Overload...brain shutting down

i hate it when this happens...i had just written my blog only to have it disappear into cyberspace. Well, i was saying that "Wow, what a week"...it's been good, actually....even if i can't remember any specifics of what happened ;0)

Today I was, yet again, the patient/victim of my group's clinical skills session at McMaster's Emerg. Being a kinesiologist, i'm very comfortable walking around in shorts and a sports bra (that's how you examine patients for musculoskeletal injuries....just in case you thought otherwise...;0) and being pulled, yanked and shaken into any and every angle a joint can possibly go...except i don't quite enjoy having my extremities examined by two different ppl at the same time pulling in opposite directions...it feels weird. Then I tried to study about osteoporosis and hip fractures, but i was very distracted....then Aaron came over and bree, kels and I went into another of our routine 'deep' conversations...except i had to go play badminton with Mike, so who knows what kind of conclusions the 4 came up with....

Anyway, i can't wait till tutorial is over tommorrow, oh, but i have anatomy right after...then depending on how tired I am i'll either take a nap or go try out a new recipie...i wanna try this no-bake cheesecake dessert...if it works, i'll take it to Rog's birthday party.

Speaking of parties, it's gonna be crazy tomorrow. First at 6pm, we'll go and hear Dave's testimony for the 'I agree with Dave' campaign (pls pray for that!), then at 7:45pm we'll drop by our neighbour's party with cookies, then at 8pm we'll go to our med school friends' Halloween party (we have to come dressed up as something that starts with 'C'), then after, we'll head down to hang out with our College and Career friends over at Rog's place. I'll be exhausted by Friday night/Sat am.

But i figure, this is the life! Soon, when clerkship starts, instead of party crawling, I'll be dragging my oversized OR greens, bad hair and baggy eyes from patient to patient. I'm sure that'll have its fun of its own.

I have decided that I think too much about too many things...hence, 'overload'. So, as of 45mins ago, i have decided to institute a 24hr self-imposed ban on thinking. My goal for the next 24 hours is to take life as it is, go with the flow and stop thinking....enjoy each moment....I figure if catastophes happen, i'll just deal with it. I want to try out this 'clueless' life that men (most of them, at least) so effectively and efficiently live. And i'm even serious.

now i really have to sleep. Thanks Aaron and Arnold for your comments and insight. (btw, A-train, where are you? what are you up to? please email me at: schano@alumni.sfu.ca, k?)
love!
s

by candlelight

Today was a relaxing day. (Yeh!!) Slept in, went for a run, took a nice shower, caught up on some errands, played doctor, studied about rheumatoid arthritis and Lupus, ate some food and took a nap with Tyrone. (this is the life!)

Tyrone is a bad influence on me. Seems like everytime I hug him I fall asleep on his tummy and take a nap. (aiyah) He has a calming influence on me. (gush) I think i need to stop dating Ty. (I know what you're thinking....) Do you think it's a conflict of interest to date your own personal chaperone? Cos who will chaperone Ty and I when we cuddle? (this is bordering on stupidity). Ah, I think maybe I need to re-train Buski the Bear's ministry from 'Protector' to 'Chaperone' ... Tigers listen to Bears, right?

Last night was awesome. Bree and I went all out for our College group get together at our place. Bree made our living room all pretty with candles, and I baked welsh cakes and raspberry/lemon/vanilla loaf to make the house smell pretty. I like those welsh cakes...(yummy). Then we sat in our living room and sang 'Merry Christmas' to the tune of 'Happy Birthday' whilst waiting for ppl to show up. (i assure you, we are NOT crazy) We had an awesome time of singing and worshipping and laughing. (wowsers! that was for you, Ashley!) After, when half of the group left, us girls went on our 'how come we don't understand guys' splurge....and much to our horror and shock and wel,.... acceptance, I guess,.... the boys reminded us that 'yes, men are clueless'. Of course this is an overt and broad over-generalization, but nevertheless, it is somewhat true, n'est pas?

When all the testosterone left our house, us girls stayed and chatted till mid-night, more like vented, no, actually, we were 'bonding' (lol). I love you girls! Seriously, we weren't bashing guys at all, we were just trying to understand them.

Anyway, now i'm just blabbing. time to go to sleep...no, actually, time to call my friend Joycelin in BC. love you all!
s

I love Raking!!

Wow, that was super fun! First: last night, our house had Lisa and Jessica over for a 6 women sleep over. (wowsers!!) Then, we awoke to freshly made french toast, fruit salad, nutella, raspberry-lemon loaf (which i made on friday night...my baking night) and tea this morning. (fantastic!)

At 11am, we went to meet up with 20 others from our College and Career group to go rake lawns!! It was awesome! Armed with rakes of all different sorts and gloves and bags, we went out to connect, serve, and hang out with the 'older' members of our church...and their neighbours...and any 'un-owned' spots (like medians in the middle of cul-de-sacs with grass and trees)... There's something very very 'soul-feeding' and wonderful about service and taking time to hear ppl's stories.

I came back, took a 3 hour nap from 3-7pm, made a vague attempt at studying the hip joint and all the weird and wonderful tests (really, contorsions) we can do to our patients, went out for bubble tea-ing, more studying, and other errands.

Tommorrow is always the highlight of my week: church and fellowship. As well, we're having a worship/fellowship night at our house later that evening and i think i'm going to make 'welsh cakes' too. I miss making and eating Welsh Cakes. And it brings back really fond memories of my 2 yrs in Wales.

love you all!
s

This is getting addictive!!

Yikes!! This blogging nonsense is starting to get addictive! Thanks again to all those who read and comment on my blog. You guys are the best!

Well, today I threw out my blood/dirt/bodily fluids/etc... stained shoes that have seen me thru my first yr of medical school till now. If not for the blood of many patients (surgical elective in Angola) that have fallen and soaked into them, i probably wouldn't have thrown it away. But watching it sit on top of my gym locker shelf for the past week and a half, today, after playing squash (i won!!...again) i finally decided to part with it.

It wasn't an easy decision. I had bonded with that pair of New Balance Cross-Trainers. But the thought of washing people's bodily fluids out was getting more and more outrageous the more I thought about it. I think i just needed time to bring closure to those shoes. I thew them into the big garbage can in the women's locker room...i hope nobody stops to pick them up. They will have had no idea how gut-wrenching the stories behind the stains are.

I think it was in some sort of weird way a symbolic gesture of how i've felt for the past couple of days. I'm grieving and I'm moving on.

Thank goodness for Tyrone (my Tiger). I hug him tightly as I fall asleep. I hope Buski (my Bear) doesn't get jealous. It's past 1am, what am i doing. I need to sleep.

goodnight, y'all.....zzzzzzzzzzzzz.........
love!
shermeen

I can hardly keep my eyes open

I only slept for ~3 hours last night. Actually, since Thanksgiving Weekend, I have only slept for maybe 4 hours per night. I tell people that I'm getting myself ready for clerkship, when you spend up to 36 hour shifts sometimes covering call in the hospital. But that's just silly. If i am so sleep-deprived now, it's only going to make me more "zzzzzzzz-debted" come Jan 2005.

Yesterday was INTENSE (for many reasons, none of which i want to go into right now). In many ways it was a breakthrough time alone and with God. Eventhough I still can't really feel a palpable, tangible, familiar presence from God, I felt that in brokeness and rawness and pain and thankfulness and gratefulness, i was able to fling myself at Him.

And I was able to cry. Wait, more like sob. No, 'bawling my eyes out" as I worshipped God is more accurate. The range of emotions and feelings you can feel in a 24-hr cycle is truly quite profound. Wow. Now i'm going to sleep. I need it. Tommorrow I have to be up at the Mac Hospital Emerg. THanks to both Amandas for your encouragement. I love you both so much!!!
s

Emotion

Sometimes i just don't know. Like i just don't know why it's already 2:09am and i'm still up. Well, i feel justified cos i started baking an apple crumble pie, peanut butter-oatmeal-choc chip cookies, and a bannana cake at 11pm, so by the time i'm fully cleaned up 3 hours later, that's not bad.

Last night i took my new 'window writers' from Crayola and wrote notes and bible verses to my 3 housemates on our living room windows...that was done from 2-2:30am. Seems i'm rather pensive and reflective at this time of the morning.

Except i wish i could cry. I haven't cried since Angola. I have so much built-up emotion that i would say it's worth the cry. Normally i would cry quite wonderfully in the safety and comfort of my own room...but i'm not sure if what i'm currently going thru is worth the cry....yet.

This past week, i've listened and journeyed with a few close friends as they've shared about their lives...and i feel both priveledged and blessed that they'd share it with me. I think I've been given perspective this week. But along with perspective comes emotional response. I've been doing alot of "sigh-ing" this past few days. I'm definitely being pushed out of my comfort zone....this probably doesn't make sense, but that's ok, i'm being vague and cryptic on purpose.

Thanksgiving Weekend Project #2: This is something I"m VERY proud of! I drilled the frames and shelf into mortar and brick!! So i finally could use a few of my birthday presents (the photo frames/cubes). I love the cubes (thanks, Rick and Sean) cos i get to put all my members of my family and some of my cousins and friends into the many (4) sides of each cube!! The centre rectangle piece is from Nigeria, it's made out of sand. Notice my stethoscope hanging...that's because it's the most convienent place to hang it and so i won't forget that i'm actually here to study medicine, not woodworking or something....
 

Thanksgiving Weekend Project #1: I bought this corner shelf from Ikea and drilled and anchored and screwed it in myself! (together with Kelsey's help)...On the top is TJ, then Tusky and Joey, then Fluffy and Monsoon. On my bed is O-rig the Ostrich, and Busky the Bear, and then, my newest acquire (from Walmart) is Tyrone the Chaperone.
 

The hat, or rather, crown, says: "Birthday Princess"...passed on to me by Usha (to my right)...which will be dutifully passed on by me to someone else on their birthday: 

The 'flag football' gang from Church! I wanted to play in the park before everyone partied it up at our house for my 25th birthday party. Notice i got water-ballooned! 

Daddy! since you can't access this jpeg from your hotmail, i've decided to post it here: in the green is MY baby, and in the red and black, Daddy, is YOUR baby! ;0)
 

OK! back at it!!

Oct 11, 04 Thanksgiving Day

Wow, what a weekend. It started out being quite abit depressing, as friend after friend, classmate after classmate left for home, leaving just Kelsey and Myself home...alone...abandoned...even Westdale's party houses were subdued, quiet, vacant.

BUT!! God is always full of surprises and Kels and I had a fantastic time this weekend! I can't even remember all we did...but the words "productivity", "efficiency", "laughter", and "loved" captures it all. We went grocery shopping, ate at a Lebanese restaurant and watched Zoolander (i can't help cracking up everytime i think of it) on Friday night followed by a full Saturday of: working out at the gym, going to ikea, staples, Limeridge Mall, Blessings & Walmart and getting many errands done and many things bought...all this shopping in 6 hours...then we stayed up till 2:30am baking (apple pie, cornflake oatmeal choc chip cookies, pumpkin bran muffins etc...) and putting up shelves...and watching Miss Congeniality as we baked...

We are HANDYGIRLS!!! HA! little did we know that with a borrowed drill and alot of praying for wisdom and safety, (not to mention we put on our chemistry lab glasses for protection), and alot of experimenting and laughing our heads off....

Then on Sunday, we had our highlight of our week: Church and College and Career small group PLUS Thanksgiving potluck...our med school friend, Peggy joined us for the first time at church...and she enjoyed it! COOL! Then our friend Andrew came over and helped us with our further "drill into concrete" dilemma shelving questions...he went to Home Depot with us ...and the rest of the day was spent putting up more shelves (i drilled into concrete and brick!!! and mortar!!!)...My friend Roger who was supposed to help me with the shelves is gonna be really surprised when he finds out i managed to do it ALL BY MYSELF (well...with alot of advice from ppl)...either that or he's going to be hurt that i did it without him....(oh dear)anyway...then i re-decorated my room and talked to my 2 best friends from BC, Mom and Dad and my relatives till 3:30am. I love my family! I missed them alot this weekend. But it's funny cos i love living in Hamilton...so i sometimes feel 'torn'...although i consider Hamilton my "home".

Then TODAY, slept in, went for a jog, and went to Pastor Lane and Deb's house for an awesome Thanksgiving Lunch/Dinner....gosh, that was truly wonderful. Talk about applying Sunday's sermon on 'community'. Got to hang out with some of my most favourite ppl from church there...i couldn't stop laughing...they are so hilariously funny! As Bre'el put it (who finally returned from her friend's wedding in the States on sunday night...yippee!): "after this, i feel like we truly had a Thanksgiving Dinner" [paraphrased] (not because of the food, but the fellowship...i added this part to clarify the context) Yah. I couldn't agree more, we felt loved. Thanks, Fusillers!

After spending the past month not wanting to talk to people and feeling like sticking my head into the soil....this weekend was great not only because things got moving and done, but because i felt i had the mental and emotional space to dwell and relax and ponder and think and pray. (about a whole range of issues) Thus, the writing of a blog update (plus Jason's prodding today too! lol).

ok, this is way too long. sorry! i don't even think ppl read this anymore...
sherm