A Tale of two cities

I have officially been in Portland for week and I couldn't be happier. At one point last week I had to find a packed box marked sweaters and find one of my favorite wool wears to curl up in due to the fall-like temperatures. Yes, I know some of you are gagging, but I am in love with the green, lush wonderland that I have found myself. My hair is jubilant. There is approximately zero humidity here which allows for some very nice frizz- free days. I also love the eclectic mix of the people who reside here, regardless if you are a hipster or a yuppie people are stinkin' happy. Everyone I walk past on the street says hello and smiles. People are emphatic about exercise, bikes, and going green. All things which I embrace. Perhaps one of the highlights of my week was going to brunch at a local establishment called Besaws. They had the most amazing rhubarb reduction champagne cocktail. They were so great I had two. I then had a chance to wander the one and only -Portland Farmer's Market. If you would have seen me I literally look like I a kid in a candy store. The sheer volume of fruits and vegetables that surrounded me was astounding. Yet, they don't just dabble in legumes and baked deliciousness, oh no, they have wine tasting as well.

Yet, as much happiness as I have felt this week the sadness and pain in my heart is hard to forget. As many of you know my father is gravely ill, and is on home hospice back home in Pendleton. I can honestly say one of the hardest things I have ever done is leaving my father in a hospital bed and boarding a plane and moving 2000 miles away. I will never for as long as I live the conversation we had before I left, perhaps not for its brevity, but for its depth. He said he wanted me to the live the life that he had dreamed for me, and by all the power in me I will do my best. You see I have never witnessed something so horrible and awful as my father's disease process. The way it has taken the man who I thought was invincible, and has made him an emaciated skeleton of a man I once knew. Yet, out of all my tears and heartache I have found something that is beautiful. Something that will continue to change and shape the person I am for years to come- Love.

The love that my father and I share is something so indescribable something that surpasses words, that I need say nothing more and I know in my heart -I will always know his love. Yet, perhaps I have been more touched by the love that others have shown my family. The constant flow of people in and out of my home. The friend who dropped everything to come to Oregon and help me move. The friend who drove me to my house to go to the hospital with my dad, while we both cried in silence in the car. The phone calls and texts. The cards and meals that have magically appeared as if a magician had pulled them from a hat. Friends of my dad who spend the night at my house every night so my dad will never be alone. The homemade strawberry ice cream that appeared and filled the antique bowls of my house. This is the love that changes people. The love that fills your soul even when your gas gauge is on empty. This kind of love never fails.

Thus, Charles Dickens was right:" It has been the best of times and the worst of times" While I don't know if I will ever understand the timing or answer to the question why, I do believe that my father continues to teach me an ever important lesson. Life is not a matter of acquiring things, or a score board; life is all about the relationships you build, and the love that surrounds you.

The Oregon Trail

I can remember vividly the first time I was introduced to the East Elementary computer lab. We walked in alphabetically to rows of what looked like TVs with keyboards attached. It was in this room I was introduced to not only the latest technology of the time, a technology that would be ever present in my adult life, but also a little game called "The Oregon Trail." Now as a first grader I was enamored by the capabilities of the computer as it educated me by playing a game based on the trail of Lewis and Clark.

Yet, unfortunately, I rarely was a winner at the game. You see my little family on the computer would always die from famine or drown crossing the river. Much of this was to my own expense since I refused to shoot the buffalo because as I learned earlier in the year they were an endangered species. PETA would have been so proud of the young activist in me. Yet, if you would have told me in first grade that I would someday be making my own trek to Oregon, I would have giggled and called you silly. Yet, in approximately 2 weeks I will be moving to Portland. While it comes with mixed emotion, I am truly jazzed about this new chapter in my life.

Yet, I can't help but be a little nervous as I leave everything I have ever known and move to a foreign place. I am leaving my loving family and friends to start my career. It is like starting from scratch. Yet, after visiting the hospital, walking the city, and meeting the people I believe that this is a place I could be truly happy. Yet, does my stomach do a somersault every time I think about packing up my quiet, comfortable life and moving- Absolutely.

I took a leap of faith, a chance, when I decided to move to Oregon, but I believe life is worth a chance. I don't want to be one of those people who is afraid to sail away from the shore. I want to meet life where it takes me. Now granted you don't have to go halfway across the country, but it applies to small aspects of your life. It is about the guy you asked out because you never thought he would go, the house you decided to buy, or the job you never thought you would get. It is about putting yourself out there, getting hurt, having successes, and experiencing life.

I am sure the Oregon Trail was as daunting to our ancestors as it is to me now. Yet, while they were faced with death daily, terrified of tomorrow, and endured pain, sweat, and tears for nothing more than a dream of a better life. I only hope that my road to Oregon will be less bumpy and dysentery free .

Thus, my hope for you is that you will embrace life and take a chance this week. Don't be afraid to start a new chapter in your life because "It is not the years in your life that matter, but the life in your years."

Sunny- side up

As a child one of my favorite breakfast delicacies my mother made me was 2 eggs with toast and strawberry jam. I can remember vividly sitting at our old kitchen table as my mother would say (as if she didn't know) "How would you like your eggs?" I would giggle and shriek with joy, "Sunny-side up!" I have no idea why I loved my eggs this way, but I think it had to do with my fascination with the runny, gooey yolk invading my toast and everything else on my plate. I loved the yellow hue that reverberated back at me making things a little brighter on my plate. Yet, I also enjoyed the fact that I could design all sorts of animals and other creatures in the yellow lake that had accumulated on my plate. Lastly, it just made me happy because when you are 5 about anything including egg yolk makes you happy.

So why is it so hard for me some 20 years later to find the joy in the littlest of things? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the weight of the world on your shoulders has gotten a little bit heavier, or perhaps you have suffered to many low blows, but the optimist in me believes that we still can find joy. It just might take a good game of hide and seek.

I have been blessed with an uncanny and at times obnoxious sunny disposition. Thus, I am rarely seen without a smile on my face. Yet, storms and torrential downpours have not excluded me from their agenda, and thus I am quite a weathered veteran. I love that life doesn't care about your time table or your plans. It is just stinkin' unpredictable. And when you feel like you cannot handle anymore, you feel like your whole being might implode from the inside out; you realize, oh yes you can. On the scale of my horrible weeks, this past week wins by a landslide. So how do we deal with the world when our sunny -side eggs have turned into nothing but a scrambled mess?

I find joy in the beauty of other people and the snapshots of life. You capture moments. If you think about most photos you take they are glimpses of moments where you are innately happy-moments you want to remember. This week, though rough, has had some glowing moments. I will never forget watching movies with my dad on the couch while we shared oatmeal cookies. I will always remember the quiet distraction of others the way they can make you forget about everything else that is going on except the present. I will never forget the jam session in my car with a friend as we sang at the top of our lungs while passerby's just looked and stared. These are the moments that I treasure. The moments you least expect to find joy, yet it somehow reveals itself. While my life this week has at time felt suffocating and dark, I am pleased to report that despite my sadness sunshine has crept in and left me with nothing but the hope for another day- sunny of course.

Royally Ready....

In approximately 5 hrs I will be getting up in my pajamas with mimosa in hand to sit in front of my television and watch dreams come true. That is right, I said dreams come true. You see tomorrow is so much more than a Royal Wedding, it is a lesson for every young girl out there- that anything is possible. As children we grow up dreaming about being princesses, we dress up like them, and strut our stuff around the house like them. We believe that maybe, just maybe, this could be us too someday. Yet, Kate Middleton wasn't born to royalty, she was born a commoner, just like an other child growing up in the UK. I am sure as a child she too pretended that she was the Queen of England, yet never believing she had a shot at the real title. Thus if I had children (which is a terrifying thought) I would wake them up from their sleeping slumber, give them a bowl of cereal, and place them in front of the TV so they could watch history in the making. You know many of you will disagree with me and find this ridiculous, but I think it shows both girls and women alike that dreams do come true. Now don't get me wrong I am not the sort of woman who enforces nor endorses the prince galloping in on a white horse coming to rescue the princess from her life as a commoner because as a liberal woman you should know how I feel about women's equality in the 21st century.

Yet, I too know what it is like to wish and hope for something thinking maybe, just maybe that it will come true. You see tomorrow is my last day of medical school. If you could only know the very convoluted and tortuous road I took to get there you would understand how important I think it is for little girls to know that dreams do come true.

Ever since I was approximately 6 years old all I ever wanted to do was go to medical school. I was a driven, motivated, and I felt a force larger than me drawing me to the field. Yet, I cannot even begin to describe the devastation and pain I felt when I was rejected from medical school. I literally thought I was going to die. I cried so many tears that year I don't even know how I can still cry to this day. So I began working at a hospital as a nurses aide, wiping rear ends, giving baths, and taking vital signs. I was also taking grad school classes on my days off to keep up on my studies, and worked as a hostess at a local steak house in the evenings.

Yet, I will never forget the day that I received my acceptance letter in the mail. I literally began sobbing uncontrollably, my body was vehemently shaking, and I had to sit down just to breathe. This was the moment that I realized what it felt like for dreams to come true. It was life changing, not only because I had waited for this day my entire life, but because of the journey I had to take to get there.

Thus, Both Kate and I will share something very special tomorrow. While I will complete my medical school career and she will become a princess, we both in our hearts will relish in the fact that anything is possible, even your wildest dreams.

Drowning

February was a fiasco. It was like the time I went to Venice and it rained the entire time I was there. I actually thought that I might die due to drowning because of all the water. I am the sort of person who believes that things happen for a reason, and that we are only given as much as we can handle. Yet, last month was truly unbearable. I felt as if my life was a rollacoaster of emotional highs and lows, and worst of all it only left me with feelings of trepidation. It was as if someone had put me in the middle of the ocean and told me, the girl who can't swim, to find my way back to shore. I was tired of swimming, tired of trying to keeping afloat, and what I really needed was a buoy, a life jacket, or some strong handsome coastguard to come save me.

Yet, I think part of life is discovering how we respond to these types of situations. I have asked myself several times over the last month Why me? Why my family? Why now? I have come to grips with the fact that the struggles we endure through this life are the moments that define us. I have been gasping for air, struggling with the waves of life for the last couple of months and right when I thought I might sink down to the depths of despair, my friends jumped in and saved me.

I am the sort of person who never wants to be a burden to anyone. A person who entered a profession to help others, not to have someone help me. Yet, this past month I have learned the beauty and grace of friendship.

It was mid February and the worst day I had had all month. I was on a service at the hospital where the attendings hated me, I had just learned my father's cancer had progressed, and my mother informed me she needed to go back for further testing of a suspicious lesion in her breast. There is no other feeling to describe how I was feeling at this moment but numb. Scared, cold, and alone I just ended up calling one of my very best friends and crying in my car after work on the phone with her. I didn't really say anything comprehensible, I just cried. I just remember when I got home I heard a knock on the door. When I went to open it up there she was standing with her gorgeous smile and a beautiful orchid in her hands extending it to me. I remember I just hugged her and cried not only because of the nice gesture, but also because I knew I didn't have to be afraid of being alone. I learned that no matter how awful or terrible the month could be I had people around me who wanted to make it better. People who cared about me.

Perhaps this is why I like spring, because even though you feel like the earth is saturated with water and that the earth is drowning somehow the green grass sprouts up and the flowers bloom. I believe that we all have stormy seasons in life. Times when you literally need a boat to get out of the stormy weather, or a shelter to take cover. This past month my friends have truly been lifesavers they have carried me through some of the worst weather of my life and I am forever grateful.

The ebb and flow of life is unavoidable. It hits us when we least expect it. Yet, you just have to have faith that it will cease that the storm will stop. When it does you are left with the aftermath, a garden of blooming flowers.

Besos

Smooch. SWAK. Beso. Tongue. Peck. Neck. French. Make-out. Smack. 1st Base. Whatever you want to call it, everyone loves a great kiss. I will be the first to tell you I love kissing. To be quite frank, I have no problem admitting I am a kissing floozy. I came to this conclusion after reading a magazine article explaining that the average person has 28 first kisses in their lifetime. And of course intrigued, I began to count. Surprisingly I realized that I was quite the overachiever. Now many you might find this dirty, and I am so sorry, but I think it is somewhat beautiful. I would go as far as to say that most women can name the best kiss they have ever had or seen in a movie without hesitation. We like kissing because it can say so much about a person without saying a word. Not to mention kissing is like the best facial workout anyone could ever get. You burn 26 calories per minute to be exact (don't ask why I know that). Better yet, it releases endorphins, so it's kind of like working out twice in one day. While I am sure many are much more versed on the subject, I have found in my experiences that most people fall into 1-9 categories of kisses. It is my goal to elaborate on these nine categories, and to shed some entertaining commentary about these categories. (As a disclaimer all of these kisses are based on real life experiences at one point or another in my short life.)

#1 The Peck

Now this is was absolutely adorable when I was 12, but in my adult life when you are on a date with a guy and he gives you a peck it means one of two things. He is totally not into you or he is asexual. I mean maybe he is trying to follow some set of invisible rules, much like the 3 day rule for calling girls back after a date, but this is so 7th grade. It does however become more endearing when you have been dating someone for a while and you are in public ect. and he lays a big smooch on ya. Now that is tasteful and the proper use of the peck.

#2 The Forehead Kiss

So I will never forget the guy who decided it was a brilliant idea that our first kiss should be shared on my forehead. I was utterly so confused and frustrated that I had no words for him. I felt like my father had just kissed me goodnight before he tucked me into bed. Now I do feel that this too can be a very sweet gesture when you have known a person longer than 1 1/2 weeks. It should come with a disclaimer: Use Wisely.

#3 The Conservative

As a raging liberal, you can already guess this kiss did not go over well with me. I am sure some people love it, but I find it rigid, predictable, and unchanging... appropriately named. So the only way I can describe kissing a conservative, is imagine getting your tongue stuck in a pop can. You really want to move it but it is stuck in that one position. This my friends is the conservative, the same approach, no spontaneity, and a stiff tongue.

#4 The Slobber Master

So I love dogs, I really do. But there is something different about getting slobbery kisses from Fido and the guy you date. Sometimes I wonder "what the heck is he aiming for I mean literally my mouth is right here." Yet, somehow he has ingested my make-up and moisturizer with one swift kiss. Maybe it's because I have issues with messes, but saliva should stay in your mouth where it was meant to be.

#5 The Jack Rabbit

Quite possibly the kiss I detest more than anyone could ever imagine. I literally just sit there and wait for the traumatic injury to be over. I don't know who ever told guys that this was attractive, but I feel like I am being attacked by a reptile. It is the rapid in and out lashing that makes my mouth feel like it is being brutally murdered. Not only is this the biggest turn off in the world, but makes us doubt you in every way. Just SAY NO.

#6 The Lip Tickle

I actually really enjoy facial hair. I have no idea why but scruff is good. Thus the lip tickle is quite the entertaining occurrence during a lip lock. It sends shivers down your spine and for some reason or another makes everything more exciting. Yet, I get that people are ticklish, and might not dig the mustached man, which in my book is a travesty.

#7 The Biter

You know a bite here and there, O.K., kind of hot. Yet, when I get up in the morning to investigate my lips to make sure they aren't bleeding profusely; we have some issues. When I think of kisses I think of soft lips, not tattered fragments, nibbled on by my loved one. Thus this kiss requires someone who can strike that perfect balance just as my friend Goldilocks would say you need a bite that is "just right."

#8 The Hot and Heavy

So this is a rare find. It is what most women believe every make out session should be because they have all read some book by Nicholas Sparks or watched some movie like the Notebook. Yet, hot and heavy kisses are unpredictable, and they only leave you wanting more. The whole experience is like a jungle gym in my mouth. While it is a boat load of fun, dude it is a lot of work. It does however make you feel alive and hot like fire.

#9 Slow and Steady- It wins the race.

Yet, this would probably come in as my personal favorite -the slow and steady. There is something to be said about a passionate kiss. It has cadence. The tongue moves in a way that leaves you lost in translation. The kiss is soft and tender, and yet still scintillating. It requires some help to steady so his hand is placed on the side of your face. It is real and absolutely memorable, but in a different way than the hot and heavy. It is breathtaking .

This brief synopsis of kissing categories was meant to be my gift to you for Valentine's Day. So while many guys will run out to buy the largest chocolate hearts and most expensive roses they can find, I encourage you to go back to the basics guys because kisses can go a long way.

On Beauty

I can hear the words of my mother reverberating off the dressing room doors of the Macy's department store, "Why can't you just be happy with what you have been given." At first it just felt like someone had slapped me in the face, and all I could feel was the aftermath of the burning and stinging that her hand had left on the side of my cheek. You see my mother and I were shopping together for a dress for St. Vitus, also known as the medical school prom. My mom had just picked out a dress that was tight, black, and somewhat more revealing than I would have chosen for myself for me to try on for her. I remember coming out of the dressing room with trepidation as my mother gasped and said, "That's it. That's the one." It was just so interesting to me that as we both stood looking in the same mirror, we each saw something very different. In her eyes, I looked great, I had a nice shape, and if it were her she would wear the dress with pride. While I looked in the mirror and was horrified. I saw every imperfection, every flaw, and I just stood there baffled at how my mother could possibly feel that this was an acceptable dress.

Yet, I have asked myself for weeks the question that my mother did "Why can't I just work with what I have been given." The answer is I don't have a stinkin' clue. I guess I have grown up in a society that has defined the status quo of beauty for me. I grew up believing that the beautiful women will live happily ever after with their prince charmings. I believed that being beautiful in this society was related to your pant size. Yet, it is hard not to be convinced that there is not some validity to my views on beauty as the findings in a recent NEWSWEEK showed that women who were perceived to be more beautiful were more likely to be hired in the work force, make more money, and be more successful. Yet, the more I think about it the more frustrated I have become with myself and the society in which I live.

All women want to be desirable, if they tell you anything different they are flat out lying to you. It is our nature to want to be loved, and thus love and beauty are intimately connected. I had a guy friend of mine tell me once that he only dates "pretty girls." I of course appalled and mildly irritated by this statement asked "How's that was working out for you." But my question rests in what and who defines what is a "pretty girl." Is it only based on appearance or are there other characteristics that weigh in? Yet, I will tell you that I believe that as much as we would like to deny it society does dictate what we consider as attractive. For example, I have ridiculously curly hair. Yet I would move my hairstylist into my home in an instant, if she would make my hair straight every day because I think I look more attractive with straight hair. Yet, in all honesty, I believe that curly hair fits me and my personality far better.

Furthermore, I know in my heart of hearts that as hard as I try I will never look like Sarah Jessica Parker. Yet, there was a time in my life where I thought being skinny was the end all to beauty. I thought my life would be so different- better actually if I was thin. Somehow I had come to believe that men would like me more, that I would be perceived as more desirable if I was a size 0. Yet, what I learned along the way is that this attempt to control this part of my life only led to disaster and destruction. I remember one day I was in Boston for the summer doing research, I remember being in the gym and going to the scale moving the notches that determine your weigh and realizing I weighed 102 lbs. I remember the only thing that went through my head in that moment was I wonder what it would feel like to weight 100 lbs. The truth is I didn't look beautiful, I didn't look attractive, I looked ill. I didn't have rolling curves, I had bony fingers and an emaciated face.

Yet, somewhere along the way I had a metamorphosis. I realized that beauty was so much more that my exterior. It was more about what resides within you. The truth is that over the years beauty will fade. It will be replaced with gray hair, wrinkles, and sagging skin and what you will be left with is a distant memory of the person you used to be. While I still have longings to be that woman that is idolized in our society, I realize that I am just going to have to settle on being me. You see I believe that beauty radiates from people. It is in the smiles, the laughter, and the unadulterated acts of kindness and this is what truly speaks beauty to me. Thus, I encourage you this week to embrace your inner beauty as much as your outer beauty. To realize that there is no criteria that you have to meet, that you possess a beauty that far exceeds the status quo. And I hope that you will find as I have that trading in my skinny jeans for hips and happiness was the best thing that ever happened to me.