You are bigger than the scars that you feel at night

(Head Underwater–Plumb)

Rotation is so much better than school. School isn’t about learning so much as it is about proving that you learned. For that matter, at school, they don’t really care that much if you learned anything as long as you could prove that you learned by guessing randomly…or cheating. I know cheating is a thing even though I don’t personally participate in that practice…and I also know that the system is kind of broken because for the most part people don’t get turned in and in exchange the people who do get turned it tend to get over-punished to make up for the people who didn’t get turned in which means that people are even less likely to turn people in and that people falsely accused by a teacher are more likely to just accept it than to fight it. I did have a teacher who accused people of cheating when a lot of them didn’t (I didn’t), but he was just going to take off points but if anyone complained we would all be going to the ridiculous committee where he would make sure we failed the class…umm, yeah, no one was going to whine about that. I will definitely take a bad grade over a failed class, and I still don’t do a good job of standing up for myself, but I was even less good at that back then (not that it helped that I was constantly being told how useless I was). Although, I still wouldn’t have had a bad grade in the class if he had graded the other assignments and exams fairly…or if he actually knew how to teach…or if a completely separate situation in my life hadn’t been going on in what should have been the background but in reality was in the foreground a lot of the time…and somehow despite everyone else seeing it I still had my head in the sand trying to make it work. Like my carpool buddy used to say a lot “I can’t fix stupid.” I would also add that I can’t fix things like self-centeredness among other things.

So anyway, back to rotation, if I am learning something it is generally because I *wanted* to learn about it because it is applicable to real life…and I NEVER have to prove that I learned. My preceptor is also awesome and if I don’t want to do a reading she’d rather I just didn’t than try to force my way through it (so far I still am in the student mindset though and I definitely did spend a few hours trying to read a few pages that went so far over my head in immunology that it really just frustrated me so much that the stuff I did know on the topic also left my brain). I never have to learn about something that doesn’t matter in real life first because my preceptor would have no reason to suggest it, and second because if I didn’t want to that would be okay, and if I don’t care then I probably won’t do it. (Not caring and not understanding are very different scenarios). I have always loved learning…but the problem with school is that I have always hated proving that I learned. What I know and how well I can perform on a test are very different things, and that adds to the frustration that is school.

I gave my first presentation this week. I didn’t think it went that well, but like everything else I got a lot of positive feedback. Now I am working on my second presentation. It is a lot harder because after countless hours of research I ended up with an article on immunizations to present. While I definitely agree that vaccinations are hugely important, everyone else in my audience likely also agrees so pulling a presentation together on that is challenging…and is the reason that my room is getting a lot differently organized (can’t really say more organized—that would imply that my room doesn’t still look like a tornado went off).

I also decided if I was presenting on vaccination I should probably also read ahead on the vaccination stuff…this is what giving up looks like…

Yeah, I didn’t even think about fixing the spelling of “give” and “birth.” I know what I meant, and some things just aren’t important enough to be worth my time…no one is going to ever read my notes with the possible exception of myself…someday I’ll slow down enough to get the letters in order.

I am still drowning in readings (hey, slow reader over here…okay, and distractible reader…), and I have so much to do, but I love my rotation…which is why I volunteered to come in today (my day off) because there was more I wanted to do and see. There just aren’t enough hours in a day or days in a week. I also got to spend a couple hours at work this week…there have been a few changes, but really, coming back is just like falling off a bike. I’m not really sure what that means, but that’s what someone always tells me…

Also, none of my patients died this week, but one did go home, and another that I recommended go to a step down unit did. This week I commented that a few of my patients were pretty much healthy…except for not being able to breathe…they kinda get boring at that point…it takes time to wean off of respiration support so when that is the only thing left before the kid goes home, I lose interest…which is why I anticipate that this week there is a good chance I will go beyond the recommended 5-10 patients to follow and get my 11^th patient so that there is something interesting going on with more of my patients…

Another awesome thing about rotation is that I feel safe there. It feels so good to be able to do what I want and go where I want without weighing the relative safety of that option, because everything is pretty safe. It kind of makes me want to cross the residencies near school off my list just because I know on a bad day at school even going to the grocery store was something I did with caution out of fear of what might happen, so being back in that environment might not be good. On the flip side, graduating might put that enough behind me that it feels safe enough…IDK…that isn’t a decision that needs to be made today.

You’ve got my heart my soul you can have it all

(Hollyn—Alone)

I love my rotation.

Short version: My rotation is a lot of work…like I have no idea how I am going to get everything done and am just barely fitting the most important things in and trying to figure out how I adequately prepare for a presentation on top of that…but I LOVE it! And not just because I get to walk past the adorable babies on my way to my workstation in the morning…and when I go to lunch and come back from lunch and go home…and only one of the six patients I was following died so far and considering I generally take the least complicated patients, there is a pretty good chance the other five I have so far won’t die! Yay!! This is where I start wishing I weren’t such a slow reader though, because I could be done in like half the time if I could read as fast as other people…well, and if I didn’t spend four hours creating a new monitoring form because I don’t think well in straight lines…let’s not talk about how week one is done and I have written a grand total of 0 of the minimum of 5 required SOAP notes…nor am I totally sure how to go about writing a SOAP note…’cause obvi each day the info changes, and if I wait until the pt is dead or discharged then it would be moderately useless…

Long Version: pretty much every day my student tag or something doesn’t work so I’ve taken to wearing my student tag and keeping my employee tag in my pocket in case of being locked out of where I want to go. The student director made sure we all had access to the professional staff lounge for coffee…considering I don’t do caffeine, I haven’t ever been there, because most of the time I am running behind, because getting my bottom to the car is something that takes me forever. I tend to be almost running from my car to the pharmacy and then to my little corner workstation. So far I have always made it before the pharmacist who sits at the workstation next to me, but not at such a time that I’d be comfortable stopping by the lounge…and I am not exactly a hang out in the lounge kind of person anyway…if I were going to hang out, I’d rather do it in one of the pharmacy breakrooms where I either know or recognize 90% of the other people there…

We had a day with Cerner downtime…the two pharmacists I was with and I went to central pharmacy because there wasn’t much we could do on the floor without Cerner anyway…and it was good we did, because everyone was panicking because they didn’t know what to do…step one: take down the box clearly labeled “Downtime Information.” Step two open and remove the page of directions. Step three follow them…step four realize the printer is pretty much out of toner. Step five, look all over for a toner only to find one behind the printer. Step six restart printer and realize that the only way to get the info for the missing MARs is to start completely over, and the missing ones are PICU. Step 7 continue answering phone calls from people wondering how much longer until we have MARs for them. Step 8 get almost finished—just hemonc and possibly any other clinic that has a MAR to print left when someone accidentally turns off the printer. Step 8 restart the printer and realize it is now printing without room numbers, units, or names. Step 9 use the barely readable MRN on the half printed MARs from earlier to figure out general ideas of names and room numbers to send up the rest of PICU. Step 10 guess that you are getting close to where you left off before and start working on how to look up MRNs without Cerner when someone says they think they might be able to get into Cerner again…and it’s back…yep, we had just a little excitement…and wake-up call about making sure people are comfortable with procedures so they don’t spend the first 20 minutes or more panicking wondering what to do waiting for someone to save them.

On Friday when I came in I walked past the room one of my patients was in and the light was off. It was just before 7a so I just figured either they had darkened the room for sleeping or perhaps the patient had been moved to another room…as it turns out, I logged into my computer and my patient wasn’t on my list of patients on the unit anymore. That was kind of sad…especially when I found out that the reason was dad deciding to withdraw support. I mean, yeah, the kid had a lot of issues going on, but I wasn’t ready to let go yet…and personally, I’m not sure how I feel about just pulling the plug on a kid.

I have my first presentation on Tuesday…I picked a topic Friday afternoon…I still haven’t actually thought about what I am going to say…tyranny of the urgent is going to make me regret this when the presentation becomes urgent tonight…

My car isn’t driving itself to the hospital, so it’s time for me to post and sign off…have a wonderful Monday!

Tired are the eyes that have seen all you’ve seen

(Solomon’s Song–Plumb)

So, umm, there was an event a few months ago that I guess woke up the OCD and while the OCD has stayed subclinical waxing and waning but never becoming overt clinical OCD, it never totally went away again. Which is how I came to be praying Sunday night that I left the garage door open…see, I was a block or so away from my house when I decided I wasn’t sure if I had closed the garage door when I left. I really wanted to go back and check but I told myself no. I almost turned around at like each intersection and by the time I got to church for the Faith Family celebration (AKA, more kid time for me), I was close to 100% convinced that the door was open and there was going to be stuff stolen and I was going to have to explain what happened. I didn’t have time to go all the way back home and come back again, but I still couldn’t get the thoughts out of my head. Never has coming home to a closed garage door led to such a mixed feeling of relief and shame. Also, never have I whimpered to myself so much about taking out the trash…although that was partly bad attitude. I was annoyed that I couldn’t remember for sure whether the trash was supposed to be on the left or the right side and I already hate taking out the trash because it feels disgusting, so I was just so over the whole trash thing…not going to lie though, I definitely did go inside to put on socks before I touched the trash can (with just my right hand) because getting socks on one-handed would be a challenge, and I definitely didn’t want to wear socks contaminated with trash can hands.

Half of me wants help because I know how awful living with it can get if it takes over again. The other half of me says great idea, but we all know that isn’t practical and more likely to just result in bigger problems especially when this is only a minor inconvenience at this point to which I am overreacting.

I love being home though. I got to see my best friend a few times already and put her littlest to sleep twice (although the second time was short-lived when I had to hand him off to change another child’s diaper…sometimes I hate the whole only adults can change diapers thing…) and also got to see the sweet older two…

Of course I didn’t wait until the night before the rotation to even go looking for the quantify website…and then discovered that my site wasn’t there…oops…and I totally didn’t get distracted and save the whole reading the ridiculously long syllabus thing for the morning…I totally am not rushing through it to check it off the list before I run out the door.

And if Everyone Was Stuck but us We’d be the Ones Not Stuck

(Sports Utility Vehicle—Veggie Tales)

There is nothing like sitting in the car forever and ever (okay, or like 9 hours) to make you notice how many songs mention something about driving…or how Francesca Battistelli seems to have a lot of driving issues…’cause she’s written more than one song about her driving incidents. Not that I am one to judge considering I will be the first to admit that I can’t park to save my life, but it’s nice to know other people will also bravely admit their faults.

Also, it doesn’t seem to matter what I put in my driving playlist on my laptop. It seems no matter what I include there is something different I actually wanted to listen to, and for the most part I do not search for the songs I want while I am driving, because that tends to take my eyes off the road a little too much…which is why maybe my laptop is singing Wordless Ones by Michael Card, which is a great song, but my mouth is singing “I am the colony queen, I know that I look like a dream, I am always a mother to be such responsibility!” (L-A-Z-Y, Discovery at Camp Wise’n’up)…and making up new verses to the lady who swallowed a fly…and singing the song that actually does end (because once I was singing the song that never ends on my way home from school during second year and my dad said he knew how the song ended—when he drove off the road into a tree if I didn’t shut up…this is why small easily portable items that can be played with in a confined space in my lap were very useful when I was not the one driving).

I used to not understand why my mom didn’t like driving. I mean, getting my license did take away some of my freedom—no more was it acceptable to bike everywhere—but driving wasn’t bad. Well, driving gets really old really fast when you spend as much time in the car as you do when you are no longer a high school student…and you have to stop when the lights or signs say so and drive the speed they tell you to and always face forward and follow the yellow brick road…no creativity allowed…well…usually.

This morning there was a traffic jam at like 6 in the morning. I was not a happy camper. I specifically leave early to avoid traffic (okay, and because what else am I going to do when all my stuff is packed, plus it gives me time at home to unwind and unpack)…I was at a complete stop for like 10 minutes…like not even creeping forward. The people in front of me were talking and started going up the entrance ramp…so now I can say that probably the most perfectly executed three-point turn I’ve ever made in my life was on a freeway entrance ramp…usually my three point turns are more like 7 or 9 point turns…but when you have to get out of the way of all the people behind you and also don’t want to be that person right in the middle when someone unsuspectingly tries to go down the ramp, you have like one chance and you don’t want to mess it up. If you are in the middle of like nowhere, it also means that while everyone else seems to know exactly where they are going that you get to pull over long enough to pull up a map and figure out how you plan on getting home without that one road that is on the laminated directions you’ve been using the past three years…

Speaking of traffic, there was also a traffic jam just before my exit on the freeway…there were two cars stopped along the side of the road, and one stopped in the middle lane…okay, seriously people? I might not know a lot about what to do in an accident/emergency—my go to is freak out and call my daddy—but even I know that if it is possible you are supposed to get to the side of the road so that you aren’t blocking the rest of traffic…so yeah there was a traffic jam because all four lanes had to squish over to the left two lanes right in the spot where everyone usually works really hard to get merged into the furthest right lane to get off (it is seriously work, and occasionally despite driving the one lane over don’t make it and have to take the next exit). So yeah…that was a mess…I’m very glad I’ve never gotten into an accident on the freeway…because now that I think about it, I might get so freaked out that I’d become that idiot everyone hates who stops in the middle of the road because my brain tells me that I need to stop and my logic system isn’t working well enough to figure out how to do so appropriately. I mean, I did figure out to pull over ONE of the times I got a flat tire (the other time I drove to school…because I had no idea what to do).

Trash bags in the car work better if you can actually reach them wile driving…which is why I was glad there was a wash cloth on the top of my laundry basket to line the cup holder to create a place to set down apple cores besides in my pockets…yeah, I totally think things through in advance. Well, I guess occasionally I do! I went searching for a gas station last night because I knew I would be super annoyed at myself if I got to the dangerously low level in the middle of nowhere in the morning. I prefer to stop at gas stations when there is at least a moderate amount of light outside so driving aimlessly at 5pm is better than panicking that there are no gas stations anywhere at 6am…speaking of yesterday, I think I got my workout for the year going up and down the stairs at my apartment building packing up the car…I have a lot of stuff.

And all that stuff is now inside my house. There are a lot of things that out of convenience I either have multiple copies of to avoid having to pack them to go back and forth or have an excessive amount because I would rather have too much than constantly worry about not having enough…which is why after getting all my clothes clean and in my room I decided that once I located my toothbrush the rest of the unpacking might wait for a VERY long time…so much stuff…and there is still more in my apartment. I am starting to regret my impulse purchase of a red and white dish set in like January or February when I found it online and fell in love…how many dishes does one girl need?! I already packed what felt like an insane amount of dishes and there are still plenty more dishes at my apartment. I do not look forward to eventually completely moving out of my parents house…although more closet and dresser space would solve a lot of the issues, since the biggest problem is that there are clothes everywhere because I have a tiny dresser at home and my closet is overrun by piles of paperwork that perhaps I need to let go of…after doing so much work moving all my stuff once I should maybe capitalize on the momentum and just throw away anything I do not need right here right now before it becomes an emotional battle to do so.

At a gas station this afternoon someone asked me if I was a runner. My brain was so confused. I actually just said no and left it at that and the lady didn’t ask more questions, but inside my head I was like aren’t runners supposed to be like skinny or something? Yeah, I am definitely not skinny anymore…probably because of days like today where I ate an entire frozen pizza (after cooking it, I’m not a cave girl) because that was easier than figuring out how to put it away appropriately…okay fine, my size might have a lot to do with the fact that food makes me happy and so especially when a lot of things are not happy, I eat…a lot. I am not opposed to eating many more than the traditional three meals per day and supplementing in between with snacks and candy and dessert…yeah, you kinda know either something is wrong or that my pickiness is getting in the way if I ever refuse food—particularly sugary food…I may have gotten distracted for over an hour upon arriving home analyzing the food options…and briefly declaring there was nothing to eat because there were no prepared bowls of ramen and peanut butter in the fridge…college taught me to be lazy…the idea of having to do more than get out a spoon and possibly put food in the microwave when I get hungry seems like so much work…kinda like how my next semester starts Monday…I kinda feel burnt out and ready for a break. I’m not so sure I’m ready to jump in to yet another semester…but I don’t really get a choice. I need to find my intern license and all the papers I need signed…and it would be way too easy if they could give us a list of our assignments in like a checklist or some other form besides a hundreds of slides long powerpoint and nearly 100 page syllabus…it feels like I must be missing something—I don’t feel like I have any idea what I am supposed to be doing, You’d think in that many pages you’d really know, but somehow they managed to write like the worlds longest syllabi without ever giving a really good definition of the assignments they wanted us to do…and I’m too mentally exhausted to deal with that right now. The part of school I am currently missing is that at school I am never 100% alone for an extended period of time…there is always someone at least passing by besides Annie inside my phone reading her book to me.

And sensorily I want to scream. The carpet might have been itchy, but at least I could be barefoot on it…my feet feel so claustrophobic inside my socks and I hate it and it makes me want to have a meltdown. Not a tantrum, a meltdown. A tantrum is a choice for attention seeking and communication to express frustration. A meltdown is an unchosen uncontrollable release of desperation. Like if someone wanted to cut my feet off right now I’d tell them to go ahead.

Dear Younger Me It’s Not Your Fault

(Dear Younger Me—MercyMe)

Apparently, I should write more posts while half asleep. I got more likes on my post yesterday than I think I’ve ever gotten on a single post before. Lucky for me, I am still half asleep today! That’s what happens when leaving is something with which you struggle…and add that to the fact that you not only have to leave yourself but pack up and bring home the other person you brought, because like in many other situations, it is generally looked down upon to not leave with the same number of seats filled as you came with…

Half asleep I make a lot of strange decisions…which is why I try not to make big decisions while half asleep. Apparently it was really important this morning that I reorganize and unpack the few things I had actually already gotten round to packing before I could go to school…yeah…so I swear I am not losing my mind even though I just dumped out my entire wallet to reorganize it…’cause that is definitely something sane people do…I gotta find out when the bank is open, because I like to have less than 10 dollars in my wallet because I never spend real money, so I go to the bank and dump out my coins into the machine that spits out a little piece of paper that I have a zillionty pennies that I can now deposit into my account…so yeah, I can’t go to an ATM, because I don’t think you can shove a pile of $5 in pennies into an ATM…and the ATM probably also doesn’t want $10 in ones…sorry to the bank people who have to deal with my $15 deposit…that’s your payback for that one time like a year or two ago when you made me verify my name and account number…actually, I didn’t mind doing that, because it is better than if when you didn’t remember me you just deposited into some random person’s account…and dealing with whatever size deposit I come in with is kind of your job as long as I don’t do it like every day…

I am really sad to leave behind my incredible friends in athletics when I go home. I got to have good conversations with two of my favorites over the past couple days and I really like them so much.

I’m tired and one of the things on my to do list for the past month and a half or so is watch patch movie. It is a movie one of the KK people told me I should watch when she found out I was interested in pediatric pharmacy. She qualified that it wasn’t really about pharmacy but it was good. After some searching I am pretty sure I meant Patch Adams…so yeah, I’m just going to hit publish and not actually get to writing about what I was thinking when I titled the post.

I can’t jump in next to anybody. Let me jump right next to you.

(Motion—Plumb)

So yeah, I started writing this post about an hour after I posted my previous post…but I told myself to stop it because I don’t have time for that and because no one probably wants to read two posts from me in the same day, because this is not twitter…so I settled for short phrases describing each paragraph…which of course means I can now only interpret about half of what I was trying to say…but that’s okay, because I had so many more adventures in the intervening time!…yeah, you can either call things an epic fail or an adventure…

Look how much fun finals can be. A lot of stress toys can’t stand up to the way I play with them…hashtag RIP flour filled stress ball that I destroyed in about 10 minutes first year…that was fun to clean up…lol there is totally a clip in that video I referenced in my previous post where the girl had a squishy duck that she broke during the video…that was pretty funny…anyway, so I took apart this toy further than it was able to go back together, but it was even better this way, because I could create a hula water bottle…which is allowed during exams, whereas toys are not. It has, however, since been thrown out because I discovered that something sorta sticky means something that quickly gets disgusting…

I was thinking in my copious spare time…okay fine, that is a lie, I don’t have spare time…while I was waiting with one hand under the faucet for the water to get moderately warm I was thinking about the two kinds of pride, cocky pride and self-minimizing pride. I really have no idea where I was going with that…but I guess since I brought it up I should note that I don’t think of myself as an overly prideful person, but I definitely lean towards the self-deprecating side when I do act pridefully. I can easily blame it on hearing so many times that I wasn’t worth anything, but in reality, even before I heard that, I wasn’t like a huge fan of myself or anything…

I had another title for this post based on the song Pinterest Parody by WUM, but then I decided that “hate hate hate” wouldn’t make a very appropriate title. “But my husband’s gonna hate hate hate hate hate hate the kitchen in this state state state state.” LOL…I love WUM. Haters gonna hate, lovers gonna love. Be a lover and love the haters—but don’t expect to convert them into lovers…

Hiding is something I’ve realized I do a lot of. Like a toddler without object permanence, I cover my eyes or hide behind my computer screen or turn around—if I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist…I’m a child at heart…

So yesterday my church had a prayer event. Technically it also involved fasting, but I do not fast from anything during finals. I used to fast from food once a year for the Lakota Journey preparation and prayer night, so I know I can do it, but during finals is not a good time to take away my coping mechanism. Also, even though I did it because everyone else was, I didn’t really find it was anything more to me than a game, so I don’t think I really got any benefit…also, after I started finding control the only place I could during senior year of high school, food, because so much of my world was unstable, I decided that fasting from food was something I probably shouldn’t do, because it could too easily become dangerous. I’ve read too many stories where one innocent day of fasting or something similar paved the way for a quick onslaught of definite eating disorders, and I definitely don’t need to go down that path. I know that my past with OCD makes me vulnerable to eating disorders (in addition to contributing to disordered eating…), so I don’t need to do anything to invite them in. So anyway, I did the prayer part. It was interesting getting there…I got so lost…I got out my phone and tried really hard to turn on navigation. I wasn’t successful in getting it to talk to me, but I did find out it would be faster to park and walk than to actually drive there. Luckily I didn’t, because when the event ended it was pouring. So, now my soggy backpack and pencil bag are chilling on the floor in my apartment while the stuff I need for the day is in a pile on the floor near a gym bag…but parking further away IDK if my computer and phone could have survived the water…

The last words I said out loud before getting into bed would have been pretty endearing if I hadn’t finished the sentence. “I am very loved” with “and very wet.” I was totally disoriented as I walked towards the event and I suddenly started hearing people screaming my name and it was someone I knew and that was super cool…and I also met someone else who was apparently saying my name because the other person was. So yeah, that was kinda cool. And when I walked in I saw more friends who were also excited to see me. And one of them invited me to sit with her. And that was awesome. And I really shouldn’t start all my sentences with “and.” Two younger girls were sitting next to me. I’m kind of a bad influence because I am a softy (AKA pushover). When they ran out of space on their program to play tic tac toe I gave them more paper…and I didn’t stop them from doodling on themselves…or from going to the bathroom without shoes on…they were super sweet though. One girl asked me if I was a counselor and when I said I was not, she said hi not a counselor, I am also not a counselor and this is my friend not a counselor. I knew the girl’s name that I was talking to, but I was blanking on the other girl’s name so it was good her mom prompted her to introduce us using our actual names…because “hello not a counselor” would be a weird greeting when I see these people again in September…the girl who I knew decided she was coming home with me…yeah, good luck with that…you’re a great kid, but there won’t be room in my car, you probably don’t want to wake up in time to get in the car by 4:30, and I definitely don’t need to be responsible for getting a kid to school and back every day. I walked around waving to all my friends to say goodbye before realizing I needed to get myself home to sleep…anyway, on the positive side I love sleeping with wet hair.

Funny story about that. I took off most of my soaked clothes and hung them out to dry. I got in bed started putting on pajamas and checked the weather…and found out there was predicted to be a lot of hail…I wanted to just pray that the weather people were wrong like usual, but my parents didn’t like that idea, and $500 deductible was enough to get my tired self out of bed. An example of how my brain works (okay doesn’t work) without sleep. I packed my lunch box and a variety of random junk into my backpack, but didn’t bring any clothes, comb, or other useful items…I feel like a real college student now though, because for the first time I had a sleepover at school that didn’t involve a mattress. Although like most sleepovers it didn’t actually involve a lot of sleep, but it was still awesome…and a lot more restful than the night third year that did involve a mattress but also involved me in t-shirt and shorts with a really thin sweatshirt as my pillow and blanket in a room that was freezing cold because it was very winter and no one was living in there at the time so the thermostat was set to not waste energy…

I am so tired…on the positive side, I was functional enough to drive places without running into anything this morning…that would have been bad if I hadn’t…also, for the first time in a long time I actually got a shower at my apartment that was like real warm not lukewarm…

I think I should probably stop writing, because I feel like I am so tired that the coherency of my writing is probably going further and further downhill the longer I write…and probably there are better uses of my time like doing the things on my to do list than writing a blog post…which is not on my to do list…

Too many leaders. You asked for followers. So take the lead now, ’cause your my father.

(What You Want—Tenth Avenue North)

This is kind of halfway between brain dumping for finals and a legit post…

You know you are distractible and have a moderately selective (but not choice-ful selection) memory when: you forget to take ibuprofen and then wonder why everything you took did absolutely nothing for you…and then look in your pill case to take more things and realize that umm, no, you didn’t take any ibuprofen because you packed three red (200mg non-flavored) and 2 orange (100mg flavored) which is the same number as is left in there…oops…well that explains why it didn’t work. I actually did take the tums and vitamins, but I did not take the ibuprofen. Let’s just say when I was on antibiotics in high school the only way I knew if I had taken it was by counting how many were left in the bottle based on the days I remembered skipping it…yeah, I am a really lousy example…don’t get your drug taking modeling from me…although in my defense, I didn’t want to be on antibiotics and it was my parents idea and they made it clear there was going to be a loss of privileges if I didn’t…(but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t keep track close enough to know if I skipped it sometimes)…oh, but I can totally spin this into a positive–I don’t have issues taking ibuprofen anymore like I did when the OCD was taking over!

Today I learned that I can have a really awesome day AND take a final.

After doing a wiggly happy dance in the early morning re-reading the notes of a bunch of my friends, and then crying in the late morning because I felt really left out, I got a really awesome surprise! I still am very much a draw an extra set of lines inside the lines kind of person, but I am also all for not being left out. I would have been happy with just a cookie and a cup in which to make my own tea, but I got to have whatever I wanted, which I re-translated into I can go one time and do not go anywhere but that one place and keep eyes straight ahead, no talking, no playing games…but I was thrilled. Also, that there was actually caffeine free options that didn’t come out of my backpack!! That like never happens at school!

Oh my…that one video about fidgeting I referenced a few weeks ago that I had been watching while waiting for people to come be tutored, well, it talked about Tangles, and I was like, aren’t those intended to be a baby toy? Except, I was playing with them today, and they really are so much fun and there were even fuzzy pieces…except, the non-fuzzy ones get very hard to take apart and put back together when your finger start getting sweaty…so, yeah…I don’t like not finishing what I started, but it was getting very close to time to get out of there, so I had to leave it not 100% sorted by color…but I put it all in a pile NOT on the floor when I was done so it wouldn’t be like stepping on legos to the next unsuspecting customer. Right next to my declaration in the sand “I love me” because I do. Love me that is. I’m pretty awesome. You should get to know me.

I was so happy that someone told me I should take a CD and even though I wasn’t a fan of the music and don’t really need extra things to pack up, I almost did…until I saw the words on the CD and went NO WAY and dropped it like it was burning my fingers (hey, at least I didn’t fling it across the room…but even if I had, it would be a lot more convenient to pick it up and put it in its rightful place on the table than when I throw my pencil or paper off my bed at my apartment and have to go find where it went and then climb back up onto the bed)…but anyway, after reading the first two words on the CD ain’t no one tricking me into pretending to like that. (Yes, I know that is improper use of the word am not). Besides, I come with my very own music in the form of a computer and a phone with headphones so even if the music wasn’t kind of annoying and was instead just okay, why would I listen to subpar music when I could listen to AMAZING music. (Plus, I don’t even know where my disk drive is and my CD player at my for real house is reserved for Sleep Sound in Jesus by Michael Card). There are a bajillion songs/musicians that I adore like Plumb and Thomas the Tank Engine and Blank Space (WUM) and Maternity Pants (Elle), but there are some I don’t, and that is okay. I get to have my own opinions. You can have your own opinions, but I get to keep mine.

Also, there was this toy full of lights and water and scented smoke and that was awesome too and I didn’t even spill the water on myself…LOL…my mentee, remembering how clumsy I can be, was kind of worried that I was going to end up with soggy pants to take my final, but there was not much water in there and it had a pretty wide base, so it would have taken talent even for me to spill…and I mean, I do have talent, but not that much talent…now, if it had been filled up to the 500mL line, then yeah, there would have been a pretty good chance I would have been wearing the water if I had played…but I am smart enough most of the time to know my limits, so if it were that full the cap would have gone back on without me playing with it…also, there were TWO red markers in the room…how awesome is that?! Doodle time!!

The final didn’t go super awesome today, but I can honestly say that I did my best, and I could have studied forever and ever and not had any better idea what the teachers were looking for on a variety of the questions…so many times I was like umm, yeah, I could totally explain to you the information you are trying to test me on, but I have no idea what you are attempting to ask me with this question. In this case, some of them may be partly 2/2 my not so awesome reading comprehension level, but sometimes I think it is fair to say that the question was just somewhat poorly worded. I wish there were an explanation box so I could tell them what I was thinking to justify my answer to show that I really did know what I was talking about even if I didn’t pick the answer they were expecting based on that information.

One more final.

369 days.

Don’t get too excited, just try staying calm…happy waiting patiently

(Patience – Thomas and Friends)

Saturday morning didn’t go according to plan. Actually, life in general doesn’t tend to go according to my plans. Mostly because I more have daydreams than plans a lot of the time. But anyway, Saturday…So yeah, Friday night I could not fall asleep. I blamed it on the humidity because I hate humidity almost as much as therapeutics, but in reality the issue was that sometimes my brain doesn’t turn off. I’m too busy thinking about ice cream and pizza and donuts and my bike and babies and so many other things that going from awake to asleep requires a special kind of focus. Also, the past few nights I had been having dreams at night so my body refused to sleep to avoid the feelings in the dreams (Imagine if your arms were duct taped to the wall at one end of the hallway and you were told you must run to the end of the hallway within 30 seconds, and it shouldn’t be such a big deal, drama queen, because that other girl whose arms were not taped to the wall did it in 25 seconds…it’s stuff like that my brain comes up with that borders on reality enough to be scary but not enough to be blatantly a dream. When in my dream L if pushing me off the parking garage and I am falling it is obviously a dream because no one would be dumb enough to do that in real life, so it isn’t really scary). As soon as I wake up and am oriented, I was fine emotionally each day, but I was exhausted. Saturday morning I at least woke up a little less exhausted…but after waiting 30 minutes the water in the bathroom was still not even getting close to feeling warm and I didn’t feel like taking a cold shower so showering in the sink it was. Not a huge deal. It gets water all over the floor, but it gets me clean without freezing in the process and detangler fixes the excess tangles that not having a stream of water straight down causes. I was taking everything in stride until I finished, turned off the sink, and heard something behind me. I turned around and saw a bee next to the window. I froze. Then I decided I was a big girl, finished putting on clothes, and grabbed a piece of foil. Then I got a little smarter and realized that trying to grab and squish a bee with a piece of foil was a bad idea. Then I kind of freaked out a little before I realized that I needed to finish getting ready and leave. My towel was very slowly hung up (to avoid startling the bee). I grabbed my brush and detangler, and slammed the bathroom door. Inside my head I was trapping the bee in the bathroom for dealing with later. I was very thankful I have deodorant in my car, because I sure wasn’t going to open the door again to use the one in the bathroom.

And then in the evening I realized I had to go home. I eventually needed to use the bathroom…and realized that without being able to watch the bee all day I didn’t know where it was. A day later at time of writing, I have looked everywhere a few times and don’t know where that stupid bee went. Which is kind of scary…and kind of annoying. I wonder if it found a way in through the washer somehow and then found its way back outside. I don’t like the idea that creatures could get inside that way, but it is better than the idea that there is still a bee somewhere hiding out in my apartment…and I think I would have noticed if a bee went out when I came in after thinking about it the whole drive home.

Sometimes it is a very good thing that God doesn’t say yes to all the things I ask for…I was praying for a year and a half for a tornado warning while I was at school…yes, I know that is dumb, because there is like close to zero chance of a tornado in November…but I wanted it and God can do anything so who was I to tame my desires based on a smaller version of God? As it turns out, I have been thinking lately that as awesome as a tornado warning might be, perhaps that isn’t really what I want. I really just want safety and companionship…and a tornado takes away one of those things…

I kind of convinced the girl I drive to church that there might be a tornado though. I didn’t really think there would, but it was kind of fun to watch her freak out and decide she was bringing her notes inside in case something happened to my car…I definitely milked it a little by brining my computer in to church on the premise that I would have my most important notes—in reality, I just wanted to check a couple things on the internet and it is a million times faster on my computer than my phone. It was rather unfortunate though, because I forgot to lock my car after I got my computer out…which on the positive side gave me an excuse to run around outside shoe-less to go lock my car before church started, but on the negative side, running around outside when the most exercise you do on a regular basis is walk to the bathroom periodically, and the only running you do is behind, makes you feel like you can’t get enough oxygen into your body and that you need a drink…but yeah, that was fun. And one of my friends stopped to say hi and I love my friends and I probably won’t be back until September and I will miss my friends so much. I missed donuts last week because I had to leave early, but people are worth so much more to me than donuts (which is why I left in the first place), and I will miss my friends long after I forget about the donuts…and besides, I was too fat to get the pants I wanted to wear all the way on Friday morning, so clearly I don’t actually need a donut…not that I didn’t have just as many calories from fruit and crackers and lemonade instead, but that isn’t the point. As much as I will love not being faced with the school situation 24/7, I will really miss all my friends here at school, church, and life. There are so many people that I have to leave behind every time I move across the country…which is going to happen a zillionty times this year…I wish I could pack up my friends and bring them with me. I mean, I do get to bring them with me via facebook (the ones with whom I am fb friends anyway), but seeing a name on a screen isn’t quite the same as conversing with and hugging a real person. I mean, I do hug my laptop sometimes, but it isn’t quite the same as a real person…even if it is pretty hot hot sometimes 🙂 .

Also, I should really go on facebook more…I think most people would say facebook is a time-waster and I should be on less, but when I got on this morning, I discovered three opportunities for free food that I totally missed out on by not being on facebook to find out about them. In all fairness, I probably would have intentionally skipped both the nachos and the juice event because they would have required going to school on Sunday, but I totally would have eaten free ice cream and chips on Saturday and all I would have had to have done was walk outside…

My life seems to be a lot about waiting…and then rushing later…For example, I was dumb and turned off my extra alarm in preparation for moving out (because on the day I move out I will want the alarm set a half hour earlier) and my clock alarm also didn’t go off this morning, though I’m not sure if that is problem with my having that clock since second grade or a problem with me playing with the buttons with my toes yesterday. So I was waiting like the most patiently I have like ever waited in my entire life (probably mild exaggeration, but, I mean, I wasn’t bouncing up and down and I at least would have looked like I was sleeping had someone been watching me…but eventually I ran out of patience and looked at the clock and it was like 5:44 and so I hurried up and got ready for the day.

At school there were supposed to be donuts at 8, so I was waiting patiently, but then I saw people at like 7:10 walking around with donuts so I hurried to get the one I wanted before all the boring ones were left.

And sometimes it goes the other way. I was hurrying to get my ID picture taken care of…and there was a sign up that the office was closed and would re-open at 7:30am…which is awesome, except that I stopped by at 8:15…so I decided to come back later…and at 9:20 still no signs of life…so, umm, how exactly am I supposed to take care of this (besides not waiting until the very last week of school since I can’t undo that?) Also, I was super proud of myself for crossing stuff off my to didn’t list that I actually didn’t do and didn’t anticipate doing…yeah, I am the kind of person who keeps more of a to didn’t list than a to do list, but usually I just keep adding to the list and things don’t get taken off until they are either done or it is too late to do them…for example, study for quiz…if the quiz was last week then it doesn’t really matter anymore if I did it, so it is crossed off…

Signing off to study for more finals,
Wiggle Worm 🙂

I can only say what I’ve seen and heard

(Flyleaf–Breathe Today)

I was taking a 5-minute brain break on Wednesday and came across a really awesome meme on the internet…that was actually really applicable to my feeling during finals…particularly on the T4 final…

“It’s not that I want to kill myself; it’s just that I would like to become dead somehow.” There were more sentences on it than that, but that part was the part that the rest pretty much centered on. I feel overwhelmed. I know that I know a lot more than my grade reflects…it has been that way in every class in which I haven’t done well…and I will definitely admit that there are a few classes (like APUSH in 10^th grade) where I worked my butt off for the grade I got, and I would definitely admitted had I gotten a worse grade that the worse grade was likely what I deserved. APUSH seems like the high school equivalent of patho and therapeutics…moderately useless to most students, an excessive amount of reading and writing, and extremely difficult exams…a difference though is that APUSH the exams were graded fairly even if they were difficult, and if I brought up an issue with an exam question I was actually listened to instead of being brushed off before I could even finish asking the question, which is not something I can really say about therapeutics. Sure, they *say* they read our submissions of issues with the questions, but my experience has been if that is true then it doesn’t happen prior to responding to the submission in a demeaning manner. Disclaimer that I think the teachers are primarily good people, but being a good person doesn’t necessarily mean that you know what you are doing as a teacher. Also disclaimer that I might not be so critical if it weren’t that I was super stressed out about my grade and other stuff…

Well, I felt that way until one of my favorite little people came running up to say hi. I love people, especially the little people. And then once I said goodbye the feeling returned. I just wanna quit. Where’s my white flag?

Also, my name should really have been klutz. This time I have no excuse. I wasn’t really over-tired…and all I was doing Wednesday morning was hanging my towel up when the shower door tried to kill me and I subsequently sat on the floor and had a whine-fest (very important to not miss the ‘h’ in whine, otherwise I’d have WAY bigger problems to deal with…). Then I wished I hadn’t melted all my ice in the sink three weeks ago. Then I sucked it up buttercup and finished packing up my stuff and went to school. I like the phrase suck it up buttercup when I say it to myself sometimes. My guess would be that it probably actually means something dirty so I try not to say it out loud, and I know it is supposed to be derogatory (and sometimes use it that way), but I like to imagine pretty yellow flowers filled with yummy lemonade in a path towards what I am supposed to be doing as an incentive to move on…anyway, that is how I discovered that I pretty much always sleep on top of my right arm…

I don’t want to hate. I don’t want to be broken

(Plumb–better)

Oh my…

Although it was a little shock when I opened the door and had forgotten just how much of a mess I had left, it was kind of stress-relieving to put the shoes back into the bag headed for the trash and throw armloads of clothes back into the basket and put the basket back into its rightful home.

Tuesday was not a wonderful day. I tried really hard to study, but it just feels really hopeless at this point. There is so much to know and so little time. In the past they have put this final in the afternoon the very last day of the semester…AKA 8 extra days to study that I am missing out on because some teacher wanted to get to start their summer early…

Then I went to the most pointless meeting ever. It was required, but they didn’t even take attendance so no one would have really known had I not shown up…and someone else showed up over 30 minutes late and no one said anything. The meeting was primarily to vote for who was going to have the official positions in my stupid fraternity next year. (Note that I think ALL fraternities are stupid, not just mine). As I have discovered this year, being an elected position means that you get an awesome title for your CV that really means “I did absolutely nothing.” On the other hand, having a self-selected position means doing a little actual work. Beyond that, next year I will be a sixth year and therefore am not required to go to a single meeting or do any of your other stupid activities. Not going to lie, I joined Greek life because it was a good resume builder, and I hate everything about it. They say it is the best friends money can buy, and you know what, loving people buys you a lot better friends than money. I would rather pull off all my eyelashes and eyebrows than spend an extended period of time with a lot of these people. I try really hard to be friendly and loving and pray for them on a regular basis, but I’d prefer to know them from a distance. The big draw to this particular fraternity is that you can join Greek life with a minimal time commitment…which is good because the meetings are so annoying. Also, there was this one girl that applied for every single position and lost (hmmm, I wonder why when her speech on why to vote for her was pretty offensive and ended with money is really important and we all want it)…well, that is, she lost every time until it go to the position of picture-taker and she was the only person who ran and therefore won by default. Okay fine, so that particular elected position actually does require the holder to do SOMETHING…but taking pictures of meetings you are already required to be at isn’t exactly a taxing role.

Then the stupid speech. It shouldn’t have been a big deal. It was required to pass the speech in order to pass the class, and I did that, so I mean the world didn’t shatter or anything, but it went horrendously. First we had to get our topic a few minutes in advance…but as the coordinator is laying them out on the table and tells us to come get ours and we try to, she tells us to stop because “I have to hand it to you” oh sorry, I guess we are not capable of using alphabetical order and reading and recognizing our own names anymore. Okay, so not a big deal, but it was just one more annoyance to add to the annoyance of the last minute dress code change and that we only had ten minutes to get the topic, write the speech, and run to the third or fourth floor to give the speech.

I knew exactly what I was going to say and rehearsed in my head as I ran. (And usually the only running I do is late). I was confident and knew what was up. Except, I couldn’t breathe. I don’t know if you have ever tried to give a speech while unable to breathe, but it is a bit of a challenge. Insert awkward pause in the middle of a sentence that sounds like I just lost my train of thought, but is really trying not to suffocate. I don’t really know what happened. It very well could have been from running up the stairs because there definitely wasn’t time to wait for the elevator. That is what I want to think that it probably was. It could also have been a recurrence of my social issues though…I really don’t want that to be the problem. I didn’t really feel scared, but that doesn’t really rule out social issues—I was never scared to talk to my best friend back before I conquered the social issues, but despite her being near and dear to my heart and working really hard to help me communicate as well as possible (and she definitely knew the tricks and did hear a LOT more of my voice than most people ever heard at the time), she still was absolutely thrilled and quite literally jumped out of her chair and jumped up and down congratulating me when I responded to a question with “I haven’t thought about that” instead of a blank look, shrug, or waiting for the question to become a yes or no that I could answer without words. Yeah, five words was a cause for huge celebration, and I was proud of myself, too, because words were really hard for me. So anyway, I passed the speech, but not by much…

Which increased the frustration and anxiety about the final. I now need a ridiculously high grade to keep the grade that I already have in the class since that brought me to the very bottom of the grade. It might be almost within reach if the exam were only over the new material, but it is cumulative. I hate cumulative exams. I wish I could go back to sixth or seventh grade when cumulative exams weren’t a thing. (I don’t remember whether it was seventh or eighth grade when cumulative exams became a thing, but either way, I don’t like them at all).

And there are a couple people whose heart seems to be in the right place but occasionally drive me crazy because okay, if I take out my headphones, ask you to repeat your question, answer it, then immediately put BOTH headphones back in that should be a good hint that I am doing something important and you shouldn’t be talking to me unless it is important…which generally does not include a lecture on what you are going to eat for lunch tomorrow or a list of all the things you are currently not craving. Patience is a virtue…that is hard.

On the positive side, I also calculated how much I needed to only go down one letter grade, and that came up with a much more realistic number…I guess I will pray for the best and just know that even if I go down a letter grade I will still pass and still go on rotation. Yeah, it will be a little harder to get a residency and I might feel a little frustrated, but at the end of the day, passing and moving on are the most important things, because they mean a freedom I can only dream of right now.