Surf dudes with attitudes

Remember I was in San Diego (and Vegas and LA) this summer? No? Me neither! It feels so long ago. It seems like at least a year ago. I'm still waiting for my precious sister to send her photos - but on the other hand I haven't sent mine yet either... I guess we really are sisters. I had a great time visiting her. At the time she hadn't really embraced the surfer-chick lifestyle (also known as the beach-bum lifestyle...) but I think she's slowly gotten there. I on the other hand was surprisingly quick to hop in the maxi-dresses, lounge around the pool and enjoy the no-stress way of living.  

The lounge around the pool part came easily as she had one right outside her door, it's the kind of effortless luxury that comes with being a student in Southern California. Obviously I chose the wrong place for higher education as the closest thing to a pool that I've found right outside my door during my years as a student in Aarhus has been a huge pile of snow and a sleeping drunk man.

Did I mention I went snorkeling for the first time somewhere near here? There where a lot of waves and I'm not a really strong swimmer but it was amazing! I'm really not a big fan of fish (I hate them actually) but the feeling of being in the deep water, far away from the shore, was thrilling and I definitely would want to do that again - maybe even learn to scuba dive... I actually loved the jet skiing in Barcelona last year too, I guess water and I aren't as incompatible as I've always thought.

The scenery is amazing and you don't even realize it while you're there. It's like it's too much to take in. Too much water to really see the ocean. That's actually a general rule for me, I first realize where I've been and what I've seen when I look at the pictures and think back; "was I really there!?"

Oh, and best bar ever? Shout House! I must find a place where they sing and play the piano here in Denmark - and then I'll move in there! You sing along, you request a song and you clap and boo depending on the mood - then you get a free drink from the bartender and the result is simply, a perfect bar.

Oh, and do you know where the title of this post comes from? (Apart from the fact that it refers to the very real surf dudes with attitudes in SD ;-) It's from the 90's show California Dreams - oh the good old days! 

The last minute

How I wish that statement wasn't so absolutely true and accurate for me right now, but it is and so now I'm somewhere between an insanely high caffeine buzz and the deepest low of exhaustion. One of these days I'll learn to prepare myself weeks or at least days before a big presentation. I might just get started with my next presentation tomorrow - if I'm not too tired...

Looking for the Muffin Man

I have now spent more than one and a half hour looking for the perfect recipe for poppyseed and lemon muffins and let me tell you, the cheers just now when I found it were definitely not appropriate for 22.30 on a school night. I love these muffins and I've been thinking about making them for weeks, but I haven't been able to track down the right recipe until just now. Sometimes I think about how it would have been if I'd been a housewife in the 1950's - swapping recipes, baking cakes and cooking casseroles, I think I would have been good at it... Now I have fit my baking in on my days off and remember to take all but three with me to work so I won't go nuts eating them alone. That's the thing about the wives in the 50's, they could bake and cook all they wanted and never risk standing there all alone with three batches of cinnamon rolls and no one to eat them, I mean that's the main reason you get married and have kids right?

These are definitely not my muffins, they have some weird butternut squash in the recipe, but they were the cutes ones I could find... I'll post the recipe and some pics later in the week so y'all can try them. (Notice the southern accent I lay on when I'm playing housewife and baking cakes...)

Fighting with the shadows in your head

I need colorful pictures today. Something to balance off the very grey and misty rain we have in reality. I need that, my John Mayer playlist and maybe a cup of tea and a blanket, that should be enough to get me through this chilly worrisome evening I'm having.

I just came in from an hour long walk. There really is something deeply cleansing about water. It's like it wipes the slate clean and gives you a fresh mind. Today it might not have eased all my worries, but it helped with my headache, and that's always something.

I really thought that this fall/winter would be easier than the previous years but it doesn't feel like it right now. It feels like I should (yes, the awful word "should") be doing all kinds of important things, and obviously I'm not, I'm just waiting and hoping for something to happen all by its own accord.

Do you remember being a kid, wishing you were a grown up so you could do as you pleased and make your own decisions? I seldom thought that way because as far back as I can remember I've wanted to go back and try again, I always wanted to be a little girl and I always felt older than my age. Today that feeling is stronger than ever, what I wouldn't give to be a little girl jumping in puddles. 

It's Friday Friday...

I'm putting my new boots on and getting ready for dinner with the loveliest girls - it's a perfect Friday. By the way, am I really the only one who had missed Rebecca's horrible song!? I'm ruining my makeup  laughing so hard...!

Oh, and the picture is from here.

Get ready to jump

I'm freaking out. I'm literally freaking out right now.

I've been sick today. Laying in bed/on the couch/floor trying to find some kind of comfort without much success. I've been feverish and throwing up, feeling insanely sorry for myself. So just a couple of minutes ago I woke up thinking it was midnight - it was pitch dark and I was asleep on the couch with the computer on my belly - that's usually a sign that it's midnight and I should move over to the bed. Only I woke to find it was just past six in the evening. So I thought, I need to do something productive with this day - at least what's left of it. That's never a good thing. That always gets me stressed and unsettled until I do something big like drag all my clothes out of the closet for a well needed re-organization, or take out my old school books and start a study session with papers all over the kitchen table.

Today I didn't do that. The computer was right there. I just had to get it started and click me into the page I've been visiting regularly for months and months now without doing anything. So I went in and without questioning anything or thinking twice I just clicked send.

My head is now worse than my stomach. Thoughts like "I'm not ready", "It's too soon", "I should have checked the letter one more time or maybe added some extra files" are tumbling around knocking each other down. Just a couple of weeks ago I told a friend that I was thinking about waiting for another six months to send the application - just to be sure, to save some money and get my things in order. She smiled and asked if I was getting cold feet. Of course I am - they're stone cold! But now it's done - I think I might throw up...

Christ, I need to get my life going, or one of these days I'll get this feeling again and I'll end up throwing myself out of a cliff out of pure impulse.

To love what you do

This morning while I was making coffee for our morning staff meeting my boss came by and asked if we'd had a good weekend? I said we'd had a busy weekend and a very busy night. I told her we had gotten some new preemies and that I was dead tired. She looks at me - pale as a ghost, with bloodshot eyes and a huge headache (not to mention the nausea I get when I don't sleep and don't eat but that can't be seen) - and gives me the biggest smile and says "isn't it amazing!? This is what it's really like to be a pediatrician!" Suddenly I can't help myself. Despite my night-shift hangover (times two as I've had the nightshift both friday and sunday) I'm smiling and giddy - it is amazing!

I so often think about the stuff I can't do. I yell at myself when I can't get an IV-line in on the first attempt. I want to punch myself in the face if I don't remember to check some blood works as soon as they come. I consider myself to slow if a patient has been waiting for more than one hour - it's unacceptable in my world, no matter the reason. 

Last night I berated myself for all of those things, but this morning I thought back at the umbilical vein catheter I got in after the specialist had been having difficulties with it and was giving up. I thought back on the good talk I had with a sad and frustrated mother at five in the morning (who actually said thank you for doing your job so well at the end). I thought about the little girl who smiled shyly and waved at me after I had "forced" her to stay at the hospital and she had looked at me like I was the devil on earth. It's some pretty amazing things I get to do on a daily basis. How can you not love holding a baby less than a minute old in your hands and hearing them scream and telling the parents - you don't need me here, you have a strong and beautiful baby? Or holding their tiny hand through the incubator while their parents are taking a well needed nap? Or hearing a three year old tell the nurse "I'm definitely not talking to the doctor" and then still get him to laugh and smile and tell you where it hurts? Amazing!

Every single day it amazes me how strong and disciplined people are who get up in the morning to do something they don't love, all respect to them.