blech

 

So its a rhythmic chant. The bold is the emphasis.

It picks at your brain

It drives you insane

the beating refrain

the hum  of the train

the ongoing tales

the endlessly trails

the whispering whales

the wailingly rales

           Stop

Dumping

I finally got my secondary application in for Med school. I just have to fill out my PhD application, send it with transcripts and application fee and letters of recommendation. On the down side, the deal on the house I bought at auction fell through; its likely my landlord will terminate my month to month lease, after I've responded to the fact that they entered my apartment without appropriate notice...I have no where to go or take the kids and I'm just too tired and worn to move right now; My  common law spouse is back to saying he's leaving me and going to seek full custody of our children, even though he of course spends nights with me and comes back for emotional energy when he's down; my grandmother broke her tibia (she cares for her disabled daughter and her granddaughter with down syndrome) and my grandfather has been put in a nursing home for the duration...needless to say, like a bad grandaughter I have not called or visited them because I have been sick; I had a suprise major exam in class today; ah what else.

Sometimes the seas are stormy

And greyness strokes the sky with a slow cloudy paintbrush

The wind carries warning of rain and uncontrollable skies

But for now there is only smallness in the greyness...

Little stormy peaks on on little stormy waves

Little brushes on your cheek by sandy salty restless breeze

A sun who has *intelligently* hidden.

And birds, agitated call to their families and mates

     <I>Come home Come in, while its still small before its immensity swallows you</I>

and if it does?

You know...

this too, in time will pass.

Mud Hut

If it weren't for my children I would live in a small hut with a mud floor. That way, not only would people not complain if I didn't sweep it, but it would be considered normal to have dirt on the floor.

In other news, I started the ASL interpreter program at the local community college. The medical school gave me a deadline extension on AMCAS, and I got that turned in (thats $180 application fee for just one school! Not the kind of money I have to waste) I'm going to finish the secondary application on Mon. I would have done it this week-end but my printer ran out of ink and I can't afford another cartridge. ( I can buy a thirty dollar cartridge or pay the fourty dollar secondary application fee). Ah, my future in medicine rests in the hands of the local library.

Cheers in this blizzard (I bet those of you in Florida are glad your not North right now)

 

 

more observations

So, I have a lemon that grew white mold first with a green tinge, then the green creeping up and taking over. I set it aside to see what would happen. I washed all the mold off of it, which left a discolored yellow swath around the center of the peel. I set it aside by my sink. The white grew back with a tinge of green then the green seemed to take over since it became mostly dusty green with a tinge of white. I see this mold repeatedly. I wonder what type it is. I had some ginger root which yielded interesting results. Ginger has astringent properties, whihc I tend to associate with clean. However this ginger root develop a white fluffy mold in one spot, which seemed to have been a healed wound (perhaps where the root was cut) I cut it off and the ginger beneath seemed fine--thus perhaps a mold that develops and feeds on the skin of the root? or scar tissue of the root? It was slow developing.

Ah, and I bought tomatos from krogers the other day which seemed to develop weeping sores It was a whitish,pinkish weeping that screamed infection to me. I watched them for a few days and and the infection indeed seemed to spread, causing swelling of the tomato and a type of non-patchwork bruising that indicated that the contents under the skin were liquifying. With sadness at the loss of viable nutrients, at at the general concept of loss to the spread of infection, I settled the tomato into its compost grave.

In other news,I am the worst cook in the world. When I get super rich I am hiring someone who likes to cook and tossing this kitchen silliness out the door.

The Medical Library

Have you ever gone into a medical library to browse through books and be drawn in deeper and deeper into the texts as if enchanted. Fairies carrying your mind in, spiraling down dimly lit tunnels, until you are so deeply swathed in the texts of the library that you are cocooned by the world inside the books. Time fades away, and 'I swear only fifteen minutes' turns into an hour, then two. Wandering through the pages, your brain swells with information as if you have bitten a magic mushroom. Whispers you can barely here stroke you, bombard you, telling you the answers. You know if you can delve just a little bit deeper, read a little bit more, think, and think and think, as if drunk on the very act, then the whispers will turn to a shout of Eureka. So you do, and they do become louder. But a ringing bell draws you up up and out of that world landing you back at the wooden table surrounded by tomes and volumes. The library is about to close, and you've probably gotten a ticket since you parked in a thirty minute only spot. Wisps of that scientific world drift from your pores, and reluctantly you head toward the stairs, feeling an empty spot, a longing. An echo of whispers follows you down the stairwell and  you ache as you know you were only a few more minutes, a few more pages, a few more pieces of the puzzle before the click that would have transformed your hungry need from seeking to understanding.

God, I'm such a geek

Still a science nerd all these years later. Medical School/Graduate school better accept me, or I'm going to set up my own personal lab in my storage closet out of desperation. Try explaining that to the FBI. "No sir, this lab is for my own personal satisfaction. I swear. No, I didn't get those molds from Russia. I grew them on a banana."

Yeah, I need the science fix.

fungal nutrient broth?

Okay, to satisfy my own need for scientific investigation, no matter how amateur, I've begun inspecting any types of growth or organisms growing on foods accidentally left out (or stuff in unknown places by my children to be discovered later or left in the fridge to long). One of the interesting things is that plates with oil on them (we use olive oil and flaxseed oil) left out for the same amount of times having been used for similiar dishes tend to NOT visibly grow things (from mold to creepy crawlies) or develop nasty odors. However when I mixed straight vitamin C with flaxseed oil and water and accidentally left it in the spare room in a fit of absentmindedness it DID grow a particularly beautiful green white mold. It grew on the surface and not into the oil between the surface and the water. It seemed very healthy looking. I wanted to save some for microscope inspection but had no suitible safe place to keep it until I could do so. Sad:(. But it leads me to suspect (using experiential learning, not what I can go look up in a text book) that oil is a useful inhibitor of maggots, fruit flies, mold, and though I could not directly observe it without microscopic aid, I suspect bacteria. However, when the appropriate nutrients in the appropriate forms (such as dissolvable powder) are mixed, oil may be a suitable media or surface to grow specific fungi (and/or bacteria). Olives with garlic stored in vinegar(with possilbe sulfites) salt, water and lactic acid attract fruit flies. I was always under the impression that vineger (acetic acid) isa preservative. Perhaps its not a preservative in the case of fruit flies, but preserves against bacteria and mold (I believe garlic has been shown to be anti-fungal and anti-bacterial) or perhaps another ingredient negates certain preservative properties such as the lactic acid. Without proof, who knows. I suspect it doesn't significanty repel fruit flies, the preservative properties of the ingredients are limited to bacteria and mold.