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Brandon wanted me to apologize on his behalf to those of you that have noticed that the last time he posted on his site was May 1st.

My grandma’s Hungarian Goulash is good, but you can only re-read it so many times…

Instead of blogging (or Facebooking or Twittering) he has been slammed with a double-duty work schedule. He is spending 50+ hours each week at the hospital learning Internal Medicine and 24 hours at the Halfway House making money to pay our rent.

An snapshot of his schedule this past week…

Monday & Tuesday: work at the hospital from 7am-5pm

Wednesday: work at the hospital from 7am-5pm
Wednesday evening: sleep from 6-10pm
Wednesday night: work at the halfway house from 11pm-7am

Thursday: work at the hospital from 7am-5pm
Thursday evening: sleep from 6-10pm (that’s 4 hrs of his fave pastime in 48)
Thursday night: work at the halfway house from 11pm-7am

Friday: work at the hospital from 7am-5pm
Friday evening: fall into bed exhausted

Saturday: see below
Sunday: work at the halfway house from 7am-3pm

Monday & Tuesday: start all over again

Today (Saturday) is a rare day off for him and he has to spend it doing stuff he didn’t have time to get to during the week instead of catching up on sleep and relaxing.

You know, fun stuff like working on his MBA course and paying bills.

And yet, do I ever hear him complain? Not even for one second. Quite literally the only thing he complains about is not having time to blog.

He promises to be back soon. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get much of a long weekend, but I think he’s going to attempt to dedicate part of his non-holiday Monday to a post.

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photos: A few shots of Brandon enjoying his favourite hobby.

[Originally written on Father's Day: June 20, 2010.]

Top 10 reasons I know Brandon will make a GREAT dad:

1) He is good at every sport ever invented.
Seriously. Ever. Someone could invent a brand new sport tomorrow and he would be good at it. Which is important because, unfortunately, our son’s mother was only picked for school teams on days that her friend was the captain. Except bowling. I will always kick my whole family’s butt at bowling (see #4).

2) He knows he’s not patient and is working on it.
He practices so much with Suh, I swear he’ll have his Masters Degree in Patience by the time she’s 3. To contrast, I know when I’m being impatient, but I’m too impatient to work on fixing it.

3) He works dang hard.
This is what also makes him a GREAT husband, best friend, student, employee, son, grandson, nephew, dog owner, and American.

4) He’s competitive.
Which means he’ll never let our son win. But I think we are both looking forward to the day our son beats him fair and square. On the other hand, I’m not competitive. I think it probably had something to do with sucking at sports my whole life and just accepting the fact that the captain only picked me because I’m her friend and actually made a huge sacrifice on behalf of the rest of the team because having me at bat when there are 2 outs means everyone is already warming up to hit the field. Losing a lot turns you into one of those weird people that can play just for the sake of playing and having fun. Except bowling. I was in a 5-pin league in my pre-teens and was the worst person on our team, but can still kick your butt.

5) He likes to cook and do laundry.
Need I say more?

6) He’s a good driver.
I think I’m a good driver too, but see #2 and you’ll be able to figure out pretty quickly which one of us will be doing the teenage teaching.

7) He has a great relationship with (and tons of respect for) his parents.
We don’t live close to either side of our families and — as our little family starts to grow — that sorta makes me sad if I think about it for more than 30 seconds. However, his parents do a great job of calling us regularly and staying “involved” in our day-to-day little stuff. I think it’s important for kids to have grandparents and extended family that love them in different ways than their parents do. I think you can tell a lot about the way a man will treat his son by looking at the way his father treats him. There are good genes here.

8) He’s good at video games.
I’m glad he’ll have someone to play with when I’m tired of dying because I can’t keep up with him on Mario.

9) He likes fireworks.
July 4th is his very favourite holiday. Out of the whole year. Weird, I know. But what kid wouldn’t like a dad that lets him play with fire in the backyard?? (except in OKC because fireworks are illegal within city limits)

10) He is generous and kind and has impeccable manners.
Heaven help the girls that cross our son’s path if he inherits even half of his dad’s thoughtfulness and genuine charm. Brandon’s parents did a great job of raising him (see #7) and there are good genes here!

And those are just the things off the top of my head. I really think the only thing he’s going to hate about being a dad is the fact that he doesn’t like being outside. He doesn’t like bugs or grass or camping or fishing or eating outside. But even if he’s not willing to get over those little things and take me out into the wilderness (because I love bugs and grass and camping and fishing and eating outside), he just might make an exception for that future father-son bonding weekend.

Happy Almost Father’s Day, baby

The husband is at work, the dogs are walked, the decaf is hot and this Sunday morning is all mine.

Brandon and I had an amazing day off yesterday. For the first time in months, I didn’t have any studying to do and for the first time in almost 8 weeks, he had 24 hours away from his job and the hospital. Bliss!

Contrary to what might have been a popular choice, we did not spend the whole day in bed. We actually got up early (dang internal alarm clocks) and took the dogs to the off-leash park before the heat of the day set in. Then we went to Babies ‘R Us and drooled over the crib and changing table that we-love-but-is-out-of-stock-until-July and tried on baby-carrying harnesses. After a healthy fast-food indulgence lunch, we headed home to watch the USA try to come from behind (again!) in the FIFA World Cup. Then we went to an early movie at our favourite $3.75 theatre (recently re-opened and mostly renovated after extensive hail and flood damage) and came home to sleep for an uninterrupted 9 hours.

It was a rare day for Just The Two Of Us and immensely treasured as they become fewer and farther between.

Today I am back online and hopelessly behind. There are 549 unread posts in my Google blog reader. So you can safely assume that unless you directly emailed me (and it didn’t get sorted into my junk mail folder) if something interesting happened on the internet in the last month, it doesn’t exist in my world.

I hope you all are having an amazing summer so far. I know mine is about to get a lot better.

Oh, and how did the exam go? It’s tough to say and I’m always horrible at estimating those things, but it felt a lot like Step 1. Some stuff I knew cold and some stuff made me feel like I hadn’t cracked a book all year. How well I did depends on how many of each I answered/guessed correctly. I’ll let you know as soon as I know, which should be in about three weeks.

Found this photo while looking for something else. It’s from September 2008.

We had a day off together yesterday and it was AWESOME. Some days I miss him even when he’s right here.

I haven’t said this in a little while, but I am so ridiculously head-over-heels in love with my husband that sometimes I feel like my heart might actually explode inside my chest.

After 7.5 months of marriage, I didn’t think it would be possible, but he is actually smarter, funnier and better looking than the day I kissed him at the St. Patty’s party two years ago. He thinks he’s gotten rounder in the midsection, but I don’t see growing love handles.

The only things I see growing are his patience, generosity, and courage.

Right now he is in the middle of a 17-hour shift at the Oklahoma Halfway House. He’s been picking up as many doubles and as much overtime as he can while we wait for his financial aid to come through and for him to start clinicals at the hospital. This guy works hard for his soon-to-be growing family. And at home, he takes out the garbage, pays the bills, makes dinner, does the laundry, mows the lawn, feeds the dogs, cleans up after them in the backyard, and fills up the car with gas.

Makes me sound a little lazy, no?

I don’t know if I do enough to live up to his expectations of a wife and partner, but he has far surpassed and exceeded anything I imagined would happen after exchanging rings. Forget about $200 million dollars. Winning the husband lottery is way better.

[Originally written on December 7th, 2009.]

“What’s Answer?” Brandon called from the front room as I unloaded the groceries.

He likes to review the receipt when I shop by myself. “44 items!” he’ll exclaim in mock indignation.

“Um, it’s a pregnancy test…” I replied busying myself with the bags so I didn’t have to look him in the eye, “I’m a little late and a little nervous.”

My period was due on Friday, December 5th. Today was Sunday.

Naturally, being well-read in the adverse affects of my caffeine addiction, I cut out coffee from the first day I thought I might be maybe a little bit pregnant. Caffeine restricts blood flow. Placentas and growing babies need blood to grow properly. Some studies say up to 300mg per day is okay, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I always thought I would be that sickeningly perfect pregnant woman that didn’t break any of the “rules” and was all glowy and barefooty.

So. No coffee for 4 days. Period 4 days late. Let me tell you, the symptoms of early pregnancy and caffeine withdrawal are nearly identical: mild headache, fatigue, irritability, and increased appetite. Monday morning, still no period, but I couldn’t tell if I was exhausted at 8am simply because I hadn’t had coffee since Thursday!

Turns out I needed caffeine. The first test I peed on Sunday morning was negative. One pink line. My period came on Tuesday. Only 5 days late, but enough to get the “what if?” wheels turning in my mind…

Are we actually trying to Get Pregnant? Well, no. Not officially. We just stopped trying to stay Not Pregnant. No charting or ovulation tracking or ordering magical baby dust online. If it happened, it happened. And I was okay with that.

Which, of course, meant I had to beat back the obsessive-compulsive type-A super-planning control-freak part of my brain with a very big stick.

I may seem to be a control freak about a lot of things, but generally I like to think I’m pretty laid back and go with the flow. My wedding planning definitely was like that. Everyone else did a great job of caring about the little details that didn’t bother me one way or another. Other than the bows, of course.

But something about figuring out how to juggle due dates in a year that will include cross-country travel for residency interviews and the inherent schedule in a woman’s monthly cycle was just too irresistible. Charts! Dates! Little tests to pee on! Heaven for those who love to mark things on calendars!

Fast forward a month later and I’m late again. I’m also enjoying my second cup of morning coffee because, well, why go through caffeine withdrawal for a false alarm twice in two months?? I think I’ve scrapped the glowy and barefooty plans too. The only thing glowy about me right now is the giant new pimple on my chin. I’d joke about heading out to buy a bottle of hard alcohol but someone somewhere would take me seriously and then I’d have to explain I was joking and, well, explaining just takes the fun out of the joke.

So here I am typing about not trying to stay Not Pregnant and over a week late. The biggest thing I’m afraid of? (This is where your brain flashes up a PowerPoint presentation of all the scary things that come with pregnancy and it’s about 425 slides long because there are a LOT). No, none of those. The biggest thing I’m afraid of at this early point is the can of whoopass unsolicited advice bound to be sparked from this post.

ARE YOU CRAZY? Are you going to drop out of school? You’re still young — why not wait?? What’s the rush? How are you going to PAY FOR IT? What will you say in residency interviews in the fall? How will you handle your surgery rotation? Are you really going to keep drinking coffee?

I think you get the picture. Feel free to ask as many questions as you like. We’ve probably already thought about them and I will be more than happy to include a post with our house-of-cards plans.

But in the end, I really just want you to be happy for us. And I want to figure out how to have an online shower so you all can come!

We are so screwed. : )

You know it’s been awhile since you’ve posted when you have to re-login to WordPress. I don’t think I’ve logged in since I installed it.

We made it to and from the Olympics in Vancouver in one piece. Mostly. I lost that awesome flag pin I’m wearing in the photo somewhere between here and that hockey game and that just sucks.

I have been sick for 2 weeks, but am alive. Mostly. I really thought I might die on the last descent into Oklahoma City. As the plane lowered, it felt like small gauge knitting needles were being stabbed through my skull into each and every sinus. It sorta sucked.

I only spread my germs to 7 Vancouver friends in 5 days. I have plenty more to write on the week we experienced Olympic history, but you can easily say there wasn’t enough time to do and see everything and everyone. It sorta sucked.

The dogs survived their week of boarding. Mostly. They both caught a wee case of the runs and are on parasite prophylaxis. More mild sucky-ness.

Okay, okay. A few things sucked. But the rest was totally and completely awesome. Including Brigette and Markus for putting us up and putting up with my germs all over their adorable new little house. What’s a good Thank You to friends like that? A year’s supply of Kleenex and NeoCitran?

I’ll be back soon. Probably before another 10 days pass, but I really can’t promise anything at this point. And I haven’t forgotten about the photo voting. That will start with the thrilling theme of flowers(!) next week.

Mom and Dad B flew home. Christmas decorations are coming down. 2010 is officially underway.

I wasn’t planning on doing one of those year-in-review reflection summary posts. But here it is.

2009
January – Brandon and I rang in the New Year in Saskatoon. It was blizzarding. His first visit to meet my family and experience Canadian winter.

February – Booked tickets for parents to come to Nevis.

March – MED 5 has a garage sale as we all prepare to leave the island.

April – Finish Basic Sciences. Say good-bye to Nevis. Initiated refund process with Travelocity. Whisked away on a surprise trip to Venice. Engaged!

May – Bought wedding dress at first stored I tried. Nightmare getting it fitted. Mornings at YMCA with mom. Days at Moose Jaw library with Step 1 material. Fought with Travelocity for refund.

June – Brandon surprises me by driving to Moose Jaw. More studying. Robin and Aruna visit the farm on their way to Ontario.

July – Finally receive refund from Travelocity. Step 1 is done! I passed!

August – Married! Rotations start in Oklahoma City. Deliver a couple of babies.

September – Husker season starts. Ob/Gyn is replaced by Family Medicine. Suh joins our little family.

October – Family Medicine (and H1N1 flu season) ends. Enjoy Internal Medicine.

November – Brandon cooks his first turkey for American Thanksgiving. The Roughriders make it to the Grey Cup.

December – Mom and Dad B come to visit! Brandon takes Step 1!

I can hardly predict how this year is going to top the awesomeness of last year… but here’s a sneak peek at what’s to come.

2010
January – Finish Internal Medicine rotation. Start Pediatrics. Apply for and arrange fall elective rotations.

February – Head to Vancouver for a few Olympic hockey games. Joyce takes Step 1!

March – Psychiatry rotation.

April – Take Step 2. Start 3-month Surgery rotation.

May – Maddy turns 7!

July – Roughriders are back in Mosaic Stadium.

August – 1st anniversary!

September – Husker season starts again!

December – Brandon finishes his MBA!

Today’s photo is of the Survivor Tree at the Oklahoma City Memorial for the Murrah Federal Building bombing. I absolutely adore this tree. I don’t know what it is. Maybe the old grainy black-and-white photos of it sitting in someone’s backyard decades ago. Or the way new growth sprouted the spring after the bombing when everyone needed to believe life would go on.

I am thankful we are more than just “surviving” this time in our life. We are soaring and celebrating. Life is awesome.

Just a little reminder that we love you forever, through thick and thin. Doing well or poorly or average on this exam doesn’t change a thing. Not even for a second.

We’re looking forward to relaxing with you during January while you take some much-deserved and highly-needed downtime. I know you’ll beat Lego Indiana Jones way before I do.

Now stop being so hard on yourself, relax, and go into that exam armed with the confidence that all these months of preparation have brought you. You know this stuff!

1 month and 1 week
2 months and 2 weeks
3 months and 3 weeks

“So, how is married life treating you?” Mom-in-law asked while we were shopping for shoes.

“I’m really happy,” I responded with a genuine ear-to-ear grin. “We have our little things*, but overall I know how lucky I am and I’m really happy where we’re at. Brandon works so hard at communication and evolving our relationship. It’s inspiring and a little intimidating, but I know we’re making forward progress.”

Our med school paths are no longer identical. Brandon spends the day at home and is excited to go out (for dinner, to a movie, whatever) in the evenings. I spend the day at the hospital and am excited to stay home (watch football, crochet, whatever) in the evenings. Really? That’s our biggest conflict this month?

Not bad, huh?

We are walking the same path. Side-by-side. We have the same goals and dreams for our family and our futures. We draw strength and encouragement from each other.

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*sometimes we have no flippin’ idea what the other person is saying.