No Method, Just Madness

Please excuse the prolonged absence from my usual blogishness. It’s just that January is always the sort of month in which there really is mostly madness and very little method to speak of. I try to take preemptive measures like making lists, labeling my calendar, setting alarms, and just generally running around in a constant low-grade panic level (beats the episodic, high-grade panic level)…all in the hopes of ensuring that the madness at least unfurls in some sort of organized fashion. But it never really works. Besides, I’ve decided that KNOWING about the madness, the precise moment that it will transpire, before it actually happens?? Yeah…that’s totally overrated. It just causes you to clench your jaw unknowingly. And then, let’s be honest, it’s all just a great big slippery slope from there…with daily tension headaches at the top, the consumption of inordinate amounts of cheese and/or pickles somewhere in the middle there¹, and the inevitable decompensation into a near vegetative state at the bottom. My roommates and The Brit watched last month as I became a permanent fixture on the living room couch, surrounded only by my matrix of surgical text books and test prep booklets…and about a dozen mostly-empty tea mugs. “Cubana Gringa?” they’d say as they’d apprehensively check my carotid pulse. Somewhat heart-warmed by their concern for my wellbeing, I’d bestow upon them a pearl of surgical knowledge that they probably could’ve done without…like: “Oh hey! Be glad you don’t have an acute diverticular bleed with bright red blood per rectum² because then you might need a hemicolectomy and a colostomy and NOBODY LIKES TO CRAP OUT OF A HOLE IN THEIR ABDOMEN!!!” Needless to say, there were a lot of unnecessary public health announcements in our household during the month of January. Some of which were at rather ungodly hours of the morning. You’re welcome, dear roommates. You’re welcome!

The other additional stressor last month was that, on top of studying for a surgical exam and eating pickles full time, a certain someone had a 30^th birthday extravaganza that wasn’t going to plan itself.³ The Brit had done such a good job pulling off my 30^th birthday seven months ago…and then don’t EVEN get me started on that marriage proposal…so I figured he deserved a great big birthday “do”…even if his “do” did quite inconveniently fall on the same exact day as my surgical exam.⁴ (I wish that was a joke. But seriously…The Same Day! I’ve been meaning to have a word with his Mum on this matter.) Luckily, I started planning The Brit’s birthday a couple months ahead. Emails were sent. Video footage was obtained from many of The Brit’s friends and family from around the world. Photos from ancient albums were scanned in. A friend with professional-grade film editing skills and a clear (and probably crack-induced) ignorance of the colossal undertaking was commissioned with little more than a polite request on my part (I didn’t even have to show a little leg! Ha! What a sucker!). A private theater space was rented. The older brother was flown in on frequent flyer miles. Some study time was compromised for the purposes of cooking insane amounts of food. And the end result was a ridiculous surprise party and an amazing, funny, tear jerker of a 30^th Birthday movie mockumentary about The Brit. I think it’s safe to say he enjoyed his birthday. How we managed to pull it all off, I will never know…nor do I care to. In fact, we shall never speak of The Great Insanity of January 2008 ever again. (Though, apparently, we WILL watch the birthday movie over and over…The Brit’s watched it 6 times since the “premiere.”)

The Brit and I have since created a pact: The Let’s Lay Off the Frickin’ Ridiculous Surprises of 2008 Act. Next year, I’ll throw this year’s leftover candles in his general direction, buy him a beer, and call it a day. Hooray!

But, so ANYWAY! January is over and I’m ready to turn this mother out, yo! It’s 2008 right? Check. Ok…so thanks to the two of you (three of you, if we count Mamacusa) who cared enough to ask if I’d given up the blogging gig. Whether the prospect of it inspired feigned or legitimate disappointment, you put to rest my fears that this had permanently become the sort of blog that only a mother could love…which it kinda is, I gotta be honest with you, but alas! We shall avert our gaze and pretend we do not know this! And with that…the usual obnoxiousness resumes here and now. Well…not NOW now, but soon. (Which is like now, but just a little later.)

Now go vote in the polls! (NOW now.) And a Happy Super Tuesday to you…

1. Purely hypothetical, of course.
2. Known in the industry as BRBPR…we’re ALL UP in those acronyms, yo.
3. Which is not to say I didn’t try to convince it to.
4. It’s not a party…it’s a “do,” in case you didn’t know. Other things I’ve learned since dating a Brit? A bachelor party is a “Stag Do.” And a bachelorette party? A “Hens Do.” I think I shall be a great disappointment to my future British in-laws when I call my bachelorette party “Ma Bitches and Ho’s Night…Awwww YEAH.”