Another Pair Of Eyes

Exciting Things

Because I am tired, I have made this picture in place of a normal blog post.

Clickety click.

Trees

I have rediscovered tree climbing, after quite a few years of absence. In fact, climbing things in general – nothing ropey, just walls and rocks and trees and anything else you can think of. Its the slight fizz of adrenaline when you look down and you’re six metres up stood on nothing but a branch, and that with only one foot.* It’s the twinge of vertigo when you get with the sway of the tree in the wind. It’s the pinpoint focus when you switch hold, half your weight suspended from three fingers and the rest supported by one toe in a crack in the rock. It’s the satisfaction when you drag yourself over the top of the wall and can put your feet on solid ground, and it’s the perspective you get from the top of a tree, from the edge of a rock by the ocean, from the top of a mountain that kind of justifies the effort.

Sing when you’re winning.

*and sometimes the major rush of adrenaline when that branch is misjudged and you end up hanging from one arm trying to recover yourself.

Terracotta

On Births: I didn’t write much yesterday re: the birth I attended, so I think I might elaborate a little bit today. I have seen nothing quite like it, ever, and more births aside I doubt I ever will. The baby was a girl, and she was delivered by C-section. It is ridiculously weird to watch, especially when you go from one side of the sheet (where the mother was conscious and talking to her partner) to the other (where the surgeons are cutting through various layers of fat, muscle, endometrium and the amniotic sac to get to the baby).

It’s really quite emotional, even as a bystander. They took the baby’s head out, and then its upper limbs, and it wasn’t moving. That first arm wave was a wave of relief, and I must have been watching the baby pretty intently because I didn’t even notice the surgeons take the placenta out, or sew up the first couple of bits. I dread to think of the emotional rollercoaster that the parents must have been on – the paranoia that something would go wrong and the potential upset I could feel lurking down that road was quite substantial even for me. I’m still worrying about the baby now: whether thats because of the extensive coverage of congenital defects and baby-killing pathologies that I’ve had or just general concern I don’t know.

I was nervous before and close to nerveless afterwards, three hours were gone in an eyeblink, and I finally understand why people describe babies as the greatest gift they could ever have been given. When it comes down to it, text will never convey what this experience really is.

On Plants: I went to B&Q again the other day, and bought some actual terracotta pots. Despite their expense I’d consider them worth it to avoid those horrendous browny-orange plastic monstrosities, shards of which can be found all over gardens nationwide. There was also something of comfort-spending in it (although 50p a pot isn’t SO dire) as the only reason I went to B&Q in the first place was to get out of the house, which had taken on some kind of trappish, oppressive atmosphere over the day. Result, though: I now have 5 pepper plants and 3 chilli plants in nice pots sitting on the window sill. I even bought plant food and fed them. I fear this whole growing malarkey is getting a bit addictive for my own good…

Also, I now have a tray filled with cress. Yum yum yum….except wait! What do you put cress in except egg and cress sandwiches? Help! I need uses for cress before it takes over my entire room with its fast-growing dastardly ways!

On Academia: Yesterday I felt knackered for hours after watching the birth, but it as it faded the oddest and most random of things happened.

I started revising.

I hadn’t even realised that I’d gone into full-on revision mode, even after I’d written six pages on thyroid function in full colour and a number of cytotoxic-drug flashcards. The fact I started having urges to watch Doctor Who episodes every couple of hours to break didn’t impart anything to me. In fact, it only really sank in at the end of the day when I realised that all I’d eaten since breakfast was half a bag of minstrels, a big pack of mini scotch eggs and a great big thing of jelly babies. It would appear that work has kicked in good and proper. Excellent…

(…here we go again)