificate and permission to design the virus of their choice. As a prize. Clearly.

Or perhaps the opposite is true - somebeing submitted a design that required the LEAST amount of holes possible for a functional head and brain-based organism, and THAT design became the main one for the human person. If that were the case, then THANK GOD things weren't more complex than they had to be. And perhaps THEY got to design the ULTIMATE KILLER T-CELL, and thanks to them, we are alive.

Or not. I'm always half-way between believing that there has to be some kind of design behind all of this, or thinking that the cosmic force behind the universe knows that what is best is what will be worked out or developed, or seeing the suffering that happens in life due to flaws in development and design, and believing that either it is quite ramdom and we are meant to use nature to what is best, or that Creator is a sadistic bastard who doesn't care (i.e. the Blind Watchmaker theory).

Or perhaps the above ramble is thanks to vodka. In that case, then on of the Best Things That Happened Today is that I did my first drunken post! Woohoo!!!!!