Category Archives: My Life

PA school: And now, the rest of the story

In mid-September, I wrote this post, in which I debated applying to Physician Assistant (PA) school.  And then, radio silence . . . .

I decided to go ahead and apply, despite knowing that applying late in the game would work against me.  Since I didn’t know what the outcome would be, I wanted to keep my options open.  Writing more about applying to PA school in a publicly-viewable space, while continuing to explore other career options, seemed like a bad plan, hence the silence here.

I submitted my application one week before the November 1 deadline.  I was not expecting to hear anything until January (maaaaybe December), so I did my best to submit it and forget it.  I was one of over 700 applicants for Saint Louis University’s 34-seat program.  While well-qualified in some ways, I felt even getting an interview was a long shot.

Then, on January 16th, I received an email inviting me for a February interview with SLU’s PA program (they interview 80 people for those 34 seats).  It was both exciting and nerve-wracking.  The invite came right as G was sick with [his first bout of] pneumonia.  My flexible, part-time work schedule made it fairly easy to care for him, but I couldn’t imagine what we would do in that scenario if I was going to school full-time (in a very intense program).

Anyhow, I swallowed my fears and accepted the invitation, then realized that if I might actually be accepted, I needed to get my butt in gear and knock out a medical terminology course, the one outstanding prerequisite on my list.  That took a bit of doing — the official registration deadline at the community college had already passed, but I managed to wrangle my way into a course (thankfully, an online course).  Then I started researching “questions in a PA school interview.”

Interview day was ushered in by a snowstorm (that big snow we got in mid-February).  Most of the local schools were already closed for President’s Day, but those that weren’t, cancelled.  Interviews were ON, though I debated whether getting to the interview was worth risking life, limb, and car (which raised red flags about my commitment level).

I arrived without incident, though I did have a minor “this is not my regular bag so I don’t have a tampon and ALL (yes, I checked the bathrooms on all four floors) of the feminine hygiene vending machines are empty/broken” crisis.  After that panic-inducing start, the interview day, which included a Q&A session with current students, as well as three one-on-one interviews with various faculty members, proceeded without incident.

I was part of the fourth round of interviews.  At that point, they had already interviewed 48 other candidates, and awarded some unknown number of the 34 seats.  Having made it to the interview stage, my guess was that my odds were a bit lower than 50-50 of being accepted.  I had quite a few questions/doubts about embarking on this path (i.e., a very intense, full-time, 27-month commitment while also being a mother), but I had pretty much talked myself into accepting, and damn the torpedoes, if they offered me a spot.

Two weeks later, I was notified that I was consigned to the wait list.  I was disappointed, but also a bit relieved.  While my interviews did not go badly, I would also not say they were great.  In retrospect, my heart was not in it, at least not all of my heart.  I can interview well, when it’s something I really want, but I’m not great at faking it.

I decided that I needed to take some time to evaluate what I really wanted for my life, and what made sense for me, not just something that sounded good, that I could do.  I set up an appointment with a career counselor at SLU (free service for alumni).  After our initial meeting, I checked out the latest edition of What Color is Your Parachute? and started working through some of the exercises (more on that in an upcoming post).

In early April, I was notified of my position on the wait list — number 25, i.e., “Better luck next time.”  I’m not exactly sure what my next step is, but I will not be reapplying to PA school this year (and likely not ever, but you never know).  At this point, I just don’t want it enough, or for the right reasons.  Now, to figure out what I do want . . . .

Allergies and busy bees

I feel like it was just Easter . . . and then I blinked and four weeks flew by!

Awful allergies
Seasonal allergies hit all three of us hard at the beginning of the month.  We took G to the doctor, thinking it was something infectious, but he said he’d been seeing kids like that all morning and it was allergies.  Our pediatrician prescribed a low dose of Claritin, which seemed to help.  (After feeling pretty funky ourselves, despite our regular Neti pot habit, Matthew and I jumped on the Claritin bandwagon, too.)

Busy bees
April was pretty crazy around these parts. The day after Easter, my MIL had a hip replacement.  Fortunately, it went well, though getting back to “normal” has taken a bit longer than she expected/hoped.  She is both Gabriel’s main caregiver (when he’s not at preschool), as well as Matthew’s main gardening partner-in-crime, so we really noticed her absence.

Matthew was really busy work-wise the first half of the month.  No sooner did things settle down for him than MY work kicked into high gear.  As a result, my meditation practice started to fall by the wayside (just when I needed it the most, of course).  But there’s light at the end of the tunnel!

And into May . . .
The first few days of May are giving April a run for their money.  On Friday, my eight-month-long bike hunt [kind-of] ended when I purchased a Kona Dew Deluxe.

NewBike

And, for better or worse, I got my first-ever smart phone.  (Good news — it’s looking like I may be smart enough to use said phone!)

Saturday was a catch-up day.  A bit of phone learning and bike tinkering, though not quite what I’d hoped, because the rear rack from my previous bike didn’t quite fit on the newbie.

We ventured out early Sunday morning for a bike-by of a property that had an open house later in the day.  We confirmed that we did, indeed, want to make it to the open house that afternoon.  The trip was extra productive because the route we took on our bikes led to the discovery of 4-5 more letter-worthy properties (that we wouldn’t have found by car).

In the afternoon, we went back for the open house, and decided we wanted to make an offer.  And then things got crazy.  We seem to attract seller’s agents who like using the “give us your highest and best offer by X date and time” technique.

Sunday night and Monday morning were spent scrambling to figure out and put together a reasonable offer, all with our realtor somewhat out of commission due to injury and illness, and us dealing with Gabriel being ill, as well.  (Plus some work deadlines I had — crazy days, I tell you!)

Matthew took the day off work to be with Gabriel (another diagnosis of pneumonia, I’m afraid), while I dealt with the house stuff.  Our offer is submitted (one of at least three offers they received),  so now it’s just a waiting game.  I’m enjoying finally having a bit of space to breathe, especially because it might be temporary.

The seven year house hunt

Sometime in April of 2009, Matthew and I made our first offer on a house.  It was a low offer (but one we felt was fair, for an amount we were comfortable paying for the house in question), and it went nowhere.  It was by no means our “dream property,” and we didn’t want a starter home, so we shrugged it off.

Our house hunt it now entering its seventh year.  In that time, we’ve made a handful of offers, usually low offers on something that might have worked, but that we weren’t too sad to pass on.

It feels like we’re looking for a needle in a haystack (I thought there was a previous post outlining what we’re looking for, but I guess I need to work on that).  In the past six plus years, we’ve viewed hundreds (perhaps even thousands) of online listings.  The listings are first filtered through some of our criteria for price, lot square footage, location, and number of bedrooms.

If something looks interesting, the next step is to pull up a satellite view.  Sure, it may have a BIG yard, but is it a big, SUNNY yard?  Or does it have the potential to be a big sunny yard, i.e., are there trees we can remove, or is the shade coming from neighboring buildings and/or trees on neighboring lots?

On the maps, we also look at proximity to highways, train tracks, and other NIMBY factors, as well as looking at transportation options.  We’ve already limited our search to locations that would be bikeable [to current/potential work sites], distance-wise, but what would it actually be like to bike from Y to Z?  Is it at all convenient for public transit?  What about walkability?

The map test significantly reduces the number of properties that are actually worth seeing in person, but every now and then it happens.  Yesterday was one of those days, and the property in question even had an open house.

I like attending open houses because it means we don’t have to waste our realtor’s time with an official showing.  (I like the realtor we’re currently working with, and after over six years and at least as many realtors, I’d like to hang on to this one.)  With an open house, you just show up, pop in, and you’re on your way.

Of course, the last few years of house hunting have been with a little one in tow.  The hardest part of this by far is scheduling viewings around his sleep times; compared to that, the actual house tours are a piece of cake!  When he was little, we would just stick G in the Ergo and wear him while we toured houses.

Things are a little trickier now, but fortunately G is pretty flexible and low-key.  If we’re viewing a clean, safe property, we’ll sometimes bring a favorite toy or two and give him the option of walking around with us or plopping down somewhere with his toys.  (Dirty properties, or those with hazards, are a bit trickier, but we don’t encounter too many of those.)

Anyhow, I brought a couple of toys to yesterday’s open house, but G was content to walk around with us.  We had finished viewing the main floor, and Matthew opened the door to the basement.  In addition to an immediate view of some rather creative plumbing (I don’t think you ever really want to hear the word “creative” applied to plumbing), we were met with a special stench, which Matthew identified as cat pee (the owners had already moved out, so there are neither humans nor cats living in the house at the moment).

All in all, the basement was less than inviting, and Gabriel said he didn’t want to go downstairs.  I was also fine passing on that experience, so I suggested the two of us check out the second floor.  Now, Gabriel really likes cats, and I could tell that he was curious about Matthew’s comment.  In a quiet voice (so the realtor showing the house couldn’t hear), I tried to explain why we thought there had been a cat (or cats) in the house.  So we’re climbing the stairs up to the second floor, and Gabriel gets this really serious look on his face and says, “But what color was the cat?”

His non sequitur totally cracked me up, and now I feel inspired to use that line at random in conversations.  “Yes, I see your point, but what color was the cat?”

Unfortunately, after our quick walk through, we deemed yesterday’s house yet another non-starter — the location would have been great for both biking and walking, and decent for transit, and the house itself had some nice features, but the actual usable garden space wasn’t as big as we’d hoped, it was overpriced for the updates it needed, and we’re not sold on the school district.  It all added up to a big N-O.  And so the search continues . . . .

Previous house hunting posts:

 

 

Burning the beans

Yesterday morning Matthew and I embarked on the “picking an elementary school” quest  (more on this crazy business in a future post).  Yes, G is not yet four, but we’ll be applying this fall for Fall 2016 kindergarten, so it’s time we stepped up our game.

Anyhow, Matthew arranged to go into work late so we could make this school’s tour time.  It was already a slightly unusual morning, and I added quick soaking beans for dinner (bring to a boil, boil 2-3 minutes, remove from heat and let sit at least 2 hours) to my usual “getting people out of the house” tasks.  Finally, with G in his grandfather’s company, Matthew and I hopped on our bikes and headed to the school.  After the hour-long tour, we debated a bakery stop, but decided to skip it (a great decision, in retrospect!).

Shortly after our routes parted (Matthew to work, me back home), I remembered the beans.  You know how sometimes you wonder if you remembered to do something, e.g., TURNING OFF THE STOVE, but you’re really pretty sure you that you did it?  Yes?

This was not like that.  As soon as I thought of the beans, I was rather certain that I had NOT turned them off.  This meant one of two things — 1) my FIL was still at the house with Gabriel (they often, but not always, do out and about) and had discovered my mistake, or 2) all of our earthly possessions, and the place we call home, were going up in flames right that second (clearly the only two options).

I was about a mile from home, and I decided against calling my FIL.  If he was at the house, everything was fine.  If he was gone, there was nothing he could do, and I might be wasting precious seconds on the phone.

I booked it home on the bike.  As I passed our street on my way to the alley, I noticed that my FIL’s car was not there, and my stomach sank lower.  In the garage, I forced myself to take the time to secure Big Blue as usual, not wanting to add the insult of bike theft to the morning’s fun.

My route from the garage took me alongside the building, where our kitchen is located, and I could definitely smell something burning.  Assuming the worst, and not wanting to waste more time, I grabbed my phone and called 911.

After confirming that a fire crew was on the way, I headed to our building’s side door.  I had no intention of walking into a burning building, but other than the smell, there was no visible smoke or flame.  We keep a fire extinguisher in the hall closet just outside our kitchen (and right by the back/basement door), and I thought if I could grab that, I might be able to minimize the damage.

Before going up the stairs to our second floor apartment, I went to the basement, grabbed a hand towel off the clothesline, and soaked it with water to cover my face.  Then I cautiously headed upstairs, continuing as I saw no smoke.

Once inside our apartment, I discovered that we got lucky.  The beans and pan were scorched, but no flames.  I quickly turned off the burner, threw open some windows, and turned our HVAC system’s fan to “On” (I made one mistake here — any guesses?).  Then I grabbed a bunch of potholders, and, with the lid still in place, carried the offending pan outside.

By that time, I could hear and see the firetrucks, so there was not much point in calling dispatch back to say never mind.  The firefighters came in, looked around the kitchen, and confirmed that everything was okay.

While I think I did a pretty good job keeping my cool and acting logically, it took one of the firefighters to think to turn on our over-the-stove exhaust fan — duh!

It seemed odd to me that our smoke alarm hadn’t triggered in any of this.  The firefighters didn’t seem surprised or concerned by this — since there was no visible smoke, they wouldn’t have necessarily expected it to trigger (we pushed the test button to confirm that it was, in fact, working).

It turned out that my FIL had taken G to the zoo, and they missed all of the excitement here.  (If you have to have a firetruck visit your house, it may as well be when your 3-year-old is there to enjoy it, right?)

Unfortunately, despite there being no visible smoke, there was plenty of nastiness in the air.  I took advantage of the gorgeous weather to air things out at much as possible, but ugh!

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I assumed the pan would be a complete loss (and counted us lucky that losing a pan was the only consequence), but once I finally dumped the beans in the compost and looked at the pan, I realized that it can probably be salvaged with some elbow grease.

IMG_7014[1]

These DID start out as black beans, they just got a whole lot blacker.  After this, I had ZERO desire to try again — we had tempeh for dinner instead.

My mistake (other than, you know, leaving the stove on in the first place), that I referred to above, was turning on the HVAC system.  I was thinking it would dilute the smell and accelerate getting rid of it.  Instead, it took something that was largely (though certainly not 100%) contained to the kitchen (a hidden advantage of a not-open kitchen), and spread it throughout the rest of our apartment.  I had just replaced our furnace filter last week (we buy a fairly high quality air filter, but it is clearly NOT one that filters out smoke particles), and that’s shot.

I can’t help but think we could have enjoyed candles for an entire year with the amount of junk I put into the air in one hour yesterday!  When I was about Gabriel’s age, my mom had a similar incident with a very burned pot of sloppy joe’s.  I asked her about the smell, and she said it just took time.  In our case, there was enough burny, smelly stuff in the air, for long enough, to seep into the kitchen cabinets, at least those nearest the stove.  Guess the stench will help me remember to make sure the stove’s off before leaving the house!

 

 

Someone like you

I started writing this post back in December of 2011.  By “started writing,” I mean there was a title (inspired by Adele’s eponymous song) and a bunch of white space.

So, December 2011.  I was five months postpartum.  I’d been seeing a counselor, which was helping, but I was still well-stuck in the snares of postpartum depression.

Adele’s hit song, “Someone Like You,” was released in 2011, and from the beginning, it was a tear-jerker for me (apparently I’m not the only one, see this interesting WSJ piece on the use of appoggiatura in music).  In the months after G’s birth, it became deeply personal.   And I don’t mean I got a little bit teary, I mean sobbing, to the point that when it came on in the car, I probably should have pulled over.

For me, the words weren’t about finding another lover, but about finding myself again, and not the sad, depressed, wanting to go back in time self.  I couldn’t go back to my pre-C-section, child-free self, I had to figure out how to move forward.  Slowly and surely, with help from a lot of people (and with a few bumps, like the winter of 2012), that has happened.

For me, 2014 felt like a real turning point.

Matthew and I acknowledged the many ways that my depression had affected our relationship (in addition to the normal affects of having a child), and we sought help.  We had already started working with John Gottman’s book Seven Principals for Making Marriage Work, and we found a local therapist who had trained in Gottman’s methods.  Turns out that staying married, especially staying happily married, takes work, ya’ll.

Individually, I completed the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course and integrated mindfulness practice into my daily life.  This, too, is work.  It’s not a cure-all, and it requires real commitment, but I’ve seen real changes.

Back to the title of this post — in late October, I was driving home from the final MBSR course.  I often enjoyed driving in silence after class, but at some point that night, I turned on the radio.  When I was within two blocks of home, “Someone Like You” came on, and it felt like a sign.  I parked and the tears flowed.  But it felt different this time, mostly happy tears.

Sitting there, I felt like I had finally found the “someone like me” that I’d been searching for — someone scarred, but stronger.  Someone who wasn’t wishing for a different, long-gone life.  Someone living in the present.