Terrible Twenties

So there's this girl in my cohort, I'll call her Spotina because that rhymes with her name which is weird so you still won't guess it, and she is something else. She is super competitive, loud, obnoxious, and all around not my favorite kind of person. She totally outdid herself last week, though. To paint a better picture of her you should probably hear some of the dumb shit she does first.

She was in my seminar class last semester, which involved random things like papers, time in the robot patient lab, and quizzes on mathematical calculations, pharmacology style. Every question she got wrong on a quiz she would argue with the teacher. She would say, "Well, if you read it this way you should calculate a dose of 1000g of morphine for the patient." Or, "Well, I interpreted it to mean that you should have 3 not 20 units of insulin." Or my favorite, after the teacher reads the answer, "Number 5, the answer is 15 micrograms." Spotina: "Well, I did it a little different and my answer was 23, does that count?"

Dude. Your patient is dead, hyperglycemic, and dead again. You don't get to argue math. Maybe string theory or non-euclidean geometry but not fucking medications. No wiggle room there. Wrong answer. Accept it then study really hard before you kill people with your fake interpretive math. Asshole.

Another thing she does which sucks is random inappropriate sexuality moments. Like she will either give gross flirty looks to people or make comments about her own sex life, about which I do not want to hear. Especially things about how she can only have military boyfriends because they are the only ones tough enough to handle her. I guess a tour or two in Afghanistan would maybe put her in perspective, or at least make her seem like less of a trial than roadside incendiary devices or angry fundamentalists. So possibly a fair point on her part. That's not what this is about, though. It's about me disliking her. And her inappropriateness.

So the major event, now that you know what an asshole she is, was in lecture. 90 people. Great professor, great class; it's about professional leadership, roles in healthcare, communication, conflict,all that kind of stuff. Very engaging and cool. We had to form into our clinical groups and use all of the materials in a plastic bucket to build a freestanding tower. Highest tower wins. Materials were styrofoam cups, straws, tape, a comb, easter eggs, tagboard, and probably some other things. It was meant to be an exercise in role development, like who falls into which roles in team efforts and how everyone operates within that.

My group kicked ass. We had so much fun and we built one badass tower. It leaned a little but who's judging? The other half of our clinical group also kicked ass and had an even more awesome tower. A lot of other groups towers fell over altogether, or just sucked and weren't high. So the professor had us stop and discuss the activity, like what did we learn from it? Ol' Spotina piped up with how she felt like she was the only one on her team who felt competitive, and who really wanted to win, and so the others did not put much effort in. Her tower was pretty sucky. Good job on the teamwork, Spotina! Seriously the whole class was just like, oh there she goes again, throwing people under the bus and being an asshole. After we discussed things a bit, a few more towers fell, and the remaining towers were voted upon and it was agreed that my clinical group (the other half though, not mine) won, with ours second.

And here's where shit went down:

Spotina stood up and kicked her tower down. That's right. She kicked that fucker right to the floor, right in the front of the lecture hall, like by the podium. I still can't get over it. Who in the hell past the age of 2.5 kicks shit over because they didn't get what they wanted? Spotina, that's who. Tower Kicker Spotina.

I'll tell you what, if I were on her team I would have kicked her down right next to the tower. I can do that, you know.

Happy New Year?

Ok, so I haven't really welcomed in the new year with a blog post wrapping up and analyzing 2011. Because it would be kind of a complain-y post, or possibly so apathetic and burned-out sounding that people reading it would want to watch St. Elmo's Fire just to cheer up. 2011 is done, kids are awesome, I'm alive and not committed yet. Pretty good all around, I'd say.

So 2012. More of the same. Some days I want to pour salt on slugs just to break up the stress a little. Actually that would add to my stress by making me wonder if my life was turning me into a sociopath. It's possible, you know. So not relaxing then, salt on slugs.

Highlight of this year so far was kicking ass in the GI lab. The doc was quizzing me and his fellow, which turned a little competitive I will admit. To be fair, the fellow had a camera up someone's ass and was slightly occupied with that. However, I reigned in pathology of inflammatory bowel info. I kicked that fellow's distracted-in-the-rectum ass and got recruited to boot. Ew, no.

Another highlight was my girls' weekend with long ago college roommates. It was nice to be a girl for a weekend, and I tried not to say the f-word as much as I do on the mats. One of the girls is pregnant, adorably so (really so cute, pretty much the opposite of my own pregnant self; I was more....large); one just bought a beautiful house and is adjusting to suburban mom-hood (never easy, things can be uptight at times); one brought her very, very cute baby girl (the first of all of us to have a girlie); and one left her boys at home for the first time since they were born (Yay! and also, well, not exactly ragin' nights on the town. Next time, maybe).

In other news, my younger son is becoming obsessed with sport stacking. It is so cute. He is the most ungainly, awkward, overlarge Lenny of a child at times, and then he blasts through a little 3-6-3 in record time. After which he trips on his own feet and knocks over all the cups, pulling the mat off the table as he tries to right them. Poor thing is bigger than any 8 year old has a right to be, size 7 (men's) feet all over the place. I actually got a black eye from his flailing about 2 weeks ago. Someday he'll grow into himself, I hope.

The elder son is claiming puberty. I'm not convinced, though in certain lights his upper lip looks ever so slightly fuzzy. I think he and his gymnastic buddies are having some kind of puberty-off, where the winner has the most body hair, since I hear about it a lot post-workout. Since none of them are showing any signs of any hair at all, I can only imagine that the competition is based mainly upon unconfirmable claims of pubes. I mean, he's already tried out his "I totally have ball hair, Mom." line on me, probably practicing the authenticity for later locker room pube discussions. My response to the claims are generally along the lines of "Cool, dude. Puberty on." Or sometimes, depending on threat assessment, "Please don't show me. I'll take your word for it." Another time it was "Hair on balls, way to go."

Along with the phantom ball hair has come some serious emotional lability. Like laughing to crying in .0002 seconds. It's wild. And the only thing that helps is a cuddle and talking. I discovered that my very catchy song "Puberty Hormones--They're Making You Sad!" did not help the situation at all. I mean, it helped me because it is a hilarious song but did not diffuse the subject of the song's emotions, which was really the issue.

Puberty hormones
Make sadness and ball hair grow
Don't pick up those socks.