Put your heart back in your pocket;
pick your love up off the floor. 

- Mika, Pick Up Off The Floor

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"Look at Christa, she's still laughing!"
"Well, of course Christa would be.  After all, it rains when Christa cries.  No, scratch that, it snows when Christa cries."
"Hey, I want snow!  I want to go skiing!  CRY, CHRISTA!”

I love my lab.  Somehow, it still shocks me when they express their affection for me.  I always feel so privileged to be the bunt of every joke.  More often than I should, I dare to think that I'm no one, that I'm no one special.  My lab always proves me wrong, time and time again.

A grad student pointed out that next semester, I'm going to become the senior undergraduate of the lab -- the undergraduate that's been working there longest out of everyone.  I didn't realize it until that moment.

The Veteran.

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My optometrist took out a bottle of eye drops, and explained to me, "This will stain your eyes to allow me to see them better.  Ha, it's kind of like running a gel!"  

When I realized that he was referencing my laboratory research, I blushed at the ethidium bromide reference.  On the inside, a marching band was playing.  I was so stoked that I understood his joke.  It was the same marching band that played at the celebration of the first full science conversation that I could follow from start to finish.  TRIzol may have ruined my grad student's data, but because I understood her every complaint about TRIzol, it will forever have a warm place in my heart.

After I left the optometrist's office, I made a detour to buy a bottle of sparkling cider, and poured myself a lukewarm glass the moment I returned to my empty home.  I picked up my coffee mug off my table and gave myself a silent toast.  Today, after all, was a day worth celebrating.

I finally experienced it: a scientific breakthrough.  My post-doc and I made a huge achievement in our project today, and it was my hands that implemented the protocol.  We finally optimized one of our analysis protocols, a goal that my post-doc has been hoping to achieve long before I joined the lab.  It's hard to imagine that it was my hands that cultured the insulinoma cells that we analyzed, and it was my hands that performed the tailored two-day immunofluoresence protocol that ended with my post-doc leaping out of his chair to hug me, that ended with laughter and smiles ringing throughout the microscopy room, that ended with "Congratulations!" all around.

I never would have expected that such a barren town, empty after the completion of fall semester, could provide me with such a beautiful day.  Because seeing those cells, punctated with gorgeous green spots of Alexa Fluor 488 dye, reaffirming my proficiency in the lab, reaffirming everything that I love about scientific inquiry, was nothing short of beautiful.

-+-

There's a hurricane in my heart.  

My heart is being thrown in every direction.  Most moments, it feels warm and safe.  At others, it sinks far into the depths of my stomach, hiding in my pylorus in fear, sadness, embarrassment, and anxiety.  And then, sometimes it skips beats like a broken record, in a way that is almost frustratingly uncontrollable and undeniable.  But only almost, because the song is so beautiful that you keep playing it on repeat nonetheless.

There's so much that I've wanted to write about these past few weeks.  I've been studying and unable to update, and I feel almost as if I've sinned by not documenting all the warmth and gratitude that I've been experiencing recently.

But right now, I'm striving to ignore the way that history repeats itself.  I sat down with all intent to write pages and pages of my love for life and the lab.  But that message was the last thing I ever expected to see.  My heart stopped, but with little hesitation -- it's a much less beautiful song.  I'm grateful that my nap isolated me from the rest of the world, and so I dodged that bullet.  I now have time to make blueprints and strategies in my mind, but I can't visualize a smooth solution to this.  This has always been a rocky obstacle course, complete with flamethrowers and acid rain.  But I can't evade this.  I'm forced to play my hand, and all my cards are in the hole.  This is going to be unpleasant.  That was a heart-in-my-pylorus moment, and I'm sure that I'm bound for many more.  Damn.

But what I do know, is that sometime soon, I will finally sit here and write with peace of mind and get to say all the things I want to say.

Until then: damn.