what a crazy weekend! on friday the first order of business was to perform my first pelvic exam. i couldn't even be nervous about it because i kept thinking of the poor girl who'd be lying on the table with her feet in stirrups. (really, is there possibly any more vulnerable position? did you know that there are at least four or five other perfectly acceptable ways to position patients for a pelvic? just what you wanted to discuss, i'm sure. but seriously.) everything went perfectly fine, stirrups notwithstanding, and she was a good sport. then nick swooped me up in the mustang for lunch at our favourite sub place in squirrel hill. uncle sammy's serves up foot-long hoagies mounded high with meat and cheese, and a veritable half-pound of piping hot matchstick fries. buried somewhere in all this deliciousness, a little star-brite peppermint (a la rachel christine!) is inevitably waiting for you to discover it. half the time i think they forgot it, until i pick up a couple of smug french fries and -- eureka! anyway, we had a delightful time. as we were walking around we saw this adorable baby asleep in a stroller who smiled just as we were smiling to each other about how cute she was. i about died. the only thing that could have made the afternoon better is if we'd had time to stop at dozen cupcakes, because i was yearning for a cosmo cupcake and i knew nick would definitely love their chocolate peanutbutter ones. but alas, he had to heed the call of the cathedral and actually stayed in pittsburgh later than he should have. it's awfully selfish of me, but i'm glad.

then there was the sex-and-the-city movie, and liz's first cosmo, and milano's pizza with blue cheese, and seven hours at starbucks, and devon's party, where tim and devon assembled a grill in his backyard and then guarded the burgers vigilantly, while amy and i cooked the (shockingly!) pre-husked corn and made brownies and laughed about the perpetuation of gender roles. fortified by our supper, we watched the penguins play the redwings, and i found myself yelling at the TV which is strange because it's the first hockey game i've ever watched. something about the pittsburgh boys just makes you want to root for 'em.

sunday afternoon i stretched out on my beach towel in the back yard and indulged in the last few chapters of a hysterical romance novel amy bought a while back. then promptly shifted gears and read Introducing Early Christianity by Laurie Guy, an overview of ancient church practices and doctrines. most of the books i've been reading are from a Catholic standpoint; it was interesting to see a Protestant perspective on some of the same controversies. what i really can't get over is how adamant most of the early church fathers (Irenaeus, Ignatius, Clement, and Cyprian to name a few) were about the actuality of Christ's body and blood in the Eucharist. then there's Athanasius and Gregory of Nazianzus who hold that the elements are symbolic, but they lived in the fourth century as opposed to the Real Presence gurus who lived in the second and third. so, is it valid to assume that the closer you are century-wise to sharing Earth time with Jesus, the closer you are doctrine-wise to understanding the truth? i was sort of inclined to think that, before embarking on my literary travels. but there have been heresies ever since the start of Christianity. in search of further elucidation, i listened to Mark Driscoll's sermon on The Lord's Supper from his 1 Corinthians series while watching the cotton candy clouds glide overhead. (there's really no better venue for sermon-listening.) didn't know he'd been raised Catholic. unfortunately he didn't tackle the root of my theological tizzy, but it sure was good to hear him comparing heaven to a huge feast of red meat and red wine with good music and good friends.

fitting, too, because last night that's just what we had. we cut up big chunks of chicken, steak, green peppers, zucchini and onions, skewered them, and grilled them over our little table-top grill. mmmm, shish-ke-babs. along with crusty bread dipped in herbed olive oil, the leftovers of tropical black bean salad, garlic mashed potatoes, and amy's finlandian cherry wine and organic cabernet sauvignon, it made quite a tasty (if eclectic) meal. we should do it again sometime.

what a day. well, it pretty much started last night with a whirlwind dash home to put on my pinstripe dress pants and black patent heels, and run in to taco bell with jon and julie where we ordered food and registered to vote (long story), and drive 45 minutes on the turnpike to the wake for amy's poppy. this has been a rough semester for her. as i told her mom, "we need to stop meeting like this..." amy seemed to be in fairly good spirits though, and we employed our new favourite distraction technique of all-dressed-up-after-a-viewing bowling. then there was the stop into eat'n'park because julie had never been there before (?!), where our waitress gave us a whole box of heart smiley cookies for free and amy drew an impressive picture of pandas frolicking on a beach. then back to duquesne, where blair and i read people magazines and watched to catch a predator and i fell asleep on her futon.

now i'm back at the library, fortified by a toffee nut latte and determined to gather as much information as possible on 4-month-old well baby checkups before starting to document the examination i would perform. did you know that babies get 5 vaccines at both their 2-month and 4-month visits? poor little guys. (and they could potentially get 9 at their 15 month appointment!) in the middle of researching when parents should start to introduce solid foods, nick's mom called to ask if i wanted to go to the beach with them this summer. so sweet! we had a lovely conversation about diabetic foot ulcers (i love that she's a nurse!) and i promised to let her know when i know the exact dates of our summer break. looks like we'll have most of july off at this point.

and elizabeth just called to say there's a festival of praise in ohio tonight (affectionately known as a fop) so i may join that crew instead of studying the rest of the night. my soul needs it.

can't believe january is already slipping away...

around the same time i referred to magazines as "mazagines", nick was calling coffee "foffee". and this year, i've added "foffee" to my vocabulary, along with other fantastic words like crepitus, whispered pectoriloquy, caput medusae, and bullous pemphigoid. it's just such a fabulous beverage, in all its permutations. for example, on saturday morning, i awoke at 6 a.m. on julie's couch with reams of neuroscience notes staring superciliously up at me. it was rather rude of me to fall asleep on them, but it didn't deter me from falling back asleep until 11. at that point the sun was streaming in through the living room windows, and julie emerged from her bedroom with a huge smile on her face. "good morning, kate!" and she hopped into the kitchen and worked her wizardry, filling the apartment with the smells of Real Breakfast. to wit, a mushroom-and-onion egg scramble, cinnamon raisin toast, and freshly brewed coffee. no better way to start the day.

and on sunday, i had the distinct pleasure of introducing a customer to cafe con panna (which is how i prefer mine). all you do is pour a blackety-black cup of joe and then top it with a perfect, quivering mountain of whipped cream. this bliss can too be yours for $1.55 at your local starbucks!

and yesterday, i concocted what may be the best drink ever: a grande three-pump nonfat with whip peppermint white mocha. except i kind of hate ordering it, because it kind of makes me seem like one of those crazy half-caf ristretto no-foam extra-hot bone dry cappucino people who you want to shake because it isn't possible to have a bone dry cappucino without foam. nevertheless, my drink is delicious, and it energized me to do fabulous lung exams on jon and julie last night, which enabled me to breeze through my lung competency today. i highly suggest it.

and now i must sweet-talk those neglected neuroscience notes into lodging themselves securely in my memory for tomorrow's 8 a.m. exam! i sense even more foffee in my future...

in the words of kenneth grahame's Mole:

"oh, my."

we're about to hurtle into another week, and i just have to take a moment to breathe in the bracing october air. i've been thinking a lot about hope recently. in what objects do i place my hope? what does it feel like to truly hope? have i been confusing it with other emotions or perspectives? take optimism. which, incidentally, is as much a part of me as my little Geiger nose. it means i look at things and think, "that's pretty peachy. i can handle that." but hope is the substance of things yet unseen; hope is believing that things will be peachy when they look anything but. if everything is going swimmingly, there is no need for hope.

of course, everything this semester hasn't gone swimmingly, and thus i was thrilled (and a little bit tickled at just how... funny God is) when the pastor at mt. ararat baptist announced his sermon topic for last night's service: hope. and let me tell you, last night's service was both a kick in the pants and a sweet premonition of the eternal John 17 moment known as Heaven. mt. ararat is a predominantly african-american church, whose building sits in the heart of one of pittsburgh's grimiest neighborhoods and whose congregation literally shakes the balconies with their singing. i kept thinking of a similar experience mr. roddy had, which he told us made him feel like "such a white boy." now, i can do some serious clapping and toe-tapping, and i can belt out "leaning on the everlasting arms" with the best of them. but i have never experienced a sermon so peppered with heartfelt commentary from the brothers and sisters surrounding me. "yes!" "hallelujah!" "come on, pastor, come on!" and whereas i generally respond to a convicting statement with a barely audible "mm-hmm", these believers would leap to their feet and stretch out their arms to heaven whenever the pastor drove home a point. it was fantastic. and while the sermon didn't add much to my head knowledge of hope (it's not really a difficult concept to wrap one's mind around), the whole service showed me what it means to live hope. amen. 

and there were so many other blessings this weekend as well. on thursday nick and i took a beautiful drive to see the changing leaves (his idea!! the little romantic stinker), and stopped at the outlet stores to buy some much-needed dress clothes. on friday, jon, liz & i trotted up to amy's house to see garrett play his trombone in the riverside marching band (and to shake our heads as riverside beat the opposing team, 69-14). then we got milkshakes and bratwurst at the place amy used to work, and came home to be stuffed with pepperoni bread by mrs. boots and to dig through her boxes of fabric to look for halloween costumes. as it turned out, jon found a flowery piece of fabulosity that he might turn into a scarf, and i found the darlingest yellow fabric with chubby lambs dancing all over it, which amy bequeathed to me with express instructions to use it for my future babies. and saturday, we went to a fantastic little coffee shop and church and then amelia and i had a proper pirate wenches' night out. made much better by the fact that we were all bundled up in our coats and scarves like sensible folk, instead of half-dressed like the silly halloweeners.

and so, here comes another week. i hope it's a good one.

fall is here, folks. i'd rather refer to it as autumn, but this year the word "fall" seems more metaphorically appropriate. the last week has been rough. and it makes me think of a couple of times i seriously feared for my life while playing with the Garritys up on the cliffs of the Puget Sound shoreline. we would leave Mom and Mrs. Garrity sipping tea in the kitchen, while the whole pack of us (eight kids under the age of ten) scrambled down the driftwood steps to the beach. and then we'd throw seaweed at each other, and try to skip rocks, and stomp around on the sand trying to get clams to squirt water up from their little burrows. entertaining enough, of course, but the real fun started when we remembered that our favourite thing ever was to play capture the flag. and we'd run down the beach shrieking about who was going to be on which team until we got to one particular driftwood log that lay like a gangplank, one end on sand and one end up on the clay embankment. then we clambered up it single file, scrambling up the cliff by means of a little path, which would probably be quite difficult for my twenty-two-year-old eyes to discern but was as distinct as a freeway to my ten-year-old vision. a few minutes would undoubtedly be spent coaxing the little ones that they "could do it", and finally we'd all be up among the trees, surveying the omniscient grey ocean and feeling like we'd quite inherited the earth.

and then the melee started. i remember sprinting down little paths and pushing off from tree trunks to get a little leverage around the corners. and whispering about plans at the secret base. and literally wrestling each other in the fierce and frequent battles over territory. but i especially remember dashing through the bracken with blatant disregard for the trail, my heart thumping in my chest as i clutched the opposing team's "flag", and then all in one horrible second, leaping over a fern only to find no ground on the other side. i windmilled for half a moment, and then my feet hit clay, and i dug my heels in and lurched down the cliff, grasping at tree trunks and plants and anything to stop. and suddenly my right foot hit a rock and i splatted on my back and lay there, clutching torn-up grass and weeds in both hands, and wondering how the ambulance would get up there to rescue me.

but as i lay there, i realized (with a twinge of disappointment) that an ambulance probably was not necessary. and i slowly un-squinched my eyes and watched the branches move overhead, and thought how good it was to be alive.

that's a fall. and this week, i've re-enacted it the grown-up way. my injections competency last week? fantastic, except that i recapped a needle without even thinking about it, and automatically failed the entire thing. and my head/eye/ear/neck/throat competency on tuesday? just as fantastic, except that i forgot to ask whether my mock patient wore glasses, forgot to palpate the sinuses, and forgot to perform three hearing tests. automatic fail. which i realized as soon as i had said "thank you!" and escorted my mock patient to the door. the day before, i redid the injections competency and received full credit, but all that relief vaporized, and i windmilled and lurched until wednesday.

but now, i'm alright. there's a difference between failing something and being a failure. there's a choice between utter humiliation at being seen by my profs as someone who doesn't prepare adequately or doesn't care, and humble resolve to prepare better next time. and there's a question of what God wants to speak to my heart, and maybe of why it took something so personally unacceptable for Him to get my attention. and as i said before, it's fall. today i'm snug in my cerulean sweater from galway, and on my way downtown for my second-to-last shift at amazon the leaves crunched under my feet. and i've been filling my ears with sweet truths. in Christ alone, my hope is found - He is my light, my strength, my song. unresting, unhasting, and silent as light, nor wanting, nor wasting, Thou rulest in might. praise the name of Jesus - He's my rock, He's my fortress, in Him will i trust.

it's starting to feel like autumn.