Month: May 2014

Classes are over.

Classes are over!  After the last final, my nursing class went to a nearby restaurant to celebrate.  Here is a photo with me actually in it.  I handed over huge-ass camera to a waitress and she took the photo with everyone in it.  I’m posting the out-take, which I always like better than the “regular” one.

I love the feeling that you get when you are done with the last final.  The feeling of complete done-ness.  You never really get that as a grown-up that often.  As a grown-up, things are never done.  The house is never completely clean, there is always something lingering at work, the kids always need something.  But school?  School can be done done done.  And then you can celebrate and have a beer in the bright sunlight.

I took about 300 photos at this party.  It was the strangest thing – everyone, everyone clamored to have their photos taken.  This is so not my generation.  So many of my like-aged friends do not want to pose, do not want to acknowledge the camera.  I have cultivated my camera skills to be stealthy.  To not bother people as they do their thing.  I’m very good at taking photos on the sly.

The selfie / Facebook generation cannot resist having photo after photo taken of them.  I would take 20-30 photos of a single person and they would pose in all the possible pose-able positions.  Smiling, smirking, laughing!  I have not had an easier time getting 300 photos of any set of people.

Flowers, Flowers, Everywhere at U Street

Since Mom went back in early April, she has been busying on her garden, with a lot of veggies and flowers planted.  She took several pictures and asks me to publish on our family blog.  They are looking very nice and, sorry to say, I miss them all.

Actually, flowers there are much prettier due to rich soil and fine weather.  Of course, Rena’s love of working on top of dirt is part of it.  She is typically a farmer.  I am more like a city boy.  One just looks at her hands that would tell all the stories.  Her hands are just like sand paper 🙂

Chincoteague

Patti owns a beautiful house in Chincoteague, VA and invited a bunch of neighborhood moms for a weekend at the beach.  Patti’s kids are a bit older than mine.  Her son, Bryson, is the youngest of 4 kids.  Bryson is good friends with Vince, that’s how I know Patti.  I have seen most of these women at parties at Patti’s house, but I’ve never had the chance to really sit down and chat.

I learned a lot of neighborhood gossip and history. The weather was glorious.  And, as Patti will be the first to admit, the drive was a little bit long – 3.5 hours each way.   I drove 7 hours for less than 24 at the beach house which was hard for me to do, because I don’t really like to drive.  But I got to know some women in the neighborhood better.

I can’t believe I’m going to write the next sentence.  I had a final this morning at 10 am and I blew off studying this whole weekend to go to the beach.  I have never walked into a final any less prepared.

One of the things I was most looking forward to was my weekend run at sunrise at the nearby National Wildlife Refuge.  While everyone else was sleeping, I was running and watching the sunrise and seeing all the beautiful birds!

Second semester ending.

The term is ending.  Finals are next week and after the last class this week, there was an impromptu game of soccer with my classmates.  These kids (I am really now old enough to be their mother at a respectable age – no teenage motherhood necessary anymore) are my friends and they keep me young at heart.  I’m so lucky to be able to go to school a second time and really, really enjoy it this time.  I loved my time at MIT and I grew up so much there.  There, in the heart of Cambridge, I was stridently ambitious. But there was always this underlying nervousness and anxiety about what I was going to do with my life and if I was going to fulfill whatever promise I thought I had.

This time around, 20 years later, there is none of that anxiety, none of that nervousness.  I just am who I am, I’m not trying to prove anything.  I try and take pleasure in learning all the new material and meeting new people.   I’m going to love being a nurse, I think it’s the right mix of hands-on work, science/medicine/chemistry and investing of emotional energy.  If my classmates are any indication, I’m going to really enjoy being with my colleagues.  I still don’t know what I’m going to do with my life and I still wonder if I’m going to fulfill whatever promise I think I have, but it all seems so much less important these days.

An Interesting Observation by a Stranger

Last weekend, I pulled my car into a local garage for A/C maintenance.  Sitting in the customer’s waiting room with me was an Afro-American man in his 50s.  Just two of us there for a long while.

Then, he started to tell me that the world isn’t fair.  A lot of homeless people are neglected and their social assistance budgets have been cut dramatically.  In light of most homeless people have mental problems, that make them much more miserable and venerable too.  A lot of people, he said, on the surface, would like to help the poor.  But, actually, they make their careers out of poor people.  More poor people is better for them.  Perpetual poor is the best.

Then he began to tell me about his observation on the gun violence in our junior high and high schools.  He said once a kid starts some problems which most kids do. No spanking is allowed.  No other disciplinary actions can be taken and, above all, no one would like to spend the time to deal with the situations. Therefore, using medicine (drugs) to calm down problem kids is our common practice.  It is the easiest and least controversial way to deal with problems.  And it works instantaneously.  When those kids are young, it is okay.  But, when they grow up, by nature of growing-up, they refuse to take medicine any more.  Besides, no one can tell us for sure, what are the long effects of taking those medicines.  Then the withdraw symptoms affect them profoundly. Therefore, we see all those tragedies happened in our schools.

He thinks that physical punishment is better than medicines so long as it doesn’t go too far.  Moderate spanking itself won’t have lasting effects but medicine will, he argued.

Well, I think it is pretty interesting observation though I am far from 100% agreeing with him.  But, nevertheless, it is quite interesting.

Ukelele.

Katherine was in town this past weekend.  She was here to join the Cowboy and Indian Alliance’s protest against the Keystone Pipeline.  She’s learning to play the ukelele. The house is a little bit crowded these days.  Seth and Christine and their two kids have moved into the basement as their house gets renovated.  They’ll be here about two months.  Since they are occupying the usual “guest” quarters, we moved Edda into our room and then Kiki stayed in Edda’s room.  We are going to have a number of guests the next two months, so it’ll be a bit of musical beds.