So you think you can study.

It's 9:30 pm and my new glasses are on to try and stop the fatigue that bombards my eyeballs as I write out yet another 300 word essay exam answer. I have written 30 so far, with a further 8 fully coloured illustrations and I am tired. I don't care any more, but there are 170 to go. So the glasses stay, a placebo to convince me that my apathy and headaches have more to do with my sight than the fact that I can think of a million things I'd rather be doing. I am hunched slightly in my chair, because the chair is too high and my back too long and the stretch in the lower thoracic muscles is starting to burn. I will do yoga tonight to compensate while my body whines.

Pegged to the wire directly above my screen is a pencil drawing of Pont Alexandre with its beautiful lamp posts and La Tour in the background and I feel a million miles away from ever being there again. The cool wet air and the smudgy clouds over the chalk white barely tangible. To the right of the picture, strung over the same wire is a pair of red footprints, smudged ever so slightly at the biggest toe that belong to the Elfling when she was a baby. I didn't date the picture, and I had a moment of not being sure if it was actually Elfling or Monkey when I hung it, but it doesn't matter. It's a symbol, more than anything.

Underneath the Parisian scene and the footprints are innumerable kindy pictures brought home crumpled in bags to admire that are bright swirls of primary colours and smudged soft pastilles. A bright red kite with a trailing blue string and a Welsh coal miner's lamp to the left.

Above the bottom string is another one, strung with lanterns and Christmas craft which is hidden by pen and ink drawings of the medial orbital wall, posterior orbit (globe removed), medial nasal cavity, cross section of the spinal cord and the cerebellum all there to remind me. I think they're decorative in their own right - or would be if my apathy were not so pronounced.

Behind them all is my gilded map of the world with the ability to scratch off the paint of everywhere I have visited. There are great swathes of golden paint left on my map and I cannot wait until I can scrape more of it under my fingernails.

Next to my computer, to the left is my lamp with its warm white glow through the fluted shade. Plain matte silver stand that does all that is supposed to and nothing it is not. Propped up against it, the Santa photo from 2010 in its red leather frame. Anterior to both, becoming superheated by the vent from my notebook is Gray's Anatomy, leather bound, 15th edition with silver pages. The ribbon place holder within the axilla. Under the book is my tablet, closed and unloved at present as I instead stick to pen and paper.

To the right, posteriorly are two galvanised buckets filled with flotsam - pens, pencils, staplers, my glasses case. At least 4 erasers still in their wrappings, a sharpener. Receipts. Anterior to these is my mouse pad and tiny mouse, my pen and my phone which buzzes occasionally with facebook notifications that I've yet to turn off or reminders for things that I've long since forgotten. Then anterior again is my workbook, filled with exam answers that I hope are acceptable, because I have so little guidance about what they should actually be. I will be showing it to friends who have passed to see if there's anything I'm doing wrong at some point.

To the left and right of the desk are my new white bookcases. Gradually being filled from the piles around the house that previously had no home, and storing up my collection of study notes and journals. My big travel book closest to me on the left, for those times when I need to sit with a Matilda-esque behemoth on my lap and ruin my neck by craning through its pages of beautiful pictures. One day soon I hope to add an atlas.

Behind me is the new piano, bought for the girls' lessons, but also for me to sit at quietly when they are in bed and flex my fingers over so that I can enjoy the sound. I am desperate to learn how to play, in a way I never once appreciated at 11 when it was offered, and so I am gradually, and poorly, teaching myself while under the guise of supervising the Elfling's practise sessions.

Behind and to my left is the little Ikea table and chairs where the babies eat their dinner when it is too cold or wet to eat outside at the dinner table. It is permanently sticky and the paint is coming off in places, but it makes me happy. They all 3 of them sit there, telling stories, or jokes that make no sense and giggling together, and even when they are all tucked up safely in bed it is still happy and giggly there.

And in the middle of it all is me. Wearing all black so that with my hair out I look like a cat burglar in bare feet. Everything stretchy because I hate anything digging into me when I'm studying. Toenails half painted and fingernails ragged from too much biting while I'm studying. Procrastinating with 13 tabs open in my browser and only 4 of them related to study. My fitness pal chiding me because I've not eaten enough calories today but not being hungry, and slightly addicted to the feature that tells me how little I'll weigh in 5 weeks if I keep it up. Recognising that not eating will make it harder to study but liking that my hips protrude again too much to let it go. Recognising that that in itself is not particularly healthy but not caring.

Books

University libraries smell different. They smell of old books and recycled air and ticking clocks, the same as other libraries, but there are different notes too. The smell of toner and carbon copy paper. Ink. Sneaky bottles of caffeinated beverages.

I am studying again, in a library even though I have an office at home with lovely natural light and white bookcases filled with texts. Somehow the artificial bright white light and the smell of toner and copy paper are more meaningful and I study better when I am here in my jeans and my hoodie in the middle of Summer with my feet curled up under me on the chair.

It is University holidays so it is quieter than usual and the quiet is welcoming. I like the tapping of the other computer keys and the click as the second hand navigates the clock on the wall. I like the clearing of throats from some unseen person in the corner and he librarian shuffling her things around in between checking facebook. I like the rumbling of the heavy metal cart that they use to replace books on shelves and the way it clangs across the tiles. I like the noisiness of the silence as the airconditioner hums in the background.

My newest textbook is open in front of me, its pages gilded at the edges so that when I get to a new page that I have not opened yet, I have to separate the pages. Proof that this is mine and mine alone. Somehow, for a brand new book they have managed to colour the pages into a sense of age and the type set is ever so subtly incomplete so that little chunks are missing out of letters. I love it. It looks old even though it is new.

I have always preferred new books. The excitement of birthdays and Christmas mornings when a brand new book smelling of brand new book would be opened and the first creases to be put into the paper spine would be caused by me and my reading. Even as an adult, this preference persevered, I think because of the novelty of having something new.

When I was a teenager, I came across the red cloth covered volume of Tennyson's poems from which this blog takes its title that belonged to my father. I have no idea if he bought it new, but I suspect, owing to both its age, condition and his financial status when he bought it, that it was not new. I have always loved it. Stole it from home, technically, without asking, because of that desperate love for it. It went to university with me, and lay on my cardboard box of a bedside table under the posters of wizards and dragons. I love that it is a book from history that has history of its own.

Earlier in the year, I was desperate to find a book that is not available in book stores. Even though it was an award winning book, it has not been republished in some time. I have its sequel, triumphantly scavenged from a second hand book fair but this book, one of my favourites of a childhood that refuses to end completely, has eluded me. I don't think I ever had a copy of my own - it was only ever a library book, so with the magic of the internet I searched for it.

The Book Depository didn't have it, but they suggested Abe Books, who I'd always been vaguely suspicious of. The idea of buying used books online feeling strange - I'm not sure why given my op shopped collection of Trixie Beldens. But they had my book, in a tiny independent store in Perth of all places in the world, and it would cost me merely $2. So I bought it, wondering how defaced the cover would be and if there would be pages missing.

There weren't.

Like the first time I'd read it, it was a library book, with the library plate still on the inside of the cover and the stamps from those who had borrowed it before, just like the one I'd read as a child. It was a different cover, so it wasn't *my* book, but this one, with its own history, that many other children had read before me, was somehow more special than any other. A new book would not have been the same because I'd already read it, had cracked the spine and smudged the pages. Had cried on a few. This was more my book than any reprint ever could have been.

I also bought, on the same day, for the princely sum of 2 pounds, Jane of Lantern Hill, the last written and published book of LM Montgomery's life. And it came to me with a piece bitten out of the cover and a little girl's name written on the inside cover in a childish script and although the book itself was not anywhere near my favourite, feeling like an idealised and slightly beatific version of Emily, it belongs on my shelf, because it too, was beloved by little girls who belong to the cult of PEI.

There is no other option, if I want to complete my collection of Trixie Belden's, especially if I want to know what happens in the last 2 books that I've never read. Unfortunately, due to the popularity and scarcity of these books, they are being offered at ludicrous prices of over $40 each online. There is part of me, though, that needs to know, desperately, if Jim ever kissed Trixie, after the lead up of all the books before then. But somehow I think I'm going to be disappointed. It's kind of nice, in a way, to know that the series has never finished for me, and that those books are still out there.

I wonder sometimes, when I look at our well worn copies of Harry Potter, and muse regularly about whether I think Snape was in fact part of one of the best stories ever written about unrequited love or just a slime ball if my girls will ever feel the same way about books. I hope so, because there is something still, that no e-reader can ever give, and that's the smell of type print that smears just a little under sweaty hands and tears that fall over stories that seem too real. And the way it feels to slide your fingers between gilt edged pages to open something that has never before been opened, and to learn something new.

On My Own

I woke up on Sunday morning to the brush of the Possum's silky head against my cheek. The musty unwell smell of him as he curled in against the curve of my neck, his knees tucked up against my belly. I rubbed my cheek against his head involuntarily and listened to him mumble in his sleep while I cried. Silent sobs that matted his already damp hair.

I think I thought then, that I would not be able to forgive myself for later that day getting on a plane. And certainly, while I stood in line at the gate and the tears messily rolled off my chin and onto my new hand luggage I did not feel optimistic. All of my perspective and determination deserted me, left me desolate as I walked across the tarmac, wind whipping my hair into my eyes.

It was a short flight, bumpy, turbulent as my neighbour sculled Bundy and Coke while I stared out the window, watching the flat blue sea blend into the winter blue sky. The tears dried up somewhere near the Proserpine coast as my ears popped painfully for descent. I looked out at the water morosely, not wanting to find anything to appreciate. Enjoying my special brand of misery, branding myself with it to alleviate the guilt. The guilt of being a mother who abandons her children for 3 months. Even if she had no choice. Or no real choice at all, when the choice is unemployment and poverty and throwing away all the years of training.

My forehead rattled against the cold window as the mountains came into view. Beautiful mountains that reflected in the still water. In spite of myself, my tears dried as I watched the clouds graze across the fields, fluffy herds in the sky as we dove between them towards the tarmac. I felt the tiniest prickle along my spine as the possibility for adventure filled my mind for the first time. 3 months to head off to the beach after work to watch the last light on the water if that's what I wanted to do.

But as I walked off the plane, and into the cramped, tattooed and sunburned departure lounge I was grateful for familiar faces as we pulled my luggage off the carousel and headed to the hospital to pick up the keys to what was to be home for the next few months. The tears nearly started again when I saw the ugly apartment with the dirty floors and the stained carpet. The bed with the polyester blend green and yellow garish sheets and plastic pillows. The broken toilet and the dead phone line, and worst of all, no internet. If it had been just me I would have wallowed, then. Curled up in a ball on the thankfully clean couch and sobbed until it too was manky to match the rest of the house.

But my beautiful guardians took me to the shops where I bought new linen and groceries and a plant, so that I would have at least one living thing with me in my little house of mismatched ugly furniture and cheap fittings. And once they left, and the house echoed with all the sounds of silence, I didn't fall into a heap. Instead I moved the furniture around, trying not to notice the inch of dirt under each piece, as I made it less cramped, and more welcoming. Banishing the ugliest things to the room I don't need. Made my bed with the lovely light natural fibred linen and fluffed up the pillows. And I stocked my shelves with fresh food and fruits and curled up on the couch to watch some TV before crawling into bed and wondering at the vast emptiness, while I curled up on my side.

The next day was Monday, and my first day of work. I looked nice. I looked respectable and I was on my best behaviour. I smiled as I met new people, eager to make a good impression as a hard worker, a team player. And I smiled tightly every time someone reminded me I was staying for 6 months and tried hard to look enthusiastic at the thought. Knowing my eyes told the truth but not wanting to offend. Until someone asked me if I had any family, noticing my wedding rings and asking in that polite breezy way. Asking if I had children, and how many? And I thought of my sick little possum, who I had sung to sleep only 24 hours before as he rocked feverishly in my lap and I burst into inconsolable tears. Ruining my first day make up. And as much as I tried they would not stop. I did not care that my director was in front of me. Or some man that I do not know. Or that I never cry at work. Because I needed to cry and it's natural to cry and to be sad and to miss my babies. No matter how many people tell me that it will be fine.

But I got through the day somehow. Relieved when I could just work. Relieved that it was stuff that I knew how to do and that I could just get in and do it. Surprised when the end of the day came, and everything was ok and there was no fear in coming back. And I caught a taxi home in the afternoon light, put on my running clothes and went for a wander along the river. The beautiful river turning gold as the breeze teased ripples along the surface. The trees whispering quietly to me, to not be afraid while the birds chirped merrily. The heavy fog of murraya and honey blossom, warmed by the winter sun perfuming the air. And it finally felt ok. Felt worthwhile me being here. And I knew it would be ok.

Automne

The last time my fingers burned and my cheeks were bright and my hair bounced over a thick pashmina wrapped around my ears, I was in Paris and the stompy feet to keep them warm in the mornings and the shake of the shoulders before stepping under the shower and the cold tiles in the bathroom was a ritual that made me glad every day I was there. I thought of that tonight as I let my skin get cold, the frigid air brushing against my naked arms instead of covering up of how much I enjoy Autumn.

I bounced to work this morning in wonderful shoes and interesting tights, my favourite black dress and a trench coat I've learned to tie "just so". I felt sparkly, even though, for once, I was not wearing anything sparkly or even red. I was just bubbled up on the inside, happy and warm and red blooded.

I love leaving work as the sun is starting to set and the golden glow comes off the city as it reflects the mirrored buildings. Getting to my car when the sky is pink and streaky and the birds are chattering and noisy. I was excited to be alive every day that I was in France. There was so much potential just in the act of waking up in the mornings that lazing around in bed did not appeal. So much I could be doing or seeing or being. I miss being excited just by the call of the wind.

There's a life lesson in there, and an obvious one at that. One that gets swamped because of all the mundane and real life things that threaten to overtake in a mutinous coup at any time. But it was not the museums or the galleries or even the tower that I thought about most this morning as I shivered putting on my mascara. It was our little white apartment and walking through the streets. That first blast of fresh cold air as it burned my ears. Of holding Bingley's chilled hand until my furnace like ones warmed it up. Of bouncing while I walked.

I remember being on a boat in the middle of the Seine and closing my eyes under a bridge just so wishes could come true. Standing in line at Franprix with a bottle of 2E wine and a box of pasta and being so very much alive.

I stood under the shower tonight, unwilling to get out and be abused by the cold and thought about how much simpler life can be when you're on holiday and you only live for yourself. And some days those thoughts make me morose and want to chuck in this stupid career and the aeons of study and work and effort. Do something simple instead. Something that doesn't take but just provides. A normal job.

But I want as well, a life less ordinary. Where I can push myself to my mental limits and never say "I could have". I never want to be that person. I want to retire when I am still young at heart but with a roof over my head. I want to travel to Nepal and camp on the side of the mountain and trek until I'm dirty and dusty and hot and my feet have blisters. But I want to go to New York too, and drink fancy cocktails in an amazing dress with even more spectacular shoes. I want to go on a Cruise Ship that is taller than the highest mountain in Brisbane and goggle at the opulence of the lobby. I want to do things that I will never be able to do if I just do enough.

It's probably a curse to always want more. I can think of at least one good friend who may or may not read this who will probably shake their head. Think that killing myself for this job and being so strung out by study and stress and mindfuckery that I can't even hug them when I see them but struggle not to keel over instead is not worth it. That any benefit I can find, even if it's making a 20 year old boy feel less miserable for 15 minutes does not weigh up against the rest. And maybe that's true too.

But this is my truth and that mindfuckery took me to Paris where the wind was cold and slapped my face and my fingers burned and my ears hurt. And it will take me other places too, other places that allow me to dream and wonder and plan and anticipate. And it forces me to think. To be organised. To be unselfish sometimes. To be a better person. And that's probably the best bit of all. 

Cattleya

I woke, unable to remember if conservation of energy was the first or second law of thermodynamics. It raced around in my belly, sending spirals of nausea in a complicated intricate loop before Bingley sleepily reminded me that it probably didn't matter either way. I lay in bed for a bit longer, thinking over the study of the day before, sticking it down again as if it were peeling off the walls of memory in long curly strips. I watched the dawn shadows on the ceiling and walls and the sun rose in the lightly grey morning, the curtains soft white and whispering as the house breathed in and out.

I feel overwhelmed but somehow at peace. There is no more that I can learn, no more space on the walls and so my job now is to keep all those recalcitrant, hand drawn diagrams stuck using more and more glue every hour that goes by until I'm sticky and gritty and tired.

I climbed out of bed later than I intended and poured a glass of water, sipping it slowly in the kitchen, the cool morning breeze tickling my bare belly above my pyjamas that were falling off my hips. At Bingley's insistence I cut a wedge of red papaya and scooped out the glistening seeds and carried it onto the new boards of the verandah and sat on the ground. The papaya was only just ripe, orange red and firm but releasing juice between teeth and over wrist. I scooped the flesh and watched the sky. Breathed the fresh, slightly damp air as it snaked up the hill and across my clavicle, teasing the unkempt hair and tickling it across the angle of my jaw.

The tension slowly uncoiled, the wound spring losing the obvious strain; the ache in my shoulders from holding my muscles so tight receded. I relaxed back into the wall and watched the birds fly in and out of the trees, listened to the hum of traffic unseen below and the helicopter across the sky. I saw with a tiny leap in my heart the beautiful purple orchids that have burst into bloom in my tree and took it as an omen.

The orchids belonged to my grandparents and I've had them for 12 years. How I have not killed them I am unsure, but they live still and they flower when they want, unaffected by season or care or attention. And somehow always when I need them most, when I need my grandmother's voice in my ear. Sometimes she encourages me. Often she admonishes me. Sometimes she talks about something completely unrelated. But I love that she's still there, keeping me sane.

I had a moment last night, in the lamplight with glowing skin and tumbled hair, breathing slightly unsteadily as I moved, of wondering at the sanity of repeating the branches of the external carotid artery in rhythm. Of finding the humour at an inopportune moment and spasming with laughter as I traced the path of the opthalmic branch of the internal carotid artery across Bingley's eyebrow. Leaning forward to kiss his nose as I giggled before arching my back and repeating Superior Thyroid, Ascending Pharyngeal, Lingual, Facial, Occipital, Preauricular, Maxillary, Superficial Temporal as my hair tickled my back.

I am a complete dork, but one who still has her sense of humour. And thanks to a burst of purple cattleyas, a teensy sense of hope as well.

Air Kerma

I knew it was coming. The perfect storm had been brewing for weeks, and while there had been the occasional histrionic outburst, it had only ever been an opener to the main event. Today, after a tutorial that confirmed that I still have far too much to cram into my head in 5 short days than is humanly possible, I came home in the bubbling, gravid evening with the skies bruised and angry to make dinner.

We have been eating a lot of 15 minute meals lately, simple, boring food that the kids will eat and require minimal effort or brain power. I had a little more time this afternoon so I made boeuf bourguignon. Or casserole. Meat in gravy with a few vegetables.  I did it properly too, flouring the meat, preparing the vegetables, deglazing the pan with yet another half drunk bottle of wine bought to try and understand the mysteries of a glass with dinner.

It smelled fantastic. It simmered down to the perfect gravy consistency. The house smelled of red wine and garlic and beef. Perfect for a stormy afternoon. Warm and filling.

Of course, the kids refused to eat it. The Monkey making gagging noises - she hates "sauce". The Possum tasting the potato with gravy exactly once. The Elfling only ate hers under sufferance and a willingness to show up the others. I teetered on the edge. Reason completely lost and temper frayed. Ego already shattered on one front, pushing precipitously on another.

The Possum had a tantrum about something. He has them often now, his understanding of speech and language and his deficiencies in both culminating in outrage at not being understood. He stood in front of me, then climbed on top of me to put his screaming face in front of mine. He could not speak to tell me what was wrong as his tantrum had reached the state where he was only capable of emitting noise and crying. It escalated as I was incapable of understanding him. I burst into tears, and then became desperate and terrified of exploding. I put him on his bed and shut his door fearful of the way I had lost all sense of reason. I didn't yell or scream or hit, and that scared me more than if I'd done any or all of those things. I was beyond anger.

I started to shake while sobbing. My brain unable to process anything. Leaning forward, my arms holding up my torso as I rocked and sobbed. Barely aware of Bingley beside me. I retched and only just made it to the bathroom to divest the only appreciated meal of the evening into the toilet bowl. I knelt on the cold floor with the tiles digging into my knees and convulsed. My head resting against the lid as I sobbed and vomited and shook. I have never in eight years wished so very much that I could be alone. My mascara stung my eyes and my teeth hurt. Horrible suppressed memories of hyperemesis flashed across my skull making me shake more. The terrifying feeling of my body being separate from myself and losing all control. My body only a vessel for my angst until it was all gone and the familiar aching sensation filled the void.

Emptied, I turned on the shower and put my shuddering self under the spray, as hot as I could before my skin flamed and stung. Scrubbed clean and pink and hollow until the shaking had steadied and only my insides that were quivering. I brushed my teeth in the soft pyjamas I wore when I birthed the Monkey then took a deep breath, walked back into my real life and the bedtime routine. Dressed the Possum, read him his stories. Feigned interest as he counted the tigers in his book before kissing him goodnight and walking out of his room.

Then, pretense expunged, the anger returned. The desperate snotty, tearful anger. Anger at Bingley for every time he smiles condescendingly and tells me "you'll be fine". Anger at those that don't understand. Anger at the fact that I did this to myself by accepting this job and pursuing this path. Anger at the hopelessness. Anger at my brain for not being as youthful and spry as it once was. Anger at ridiculous curricula that don't cover understanding of concepts but expect memorising of tables and formulae that I will never ever use in a clinical setting.

And then, eventually, I stopped crying. It took a while. I used a lot of tissues and I haven't picked them up yet. They're in a damp, snotty pile beside me on the desk. But once I'd stopped snivelling and the fog of despair had lifted a little I was left with the "now what" part of any complete, messy meltdown.

A very large, very tired, very sensible part of me wanted to go curl up in bed. Sleep for a month and wake up in another time and place. But the bigger part, the simultaneously damaging and preserving part of me picked up my bag of study notes and text books and pulled them out. Arranged them on the desk and picked up a highlighter. Made me practice exam questions and leaf through a hefty text book and ask Bingley to give me a pop quiz.

When I say I am going to fail this exam, it is not for dramatic effect - the proportion of persons who fail is actually quite high, and my best case scenario involves failing at least some sections. Acceptance of this fact is very difficult for me to come by, as it feels, rightly or wrongly, that I have so much more to prove; when all I know for certain is that I can prove that this is a very bad idea. There's also the stubborn fact that I've never failed an exam before, and I don't particularly want to. Aside from the ego thing, if/when I fail this, I have to do it again, and more than the study and the cost, it's feeling this way for another 6 months that terrifies me. At least with hyperemesis there was a baby to cuddle at the end.

Azygos

The polish lasted 20 hours. So a new record. Scratching the polish off like superglue from fingers is oddly hypnotic. And I still haven't bitten them today. My toes are still pretty.

I went for my 6 weekly wax appointment this morning and the wax was too hot. My thigh has a red blotch on it that curves upwards and across the softest part. It doesn't hurt any more but the redness remains.

I tried to study today. I opened all my books, I laid out my favourite pens. And then I just sat there. Blankly. For probably an hour. I read 14 words in an e-mail and all rational thought deserted me. My pen trembled in my fingers so I put it down. Bit my lip.

Then I shakily wrote a few words about the azygos vein. Which means "no pair". The irony stung just a little bit.

Panic, it is all encompassing. But my legs are soft and smooth and I still have twinkly toes. And I sent a gift today, to someone who means a lot to me. And I have to remember that the sun will keep on rising and falling whether I fail anatomy or not.

Bonus points if you pick up all the labelling errors (to be fair I did it at 3am).  

Pastel

My toenails are blue. The paint job is decidedly wonky but I'm getting better. I tried my fingernails too and I look like a 4 year old who has stolen her Mum's makeup. I doubt they'll still be painted tomorrow as my tolerance record for paint on my nails is about 14 hours. But for the moment they sparkle like the twilight sky and the acrid smell is pleasing. And if you don't look too closely you can't see the uneven cuticles. Besides, it stops me biting them. Mostly.

I have been studying so hard that it feels like my brain is battered and bruised. But the panic still rises inside of me and bubbles up in a fountain of acid in my throat so I keep pushing on and forcing more knowledge about the popliteal fossa into a reluctant and terrified brain.

I am sleepy tonight, the first night in a week. No caffeine today. It was raining hard and friends visited so I drank cider on the couch and laughed instead, but the nagging fear crept along my shoulder and whispered in my ear about the time I was wasting. Was I not afraid of failure?

Last weekend for Easter I studied hard when we weren't visiting or listening for the Easter Bunny. But it wasn't enough and I spent last week feeling guilty and anxious. We went to the rainforest and climbed rocks for hours until my limbs felt soft and heavy and ached to move. We swam in rock pools and under waterfalls and I climbed halfway up a waterfall to take pictures of rainbows in the spray. We left the path and down to where the water is hidden and took off all our clothes to swim in the stream. It was so beautiful that for a few hours I forgot to be anxious and my eyes glowed gold. I climbed a fallen tree that was over a gorge and I lay there in a shaft of sunlight through the green sky with my cheek against the softly curling moss. I dangled my arms down and watched the rushing water 3m below me and thought about all the patients I see with broken bones and bodies who fall 3m. Then closed my eyes and smiled. Bingley just shook his head.

I was so sore the next day. Not in my legs, which I expected because of all the steps. And the climb. And the bounding over rocks. But it was my arms that hurt. I had used them to cling to the rocks, especially the slippery ones so that I wouldn't fall. Up there, half way up a waterfall. It was worth it.

I finished reading my first Hemingway book two nights ago, giving into insomnia. The Old Man and the Sea. I had never read Hemingway before and did not know what to expect. I am still not sure. I feel a little awe and a little despair because he makes me feel as if I waste words. His words are so sparse, so spare. And yet they paint pictures that my airy adjective heavy narratives always seem to fall short of. I never thought of writing having colours and texture before, but I saw it after reading that little palm sized book. I feel like my writing is weak and pastel and his is bold and bright. I think pastels are often pretty but I live for colour. I want to write in colour.

I want to go away for a while and study and not have responsibility or things to do. I don't want to pack school bags tomorrow morning. Or brush hair that has been matted by the soap bubbles that they foamed in the bath tonight. I want to sleep and drink caffeine and go slightly crazy with no one to be sane for. I want to wake when I wake and the breeze is brushing the curtain across my cheek and sleep when I collapse. I don't want the accusatory faces when I just want to sit. When all rational thought has fled and instead there are only the cacophonous voices of tangential strings. Medial head of gastroc and tendon of soleus. Semi membraneous. Semitendinosus. Synovium. Remnant of sciatic artery and division below popliteus.

I don't want to get up again while writing this, and pat and rock and sing him to sleep for him to get up yet again and smile cheekily over the back of the couch. It's not funny tonight and his beautiful eyes make me frustrated.

I want to go away for a while and be crazy somewhere. Hear the waves crash and cut my feet when I jump through rock pools. Feel my hair swell with salt. Watch the moon rise. Drive for hours through the bush for a sprig of wattle and stand on top of the pulpit overlooking the schism. Red cliffs on one side and blue mists on the other. Sunlight on my face.

I'm not sure how I will live another week of this.

Do or do not, there is no try.

When I was little and at school, one of my teacher's (funnily enough, my Dad's) catch phrases was "there's no such word as can't". Indeed, according to him, all things were possible, I just hadn't found the solution yet. I can remember being cranky and wanting desperately to give up on whatever fantastical problem solving task he'd given me and being furiously rebellious in my head by shouting "can't can't can't" over and over. But what made me angriest still, was that I knew he was right. There was always a solution. Sometimes it was inelegant. Often I didn't like it. But there was always a way.

I find myself now, with too much on my plate and an exam that I'm certain I will fail wailing desperately in my head that I can't. I can't do this. I can't do more of this. I don't WANT to do this. And then I hear his voice as well, telling me that there's no such word. And I'm cranky. So very very cranky. I don't want to think of a solution. I don't want to work hard and that BE the solution. I just want things to be easy. But they're not.

I have too much to do and not enough time. I have too much I want to do and no ability to factor it in. And there are things that desperately need to be done that I don't want to face. And I want to hide under the blankets until it all goes away. Except it won't. And I really only have a few choices of which can't is not one.

The first choice is that I squander $2450 and a good portion of my self respect and just fail my exam. Not show up for it. Or not attempt it. Face the consequences of that. Ignore the looming deadline, be the parent and the artist I want to be, and make it up later. As if it were that easy (financial implications aside). This exam which I am sure to fail regardless of the effort of the next few weeks is more than just about getting it out of the way. The results are given to my training hospital. All my superiors are given my results. I have good reasons for not being able to study as much as my single, financially unencumbered, childless colleagues. But do you think they'll care about that? Or will I just be another clichéd woman who ought not to have been given a training place in the first instance?

There is no leeway. There is no understanding. There are no magical extra hours in the day that I'm given. And so my poor children go to vacation care every day with no parental holiday to look forward to and I force them to accept this life too while not being able to show benefit for it. There is no extra income. There is no extra time. I am not a better parent. We have no house. We own nothing. We are not building anything. Just my career which takes and takes and takes. From all of us.

And I know it gets better. I know that 5 years from now if I finally finish this that that's it. There's the finish post. The final one. 15 years after passing GAMSAT. 19 years after starting university. 32 years after starting school. It's there. And I think to myself, 5 years is really not so bad. Out of 32 it's less than 16%. I've made it 84% of the way! I have to keep going. And I hear my Dad and he smirks a bit and reminds me there's no such word as can't.

But the tantrum in my head right now is so epic. So painfully loud. It wakes me from sleep. It taunts me when awake. It clangs around and makes my eyes burn and my stomach clench and my muscles ache. And I ought to be studying right now. Practising exam questions until I can rote write beautiful essay answers and not have to have this conversation with myself again in 6 months. But instead I'm listening to the tantrum and I'm angry with myself for not listening to my Dad instead.

There is a solution. I just haven't found it. Yet.

Pterygopalatine Fossae

My fingers are cold and mottled, the blood vessels visible below the ink-stained skin like grout between uneven cobblestones. My rings are loose and fall forward onto the knuckle when I move my fingers and then back again when the movement changes. Threatening to fly off if I were to wave my hand or gesticulate.

Libraries are always cold - cold and dry. Keeping pages safe and their excellent mustiness preserved. Stopping the march of decay from ambient moisture and heat.

I am curled up with my knees against my chest, my chin resting atop as my fingers write and draw and type. Cloistered away in a tiny study room with blank walls, a mountain of heavy books and my new pen. The books are the oldest ones they had available in the library. Ancient anatomy texts that smell vaguely of formalin and are stained at the edges. Worn cloth covers that are threadbare at the bindings. I like them better than the new.

The stains on my fingers are from the new pen, an art pen purchased from an achingly beautiful store with every type of art supply possible. It has the narrowest nib. Each stroke less than one tenth of a millimetre. Just ten micrometres across. Ten quintillion yoctometres. I am irritated because my calcaneus is wrong. Bohler's angle is wrong and the adjacent navicular is too broad, but I keep on sketching, feathery strokes deepening the margins on the soft artist paper.

Occasionally I shiver and involuntarily pull my arms closer to my body, make my surface area smaller. And my wrist adjusts the angle as I pull the paper closer and keep drawing. Flick of the eyes to my 4 reference books, back to the paper. And so on. Avoiding the temptation to approximate. Occasionally my right hand gets sore and I switch, use my less precise left fingers to shade and etch, trying to improve the dexterity in both.

My hair sometimes falls across my face and I tuck it back absent mindedly, smelling the faint peroxide of the semi permanent "rinse" I put through my hair this morning and staining the tip of my ears in the process. The perfume and "bamboo extract" wafting around, trying desperately to mask it and somehow highlighting instead. Sometimes instead of tucking immediately I bring the lock of hair forward and twist it between my fingers, squinting slightly at the teinture. The unexpected darkness from hair that had been "nearly black" before. I think I will like it, but I'm afraid I won't - the contrast between dark and pale already too stark.

I am eating raspberries from the punnet. Deep red and indecently large.Juicy and plump that burst between teeth. Little seeds that stick in my teeth and ruby juice that mingles with the ink stains on my fingers. They are worth the $8 I paid for them. I have pepitas too. Soft green and crunchy. But I like the raspberries better.

I am supposed to be reviewing the pterygopalatine fossa this afternoon, but I'm not. I know I should and it makes me feel guilty and nervous in the pit of my stomach, but I want to draw instead so I am pretending drawing counts. It doesn't really, though at least I have an accurate picture of the sustentaculum in my mind. I guarantee they won't ask that on my exam.

My work involves focusing mostly on a spot a fixed distance from my eyes. I don't like it and my lenses are not as mobile as they once were. I find the outer edges of my long distance vision softer than it was previously. The colours are unaffected but the sharpness and definition has changed. I am fearful of this. Of losing my sight. Any of it. How could I draw if I can't see? Then I remember I could wear glasses and am slightly mollified. But only slightly.

The temptation to procrastinate is strong. Even from this which is procrastination in the first place. I want to open my e-mail. Or facebook. Click on things mindlessly. Read my favourite blogs. But I want to write here too because I have been neglectful and I feel it. I have let other relationships drift in the past but this one I want to hold onto. Luckily blogs are very forgiving.

Omohyoid, Digastric, Scalenus, Sternocleidomastoid. They were on my list to revise today, but I drew them last week and I am cheating myself by pretending that counts. I can't remember their innervation and I find it difficult to care, but I have to. There are only three weeks until my exam and I am suspiciously calm. Not because I am confident of passing, but the opposite. It seems so inevitable that I am going to fail that being upset about it seems silly. Except I paid thousands of dollars to sit the exam and will have to pay thousands again when I fail. And I could have bought shoes instead.

I brought my Physics text with me today, because I like it and sometimes I highlight passages in it that interest me. These are of course not the passages that I need to know for my exam. It thrills me in the tiny secret places in my brain that fizzle and pop about the understanding of what is un-understandable. Derstandable? That make me feel connected to the universe and an important collection of tiny particles that are not even a speck of sand on the beach of our galaxy. Feel oddly comforted by being so insignificant and yet able to do so many things. I wonder if that's how quarks feel.

It's 3pm and my self imposed time limit for being productive again is up and yet I know I'll stretch this out a few more minutes. That the e-mail that I've forced myself virtuously from reading while writing this will be read and that facebook will be refreshed.

Then I'll curl up again, with the pterygopalatine fossa in front of me, and I'll be an expert in an hour. Hopefully.

Into the tree

I was walking home, well to my car at least, at dusk, when I noticed the clouds and the sunset and the glint off the water under the rain. The fresh, spicy Autumn air was everywhere burning just the tips of my ears. I have to park a fair way from the bus stop most mornings and the birds were screeching in the trees - rainbow feathers falling around in a glorious blizzard of colour. I was so busy looking up and smiling at the beauty of it all that I walked straight into a tree, only avoiding hitting my face because I was carrying my books in front of me. It was very unglamorous and I doubt I looked very professional. Gazing up at the stars is not the sort of behaviour one expects from a wise and serious registrar, stressed by exams and study and long hours. But I find I can't help it.

Today I did my first lot of interventional procedures. Using both hands to steady and guide. To use my knowledge and my skills and my kick arse coordination (thanks, years of gaming!) to safely and as untraumatically as possible assist in the medical care of patients. It was such a tiny tiny thing, but snapping on that latex, and prepping and draping skin and doing something that could impact so strongly pushed that tiny little switch that lit up a whole room inside of me. I feel happy and light and excited by all that I'm learning - and I'm learning so much. There are so many amazing teachers that are happy to teach and I have to remind myself to slow down a little sometimes, so enthusiastic do I feel about wanting to understand everything.

I was in a physics tutorial yesterday and there was a concept being explained that required thinking out of regular dimensions and space and using a different space. Non cartesian planes (Poor Descartes!). And we don't technically need to know it for the exam so when asked about it our tutor smiled and said that he could explain it but that if we'd prefer, just to think of it as magic. And while I am too curious to ever just leave it at that, the explanation was no less magic for me when I understood it. I am in an area of such phenomenal discovery and advances that it is hard not to be blown away by the human achievement of it all.

Sometimes I am sad and I miss my everyday clinical life. I miss the simplicity and complexity (and the beauty of that paradox) of physically interacting always with patients. And sometimes I question why I'm here and why I'm doing this. But then days like today I am buoyant and gleaming and walking into trees. And I figure that if the sky is still so beautiful and the colours so vivid then my choices can't be all bad and I bounce a little higher with each step and keep on keeping on.

The Library

Against the window in the green chair with sunlight spilling over hair and glinting with every movement. Red toenails peeping out from feet tucked up under and chin propped up on a wrist with furrows over the brow. Anatomy text on the ground physics text in lap and a highlighter gripped in the free hand.

Thick glasses perched on the end of sagging nose and Oxford shirt ironed impeccably. A Tom Clancy novel held up as though a piece of music being read and conducted. A mole on the fourth finger of the hand and a battered wedding ring.

Upright in an orange chair, sensible shoes flat on the floor. Shimmering nude stockings in the light stealing through the plate windows. Carefully coiffed hair in neat waves with slides holding it all away from a faded face.  Lurid romance pages being turned languidly without expression changing at all. Just thin crepe hand lifting occasionally while eyes travel slowly.

Laptop. Large glasses. Pile of books. Even bigger headphones. Head dipping regularly in time with unheard beat. Fingers occasionally tapping rhythm soundlessly while the keyboard keys click softly. Concentration. Black hair in need of a trim. Unmatched socks.

Harrassed and hair unbrushed. Pulled back into an askew clip. Absent mindedly rocking the giant pram back and forth; back and forth. Magazine open on the bench beside and flicking through the pages without reading just looking at the pictures. Toddler on the floor at feet with a board book flicking through the pages looking at the pictures.

Heavy metal trolleys groaning with books wending across the carpet and squeaking. Books lifted and returned, one after another until all gone and then the trolleys abandoned at the end of rows. Some trolleys left full and no books unpacked, a cornucopia of other people's choices. Little flashes at someone else's psyche.

Tables littered with haphazard piles of books abandoned by their collectors. History books. Travel books. Western comics. Chick lit with pastel covers and wry, simpering by lines.

Sirens outside the plate glass. Everyone turns to look then as one moving beast turns back and starts reading again. Inhaling the sweet musty smell and losing themselves in new worlds. The cacophony of the many silent readers noisy and comforting.

Sketchy

It was a hot and tense start to the weekend, with no rain and no relief in sight. I felt tired and hot and resentful and not inclined to be a loving wife or mother. The exorbitant electricity bill courtesy of an ailing refrigerator and the necessity of replacement just fouled my mood further.

It was lucky then, that in a burst of forethought and perseverance I had booked a babysitter for Sunday so that after a workout at the gym, Bingley could run off and not think about children for a while.

We went to yum cha and then to my beloved GoMA to see Matisse. I adored the exhibition. I loved standing with my nose almost against the glass as the worried stewards looked on so that I could see every last stroke of the pen or where the stump had been smudged into the vellum to create shadows and softness.

My very favourite bit of all though, was at the very end of the exhibition where a hall had been set up like Matisse's studio, and there were free drawing pencils, art boards and an encouragement to sit back and create. I have been drawing a lot lately, studying with pictures and sketching the finer details of the foramina of the sphenoid but sitting there with a large piece of thick card and a lovely soft pencil while I looked at art work in between all the others doing the same thing filled me with the sort of contented bliss that comes with doing what you love best.

I loved sneaking a peak at the works being created, from little tiny girls, balancing on a stool, to stooped and serious gentlemen studiously recreating still life. I loved the sound of pens rasping softly against paper and bodies bent over their works. The absorption of trying to recreate something on paper. And I loved being amongst that. Being completely absorbed and not noticing an older woman at my elbow watching my every pencil movement and encouraging me to continue. I loved the dark smudge of graphite over my palm where it brushed the page. And I loved best of all that from the rough sketches little bits of reality imprinted on the paper.

While Bingley sipped his coffee and ate shortbread overlooking the river I sparkled and sipped tea and smudged my face with my graphite-y hand and wished that I could sit curled with my neck aching balanced on the chair and practice and practice and practice until I was good at this. But even more than being good, I just wanted to keep doing it. My fingers literally tingled.

Not Matisse, but I can't resist marble

My fellow sketchers

20 minutes later

Studying the orbit - handwriting bonus for the graphologists

Almost finished the cerebellum

Finally coming to grips with the palatine bones

Adrift

I remember reading once, that one of the therapies that they use for anxious children is to wrap them in a heavy blanket so that they're provided with deep sensation over the skin. I guess it's a sort of regression to the womb thing, where those round walls gave a defined boundary so that everything you knew could be contained within your little egg. I don't know if I was wrapped as a baby, I suspect not as it was all the rage to sleep babies on their bellies, and the combination seems a bad one to me. Plus I'm intensely claustrophobic so I'm not sure how that would have worked (in utero or ex utero). But when I sleep I need a blanket - I always have. It can't be tucked in and it can't be tight but the weight against my back helps me sleep. I have to be so relaxed as to be almost comatose to sleep in nothing but air, there's just too much stimulus from every nerve ending being exposed to the air.

These were the thoughts I was pondering as I curled up in my single hammock this afternoon, like an oversized Anne Geddes baby with my feet tucked up and the soft nobbly material curving around me. I wasn't claustrophobic because my one foot was out so that I could keep swinging, and the breeze was on my face so I could breathe. But I was so intensely relaxed, swinging backwards and forwards spinning slightly before righting myself with a well placed nudge on the balcony railing, cocooned in space. And at least part of it was the gentle hug of material, holding me in.

It's easy to feel frayed sometimes, friable, as if there are just so many tangling threads all around you that are impossible to keep tidy and neat. It's like free falling in every direction while you try and work out which thread you should try and pull in first, knowing it all seems a bit pointless to go after one at a time. My skin becomes uncomfortably sensitive when I'm anxious, to the point where every light breeze across the hair on my arm can feel like bugs crawling on my skin, so intense is the sensation. And the need to have something external, pushing it all back in.

I have been studying but not. Occasionally chastising myself about my inability to sit still and absorb reams of information. I forget that I've always been terrible at studying - never having learned it at school, adapting a cramming method that worked for me at university and served me well through three degrees. I am useless at revising things, I read it, understand it all, and then feel virtuous for knowing that, but forgetting the finer details absorbed only through rote learning or revision. I do best with learning, not revision, where the first flush of understanding penetrates like pleasure as it tickles me to understand and grasp a new concept. But anything peripheral to that needs to be nailed down like a piece of particularly recalcitrant decking to stay stuck in my brain. And that's where I struggle most. Easily distracted, daydreaming when I should be concentrating.

Sometimes while studying physics, the diagrams and the formulae begin to slide around the page. The coefficients and the algebra and the Greek letters dancing around and refusing to stay still. All these concepts that once upon a time would have come to me easily, snapping and fizzling away feeling just out of my grasp. As if I'm trying to count grains of sand while I'm walking on it, and trying not to panic as I realise how impossible that is, as each grain moves under my foot and a hundred more pour on top of it.

But I draw diagrams, and come back to things, and I work out ways to quantify that sand as it slips in between my fingers. And it's probably a round about way, and I think it probably takes longer than those that just learn it through faith and rote, but when I learn it and understand it, it sticks there. Sticks and allows me to manipulate it, something tangible not just a poster on the wall of my brain. I can mould it with my hands, shape it, and share it.

I feel adrift at present, and the tangible days seem to slip by like silk over smooth skin, tantalising but brief. And a gentle fog sits all the way around my consciousness, not grey or miserable, but muted, soft and shimmering, nothing clear. And sometimes it's beautiful to exist in a world that feels lifted straight from a Degas painting, all swishes and light and movement, but others I need to curl up in my hammock and have it press me firmly in on all sides. Weighted and calm.

Gone fission

It is a beautiful Summer afternoon and the sky is such a uniform unearthly shade of blue that it does not look real. There is a beautiful breeze rustling the trees and my Michael Kors ensconced feet are up on the verandah railing as I sit back and watch the world go by.

Work is very very quiet this week, to the extent that I have no patients at all, so my time is mostly spent trying to wrap my head around the mind fuckery that is quantum physics. It requires such logic and straight mathematical principles, and then requires you to suspend that logic and use abstract imagery which is then re-incorporated into those structured mathematical principles. Once upon a time I thrived on it, the idea of logical magic. Ordered chaos. Fractal dreams. But now that I am studying it in earnest, my brain often hurts.

Today after successfully expanding the edges of my brain with positron annihilation (one of the coolest named concepts in science) I tried to integrate the exponential coefficient to determine the scatter or something or other and the particular neurons that were lying in post-orgasmic annihilation bliss rolled over and started snoring. So I did the only sensible thing really and drove to little Italy and ordered an apple gelato. And a piece of pistachio cheesecake. And sat in the window of a little slice of Italy while the cricket was broadcast under the Eiffel Tower and savoured every last bite.

One of the things I miss most about Paris, and Bangkok for that matter (still haven't written that post yet) is the ability to find somewhere to sit and eat and reflect on every single street. There is so much scope for wandering and so little for cars or other mindless transport. There is such social pleasure in isolating oneself at a teensy table that rocks precariously and to sit there all alone and watch the world go by from behind the shelter of an enormous pair of tortoise shell sunglasses.

I love that meal times are so sacred in Europe that it's expected that a good proportion of students will go home from school to eat with their family, all around the table. Though half of my family are screaming at present after the game of bouncing each other on the hammock (which was prohibited less than 2 minutes before) resulted in the inevitable de-hammocking face first while the other one is coming to grips with "uneez" in the tiniest underpants ever invented.

It's not quite dark enough yet for the birds to be singing, the trees are still drenched with sun even as the moon presides brightly in blue. Bingley and I are busy being entertained and awed by the Possum doing a 24 piece interlocking puzzle without assistance. He is quite proud of himself also.

The scrub turkeys are making a nest in our front garden and they are becoming as tame as the possums that take food from our hands. They make such a mess and are such ugly birds, but I love living things being around me so much that I don't care.

The solar detector for my tree lights is full in the last rays of sunlight so that the second dusk falls there will be twinkling stars just out of reach to wish on even if the clouds come cover the ones in the sky. And with my physics book on my lap I can even explain to you why the stars glow as brightly as they do, right down to the little quarks at their centre. And even if it hurts my head, I'm glad that I'm learning this. Answers to questions I never thought to ask. Fizzpops of knowledge snapping away through my neurons like sherbert. Fusion on a tiny scale.

**Edited to note that I finally posted Part One of Bangkok**

Hello, I'm boring

Is this thing still on? Maybe?

So, I've not been writing much lately, as you may have noticed. Except about a holiday I took several months ago. And I still haven't finished that. Procrastination and I, we're like best friends forevah! Part of it is because I'm crazy busy and part of it's just because I'm too stubborn to write properly on here without finishing my holiday posts but at the same time too off with the fairies to sit down and commit to the last 2 posts. I'm completely manic at the moment and ahve the attention span of a mentally deficient squirrel, but am mostly fairly happy which in the scheme of things that probably counts for most.

I have been reading a lot lately, rediscovering my torrid affair with the written word and despairing at my dreadful attempts to replicate the same. In a glut I read about 15 books over the spate of a few days, and was left panting and sated but absolutely craving more so I bought a bunch off the Book Depository to encourage me to read my "have to read someday" list. I called it my reward for getting my training position and thought it quite grown up after my initial urge to buy ridiculous shoes, but now I'm remembering all the study I should be doing the beautiful books sit by my bed while I hunch over a Physics textbook and mutter mutinously.

None of the physics is sinking in and I feel like a giant fraud. I keep waiting to get found out and kicked off the program even before I have signed the contracts and it makes me anxious and rebellious at the same time. So I get little done and tinker aroudn the edges with my massive to do list and consider taking a nap. Apparently 30 is the new 13.

I then commit to projects like baking a Christmas Cake (which takes weeks if done properly) and making the annual Christmas dresses (which ought to have been done right now, but which I haven't started) and instead of usefully doing anything I avoid them and then panic about the same. These are clearly not useful or rational or particularly mature ways of coping with things but appear to be how I'm built.

I'm also in the crux of a massive emotional upheaval where I'm simultaneously delighted and bereft by a situation that leaves me swinging like a yo yo that is either maniacally happy with a slightly scary teeth baring grin or hopelessly wounded and teary. It's strange to sometimes sit in the middle of the electrons that buzz around the nucleus of Elemental Jenn and watch them zip around at crazy speeds and wonder why they don't just calm the fuck down. I'm sure Bohr could explain it.

The three raisons d'etre, are at their grandparents' place this week and tiring out someone else and I miss them dreadfully while being selfishly glad to not have to look after them at the same time. It is so ridiculously easy to look after only your self for a week that one could become quite accustomed to it. Savvy to this, they are being returned soon, and we will all be happier for it.

Anyway, I'm going to sneak off and read some Bronte (on whom I'm cheating with Hemingway and Melville), which I shouldn't be reading at all because I should be memorising a Physics text book while ignoring my to do list and the last 3 presents I have to wrap. WTF is with me not wanting to finish things? I think it's a disease.

Anyhoo, much love if you've made it this far. Bisous to all.

PS I never realised Jane Eyre started so miserably, I was hoping for a fact universally acknowledged... tell me it cracks a smile SOMEWHERE.

Anatomy

In the year 2000, in between bouts of drunkenness and guilt about not doing any work I used to be adept at something I called pseudostudy. I was at the time studying some relatively knowledge heavy anatomy subjects, and trying to rote learn "knee bone attaches to the hip bone" or however it goes was painful and had me glazing over by the end of the first table.

I tried writing out notes, but I could type while thinking of something else entirely, so I never actually learned any of it. In the end I fell back on doing something I enjoyed, and telling myself it counted as study. I started doing freehand medical illustrations so that I could remember things. Because when you're trying to work out where the insertion point of the brachioradialis muscle is, you remember it much more clearly when you've painstakingly drawn it in a corner of your notebook.

We were stashing the Elfling's grown up birthday presents down stairs when I stumbled over my box of textbooks, and on top was the ringbound folder I'd put together of my anatomy notes and illustrations; it was a nice twist of fate, because I've been drawing a lot lately, and composing art in my brain, and it's following an anatomical theme. It started in GoMA when I randomly freehand drew a heart from memory on the back of a postcard, and it's sort of spiralled from there. But here are some procrastinatory efforts by an 18 year old Jenn. I wish I'd paid more heed to fine arts.

 

Lost

I opened this window an hour ago and have been blinking at the narrow white box ever since. Needing to write and not knowing where to start, and instead deciding to start with nothing. I am on a rotating roster at present, and so I have no idea what day it is, only that it is not a weekend, even it feels that way to me. All of me feels jumbled at present. Topsy turvy. It's difficult to explain except to say it feels like there are several of me, running around and playing the role of one.

The work version, which turns up to work in her freshly ironed clothes and sees a bucketload of people, works hard and stumbles home. Body tired, brain all used up, and slightly scruffy around the edges. Wanting nothing more than the bliss of crawling into bed and a soft pillow undercheek. The one that misses her friends when she thinks of them, but mostly gets up, goes to work, comes home, occasionally eats and falls asleep. This version is also keeping her eye out for research projects and in all her spare time often opens an anatomy book so that she can keep up her skills ready for the next phase. This is the grown up version, and I am scared of her sometimes, because I don't really recognise her.

The family version rejoices on coming home to the noise and the chaos and delights in the fact that the Monkey can now write her name clearly. And that the Elfling got 10/10 for her spelling test. The family version comes home to the cheeky face of her Possum and is smothered in kisses and hugs that wrap around her knees from behind. The family version helps finish making dinner and getting the three musketeers in bed, reading Fairy Realm to the Elfling and the Hungry Caterpillar to the Possum. The family version is tired at 3am when she rolls out of bed to mix a bottle of formula, but does it anyway to calm the horrendous sobs coming from the cot. The family version wants to spend more time with Bingley but despairs at how mundane the time is, when the work version is desperately wanting to sleep.

Then there is the dreamer version, she drifts in and out, in between work and family and whispers that if you just escaped now, think how beautiful life would be. If only I didn't have to make school lunches in the morning. If only I didn't have to go to work. If only I could sit on a rock in the middle of the air and think only of the blue of the sky. The dreamer version composes half story ideas and then convinces herself that she could be a writer instead of a doctor. And in the dream version things like having to mop the floorboards never really feature. Nor do little things like if I didn't live with Bingley any more, that I would still need to do things like take the children to ballet class and would never be able to move from this city. That travel would be near impossible and the work version would be left weeping in a corner.

And I preside over all of them, feeling like I am herding cats as they all do what they please. No matter how often she's told to just switch off when she comes home from work, the adrenaline overlaps and often it takes hours to unwind. And the noise and the chaos can be so overwhelming for the family version that she hides behind the dreamer who won't restrain herself from living in fantasy no matter how many stern talks we've hd on the matter. And by this stage the family version is playing blocks with the Possum who is trying to stick them down her cleavage and wondering why she hasn't gone to bed.

I feel I am drifting at the moment, loose threads of me spreading out like oil on water. And I can't seem to reel them in again. Just as soon as I get a grip on one thread, and one part of my life seems to be doing what I want, the other parts make a run for it and I'm left tired and shaky in the middle just trying to hang on. I shall get through this, and I know the other side will be beautiful, but right now I feel swampy, and lost.

More proof that I am the world's biggest nerd

Chain of events leading to minor supernova of neurons in Jenn's head today


1. Voluntarily doing research in the library
2. Voluntarily researching the physics involved in the production of digital images from Computed Axial Tomography (aka CAT/CT scans)
3. Discover that in 1958 the EMIDEC 1100, Britain's first transistorised computer, was developed under the leadership of Godfrey Hounsfield, an electrical engineer working at a company called Electrical and Musical Industries
4. aka EMI
5. Which received a huge boost in funding in the early 1960s from the sale of this


6. Which lead to Hounsfied inventing a machine called an EMI scanner capable of 80x80 pixel resolution axial images of the brain
7. Which lead to him receiving the 1979 Nobel Prize for medicine
8. And paving the way for the images that I use every day as part of my job


9. Thus meaning that my future vocation is heavily based on the initial success of a group of Liverpudlians whose songs I sing regularly to my children. :D
10. And that part of me is so hugely tickled to think that loving music can be the source of something so advanced, so necessary and so incredibly life changing in such a tangible way

Purple's a fruit.

I solved the bread crisis, which in retrospect was most likely due to not getting enough vitamin B, with seeds. Seeds and nuts really, but between the two I’ve noticed my blood sugars are absolutely more stable and I’m feeling generally a lot healthier. It didn’t help though when at morning tea meeting today someone brought out a packet of mint slice biscuits. There is no way on Earth I can say no to them, but managed to restrain to only one, so I am feeling virtuous and smug.

I’ve also been going to the gym after work, and hope to make it a regular habit. Something that is made more difficult through apathy and staying up too late to watch Season 3 of True Blood, but is worth it nonetheless. The biggest thing I’ve noticed? My posture is better. I tend to gain weight on my arms, upper back and bust. Which when your bustline is already too big puts a lot of strain on the thoracic spine. In any case I feel more confident and generally like I’m breathing properly when I stand up straight, so the effects are multifactorial. I really ought to start the day with some sun salutations as well – I know they’ll make me feel better, but when it comes to that or burying my face in the pillow for 10 more minutes unfortunately the pillow still wins. Hopefully it will start getting hot soon so getting out of bed becomes necessary.

The jacarandas have just started flowering I noticed. Study time for university and high school students… and, as it turns out, for me. I have a bit of down time at the moment, and have been trying to fit in some independent study. Mostly just to keep my brain active, but also to further my education and place me in a better position when I apply for training positions.

I am a paper studier, and cannot get by with computers/internet alone. It may seem odd, that in an age when you can google or wiki your way through everything that I would shy away from technology, but when it comes to real learning, I am at my best in a library with a paper book, off a shelf, a ream of recycled/reclaimed paper and some pens and pencils. I like to doodle diagrams and make up flow charts. I once fancied a career in anatomical illustration and like to do my own sketches of the blood supply of the forearm and the muscles of the eye. I very firmly believe the mantra of “see one do one teach one” and cannot help myself from trying to share pieces of new found knowledge.

In fact, anyone that’s been trapped in a car or other small space with me for any length of time knows that I can’t help but share. And teach/explain. Ever wanted to know the molecular basis for diabetes? Welllll let me pull up a seat.
Anyway, I’ve procrastinated enough, and need to re-read the physics of MRI. Hope you are all well.