My Misty

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened. 

- Anatole France

Today my beloved pet, Misty, passed away to greener parks. She had been fighting for her life, most probably against a gastrointestinal cancer, for the past six weeks or so. Somehow knowing that her time was coming and that it would deliver her from pain and suffering has not made her passing any easier. When she came in to my life, a little white fluff ball with bright orange ears, we had just lost our first family pet, Muffy. In the midst of our family grief, my grandma found an ad in the newspaper for some poodle puppies. We piled in to my mom's van and drove down to one of the less inviting areas of town and that is where we first met Misty. I picked her out. She was hard to resist with an almost comical appearance, a feisty spirit in her eyes, and boundless energy. She sat on my lap on the way home and stuck her nose in front of the air conditioning vent as if it were the most glorious sensation on earth (and let's face it, in Fresno in the summer it pretty much is); she never did stop loving car AC vents. Although I was excited about our new puppy, once we got her home I didn't quite know what to think. She was playful, but tenaciously so; I was almost afraid of her eagerness and energy. As time went on, the exuberance of puppyhood mellowed into an energetic and companionable adolescence and young dog-hood. She loved jumping to catch balls in the air, playing fetch, going for walks, and chasing ducks in the backyard. Her unabashed delight in life frequently spoiled her elegant appearance such as when she would come inside with green legs after falling in the lake accidentally chasing a duck or when she would sheepishly attempt to hide her soggy paws after miscalculating a jump and falling in the pool. With her larger than life personality and intelligence, she became and integral part of our family, and it has been a wonderful 12 years of Misty Mocha Creme (can you tell I named her while I was in junior high and coffee culture was on the rise?).

In memory of my sweet, loving, persnickety little cuddle bug. I am grateful that you have been delivered from your struggles. Thank you for fighting so bravely. I hope you have lots of toys to rip open in the great beyond.


Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.
-Vicki Harrison

Reindeer Games and the Importance of Flour

Every year when the holidays come around I find my head (and my computer) overflowing with ideas of what I want to do this year for the holidays. Ideas collect throughout the whole year, are forgotten, are remembered, and occasionally I even attempt some of them! Some attempts are more successful than others. As you can see above, my Christmas kitty scarves were a success where as these reindeer cookies....

This is what we should look like!

 ....not so much.

And that, boys and girls, is why you should always be sure you have enough flour for your cookies before you start to make them. Don't be like me. Don't preheat the oven, make most of the dough, and prepare all the decorations only to realize you're 2-3 tablespoons short on flour. It doesn't end well.

Bonus tip from your local absent-minded med student baker: Don't forget the baking powder in your pancakes or they will be thick & dense instead of fluffy.

As always, I'm happy to provide these valuable life lessons any time, free of charge.

Happy pre-holiday time fun everyone!

Halloween Time in photos

It's all in the eyes

The Husband Unit has much better sticker placement skills than I do.

She's watching you

Maybe It's Fall?

 Since moving to southern California seven years ago, I have often heard it expressed by people that I am "so lucky" to live here. Such comments have been directed at me so many times that it must be true, but I still find myself wondering what exactly is there to be envious of? Maybe it's the weather. True, the weather here is nice and stable...and boring. When it is something other than sunny with clear skies, you would think the world had ended. Daily conversations & news media are full of excessively exaggerated reactions to rain and how terrible it is, the number of car accidents increase because rain makes native southern Californians twitchy and nervous on the road, and everyone you talk to will complain about the rain. (True story: One day while walking home in the rain in college, I overheard someone on their cell phone describe the weather as "the Apocalypse").

Or perhaps people envy the hustle & bustle of such a large and diverse population and the car culture of California. Because who doesn't enjoy sitting in bumper to bumper traffic at 5:30 in the morning. Or maybe it's because when it's a truly nice day, even by southern California standards, you can do something fun like go to the beach, an outdoor shopping mall (especially in western OC), or Disneyland...just like the other 14 million people. Or maybe it's the wild abandon with which air conditioning is used in such a way to showcase just how much money there is to throw away here. I mean when it's 70 degrees out who doesn't want to walk into a building Air conditioned to 55F? Nothing says luxury and style like torturing people with Raynaud's for going to work or the grocery store. If nothing else, living in southern California will maintain your sense of humor, because otherwise you'd go mad.

As for myself, I find that I spend more and more time each year in southern CA waiting and waiting for the change of seasons....and I always wind up disappointed. Two years ago, I spend an entire summer in San Diego waiting for a nice sunny summer morning only to meet with cloudy mornings all summer...and then summer was over and I was still waiting. This year, I have been waiting for fall to come. Last week, it finally felt like fall. The mornings had a crispness to them (which was enhanced by a day or two of rain that cleared all the smog out of the air) that returned in the evenings. And then two days later it was 90 degrees again. Nevertheless, I took full advantage of those two days by finally opening a can pumpkin and baking something with those wonderful fall flavors. I had originally planned on just making some oatmeal cookies for the Husband Unit for the day I got to see him in the past couple weeks, but then I thought it was a shame to waste the weather so I mixed in some pumpkin to make it more seasonally festive.

 

These cookies went over really well when I brought them in to my shift last weekend. I think when I make them again, I will add more of the spices; there wasn't quite enough flavor from the spices.

On Eating Cake

Today I am pretty impressed with myself because I have exercised for two days in a row! Oh dear, how far I've fallen. After spending almost 3 years getting back into shape towards the end of college/beginning of grad school, I completely derailed all of my hard work over the course of studying for step 1 and my first 3rd year rotation (surgery). To think only around a year and a half ago I was a bit exercise-crazy, running or working out nearly every day, and now it takes me a good 30 minutes to talk myself into getting off my butt, if I manage to at all. Given my natural tendency toward slothfulness (doesn't everybody?), I am not yet at the point where I turn to exercise when I have a bad day or am feeling down instead of curling up in a ball with a blanket and that makes getting back to where I was really difficult.

Of course I'm going to lay on your nice clean naked bed. I'm a cat, it's what I do

Over the course of the past year as my exercise habits have fallen off a cliff never to be seen again, I've come to appreciate the importance of convenience and of having an exercise buddy. When I moved to my new apartment last year, I lost my comfortable routine of running a short distance uphill to the fields behind the gym, then doing a body weight workout, and finishing up with an easy jog or walk downhill back to my apartment. I also lost my running loop route that I had become so comfortable with when I moved. Initially, it took me weeks to get comfortable running by myself in the area around my new place or even using the gym at the apartment complex. I also had to learn how to do my body weight workouts in my living room (and ignore the fact that I'm sure my down stairs neighbors really do not appreciate the jumping) as there is not a suitable outdoor space nearby nor enough room in the small gym. When I moved I also lost perhaps the most important driving force behind my  previously healthy, wonderful exercise habits, namely, my exercise buddy to hold me accountable and goad me into working out even on days I'd rather sink into the couch never to be seen again.

Tiger Lily says, "Mommy, I don't mind that it takes you a week to do laundry after you've sorted it. It's comfy."

Unlike the Husband Unit, I do not derive pleasure from exercising, nor have I found it to be an indispensable part of my day for most of my life. Now that I have experienced both the lazy extreme and the active extreme (by my standards anyway), I will concede that I feel better, sleep better, & focus better when I am more active (something I would never have believed if you asked me in college!). And so, I am starting the long and slow road of returning to a more active pattern of life. I've seen countless lists of reasons to exercise floating around the interwebs. As for me, my reasons are these: to sleep better, to focus better, to feel better, to keep the inevitable age-related weight gain at a minimum, to feel more confident, to be able to be the kind of parent I want to be someday, to not become those patients that make me inwardly cringe, to make my husband happy, to feel sore the next day, to feel accomplished, and, perhaps most importantly, to eat cake and not feel guilty about it!

Mmmm one year-old cake.