Dreams and nightmares

my mind is a wonderland; my house, a circus

This past weekend I took my first exams for Anatomy and Physiology. I expected to do well because, unlike math-related subjects, systems-level thinking makes intuitive sense to me. ¹

Friday night I had super stressful dreams² and woke up in a cold, adrenaline-fueled sweat on Saturday morning, which proved an inauspicious beginning.

Still jittery from the dreams, I sprayed deodorant in my hair instead of dry shampoo. Distracted, I made a wrong turn on campus onto a dead-end road. Then when I got into the lab building, I looked at the elevator (which I have used before, mind you) and all I could see were the emergency buttons. I swear, I stared at the panel and said to the person next to me, “What do I even push?” “I think it’s that one,” she said, kindly pointing to the single plain silver button by itself at the bottom of the panel.

Once the exam began, I blanked on the word for the shoulder region (acromial; I will now never forget) but after that, I did very well.

That distressing morning blindsided me because this is an otherwise heady time: Olympics season. When my self-belief soars to heights normally reserved only for Big Air Snowboarding.

I lounge on my sofa, judging, while in my mind I gracefully land a quad with perfect extension—ok maybe not a quad, but certainly a triple flip—and jackrabbit through the moguls in my warm but cute snow coat. (That my most physically exhilarating feat of athleticism in the past five years was a pencil dive at the Y, it matters not. I mean, I couldn’t land a 1440 right now, but with a little bit of conditioning, who’s to say?³) Still, I am approaching sports retirement age (I’m 38) so I’ll probably keep my aspirations more modest. Ice dancing, say, or curling.

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In other sporting news, my middle son Oliver (recently turned 9) is starting spring soccer this week, and Friday evening we had a parent meeting on Zoom. The meeting opened with a parent loudly saying “what the F” but it was the actual eff-dash-dash-dash word. I wouldn’t say what I felt was schadenfreude; what’s the German word for “thankfully-it-wasn’t-me-this-time”?

Because let’s be honest, it could’ve been. At one point during the meeting I did in fact discover a hamster running across the kitchen counter with a coffee filter in his mouth. The difference is nobody knows what I said, because I know how to mute.

This hamster can sleep anywhere. If you’re wondering about that large mass he’s using as a pillow, yeah those are his balls. According to hamster-home.com, “Hamsters are renowned to have testicles as large as 1/4 of their body.” And firsthamster.com describes the rear end as “very large, bulging almost. that is where their testicles are, and you will see them often” (emphasis mine).

1. It’s easier for me to remember the names of things when I can conceptualize the actual need for that thing to even exist. Basic example: it’s easy for me to remember “phospholipid bilayer” because it makes sense that a cell membrane would need to both let things in and keep things out, and a phospholipid bilayer provides both hydrophilic (thanks to phosphate group) and hydrophobic (thanks to lipid tails) properties.

Okay, I recognize that example is probably still clear as mud to some people. But to me it makes sense.

2. All I remember was being massively pregnant with another child. No way, Jose, I muttered to myself, mantralike, while getting ready.

3. As Josh Groban taught us in his 2004 Christmas album (but I like to think it applies year-round):

Believe in what you feel inside
And give your dreams the wings to fly
You have everything you need
If you just believe