Love is.

I know you haven't heard from me in a little bit, but it's because I'm on that that cloud up there.  Yep, that ninth one from the bottom.  I'm just sittin' pretty up here, enjoying the view.

Ladies and gents, there is a Dr. D in the house.  And he's done with away rotations.  Donezo.  Even better yet, he's a fourth year medical student and---today?  Well, today he got to come home from the hospital at 3:30pm.  It was still light outside.

That's what's up.

We are currently cozied-up in a booth at my favorite coffee shop, and as I bask in the glow of our rediscovered togetherness, I decided to compose a list of what love is to me, based on the past few days.

That's my two cents, anyway.  It evolves daily.  How about you?

PB&Js and Peds

Something about Dr. D being on his pediatrics rotation has caused our culinary tastes to regress.  I'm not sure I can count how many meals have been made up of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and/or cereal this month... all I know is that my hands are perpetually sticky and our Jiff is running low.

Our friend Dr. S helped us step it up a notch more recently by providing us with some delicious home-baked sourdough bread.  There truly is nothing better in my opinion than pb&j on toasted sourdough.  It's my desert island food---you know, if you were stranded on a desert island and could only eat one thing for the rest of your life and miraculously there was an infinite supply of pb&j trees.  My other choice would be bean and cheese burritos.  Don't hate.

Our gastroregression (yeah, I just made that up, so what?) reached new infancy recently when Dr. D got the urge to forgo the customary Kashi in the cereal isle and opt for Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch...

...which he proceeded to methodically add to his pb&j later that day.

Guys, I can vouch for this: it was awesome.

The Cure

Ten years ago today, at 3:12pm, the 15 year old version of myself stood completely still amidst the chaotic chatting and crowded, frantic changing of the girls' locker room at the end of a 7th period gym class. I stared quietly at the slip of paper in my hands, frozen on the outside and pulsing with electric energy on the inside, as I read the last line again: Will you be my girlfriend?

Little did I know then that my answer could have been, "Someday, I'll do you one better."

* * *

Flash forward seven years later, three years ago from today (only three years? It's amazing how time has the capacity to feel simultaneously fast and slow). Dr. D and I had been planning our trip to the bay area for quite some time, to visit friends and to celebrate seven years of togetherness. We explicitly agreed: no presents.

There were many times over the course of that weekend trip that I should have caught on to what was happening, but I remained blissfully unaware until the very moment that it happened. I suppose my first indication that things were not what they seemed should have been when, on the day that we were supposed to leave to drive upstate, Dr. D surprised me with two plane tickets. I hated flying. As in deathly afraid, need to be medicated kind of hate. Also, I was perturbed because we had said no presents.

He assured me that he didn't care about the gifts, he just wanted to get as much time out of our trip as possible and not waste it on driving. It was the first flight we ever took together, and as I sat in my window seat, hand-in-hand and forehead-to-forehead with Dr. D, I remember realizing that it was the first take-off in years that I wasn't thinking about dying---I was thinking about life. With him.

To an outside observer, the next clue that this weekend was more than it appeared could have been discerned by the gourmet dinner that was served to us that evening in our friends' home. Mr. and Mrs. S (who at the time were still Mr. S and Miss B) provided us with a decadent feast of orzo, Cornish game hens, and wine. I'd like to defend my continuing obliviousness by pointing out that the two of them have always been gourmands in the kitchen. Still, how could I not notice the twinkle of a secret in Mr. S's eye?

The next day was our anniversary, so we set out to explore San Francisco. First we stopped to get sourdough sandwiches (a must, of course), then we went to Golden Gate park and had a picnic on a park bench and laughed at the antics of the ducks in the pond---I believe the polite word for it is "twitterpated". Next, we went to the Japanese Tea Garden to explore, take silly self-takes with my camera, and of course have a little bit of tea. As we read the fortunes from our fortune cookies, Dr. D had a good laugh over his and shared it with me: All decisions you make today will be most fortunate. I didn't really get the joke, but he seemed absolutely tickled.

One might think that all of this sounds a little over the top and dripping with romance, but as you've probably learned by now, Dr. D is the king of romance. In fact, he's more like the doctor to the lawyer to the king of romance. That's how good he is.

Oh, and you ain't seen nothing yet.

Later that afternoon, we found ourselves driving the dangerously hilly landscape of the city, and as we reached a red light, Dr. D turned to me and said: "I'm gonna need you to get out of the car."

I abruptly stopped singing along to the mix CD that Dr. D had made for the trip (a standard practice... are you even surprised at this point?), and just stared back at him, not sure if I heard him correctly. Turns out, I did.

"Really. You need to get out of the car, go into that hotel on the corner--" Oh look, sure enough, that's a hotel-- "and ask them for their day spa. I made you an appointment."

I really don't recall what I said at that point. I may have sputtered something along the lines of "Whaaa....?", but that was all I had time for because the light turned green, and with the further instruction of "Just go!", I did exactly that.

But not without managing to call out to Dr. D through the open car window as he drove off: "We said NO PRESENTS!"

Incredibly disoriented and in a bit of a daze, I walked through the hotel lobby, inquired about the whereabouts of said day spa, and took the elevator to the penthouse level, which opened up into what I could only assume was, well, a day spa---I'd never actually been to one. Approaching the frighteningly smiley and friendly hostesses, I attempted to explain myself.

"I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing here but my boyfriend was driving and then we were in the middle of the street and he said get out of the car and he told me that I should come here and tell you that he sent me here for something but I really have no idea what and I... it's our anniversary." I figured the last statement could somehow clarify all of the verbal diarrhea that came before it.

Still smiling, one of them nodded and said, "Of course, we're expecting you. Please have a seat in our waiting area."

I sighed with relief, and looked in the direction of the waiting area---directly into the eyes of my best friend since childhood, Dot. She waved sheepishly.

OKAY. This is when I figured it all out, right? I mean, Dot lived back down south near us, so the fact that she just miraculously appeared in this day spa in SF made it all too completely obvious that Dr. D was up to something huge, correct?

Nope. I still didn't figure it out, because I remembered that Dot had told me a week earlier that she would be in the bay area at the same time that we were, for a family member's birthday. "Dr. D told me he wanted to do something special for your anniversary, and since he knew I'd be here, he asked me to come to the spa with you!" That's how Dot explained it, and I took it for face value, no questions asked. Ah, naivety.

We had a wonderful time getting pampered, and as the session came to a close, I noticed Dot was periodically texting someone. At this point, I knew there were probably more surprises coming, but the biggest one I could come up with was this: Dr. D had secretly planned a nice dinner for us with some of our friends in the area. I mean, our friends are a big part of our lives---our extended family---so why not include them in our celebration?

I wasn't even all that shocked when Dot and I were picked up from the hotel not by Dr. D, but by Mr. S instead. We must be going to meet Dr. D at the restaurant, I thought to myself. Still, my friends were remaining suspiciously tight-lipped, so I decided to ask them where we were headed.

"I don't ask questions, I just do what I'm told," said Mr. S, cryptically. He and Dot managed to spend most of the car ride talking about anything and everything that didn't have to do with where we were going, so I had very few chances to interject with periodic questions about what was happening. It was useless anyway, because my questions were ignored. I was equal parts annoyed and thrilled.

Finally, Mr. S parked the car near the bay coast line, and I could see the Golden Gate bridge standing impressively in the near distance, gilded in the light of the sun that was beginning to set. I followed Mr. S and Dot as they began to walk towards a grassy meadow next to the water (a place I would later learn is called Crissy Field), and I remember thinking to myself that this was a very strange place for a restaurant.

I eventually noticed that we were walking towards someone, who appeared to to be holding a bouquet of white roses. As we got closer, I realized the person was... not Dr. D. It was one of his roommates, Palex. In a recurring theme of the day, I realized that Palex was strangely in SF when he was supposed to be back at home. He handed me the bouquet and pointed to a single long stemmed white rose on the ground a little farther away from us. "You should start following those," he said, grinning.

In that moment, I don't know what I thought was going on. All I know is that for some reason, I was still under the impression that this was all a very extravagant anniversary gift. And again, I found myself horribly under-prepared in the reciprocating gift department. How embarrassing.

I started to walk towards the first rose, but then remembered about dinner, and turned back to the three friends who were with me. "Aren't you guys coming?"

Maybe I'm remembering this part a little more dramatically than it actually happened, but Mr. S could have just as easily have been playing the role of a dewy-eyed karate guru or sage wizard sending off his protege to face the wonders of the world for the very first time. He said to me meaningfully and with great weight to his words, "This next part... is for you."

I began to walk and collect the roses. Each one of them had a slip of paper attached to it, and similar to the manner in which Dr. D asked me to be his girlfriend seven years earlier, each slip of paper had part of a poem written on it. This poem incorporated small pieces of lyrics from some of our favorite songs into a retelling of our story as a couple. It was beautiful, and my heart was beating faster with each rose I collected. Between the first and second rose, I noticed another one of Dr. D's roommates, JZ, in the far distance with a camera. At this point, I wasn't even surprised to see new friends cropping up. I was just grateful.

As I moved from the fourth to the fifth rose, a man who I didn't recognize and who was walking (of all ridiculous breeds) a wiener dog, called out to me.

"Are you looking for the cure?"

Having no real idea what he was talking about---or what I was actually looking for, for that matter---I found myself thinking, Is this part of the plan? I mean, am I? Am I looking for the cure? Is this a metaphor?

Turns out that the look of confusion on my face was enough for him to clarify: "The Cure. As in, the band."

"Ohhh! Um, no thank you. I'm just looking for my boyfriend." So it turns out he wasn't some cosmic metaphorical messenger. He was just a stranger with an affinity for 80s music, interrupting a girl's proposal (yes, in case you hadn't figured it out by now---like I still hadn't at that point---this was a proposal).

I made my way towards the last rose, and beyond it I could see Dr. D standing on the beach. As I began to walk across a pedestrian crosswalk to collect the rose and read the last stanza, I was very nearly run into by... well, another one of Dr. D's roommates, Lui. He looked absolutely shocked to see me (it turns out he didn't realize that he was going to be walking right through the action, he thought he would simply catch up with us after it was all over), and realizing he was probably infringing on a "moment," he didn't respond when I said hi and instead ducked his head and doubled his pace, power walking right by me. For those of you who don't know him, allow me to assure you that this was a perfectly fitting, Lui-esque contribution to the experience.

After I read the final stanza, I approached Dr. D on the waterfront and could see that he had set up two stools. Next to one of them was an acoustic guitar. My immediate thought was, That's weird, Dr. D doesn't play the guitar.

All I could think to do was smile and say, rather lamely and unromantically, "Hello." Dr. D took me by my hand and guided me to sit down. He then sat down as well, picked up the guitar, and began to play a song---the words to which I had just collected, attached to the roses.

Oh my gosh, he learned to play the guitar for me. He even wrote me a song. This is the most perfect anniversary present ever! I was surprised, joyful, and completely and totally in love as the sun set over the Golden Gate to the tune of our song.
When the song ended, Dr. D took my left hand and looked into my eyes. And it finally clicked. (Better late than never, I suppose.)

He's proposing.
He pulled a small blue box from his pocket, and in it was a promise. A lifetime. And I said yes.

* * *

It later occurred to me that maybe that man with the wiener dog was there for a reason. Not as if to say that it was part of the plan for him to be there to interrupt me---I checked with Dr. D, and the gentleman was certainly not listed in the approved cast of characters. No, what I mean is that he was meant to be there on that day, at that specific time, to ask me that specific question because Dr. D was (and still is) my cure.

Happy anniversary to the man who, quite simply, has been making my life better for the past decade. I'm so glad to have found you so early in life, and my life is healthier for it.

MM 101, Lesson 4: The Danger of Differentials

Over the past two years, I've heard some pretty freaky medical stuff. I'm talking weeping pustular wounds, anus-dwelling worms who lay eggs at night, African sleeping sickness... the stuff nightmares are made of, for the medically overly-informed.

Is it really any wonder at all that I've become a bit of a hypochondriac?

I'm not quite sure that hypochondriac is the right work for it, actually. It's not like I'm constantly telling myself that I'm sick---in fact, I do my best to tell myself I'm not sick until it's absolutely apparent that I am. So I guess I'm not really sure if there's a word for it...

Let's just put it this way, in terms of medical matrimony: Marrying a med student means you'll often assume the very worst of your ailments, thanks to a handy thing called a "list of differential diagnoses."

Differential diagnosis is just fancy doctor-talk for "shtuff that might be going wrong." It's something that doctors use to move from a patient's chief complaint or symptoms to an actual diagnosis. Every symptom you can think of---runny nose, blurred vision, swollen fingers, you name it---has a differential diagnosis, a list of things that could be wrong with the patient. All of my medically inclined readers will probably balk at this statement but, yes, it's kind of like the list of illnesses you get when you fill out WebMD.

So, I'm sick. Last weekend, I started to get a sore throat and a runny nose---signs of my first cold of the year. However, in true married-to-a-med-student fashion, my first thought was that I might have strep throat. But THEN... I remembered I had been fatigued lately. Fatigue has a huuuuuuuuge differential diagnosis, and one of the only things I can really remember being on that list is mononucleosis. So then I start thinking, oh man... I have mono. And then after a couple days I start coughing, so I'm like, this is definitely bronchitis. Or maybe whooping cough. Tuberculosis?

Thank goodness I'm not a doctor, or I'd have everybody thinking that their runny noses mean they've got TB. Dr. D tells me that I've probably just got some viral upper-respiratory infection, which should clear up in the next week (phew!).

That's the danger of being only slightly informed about differential diagnoses, though. I know just enough to scare myself, but not enough to really know what I'm talking about. Thankfully I've got Dr. D here to tell me I'm not dying.

I think I'm gonna go back to sleep.

Anniversary of the "r"

Exactly two years ago, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror in a swank hotel suite, leaned forward, and looked for it: some sort of sign, or maybe a tag or bar-code revealing the newest part of my identity that had been created by the events of the day before.

Wife.

I turned my head a couple times, scrunched my nose and forehead, made a few more faces. No sign of it. I found no visible mark giving away the fact that I was now the proud owner of a new and shiny title, that I had finally achieved a relationship status worthy of cramming that "r" in between the two letters of "Ms." But wow, did I feel different. I was giddy and at peace all at once. It was like I had just received a lifetime guarantee on... well, life.

And as far as I've been able to tell over the past two years, that guarantee was basically that life will be awesome. Yes, awesome really is the best word for it. I thought about saying "perfect," but that's not really true. Things still can (and do) go wrong, but we're able to get through and grow from the struggles, and are usually filled with awe when we see how everything comes together in the end. Life is awesome. And my husband is an awesome gift...

Homeboy makes me laugh like no other. He's the perfect extroverted balance to my touch-and-go introversion. He makes a mean crock-pot of beans, and he trained himself to like olives and pickles because I love them on the Subway sandwiches we split. He's spent the past twelve years or so learning to interpret my nonverbal language, so now when I'm too upset or annoyed or sad to put things into the proper words, he can do it for me. He makes flying on planes less scary. He understands my need for chocolate and the occasional rap music binge when scanning through radio stations, and he judges neither. He is a man of science and faith, and he's learning to heal people. I love him for these reasons and for countless others.

Happy anniversary, Dr. D. Thanks for the "r."

Medical Matrimony, et al.

I have this crazy idea. Or maybe it's less of an idea and more of a theory, since "idea" implies a sense of originality---and let's face it, blogging hasn't been original since, what, 1997? I was 12 at that time, and let me be honest: in sixth grade I was too busy collecting key chains, sketching Disney characters and ignoring the fact that poor Dr. D (my husband) was in excruciating puppy love with me, to ever have the expendable brain waves to create the idea for online diary-writing. Let alone to think of calling it a "blahg." I mean really.
So my theory is this: I am going to want to remember this. What is "this," you may wonder? (I do realize that posing this hypothetical question assumes a readership greater than zero, which may be somewhat arrogant and misguided on my part, but I digress...)
When I say I want to remember this, I mean these early years of our marriage, and how we (Dr. D and I) got to this point in our lives, as individuals and as partners. I want to remember the big things and the little things, because sometimes the little things have an even bigger influence on the road ahead than all of the big things combined. For instance, one day when Dr. D was in grade school he was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. That was a little thing, a moment in time. But because of his answer to that question, we're where we are now and Dr. D is halfway done with his medical degree. We've had the chance to build a home together and learn to rely on each other and trust in our love. We're also farther away from our family and friends than we ever expected to be, so it's my hope that this can be a way to share our lives with them despite the distance.
Woah... that got heavy for a second, didn't it? Let me lighten the mood a bit with the thing that I'd like to remember today:
Dr. D and I frequently have deep, existential conversations. On one such occasion, we posed to each other the question: if your spouse was a vegetable, what vegetable would they be? My loving husband eagerly blurted out his answer first: "You would be a GREEN BEAN!" I must not have been able to mask my disappointment and rising body-image sensitivity fast enough (I mean c'mon! Long, skinny, limp green beans?!), because he hastily added: "I mean... you're a well-proportioned green bean! With all the curves in the right beany places!"
He's a keeper.