Just Another Manic Monday

Read it, over at MiM.

Click: HERE.

Monarch Butterfly

Orange and black wings

Fluttering, cloaking branches

Poised in the sunlight

My good friend Ramona Bates is hosting the next Grand Rounds and I have been puzzling over what to submit for a few days now. The theme is changes. This is something I wrote on a bedside table in a hotel room in Monterey CA back in 2008, after visiting the Monarch Grove Butterfly Sanctuary. I was at a pathology conference by myself, and just starting to blog. I haven't posted it before, but I think it fits. It reminds me that we all, no matter how old we get, have the potential to find something new within ourselves and soar.

To all my friends on the verge of something new, I wish you the best.

Last Day of Summer

Was dream-like.

Kids and I slept in and had a fabulous breakfast of crispy bacon, flaky layers biscuits (C's fave!) with melted cheese on top and egg white omelets. We hit the pool at Mom and Dad's afterwards.

Jack's main goal was to tump me off of the raft. I had a friend visit this past week - old Montessori friend who is a breast pathologist at Harvard. She heard me use the word "tump" and rejoiced. "No one in Boston even recognizes that word. It is so unique to the South." Anyway, I am 145 lbs. on a good day (5'9"), and Jack is only around 50 lbs., so it was tough for him. I was goading him and delighting in his failures, all in good fun. Finally, he stood up on the raft between my legs and started jumping up and down, yelling "Tump! Tump! Tump!" Surprised me by working. He was so proud.

Then we started races with different strokes - Breast Stroke, Free Style, Back Stroke, and my Dad demonstrated the stroke he held a state record for in Memphis years ago - the one the yielded him a full ride to Big Ten swimming school in Iowa. The Butterfly. He still does it so beautifully and powerfully at 60 plus, it is an amazing sight to behold, especially in an infinity pool on the Arkansas River. I love it when the pool and the River look the same color. It's like glass.

After lunch we played Life - Mom and C had bought it at Wal-Mart the day before. I laughed at doctor's salary - $100,000 - great but not the same as it was in the eighties. I hadn't played Life in over 20 years. Jack wimped out after 20 minutes and went to play Plants vs. Zombies on his itouch. But the rest of us hung in there, and C was delighted. She named her spouse Johnny, and her son Stevie. Twin girls were Haley and Bailey. I laughed so hard when she said, of the light blue identical pegs, "Doesn't my son look just like my husband? It's hard for me to tell them apart!"

After delivering b-day present to sis-in-law Annie, we headed home to cook dinner. I turned on TV for kids so I could finish labeling clothes and get everything organized for first day of school. It was nice to have a babysitter come to house all summer so I could just crawl out of bed, sometimes run, and head to work, but I am looking forward to the breakfasts together before school that I have missed. Good times - talking about dreams and day ahead. Jack starts first day of Kindergarten tomorrow at new school. Big deal! And C is hitting Third grade. Life goes on. Too quickly sometimes.

Hope everyone has a good summer to school transition.

Willing to Give

Could not embed. It was disabled. Here is the link:

California King

"Does it count as a feeling?

If you wish that you could feel?

My evil's my discretion

And I can make anything seem unreal."

The genius continues. Add to the 171 page views. She deserves it.

I will move on soon, promise.

Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

Read it, over at MiM. Click: here.

A Book Review!!

Read it, over at Mothers in Medicine. Click: here.

Uri Geller

Do what you love. When you love your work, you become the best worker in the world.

I freaking love my work.