I'm turning into my...Father?? (And my mother before parties)

Yes, it's true. Most girls fear turning into their mother. Me, I'm Dad all the way. Now, to be fair, I've been like my father most of my life. Super type-A, organized, tidy, stubborn, anxiety prone overachievers. (Too the point of OCD with me when I was younger, but again, story for another day). I also inherited his metabolism (thank God), lack of tolerance for fools, and the Italian temper. (Quick fuse, but mostly just bark. Heaven help you if you REALLY piss us off...) This caused us to butt heads quite frequently when I was in high school, but we've since become pretty good friends. :) (I turned 18, and he got cool. Go figure!) All this truly hit me this afternoon...

Allow me to set the scene: We've got a fairly tiny kitchen area as it's combined with our living room. It's about the size of a postage stamp, but not usually a problem (especially since my usual idea of cooking is removing the packaging and sticking it in the oven). However, if the dishes pile up, it becomes claustrophoic FAST! My flatmates are fairly tidy, but with the quick approach of exams, household chores fall by the wayside. This drives me NUTS. We had leftover desserts and salad from Thanksgiving last week that have been sitting on the counter since. We had a nice little penicillin farm going by today, let me tell you - YUCK! (Refrigerate people, seriously!) This combined with quite a few dishes of several days duration makes for a mess. Also, I tend to be the only one who takes out the trash, a job the germophobe in me HATES. Today was no exception.

I'm also one of those people who can't sit down and concentrate on things (like studying) if there's chores or errands to be done (my Zeigarnik, I suppose. It's a tension for unfinished business. Overachievers are prone, and I've got a big one. Could be part of the reason I don't sleep well...). Anyway, when I need to procrastinate, I clean. This causes me to become extremely productive around exams. Today I've been to the post office, picked up my contacts, done my grocery shopping, did the dishes, emptied the trash, swept the kitchen floor, started my laundry (drives me up the wall not having a dryer...), changed my sheets, put away the Thanksgiving decorations, and settled my accounts for the month. Hahahaha I would have decorated for Christmas but have been warned my flatmates this is not allowed 'til tomorrow. :P (I've got Christmas music on now as I needed a bit of cheering up today.)

So, it seems I am my father. He's the one at our house who freaks if the dishes sit for more than a day. Mostly he's got to do them right after dinner, while my mom is content to let it sit 'til she has enough to run the dishwasher (which in a family of 6 doesn't take long). She also doesn't really clean unless we have a party at the house (and then she turns into a psycho...). She used us kids as labour when we were younger. We'd get paid by the hour for doing the den, kitchen floor, etc. We HAD to either clean our rooms or our bathroom once a week. I don't understand why my younger brother rushes through his chores - the longer you work, the more you get paid! Hell, I still get paid for cleaning and ironing hahahaha. My dad is the one who cleans their room and bathroom once a week. My mom refuses to share the laundry, though. It's the only time she can escape to the basement and be left alone. She calls it her therapy. We all do our own now, but she still has enough to keep her busy. And in true homage to my dad, I'm sure I'll have the flat spotless before I leave for Christmas break in two weeks.

Ah, well, I suppose I could do worse than be my father. He's smart and active and hasn't truly grown up (and I hope he never does!). He's got a great sense of humor and never lets us take ourselves too seriously. He can be a bit intense, but sometimes you need that. To be fair, I see him turning into my grandfather - no matter what you're going to do, he'll tell you his opinion and what he thinks you should do. (Grandpop is still telling me I should have gone to vet school in Florida where his sister lives or joined the Navy and had them pay for it. [shakes head and grins]) Now if I could just find a guy like my mother to balance me out, I'd be set. ;-)

I'm going to be a crazy old lady, aren't I? :)

P.S. Flyers update - back on top (for now), but Hartnell's suspended for one more game. Broad Street Bullies are back...now if Gagne would just get well... Now off to eat lunch and study for real!

Inevitable Conversations & Why I'm Becoming a Bear

Happy post-Thanksgiving! I'm sitting here a bit fuzzy headed from a big meal last night (everyone had class' til late on Thursday) and too much sleep today (and quite possibly the animal welfare legislation notes I'm reading...). I think I've been out of bed for a grand total of 30 minutes. It's just so warm and comfy...but I'll get to that in a minute.

I got speak with my whole family on Thursday while they were at dinner, which was great, but it always makes me incredibly homesick. However, there are things about these conversations that I absolutely dread. The background to this is my chronically single status. I've dated off and on, but never anyone seriously (or longer than a few weeks). There has been serious (on my part) interest in a few guys over the years, but the stories are messy and best left alone. If you ask me why the singlehood your answer would be lack of time and opportunity (and that most guys are idiots). If you speak to my friends, it's pickiness and fairy-tale syndrome (Damn you, Disney!). Ignore them. ;-) Anyway, at my age, this tends to prompt incomprehension and suspicion in my relatives. My mother has asked me twice if I was a lesbian (which I'm not although since vet school have considered in passing just 'cause my odds are better LOL). All this leads to the inevitable question every time the holidays or summer vacation roll around. "So, are you seeing anyone?" I got a new variation on this from my aunt this week and was asked, "So are you having sex?" (I'm praying to God my mother wasn't in the room at the time, even though the answer was no. That's a conversation I would rather avoid.) After I stop laughing and my inevitable answer of "NO" is given, I am then forced to explain why. (Like I know??) At least this year I had my speech ready. Let's do the math, shall we?

There are 21 guys in my year at school. (I'm discounting the other classes as we barely ever intermingle, and the story of the Big Bad Wolf in the year ahead of me is best not told to the fam.) 13 of these guys have girlfriends. 21-13=8. 3 of the guys in my year are gay (2 of which came out to me within 24 hours of each other in October - yeesh.) 8-3=5. The remaining 5 guys are undateable for various reasons of personal hygiene, age, manwhorishness, and extreme reserve. 5-5=0. Now add to this that the vet school is rather isolated from the rest of the uni, and the course leaves little time for outside activities = I remain single. :P At least this year, my equation managed to stave off any more questions, even though I did get the sympathetic and pitying "Oh." (God that makes me crazy. Why do I have to be dating someone as well as training as a vet to make me a whole person?? *HUGE PET PEEVE ALERT TO BE COVERED WHEN I'M MORE AWAKE*) I suppose we'll go another round in a few weeks when I'm home for Christmas. ('Cause of course the answer will be different in 3 weeks...) Maybe I should ask for a mail-order husband or an arranged marriage this year. Certainly would make life easier, and I'd love to the see look on people's faces if I actually answered yes to the inevitable question.

Ok, so have spoken to the family and managed to depress myself about being stuck here. Now I'm going to combine that with the lack of daylight we're currently experiencing. We're down to less than 8 hours of sunlight a day, and it POURED rain all last week. Oh, and it's FREEZING, although for some reason we're the only place it's not snowing. As you can imagine, this induces an extreme need to hibernate. I want to crawl into bed, snuggle under a million covers and sleep 'til March when the daylight starts coming back. However, not being large, hairy, and clawed, this is not a feasible option. I just get a wee bit irritable and depressed (to the point where I almost started crying in the grocery store yesterday 'cause I couldn't find minced onion. Oi.). During the winter, it's constantly a wonder to me that more people don't jump off bridges or something. At least there's Christmas to look forward to, although I have to get through an exam first. Yuck. :P

P.S. For those of you that were worried the paper with the pink Post-It was found, signed and sent to me a week ago. Too bad it arrived a day before the paperwork needed to be in NY. Thank God I had badgered the office into signing another copy 3 weeks ago so everything would be in on time. I swear this place is going to drive me to insanity one of these days....

This is why I don't sleep...

So I have figured out why I don't sleep at night anymore...I do things like stay up to keep an eye on the score of the Flyers game. Then the Flyers do silly things like lose to the damn Rangers for the second time in two weeks in overtime, causing them to have to share first place. As a Philly fan, this scares the crap out of me because we know the slide into suck is likely to happen at any time and without warning. Anyway, it's now nearly 4 AM, and this all serves to make me too pissed off to sleep.

Oh, and will someone please tell Simon Gagne to DUCK the next time someone takes a swing at him? He's been out of action since October 24, and as much as I want him to recover to his old self, this indefinite absence worries me a wee bit....Sigh. Couldn't we just have one season where we run away unchallenged with the whole thing?? Just one?? Good thing I only have one lecture tomorrow morning...

Top 10 Reason NOT to Attend (Foreign) Vet School

Ok, so our class has been having some MAJOR issues with our course organizers this year. For instance, one of them has changed an exam format from open to closed book in CLEAR violation of uni policy, and is using semantics to get around said transgression. Anyway, when they asked to have a meeting with us to discuss said issues, we were treated like 5 year olds throwing a temper tantrum. Fabulous. In response to the lunacy, I am taking a page from David Letterman's book, and making a top 10 list. I'd post it on Facebook, but the vet school police would find it and expel me. :P

Without further ado I give you: Top 10 Reasons Not to Attend (Foreign) Vet School.

1. Debt, debt, and more debt. Made all the worse by the amazing exchange rate. Thank you, Mr. Bush.

2. No one works here. EVER. I'm serious; trying to get someone to even answer an e-mail is like going on a damn Grail quest. I realize everyone needs a holiday, but you don't get to take one once a week!

3. High School, take 2. Imagine your high school. Now imagine your high school if you were at least 5 years older than most of your classmates. Now imagine your high school if most of said classmates were girls. See where I'm goin' with this? Which brings me to...

4. Love life? What love life? My class is 80% female, and my male friends are gay. You do the math. I got asked the other week if there was anything new with my love life. My reply was that it had disappeared 2 years ago, and I haven't seen it since. If you find it, could you please tell it I'm looking for it? Thanks.

5. Rampant paperwork thieves. Apparently even if you drop off a form and leave a HOT PINK Post-It on it with your details, it's not safe from these criminals. Unfortunately, the office is run by the visually impaired, and they don't realize it's missing 'til a week later. Or if it's the finance office, not at all.

6. Politics is alive and well. Admin figures if they pay us lip service now we won't make a fuss when they screw us later. How very American of them.

7. Common sense is not required. Let's give the kids 106 lectures worth of work to learn, and then schedule the external lecturers for the Thursday and Friday before their exam the following Wednesday. Or this - let's offer 80 places for graduate entry students. No way they all accept....Genius.

8. The GIANT money pit. We have class at our hospitals 20 minutes outside the city, but we're the only school within the university that has to pay for our own transport out there. They decided not to give us printed notes, but printer credit to print most of our notes ourselves. Where is my tuition going, exactly??

9. The slave labour clause. Oh, you didn't see that? It stipulates you have to do 12 weeks of farm/horse/kennel work FOR FREE, and then a year or two later 26 weeks of unpaid interning on your vacations if you want to graduate. Not to mention ICU duty and final year itself during which time half the clinicians will treat you like crap. Oh, and I hope you don't like to sleep or eat. We don't do those here.

10. Animals? Who said anything about animals? I hope you didn't think you'd actually get to work with LIVE animals did you? That's only for the final years. And I think most of them would be happy at the end of the week to never see another animal again....

Someone remind me again why I'm doing this? I can't for the life of me remember right now....

Bonfire Night....

It's actually Guy Fawkes, but same difference. The whole thing has to do with the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament. The funny thing is no one here can actually remember if they're celebrating the fact it didn't get blown up, or the guy trying to blow it up. What really worries me, though, is the sheer amount of fireworks involved in this holiday. You can buy them in the grocery store!!! The purchaser is supposed to be 18 or over, but we all know how that goes...

14 year old kid to the homeless guy: Oi, I'll give you money for a pint if you'll buy me rockets....

Homeless guy: mmmmm, beer.....

If you can't find a handy homeless person, just ask an older sibling, parent, uncle, whatever. Working the ER tonight must be such a joy.

The best part is that they start celebrating Bonfire Night at least a freakin' week early. There have been fireworks going off at all hours of the night for at least that long. And they won't stop for a few days. I think people here want to set things on fire. I've already heard one fire truck come screaming past outside my window, and I'm sure there will be more as it's only 6:30 PM. This is incredibly conducive to the studying I have to do. Sigh.

At least on the 4th of July we know what the hell we're celebrating....

Failte!

It's 3AM, and I've got class at 9, so of course I'm setting up a blog... Hello! Not sure what prompted me start this other than a need to have a place to generally rant, have a laugh, share moments of pure stupidity (mine and others), and try to figure out these crazy years they call your 20s.

I'm not sure who's reading this, or if anyone will, but I'll introduce myself for the one or two people who stumble upon my musings. NL, 25, future veterinarian at your service. I’m a Philly native currently living across the pond to gain the means of future employment, namely working my ass off to put the letters Dr. in front of my name in a few years. And putting myself into a debt large enough to rival the national deficit (okay, maybe not quite that much, but it sure feels like it). For any future veterinarians out there reading this, let me give you one piece of advice: win the lottery. Let’s see, other vital stats: 5’2" of Italian descent and mostly average looks unless I have 2 hours to spend primping, which I usually don’t. My saving grace is an athletic build thanks to good genes and seven years of competitive rowing. I’m a roll out of bed, throw on something clean, brush hair and teeth, and out the door kinda girl. In my "spare time", I catch up on sleep, read pretty much whatever I can get my hands on, row (natch), play basketball, and whatever else allows me to avoid studying. I hope that some of what I have to say at least makes you laugh. Now, as they say, on with the show.