Fat Cats and Pants Piles (or, The Woman Behind the Curtain)

Getting in to med school can be a Sisyphean task. Well actually, I suppose it's more Atlasean than Sisyphean since, eventually, people DO get in to med school...it's just really hard.

Either way, unlike Atlas or Sisyphus, one does not go it alone if one can help it. Yes sir, there are many people behind the scenes that make the Axl show run as smoothly as it does. Although I have the ripped physique and bulging-ass muscles to hold the world on my shoulders (see photo, left), there is a cast of little people that ought to be grudgingly acknowledged. Among them are my brother Slash who keeps me honest, my mother Amber who keeps me abreast of the latest health hazards ("Why are you talking to me!? Quit using your cell phone!" [click]), and my father Father who keeps me off the streets when the royal coffers run dry (i.e. med school apps time).

But I must acknowledge two particular shots of anabolic steroids that keep my muscles bulgey and my heart mooshy:

1)Bobbins Chookums Magellan Mouse Destroyer 3000-

Bobbins, well, what can I say about him that hasn't already been said? He is an epic cat, a prince among paupers, a giant amongst midgets, and he eats constantly. He scratches up all the furniture, tries to eat all our food, costs $20/month in "pet rent", pukes on the carpet, chews all our papers, breaks all our blinds, bites people when he doesn't feel like doing shit, and eats all our food. He's pretty much the i can haz cheezburger cat.

AND he always sleeps on our bed right in my face. And if I roll over and try to roll back, he's taken my space. But then I wake up every morning and see this:

and what more can you ask for really?

Oh, remember how if I roll over in bed and then roll back, my space has been taken by Bobbins? Well, guess what happens when I try to roll back back?


2) Heavy Metal Vixen

She has been variously described as a mystery wrapped in an enigma, a desert bloom, the light of my life, a diamond in the rough, Speedy Gonzalez-Chang (she's half mexican half chinese - it's not racist cause I'm dating her. Why did you think I was dating her? Duh!) and a tree falling in the woods with nobody around to hear it. She is Heavy Metal Vixen, the person who has taken my bed space when I want to roll back back away from Bobbins, but then I can't and I am left trapped like a sardine between a grumpy ball of fur and claws on one side and Bobbins on the other.

Hehe, I keed! No babe put away the baseball bat! I mean...

The truth is, she's a sweetheart, and she keeps me on the straight and narrow, and she makes my stone-cold heavy-metal heart all sorta fuzzy and warm. When I didn't want to wake up at 7am on a Saturday to drive to the library and take my practice MCATs, Fraulein Vixen was there to kick my ass out of bed. And that shit worked- I got a 36 and I owe a lot of that to her. But then when I come home and kick my pants off and leave them on the floor, she's totally cool with it! (as long as I keep all of my kicked-off pants in a single, designated "Pants Pile") Killer!

Sometimes I start a secret second pants pile next to the bed where she can't see it, and then she finds it, and then..."it puts the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again!" But you know what, she feeds me, does my laundry, loves me, puts up with the cracked-out roller-coaster ride that is my life, literally follows me from sunny Cali to the deserts of the American Southwest, and makes sure I don't drive the whole show in to the ground.

And what more can you ask for really?