In the Mirror

Until this week if you would have asked me what the hardest part of medical school was I would have said changing the parts of me that needed honing to succeed in medical school. It has ground me ruthlessly down via a relentless daily scouring until I shed the bad habits and unnecessary clutter that I've carried like suitcases for years.

I've learned I can't always be there for everyone, goodness knows I can't even be there for people I love many times. I've learned the world goes on anyway and the people I love and who love me do their best to understand.

I've learned to draw lines around myself emotionally and protect what little vital energy is flowing in my soul and not waste it on things that aren't important.

I've learned how much time I've wasted in my life and what's possible to accomplish in 30 minutes.

I've learned that I need help, desperately.

And in spite of what the American/Protestant way has woven into every fiber of my soul. I've learned that motivation and self-control should be regulated.

I've learned when motivation and self-control are given free reign they cause my heart to die and my body to become ill. That there is a point where you can have too much self-control and too much motivation. Imagine that.

I've learned, "They're the expert... Why not try it?" Isn't always the best sentence to live by. That experts don't know all of what is best for the individual.

I've learned that it is only healthy to change so much at one time.

I've learned that there are things that are my essence and I shouldn't change them or they break my soul.

I thought the list above was the sum of what I needed to learn...

Then I went for a climb, my first trad multi-pitch 480 ft climb, and my perspective changed; my heart beat again. I was ready to learn the real lesson.

Today I should be studying, and I will. But instead I've sat for awhile, looked out the window and cried. I had a long text with my mom. I ran across a Ted Talks that spoke to my heart...

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame.html

And I realized the personal change hasn't been the hard part.

The hard part is trusting myself, accepting I am smart enough, wise enough and have what it takes to survive. Not just for medical school but the future that sits before me.

The hard part is being ok, that I failed a class and being ok with the shame of not being perfect. Facing the critic inside that will never be satisfied and with a smile saying, "I am satisfied".

The hard part is learning to look in the mirror and loving what looks back, even if I'm messed up.

The fight isn't medical school, the fight isn't changing habits, the fight is with myself.

Medical school isn't special. We all face the potential shame of failure or the shame of past failure. Almost all of us have to make the decision to start the fight again or give into the inner critic every single day.

It takes courage to get back on your horse and go into hand to hand combat.

And so I am trying again to be kinder to those around me, be gentle and encouraging. Less judgmental...

I'm trying to say more often, "Take heart, you're not alone. And no matter how many times you've fallen, I'm proud you have the courage to stand up, face the possible shame of failure and try again. I know what that feels like."

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Stories Told: Lessons From a Storm Part 2

Stories were told. I suspect every disaster has its own folklore that races through the battered towns. Little children rescued from coolers citing women with wings as their saviors, adults flung hundreds of feet only to stand and help their neighbor, five people found in a basement in this town, three people rescued from a basement in another. Each day, without the help of a TV or radio we heard more stories of hope. Each day they brought a smile to our faces.

Humanity needs hope. Most of the time these stories whether partially true, true or truly figments of someone's imagination stoke the embers of hope. They are like a sugar pill, they make tomorrow more bearable and if they are true, all the better.

One story was different. Every disaster or human tragedy has this story. The characters and places are different the message is the same. It is a story of brightly colored, candy coated poison.

A man of faith had been away from his home and when he returned the valley around his home, a place of drug dealers, was decimated. Houses were piles of rubble. His home, his pets, his cars were untouched. My friend's face was enraptured. The tornado had spun out at the bottom of his hill and couldn't make it up.

I smiled and nodded. My stomach cramped and my heart bled, grated raw by the lack of compassion in the story for the families in the valley. Families who most certainly suffered and will continue to suffer for their loss of life and homes.

In a few of my photos there were shots, specific ones that were a rebuttal to this innocent story that poured toxic into my heart from that day forward. Photos of the box labelled "Missions" that was flung from the place on the granite counter top where items were put in to donate, the counter top pulverized. Photos of an inner wall that has, "Every good and perfect gift comes from above." The rest of the house crushed like an egg. Ironic.

I wanted to grab my friend and beg for him to see, there are no favorites. There isn't always reason, not always an answer to impose upon this chaos. Everyone suffers together. We crave black and white yet are gifted with a insipid gray haze. In that dreaded pallid haze, is a place of grace.  It is here that I found humanity grabbed hands, rough hewn and straight laced, broken and whole, deserving and undeserving and struggled to rise above the obliteration of their existence.

But in my abraded heart I still hemorrhage anguish for the callousness of the 'favored' who will never understand the gift of the haze.

We have Our Lives: Lessons From a Storm Part 1

This morning I woke up with black circles around my eyes, a smoker's voice and the energy quota of a snail. Most people felt they understood what was up. But one friend  cheerfully asked, "What's your problem?" I laughed a little and slowly walked away. How do I explain? Maybe I never can. Maybe you just have to be there. Maybe I'll try, as I explore what a few days in the aftermath of a storm taught me.

The reality is that most people thought that searching for bodies would suck me dry, leave me depressed or stressed. This was a nearly forgone conclusion with many. It didn't. While I'd obviously rather rescue a living human I feel honored to bring closure to a family who would otherwise wonder what became of their relative or perhaps stumble upon their husband, wife, or child's mangled or dismembered body. I have the protection of not knowing the person whose shell became a part of the twisted debris tossed aside by an insatiable storm, they do not.

Why do I spend the evenings alone by the lake to silently reflect?

I climbed over acres, if not miles of rubble, most of it was unrecognizable splinters. I'd see a doll, a pair of jeans, video tape, a photograph of children, a motorcycle chain and a jewelry box all a dull, gritty, angry brown. As I walked I realized each of the items represented someone's life, their money and their hopes. I came across a father, a mother, a grandmother as I walked, each one staring blank at the shards that had been their home. Each one forcefully met my eyes with theirs and with a feverish passion of thankfulness named the people in their family that were alive, their neighbors and friends. While they stumbled in light tennis shoes over boards bristling with nails, cement blocks on edge and the dusty splintered trees, they all had the same conclusion, "We have our lives."

We have our lives. The contents of their homes ripped open, gutted like the prey of an angry dog.

We have our lives. Their cars rolled and tossed by the careless hand of an enraged child.

We have our lives. Photographs of their children, healthy, happy and proud buried in the mud, slowly decomposing.

We have our lives. Vulnerable, stripped and bare.

We have our lives. Their hearts full of thankfulness.

We have our lives. Their hands full of supplies for their neighbors; the one who was deaf, the one who lost a loved one or the ones who sat in mute coma at the place where their front door should have been.

We have our lives.

And so tonight I stood beside the lake, throwing a pebble in and watching the ripples move away. The trees around me reached toward heaven in a majestic verdant hymn of grace. On my heart a heavy responsibility laid bare, throbbing, bleeding fire throughout my soul...

I have my life...

In Closing

While I sat in the Urgent Care room, its chilly pleather aqua blue and mauve chair squeaking beneath my restless twisting and turning, they told me it was the last time. I was given the script for antibiotics that would drain my credit card and destroy my guts. It's been two weeks I've been sick, maybe three, it's hard to remember now.

We'll culture your sample, we're shocked its never been cultured before, with your history.

I don't go to doctors.

Your sample was incredibly dilute.

I drank 96 oz of water since 7am to keep the pain down.

Infections can be resistant to all but the most exotic antibiotic.

Great

They listened to heart and lungs. Peered into ears, eyes, nose and tonsils. Tapped an aching back. The doc was excellent, thorough.

It's the last time. Another, in a month or less, you'll need to go to a Urologist.

I don't go to doctors.

You've likely already damaged your bladder and possibly kidneys.

My face in my hands I stare at blue smears on a composite tile floor, all a fluorescent white, burning my eyes...

...I'm cold.

(another sketch for a short story)

Experiencing YMSB

I'm deaf, although a few minutes ago I wish I were more deaf. The cilia in my ears is flattened and an eternal hum, buzz and ring reverberates in stereo around my frontal cortex. Something like a good pair of headphones stuck on the emergency broadcast system and you can't tune it out, off or to a lower volume.

Never mind my ears. The other day while running down the beach and through the sandy Florida streets early in the morning I saw a sign hung on moldering bleached pinkish, brown bricks that said, "Yonder Mountain String Band (YMSB) - Thursday 8pm".  I went early and was the first one in line. Sad I know, but I've been to YMSB shows in Durango and the line snakes out further than I wanted to stand on a wet, gelid Florida night. A woman and her father came stand with me and chat. She's a lawyer who does medical malpractice lawsuits, he's retired and checking out chics, professionally, it appeared. She and I got into a vigorous and illuminating discussion. We took up standing positions along the upstairs rail, front and center and waited watching the crowd below go on a collective and expensive bender.

YMSB - Dave Johnston, Ben Kaufmann, Jeff Austin & Adam Aijala

When it all started there were a few "hoppers" up front that felt the word dancing meant constantly flinging themselves vertically away from the earth's gravitational pull only to find themselves being rudely yanked back by it's unceasing grip.

There were three men to my right that I called the judges. All were well over the age of veiled peeking and had degenerated into twelve year old males, engaging in the, "punch, nudge, wink, har har," view of females. They pointed and assessed expertly, mouths obtusely agape at the bouncing, lissome females in the crush below.

People behind me waved their arms in the air in erratic patterns, hopped and bowed to the rhythm of the base, mandolin, banjo and guitar. The iniquitous rhythm drove even the most upright person to nod their head like a seizing bird.

I wondered if I took a video with all the sound gone if all of you would think I visited an asylum for fun. Everyone looked like they'd come undone. 

It was a good show for a small venue.

Like molecules moving from different states people's movements changed throughout the night. At first with maximum space the people flowed, jostled and hurled themselves as if molecules in the gaseous state (something is just not right with that sentence). Collisions were infrequent and fully elastic.

As the night became darker, the music louder and the crowd denser their movements were more like that of a liquid. Some formed bonds and bounced around but most could still fling themselves in abandon before hitting the next person.

Finally we hit solid. It was flesh from wall to wall. At this point each molecule's degree of freedom was limited to simply quivering from side to side. Most of the real motion was up and down. Bonds were formed and broken regularly throughout the crowd. People, well sozzled, were kept up right and jumping by their neighbors. It was at this point I decided I'd had enough of the balcony and was going to join the solid on the floor.

It looked like the concerts in Colorado but missing were the distinct little pillars of smoke that shown the way to a pot pipe and a pinch of the good stuff.  But although they were visibly absent the affects were still there. People upstairs were unmistakably chemically loony, whirling in large circles with arms flying out beside them like streamers and eyes inscrutably looking at the tongue and groove ceiling. Girls sat in darkened corners fixated by the bits of dirty torn carpet near their feet.

Down on the ground floor I squeezed my way through bulky fat middles and skinny eyeball jabbing elbows until I was in the middle of the solid. At this point they began to sing one of the songs that always makes me laugh, "Granny Won't You Smoke Some". What a hilarious song.  Up and down the crowd surged. What had taken me so long to join the solid? It was fun dodging elbows and being pummeled by rings of fat as they orbited the twirling bodies to which they were loosely attached. And hearing my shoes schluck off a floor covered in drying beer and mud. It was fun, I know this appears  sarcastic but I enjoyed the experience.

Social lubricant had greased the wheels and one fine young man up front pulled up his shirt showing his scrawny chest to the boys on the stage. Save two members, the band looked bored. They've seen it all and mentally they were off in Tahiti on a beach just like you and I when we're at work from 9am-5pm. Likely they were likely aided by a chemical agent that we'd be fired for having. The two front and center fed on the energy of the crowd and it was hitting feverish.

I was considering coming home early, you know midnight or one, like the pathetic old person I am but decided to stay a little more. I was not disappointed. They pulled out all the volume the speakers had and jammed out "Crazy Train," another favorite of mine and from the reverberating howl everyone else's too. The crowd bounded up and down and up and down hands flying and waving people yelling and singing.

Strobes

Strobes broke us into vignettes of the moment. I was there hopping, singing and crossing my fingers that all the jumping would help build muscle to avoid injury when I ran. The boy behind me with his hoody askew was leaping with two arms in the air while bowing and thrashing around. He fell on me several times not being as much part of the solid as he should have been with that much induced instability. Sweetly, he screamed a sincere mushy drunken apology in my ear each time.

Suddenly a great gap in the crowd appeared in front of me. Three people were on the floor.  A trampling at a YMSB concert? Unthinkable. Then I saw they were kneeling, heads down in the gummed, muddy beer floor. I thought perhaps they had decided they wanted beer so badly and were so high they were licking it off the floor but not wanting to make too many assumptions I decided to ask. They were looking for the glasses. Being the only one that saw one of everything rather than with wobbly, double vision I found the glasses quite quickly. YEY! Everyone around gave me a hugs. Hands soaked in mud and beer stuck lovingly to my back and hair. It made my night. I know what it's like to have lost your glasses.

It was time to go and the solid began to melt and once out the door it nearly instantaneously sublimed back into a gas. Released from their solid state most of the molecules were teetering down the street appearing unable to shoulder the responsibility of holding themselves upright. One helpful teeterer perhaps in his twenties and with frightening brown curls that shot straight out from his head shouted at me in his profound deafness to put on my coat, didn't I know it was cold? The streets barren, had been almost silent, neon lights bouncing off of wet, glimmering asphalt.

It was cold the wind blowing off the crashing waves a few hundred yards to the left but I was warm, sweating. "Thanks Mom," I wanted to yell back to my helpful teeterer in my own state of hearing loss. What a night.

The Real Reason I have Options

Options are good, they scratch and smooth my ego until I'm purring like a contented kitten knowing  that I'm loved at more than one school. I walked into this season of interviewing pretty sure I'd be a lucky girl to even get one school.

Now I have two excellent options, RVU in CO and VCOM in SC and I am wait listed everywhere else I've interviewed. That means it's a good possibility they will become options later. (not sure yet at UNC) To not be turned down anywhere is a shock, I am humbled that they all see something in me they like enough to keep me around. Everyone said it would turn out this way and I always hoped everyone was right and worked my rear off like I didn't have a chance in hades. Statistically I didn't.

I still have prospects of two more interviews, Ft Lauderdale, FL, and Vallejo, CA, so it is far, far from over, just in a little lull. Even then it won't be really over until May. It's a long time to sit in limbo. Limbo is a difficult place for me, since I like to wrestle life to the ground and then reduce it to a list of steps to success. But it is in limbo I learn the most about myself and my great lack of balance. It brings out the weaknesses of my character and parades them around like lumberjacks in a ballroom. Can't miss them! :)

The odds were wretched. My statistical chance at RVU was 4.8% around the same with VCOM. I knew this before I started working toward becoming a Dr and purposefully never thought about it again. Yet odds like that are inspiring. They force me to live on the sharp edge, to drag out every reserve in my soul to do battle. While I bet my whole future, I didn't gamble that much. I know that focusing on one day at a time more can be achieved by any of us then we ever imagined we could.

It wasn't me. I learned this graphically by watching a good friend work hard for a goal they deserved. A goal they likely would have achieved but were blocked in the final stages by someone who had the power to do so, it broke my heart. I still hate it when life is unfair.

It reminded me how blessed/fortunate I've been. There were many times I was blocked from going toward my goal by circumstances. Perhaps some of you remember I lost funding after my first year back at school and it was an influential Chemistry professor that believed in my potential, my dream, who got me into a program and back on track. I can think of many other amazing people (Bobbie, Shellie, etc etc) who saw some little spark of potential in my overly excited brain and either made my path easier or passed that enthusiasm on to someone else who had never met me and in that way, made it so I could move forward.

Thus I suppose this should end as a tribute to those who helped me, the hero's of my life. They include not just the people who have straightened my difficult trail with their influence but everyone who cheers with me and groans at my super nerdy posts, Charles, family (adopted family) and (amazing) friends. It is via each of you that I get the reserve of optimism that keeps me noticing the smallest wonders, a budding tree, an odd  patient, a silly caterpillar with sinusoidal legs. These things and each of you, keep me smiling and give me strength try again tomorrow.

There is some saying about it taking a village to raise a child. It is my experience that it takes one crazy village to make a doctor!

Thank you! If I had a glass of wine/sparkling peach juice (whatever your taste might be) I'd propose a toast and dedicate each success to you!

Might as well enjoy it, it's all about to get that much harder... and I can't wait...

Standing in Danny's Garage - A Brief Character Sketch

I stand in Danny's Garage, it's owned by this fellow with a red tinged quarter inch beard. The thumb of his weighty, cracked hand is confidently hooked into his already strained jeans. His flaccid belly is stretched taut with a woodland camo shirt and is indented where his right thumb fits in. Beer he bought cheaper than "that bottled water" is in the left hand, crusty and torn jeans sag at the crotch pulling the eye down to scuffed steal toed boots that used to be dark shiny brown and are matte tan now. He stands hips jutted forward, hair in slick dark blond clumps strings out from under a day-glow orange hat, gathering into a mullet that looks like it was shot and applied to to back of his head in the 80's and has been decaying ever since. His shoulders are collapsed forward because he's relaxed, in his domain. He's the king of chaos and stuck to 2"x4" studs he has a harem of naked women torn from tawdry magazines, all inflamed for his desire. (Don't judge, greasy guys need love at their command too.)

He's standing in his garage where he does dubious shade tree mechanicing. He loves Fords cause his daddy loved them and they ain't no foreign junk and that's all he needs to know, ever, period, don't bring it up again. Snap-On sockets, the only thing of quality to be seen, are hanging out of the open drawers of his red, 5'4" tool box (I know because I stand by it). Black, limp rags hang from the corner and are piled all over a darkly stained cool gray floors, scattered with clay cat litter that scuffs when I move. Old cylinders of various welding gases stand in a corner, not sure what color they started life as but the scratches showing different layers of paint and ending in rust. Cars are in various stages of being repaired or torn apart. Parts from all the cars mingle like it's a cocktail party and they're hell bent on going home with a different car then they came with.

I've stood here before, not at these exact coordinates, but I've been here assessing the general view of the area. I've stood here doing the complex math required to extrapolate what it means about the people who own and work in the place and what it's going to cost me to leave with a car that runs and drives.

- This is simply a character sketch I want to save for a future story, our cars are fine. My mechanic is far classier and better looking than the quality one described. :) My thanks goes to S for the business name.

The Greatest Summer

Remember all the things I was going to do this summer? It was a short list but had two things in it I'd never done and wanted to do, try to do photography professionally and publish one short story.  Perhaps you'd like to know how it's gone? I was so gung ho and shared it with you guys to hold me to it. 

I didn't. I didn't even start down that road. Instead I have two jobs, one redoing a website for the NCSU Biology department and another playing super girl who can do everything and replace anyone in the front office of a Dermatologist's office. Far cry from what I wanted isn't it?  Life happened as it often happens to us, fast. What I needed to do for the summer changed three weeks into it based on decisions that I did not control. It's a long story...

I have a friend, he likes to say that planning is like peeing into the ocean. He's right. Life is less about always achieving my goals and more about making them and then practicing holding them lightly, not grasping them so tightly that I go down with them when they're lost at sea. And as I watched those plans be swept away this summer I eventually smiled as they disappeared because there is always tomorrow. Tomorrow will be full of new plans, new goals and new challenges. The sea that I am continually challenging will flow around me and through me making me the a woman of greater insight, compassion and perspective.

 

Truthfully, I love the Biology job. My boss is a brilliant woman, a neuroscientist, and I enjoy chatting with her talking about big plans for the department and for the website. I'm directing the automation of the site to keep it's updating painless and later I will tweak its layout and give the pages better focus. It's something I'm very good at and it's nice to be the expert sometimes.

The dermatologist job is teaching me how a Dr's office is run. The daily grind of keeping one alive and well. This is an amazing opportunity if I should ever decide to run my own someday. 

Currently...

...I'm trying to write secondaries. Secondaries are the second application that all medical schools require you to fill out. Most have 3-5 essays they want you two write, no two the same. I have come down with a viral case of writer's block and each paragraph is a physical fight. I fish words from my brain like I fish broken bits of eggshells from my eggs in the morning. It each word is an elusive hunt often not meshing with the one before. It will get done... once I'm done writing this. 

...my father-in-law lays dying, his tubes disconnected, life flowing from his body. Life is short and it's not worth getting too spun up about.

After running around Lake Lynn this morning I stopped by the grocery store and heard this song. It reminded me of my plans this summer of all the plans I've made over the years and failed at completing, plans that I may never get to complete... It's all about perspective...

The Greatest 

by Kenny Rogers

...He makes no excuses, He shows no fears
He just closes his eyes and listens to the cheers

Little boy, he adjusts his hat
Picks up his ball, stares at his bat
Says I am the greatest the game is on the line
And he gives his all one last time

And the ball goes up like the moon so bright
Swings his bat with all his might
And the world's so still as still can be
And the baseball falls, and that's strike three

Now it's supper time and his mama calls
Little boy starts home with his bat and ball
Says I am the greatest that is a fact
But even I didn't know I could pitch like that.

To the Unknown

Tested this morning and I am now a certified General Class HAM. YEOW!!! YIPPEEE! *JUMPING* One goal for the summer down and a couple more to go  and those may not get accomplished. But more on that later.

Just as important, I finished the dreaded personal statement last night and I can now apply to medical school. Once I push that button the future is shot into the unknown and it's out of my hands. I don't particularly like that part of it. I'm more comfortable when there's something left for me to do, to control and to perfect. It's good for me, pushes me to be still and exercises my character. Jumping into activity isn't scary for me, jumping into stillness, into waiting, terrifies me.

So I'm looking over the edge and about to let go... wish me luck.

The Pop-riveted Wonder

It was green, wasn't it? Last time I saw it, green was the predominant color. A dark, dusty green, with small cracks where the sun had been able to get through the shiny gloss that enticed the original owner. The cracks ran down to a peachy spot that was sandy and dull and picked up on the other side where they branched out to a burgundy burst of rattle can paint. Then they dove on down to where it suddenly stopped short in the mottled silver of tin that took up where the crack had left off. A rivet seam sewed the tin to the fractured green.

Each tin patch gave way to another tin patch, their rivets lined up in precise rows until the tin gave way to a cancerous lesion's lacy edge. The rust that threatened to end the life of the venerable machine, eating it in pieces and leaving it in the Upper Michigan driveway to nourish life with its oxidized iron.

Sometimes Dad, a tall imposing man whose gigantic hands were the terror of every naughty boy in Sabbath School, would wind up its motor and charge the feisty steed shooting gravel from under balding tires down the driveway toward the growing pothole that marked the quarter mile point. As my brother, Eric, and I, bent toward the space between the two front seats our blond heads nearly colliding in the center with each lurch. Our eyes were pinned wide open with the g-forces and we leaned forward with the thrill that 35 miles per hour on a gravel road can give two grade schoolers.

Then we would hit the dip, our seats dropped out from under us, our heads rapped the seat in front. We would be suspended for just a second at the apex of our bounce and then we would be falling down while the seat came up impacting our bums with the force of a resounding spank. Our high voices would cheer. The sharp smell of the dust that had hovered above its resting spot, the lightly grooved plastic mats, was pulled into our noses as we inhaled sharply. Dad cheered too, I think, but it sounded kind of like, "it should make it to school and back." The struts were rusted so badly he feared they would give out and the sporty hatch-backed car would strand us on a lonely country lane while doing the permanent splits with its tires.

Normal places people don't have to worry about breaking their struts on the way to school, even if they are rusting. But Upper Michigan was hit hard by the slump of the 80's and it was rumored that our town had written the head of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to stock our potholes so all the non-vegetarians could all have fish to eat. We vegetarians were happy too, that meant more food for us since everyone else would be eating their Rainbow Trout, Sucker or Coho Salmon. Maybe, the hardy locals whispered, they would even stock a few Smelt for those prone to biting the head off of the little fish in the ecstasy of successful fishing.

This fish head biting was a local tradition. My 10 year old male classmates would puff out their scrawny plaid, flannel covered chests and recount their latest experience of this tradition hoping to make the small female population at our school scream. Most of the girls did scream, their stiffly sprayed bank of upright bangs quivering in their horror. The DNR never did honor the request and it seems that the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) - busily making life better under the bridge, never came to patch the holes. And so my dad continued to try to break the car in the driveway where we could get home easily.

I didn't like the car. In spite of the joy of the daily NASCAR like drive down to the looming pothole in the driveway it was beneath my 10 year old permed and hair sprayed dignity. Thinking back, it was the 80's, everything was ugly and there were very few new cars on the road but somehow I knew I rode in the ugliest car in the nation. This was my third school since I started five years ago and since it was populated with cousins and people of the North that had dug in for years, as a newcomer I did not feel welcome. Simply put, I was really not cool. Life was a tragedy and that was compounded by the green patch worked Datsun that got us to school.

As Dad drove, I would sink down in my back seat, well under the little triangle of glass that was my window. When we arrived to our orange and white vertically striped, tin sided school, Dad pulled the grayed green emergency break until it clicked out to its last setting and hopped out the "pop" the seat. I would scramble out careful not to catch my tightly pegged jeans on the car and hoped that no one, in the twenty kid classroom would see me out the plate glass windows.

Even then I had to admit it added brightness to my life. Eric and I with our heads down resting on our knees would amuse ourselves by pealing up the aforementioned rubbery black floor mats and peer at the pavement streaking by. The different colored rocks that made up the gray concrete would speed by making faint streaks of color under the car. We would whisper in conspiratorial tones about what we would do if we were kidnapped in the Datsun. At 10 and 7 we had it all planned out. We kept an arsenal of driveway gravel on the floor near our seats. IF someone were foolish enough to steal the Hornbacher children we would quickly pull up the mats to the secret holes in the floor and drop out the little rocks.  A Hansel and Gretel trail of gravel. It was infallible.

But the best story happened when the Mother-in-law or Coco as we all called her, came up to visit.

To be continued...

This Week

What happened this week?

It started last week. The night we arrived at our new apartment, after our 2000 mile drive from Colorado, I made the mistake of checking my email. It was 9pm and I should have gone to bed, but I did not.

There was an email stating that there had been an update to my FAFSA and I was not eligible for financial aid. What? I had accepted the loans already. I didn't sleep well and spent much time praying for peace and a little perspective. It would have been nice to run down to the financial aid office but I could not. The next day we had a UHaul rented and we had to move out of storage and into our new place. So we did.

Thanks to God, I began to get some perspective. Every stressful time in my life I have been able to learn something new. Sometimes it turned out like I wanted and sometimes not, such as the case with the MCAT. But I was always given new insight into myself, life and God by these situations. My life has been deepened and enriched by each moment spent out on the tippy-tip of the trembling limb where we have chosen to make our nest. Thus after some quiet time, thought and prayer I was thankful for yet another test of my ability to relax and let the things go I could not handle right then and still be motivated to take care of what had to be done. Thankful...in a day or so, that is unheard of for me. :) Maybe I'm learning/growing.

I discussed with Charles what I thought was happening. I was planning on applying to start the 14 month BSN (bachelors of nursing) this next summer but if my financial aid was running out I may not have the money to do that. It is good to have another head during these times because he suggested I look to see if I could apply for spring 2010. So I did. This year they had extended the deadline to Aug 17, 2009 and the day I found out was Aug 15, 2009. So I had a lot to do in two days if I were to apply. This is where three essays and getting all the schools (high school and colleges) to mail out my transcripts on Monday, August 17, because they had to be postmarked by then.

Sunday I filled out the lengthy application and finished 1.5 essays out of three. Monday I faxed and called all the schools (that were still open) and begged them to send out my transcripts that day or at least tell me if they could not and save me the $70 application fee. They all promised and that was over 3/4's of the day just to get everything taken care of as far as transcripts. Then to finish the application. It's a long boring process and I'll spare you the details. We'll just say after they closed the application early (mistake on their computer's part) and I had the run around at NCSU to get my transcripts to drive them to UNC I was able to submit the application less than 2 minutes before 11:59 August 17, 2009.

Thursday I was finally able to make it in to the financial aid office (9am sharp so there'd be no lines) and figure out what is going on with my financial aid. I have been expecting financial aid to run out. The government only allows students to borrow a set amount from them and I accrued a pile of debt by going to private college the first time around. I knew I would run out of financial aid in the next two years but this was a little early. (By the way graduate limits and undergraduate limits are two different things I am still doing undergraduate classes.) Come to find out it was a mistake on the lender/government's part. So things are back to normal. I will not run out of financial aid for a couple of years. WHEW!

But now I have an application in at the UNC School of Nursing so we'll see if I get in. If one person did not follow through on the transcripts I don't have a shot and I have no way of knowing until November. So we'll see.

Why nursing I thought you wanted to be Dr Heather? Nursing, well it could take me two years to get into medical school and I am running out of useful undergraduate courses to take. Nursing would give me experience in the daily life of medicine, give me a good income and provide a back up, Nurse Practitioner, if medical school should fall through. So if after two years of applying to Dr school I don't get in I will have worked two years as a nurse and since I have to work one or two years to be eligible for NP school it would allow me to slide right in.

I have it all buttoned up right? Not so fast. Read the sailing post before this one. Life is NEVER buttoned up. Plans are good but I am finding that life/God has its own ideas when it comes to plans. And so far I have found that it doesn't generally follow my plans and I am much happier when I am willing to let go and learn to sail with the winds.

Changing Like the Wind

Muscles bulged, white knuckled fingers wrapped around the halyard and eyes squinted to see the top of the sail. Did the mainsail catch on the hook? Are we ready to go? The jib, pregnant with wind, pulled at us, our feet were braced in the water that tickled our knees. There was the hollow clang of the ring settling on the hook and we all began to look at the job in front of us. Batten down the snacks, jackets and shoes, sail and tuck the mainsheet in its cleats then bruise shins and stub toes while scrambling topside because sailboat 888 is not staying by the dock for very long.

Our eyes turn to the open lake, wind creating a map of it's directions and speeds around the lake. Out to the starboard side a it is like a crazed weaver created a cloth with random texture, some of the water nubby with wind and other parts smooth and soft like velvet where the breeze has lifted her skirts and floated past on lace pantaloons without touching down.

We were in a nubby section and the boat is sliding backwards toward immanent collision with the dock at a frightful speed. The mainsheet yanked forcefully from the stainless steel of cleats allows the mainsail to slide across the hull, we ducked our heads one right after another in a silly looking dance to miss the mainboom's skull crunching reach as it swings overhead. Turbo lifts his black fuzzy ears as it comes toward him and drops to the trampoline deck with an omph. Once it is settled in its new location it causes us to bear away, out of the wind's strength, and gives us more time to get all the tack arranged and ready for the warm breezes that are pushing across the lake.

After an appropriately democratic discussion on where best to tie down the mainsail we begin come about and the boat begins to heel. The three designated scramblers, Charles, Dad and I, scratch and tumble under the mainboom and onto the hull that is hovering above the water by several inches. We do not want to capsize, what a mess that would be, we don't even know how to sail let alone right an upside down boat. Thus we are off across the lake heading toward our current destination, the other side of the lake.

My hair pulls out of it's ever present black hair tie and finds a way to tickle my nose and slide into my mouth. My heel touches the water and it releases diamonds from its murky depths that land on my leg and slowly make their way back to the whole. Eric, at the helm, has the smile of the toothpaste model, his hand holds the tiller firmly. Dad and Charles lean out over the hovering hull, holding spider web guy wires, their eyes shut to the wind. Dad is dipping his backside toward the water to see how close he can get before it drags. Turbo the breeze pets him, ruffling his hair on his head, then his back and then lifting his tail for one last tweak, lays with his chin between his feet. His frosted eyebrows move up and down as he looks around at the liquid and shoreline birds sliding past. It is silent among us.

In front of us a velvety spot appears, much to large to avoid and immediately the wind stops. The heeling hull comes down to the water and Dad's posterior comes down into the water and he yelps. He and Charles laugh while splashing around to get out of the water and back topside. We're learning. So there we sit. Wind happening all around us, other sailboats speeding on toward the other side. We look over the edge and our faces stare back at us a perfect mirror in the middle of a lake wracked with wavelets. We pull out the paddles and begin to paddle toward the nearest nubby spot in the lake but we don't make fast time. Sometimes it works and sometimes we wait it out until the wind blows up on us again. It will, it always has, it may take awhile but it will come running by, pick up our languid sails and we will fly again. We may have to adjust our course, or our goal but we will sail again.

No Clouds, all Sun and an Ice Cream Truck

Ever had one of those days that seems everything is brighter, tastier and happier than it has ever been? Don't you love emotions, 3 blogs back I was almost rocked to my core over some rough news, today the sky's the limit and its blooming flowers in my path - quite literally.

I am not generally dramatic. (couldn't guess could you?) Although the past year has held a good bit of drama and lessons for me. It seems I waited years for some change in my life...spiritual growth, noticeable emotional growth, some flash of clarity on what I wanted for my future. And it all happens *slam* in one year. These are my favorite years even though they are my toughest years.

Another such year that flavors my heart strongly is my year in Cambodia. Much harder than this year it was one to grow bitter on or grow stronger on. Thank God, after a few years of quiet contemplation He has turned into "miracle grow fertilizer" for my heart; scribing deeper the channels of spiritual understanding and human empathy. It is touching many decisions I make today is a tendril that curls down deep into that year.

Oh I digress...bother that was not my intent.

So the other day. YEY! I spent it studying sort of a normal day. But it was warm...70's the windows were open, birds sang their zippy little songs and Charles did his homework as well.

We had noticed an ice cream truck with tinny little speakers had wound its way through our apartment complex a week ago. Charles and I talked of our ice cream truck memories. He bought ice cream from such a truck when he was a child. He remembered pooling all his coins together in hopes to afford on of the pictured delicacies. I remembered reading about ice cream trucks and wanted to buy ice cream from one since I was small.



The familiar sound of "Mary had a Little Lamb" played on some circus synthesizer through cheap speakers came floating through our open window. WHOO HOOO! The ice cream man! I went digging through my purse but I had no cash, this is not a surprise I don't really carry cash like I should. Charles clucked and scolded me about not having cash and then dug around and found a $5. YEY!

Out to the truck to pick our ice cream from the pictures on the side. It was hard to decide and I was glad there were 5 small heads milling around the truck shouting out their orders, gave me more time to decide. Five cheering little heads raced past my waist and it was my turn.

The ice cream man's tired face pokes out his side window. He looks like he has dealt with thousands of fighting children before noon. I finally choose an ice cream sandwich and place my order, immediately I see three other things I might have liked too but ice cream sandwiches are tops so I am happy! Charles picks a drumstick and we trot off to our apartment with our prizes. WHOOOO HOOOO ! I want to shout I bought ice cream from an ice cream truck how COOL is that?!

Have you ever wished you could do something for years and then when you do it, it just isn't what you hoped? Well I am here to say that this was NOT one of those things. Nope, it was all I dreamed of and more.

Charles of course said the best was to come. We stashed our treasure in our freezer, ate lunch and then loitered around outside licking (yes, I lick my ice cream sandwich thank you very much...it lasts longer!) the heavenly goo off of our quickly melting purchases, our sticky fingers and sweetly dabbled noses...(ok that was just me, Charles is cleaner than I am). And for 30 minutes we were 8 years old, sitting on the sidewalk, laughing, not a care in the world, not a cloud in the sky, enjoying the best of life.