I'm back from my depressive break! As of yesterday, actually. By depressive break, I mean the one and a half week period in which I did little more than sleep about 16 hours a day and read while taking painfully hot baths. The fact that I was reading Revolutionary Road did not help my mood, either. It's a great book, but painful in its cynical truthfulness. So obviously, I fell off the wagon for this block (Neurology), but I am quickly and desperately climbing my way back on.

Other books I read last week/early this week:
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls--a memoir about a successful writer for MSNBC who was brought up by nomadic parents in neglectful circumstances. I loved this book because I was at once enthralled by the adventure and romance of her childhood, and appalled that parents could be so selfish and immature.
The Good Good Pig by Sy Montgomery--a true story about a pig named Christopher Hogwood who is one of the few farm pigs that have been allowed to live out a happy life. This book cheered me up considerably! Except of course, Christopher Hogwood dies in the end at a ripe old age of 11...or 12.

Things that are on my mind right now: Should I quit school now, before the OSCE exams after spring break? Or wait till later so I can ostensibly take a year off before making the final break?
The OSCE exams are when I will have to perform a physical exam on 10 different standardized patients in 3 hours, while being spied upon by cameras who will grade my performance. Basically, my worst nightmare. I would rather do almost anything than do physical exams. The mere thought of it makes my vision staticky and my head dizzy. The invasion of personal space is just too much to handle.
But I would feel even more like a failure if I quit now instead of later...

The stress of these past weeks have increased my social fears, and I am currently at the point where I can't stand to feel anyone looking at me. I just had to go down to the cafeteria during lunch hour to get food, and the crowd of people was too much.

When will this be over? I can't go on.

Something I actually enjoyed while studying today: this picture of what people with migraines sometimes see before they get a migraine.

This website is hilarious.

addendum to last post:
Though even if I did have kids, I don't think I would be one of those parents. I'd probably just strap the kid on my back and do whatever I felt like doing. Aaron and I'd be the parents that other people look sideways at, with their school age children up on a school night at a midnight movie, or shopping at a 24 hr Walmart or something.

Having said that, a couple of weeks ago, Aaron and I were eating dinner at Sal's, the best pizza place in Dallas. This lady and her three kids ranging from 6 months to about 5 sat down right next to us, despite the fact that there were empty tables all over the restaurant, since it was early for dinner. At one point, she turned to us and said over the racket of her kids, "I know, we're the best birth control in the world, huh...obviously I didn't pay enough attention to birth control...just kidding." She seemed truly frustrated with the whole situation. And it's not like she seemed like some ghetto lady who just couldn't keep up with her birth control, she was the typical Dallas-ite soccer mom, who seemed like she would drive a 4Runner and buy her clothes from JCrew.
Later, she said to her kids, "Maybe, if we get home early enough, we can all bathe tonight!"

See, that's what happens when you have kids. Lowered expectations for your own life, which then translate into unfairly high expectations for your kids.

"We had date nights on Thursdays or Fridays, I can't remember. So we'd leave early, linger over dinner, and get back early so we could get [our child] to bed, since she had school in the morning...The babysitter would get there at 5, and leave at 7, 7:30. Sometimes we'd just go grocery shopping without the kid."

I'm working at the library and eavesdropping on the conversation of two women--the one who said the above was trying to convince the other to have another child before she gets too much older. And then, the conversation sidetracked to the above quote, where she describes what her life was like when her kids were younger.

The hopelessness of her situation strikes fear into my heart. The bright spot of my whole week after having a kid is a two hour block once a week to grocery shop in peace? Hmm. No thanks. I really don't understand the popularity of procreation. Is biology so all-powerful?

Poor Aaron, he is sick...Poor me, I am sick. We went to bed at 10 pm only to wake up at 1 am to drink chicken noodle soup and orange juice. Now I can't sleep and I've spent the last hour looking at photos on flickr tagged with the word "sick."

Right now I am really missing elementary school cafeteria lunches, everything in its proper compartment on the plastic tray.

Am currently procrastinating by looking at the millions of "What's in your bag" photos on Flickr. So I was just clicking along, and thought absentmindedly, "Oh, look at these people who carry a toothbrush and sometimes even toothpaste with them everywhere they go! I wish I had the desire to be so hygienic." And then, after a couple of other pictures, I thought, "What's with all these people who carry their sunglasses in their purses without cases?! What if they get scratched?" And then I realized I care more about my sunglasses than my teeth. Messed up.