Good things

Enough of the emotional rant. On to happier things. And there are things to be happy about. It is a month for thanksgiving, after all.

In August we moved into a house. It has improved our quality of life by what feels like 1000 percent. It is spacious and cozy, in a great neighborhood and next to a large park with a playground. The main floor alone is bigger than our apartment with an eat-in kitchen, living room, two bedrooms and a bathroom.

Then there is the basement. I could write an entire blog on my affection for this extra level of house. The South is really missing out on this architectural wonder.

It has a large laundry area, tons of storage space and a room perfect for toys which never have to be picked up. I've probably already saved myself days of work by not going around picking up toys every night. They can just lay scattered on the floor in the basement until we decide it's time to go downstairs again.

The house also has a second floor mother-in-law suite with a bedroom and bathroom. And it has a fenced in backyard and a driveway, which I also have affection for after hauling groceries from an apartment parking lot. It is worth every penny extra that we deliberated over before committing to the lease.

Apartment-dwelling makes sense for city folks but houses are for us suburbanites.

Our little piece of suburbia

 

After the Step 2 board exam in September C.J. rewarded himself with a smoker. C.J.'s not much of a cook but the idea of preparing meat with a blow torch and a pile of wood appealed to his manliness, not to mention he was a little home sick for some good barbecue.

His efforts paid off with some of the best brisket I've ever eaten. The neighbors were baffled by the smoke rising from our backyard at 7 a.m. on Sunday morning (who is this redneck neighbor?), but they didn't complain after they got a sample.

Bringing a piece of Texas to New Jersey

Thought we'd have to freeze some of this, but don't you know, we ate it up in a week

Another reward after Step 2, a trip to The City to see our favorite Austin, TX band, The Gourds. A fun date night for us and a great show featuring songs from their fantastic new album. We never get tired of listening to this band or seeing them play a live show.

No fall in the Northeast is complete without apple picking. I rank this outing right up there with the basement for top things to love about living here. I only have a few sad iPhone pictures to show for it, but it was a great way to enjoy the cool weather and the apple crisp that resulted wasn't bad either.

Liam and I with Penny and Sandy and Karen and Paul

Apple pickers (and tasters)

And there was a trip to the pumpkin patch, another great fall outing which included a hay ride. Being in the presence of a real tractor was the highlight of the trip for Liam, but he indulged us and picked his own pumpkin too.

There was this odd event the weekend before Halloween - a snowstorm that dumped a foot of snow in our area and knocked out power for days all around us. I am thankful we had no power outage here, it melted quickly and the weather has been mild since.

Fall snowliage

Liam loves Thomas the Train more than anything else right now. When I say "Mommy loves Liam," he says "Liam loves Thomas." He carries his trains everywhere and sleeps with them at night. It is only natural that he was a train conductor for Halloween (not to mention it's a pretty easy costume to pull together!).

Our street was decked out for the holiday, and it was so sweet to take Liam trick or treating for the first time. I'm pretty sure C.J. and I enjoyed it more than he did, we loved hearing him say "Happy Halloween!" although it had to be coaxed out of him in front of the neighbors.

Mommy also loved that he's not old enough to notice if I pick out the good stuff from his candy stash. I call that my special pregnancy privileges. 

That was weird when you took me around to the neighbors' houses, can we watch this Thomas video again?

Speaking of mother-in-law suite, ours is now being occupied by, well, my mother-in-law. A few of life's twists and turns brought her to New Jersey to take up residence with us, and we are pretty excited about the extra set of hands.

The ratio of three adults to one toddler has been a life saver for this set of tired parents. In between working her own job, she cooks, cleans and watches Liam. The timing couldn't be better for her arrival just before baby number two. We are grateful for her help.

Liam and Nana



Goodbye third year

If nothing else inspires me to blog these days, I should at least mention here that a big milestone passed in September - we finished (survived) another year of medical school.

I wonder if perhaps I am more negative than other wives about medical school. I see blogs from some of my med school friends and they seem cheery and don't mention much about what their husbands are going through. I know putting into words how I honestly feel on this topic will result in one very whiny, depressing and boring blog.

However, the mood has struck and against my better judgment I will now proceed to complain.

Medical. school. is. a. beat. down. I. hate. it.

It is a never ending list of things to complete, hoops to jump through and tests to study for. It costs a fortune. It is a huge time suck. It overshadows everything, even the fun moments. It is always looming, demanding, a monster needing to be fed constantly.

To say that I will be glad when it is over is a gross understatement.

So I am compelled and happy to report, there is less than one year left. All signs indicate C.J. will graduate in May.

Not that it will get any easier then. He will start a residency in July which will mean an additional three to four years of long hours and hard work. We will face a mound of debt that we are completely ignoring at the moment. But maybe (I can only hope) it will feel like less of a struggle. 

Just to recap what happened in the last few months of third year - there was an internal medicine rotation with a lengthy patient case study due every week. There was an application process that included busy work and more busy work and asking for letters of recommendation and writing a personal statement and researching programs and uploading information. There was a board exam that required weeks of non-stop studying followed by lots of anxiety while waiting for the test results.

It seemed there would be a break then. The hard part was over. The test was done, the application was in, the fourth year electives began and they are, after all, electives. No pressure.

But of course there was pressure. Anxiety and fear and disappointment as the rejection letters started showing up and far outnumbering the interview invitations. There is that hard, cold, bitter truth staring us in the face - there is a disadvantage to being a foreign medical student. There is a stigma. Yes, C.J. will be a doctor. Will he be the doctor he wants to be in a place he wants to live at the program of his choice? Likely not.

Then there are a few interview requests. They trickle in slowly. This is very good. But wait, it requires plane tickets and hotel rooms and researching and practicing and scheduling and planning and thank you notes. More time suck, more pressure, more endless "what if" conversations about places like Michigan and Newark and West Virginia.

Not to mention the sobering feeling that on one day in March, our fate will be decided by a computer algorithm. Not just the fate of the next few years, but the fate of the rest of our lives. Because we will make a commitment to one specialty that will dictate our life style and potentially where and how we live for a few more decades.

Assuming we match. There is always the chance of not matching, and that is a scary thought that I'm pretty sure keeps C.J. awake at night.

I am encouraged that we've made it this far. I like to think about three years behind us. It seems we can make it six more months. We have done some fun things lately, we don't have a bad life. I am not walking across a scorched earth in Somalia with a starving baby, I like to remind myself.

But if I said this experience wasn't hard, I would be lying. If I just posted pictures of apple picking and pumpkin patches and the latest adorable thing Liam is doing, I wouldn't be painting the whole picture.

There is something dominating our lives and consuming all our thoughts and expending all our emotions. It is the beast called med school. And we are now in our fourth year.