If I had a daughter...

Today's Voicemail

Vivi: Hi, Robin...

(tif in the background): It's just me, Vivi, wanting to call and say hi.

Vivi: It's just me, Vivi, wanting to call and say hi.

(tif in the background): Bye.

Vivi: Bye.

(Vivi in the background): She didn't talk.

Everything Is Illuminated

I just finished this book and I might have a new favorite author. If you recall, Jonathan Safran Foer also wrote this, so I guess it's not a stretch to say he has been a big influence in my life. And that was BEFORE reading his novels, which usually touch me in more meaningful ways than non-fiction.

One of the many gems:

Jews Have Six Senses

Touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing...memory. While Gentiles experience and process the world through the traditional senses, and use memory only as a second-order means of interpreting events, for Jews memory is no less primary than the prick of a pin, or its silver glimmer, or the taste of the blood it pulls from the finger. The Jew is pricked by a pin and remembers other pins. It is only by tracing the pinprick back to other pinpricks - when his mother tried to fix his sleeve while his arm was still in it, when his grandfather's fingers fell asleep from stroking his great-grandfather's damp forehead, when Abraham tested the knife point to be sure Isaac would feel no pain - that the Jew is able to know why it hurts.


When a Jew encounters a pin, he asks: What does it remember like?
 

Thrive

Kaiser Permanente is trying to put me out of a job one 61 second radio ad at a time. Plus my voice is way less soothing than Allison Janney.

And then he mispoke

I'm so far behind on posts that I'm starting to refer to this blog as my scrapbook.

Until I can post pics from Europe and our Dirty 30 Birthday Roast, let this tide you over: Tonight Ben and I were warming up tacos for dinner (note: trust that when the taco guy says he can feed 30 people, he really means it - don't buy more food). I was giving Ben a big hug when he leaned back so he could see my face and the following ensued:

B: Hey, I was thinking of something today at work that made me miss 17 year old Robin.

R: (stepping back from embrace) Excuse me?

B:  (reaching for me) Come here! I was just saying that something reminded me of you at 17 and I missed you.

R: What's wrong with (almost) 30 year old Robin?

B: Nothing! Nothing!

R: Are you trying to make me jealous of myself?

B: No! What I'm trying to say is that I thought of a memory of you and it made me want to leave work right then so I could see you!

R: Riiiight.

B: I'm serious! If I could just remember what it was, you'd really like it. It's a compliment!

R: Mmmm Hmmm. Keep digging your hole.

If his memory doesn't get real sharp real soon, Ben's going to feel like he's 17 again and sleeping on the couch in his bedroom (because he was too lazy to make his bed).

My next pet.

The tension of life.

Life is rarely divided into nice, neat little chapters. Milestones? Yes. Clear beginnings and endings? Sometimes. Feeling one emotion and then another? Rarely. Instead of sad then happy then angry then excited, one tends to feel sadhappyangryexcited. Or something like that. At least that's been my experience this last month.

First there was a tornado that took out 30% of my hometown.

Then there was the 8th anniversary dinner!

 

Then I received my first piece of mail addressed to Dr.! 

Then I was hooded!

Like a doctor.

Then I graduated!

And took a lot of pictures with supportive family members!

And proud husbands (wearing one of the matching T-shirts his mom made for us).

Then I had a party with a lot of incredible people I get to count as friends!

Then I had a final goodbye dinner with my fellow interns. 

Then I went to a goodbye party for a couple near and dear to my heart.

Then I helped a friend move into her new condo!

Thursday is my last day of internship.

Friday is my first day of post-doc.

And so it goes...