Pot, Meet Kettle.: The Art of Anatomy

I just spent an absurd amount of money on used textbooks for my grad school classes. One of the books I purchased is titled "Atlas of Human Anatomy", and it is pretty much exactly what you'd expect it to be. Fortunately for me, I love studying the human body. (Insert "that's what she said" joke here.)

I'll never forget the excitement I felt during my first Anatomy & Physiology course. It was the Spring of 2005 and I was working full time as an underpaid corporate retail buyer, attending classes after work, and waiting tables on the weekends to earn money for nursing school. I felt stressed, under appreciated, and downright exhausted. But regardless of everything else that was going on in my life, I would arrive home at 10:00 pm every Tuesday and Thursday night literally bursting with energy - I was that excited about the material. That class led me to the realization that our bodies are sheer miracles. The fact that humans live for even a day, let alone decades upon decades, is absolutely astounding once you understand even a fraction of the processes that must take place for one to survive. During that time I remember saying to my mom, who also holds a bachelor's degree in nursing, that I used to look at deficits in the human body - be it birth defects, sickness, disease, or injury - as rare yet intriguing phenomena. Now I view health as a marvel. The human body and it's ability to maintain homeostasis in the face of an ever-changing environment is a miracle, one which I myself wouldn't believe possible if not for the world's 6.6 billion examples.

That being said, how wrong would it be to decorate my future child's room with the artwork of brilliantly talented artist Michael Paulus? Because I love it. And, once my future kid gets over the nightmares, I'm pretty positive that he/she will love it too.