Tomorrow afternoon I leave on a whirlwind tour of midwestern medical universities that have invited me for interviews.

Here's my upcoming interview schedule

Fri Dec 4th - Mayo Clinic
Mon Dec 7th - Loyola
Tues Dec 8th - Medical College of WI
Thurs Dec 10th - Univ of Chicago
Fri Dec 11th - Rush

Jill and the kids will be sad to see me go, but this will not be for as long as my last trip.

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Today I woke up in the Hilton Garden Inn in Rochester, MN. I woke up at 5:20, but was able to get back to sleep and slept until 6. Afterwards, I got up, took a shower, and got dressed. I ate breakfast at the hotel. Sitting in the restaurant in my suit, surrounded by well dressed strangers, I felt like a more homely, clumsy Donald Draper.

My interview went fine today.

Last night I told the kids that I would be studying in the university of chicago for most of november. I told them at different times.

Ben I told while we were walking back from the Forrest household, after I had fixed their computer. He didn't have much to say about it. Then he spoke up, "Look, Dad, a giant feather!" Nonplussed, I looked around. Sure enough, there was a sculpture in a yard that we were walking past that was a wire outline of what was either a curved leaf or a feather.

"Could it be a leaf?" I asked him.
"No, I don't think so." He replied; a three-year-old of absolutes.

May had a hard time going to bed last night and kept getting out of her room complaining of bad dreams. I gave her a snack, let her do some extra homework, and finally let her watch some of the first game of the world series with me. When I told her she got very upset. She cried and cried and cried. She told me, "Things are much better when there are two grown-ups around. When mommy's not at home, daddy yells alot, and when daddy's not at home 'it's going to be a bad day'." She had recovered by this morning, though, and was talking about the cadre of grandparents we've martialed to support Jill for the month.

Today Ben and I worked on cleaning up the back yard while Jill went to get her hair done.

Hello friends and blog-readers,

News of the kids:
May is in kindergarten now and it is going well. She had a rough start in that her teacher yells a lot more than she's used to grownups yelling. I take this as a complement to our parenting style. Still, I can't imagine being the only adult in a room full of five year olds and not screaming my head off all the time. I feel like I do a lot of yelling with only one five-year-old and her little brother around. May likes doing her homework so much we had a quarrel about it the other night. She was doing some workbook pages when I wanted her to do something else (clean up toys, come to dinner, go to bed, I can't remember), and she shouts back to me, "Dad, do you want me to be smart or not? I have to get this done!"

The little brother is also enjoying the pre-school program he goes to in the neighborhood. He's had some adjusting to do, but loves his teacher and her aide. He likes recess the best and his second favorite part is going on field trips (they went to an apple orchard). Last week Ben was at the local nature preserve at a class that Jill signed him up for and they got to do a butterfly hunt. Immediately, he captured a butterfly and shouted, "Teacher! Teacher! Look! I got one!" No one else in the class, adults included, caught a butterfly.

The nature class he goes to is at Palmyra Cove, a preserve beside the Delaware river. We've been there a few times, and in going there, Ben has developed a keen interest in maps. Treking in the preserve, we follow a map. Ben noticed how important the map was and insisted he carry, read, and interpret the map. Whenever he has a chance, he grabs whatever map is at hand and seeks a leadership, or at least a navigational advisory, role.

The other day we were taking the kids to the library in the wagon. They're big enough now that Jill can no longer pull them both in the wagon. Officially, the wagon was only brought to sustain those children unable to continue the march to the library. However, immediately, Ben gets into the wagon sitting in the forward facing bench seat.

"Ben, move to the other seat so I can get into the wagon." His sister requested.
"No."
"Dad, Ben won't move seats"
"Well, he was in the wagon first. Why don't you sit on the other seat." I replied.
"Oh, Ben," she says, "Do you see that spider moving up the wall of the wagon by your seat?"
"Oh, no." He replied, thoughtfully. He moves to the other seat - not frightened or nervous but ceding his place because of his sister's claim on all things related to animals, insects, or biology.

Later in the week, we were washing the kids and Ben ran down stairs after getting dried off. He said to me, "Look how clean I am. I'm ready for vacation!"

Then, on the weekend, we went to visit Grandma Tina. Next Saturday we leave for one month in Wisconsin, Chicago, and nearby locations.

Readers will know that I recently returned from Bethany Beach with the deBeers clan. It was an excellent vacation with the exception of two troubling occurrences near the end.

Firstly, Jill and I went for a run. This is not in itself a troubling occurrence, yet, after the run, Jill was sitting on the couch, cooling off and shouted, "Ew. Gross!" She had a tick on her leg. I looked at my legs and noticed that I had about 20 ticks on my legs. It was disgusting. Ticks, easily removed with tweezers - even those already latched on, are my least favorite parasite. What creeps me out so much is that they are fast, have an uncanny instinct for climbing and escape, and resist death. Mosquitoes, also an unpleasant parasite, are easy to kill and are quite content to lollygag into one's crushing palm.

Secondly, I took Ben into the ocean and got my prescription sunglasses washed off. I was holding him and went into some deeper water. Then a wave came. Unencumbered, I could have easily leaped above the crest of the wave. However, at a critical juncture I realized that I could either hold my son above the wave or lose my sunglasses. Did I make the right choice? Only time will tell.

May was playing with the girl next door, RM, and asked me. "Daddy, could you please turn on the lights in the toy room?" Then she turns with a stage whisper to RM, "If you ask him nicely, he'll do what you tell him to do." A funny story, true. Still funnier, she repeated this same routine for the baby sitter who sees her regularly. Not only has she realized this is a funny joke, she's incorporated it into her schtick and recycles it for new audiences.

May gets along well with RM, but the other day they had a quarrel. RM was using the bathroom and May came down to get me, "RM had an accident and tinkled on the floor." This is not uncommon with pets and children. I went upstairs to investigate. "OK, where did RM tinkle." "In the bathroom, on the floor."

RM is in the bathroom with the door shut and cries out, "I DIDN'T HAVE AN ACCIDENT THAT'S NOT TRUE!" Then she comes out of the bathroom and begins to rip into May as only a 4 year old can. RM is dramatic and powerful and when she yells in her house, with the windows shut, I can hear her next door. "MR. BARASCH! YOU MUST TELL MAY NOT TO TELL THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE ABOUT ME!"

"May," This is a reasonable request. Honesty is a virtue we seek to cultivate. "I'd like both of you girls to tell each other that you'll agree to only tell the truth about each other. May, I'd like you to go first. Can you please tell RM that you will only tell the truth about her from now on?"

"I'll think about it." She replies in a perfect deadpan.

My cousin Bill, his wife Sarah, and their son Ariel visited immediately after the Beach trip. The kids were playing in the backyard and Ben was hanging between the swings on the swingset like an Olympic gymnast. He wasn't wearing a shirt and his tiny baby-muscles bulged out of his back. "Good grief! He's ripped!" exclaimed my cousin-in-law.

We are at the beach this week - NOT Long Beach, NY but instead Bethany Beach, DE. We're staying in a 3 bdrm 'cottage' with Jill's parents and the kids. We went out to dinner tonight and I had the rockfish with lemon and capers. Jill and her mom each had an excellent crabcake. The kids had chicken nuggets and mac'n'cheese. Sandy, Jill's dad, had the tuna steak with wasabi sauce. Now, I'm a big fan of sushi, but the popularity of sushi has influenced more traditional western styles of fish preparation. When I desire a western fish, I always, as did Sandy tonight, ask for my fish to be at least medium.

On the way to the restaurant, Benjamin wanted to bring his blanket, AKA "Ba-ba", into the restaurant. He told me, "I'll bring in ba-ba, unless there's a sign..." Implying that if a sign forbid bringing blankets in to the restaurant, he'd be willing to cooperate. Cooperation, however, is not high on his list. After dinner we went to Walgreens to pick up some ice cream, and Sandy made the mistake of playing with a 10" rubber bouncy Spiderman ball. Ben, despite the fact that we have the same damn ball at the cottage and at home, kept screaming, "I WANT THAT SPIDERMAN BALL!" until I carried him out of the store over my shoulder. He screamed "I WANT THAT SPIDERMAN BALL!" all the way home until I was able to distract him with trivia questions about the super heroes like, "Can spiderman fly? Can superman fly? But can superman swing from a spider-rope-made-from-webs?" When we got home the kids ate some ice cream and were hard to get into bed.

May had a special naughty trick today. After we got back from the beach, I rinsed off in the cabana and changed into my dry clothes. Unfortunately, someone had locked me into the cabana. The last few people who had been around the cabana were my daughter and my mother-in-law, so one of them must have set the hook-and-eye on the outside of the cabana door. I thought that it would be doubtful that my mother-in-law would lock me in the cabana, she wouldn't enjoy feeling guilty when I finally got out. After some cajoling, I finally got May to admit it was her who locked me into the cabana. I asked her why she did it and she told me, "I was looking upstairs and thinking about going upstairs, and at the same time my other hand was doing things with the door and then I really wanted to run upstairs and so I did."

When I was trapped in the cabana, I tried a few things. First, I kicked the door, but I didn't want to break the door or my foot, and remember, this is a cabana so I'm barefoot. Then, I tried scooting under the cabana door. This wasn't my first choice because I had just showered and changed into clean clothes. I had to lie on my back in the mud and sand at the bottom of the shower. I made it farther than I had thought possible, but got stuck on my lowest ribs - couldn't get those under the door. I heard some neighbors talking and decided to call for help. "Help! Help! I'm locked in my cabana! I'm at 33932 Monterrey Ave and I'm locked in my cabana!" Jill, who was in the shower, overheard my call for help and sent her mom to free me.

About twelve years ago, my dad, ex-step-mom, my sister, and I took a vacation in China. As I am something of a gastro-naut, I earned myself quite a few interesting stories to tell at cocktail parties. Despite my reckless eating behavior, there were a few delicacies that my sister wisely steered me away from. We referred to these eminently avoidable meals as 'wild-lunch', a phrase coined by a Japanese student who was studying with Sarah in Shanghai. Then, when something bizarre happened we prefixed our descriptor of the incident or place with 'wild-', for example, we had 'wild-toilet', 'wild-taxi', etc., etc.

El Destructo is quickly becoming the master of 'wild-toilet' as he is apt to whip out his junk and pee at any time on the slightest provocation. He went the entire day Saturday, however, without any accidents. He might have had an incident of public urination (aka 'Wild-toilet'), but if no one gets a citation and you don't have to change your clothes, I don't count it.

Today is May's last full day of school. She's made a great deal of progress this year and all the credit goes to the public school system in Collingswood. She's had great teachers who have really done a lot to help her with her hand-eye and small muscle coordination. Entering the school year, she couldn't hold a pencil in her hand. Leaving the school year, she writes, colors, and draws with pleasure and confidence.

I'm also coming to the end of a school year and am ending the year on a mixed note. I've learned a lot this year and am looking forward to next year. The year has been good for me, but I am disappointed to end the year with a performance that could have been improved upon in the Consult/Liason division of the department of psychiatry. I wish that I could say my poor performance was due to a lack of interest, but I find many of the cases fascinating. I am heartened, as always, by the memory of Dr. S's medical school evaluations and the random, subjective nature of this year of medical school.

The kids always have a hard time getting to sleep. Not anything unusual, it's just that they don't want to go to sleep because we eat ice cream and watch TV after they go to sleep. Everyone knows. So When El Destructo 'wakes up' 40 minutes after he's been 'put to bed' he stands at his door and calls, 'Mommmmmmmmaaaaaaaaa!' until Jill comes and tries to get him back into bed. Unless I am the one who tries to get him back into bed. In this case, he says, 'You're not the one I wanted!' and cries.

May has been doing some crying lately as well. When I need to leave in the morning, she stands in front of the door and cries and cries. I tell her that I'll be home for dinner but it doesn't help a lot. She just cries and cries.

Ben is doing better on the potty and tonight looked very thoughtful while he was getting his jammies on. Being in such deep thought, I assumed he had to use the potty and I was right.

As it turns out, a spot opened for me to study pathology in Milwaukee during August. Yay! That means I'll be going back to the midwest for a month this summer. I'll be studying in the pathology department at Medical College of Wisconsin during the week, but will probably have some time free on the weekends.

My dad is visiting which means we need to spend some time fixing his computer, cleaning up after him, and begging him to take us out for dinner. Jill and I wanted him to spring for some Chinese take-out, but May wanted to go to Friendly's. Grandpa Steve filled everyone's wishes.

At friendly's, both kids were well behaved. They were really hungry, and when El Destructo's hot dog and macaroni-and-cheese came, Ben dumped the first spoonful, as hot as lava, into his lap. He cried and cried. Scared and in pain he had to go sit on his mom's lap. He was so upset that he lost control of his bladder. Jill, always prepared, had some dry clothes for him and whisked him off to the bathroom. She, herself was not prepared for a potty accident and had to sit in wet clothes through the rest of the meal.

Later that day, I got home and we ordered some Chinese take-out. I got mooshoo vegetable, Jill got chicken with eggplant in garlic sauce, and grandpa got pork lo-mein. I offered to bring one of the kids with me as I went to pick up the food. May wanted everyone to go, but Ben and Jill wanted to stay at home. May also wasn't willing to let me go without the whole crowd. She had a tremendous meltdown, "We MUST have everyone go to get the Chinese food!" Finally I talked her down from the emotional moment and we drove to get the food.

I negotiated two free egg rolls and two extra fortune cookies. I told the kids, "If you want a fortune cookie, you have to eat Chinese food!" They did a good job. Of course, they loved to eat the mooshoo pancakes, but they also ate some lo mein. When we ran out of pancakes, we gave them tortillas.

Yesterday, Jill and I went to pillage the remains of my cousin Jeff's Philadelphia apartment. Our prime goal was to secure his bed, a double (aka full size), and trickle May's bed down to El Destructo. Jeff left a lot of good things at his apartment for us. We got a bottle of fancy vodka and about 18 rolls of toilet paper a long with a numerous assortment of cleaning supplies. The mattress fit into the car, but the box spring had to be strapped to the roof. Everything went fairly smoothly with the transport except when crossing the Ben Franklin bridge over the Delaware river as we left Pennsylvania and entered New Jersey, the box spring began to flap and bounce on the roof of the car.

I was fine with that and put my hand out the window to support the effort of the five or six bunjee cords that were holding the box spring to the roof. Jill, who is a little more worried when we endanger the lives of innocents during interstate travel, also held the box spring. When we arrived at our house, safely, the most important bunjee cord - the one in the back - had fallen off. Nevertheless, everyone survived and all of our panic and worries are now nothing but an intro for a blog entry.

May was excited about her new be, "My new bed is gigantic!"

Ben celebrated his upgrade and May's upgrade by bouncing on the beds. No one got hurt in the bed bouncing.

Dear blog reader,

Thank you for returning to my site. I hope that I will return as well and will be posting more regularly now that I am done with the surgical portion of my medical education.

I just finished studying with the Ob/Gyn department and enjoyed it a great deal. However, this field of medicine is probably not for me. I did get to learn a few interesting things - for example, the greek root words of 'obstetrics' are equivalent to 'to stand and wait.' I did a fair amount of waiting on Labor & Delivery. I also got to deliver two babies, which was tremendously exciting, and OB/Gyn is an exciting field, but maybe a little too exciting for me. Even from my brief exposure to this field, I could see that there are many times when practitioners have to make decisions in a matter of seconds which expose or relieve a huge amount of risk to mom or baby or both. In pathology, a strong possibility for my future specialty, the most exciting decision is which textbook to read next.

My next rotation is psychiatry.

May got to go to the zoo this week on a field trip with her pre-K class. She told me that she got to feed, pet, and go into a room with baby spider monkeys. She told me that she got to feed the monkeys Fruit Loops, popcorn, and animal crackers. It seems like this is a real possibility as she is sticking to the details of her story. She also said that, no, they did not lock the kids in the room with the monkeys by themselves, and yes, the zookeeper told them they had to be gentle when petting the monkeys. I must admit, I felt a twinge of jealousy.

El Destructo is racking up the damage to our property. I was able to re-hang the curtain rods that he pulled down, but still need to repair the passenger-side rearview mirror that he swung on 'like Spiderman' and broke of the Blazer. Saturday afternoon, barring rain, is my time slot for this aggrevating and tedious task. My cousin Bill once told me that 'having a girl first does not adequately prepare you for having a boy.' More true words have never been spoken as it is exhausting to try to keep up with him and keep him out of danger.

It rained pretty much all week in the Philly metro area. I used to think it rained more in this part of the country than it does in Wisconsin, but after thinking things over, I've decided that I merely notice the rain more acutely as I no longer have a car in which to hide when the rain comes.

More soon.

Yesterday, Jill was trying to get some cooking done. She had the cookbook open and was looking at the recipe. Ben climbed up and grabbed the cookbook. He brough it upstairs. They had an intense discussion, bordering on a quarrel, about whether or not Jill could use the cook book.

She asked him, "What recipe are you looking up, Benjamin?"

He replies, "Chicken nuggets."

"And what ingredients do you need to make chicken nuggets?"

"Chocolate Milk"

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May is in a talent show for her Pre-K program and will be singing, "She's a grand old flag" - probably in a group of other kids. She can count and read and do some math.
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I went to bed last night at 7:30 with the kids - it was great.

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It's been slow this week on the surgery service. I've only done three surgeries, and those were all on Monday. People are saying that the economy is causing people not to seek medical or surgical care. I think that's possible. Certainly, if you had an insurance with uncertain coverage and the option to delay a surgery, you probably would, at least until you felt you were less likely to pick up some of the tab.

I woke up very early today, at 3:55 AM, so I could be sure to shave and get on my first train in time to make the 5:01 connection onto my second train. It was cold, with a small amount of frost on the ground, but not enough to make it slippery. I wore my fall coat, which is lighter than my leather, and a green hat with brown diamonds that Grandma Tina gave me last year. I walk quickly in the morning to catch my first train, and am even more hurried in the mild cold of southern NJ.

The moon was out this mornign, a slender crescent of white against the night sky. The wind whipped through the thin teal scrubs that I'm obligated to wear despite the fact that they're hip. In warmer weather, I see rabbits and sometimes raccoons when I'm up that early, but all the other animals were hibernating today.

Jill is in the midst of Tax Season mayhem working for H&R Block and is tolerating re-employment very well. She has been working 8 hours a day Saturday and Sunday the last three weeks, and I have been very successful in keeping the kids from sustaining any kind of serious or permanent physical/psychological damage. Though I have been spending a lot of time with the kids, I still have done some fun things.

Friday night, I watched the documentary Helvetica, a movie about the design of that typeface and how it has been used in the last 50 years. If you're somebody who occasionally watches documentaries and thinks, "hmmmn," I'd recommend it. A lot of designers are interviewed and they get into some of the more subtle issues of typeface design and, in general, graphic design are explored.

Saturday morning I took the kids to the children's museum where they collected their share of germs and also donated germs to the general population. Saturday night we got a baby sitter and went to a cuss-word party at a friend's house. We all have kids and try not to swear in front of them, but this party was a great opportunity to leave the kids at home and say, "Gimme a glass of fuckin' Chardonnay."

On Sunday I had to teach Sunday school. May's class of 4 and 5 year olds had a lesson on work/life balance. I had planned to be very well prepared to teach, but felt grateful to make my appearance on time without a hangover. In my plan, I would have paper-clipped pages in the assigned text (The King's Stilts by Seuss), in reality when things got too academic I explained the pictures and flipped the page quickly. In my plan, I would have cut out images from magazines of people working and people playing, in reality the kids had a blast cutting up my old Coupon magazines and New Yorkers (thank you, Rakesh). It was fun and, other than reading the assigned text a few times to my kids, was only about 10 minutes of out-of-class homework for me.

This weekend I hope to try the new Thai place in town.

Let me first say that I'm very sorry I haven't posted in a long, long time. I'm on my surgery rotation and it's very difficult to find the time to do things.

Since my last post, Ben has developed an obsession with super heroes. He must wear at all times a cape, a spiderman costume (or at least clothes with spiderman on them, if the costume is soiled), a spiderman sword (not that spiderman usually carries one...), and a spiderman flashlight. The flashlight is pretty cool, actually, instead of a regular light patter, it displays a face of spiderman. I brought it to a party last weekend and kept blasting people with it. It was almost as big a hit as my story about the time I ate deep-fried scorpions.

Anyway, my friend from school picks me up yesterday to drive me to the children's hospital in Delaware for a series of lectures from the pediatric urologist and runs into my kids while I'm packing up my lunch. He asks my daughter, "So is your brother interested in superheroes?"

May replies, "Sure, he likes superman and batman."
Mike asks, "What about spiderman? Does he like spiderman?"
May answers, "Obviously, he does. He's wearing a spiderman costume, isn't he?"