Richie is so good to me.

The comment I get the most when I tell people that I have returned to medical school after nine years out with two children and a husband in tow is something like, "Wow. Brave. You must be very busy!" Right away I feel guilty because I know that my husband has absorbed 100% of what I no longer do. Last night, I came home a little late because I'd been practicing for my lab dissection demonstration (my "demo"), and he was in the middle of making a double recipe of lentil-chickpea stew. He told me to go into the living room and play with the girls. Not set the table, not help out in the kitchen; go enjoy our children.

After we had eaten the delicious meal of stew with bread and cheese, he took the girls upstairs and did bedtime routine with them so that I could study. Then he went to the gym and told me to leave the dishes for him. He came home and did the dishes. Then he stayed up until I was ready to go to bed - 11:45. This from a man who prefers a bedtime of 9:45. He stays up with me because one of the pillars of our marriage has always been to go to bed at the same time. It's like pressing the reset button on our connection for the day. Plus, and I am the luckiest person in the world because he reads me to sleep. (We are still working our way through Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.)

But last night I was extra-stressed because my demo was at 8 a.m. this morning and I have a test on Friday (that I am about to start studying for). So I was sad and I cried a little once I got into bed, mainly because of tragedy in the world and feeling inadequate and out-of-control. You know, the usual. Richie massaged my hair and told me it will be okay. Then he read me to sleep. He was so tired that he fell asleep in the middle of a sentence.

I assert that I am THE highest-maintenance wife this side of the Mississippi. Richie has served me extravagantly over the past several months; last night was one of many (most) where he bends over backwards to make things easy for me. I am so thankful.

So when people say, "Oh, you must be very busy," I immediately reply, "Actually, my husband is the one who really makes it possible. He does all the work." The more accurate answer would be that I am more well-cared-for than any other med student on the face of the planet. This is a team effort. Although I am the one actually enrolled in school, Richie is Team Captain. I love him. I LOVE him.

Brief update; pictures to follow

This morning is mostly typical of my weekend mornings. I tried to wake up at five to study, but since I stayed up til midnight studying, I got up at seven instead, when the girls woke me. Vivian was the first one out of bed. She had an accident this morning, a twice-a-year event that worries me about her continence and stress level, but not unduly. I think sometimes she just decides to go pee in bed. That's what she told me the last time she peed in bed. Anyway, this morning she shuffled into our room at about 6:30 to let me know she had had an accident. I was in denial, and asked if she could see well enough by the night light to change her jammie pants. Duh. I forgot, somehow, that the bed would need to be changed as well and that moral support is required after an accident. So soon I was up changing the bed and getting Vivian settled. The second, obvious level of denial was that at 6:45 there was any hope of snuggling in and sleeping more.

And now Mazie was awake. She woke up smacking her mouth sleepily and yawning. I thought we had woken her, so I said, "It's okay, Mazie, you can go back to sleep" (note denial). She replied, "I know it's okay; I was having a GREAT dream!" Well! That's great! Sometimes I think their moods upon wakening are temperamentally determined and other times I think it's developmental. I think four is a difficult age for everyone. Both my kids have been more negative and more volatile at age four than at any other age. Five is liberating because, finally, their independence and capability are catching up to their intentions. But four is a doldrum year in our experience.

Basically, I returned to bed only to retrieve my bathrobe (I spread it over my side of the bed for extra warmth). The girls and I came downstairs because our neighbors, whom we love, sleep on the other side of a thin wall from the girls' room so that I'm pretty sure that every little bump from the girls' room translates directly to their eardrums. The girls brought down their dress-up arsenal and began playing "historical girl" while I booted up my laptop to start reviewing powerpoints. Also, I started a pot of half-caf. ("Half caf double decaf with a twist of lemon..." props to anyone who can call the movie that's from :).

First, historical girl. Mazie has been reading the American Girl series, the Little House books, and a different but similar series called "My America." Historical girl combines storylines from these three sources with certain favorite dress-up items. They repurposed their cook's hats as bonnets and they wear their dresses in confusing layers.

And studying. I have been through several permutations of trying to get the material as well and as efficiently as possible. We learn mostly from powerpoint slides and talks, so that's where the beef is, so to speak. I started out trying to honor the paperless goal of my school, but that failed immediately. Then I decided to take notes on paper in class, noting the slide number so I could use a combo of my written notes and the saved powerpoint file. FAIL. It didn't integrate things well and still relied on my learning mostly digitally. Next, I decided to use paper liberally because this is important, darn it. I commenced the longest-term studying solution so far: printing out slides before lecture, taking notes right on the paper printout, then having a hard copy to study from. The problem here... lots of font sizes or figures are too small to make the handouts practical. Plus, my hurried scrawling captured detail but made the finished product both visually and conceptually confusing (ppt provides little hierarchy of ideas). I decided what was lacking was logic and overview, which is still lacking in the printouts because they follow that exasperating ppt. format.

I have now gone all the way back to my tried-and-true study method of copying out notes longhand in outline form. The advantages: First, processing the concepts into a logical framework from which to build. Second, my own handwriting gives me some visual latitude to underline, star, all-caps, box, diagram, and arrow to my heart's content. Finally, taking the time to make a lovely handwritten study sheet is perhaps the best learning time I have as I mull over the concepts. The drawbacks: TIME (this may be fatal; we'll see) and my handwriting, which gets buck-wild with fatigue or caffeine or really anything less than an ideal situation.

Thanks for suffering that explanation. Booorrrrrinnnnggg; I know, but it occupies most of my waking hours, so it's important to me.

So, this morning. I outlined for as long as I could, inervening in disputes and, when "Historical Girl" had played itself out (largely because Vivian didn't know the story lines and kept wanting to do things the characters did not actually do), suggesting games other than "Let's play that I am the most beautiful fairy in the whole world." I exhorted them that beauty is subjective and ultimately disappointing. Yeah, they totally got it.

Then I played for a while (we made salt-rising bread and then stew), then made breakfast. Then Richie woke up (he's been getting less sleep than I have because he usually wakes up very early and can't get back to sleep)...and then I blogged. Now I am back to outlining....